5 ms·

>Why would you want it any other way? Democracy is messy. Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me. >Do you think activists stick to facts and data to prove t

by ses1984 6y ago

>Why would you want it any other way? Democracy is messy. Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me. >Do you think activists stick to facts and data to prove their case? Almost never. There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies.

macspoofing 6y ago
>Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me No! The opposite in fact! When Democracy is messy it means there's a lot of 'bumping' and 'turn' (to use some metaphors), unlike the sterile utopia that some push for, where everything is clean and specified and everyone follows a neat pattern (to use more metaphors). For example, I love how messy caucuses are, people are yelling and clamouring, convincing each other to join the other side, negotiating and trading (TALKING to each other), making mistakes, etc. Democratic chaos! Beautiful! But they are going away to just regular, boring voting because this chaos makes many people uncomfortable and it FEELS better to have a top-down, clean, organized, designed approach. This reminds me of Jane Jacobs [1], an urban activist that criticized the then modern notions of urban renewal which called for creating neat, sterile, single-purpose zoned areas. To her, a city should be 'messy' with active mixed-use neighbourhoods encouraging this 'bumping' and 'mixing'. She's right! And I see this idea of urban planning analogous to the democratic process. There is a side-benefit to this chaotic Democracy - it's harder to be gamed, by Russians or political consultants or political parties. >There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies. The other side feels the same about your side. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs
- ncallaway 6y ago
  > But they are going away to just regular, boring voting because this chaos makes many people uncomfortable and it FEELS better to have a top-down, clean, organized, designed approach. I am strongly opposed to caucuses, but not for the reasons mentioned. I'm actually fine with the disorder, the chaos, the shouting. What I'm not okay with is the time commitment required. It seriously disenfranchises those who cannot afford to take an entire evening in order to vote. It creates a significant discrepancy between those who are privileged enough not to see the time commitment as a significant burden, and those who do. (Not to say regular voting is perfect. Look at the recent elections in GA for a counter-example, where voters had to wait in line for hours) Anyway, none of this is really relevant to your main thesis, but I did want to run down the tangent and present the case for why I think caucuses are bad that doesn't focus on disorder.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >What I'm not okay with is the time commitment required. I understand your position but this is way overstated. Anything worth doing is going to cost you time and effort and streamlining it will make it lose some important intrinsic property of it. Approximately 50% of American households carry credit card debt. Do you know why? Because if you truly want something, you'll find a way to get it even if it means financing it will cost you 3x-5x more than just saving up for it. I do not believe that the vast majority of people who care about caucuses would not find a way to attend a caucus. >It creates a significant discrepancy between those who are privileged enough I will never buy into this flawed notion of 'privilege' that misinforms more than it explains. Everyone is busy, especially when it comes to things they barely care about. If someone cares about caucuses and primaries they will get engaged and find a way to attend. Evangelicals that care about their faith will find a way to tithe 10% of their income, go to Church EVERY Sunday (not just once every 4 years), and get involved in Church activities. Practicing Orthodox Jews have very onerous stipulations on what they can and cannot do in their daily life, but they care about their faith and therefore they find a way to do those things - regardless of their income and wealth and privilege. Going to a caucus once every 2 or 4 years on a Saturday isn't a reasonable barrier for those that care. Worrying about those that don't care enough to make time isn't improving things. Your time would be better spent advocating to those people to CARE enough to attend, not destroying the beautiful chaos in order to HOPE it attracts those people into coming out.
