Yeah, sorry, but my access to healthcare isn't something as heart felt as the weather report. I either live or die without it.

Right, but my comment isn't about current-day America, more a possible future where your access to care doesn't rest on an election, because not everything is hyper-politicized and some decisions get made for what is the best decision for most not what matches the ideology.

The hyper-polarization of the political landscape means you either get care or you don't. If one side will help you and one side wont, you're going to have a tough time holding on to your rights regardless of one election win.

A more unified America with a strong middle class wouldn't need to undermine one group to bolster another, and you would have more moderate political candidates rather than having to choose between two distant evils every election.

I get to not care because years of moderate politics in my country has seen a general trend toward humanitarianism regardless of which "side" wins. Recently the "right-wing" political group of my country protected same-sex marriage, even though it doesn't align with their ideology, because they're only moderate-right, and so their priorities still lie in pleasing the majority and not extreme political interests.

Obviously the US would have a long way to go before it could ever take any of this advice seriously, I was just trying to point out that the divided nature of your population drives the politics too.

Would you rather be forced to pay 130 bucks a month and still have to pay up to 800 bucks a year for initial costs of health care? Because that’s what it means. Or you get your own health insurance and have something to choose from

You're talking to someone who buys health insurance on the individual market. $130/mo premiums and a $800 deductible sounds amazing, considering that I pay many multiples of those rates. I'd gladly pay more than triple or quadruple that, as I'd still be saving money and would wind up with better benefits.

If I bought a family health plan, I'd be paying at least 15 times those rates on the individual market.

Meanwhile, other first world nations are able to insure all of their citizens with better health outcomes than outcomes in the US, and at half of the cost the US pays for its inferior levels of care[1].

[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...

I don't think anyone who's sick/dying gets turned away from the hospital.

Only for emergency care. If you need, say, cancer treatment, you are on your own.

>In many countries, politics is just politics, it happens in the background and is about as heart felt as the weather report.

Which countries are those? Because the US are insane, but politics is heartfelt in all countries I'm familiar with.

Which doesn't mean we have to reach such levels of infighting of course.

Canada feels closer to what your parent described than to what I see in the US, for one. There are of course those at the extremes who are very partisan. Although most of those identify more with US politics than Canadian it seems. But for the vast majority it's much less of an issue than it is in the US. For one thing, most people are not members of one of our federal political parties. Local politicians don't even align with federal parties, nor do provincial ones in all cases. Many people will shift their vote between ideologically similar parties, especially the Liberals and NDP.

Basically, for myself and most people I know, we vote for the party whose platform most closely matches our own priorities and beliefs, but it's not part of our identities in the same way. The parties themselves are also far less polarized than in the US. And because it's a multi-party system, you can have minority government that actually functions by garnering support of opposition parties. (We also effectively don't have multiple veto points though, so generally the governing party is able to govern; I think that also helps keep things from getting overheated.) Of course, the system isn't perfect. For instance by virtue of being both multi-party and first past the post, the winning party usually has the vote of a minority of the population, and still generally holds a majority of seats in parliament. But I've really come to appreciate it in comparison over the past few years.

As a Canadian, I would say the organization of our system of government and how voting in Canada works also plays a part in this. I can vote for my party of choice in a federal election and even if they do not become the governing party, I have the possibility of gaining more seats for party in parliament.

Compare this to the US where aside from being a two party system, the majority can vote for a candidate in a federal election and that party can lose and get nothing. (Of course, votes for members of congress don't function like this, but clearly not as much weight as placed on these.)

That's a good point. Less feeling that your vote was wasted. Of course the first past the post system does mean in many ridings it still effectively can be, but I still agree with your point. The lack of divided government also largely removes the blame game. Government governs, and the people either like it and keep voting for them, or vote for change (and get it). That's actually the one thing that gives me pause about a proprtional representation system (despite having voted for in in two BC referenda now). Would regular minority governments bring in more of that uncertainty? Maybe. But it would further improve the situation you described, which seems worth trying to me. (From my perspective it would be reasonable to agree to hold two elections under a PR system, then automatically have another referendum on whether to switch back.)

