🇳🇱
Aaaaannnddd another person murdered in the good ol' USA for a nonviolent crime.
Home of the free and the brave is no longer reality, it is propaganda.
@freemo > Home of the free and the brave is no longer reality, it is propaganda.
Completely. It was probably True and Right at the time of the Founders, who got off from under the British monarchy and started a new social contract experiment.
Now? 😔
Sadly it seems a new Revolution is the only way the country will find its course again. It would be bloody, but the status quo is unreal.
@design_RG Yea the thing about revolution, and civil wars, is there needs to be one of two scenarios for it to work...
1) there needs to be a geographic divide between the two sides. In this case left and the right are geographically intermixed so there are no lines that could be drawn
2) The whole of the people need to unite and universally envision the government as the bad guy with some unified sense of a public morality they are fighting for. With the left-right divide in america there is no unification.
As such revolution isnt likely to happen in the current climate.
@freemo I think it might happen, the country can't keep going as it is.
REgional tensions are high, and the Stupid in charge is only trowing gasoline in the fires. Likely it could end up in a bunch of new regional blocks, and this could take a long time to happen, maybe not.
Depends on many things. I love #Dystopic books and film, and have read and seen many; sometimes it feels like it's preparation for what's possibly to come.
Do you know the "World Made by Hand" novels by James Howard Kunstler ? Lovely, he's agreat writer, this series has 4 novels at the moment.
Highly recommend read.
His personal site : https://kunstler.com/books/world-made-by-hand/
@design_RG tensions arent enough... I think you are right that things may blow, but its more likely to look like riots and violence among americans than directed at the government in any real sense.
I mean just look at the people the population is voting for, those politicians dont look like revolution to me, they look like Status Quo with dementia.
We have a democracy, if things stood any chance of changing we would have a half-decent politician up for election right now.
@freemo > We have a democracy
Uhm, can be qualified, maybe "flawed" is a good adjective? I have frequently seen it used.
People are blinded by propaganda and noise, distractions. The political class is crass and corrupted. TWO parties, representing all the people?
Elections turn out, for presidential elections, under 50% ? OMG. And they go around harranging other people's countries and systems. Please.
@design_RG The flaws int he democracy, though, are not any unfairness in how votes are counted or any significant suppression in our ability to vote as we please.
All the flaws you mentioned are flaws inherent int he people, not the government. The people choose to read the huffington posts and the breitbart's of the world and get brainwashed by the propaganda, they choose to vote for the politically corrupt, they choose to buy the lie of a two party system and vote for it.
Every single one of these problems are problems inherent in the people and the choices they make. Every single one would go away if the people actually had any proper vision for a revolution and made changes, but they dont.
@freemo @design_RG Its a problem with system in use not the people. It is not a lie when winner takes all, scenario is applied. Even if some third party wins somehow it would still remain only two party system. Third party would just kick out one of those already in place.
That has no basis in reality. winner take all has nothing to do with a two party system. If anything that would mean its a "one party system" but the meaning there means something very different than what people even mean when they say "two party system".
If for example you saw year after year 3 or 4 parts having rather equal chance of winning then it wouldnt be called a two party system. That can happen simply by people voting as such.
@freemo This is the consensus in the political sciences actually. Look up Duverger's Law.
Yes, it can happen, but the winner takes all situation is going against that. Making additional parties does not make sense, because you can't meaningfully affect the country and people would not vote for third party because it is a waste of votes. Even if somehow a third party wins after some iteration, we are going to end up in two party system again.
@vnarek Hardly consensus that one *garuntees** the other.
It is true that because ofthe fact that people have bought into the lie of a two party system that a plurality vote tends to generate a two party system. This is absolutely true.
Likewise other systems of voting (even with a plurality rule in place) can effectively invalidate this sort of two-party thinking among the people, namely things like ranked-choice voting.
So there is some truth taht effectively, as long as people beleive the fallacy of the two-party system, it will be maintained unless and until counter measures are used to prevent it.
But it still, and always will, rely on the underlying fallacy being consider a truth by the voters and the people.
@vnarek In fact no only is not a scientific consensus that such a law is, in fact, a law, if you just go tot he wikipedia page about the law there are multiple counter examples that disprove the "law" listed.
@freemo Yea it says "tend to favour two-party system". I am just saying that it is hard to go against the system which makes two parties stronger and vote for third party. It is the same as systematic oppression of some race/ethnicity. You can escape poverty, but it is highly unlikely if the system does not want you to.
@vnarek Except it doesnt make the two party stronger. The only thing that makes twh two party system stronger is the fact that people beleive the lie that a two-party system exists in the first place.
It takes only very simple logic to realize as a voter there is no incentive to vote for the two parties. But enough propaganda has spread to convince people that they must vote two parties anyway.
Its little more than people being idiotic and letting that effect their vote. Ideally the system shouldnt need to correct for their idiocy, the people should be thoughtful enough not to let themselves fall into that line of thinking in the first place.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
(i know im late to the party but i wanted to read the thread, then i ended up going for a walk lol)
first past the post is interesting because i think the idea is that it simplifies the election process in order to try and get more people to go and vote whilst also trying to avoid the paradox of choice
the issue imo is that a lot of people simply arent actually interested in politics and will either just not vote, or vote based on one issue
i have to admit, my voting has been largely single issue, i dispise the conservative party in the UK for the most part because i hate their anti freedom stuff but because labour isnt any different in that regard and brexit has been the big issue ive voted for them
i voted brexit party in the EU thing the year prior and that was the only time ive really seen a seperate party come in and smash it, and that wasnt for a general election.
people largely arent interested in local party politics, just the big country wide stuff.. which im guilty of too, its very rare for me to think 'oh i wonder what my local council are planning'
it was interesting to see the tactical voting stuff in the last election, people not wanting to vote labour voting libdem and greens, getting shouted down because the options are conservative or labour
as for fixing it im not too sure, first past the post is useful for a country because it narrows down the regional differences but it only really works when picking an A or B, i think the issue is that the smaller parties dont actually have any regional options, i cant remember which party but at one of the local elections i remember looking at the ballot and thinking 'wow no X candidate' lol (i think it mightve been ukip or something idr)
i think our current voting system could work if the public was either more interested in the actual policies and not the red vs blue or even if there was a proper third choice, and i mean one people actually voted 33% for, that would allow labour and conservative to actually make their stances clear in order to get votes.... maybe i dont really know
also looking at the wikipedia article I WONDER WHAT THE WRITER THINKS LMAO
anywho thats my rambly post without any concrete solutions, best enjoyed with a bit of bbq sauce
I dont have time right now to give this response a full read and a full reply but I want to say one thing.
I dont think getting people out to vote should be the goal. People who arent interest in politics, and especially people who dont bother to research the politicians and their viewpoints should be actively discouraged from voting.
If ranked-choice voting discourages people from voting I'd see that as a step in the right direction honestly.
