volkris @volkris@qoto.org

There’s an old idea of fairness that when cutting a cake between two people one person cuts and the other picks the piece they want.

This method aligns the interests of both parties, no matter how corruptible and human they may be.

I think it’s underappreciated how often the US government design has a similar method in its checks and balances: one group can reject an official, but they don’t get to choose the replacement.

See, for example, impeachment proceedings.

After all: “This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public.”

–Hamilton (maybe)

#USPolitics #politicalscience #federalistpapers #hamilton

To understand the state of #USPolitics, and US society more broadly, a person has to realize that the process against #Trump isn’t merely two camps who want the guy found innocent or guilty after a weighing of the evidence.

No, it is as if there was a murder trial where one side believed they were having beers with the purported victim as the trial was going on.

It’s not a matter of legal technicality or weighing preponderances of evidence or reasonable doubt; it’s a matter of the country being divided over fundamental fact, here whether a person is alive or not.

It’s not a political division. Sadly it’s a reality division.

When Marjorie Taylor Greene hammers Johnson on the basis of his being “the Republican leader” she shows her own ignorance, but more importantly, she expresses a critical misunderstanding that’s pretty rife throughout the US population.

No, Johnson is not the Republican leader. As Speaker he’s the voice of the entire House, including Democrats, in contrast to Steve Scalise, who as Majority Leader is the actual Republican leader.

The reason this isn’t mere technicality is that Democrats absolutely have a say in the Speaker and can support or oppose the ouster of a speaker and choice of a new one.

#MTG is an idiot, though the public can be excused for not knowing this detail. Unfortunately, politicians take advantage of that, contributing to congressional dysfunction.

#USPolitics #House #GOP #Democrats #politicalscience

An update on and description of #BlueSky distributed capabilities, including a long segment on distributed labeling and moderation, and how the way #Mastodon / #Fediverse handles it promotes contention on this platform.

I always say, there’s a lack of focus on technology serving users here, with instances being the primary focus, and that’s a shame.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/27/why-bluesky-remains-the-most-interesting-experiment-in-social-media-by-far/

Conservative media loves to repeat that the NY court imposed improper penalties against Trump’s businesses considering that they were already being overseen by a court appointed official that would keep them from doing wrong.

Problem is, the overseer reported to the court that they kept doing wrong.

It’s a case where the details swing the superficial claim in the other direction.

#Trump #USPolitics #GOP

So many get wrong, and so many misreport, that the #SCOTUS is to rule on the safety of mifepristone. It is not.

The Court has neither the expertise, the legal jurisdiction, nor the interest in making such a determination. It’s absolutely not what the Court is doing.

Instead, what the Court is to rule on is specifically the legal questions surrounding whether the executive branch followed legal procedures as it acted.

It seems that the FDA didn’t follow the legal process and botched this, and we should be holding executive branch officials responsible for their failure there.

All of the drama protesting the Court misplaces the real blame and lets those responsible off the hook, and is so counterproductive to the goals of those protesters.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-235/279230/20230908165000535_USFDA%20et%20al.%20v.%20Alliance%20for%20Hippocratic%20Medicine%20et%20al.%20Petition.pdf

#USPolitics #abortion

Many here joined the bandwagon of outrage over #Trump’s use of the word bloodbath, but I don’t think many realize how counterproductive that was.

#Conservatives have been milking that outrage to their benefit, using it to frame anti-Trump speakers as out of touch or flat out duplicitous, saying they’re intentionally misunderstanding or misrepresenting what Trump was saying.

The thing is, what Trump was [apparently] saying is actually idiotic. THAT is what needs to be called out.

It’s just the sad norm of strategic misstep: Trump will say something really stupid, but instead of pointing out how dumb he is, folks give him not only a pass but actual ammunition through unfounded attacks.

And that’s how we got and may get President Trump.

#USPolitics #bloodbath #GOP

It's instructive that the most rabidly anti #TikTok conservative figures seem to be coming from a place of being completely out of touch with and misunderstanding the youths.

I keep hearing them say, Where did [insert idea] come from? Nobody was talking about that before the Chinese started manipulating kids through the TikToks!

But of course, they were talking about it, just in different circles that the speaker wasn't aware of.

This says a lot about many topics and many sides, but generally:
Echo chambers promote ignorance that leads to assumptions that manifest in heavy handed non-solutions to misidentified problems.

And all too naturally, those proposals will tend to be rather authoritarian efforts to fix people.

Implementing a “Share on Mastodon” button for a blog
Normally, adding a share button to a blog is a trivial task. In case of Mastodon, it is complicated by the fact that you need to choose your home instance. And it is further complicated if you decide to support further Fediverse applications beyond …

https://palant.info/2023/10/19/implementing-a-share-on-mastodon-button-for-a-blog/

#Fediverse #Mastodon

These days the phrase “you can’t make this stuff up” is so overused that really it comes across as,

Oh no, I CAN make this stuff up, and I can make a lot of other stuff up too.
You can’t?
Are you really so low functioning that this is beyond your imagination?
Well that explains a lot of the other dumb ideas you have.

You can’t make this stuff up has become a brag from people who, well, honestly probably aren’t smart enough to make such things up on their own.

Apparently this is a website demonstrating #Fediverse / #Mastodon and #BlueSky interactions all being intermingled as they engage with the post.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but at first glance it’s pretty interesting to see.

https://nerdy.dev/this-site-now-supports-at-protocol-mentions-and-interactions

The big problem with the #Biden State of the Union speech was that instead of speaking to the whole country about the whole country, it focused on speaking to his own choir about himself and his reelection.

That’s why people are criticizing it as a campaign speech.

If you’re a Biden supporter, realize that the speech did not invite non-supporters, including independents, to join in his efforts. It appealed only to those already on board, which is not productive in terms of actually getting those efforts done.

In other words, if you’re in favor of what Biden was calling for, you too should be critical that this #SOTU won’t help get those things done.

The speech seemed focused on helping nobody… except Joe Biden’s personal reelection.

Growing up in the US, decades ago, I was cautiously optimistic about the future for the US government:
Sure, folks had ideological, philosophical, and political differences, but we’d keep on having a big social conversation, challenging each other, to come to a positive consensus, all as the government itself continued to maintain its core functions, shaped by the ongoing debate.

It seemed at the time as if we were working with a rough draft, and things would keep getting better. The government had good bones, to borrow an analogy.

The thing I find so depressing about #Trump as the #GOP
nominee isn’t ideological. It’s that we’re now facing a race where the idea of actually administering a functional government isn’t even a significant issue to voters. I never see it coming up in mainstream conversation from either the left or the right.

This is one reason I’m so obsessed about #USPolitics, because in my lifetime it’s regressed so terribly, from a functional government that’s responding to productive debate to one where functionality isn’t particularly interesting to the average voter.

The US population has lost faith in government over this time, but the problem is, well, that’s what they voted for by nominating people like #Biden and Trump.

It’s why Super Tuesday was a symbol of this regression of the US government to me, even if it had become inevitable.