4 ms·

Maybe in 2028 a presidential candidate can run with removing the Patriot Act as one of their campaign points. I suspect the world will be very different then.

Maybe in 2028 a presidential candidate can run with removing the Patriot Act as one of their campaign points. I suspect the world will be very different then. The America I knew, remembered, and loved started dying with the passage of the Patriot Act.

Xelbair 1y ago
Given how patriot act survived many terms of both republicans and democrats i highly doubt it. It is a extremely convenient act for whoever is in power.
- mothballed 1y ago
  There needs to be something like the federal equivalent of a referendum. I think with that, it would be possible to get rid of the patriot act and legalize weed, both of which seem to have popular support but zero chance of majority of representatives backing because they don't want to be liable for the worst-case corner-cases in the aftermath.
  - runako 1y ago
    We are constantly voting in primaries and general elections. We vote in federal elections every two years, state elections generally at least as frequently, though often not in federal election year. We vote for mayor and city council and insurance commissioner and Secretary of State and county commission. We don't need a referendum, we just need to choose representation that wants the same things we want. (Alternate formation: Americans do not want these things as much as some of us think they do.)
    - mothballed 1y ago
      By referendum I meant to be able to vote directly on a specific law. If you look at how weed was legalized, it required a referendum in many (most?) states because no representative wants to be the guy that has his face plastered everywhere when some kid dies after he smokes some legal weed and smashes into a pole, even if most his constituents wanted the policy. Representatives generally have to be risk averse to get to the point they can even represent people on issues. This means they are extremely reluctant to vote for anything that might come back to bite them somehow, even if it is popular. >Alternate formation: Americans do not want these things as much as some of us think they do There is extremely overwhelming evidence that a supermajority of americans have wanted medical marijuana to be federally legal for many years. And overwhelming evidence the representatives have not been successfully bringing that forward.
      - runako 1y ago
        Absolutely. The catch is that when voters vote at all levels, they express by their choices that e.g. marijuana legalization is not a high priority. So voters might well vote to legalize if given that standalone choice, but it's not obvious to me that it's a good idea to insulate representatives from their inaction. > no representative wants to be the guy So on this, a number of states arrived at some level of legalization exactly this way. Legalization laws were signed by governors as diverse politically as Kay Ivey in Alabama and Tim Walz in Minnesota. There's no statutory reason that voters in e.g. South Carolina cannot choose representation as amenable to legalization as Beshear in Kentucky or Reeves in Mississippi. Referenda also are subject to faithful implementation by representatives, so attempting to side-step the choice of representatives is not necessarily going to be fruitful.
      - mrguyorama 1y ago
        >If you look at how weed was legalized, it required a referendum It only required a referendum in some states because most US states are controlled by Republican governors and legislatures who openly defy what their own constituents want without fear of being voted out, because republicans vote republican no matter what. Republican voters will say "I want to legalize weed", their elected representative spouts literal DARE propaganda about weed that republican voters KNOW is false since they literally smoke weed (illegally, how about that), but they STILL re-elect those politicians, because it's more important to not have a democrat in office than to actually get what you democratically voted for. Here in Maine, we passed a referendum to legalize weed. It passed. Lepage spent the next 4 years of his Governor term refusing to implement it, entirely. Like he just criminally defied the will of the public. As soon as Mills took office, the state built up a framework for recreational weed and IMO it's pretty good compared to other states, which is probably why we have literal Chinese gangs growing illegal weed all over the state :/ You see the same thing in every Republican state that allows citizen referendums. The public passes a referendum, and the republican politicians of the state just utterly defy it, and they do not get voted out Democrat politicians respect citizen referendums, even when they are stupid and against democrat policies, like in California where Uber is not an employer because that's how the people voted.
        1y ago
    - ksenzee 1y ago
      The first-past-the-post system, combined with our current primary system, is set up such that most Americans do not get the representation they actually want, and Congress is made up of extremists. We don’t have the Congress we have because most Americans actually want it that way.
mothballed 1y ago
Ron Paul already did that. Not very popular.
- aleatorianator 1y ago
  popular means whatever Hollywood decided to like this is the end of celebrity culture at the hands of social media. monarchies are the central core of celebrity cultism, look at France today; surrounded by the Monarchies and up in flames.
- thesuitonym 1y ago
  There are many reasons Ron Paul was not very popular.
n0n0n4t0r 1y ago
