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But the way we're lashing back seems completely unproductive. Why not organize around a sane leader instead of electing bigger and bigger idiots in some kind o

by panic 10y ago

But the way we're lashing back seems completely unproductive. Why not organize around a sane leader instead of electing bigger and bigger idiots in some kind of suicidal hope that the system will collapse?

jordanb 10y ago
You're asking why the angry mob is so disorganized? Angry mobs are angry mobs and demagogues are demagogues. My point is that the fault doesn't lie with the mob it lies with the people who let things come to this.
- panic 10y ago
  An angry mob is made of people who are individually responsible for their decisions. It doesn't matter whose fault it is; if the government won't fix it, the people have to organize to do it on their own, and an angry mob is not the best way to do that.
  - oh_sigh 10y ago
    They aren't an "angry mob". They are people voting for what they feel to be their best interest. I find it interesting that you believe people voting to be an "angry mob" because 1) they don't listen to the political establishment on who they should vote for, and 2) they don't listen to the academic establishment on who they should vote for.
    - panic 10y ago
      I never said they were. I was responding in general terms to the comment above mine. What disappoints me about this vote has nothing to do with the way people are organizing, but the thing they're organizing around. People are voting based on how they feel or what "side" they're on instead of thinking about what will actually have the best outcome. Cutting off the nose to spite the face and so on…
      - oh_sigh 10y ago
        When has it ever been different?
rodgerd 10y ago
The traditional left parties, in much of the English speaking world, have shuffled so far right (the "Third Way" types like the Lange, Blair, the Clintons, and so on) that there's slim pickings for have-nots to vote for. In the UK half of the Labour party and progressive institutions (like the Graun) spend more time attacking Corbyn for being, well, a Labour leader than they ever do going after the Tories. Clinton says that everything is sweet and the system can't (and shouldn't) be changed. The institutions that used to provide alternatives political voices have been co-opted. So who are they going to vote for?
- eru 10y ago
  In proportional systems, you have parties popping up on the fringe, as older parties vacate them. See Die Linke (The Left party) in Germany taking over territory perhaps once held by the SPD (Socialdemocratic party).
  - rodgerd 10y ago
    Pretty much - we have the same thing in New Zealand, but one of the dynamics we see here (I don't know if you get the same in Germany) is a huge hostility from the old left parties to the new left parties - there's an arrogant assumption that those voters "belong" to the old left, and a lot of derision directed at them (I guess a not dissimilar dynamic to the Clinton/Sanders split).
    - eru 10y ago
      It's a bit more complicated in Germany, because Die Linke is in some sense a continuation of the former East German ruling party. So the accusations are not so much that `these voters belong to us'. But: no self-respecting party should form a coalition with these dictators ever. That taboo has been broken on the state level in East German a long time ago. But it still holds some power on the federal level, and in West German states.
zepto 10y ago
Because no sane leader has been produced by the political system.
jerf 10y ago
In other words, why doesn't the pendulum stop swinging? Because bringing it to a halt would take precision work and even then it probably wouldn't be stable. Iterative systems oscillate. It's what they do. Moreover, a lot of the suggestions about "how to solve it" are in fact what people are trying to do very hard, and are themselves part of the system. The obvious solutions are what are taking us in the current direction. The fact that they are obvious is why you can actually plot the cyclic progression of civilizations with some reliability. It's an interesting field of study. (BTW, buckle up. We're almost certainly in for a period of substantial uncertainty based on those modes. But, also, you are not your government or social system. Whatever abuse those things may be in for doesn't mean that you won't come out of it. Also, while I'd say high technology shows little evidence of having eliminated the cycles up to this point, I do consider it a wild card personally. Doom is not guaranteed.)
- caser 10y ago
  Do you have some links on the cyclic progression of civilization? Would be super interested to read more on that.
  - jerf 10y ago
    A good start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory See also http://www.livescience.com/22109-cycles-violence-2020.html http://www.livescience.com/22109-cycles-violence-2020.html , which also has some very Google-able keywords. Bear in mind that it's a field of active research, and I'm giving those more as starting points I plucked out from Google hits than necessarily endorsing those exact theories. Personally I would only defend a somewhat weaker idea, that the future isn't somehow entirely random, but that we can indeed look to theories like this for some understanding of the next few decades, modulo the technology wildcard. Or at least a much better understanding than just thinking it's all whims of fate and everything's on the table equally. I said some reliability on purpose... it's not totally reliable, but you can still do much better than nothing.
pdonis 10y ago
> Why not organize around a sane leader Because there aren't any. Although I would not use the word "sane" here, I would use the word "capable", as in capable of running a political unit the size of a country. The inconvenient truth that nobody wants to acknowledge is that there are no human beings capable of doing that. Countries are simply too big and too complicated. (This is actually true IMO for units much smaller than countries, but countries is the current level of discussion.) The problem is not to find someone who can govern a country sanely; the problem is to figure out how to organize ourselves and coexist given that nobody is capable of governing a country sanely.
unethical_ban 10y ago
We tried that. Sanders, Rand Paul. We had potential leaders that didn't always resort to shouting, that wanted another way. Now we have Trump Clinton. This cycle is completely about the ruling elite wanting the same crooked game to keep playing, and the voting public saying "You know what? Fuck you".
- sixo 10y ago
  To a lot of folks, those candidates weren't appealing. They didn't inspire confidence that they could work on a populist agenda while also being competent political leadership. Paul more than Sanders, but a lot of people have trouble taking Sanders' rhetoric very seriously, or believing that it is well-based in facts, is well thought-out, isn't likely to have disastrous side-effects, that sort of thing.
- oh_sigh 10y ago
  If this cycle is about that, why would Trump have gotten the nomination? Jeb/Rubio were the golden boys of the GOP, and they got blown up by Trumps appeal. Yes, the Dems couldn't pull it off with Sanders, but it appears the republicans actually picked, perhaps not an anti-establishment candidate, but at least a non-establishment candidate.
eru 10y ago
> Why not organize around a sane leader instead of electing bigger and bigger idiots in some kind of suicidal hope that the system will collapse? The voting systems make that hard. Eg for the US any one who wants to win the primaries has to pander to their extreme base. Moving to range voting would help a bit http://www.rangevoting.org/ http://www.rangevoting.org/
oh_sigh 10y ago
Because facts don't win elections, persuasion and emotions win elections.