    - ncallaway 6y ago
      Do you find getting an ID to be a significant burden? Probably not. There exist people for whom this is a real barrier. Do you have a job that allows you to take a day off work if you need to? Probably. There exist people for whom this is a real barrier. Do you have a job that doesn't require you to work on weekends? Probably. There exist people for whom this is a real barrier. It's hard to ask someone to just CARE more, if caring more means they might be fired from the job that puts food on their table. I'm sorry I used your trigger-word "privilege". I do want this to be a safe space for everyone to participate, so next time I'll avoid that word. For my previous post, you can substitute the word "economically able" instead of the word "privileged", and the meaning should remain mostly the same. I actually don't mind the additional barrier that caucuses create that deter the people that don't care that much. If two people are equally able to attend a caucus, and the activation energy of the caucus filters out the one that doesn't care that much, that seems good to me. But I really very much do mind the additional barrier that caucuses create for the people that are not able to attend them due to their circumstances. If two people care equally, but one doesn't attend because they would lose their job or need to earn enough money for dinner—then I have a massive problem.
- MacsHeadroom 6y ago
  Chaos is way easier to game if your goal is to accentuate chaos to an extreme. It's a mistake to think all competitors want a competitor they can trick into helping them. What if they just want to see their competition crumble?
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    The implicit and critical part of this 'chaos' is decentralization and localism. When every caucus is run differently and by local organization, that's not easier to game. The only way to game that kind of system is to centralize and standardize the process ... which is exactly what is happening. > What if they just want to see their competition crumble? Who cares! Every person will have different motives for doing what they are doing. That's expected. Welcome to Democracy.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Russian troll farms drove nice wedges across the US on all kinds of issues (by boosting the extreme viewpoints) and it worked wonderfully despite there being no central/standardized process. Caucuses are impacted by that just as much as any other process.
      - macspoofing 6y ago
        >Russian troll farms drove nice wedges across the US on all kinds of issues Small potatoes and inconsequential. Americans don't need any outside help to drive wedges between, they are already at each other's throats.
- ses1984 6y ago
  As long as "democracy is messy" isn't used as an excuse to avoid reform, I don't care what you call it. >The other side feels the same about your side. "both sides are the same" NO.
stronglikedan 6y ago
> There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies. The only difference is that spewing outright lies is a large subset of appealing to emotion when it comes to activism, which is itself a large subset of politics. > Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me. Democracy is compromise, and compromise at the level of government is messy. It's not giving up, it's jut not giving in to one idea without considering and weighing all opinions.

