8 ms·

I feel helpless. In this and in many things that this administration has brought on. Vote? Yeah, right. Sign a petition? Yeah, right. I feel like unless t

• throwaway5752 9y ago
  You're a dope if you don't vote. It's impolite to mention this, but it is not a political problem, but a Republican problem. A Democratic administration's FCC enacted Net Neutrality, a Republican one is attempting to dismantle it. Vote for Democrats at every level of government, in every election possible. This will change some day, but today the Republican party has lost its mind and morals. To be clear, I'm not calling you a dope.
  • thesmallestcat 9y ago
    What a delightfully simplistic view of politics. You know about the Blue Dogs, right?
    • throwaway5752 9y ago
      Yes. And?
      • thesmallestcat 9y ago
        And so you could have a single-party system and you'd end up with a split of conservatives and liberals. It's not about party, at least not about blindly voting for one party.
        • throwaway5752 9y ago
          This is not about liberalism or conservativism at all. It would be lovely if the current Republican party was about conservativism. This is not about political philosophy, this is about party and who exercises power in those parties.
          • thesmallestcat 9y ago
            Not all Dems support Net Neutrality, not all Republicans oppose it, which contradicts your point.
            • trivial 9y ago
              There are some people that think the earth is flat or that lizard shape shifting aliens control the highest level of every government does that make them a fair representation of the views of humanity as a whole? There are significant differences between the two parties.
            • omginternets 9y ago
              Most Dems support NN, and most Reps oppose it. You know this.
        • robotresearcher 9y ago
          He's not advocating voting blindly. He's advocating voting for the party that actively supports net neutrality.
    • Para2016 9y ago
      He's posting from "throwaway" which means he knows his entire statement is completely biased and absurd. As if voting "D" without knowing a thing about the candidate is a good idea.
      • throwaway5752 9y ago
        Yes. I'm posting from a "throwaway" which is 5 times older than your account, has almost 15 times as much karma, and contains exactly the same amount of personally identifiable information. Happy Thanksgiving.
        • Para2016 9y ago
          Wow, just saw your reply. I'm happy you have so much karma! That must mean a lot to you. Have a wonderful holiday season!
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      The Blue Dogs are a very belated rearguard action against the partisan realignment that had largely completed when they were formed, and as the realignment progresses and solidifies they have rapidly become irrelevant.
  • brian-armstrong 9y ago
    It's worth noting that Ajit was installed by Obama
    • Zren 9y ago
      Obama installed the Republican nominee since the FCC can't have more than 3 comissioners from the same political party (thus there's always a 2v3 balance). > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_V._Pai#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajit_V._Pai#Career > In 2011, Pai was then nominated for a Republican Party position on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Minority leader Mitch McConnell. He was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012, > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission#Commissioners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commiss... > Only three commissioners may be members of the same political party.
    • bbatsell 9y ago
      As an independent agency, the FCC is required to have two members from a minority party, and when a spot opens up, a new member is traditionally given to the President by the minority party. (Pai was Mitch McConnell's choice.)
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • ep103 9y ago
      A lot of people are asking this on the various forums, but is misunderstands what actually happened. Many of the major regulatory bodies work in the same way. At the top of the body, there is a board of political appointees. For the FCC, there are 5 commissioners. Of these 5 Commissioners, 2 are always Democrats, and 2 are always Republicans. That last one, the chair of the committee is always the current sitting President's choice. This is done this way, to keep some stability among the various administration heads across washington. So during Obama's term, a Republican chair opened up on the commission when Meredith Baker resigned to lobby for NBC. That meant a Republican needed to be appointed to the commission, so Obama asked Mitch McConnell for Mitch's recommendation, and Mitch chose Ajit Pai. When Trump took office, the sitting chair of the commission Thomas Wheeler (Obama's nominee) resigned, and Trump elevated Ajit Pai. Trump then filled Ajit Pai's Republican seat with another Republican, and now the board is majority Republican. So Ajit Pai was not Obama's recommendation. Ajit Pai was Mitch McConnel's choice for the then open Republican Chair on the FCC Commission. Its a little strange, but this is traditionally how its always been done. Now as to your other question: this last sentence is just conjecture, but we know from the Russia investigations that Trump had a tendency to demand loyalty pledges from his appointees, so I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised to find that Ajit Pai is marching so steadfastly towards this single policy agenda, despite all of the obvious flack and harm it is incurring on him and the nation in general.
