And this is not going to fuel more conspiracy theories, at all \o/
And to downplay the issues as 'a president's style' is incredibly disingenuous.
> > These are simply more opinions [...]
> > > No, not opinions. Demonstrable facts.
you're going to have to explain this one to me
Voting on that basis has, and will continue to have real damage for citizens of the country, and thus the country as an entity.
Our "current understanding" seems to be shifting a lot.
However, this mirrors what the QAnons and the hardline MAGAs say about Clinton and Biden. Or more or less what Bush used to tell about Saddam. It might be worth noticing.
Or we only have to outrun the slower party in order to successfully outrun the grizzly bear of being less best for the country. No other accountability applies for very long if your faction can still pull back ahead as the better one for some projective new future of America, but both factions by their own definition will always outrun the other in that shadow race.
Have you lived outside the US? Socialites in expensive lavish cities are the minority in the world by far. The majority is what you just described, poverty, and lack of education to start.
To them you are like Maria Antoinette telling them just eat cake from your cushy little San Fran bubble.
Yes, I've lived outside the US - I'm not even from the US. I've lived in 5 different countries.
I don't really care how it seems. Ignorance, and offense at having that ignorance called out, is not a sufficient reason to burn a country to the ground and violate the rights of citizens.
If it were up to that poor uneducated half of the US, most of them would push for the US to be closer to Gilead.
Walk a mile in their shoes before you Insult and attack their way of life and thinking. that is the definition of ignorance in of itself
> Walk a mile in their shoes before you Insult and attack their way of life and thinking
You're making a ton of assumptions here to make a point that has no bearing on mine.
You seem to be remarkably out of touch.
It's a flawed system anyway. Ridiculous that everyone should have a say.
(Since it's the second quote of his I've used in this thread, I'd like to actively clarify that despite being British I am a long way from being a fan of Churchill, but he does have some good quotes attributed to him!)
So when you say "It's a flawed system anyway. Ridiculous that everyone should have a say." - do you have a better system in mind, that works better than existing forms of democracy?
First I should point out how utterly ridiculous it is that with all the data we have access too, all our analytical capability and ability to model and simulation, there are not many people working on alternate systems, and anything people come up with is not taken seriously. People would rather poke holes in anything new, even if it has less problems than our current system.
I do have a rough idea for a system, it's based on a lot of research, but only exists as a lot of rough notes - I haven't taken the time yet to properly organize and write everything out, it's a big project.
Basically though, it tries to solve some of the problems of representative democracy like we have in the US. Some example differences (which I'm not sure if I can devote time to defending in this thread, I just list them as examples) by:
- Removing elections for many positions, having them appointed or offered to people from a qualified pool - possibly even assigning them the duty of serving in such a position, not unlike jury duty.
- Giving people in positions of power more power to act unilaterally, while still having their actions subject to review, a cross between SCOTUS and a jury of qualified individuals randomly selected.
- Ensuring leaders must act based on current science and knowledge, not personal feeling or intuition - these are not things the general population should be voting on, even indirectly.
- Many more referendums for big issues, rather than just having elected representatives make the decision, or worse, fail to make the decision.
Basically, many more elements of a meritocracy, much less influence and say from the population, while still ensuring they have a voice. It would be a much less democratic representative democracy in the best way possible, although I suppose it could still fall under that same umbrella.
- must act based on current science and knowledge (religious oppression)
- positions of power more power to act unilaterally (monarchy)
- appointed or offered to people from a qualified pool (nobility)
But, yes, religious oppression to a point is a good thing. At a minimum kids should not be allowed to be indoctrinated.
More power to act unilaterally does not equal complete power to act unilaterally i.e. a monarchy.
A qualified pool would be based on education, not heredity.
And the US is both a representative democracy (no need for scarequotes) and a representative republic.
I used 'representative democracy' (quotes actually make sense here) because the context was about how well democracy as a form of government works.
This[0] helpful wiki page may be of interest to you.
The US is a republic. Calling it a democracy is done by people who want a different form of government where the majority rules and can remove the rights of the minority.
Got it.
Its use as a source is specifically banned in every academic institution I've attended over my entire adult life.
Yes, it's banned in universities, but that's largely as a holdover from when anyone could edit it. Wikipedia is repeatedly tested to be more accurate than Britannica, which has never been banned.
It doesn't matter anyway, as Encyclopedia articles are summaries, and the actual sources can be referenced.
In this case, the article is correct, explains why it is correct, and certainly trumps your baseless assertion.
Let's imagine a hypothetical political party and its presidential nominee that had an official policy of "if we get elected, we will nuke every country in the world except our own, and if we don't get destroyed in return we'll then move on to use our military to murder every white person in America" (hopefully that's extreme enough and far enough from actual policies for anyone to read it as a dig against a particular party!), and imagine 51% of the country supported this party and these policies. How many people would go "well fair enough, democracy!"?
It's a bit like that old line attributed to Churchill:
> Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?"
> Socialite: "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course... "
> Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for five pounds?"
> Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!"
> Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price"
It's easy (for some people, though I don't condone this view) to look down on prostitutes as being immoral and disgusting if nobody would offer you more than £5, but how many people with that view would be willing to bend their ethics if they genuinely had an offer of tens of millions in return for having sex one time?
Likewise, it's easy to say we should respect democracy when both sides genuinely want what's best for as many people as possible but disagree on how to achieve that, but what about if democratic voting leads to having a leader like Stalin, or Idi Amin, or Putin?
Put another way: if you sincerely believe either that all Democrats are evil and trying to wipe out white people and destroy Christianity, or you believe that Republicans are all literally the same as Hitler and will do as much harm, in either case (despite neither view being accurate) if it's a genuine belief then isn't the ethical reaction to oppose them even if undemocratic? (As a non-American I can't claim to be an expert on what the worst, most-exaggerated claims made against each of Biden and Trump are, so insert whatever they are to replace the examples above.)
One problem is when you get leaders who genuinely will do evil things and yet manage to be popular enough to win elections; the second problem is when you have enough people believing conspiracy theories and bad faith claims about a party that make them look evil. Neither is an easy problem to solve.
If the extremist party remains competitive, doesn't the other party increasingly get drawn away from the public interest and towards entertaining (or at least resisting) extremist policies?
If the extremist party doesn't remain competitive, doesn't the other party win without needing to appeal to voters, leading it into corruption (or at least complacency)?
It seems to me that there are only three ways (violent or otherwise) to restore democracy in a two-party system after one of the two parties turns to extremism:
1) replace the extremist party, restoring two-party democracy
2) rescue the extreme party from extremism, restoring two-party democracy
3) reform the voting system to facilitate multi-party democracy
There's an obstacle to opposing extremism in the United States by democratic means; electoral procedures (such as the Electoral College) too often give victory to a party (extremist or otherwise) without the most votes, so persuading a majority of voters isn't enough.
Ah yes, as a student of 1940s Jewish culture, I am quite fond of the "it didn't happen, but they deserved it" angle myself.
If you're nominally in power, but your opponent can rig an election under your nose while you're helpless to do anything about it, you were never actually in power. It opened a lot of eyes to the reality of modern Western democracies, and freed us to pursue something better. I'm grateful for it.
Evidence: Trust me, bro.
It was amazing when states like PA were counting and clearly said results will change by the morning, and when that happened and people woke up to a different result they started crying conspiracy.
The election definitely wasn't rigged, but if it had been necessary to do so I would have supported it. Can't ever repeat the disaster we had from 2016 - 2022 again.