by panic 10y ago

jordanb 10y ago

You're asking why the angry mob is so disorganized? Angry mobs are angry mobs and demagogues are demagogues. My point is that the fault doesn't lie with the mob it lies with the people who let things come to this.

panic 10y ago
An angry mob is made of people who are individually responsible for their decisions. It doesn't matter whose fault it is; if the government won't fix it, the people have to organize to do it on their own, and an angry mob is not the best way to do that.
- oh_sigh 10y ago
  They aren't an "angry mob". They are people voting for what they feel to be their best interest. I find it interesting that you believe people voting to be an "angry mob" because 1) they don't listen to the political establishment on who they should vote for, and 2) they don't listen to the academic establishment on who they should vote for.
  - panic 10y ago
    I never said they were. I was responding in general terms to the comment above mine. What disappoints me about this vote has nothing to do with the way people are organizing, but the thing they're organizing around. People are voting based on how they feel or what "side" they're on instead of thinking about what will actually have the best outcome. Cutting off the nose to spite the face and so on…
    - oh_sigh 10y ago
      When has it ever been different?

rodgerd 10y ago

The traditional left parties, in much of the English speaking world, have shuffled so far right (the "Third Way" types like the Lange, Blair, the Clintons, and so on) that there's slim pickings for have-nots to vote for. In the UK half of the Labour party and progressive institutions (like the Graun) spend more time attacking Corbyn for being, well, a Labour leader than they ever do going after the Tories. Clinton says that everything is sweet and the system can't (and shouldn't) be changed. The institutions that used to provide alternatives political voices have been co-opted. So who are they going to vote for?