Australia is one, New Zealand another. I can't speak too much for other countries I guess so I probably shouldn't have written "many countries" as that's just an assumption on my part.

I'm from the US, moved to Australia and am now a dual citizen.

I think the reason for this here is because we have preferences in our voting, and we have compulsory voting. I can say, "First the communist, then the gun people, and if neither of those, finally go for a major party." if that suits me. That means our voices get heard, and the major parties listen.

In NSW government for example we had an unpopular law put in place that killed our nightlife, so an entire political party was created just to fight that one law. They got lots of first preference votes, and the votes for all who did that were routed back to candidates that actually won because of the preferences. Being able to allocate our votes back to major parties with our voices being heard is important. Liberal then realised this wasn't a hill they were particularly keen to die on, so they repealed the law. (https://www.timeout.com/sydney/nightlife/keep-sydney-opens-o...)

Also, compulsory voting means that everyone is going to vote. They have to by law. So there's no need to stoke the base to get turnout. Stoking the base makes you scary to everyone else and you get the smack down at the polls for it.

We currently have Greens members in our house of reps, and many many 3rd party candidates in the senate. It's nowhere near perfect, but having your voice heard clearly, having that reflected in law, and ensuring there's no apathetic middle that lets the extremes dictate policy cuts the crazy right down.

We must know different people in NZ and Australia, because I disagree with the inference their citizens treat politics like the weather report. One of the biggest differences at least in NZ is that there exists MMP for voting, which allows NZ to avoid brinkmanship in policy and winner-takes-all mindsets that lead to sharp divides.

It's not quite that it's unimportant to people I guess, it comes up in conversation during election periods of course. People just aren't particularly partisan or passionate in my experience. I think most people have other things they would rather talk about.

Similarly as the comment above mentions, Australia has preferential voting which helps in reducing the overall divisivness of the two party system most democracies end up with.

Issues like basic rights for transgender people, protection of voting rights for minorities, health care for unavoidable illnesses, and the major economic retooling needed to mitigate the effects of climate change are 'just politics' only for people privileged enough not to suffer because of them.

It doesn't matter how important the issues are if the political system is so paralyzed it can't get anything done.

The USA seems to have devolved into a system where elections are like votes on those huge omnibus bills that rightly get so much flak - if you want to see action on the environment, you have to also support increased welfare spending, increased gun control, gay rights and any number of issues that have nothing to do with environmental policy.

Similarly, if you want fiscal conservatism, you have to support people who want to ban abortion, oppose any climate action, use the state to prop up religion in society and so on and on.

This is nuts. The two-party system seems to make it impossible to tackle political issues on their merits, and I hope the people start to organize around specific issues instead of around the current parties. Pick an issue important to you, maybe starting on the less controversial end, and I think you will find that if you don't mix it up with every issue under the sky, people across the blue-red divide will support it. Organize those people outside the party system, and maybe you can get some change going.

There is generally not just one side that has a meaningful investment in the resolution of some political issue. Arguing that the other side does not have a legitimate concern regarding some political conflict is generally not going to be very persuasive, and it isn't going to make those people go away.

That being said, I think it is possible to care very deeply about certain issues, and act on those concerns, in a way that largely avoids the political sphere. Trying to fix the problems we are concerned about by means of influencing the power games of elected officials is often very crude and ineffective. Sometimes influencing politics is necessary, but if we let ourselves believe that the only way to effect change is "shake the vending machine" of governmental power we will generally end up frustrated.

Which minorities don’t have voting rights? Are you sure you’re in the correct century?

You don't have to say some community cannot vote, you can suppress their political rights by other subtle actions like closing voting centers in areas they predominantly live, gerrymandering district boundaries such that they are insufficiently represented in state assemblies, etc.

