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The USA is governed by evil people, and the people of the nation are too stupid and expecting someone else to stop them. Plain as day light.
by bsenftner 2mo ago
The USA is governed by evil people, and the people of the nation are too stupid and expecting someone else to stop them. Plain as day light.
- jfengel 2mo agoNo, we're not expecting someone else to stop it. We voted for this. The evil is not imposed on us. It is us. Not everyone, but a majority. The minority is looking for ways to stop it, but it requires getting literally everyone else to work together. Which means any disagreement among them results in a loss, and more of the same evil.
- zeezer0 2mo agoIt's not a majority at all. it's a manipulating minority.
- doublerabbit 2mo agoFraudulent minority too. Let's not forget Elon Musk was paying folk to vote for.
- burnto 2mo agoAnd a population that seems content being manipulated.
- jfengel 2mo agoIt was a majority of voters. If you include all of the non-voters as tacitly consenting to it, then it's an overwhelming majority. That's not entirely accurate; quite a few non-voters were prevented from voting in one way or another. But most non-voters chose not to vote. Quite a few were explicit about having some disagreement with the primary opponent and concluded that the two sides are equivalent.
- amanaplanacanal 2mo agoIt wasn't even a majority of voters, it was a plurality. It was 49.8%.
- doubtitt 2mo ago[flagged]
- delecti 2mo agoI don't think "manipulating" is valid. A bit over a third voted one way, a bit under a third voted another, and a third didn't vote. The third that didn't vote was saying "sure, whatever".
- gs17 2mo agoI'm not sure it's fair to say it's "sure, whatever" on a national scale. The electoral college means you're most likely saying "sure, whatever" to the majority in your state. My vote in TN was the same outcome as if I sat home, and even if a third didn't show up there either, I imagine many knew Trump would win the state regardless and wanted that outcome.
- tstrimple 2mo agoSure buddy. None of those changes to voting are "manipulating". Counties that used to need federal preclearance closing 1,688 polling places once the Supreme Court said they didn't have to ask permission anymore is "just good fiscal sense". North Carolina's legislature pulling data on which voting methods black people disproportionately used, then writing a bill restricting exactly those methods, is "election integrity". The Fourth Circuit threw the whole law out and said it targeted "African Americans with almost surgical precision". But sure. To you it's not manipulation. Alabama passing voter ID and then closing 31 DMV offices, including every single one in counties over 75% nonwhite, is "saving taxpayer money". The federal DOT found it violated Title VI and made them reopen. Budget cuts, though. Ohio's redistricting commission being told seven times by its own Supreme Court that the maps were unconstitutional, then running out the clock and holding the 2022 election on them anyway, is "federalism". And then there's the fake electors, which people gloss over because they don't know how the process works. When you vote for president you're not voting for the president. You're voting for a slate of electors. Your state certifies which slate won, sends that certificate to Congress, and on January 6 the Vice President opens the certificates and they get counted. That's the whole election. It's paperwork. So in 2020, in seven states Biden won, Republicans got a second set of people together, had them sign certificates declaring themselves the real electors and Trump the winner, and sent those to Congress and the National Archives. 84 people signed. Ron Johnson's office tried to hand-deliver the Michigan and Wisconsin ones to Pence on the floor on January 6. The plan, written down in a memo a month beforehand, was for Pence to count those and reject the real ones. That's "pragmatism". Louisiana's governor suspending a congressional primary that was already underway so the legislature could delete a majority black district is just... I don't know. I'm out of ridiculous fucking excuses anymore. And the third that didn't vote "said sure, whatever"? Some of them did. Some of them got purged off the rolls, or showed up to a precinct that isn't there anymore, or needed an ID from a DMV their county no longer has. Those are not the same group of people. Keeping the second group home is the point of everything above. Republicans have spent a decade making it harder for specific people to vote, and then pointing at the resulting turnout as proof nobody cares. Well it worked on you at least.
- throwaway613746 2mo ago[dead]
- amazingamazing 2mo agoEither way the metric has been the same
- RobotToaster 2mo agoLess than half of people who voted voted for Trump, and turnout was 64%. Being allowed to chose between two evils every few years isn't democracy.
- krapp 2mo agoThat's been the system for over 200 years and Americans have never changed it, even though it only exists as it does to keep slaveowning states in the union and prevent a civil war (which it failed to do.) If it isn't democracy now, it's never been democracy.