eru 10y ago
In proportional systems, you have parties popping up on the fringe, as older parties vacate them. See Die Linke (The Left party) in Germany taking over territory perhaps once held by the SPD (Socialdemocratic party).
- rodgerd 10y ago
  Pretty much - we have the same thing in New Zealand, but one of the dynamics we see here (I don't know if you get the same in Germany) is a huge hostility from the old left parties to the new left parties - there's an arrogant assumption that those voters "belong" to the old left, and a lot of derision directed at them (I guess a not dissimilar dynamic to the Clinton/Sanders split).
  - eru 10y ago
    It's a bit more complicated in Germany, because Die Linke is in some sense a continuation of the former East German ruling party. So the accusations are not so much that `these voters belong to us'. But: no self-respecting party should form a coalition with these dictators ever. That taboo has been broken on the state level in East German a long time ago. But it still holds some power on the federal level, and in West German states.

zepto 10y ago

Because no sane leader has been produced by the political system.

jerf 10y ago

In other words, why doesn't the pendulum stop swinging? Because bringing it to a halt would take precision work and even then it probably wouldn't be stable. Iterative systems oscillate. It's what they do. Moreover, a lot of the suggestions about "how to solve it" are in fact what people are trying to do very hard, and are themselves part of the system. The obvious solutions are what are taking us in the current direction. The fact that they are obvious is why you can actually plot the cyclic progression of civilizations with some reliability. It's an interesting field of study. (BTW, buckle up. We're almost certainly in for a period of substantial uncertainty based on those modes. But, also, you are not your government or social system. Whatever abuse those things may be in for doesn't mean that you won't come out of it. Also, while I'd say high technology shows little evidence of having eliminated the cycles up to this point, I do consider it a wild card personally. Doom is not guaranteed.)

caser 10y ago
Do you have some links on the cyclic progression of civilization? Would be super interested to read more on that.
- jerf 10y ago
  A good start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory See also http://www.livescience.com/22109-cycles-violence-2020.html http://www.livescience.com/22109-cycles-violence-2020.html , which also has some very Google-able keywords. Bear in mind that it's a field of active research, and I'm giving those more as starting points I plucked out from Google hits than necessarily endorsing those exact theories. Personally I would only defend a somewhat weaker idea, that the future isn't somehow entirely random, but that we can indeed look to theories like this for some understanding of the next few decades, modulo the technology wildcard. Or at least a much better understanding than just thinking it's all whims of fate and everything's on the table equally. I said some reliability on purpose... it's not totally reliable, but you can still do much better than nothing.

pdonis 10y ago

> Why not organize around a sane leader Because there aren't any. Although I would not use the word "sane" here, I would use the word "capable", as in capable of running a political unit the size of a country. The inconvenient truth that nobody wants to acknowledge is that there are no human beings capable of doing that. Countries are simply too big and too complicated. (This is actually true IMO for units much smaller than countries, but countries is the current level of discussion.) The problem is not to find someone who can govern a country sanely; the problem is to figure out how to organize ourselves and coexist given that nobody is capable of governing a country sanely.

unethical_ban 10y ago

We tried that. Sanders, Rand Paul. We had potential leaders that didn't always resort to shouting, that wanted another way. Now we have Trump Clinton. This cycle is completely about the ruling elite wanting the same crooked game to keep playing, and the voting public saying "You know what? Fuck you".

sixo 10y ago
To a lot of folks, those candidates weren't appealing. They didn't inspire confidence that they could work on a populist agenda while also being competent political leadership. Paul more than Sanders, but a lot of people have trouble taking Sanders' rhetoric very seriously, or believing that it is well-based in facts, is well thought-out, isn't likely to have disastrous side-effects, that sort of thing.
oh_sigh 10y ago
If this cycle is about that, why would Trump have gotten the nomination? Jeb/Rubio were the golden boys of the GOP, and they got blown up by Trumps appeal. Yes, the Dems couldn't pull it off with Sanders, but it appears the republicans actually picked, perhaps not an anti-establishment candidate, but at least a non-establishment candidate.

eru 10y ago

> Why not organize around a sane leader instead of electing bigger and bigger idiots in some kind of suicidal hope that the system will collapse? The voting systems make that hard. Eg for the US any one who wants to win the primaries has to pander to their extreme base. Moving to range voting would help a bit http://www.rangevoting.org/ http://www.rangevoting.org/

oh_sigh 10y ago

Because facts don't win elections, persuasion and emotions win elections.