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
When you start having to look at the arguments that were rejected by the court, you're not on high ground.
You can look at the dissents all you want. You're looking at argument set didn't work out. Why in the world would you look at them without further explanation?
Those were the losing arguments. Why in the world would you stake your claims on losing arguments?
@harleygold No, as an appellate court they could not have bypassed the lawsuit.
They could have chosen not to be involved, they could have chosen to declare that the lower court ruling wasn't worth their interest.
But I wouldn't say that's the same thing is bypassing the lawsuit.
@Ralph058 keep in mind that this is not just any old committee, but one where they don't need just votes but actual explanations and arguments to be percentage to the public.
If you think things were complicated with only nine judges to deliberate between, just wait for thirteen.
It would make hearing and deciding cases just that much more complicated as it would involve that much more running between offices to trade drafts and vie for coalitions.
You know the phrase too many cooks? It applies here.
@AmenZwa I mean, he's already lost Supreme Court battles.
So much for that conspiracy theory.
@BohemianPeasant the misunderstanding is that no, the Constitution doesn't impose that bar. It only authorizes the bar, but the Constitution itself always relies on others to impose such stipulations.
For any constitutional concept to take force there has to be some functionary interested in giving it life, whether Congress through, say, EC processes or the executive branch through execution of law, or courts through judicial processes.
The Constitution does NOT impose the disability. It can't. It's only a piece of paper spelling out rules.
It's up to others to impose the rules, and that's exactly what the Supreme Court recognized in its ruling.
@harleygold I think a problem is that so many eyes aren't actually on the Supreme Court but rather on media outlets and others who give out flat out false versions of what the Court has done.
These pages are full of people promoting claims about court cases that just don't match the actual rulings.
So many now view the Court as puppeteers not because of anything they've done but because viral clickbait articles lay out this dramatic version of events that's not quite how any of this works.
I wish more went right to the source instead of buying the stories spun by these third parties.
@6G@mastodon.social wow, no, that's not what the ruling said.
The ruling was specifically about whether a *state* can intervene in a federal election based on the constitutional provision.
It doesn't mean the feds can't step in to deal with the federal matter. The Court specifically pointed to federal laws on the books to handle insurrection.
@Hyolobrika right, but that doesn't change that the US president is determined by definition, not by claim.
If folks want to move away from the presidential system and start implementing orders from someone who doesn't qualify for the office as per the qualifications that determine who holds that office, fine, but they're still by definition not following the US president.
The reason this matters is that legions of separate people with their own interests and desires sign on to the system that supports the actual president. Any other actor wanting to claim power is up against that giant mountain all built around the presidency.
And someone who's not president will face that tremendous obstacle even if they claim or even believe themself to be president.
Because by definition they're not.
@lin11c No, the ruling was focused entirely on what a state can't do rather than what an insurrectionist can do.
That's how US courts work: since the question was whether the state could act, that's what the Court answered, not the separate question about whether an insurrectionist can be president.
It wasn't the question before the Court, so the Court didn't answer that question.
@IAmDannyBoling @Stinson_108 @atrupar
@jeffowski ah, yes, a vast right-wing conspiracy, you say?
@Legit_Spaghetti sounds like you're putting words in his mouth with regard to the problem he's identifying.
The stuff Trump says is awful enough without stretching it like that and losing the high road.
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.
@lin11c we can easily refute that by pointing out the uncountable executions of presidential power that happen every single day without Supreme Court involvement to affirm the presidency.
And no, that was not in the SCOTUS ruling.
@IAmDannyBoling @Stinson_108 @atrupar
@ClaraListensprechen4 if you think I said anything about only Republican candidates then you misunderstood my comment.
@gkmizuno oh, maybe that's what inspired the thought :)
I went to skim the ruling again to double check something and must have forgotten that you said that.
@Hyolobrika no, the presidency is a legally defined office, really the result of a legally defined process.
Anything that happens outside of that legal definition is not presidential.
Anyone can claim to be president, but unless they meet that legal definition, they are no more president than I am.
US Politics Trump 2nd Term not inevitable
@ianRobinson last I heard it's mathematically impossible for Trump to win with only Republican votes, so I'm mainly thinking of the never Trump independents giving him a difficult path to winning.
Mainstream Republicans seem to underestimate that.
@spectral I wouldn't go down that road. Basic knowledge of civics and how voting works seems to be a really big factor in this, from what I've seen, and while that may be correlated with university education, it's not a correlation we have to live with.
Knowledge of basic civics should be accessible throughout the population expected to live under the government, and to vote for governmental representation.
I'd say that's more about access to quality, informative mass media and primary education than university, or it should be.
In which cases did the SCOTUS do each of those?
In my experience such claims are debunked by going to the actual rulings to see that the Court didn't actually do whatever some special interest is claiming.
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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