  • taohansen 9y ago
    both parties don't make decisions i consider sane or particularly clever yet those are the only two parties i may vote for with any chance of success. the voting system is broken by outmoded/gamed structures (gerrymandering, an electoral college), and all-or-nothing outcomes (if i vote for one candidate and they don't win, i may make no second or third choice with which then to put my voting power behind). i simply feel an unrelenting despair when engaging in the realm of politics. it's two devils on a stage lording over minions who condemn and pollute the miracle of human life daily with short-sighted greed and a stunning lack of ethics. a revolution is out of the question because the very tool that was meant to fight back against such sloven corruption no longer disbands after war but simply persists against an invisible Enemy none of us can touch, see or feel. what is this insane existence we find ourselves in where the only choice i have is to acquiesce or ineffectually protest?
    • Buttons840 9y ago
      Considering donating to fairvote.org, I do. I should confess I don't know much about how they actually use my money but I support their stated goal of improving our voting systems.
    • ep103 9y ago
      From any given viewpoint, both parties may not be ideal. But within both of those parties are numerous different ideological groups. On the right, the major wings range from evangelicals, libertarians, neoconservatives, "traditional", and so on. On the left, the parties tend to fall into a mix of "Blue Dog" democrats, Clintonians, progressive caucus, black caucus, and a whole bunch of single issue and identity issue groups. No matter what your particular viewpoint is, one of those groups likely aligns with most of it. During primaries, those different groups hash out against each other, and then redirect the party as a whole. So the key, then, is to find the smaller groups and politicans that more closely reflect your beliefs, and lend your support to them. Yes, our two party system doesn't allow for second and third choices on a single ballot. But what it does allow for is for you to vote for your preferred candidates (the above caucuses) in primaries as your first choice, and then vote for your second choice in the general if your favorite candidate didn't win or run in a specific primary.
    • 9y ago
  • averagewall 9y ago
    Democrats use drones to kill innocent or presumed-guilty people in other countries. Are you sure their lives don't matter compared to net neutrality? They're also responsible for harsh sentences for drug offences which is a major reason for all the imprisoned people in the US. Net neutrality is still more important than all those ruined lives? The housing shortage in San Francisco is democrats too. Maybe with money saved from rents to landlords could be spent on rents to non-neutral ISPs. It's far from a simple as "always vote democrat". That kind of naive arrogance is why the US has two entrenched parties that both maintain the status quo of terrible things you don't like.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • bkanber 9y ago
      > Democrats use drones to kill innocent or presumed-guilty people in other countries. That's not a Democrat thing, that's an American thing. We don't have enough data to say democrats use drones more than republicans. GW Bush was the first President to have access to drones period, and it was not yet a mature technology nor at the beginning of his term. Obama was the first President to have drones available for his first term, and yes he did use them. President Trump is using drones just as much as Obama did, and in fact Trump has taken the White House out of the command loop and is giving more authority to the CIA to execute drone strikes! So not just drone strikes, but drone strikes with little accountability, ordered neither by an elected official or the military but instead the CIA. Also, President Trump rolled back Obama's mandate that drones can't be used outside of war zones. Don't forget that President Reagan signed that drug sentencing act into law. The housing shortage in SF is NIMBYs, not democrats. It just happens that democrats are overrepresented in SF so you are using a correlation as causation. > Net neutrality is still more important than all those ruined lives? It's not a binary decision. But losing net neutrality could lead to some pretty awful social and economic effects 20 years down the line. It can lead to even more class inequality, lower education levels, increased crime, and potentially even a major recession or crash as our tech sector productivity decreases due to the anticompetitive environment. > It's far from a simple as "always vote democrat". That I agree with.