[flagged]
- dzonga 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ptaffs 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      >he (and his kind) lives for short term gratification and will move on to another house and decorate that with gold. Exactly. It's a social norm among that class of society When a Koch, or a Scwab, or the CEO of some mega-corp buys a property on Martha's Vineyard, or the Hamptons, or Vail or overlooking Tahoe or whatever, with intent to actually spend even the scantest amount of time there themselves they engage in absurd unnecessary renovations. That's just how they do things. There is an occasional exception for those in that group who have "found meaning" in some other avenue for lighting money on fire. Edit: You can thank me later for implicitly telling you where the best construction dumpsters are.
  - moi2388 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - LightBug1 1y ago
      Just !
      - moi2388 1y ago
        Want to bet 10k? You’re literally making claims without any basis. He left last time, he will leave again, if he even makes it to the end of his term
conception 1y ago
Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?
- bluGill 1y ago
  Many people will imagine things. However history constantly suggests that most of those are very different from the reality that results. The good news is when your candidate loses you don't find out the evil they really do and you can say it is not your fault. The bad news is you don't find out what is bad about the things you think are good.
  - bluSCALE4 1y ago
    Sanders is gutless and acts like the Democrats are the greater of the two evils even as they silenced him and prevented from being their front runner.
- garciasn 1y ago
  An interesting what-if scenario; but, let's assume Sanders won and all else remained largely the same as it has: Unless the Sanders Administration had a very favorable or majority Democrat Congress aligned with his progressive wing, many proposals would be outright blocked or heavily compromised. Knowing our limitation that everything else has stayed largely the same as history since, this wouldn't be the case. The hypothetical administration's attempts at sweeping reforms, such as healthcare and climate regulation, would very likely be significantly curtailed or overturned by courts or constrained by constitutional limits on separation. The GOP, even though they actively outspend Democrats when in power, obstruct via financial limits each and every Democratic-led effort while crowing about expansion of debt incursion; as such, spending on Bernie's proposed initiatives would raise concerns about deficits, inflation, and taxation. Even with tax increases, there would be pushback from wealthy individuals, corporations, and lobbyists. Basically, nothing would change in any significant way except, perhaps, the SCOTUS would not be outright overturning DECADES of 'settled law' in favor of an absurd view of the world as it was hundreds of years ago.
  - 1y ago
Consultant32452 1y ago
the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe. ~H.L. Mencken The bad guys will say you only need privacy if you’re guilty and the plebs will lap it up
black6 1y ago
I might turn out to vote if there was a candidate whose sole platform plank was to repeal as many existing laws as possible.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  any democratic candidate?
  - genewitch 1y ago
    https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/report-cards/2022 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/report-cards/2022 I'm not sure that democrats enact/write less laws. If they don't enact (or write) less laws, i cannot see how the aggregate number of laws reduces. This, apparently, is a "hard" statistical (research) problem, even though i've seen reporting on this exact subject, along the lines of "number of lines in bills written by each party" or similar. but the top 2 are democrats. I think "enacted" is a different metric, but i'm still pretty certain that democrats lead on "enacted" legislation, at least in the last 25 years.
ivape 1y ago
No candidate can do that. The children were raised to be racist and ignorant. That basically means you are going to deal with poorly raised feral racist and entitled children. You aren’t going to rehabilitate that in your lifetime, the childhoods are fucked up. Maybe in 30-40 years these people will have a come to Jesus moment, but we don’t have a malleable national moral character to appeal to helpful sensibilities given how poorly the prior generation failed at raising proper children with good moral character. Basically, a good portion of White America are gone cases. You won’t be able to explain to gone cases anything. That’s the reality of America.
AlecSchueler 1y ago
It's called the patriot act, anyone fighting it is instantly framed as anti-American.
ActorNightly 1y ago
[flagged]
- juanani 1y ago
  [dead]
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> a presidential candidate can run with removing the Patriot Act as one of their campaign points I've worked on privacy regulation. This would not get votes. The unfortunate fact is that the people most passionate about these issues are also tremendously lazy or extremely nihilistic. (Maybe it comes with the territory of not trusting institutions.) Either way, privacy advocates can rarely muster even a dozen calls to electeds, let alone credibly threaten backing a primary opponent. The reason SOPA/PIPA worked is it animated a group of tech advocates beyond those with ideological opposition to surveillance.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