Early in the last century, poll taxes were popular, as well as literacy tests. There are a lot of methods to make it harder for people you don’t like to vote.

- Felons, in varying degrees in different states.

- Residents of DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam

- People who have had their names removed from voter roles with no warning, as in Georgia, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, in the last few years.

- People who can't get US citizenship despite having lived here most or all of their lives.

- Vulnerable individuals who couldn't get an absentee ballot in Texas despite the pandemic

And so on. They're smaller, more specific minorities now. But there's a lot of them

Nothing here supports the argument that minorities don’t have voting rights, and I think the fact that you’re trying to stretch this to include non-citizens says a lot about how honest the original comment was.

I understand how you could assume that these issues aren't about minorities, but they really all are. Each of these issues barely touches white people while affecting minorities deeply.

- Felony convictions: Black and latino men are convicted of felonies at much higher rates than any other population. In 2016, 7.44% of black people had their voting rights stripped for felony convictions.[1] Over 1% of all black people in the United States are currently incarcerated, compared with about .2% for white people.[2]

- DC in majority minority, with 46% black residents.[3] Puerto Rico in 98.9% hispanic.[4]

- Citizenship: Over 800,000 people have enrolled in DACA, mostly of Latin American and East Asian origin. [5] They are ineligible for citizenship. Among those eligible to apply for Citizenship, many are from Canada or Europe.[6] Our immigration laws are setup to favor high school immigrants, who are far more likely to be white than the immigrant population as a whole. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it means our voting population is far more white than our resident population.

- Disenfranchisement: This is far more piecemeal, but southern states routinely take actions that just so happen to make it more difficult for minorities to vote rather than white people. I recommend listening to [7] if you're interested, which covers a specific recent circumstance in Florida, with a few examples from other states. It's no coincidence when eliminated polling places and dropboxes just so happen to always be in Black neighborhoods.

Remember, the voting rights marches of the 1960s weren't about giving black people the right to vote, that happened in 1870. They were about how certain states had made it so difficult for black people to vote that it was essentially impossible. Sure, many black people vote in these states today, but that doesn't mean that they have an equal ability to vote. The measures aren't as strong as they once were, but they still exist.

[1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08... [2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p19.pdf [3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/DC [4] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/PR [5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/25/key-facts-a... [6] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/lpr_pop... [7] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/927846676/who-gets-to-vote-in...

Minorities are disproportionately affected by long waiting times. Minorities have to wait twice as long to vote on average. Examples abound of people having to wait 5+ hours just to vote in heavily Democratic, minority locations. Its an easy problem to solve - add more/better locations, more voting machines, more poll workers - but seems to be consistently ignored or even exacerbated.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smartphone-data-s...

Same for issues like diversity hiring and SJWs irritating well-running open source projects. I say this as a left leaning person. Politics and religion tend to divide people thus they have to be kept away, it won't harm anyone but self important non-technical idiots who think renaming master to main will change the life of oppressed people.

I don't dispute that, but also realise my comment is about the general population so inherently has to generalize.

I guess my reply would also be that in a well functioning democratic government people get to trust that those issues will get addressed in time, though that is also not universally true.

Well, when you have one side saying "count the votes" and another side saying "stop the count", it's unlikely we're in a well-functioning democracy. These are the exact issues at stake in elections: whether religious protections extend to denying abortion care, whether one polling place per county overwhelmingly favors rural whites, whether racial sensitivity training is itself racist and should therefore be banned from government contracting. These are from the last month. So it's fair to assume, with one side for and one side against, that while these issues might resolve themselves they might not to your satisfaction.

You also have the same side saying both "count the votes" and "stop the count."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrj3n0j2Q2w

The history of the US shows that 'in time' means hundreds of years to get nominal equality, a hundred more years for that equality to be even moderately enforced, and continued harassment, mistreatment, and open murder by the state fifty years after that.