  • usaar333 9y ago
    > Vote for Democrats at every level of government, in every election possible. And this is why a lot of us feel powerless with this issue. I live in an area where every elected official from local to federal is a Democrat. (obvious exception being the president, a Republican that actually lost the popular vote by 3 million). Needless to say, my federal representatives strongly support NN.. but they are in the minority. Hence, why voting feels meaningless for me.
    • creaghpatr 9y ago
      You can lobby the Democrats to change their platform from identity politics to economic issues and then they won’t alienate the voters that left them in 2016.
  • whataretensors 9y ago
    America cannot be divided by D and R. Nobody fits cleanly in either category if they have any independent thought. It's completely ridiculous that my views on internet regulation should be aligned with my views on the school system. Our government might just need to be completely rebuilt to include more granularity. And we should toss these lossy classifiers that only serve to dehumanize one another.
  • syril 9y ago
    eat shit you communist slime
    • throwaway5752 9y ago
      Happy Thanksgiving. May you and your loved ones have an enjoyable holiday.
  • dahart 9y ago
    > You're a dope if you don't vote. Are we all dopes if we buy that voting on this issue is going to once and for all solve the problem of corporations continuing to take more control and extract more money from the internet? This "vote" has come up for discussion every year for a decade at least. Some years I vote and some, I admit, I haven't bothered. But it keeps coming back. No matter how many times we vote no, it keeps re-appearing. The elephant is the room is privacy & encryption. We're asking elected officials to protect our freedoms for us, when we have the technical means to protect ourselves. ISPs shouldn't have the right to look at the contents of traffic at all. The issue of whether they get to charge more for some routes is a side-show compared to the issue of whether they have the right to look at our traffic. If we focused on privacy, and built a system that encrypted routing information and blocked it from prying commercial interest eyes like ISPs, we wouldn't need to have a debate, and we wouldn't need to vote.
• loteck 9y ago
  I suspect a lot of people feel this way. You're right, your individual vote isn't remarkable. And yet, voting is the only legal direct action any normal person can take. If only there was some way you could convince more people in your community to vote with you. Then you might have something.
• pitaj 9y ago
  This is the exact problem I have with bureaucratic regulatory frameworks. The ones making the regulations have essentially zero accountability to the people.
• mratzloff 9y ago
  Go to a town hall. Call. Both of these are more important than voting (which you should also do).
• rconti 9y ago
  I'm just tired. I'm tired of fighting all these pro-tech and pro-freedom fights going back decades, to the Clipper chip and the CDA. I'm tired of trying to figure out if the hyperbole (this time it's CRITICAL you act!) is deserved, whether the issue is that serious, and whether we're really on the right side of the issue in the first place. I'm tired of trying to figure out if contacting my (Democrat) lawmaker will make a difference if they've already signaled opposition anyway. I'm tired of wondering if an angry tweet to a Chairman who clearly doesn't have my best interests at heart anyway will make a damn bit of difference. And anyway, somebody's twitter bot army is already doing the opposite of what I'm doing, times a million, and the FCC comments stuffing is doing far more than I would ever choose to do (legally, morally, and ethically). More generally, with regards to this atrocious administration, I know the entire point is to just go after everyone who opposes 'them' in the most craven, cynical, and childish manner possible, to wear 'them' down and rub 'their' face in it for daring to suggest they're terrible people, but all of this internet freedom stuff vastly predates most of the people in power. I read just the other day that, if enacted, this will almost certainly be declared unconstitutional in the courts anyway, so what's the point? I'm just tired.
  • luckydude 9y ago
    You and me both, bud. I really fear for our country. I used to be proud to be an American, these days I'm ashamed. I'm half Dutch and went back to the Netherlands with my family this summer and it was so frigging pleasant. The discourse was sane, they actually work together to fix stuff. As painful as it is to form a government there sometimes, I much prefer their system to ours. We look pretty crazy from the inside, we look bat shit crazy from the outside.