Xelbair 1y ago

Given how patriot act survived many terms of both republicans and democrats i highly doubt it. It is a extremely convenient act for whoever is in power.

mothballed 1y ago
There needs to be something like the federal equivalent of a referendum. I think with that, it would be possible to get rid of the patriot act and legalize weed, both of which seem to have popular support but zero chance of majority of representatives backing because they don't want to be liable for the worst-case corner-cases in the aftermath.
- runako 1y ago
  We are constantly voting in primaries and general elections. We vote in federal elections every two years, state elections generally at least as frequently, though often not in federal election year. We vote for mayor and city council and insurance commissioner and Secretary of State and county commission. We don't need a referendum, we just need to choose representation that wants the same things we want. (Alternate formation: Americans do not want these things as much as some of us think they do.)
  - mothballed 1y ago
    By referendum I meant to be able to vote directly on a specific law. If you look at how weed was legalized, it required a referendum in many (most?) states because no representative wants to be the guy that has his face plastered everywhere when some kid dies after he smokes some legal weed and smashes into a pole, even if most his constituents wanted the policy. Representatives generally have to be risk averse to get to the point they can even represent people on issues. This means they are extremely reluctant to vote for anything that might come back to bite them somehow, even if it is popular. >Alternate formation: Americans do not want these things as much as some of us think they do There is extremely overwhelming evidence that a supermajority of americans have wanted medical marijuana to be federally legal for many years. And overwhelming evidence the representatives have not been successfully bringing that forward.
    - runako 1y ago
      Absolutely. The catch is that when voters vote at all levels, they express by their choices that e.g. marijuana legalization is not a high priority. So voters might well vote to legalize if given that standalone choice, but it's not obvious to me that it's a good idea to insulate representatives from their inaction. > no representative wants to be the guy So on this, a number of states arrived at some level of legalization exactly this way. Legalization laws were signed by governors as diverse politically as Kay Ivey in Alabama and Tim Walz in Minnesota. There's no statutory reason that voters in e.g. South Carolina cannot choose representation as amenable to legalization as Beshear in Kentucky or Reeves in Mississippi. Referenda also are subject to faithful implementation by representatives, so attempting to side-step the choice of representatives is not necessarily going to be fruitful.
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      >If you look at how weed was legalized, it required a referendum It only required a referendum in some states because most US states are controlled by Republican governors and legislatures who openly defy what their own constituents want without fear of being voted out, because republicans vote republican no matter what. Republican voters will say "I want to legalize weed", their elected representative spouts literal DARE propaganda about weed that republican voters KNOW is false since they literally smoke weed (illegally, how about that), but they STILL re-elect those politicians, because it's more important to not have a democrat in office than to actually get what you democratically voted for. Here in Maine, we passed a referendum to legalize weed. It passed. Lepage spent the next 4 years of his Governor term refusing to implement it, entirely. Like he just criminally defied the will of the public. As soon as Mills took office, the state built up a framework for recreational weed and IMO it's pretty good compared to other states, which is probably why we have literal Chinese gangs growing illegal weed all over the state :/ You see the same thing in every Republican state that allows citizen referendums. The public passes a referendum, and the republican politicians of the state just utterly defy it, and they do not get voted out Democrat politicians respect citizen referendums, even when they are stupid and against democrat policies, like in California where Uber is not an employer because that's how the people voted.
      - 1y ago
  - ksenzee 1y ago
    The first-past-the-post system, combined with our current primary system, is set up such that most Americans do not get the representation they actually want, and Congress is made up of extremists. We don’t have the Congress we have because most Americans actually want it that way.

mothballed 1y ago

Ron Paul already did that. Not very popular.

aleatorianator 1y ago
popular means whatever Hollywood decided to like this is the end of celebrity culture at the hands of social media. monarchies are the central core of celebrity cultism, look at France today; surrounded by the Monarchies and up in flames.
thesuitonym 1y ago
There are many reasons Ron Paul was not very popular.