macspoofing 6y ago

>Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me No! The opposite in fact! When Democracy is messy it means there's a lot of 'bumping' and 'turn' (to use some metaphors), unlike the sterile utopia that some push for, where everything is clean and specified and everyone follows a neat pattern (to use more metaphors). For example, I love how messy caucuses are, people are yelling and clamouring, convincing each other to join the other side, negotiating and trading (TALKING to each other), making mistakes, etc. Democratic chaos! Beautiful! But they are going away to just regular, boring voting because this chaos makes many people uncomfortable and it FEELS better to have a top-down, clean, organized, designed approach. This reminds me of Jane Jacobs [1], an urban activist that criticized the then modern notions of urban renewal which called for creating neat, sterile, single-purpose zoned areas. To her, a city should be 'messy' with active mixed-use neighbourhoods encouraging this 'bumping' and 'mixing'. She's right! And I see this idea of urban planning analogous to the democratic process. There is a side-benefit to this chaotic Democracy - it's harder to be gamed, by Russians or political consultants or political parties. >There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies. The other side feels the same about your side. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs

ncallaway 6y ago
> But they are going away to just regular, boring voting because this chaos makes many people uncomfortable and it FEELS better to have a top-down, clean, organized, designed approach. I am strongly opposed to caucuses, but not for the reasons mentioned. I'm actually fine with the disorder, the chaos, the shouting. What I'm not okay with is the time commitment required. It seriously disenfranchises those who cannot afford to take an entire evening in order to vote. It creates a significant discrepancy between those who are privileged enough not to see the time commitment as a significant burden, and those who do. (Not to say regular voting is perfect. Look at the recent elections in GA for a counter-example, where voters had to wait in line for hours) Anyway, none of this is really relevant to your main thesis, but I did want to run down the tangent and present the case for why I think caucuses are bad that doesn't focus on disorder.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >What I'm not okay with is the time commitment required. I understand your position but this is way overstated. Anything worth doing is going to cost you time and effort and streamlining it will make it lose some important intrinsic property of it. Approximately 50% of American households carry credit card debt. Do you know why? Because if you truly want something, you'll find a way to get it even if it means financing it will cost you 3x-5x more than just saving up for it. I do not believe that the vast majority of people who care about caucuses would not find a way to attend a caucus. >It creates a significant discrepancy between those who are privileged enough I will never buy into this flawed notion of 'privilege' that misinforms more than it explains. Everyone is busy, especially when it comes to things they barely care about. If someone cares about caucuses and primaries they will get engaged and find a way to attend. Evangelicals that care about their faith will find a way to tithe 10% of their income, go to Church EVERY Sunday (not just once every 4 years), and get involved in Church activities. Practicing Orthodox Jews have very onerous stipulations on what they can and cannot do in their daily life, but they care about their faith and therefore they find a way to do those things - regardless of their income and wealth and privilege. Going to a caucus once every 2 or 4 years on a Saturday isn't a reasonable barrier for those that care. Worrying about those that don't care enough to make time isn't improving things. Your time would be better spent advocating to those people to CARE enough to attend, not destroying the beautiful chaos in order to HOPE it attracts those people into coming out.
  - ncallaway 6y ago
    Do you find getting an ID to be a significant burden? Probably not. There exist people for whom this is a real barrier. Do you have a job that allows you to take a day off work if you need to? Probably. There exist people for whom this is a real barrier. Do you have a job that doesn't require you to work on weekends? Probably. There exist people for whom this is a real barrier. It's hard to ask someone to just CARE more, if caring more means they might be fired from the job that puts food on their table. I'm sorry I used your trigger-word "privilege". I do want this to be a safe space for everyone to participate, so next time I'll avoid that word. For my previous post, you can substitute the word "economically able" instead of the word "privileged", and the meaning should remain mostly the same. I actually don't mind the additional barrier that caucuses create that deter the people that don't care that much. If two people are equally able to attend a caucus, and the activation energy of the caucus filters out the one that doesn't care that much, that seems good to me. But I really very much do mind the additional barrier that caucuses create for the people that are not able to attend them due to their circumstances. If two people care equally, but one doesn't attend because they would lose their job or need to earn enough money for dinner—then I have a massive problem.
MacsHeadroom 6y ago
Chaos is way easier to game if your goal is to accentuate chaos to an extreme. It's a mistake to think all competitors want a competitor they can trick into helping them. What if they just want to see their competition crumble?
- macspoofing 6y ago
  The implicit and critical part of this 'chaos' is decentralization and localism. When every caucus is run differently and by local organization, that's not easier to game. The only way to game that kind of system is to centralize and standardize the process ... which is exactly what is happening. > What if they just want to see their competition crumble? Who cares! Every person will have different motives for doing what they are doing. That's expected. Welcome to Democracy.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Russian troll farms drove nice wedges across the US on all kinds of issues (by boosting the extreme viewpoints) and it worked wonderfully despite there being no central/standardized process. Caucuses are impacted by that just as much as any other process.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >Russian troll farms drove nice wedges across the US on all kinds of issues Small potatoes and inconsequential. Americans don't need any outside help to drive wedges between, they are already at each other's throats.
ses1984 6y ago
As long as "democracy is messy" isn't used as an excuse to avoid reform, I don't care what you call it. >The other side feels the same about your side. "both sides are the same" NO.

stronglikedan 6y ago

> There's a difference between "appeal to emotion" and spewing outright lies. The only difference is that spewing outright lies is a large subset of appealing to emotion when it comes to activism, which is itself a large subset of politics. > Sounds an awful lot like giving up to me. Democracy is compromise, and compromise at the level of government is messy. It's not giving up, it's jut not giving in to one idea without considering and weighing all opinions.