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
Yeah, I've seen the politicians selling that line about the Dems helping the GOP, but we shouldn't buy it.
Is it really so important to keep the House shut down to, what, make the GOP look bad? What exactly is the motivation there?
Sounds like cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Democrats are that uninterested in opening the House?
I mean I don't know what country you are asking about, but it doesn't really matter where you live, the Rules of the House are available to anybody, right there on the internet, so anybody who's interested can see for themselves how this process works.
Democrats don't need to vote for the Republican choice, but so long as they vote for their own choice instead of answering "present" they are adding to the number of votes that need to be overcome to move forward.
Each representative has to decide for himself whether keeping the House shut down is the right way to go, and we see how they are voting unanimously, helping the fringe Republicans in their bargaining position.
In the US, by both the Constitution and by law implementing the Constitutional design, a candidate doesn't win or lose an election until the EC vote has finished counting by the joint session of Congress.
There's not really a day of election of president in the US since the EC election process lasts a little while with a few different steps. It takes a little bit of time, again by law.
One unfortunate thing was that all too many politicians and reporters were flat out denying that these laws existed even as they were being implemented and even as they are perfectly accessible to anybody who knows where to look them up.
Such people really did a disservice to the general public, and I only had to laugh when recently some politicians were bragging about making reforms two laws that they previously seemed to say didn't exist in the first place.
No that's not how the House of Representatives works.
Every single representative gets to choose on their own, on behalf of their constituents, how to vote. That is so important for us holding our representatives accountable for their actions.
The House doesn't operate by party. That would get in the way of representatives' jobs of representing us.
So no, it's not up to Republicans to figure out what the chamber is going to do. It's up to all of the representatives, regardless of party, to figure out what they're going to do, and so far Democrats have been voting unanimously that they would rather keep the chamber from moving forward.
The sad thing is that many Democrats have been overtly saying that they are voting this way for partisan reasons. Shutting down the House for partisan reasons.
I hope their constituencies appreciate their choice.
Or he could save some money by discouraging fellow Democrats from voting for gridlock.
If just a few of them answered present instead of pushing a different candidate like the fringe Republicans the whole situation would be resolved and the House could open.
I just really think we need to emphasize that the Democrats are voting in lockstep with the fringe Republicans to keep the chamber closed here.
It turns out they are not a homogeneous group.
Some have articulated what they want, and there have been efforts to meet them in the middle or even give them exactly what they want. Some of the proposals aren't particularly out there. There is some criticism that they should have spoken up earlier, though.
Others of them don't seem to have any idea what they're talking about, any idea what they actually want, and just keeps spewing bumper sticker slogans.
It's almost a shame to lump the first category in with the second.
I really don't care about Republicans, but I do care that Democrats are choosing to keep the House of Representatives closed by voting with fringe Republicans against the more moderate choice for Speaker.
And really, if all of the Republicans are extremists without an agenda, fine, let them own that. Let them be proud that they are keeping the House closed.
They should at least be honest about it.
If you're referring to the Speaker elections, Democrats participated in every single vote and sided in lockstep with friends Republicans against reopening the House.
And they need to be held accountable for that.
On the other hand, I think it's been amazingly notable over their years how lockstep the voting has been on the Democrat side, while the Republican side has seemed much more comfortable with diversity of thought.
I don't know what the lesson there is. Maybe don't judge books by covers? Maybe it's more about the people who elect the different parties? Maybe some sort of statistical averaging? Not sure.
But watching Democrats vote in lockstep this week has really driven that observation home.
@fkamiah17 @msmith1047 It's not only allowed, it's required by the rules.
The Rules of the House say that at this point in the process they are required to be in the process of voting every single moment that they are in session. They are required by the rules to continuously vote.
One way to think about it is that the next task in the queue is to vote for Speaker, so they have to do it unless they want to change the queue, but changing the queue requires a Speaker, sooooo...
They aren't voting over and over again because people want to. They're doing it because that is the required process.
US Politics
That would cause a lot of problems down the road because it would be a Speaker trying to manage votes of a chamber opposed to him. It would mean this gridlock on into the future.
But Democrats are free to vote present which would also end the gridlock in a way that has a speaker aligned with the majority.
It isn't Dems helping Republicans pick someone.
It's breaking ties with fringe Republicans and choosing to oppose them, opening the House for business.
A few Democrats merely have to answer "present" and the fringe Republican impasse would collapse.
That's not helping anybody pick anybody. It's just getting out of the way of progress.
Because maybe the people that have been elected to serve in the House of Representatives might want to actually do that?
For a party supposedly full of problem solvers, it's pretty weird that the party is voting in lockstep to maintain the problem, taking the side of fringe Republicans to choose to keep the chamber from functioning.
I mean, the weird way that Democrats seem so eager to toe the line and conform is kind of something that a lot of us have been criticizing them for increasingly over the decades.
Yeah they stick together. Sometimes to an extent that just looks off-putting if not unhealthy.
I strongly disagree, as one would hope that Democrats would like to have an operational House in which the function.
Right now they are voting as a block to say they would rather have the House shut down, so they are already well into shenanigans.
They could be part of the solution. So far many Democrats have been explicitly saying they refuse to be.
Yes but keep in mind that it is intentionally the most representative chamber, representing an extremely divided country.
The population of the US is currently very chaotic so it only makes sense that the representatives of the people is in a similar state.
It's a reflection of the times we live in where people can't agree on the color of the sky.
@Paulatics Everything I've heard from Democrats has been really clear that they are voting as a block to keep the House shut down rather than accept Republican nominees.
So with them effectively siding with the fringe Republicans there's not really anywhere to go.
That's true, although we have to be careful about what the right moves are because certain improvements to Mastodon, making the right moves for Mastodon, amount to introducing proprietary elements that reflect the centralized platforms we're trying to get away from.
So we have to be a bit careful about what the right moves are.
Typo, sorry.
Unfortunately there's a lot of misinformation out there about the timeline of the US election and how it actually goes, so every once in awhile I get the urge to yell into the void to try to correct the record
@J3Words@mas.to
I appreciate that. It's just rough because there is so much misinformation out there, and so many people who do take things seriously even though they are being misled even by people who aren't joking.
These are difficult times.
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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