4 ms·

We are not at a point as a country to have a serious discussion about governance. The administration in charge (as recently as yesterday) still blames Biden fo

• catigula 4mo ago
  The problem runs deeper than the current administration. Voting doesn't work. The Biden administration isn't the antidote to our problems.
  • triceratops 4mo ago
    > Voting doesn't work Disparaging democracy doesn't work. Saying shit like this is worse than not voting. EDIT: Downvoted for defending democracy. I do love democracy :-D
    • avaer 4mo ago
      Since many people reading this probably don't know: voting is not the only, or even the original form of democracy. Representatives in ancient democracies were selected by sortition, which is based on statistics, not popularity or money.
      • triceratops 4mo ago
        The only way to peacefully change how representatives are selected is...voting.
        • thunky 4mo ago
          Nobody voted in Kamala Harris and somehow she became the only choice besides Trump.
          • triceratops 4mo ago
            So then you agree with me that not being able to vote is catastrophic. "Voting doesn't work" rapidly gets you to "No votes for you."
            • thunky 4mo ago
              [dead]
    • catigula 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      • deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      • sveme 4mo ago
        What's your suggested alternative? Would you say that American democracy is broken or democracy in general?
        • catigula 4mo ago
          "Democracy" is a hugely wide category some variant of it is likely the preferred system of governance. Regardless, it's a weasel category. Many would argue that China is democratically reflecting the will of their people. In fact, Von Mises famously argued in his seminal work Liberalism that all systems are democratic because they require the will of the people or are overthrown. A little silly of a reductio in my opinion, but it's emblematic.
          • AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
            So, to repeat, what is your suggested alternative?
      • triceratops 4mo ago
        > Being a toady for what isn't working makes you useful It's great you aren't a "toady". > this system is broken and needs to be disparaged And then what? You're either being paid to spread this doomslop or you're just a bored, contrarian cynic. I really really hope it's the second one.
    • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > Disparaging democracy The ancient Athenians knew that elections favored the rich. That’s why they incorporated selection by lot into their system. Our modern understanding of democracy has fetishized elections to the point that some voters might see hundreds of them in a year, including for positions that shouldn’t ever be elected (e.g. judges), while still having little to no actual civic power.
      • triceratops 4mo ago
        How will you get selection by lot into the current system without violence? Voting.
        • deleted 4mo ago
          [deleted]
        • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
          > How will you get selection by lot into the current system without violence? Voting Oh totally agree. But also civic involvement. The returns to even small amounts of civic engagement in America are so ridiculously high because most of the population doesn’t do it. If like 5% more of the electorate called their electeds at least twice a year, that would represent a 25% increase in civic engagement, enough to break constituencies.
      • catigula 4mo ago
        The "just vote" lot are the perfect pressure release valve for the failed system. Out of control inflation? No healthcare? Endless war? Just vote! You just have to vote for a democrat! It's time to say no to these charlatans. If people lose hope in the system, that's when it can change.
        • triceratops 4mo ago
          > You just have to vote for a democrat! Or a third party. > If people lose hope in the system, that's when it can change There's only 2 ways it can change: voting or violence. You're saying voting doesn't work. That means you're advocating violence.
    • boppo1 4mo ago
      Nah, voting doesn't work because to become a candidate necessarily requires backroom dealing at odds with the interests of common voters. We need sortition.
      • triceratops 4mo ago
        How will you get sortition without voting for a pro-sortition candidate?
        • buellerbueller 4mo ago
          I've thought a lot about this, because my state is heavily gerrymandered, and the legislature keeps voting to undermine several recently passed amendments (abortion rights, marijuana) to our state constitution. They also tried to change the threshold for passing a referendum from 50% + 1 vote to 60%, when it was clear that there was enough support to pass the abortion rights amendment. You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum. Fuck what the professional politicians think of sortition; do an end run around them, because professional politicians are the problem. Get this accomplished in enough states, and then you have a level chance of doing an amendment to the US Constitution.
          • triceratops 4mo ago
            > You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum. Aka...voting. If you truly believe "voting doesn't work", as you first said (EDIT: that was someone else whose username starts with a "b" sorry), then this referendum won't go anywhere either.
            • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
              They didn’t say that! That was kitty Caligula.
              • triceratops 4mo ago
    • fullshark 4mo ago
      It's at best a weak check by the populace on two rival gangs of the ruling class. It's certainly not what its proponents claim it to be.
      • triceratops 4mo ago
        I see, you prefer your gangs unchecked?
        • fullshark 4mo ago
          I clearly did not say that, re-read and try again. There's a lot of thoughtful responses to your histrionics, I suggest you take a breath and actually engage with the ideas contained within them.
          • triceratops 4mo ago
            > There's a lot of thoughtful responses to your histrionics Sorry, can you please point to one of these thoughtful responses? I've seen one idea suggested: "sortition". But no ideas for how to get it peacefully without voting it in. I engaged with all these comments and asked this question. "Voting doesn't work" is a cynical, doomerist, thought terminating cliche. I don't want this mind virus to propagate. You may call my comments "histrionics". But instead I suggest you take a breath and think about where calling voting and elections "useless" leads.
    • rubzah 4mo ago
      Saying it seems to have become a taboo, probably because of the existential horror of it possibly being true.
      • triceratops 4mo ago
        Is there an alternative?
        • AnimalMuppet 4mo ago
          Say the truth; take the downvotes. But I would say that the voting that matters most is voting in primaries. Get rid of the ideologues and zealots on both sides; get some people who can think rather than just yell.
          • triceratops 4mo ago
            Agree. Voting doesn't just mean voting in regular elections for legislators and executives. Vote in every election you are eligible for.