- jfengel 2mo agoDemocracy is only ever choosing between two evils. You will never agree entirely with either candidate. In order to reach a majority, you will have to reach some kind of compromise with people with goals you hate. As has been famously stated, democracy is the worst system, except for all of the others. I think people often underestimate just how bad it is.
- lesuorac 2mo agoYou should never need to pick between just two candidates though. The need for any sort of alternative system to first-past-the-post should've been plainly obvious in the '00 election. The problem is the people that could change that were elected under a first-past-the-post system and don't want to lose their current advantage.
- gs17 2mo agoSadly, the biggest group pushing for an alternative is FairVote, who exclusively push RCV/IRV, which doesn't fix most of the issues of FPTP and introduces new ones. I'm bombarded by their ads, where they outright lie about its properties ("RCV ends the spoiler effect", "RCV means no more voting for the lesser evil").
- gusgus01 2mo ago
- janalsncm 2mo agoRoughly 1/3 voted for the winner, 1/3 for the loser, and the rest didn’t vote. A majority did not choose this.
- CivBase 2mo agoI even wonder how much of the 1/3 who voted for him now regret it.
- jfengel 2mo agoNot many. And even fewer would make a different choice, given the opportunity. Change will rely entirely on people who sat out 2024. The question is how much regret they feel. Cynically, I assume most people would rather alter their world-views to justify their choice, than admit that they had made a mistake.
- snarf21 2mo agoNot voting against evil is indeed voting for evil and that is what the net majority did. The minority doesn't have a charismatic leader to rally around so we don't have a "movement" that can fight back against the corruption at scale. Democrats need to stop taking the high road and start thinking "WWRD?" and out do them.
- nozzlegear 2mo agoWhat Would Reagan Do?
- snarf21 2mo agoI meant Republicans more broadly. Whatever bad things Reagan did, it is a shadow on current Republican tactics.
- nozzlegear 2mo agoAh gotcha, now that I reread your comment it's obvious what you meant. My bad!
- bsenftner 2mo ago...and this inability to get people to work together is architected, designed, and reinforced constantly. Fact: no where in any general education within the United States are people taught how to discuss issues with disagreement. This is strategic: the lack of this education creates easily emotionally swayed non-intellects that fall for cons over and over. The US is a conman paradise.
- jfengel 2mo agoDo any other countries teach it? I'd be curious to know how such a curriculum works. I have dark suspicions that it would be difficult to implement in the US, because of existing divisiveness. One side or the other would likely see such a course as biased against them, and step in to prevent it (or bias it for them). Even if it studiously avoids discussing politics, it will be easy to step into something easily analogized to politics.
- bsenftner 2mo agoIt used to be taught, every high school and many early junior high and elementary schools had debate clubs, and the ability to hold complex and nuanced debate used to be intellectual entertainment for many. however, then the 60's youth rebellion saw the "debate stars" all on the youth side and arguing against the hypocrisy of the status quo. Soon, debate clubs were disbanded, and the formal rules of debate changed to allow for "cheap tactics" that destroyed the intellectual purity and allowed literal stunts, information overflow and diversion tactics to be allowed. That set the stage for debate and a pop culture intellectualism to die a quick death. Within a decade, the ability to discuss controversial topics without emotional outrage was lost. Now we are bereft.
- cyanregiment 2mo ago[dead]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- doubtitt 2mo ago[flagged]
- ourmandave 2mo ago149 days until Jan 3, when new representatives are seated.
- gilrain 2mo agoWhat is your contingency plan for if the groundwork that has been laid to falsify election results works? Wait harder? The ethical US has rolled over already.
- wbobeirne 2mo agoFunny how at this point election fraud is a bipartisan issue, everyone seems to believe it's happening or will happen!
- hilariously 2mo agoTime passes. Trump is literally doing his utmost to disenfranchise voters, called electors to personally harass them, and has spent years "investigating the fraud" to setup groundwork for violating people's voting rights. One side says bullshit, the other side says "look at all of the fucking evidence of your eyes"
- kqp 2mo agoNot sure what you intend by this, but yes, that’s their goal. The same people put on a “Trump was robbed” act for the Trump voters and a “Trump is robbing you” act for the Democrats, and with both they accomplish their true goal: get Americans to stop believing in democracy.
- K0nserv 2mo agoIt's because everything Republicans say is projection. They want to cheat, so accuse the Democrats of doing it first. In actuality it's the current admin that's laying gound-work for election fraud in November.
