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
@solicitor Trump will be impeached and removed if we elect congresspeople who will impeach and remove him.
It's up to us.
No, I think we voters are choosing this. So right, I don't think it's going to happen, I think we should do better, but I don't think we will.
But the point is, it's not up to Trump. We want this for some reason, so we are choosing it based on our congressional election choices.
I tend to agree with one caveat: IMO a charade is a conscious deception while I don't think Trump is sufficiently connected to reality to realize that he's participating in a fiction, once again he's going to be used and manipulated by the real adults in the room.
This has been the story of his entire political career, though.
And another part of what's going to happen is, when Putin doesn't do what he convinced Trump to say was going to happen, Trump's support base is once again going to say this is Putin disrespecting Trump, not that this was Trump falling for an obvious lie.
@RonSupportsYou I don't know what you think I was fooled by. I'm adamant that anything Trump says is probably not true.
volkris
boosted
Federal judges have started issuing more rulings on a per curiam (collective unsigned) basis for fear of Trump retaliation so maybe the remaining staff at the Bureau of Labor Statistics can start issuing monthly job numbers that way.
@AGT I emphasize that Trump may be pressuring Ukraine, but that's not the same as America pressuring.
In the US system the president only represents a single Branch of a single government, not the entire government, and not the entire country. Presidents say dumb things all the time that are absolutely rejected by America. It is no different here.
To represent America would require an act of Congress. And that is absolutely not what Trump is going for.
You're both missing it. Trump's major value proposition is that he has a personality disorder wherein he has zero shame. He wouldn't resign because that would require shame. It would require him to care about doing right things. He doesn't.
But he does stand for consequences in our system, because our system doesn't require people to have shame or to decide for themselves whether they care. We impose that on them.
And that's why Trump is now a convicted felon, and it's why he has lost so many court cases and has screwed up so many negotiating sessions, and at any point the people that we elect to Congress could impeach him with very legitimate grounds for doing it.
He is suffering consequences for his misbehavior, because it's not up to him whether or not he does. But we should probably stop reelecting representatives who don't care to really unload on him as he deserves.
That's up to us though, not him.
@HamonWry Right, because they're using him to promote their own priorities.
That's been the game all along.
@RonSupportsYou sounds like you're just really not keeping up with the news lately.
@iuculano That's not how the US system of government works, though.
This isn't Trump's attempt to steal five congressional seats. That's not how this works. Instead, folks elected through democratic processes the officials tasked with setting district borders. Trump has nothing to do with that. That is between those representatives and their voters.
There's no stealing, there's just conspiracy theories that rely on lack of information about governmental processes.
@fingolas when the newspapers leave the task of reporting and start acting for their own interests, there will be no paper in any meaningful sense anyway.
Suicide in the face of hysteria isn't exactly better.
No, it is enough for the newspaper to chronicle things, because that's its job.
@RonSupportsYou What? Trump already pulled the trigger on all kinds of substantial things against Russia ranging from attacking the dark fleet through direct tariffs and sanctions.
No, Trump has been emphatically portraying Putin as the intransigent one.
Sounds like you need some better sources of news if you haven't heard about this stuff. It really has been reported widely.
@rpardee It's not up to him.
@DarleneRyan and that's why he fails so often. But again, this isn't about Trump.
He can go be a loser in DC even as we hold our Representatives accountable for their bad votes by refusing to re-elect them.
It's up to us, but too few people realize how that works.
@JaniceOCG I think you're missing the point that they aren't gutting the VRA at all. They are instead moving to implement it on its own terms, saying that the VRA has been misapplied in the past.
No gutting, no vacant shell, here's the VRA, and it's to be applied as our elected lawmakers made the law.
That's not how the US government works. The VRA is still fully in effect, and in fact so many of the arguments right now are about how to properly make sure it stays in effect.
No, nobody is going to repeal the VRA.
If you want to make changes to it, well then elect better representatives to Congress that will do that. But the VRA is settled law.
You're missing the actual folks that deserve the most blame the representatives that we keep reelecting even as they fail us over and over.
All of this stuff is not supposed to be fixed by the courts, it's supposed to be mainly up to their representatives that we elect to Congress. But it seems like they spend their time pointing fingers at the other branches for things that are really up to them.
Stop reelecting bad people to Congress and a whole lot of stuff would be fixed.
@grrlscientist No, that's not how this works.
If we want federal voting rules to operate differently then we need to stop reelecting crappy representatives that don't fix Federal voting rules.
This has nothing to do with the court, this has to do with us electing crappy representatives.
Hold your representatives accountable. Stop reelecting them when they fail us. Don't let them point fingers at the court when they fail at their jobs.
@persagen But that's not how any of this works.
Know your enemy? Okay, well trying to hang this all on Roberts is not knowing the enemy. It's buying into a reductionist story that doesn't reflect how the government actually operates.
@BohemianPeasant that gets it exactly backwards, though.
The argument is that this is what the voting rights act actually called for, so it's not undermining it, it's supporting what the act actually says.
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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