    • ramon156 4mo ago
      Not doing anything is also not working. Denying it is worse than saying its broken. It's clear as day. Key figures, wealth, etc. Shouldn't influence their power to this extend. The general public isn't silent, it's silenced.
  • win311fwg 4mo ago
    > Voting doesn't work. It works fine to accomplish what it is intended to do: Pick a worker to hire. The problem is that many assume it ends there and the employee will magically go off and do great things. That is not how it works. If you've ever worked with employees before, you'll know full well that you have to regularly communicate with them to keep them on track. Even if the most stellar employee in the world trying to do everything right will never be a mind reader. When was the last time you spoke to the person you hired for the job of representative? I expect for most reading this, the answer will be never. That is what doesn't work.
    • catigula 4mo ago
      Incorrect. You can merely lie and spend money and get elected and then do the opposite. Rinse and repeat. See: John Fetterman. It doesn't work. It's fundamentally broken.
      • win311fwg 4mo ago
        Their actions are recorded. You have full view if they are failing to do their job, and when they fail to do their job it is on you as their employer to bring the consequences. What did the people who hired John Fetterman do to stop his unacceptable behaviour? Nothing, right? That's the problem. Employees are not magical beings. They are simple, imperfect humans that need constant management. But there is this strange idea that voting is sufficient to act as the management layer. That is not how it works. Voting is only for selecting the employee you want to hire. You still have the be the employer after they are hired. It is not fundamentally broken. The model proves to work perfectly fine in other contexts regularly. The trouble is that you, along with a lot of other people, are looking for magic so that you don't have to get your hands dirty. The harsh reality is that magic doesn't exist, I'm afraid.
        • thunky 4mo ago
          > It is not fundamentally broken It's corrupted by money, bribery, gerrymandering, an electoral system that is anti-democratic, and a two party system that has as a joint monolopy on power via division. Corrupt means broken.
  • SoftTalker 4mo ago
    The problem as I see it is more about a real habit of blaming the other side and keeping problems alive as wedge issues than actually solving anything. This was a problem before, and always has been to some extent, but seems to have gotten much worse since social media and twitter became ways for memes to spread virally. So much easier to get outraged about something the other guy is or is not doing, than to do the work to come up with any solutions. And the country is pretty evenly divided on which side they like, so we're just treading water in sewage mostly.
    • akudha 4mo ago
      Exploiting wedge issues is how the game of politics is played, isn't it? This has been the playbook forever. Find (or create) an enemy (real or imaginary) and rally supporters against them and keep the wedges/enemies in place, so it can be exploited forever. This is true nearly in all democracies. It would be nice if it wasn't but somehow politics generally seems to attract/promote the worst people in society. It is upto to the voters to see past this.
  • wat10000 4mo ago
    Voting works fine, people just don't do it very much. People complain about their choices. Meanwhile, there's atrocious turnout in the primaries which determine those choices.
    • triceratops 4mo ago
      Agree. There's a direct line from Robert A Heinlein: "When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived." to the anonymous scholar who first said, probably as a joke: "If violence didn't work you didn't use enough". Whatever you think of voting and democracy, the alternatives are far more unpleasant. Vote every time, without fail.
    • s1artibartfast 4mo ago
      How does more voting resolve anything? Split up fans are still split opinions and bad politicians are still bad politicians. A 51 49 election still has the same outcome if 10 million or 100 million people voted. It seems to me that people will need to not only vote but change their voting criteria
      • wat10000 4mo ago
        I'm specifically thinking of the primaries here, where you often have more than two candidates and it's not a 51/49 split. I think it's very likely that the people who currently sit out the primaries would vote differently from the people who show up. It's a pretty small minority who vote in primaries, and those who do will tend to be a lot more politically active than average. Far too many people complain about the bad candidates in the general, and don't do the most basic thing to influence that.
        • s1artibartfast 4mo ago
          Ah. One of the various forms of ranked choice or approval voting in the general would also solve this. I agree that mixing of the party primary system and the governmental election process is a problem leading to dominance of finge views.
• timacles 4mo ago
  The politics in this country have been intentionally broken going back to Clinton and Obama. It is impossible to make meaningful change anymore. Add in the propaganda convincing 2/5th of the country to consistently vote against their own interests and fundamentally misunderstand core issues, and it is difficult to see what can be done in the next 10 years. The USA has had a hostile takeover by oligarchs. We are a country who serves only corporations and those who own them. Regular people have been almost completely removed from the process
  • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > We are a country who serves only corporations and those who own them. Regular people have been almost completely removed from the process Regular people removed themselves when we chose cultural flashpoints over material wealth.
    • virgildotcodes 4mo ago
      I mean, I also have times where I find myself blaming people for being so stupid. That said, you have to realize that this has been a very intentional propaganda effort by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades. Disorganized masses are largely powerless against that sort of effort and the outcomes are predictable.
      • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > this has been a very intentional propaganda effort by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades There is no evidence it was highly coordinated and many reasons to believe it’s emergent. Cable TV and then social media created systems competing for attention. The content originators became increasingly decentralized, increasing both diversity and ruthlessness. > Disorganized masses are largely powerless against that sort of effort Historically untrue. Starving, uneducated masses are easy to repress. Distracted masses only so long as they look away. And I think we’re seeing signs the American voter isn’t looking away.
• miltonlost 4mo ago
  Vote out the Republican fascists actually abdicating responsibility. Dems can't do anything when they don't control legislature. Don't end up bothsidesing the last sentene when the rest of your comment is about the iffectualness of Trump and Republicans
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• UncleMeat 4mo ago
  Trump blames Biden for January 6th. When, you know, Trump was president and Biden had not yet assumed office. Dude is simply constitutionally incapable of being a serious person.