- zer00eyz 2mo ago> falsify election results This is something that is extremely hard to accomplish in the US. It would be akin to all of Europe voting on the same day and trying to falsify an election in each country. The logistics of this means that you need a lot of participants, and someone is going to blow it (and the whole thing unravels). That is not the same as interfering: Jackboots at the polls, screwing with the mail, ID requirements. These two things are NOT the same.
- gilrain 2mo agoIt really is. “This is bad. When will someone stop us?”
- marcyb5st 2mo agoHonestly, despite having a wife from the US (not an US citizen anymore), I agree with you. It is really weird to me that such a thing as lobbying can be legal. Or the fact that you can donate to an election campaign so that they have more money to influence people. And it is even more surprising that the vast majority of US people don't even question these things. I have the theory that American exceptionalism hinders their critical thinking when it comes to these kind of subjects. Ie "If we decided to do it like this, it means is the best way possible".
- amanaplanacanal 2mo agoA lot of people question them. But the supreme Court has decided that giving money is equivalent to free speech, and can't be touched. I don't know how we will ever get out of that problem.
- m000 2mo agoIf you watch the news coverage for any kind of elections in the US, you would assume they are not determined by votes, but instead they are fundraising competitions: The one that raises the most money gets elected. I can't recall any situation where the news report that someone is bound to win because people view their platform as superior, and not because they raised the most money. I believe that such cases do exist (Mamdani would be one), but it seems that the traditional media intentionally insist on only reporting the money raised (i.e. promote the establishment-sponsored candidate) to make people give up on their vote.
- ghosty141 2mo agoNot evil, just dumb.
- dudefeliciano 2mo agoyou are being too charitable, they are both.
- bsenftner 2mo agoDumb is evil. Dumb chooses shortcuts every time, even if it harms others, dumb is selfish evil.
- wookmaster 2mo agoSorry but greed is evil, this is driven by greed.
- glaslong 2mo agoUsing the HN homework from earlier about multi-objective optimization... perhaps a Pareto optimal trade space of evil and dumb, to the maximum extent the two can coexist
- ghosty141 2mo agoHehe, I think evil often stems from dumb in the sense that rarely is evil the choice that leads to good long term outcomes. For example the famous prisoners dilemma where the best strategy is tit for tat with occasional forgiveness. ofc smart/evil/dumb are all simplifying things way too much since its not like humans have video game like attribute sliders. Im very aware of that, this is not meant to be taken that seriously.
- glaslong 2mo agoYeah, it's unfortunately fun to theorycraft the data and over-intellectualize a bit. Sorta takes the sting out of the reality ya kno?
- 2mo ago
- squidbeak 2mo agoIn the USA's defence, the system that put these gangsters in charge also gives it a shot at changing course in a couple of years.
- baggachipz 2mo ago...unless the gangsters change the rules. Which they have and will.
- CivBase 2mo agoTrump 1 was so bad, people showed up in droves to vote for anything else. That's how we ended up with a dimensia president. Biden was so bad, people showed up in droves to vote for anything else. That's how we ended up in a war with Iran. Trump 2 is so bad, people will show up in droves to vote for anything else. The downward spiral continues.
- DangitBobby 2mo agoYeah Biden was soooo bad... Give me a fucking break. Americans are just as dumb as everyone says we are, that's how we got Trump 2.
- CivBase 2mo agoSentiments like this are why things will not improve. Neither side needs to practice any introspection because they're the good side and when the bad side wins it's just unavoidable because voters are dumb. Keep doubling down. Surely that will make things better.
- DangitBobby 2mo agoPretending we have issues we don't have also sure to make things better, right? No one who sincerely frames Biden as a problem worth mentioning in a discussion of leadership decline is worth listening to, especially given that he was sandwiched between Trump 1 and 2. A lifetime of patience has been exhausted in one decade.
- wookmaster 2mo agoI'm baffled why Germany would allow this, you'd think they and the rest of Europe would understand the importance of energy independence at this point.
- Lio 2mo agoThis is/was a project in the USA. Europe is baffled by this US administration but has no say if the US does something so short-sighted. It's not like the Trump administration is stopping off shore wind projects here... yet.
- pjc50 2mo agoGermany has its own problems of institutional capture by fossil fuels and reluctance to change. Even culture war and a local Nazi problem. Some of this has the same roots in social media and dodgy money (esp. wirecard), but not all of it.