volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
@Jgmeadows meh, I guess, but the problem is that the misinformation and disinformation is coming from sources that are not supposed to be political in the first place.
When you have major newspapers misreporting information on a daily basis, that can't be excused as just common partisanship. That is a much deeper problem.
And that's what we're facing right now.
@erikalyn nobody was asked to save McCarthy! I really hate that that narrative made the circles a couple of weeks ago.
The question in front of the House was not about saving McCarthy. The question was, do you want the house to keep functioning, or do you want these nut jobs to be in the driver seat, shut the whole place down, and then let them have huge amounts of influence to choose the next speaker?
(Well okay, the first part of that at least)
So Democrats backed the nut job effort to shut the house down, setting up this situation where they now have a huge amount of influence in what happens next.. Great.
So I'm saying we need to hold the Democrats loudly accountable for their vote to shut down the House and hand control over like this.
It has nothing to do with McCarthy. That dramatic storytelling got a bunch of clicks for certain journalists, but it was a gross misleading version of what question was actually before the chamber.
And yes, I was quite irritated about it🙂 because it lets elected official off the hook to buy that distraction.
@Jgmeadows I really think the real problem comes down to lack of reliable information, we have people being told sets of facts that are drastically different, and people don't have a good way of reconciling the stories that they are being sold by the ones who are supposed to be telling us all the truth.
If we can't agree on whether water runs uphill or downhill, how can we even start to address all of the more complicated questions that arise from that.
So I think it's not so much that everything is poisoned by partisanship, but that partisanship is growing to fill the vacuum as people struggle to deal with these disagreements of fact.
IMO that's the core problem, and if we had a way to address it, a lot of other problems would fade.
@ravenonthill I mean if you want to burn your cash, Well it's yours to burn.
@Jgmeadows people down here don't realize just how complicated districting really is because not only is it inherently complicated trying to figure out where to draw those boundaries, but now we have a whole series of state and federal law contradicting each other that both reject and require gerrymandering.
Take the recent Alabama case where it's been under. Reported that what the Supreme Court actually said was that the state was required to gerrymander, faulting the state for being out of compliance with federal law because it didn't gerrymander enough.
Yeah, just wrap your mind around that. That's how nuts the whole situation is.
Keep in mind that with the first past the post voting system that is used almost everywhere in the US, political parties end up being a way to address the problems of that voting system.
It's a HUGE problem for people to waste their votes, casting votes strategically by guessing how their neighbors are going to vote, and their neighbors are doing the same strategy, so naturally people start to organize, and that's how you get political parties.
It's just people trying to overcome the problems with that voting system.
The real solution is to move on to a better voting system. Then we wouldn't need political parties to overcome those issues.
But so long as we keep this voting system, political parties are a solution to a very real problem, and we can't just do away with the solution without addressing the problem.
@erikalyn stories about the rule changes have been pretty exaggerated. Heck, you could even say the nut jobs were fooled with pretty inconsequential rule changes that the idiots didn't realize were inconsequential.
For example, take the headline issue of the number of people required to move to declare the chair vacant. Lowering the number to one really doesn't matter if sanity is just going to boot the nut jobs out of the room anyway.
Unfortunately, Democrats backed the nut jobs and empowered them to shut the chamber down. The rules change didn't actually make a difference there so long as Democrats were willing to partner with the nuts.
And it still doesn't matter now because whether the rule is reverted, so long as Democrats are willing to shut the chamber down with the nut jobs, it means there are still votes to close the place regardless of the rules.
So long as Democrats are voting with the nut jobs, the nut jobs are basically in charge. So here we are.
People really need to reevaluate their decisions to re-elect their representatives based on this circus.
@erikalyn none have run for Speaker because given the Democrats' voting strategy they can't mathematically win.
So there's no point trying.
The current vote distribution gives all of the power to the nut jobs, which really stinks, but that's just the reality based on this situation.
@SaanichGuy Each and every representative in the House was elected by their district.
If we decide to elect people who toe a line with a political party, well we get what we vote for.
We should probably stop re-electing these jerks, but step one in that is calling them out for what they actually do.
And then voting for other people next time.
@squig@mastodon-uk.net meh, the simpler explanation is that he has a career of profiting off of attention even running for president gets him a ton of attention.
Which you are giving to him here.
So I don't think we need to assume all of these extreme explanations when the simpler explanation suffices.
@getalifemike this makes me think about the really fundamental philosophical idea that a person should not be punished for something they didn't do.
To hold automakers financially liable when someone kills a person with their product is to find them guilty of something they didn't do.
It's always a red flag that it's not such a good idea.
@erikalyn Well right, this is pretty much the natural and expected result since given the voting strategies, Republicans have no choice but to seek permission of a handful of awful members.
So long as Democrats continue to vote as a bloc, moderate Republicans don't have the numbers to vote a decent person in, so they have to court the extremists to get the vote over the line with awful candidates.
No matter what happens from day to day, we can expect this result from that situation.
@Jgmeadows I'm emphatically saying we should blame every representative for how they DO vote, not how they don't.
Democrats voted to shut down the House setting the stage for Jim Jordan to become the leading contender for Speaker.
If you really want to focus on Jordan for some reason, well, keep in mind that Democrats basically voted to support him.
It's cold comfort that Democrats later chose to vote in a way to keep the legislature shut down rather than for him to take the gavel, but it's a situation they set up with the votes they actually made.
@arush when did Trump shit on American Jews?
(I mean everything that comes out of his mouth is shit, but I don't remember a particular occasion)
@courtcan I mean, chilling is how a lot of these students came to be in the first place!
@Jgmeadows I know you are, but that's not really the story here, and that's my point.
The GOP is largely unified. 90% of the members are on the same page, as evidenced by the voting roles and their ease of selecting a majority leader.
The problem is that electing a Speaker isn't up to the GOP. It's up to the entire House. So if you're focusing on GOP infighting when talking about electing the speaker, you might as well be talking about your infighting with the guys at the bar.
It's really not core to the process, and focusing on it lets other officials off the hook for their responsibility to get it done.
Every single member of the house needs to be held responsible for their votes that shut down the House and keep it closed for legislative business.
@neekerbreeker@mastodon.green the issue is that regardless of what you and I think of it, these two were not doing their jobs as representatives since they weren't representing the positions of their constituents.
So I wouldn't be so quick to praise them for doing the right thing when by doing the wrong thing, in terms of the democratic process, they undermined their positions and gave ammunition to their detractors.
In the broader picture they came across as just out of touch.
@Jgmeadows It really needs to be emphasized that the #Speaker is elected by the whole house, not just the majority party.
Folks misunderstanding that is a large reason why we're in this mess in the first place.
@argumento Exactly, so let's focus on what's happening today and maybe try to prevent more suffering today.
Oftentimes it's counterproductive to start trying to get people to talk about what happened generations ago because then you end up arguing about all of that stuff while today's problems just get worse.
And yes, you can argue that today's problems arose out of what happened in the past, but again, going down that road is often a distraction, no matter how theoretically sound the argument may be.
@argumento but at the same time we can't let the past prevent us from moving forward.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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