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Its taken me a few days to really come to grips with the fact that America now has its first segregationist as president in living history.
What a dark and shameful day for America. I truly am ashamed to call myself a US citizen :(
I had so much hope back in 2008 when I voted for Obama and still believe in the Democratic party. But Obama was a disgrace and I regretted that decision ever since. It has been nothing but downhill since then, each time getting worse.. .First Bush with the Patriot act, Then Obama & Biden murdering US citizens and extending the Patriot Act, Then Trump generally being an idiot, and Now Biden a segregationist as president.. Can we sink any lower?
I agree with everything you just said except the bit about having a two party system.
While first past the post voting system absolutely doesnt help matters when it comes to breaking the fallacy of a two party system, and I agree there are better systems if we want to encourage third party (I’d say instant run off voting is the way to go)… I dont think that it implies what you do.
FPTP doesnt guarantee a two party system, nor does a two-party system in any sense of a framework actually exists. We have plenty of historic examples both within the USA (9 times we have had third parties take the lead in the top 2 place and stay there), but also outside of the USA where in the past countries with FPTP voting did not result in 2 party systems (and in some cases parties numbers in the tens of dozens or even approaching 100).
We can easily reason that a two-party system doesnt really exist except in the minds of the american people. It is the result of a fallacy in their reasoning and has mostly been unique to them as a population and not associated with anything to do with our system. It stems from the “lesser of two evils” fallacy. It basically boils down tot he fact that as long as people beleive “the other guy” is the worst imaginable evil, to the point that any evils from your side are insignificant no matter how bad they look in isolation… in that case people will usually vote keeping with the status quo. They wont rock the boat for fear that it might be tot he advantage of the other side. there is no basis for reality there.
@freemo FPTP doesn’t guarantee a two-party system, but when combined with gerrymandering and the mentality you mention that “the other guy” us the worst imaginable evil, a two-party system becomes a stable outcome, especially when polling data is used in game theory to produce the desired outcomes. The existing parties would have to act flagrantly illogically for them to lose their positions. Regardless, we agree on the likely future, which is a shame. :(
@Demosthenes Yes thats true.. like I said other forms of voting encourage a break from two-party entrenchment. so yea if you have a nation prone to latching on to a two-party fallacy mentality then other voting systems do a better job at protecting against that. I think we agree on that idea then.
But it is important for people to know there is no two party system as it stands now other than the illusion of one. There is no logical or reasonable reason one should vote two-party, your vote is no more effective in doing so.
@Demosthenes @freemo One possibility is that the Republican party collapses at some non-near-future point and another comes forth to take its place.
I have recently also been thinking of a third, weirder idea: an exclusively congressional party or block of independents designed to break gridlock in Congress by robbing both parties of majority. This may not change the executive branch, but it could make the legislative branch function again.
I suspect it is more likely that the democrat party winds up loosing its power as a party and is replaced by a new liberal party. If you look at patterns of past party reversals it tends to follow ideological extremism and is very abrupt. In other words the party goes from having a near 50% hold over votes to almost 0 from one election to the next one, and it always seems to be the party that is on the ideological fringes/extremism with little tolerance to anyone on its half of the spectrum not at the fringe with it.
This describes the democrat party to a T and while the republicans have plenty of members who are extremist overall they tend to have a much healthier acceptance of different ideologies.
I think the last two elections make it really obvious the democrats wont last much longer consider they couldnt even win against Trump, a man with a vocab of about 15 words, the first round and the second rand barely won by a hair’s breadth and even then still somehow found the two politicians on the left who could possibly be worse than trump.
Only reason Biden won at all and only democrats have managed to stay alive for the lastfew years is they lean really heavy on the propaganda machine, it works, but that only works so long. Democrats wont buy a constant stream of propaganda for forever and they just to have the substance anymore to win on anything other than propaganda apparently.
Their days are numbered.
@freemo @Demosthenes Interesting point. I will definitely have to think about this.
@freemo You have seen Idiocracy, right?
@freemo I don’t think he still believes whatever he said in 1977, but yeah this kinda sucks. I think its tricky to judge peoples opinions from the past using current norms.
@freemo To be fair Biden is probably not going to do anything remotely segregationist at this point, and I strongly suspect he has moved beyond that politically if not morally, given the vast timespan between him then and him now and the changes in the Democratic party. Still aggravating that we now have yet another old white Christian man due to be in office.
@mathlover Biden will do whatever is in his best interests, no matter how evil that may be. The moment it worked against him to propose segregationist policies he stopped proposing them.
The concern is not that he will actually enact segregationist policies. The concern is that he has demonstrated he is so exceptionally evil that his ability to make morally conscious choices is completely lacking.
Last time he held any sort of power was as a vice president. He and Obama felt it was ok to murder a 16 year old citizen with no trial at the time. So clearly he has gotten worse from a moral perspective since his segregation days, not better.
@freemo I have not heard the story about the 16 year old. Mind sharing a link?
@freemo Thanks.
@freemo “can we sink any lower?” I ask myself this question frequently. I think the growing extremism on both sides is due to a combination of the gamification of our political system[1], our first-past-the-post voting system leading to two parties, and media consolidation leading to complete media separation of the two political parties. This ain’t gonna magically reverse under Biden, so I only see both sides becoming more extreme and separated as time goes on.
[1] by this I mean the application of game theory to optimize for winning