n0n0n4t0r 1y ago

[flagged]

dzonga 1y ago
[flagged]
- ptaffs 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    >he (and his kind) lives for short term gratification and will move on to another house and decorate that with gold. Exactly. It's a social norm among that class of society When a Koch, or a Scwab, or the CEO of some mega-corp buys a property on Martha's Vineyard, or the Hamptons, or Vail or overlooking Tahoe or whatever, with intent to actually spend even the scantest amount of time there themselves they engage in absurd unnecessary renovations. That's just how they do things. There is an occasional exception for those in that group who have "found meaning" in some other avenue for lighting money on fire. Edit: You can thank me later for implicitly telling you where the best construction dumpsters are.
- moi2388 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - LightBug1 1y ago
    Just !
    - moi2388 1y ago
      Want to bet 10k? You’re literally making claims without any basis. He left last time, he will leave again, if he even makes it to the end of his term

conception 1y ago

Can you imagine the world today if Bernie had won?

bluGill 1y ago
Many people will imagine things. However history constantly suggests that most of those are very different from the reality that results. The good news is when your candidate loses you don't find out the evil they really do and you can say it is not your fault. The bad news is you don't find out what is bad about the things you think are good.
- bluSCALE4 1y ago
  Sanders is gutless and acts like the Democrats are the greater of the two evils even as they silenced him and prevented from being their front runner.
garciasn 1y ago
An interesting what-if scenario; but, let's assume Sanders won and all else remained largely the same as it has: Unless the Sanders Administration had a very favorable or majority Democrat Congress aligned with his progressive wing, many proposals would be outright blocked or heavily compromised. Knowing our limitation that everything else has stayed largely the same as history since, this wouldn't be the case. The hypothetical administration's attempts at sweeping reforms, such as healthcare and climate regulation, would very likely be significantly curtailed or overturned by courts or constrained by constitutional limits on separation. The GOP, even though they actively outspend Democrats when in power, obstruct via financial limits each and every Democratic-led effort while crowing about expansion of debt incursion; as such, spending on Bernie's proposed initiatives would raise concerns about deficits, inflation, and taxation. Even with tax increases, there would be pushback from wealthy individuals, corporations, and lobbyists. Basically, nothing would change in any significant way except, perhaps, the SCOTUS would not be outright overturning DECADES of 'settled law' in favor of an absurd view of the world as it was hundreds of years ago.
- 1y ago

Consultant32452 1y ago

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe. ~H.L. Mencken The bad guys will say you only need privacy if you’re guilty and the plebs will lap it up

black6 1y ago

I might turn out to vote if there was a candidate whose sole platform plank was to repeal as many existing laws as possible.

_9ptr 1y ago
any democratic candidate?
- genewitch 1y ago
  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/report-cards/2022 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/report-cards/2022 I'm not sure that democrats enact/write less laws. If they don't enact (or write) less laws, i cannot see how the aggregate number of laws reduces. This, apparently, is a "hard" statistical (research) problem, even though i've seen reporting on this exact subject, along the lines of "number of lines in bills written by each party" or similar. but the top 2 are democrats. I think "enacted" is a different metric, but i'm still pretty certain that democrats lead on "enacted" legislation, at least in the last 25 years.

ivape 1y ago

No candidate can do that. The children were raised to be racist and ignorant. That basically means you are going to deal with poorly raised feral racist and entitled children. You aren’t going to rehabilitate that in your lifetime, the childhoods are fucked up. Maybe in 30-40 years these people will have a come to Jesus moment, but we don’t have a malleable national moral character to appeal to helpful sensibilities given how poorly the prior generation failed at raising proper children with good moral character. Basically, a good portion of White America are gone cases. You won’t be able to explain to gone cases anything. That’s the reality of America.

AlecSchueler 1y ago

It's called the patriot act, anyone fighting it is instantly framed as anti-American.

ActorNightly 1y ago

[flagged]

juanani 1y ago
[dead]

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> a presidential candidate can run with removing the Patriot Act as one of their campaign points I've worked on privacy regulation. This would not get votes. The unfortunate fact is that the people most passionate about these issues are also tremendously lazy or extremely nihilistic. (Maybe it comes with the territory of not trusting institutions.) Either way, privacy advocates can rarely muster even a dozen calls to electeds, let alone credibly threaten backing a primary opponent. The reason SOPA/PIPA worked is it animated a group of tech advocates beyond those with ideological opposition to surveillance.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]