- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
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Shit, y’all could’ve saved a ton of time and effort if you’d have just asked me; I’ve been saying this for years. And it’s only worse when you’re the one speck of blue in a red sea.
It’s one of those things that are obvious to reasonable people but it’s nice to have proof for when you run into unreasonable people who deny it.
i love getting scolded about voting when even if I personally managed to pull off a miracle and convert one thousand people to vote for biden, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
jUsT VoTE!!1!!11
As if voting for president makes any difference, when it’s the electoral college who makes the final decision. And they’ve proven in the past that they’ll do what they want.
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The sudden spike coincides with the Citizens United and SpeechNow SCOTUS decisions.
It’s been trending for some time. Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” describes a host of national policies that were intensely disliked when they began and only became normalized after years of mass media manipulation.
The Drug Wars, opposition to the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements, most of our wars after WW2, our large scale claw backs of social spending and ballooning security state budgets, our habit of subsidizing sports stadiums and toxic waste sites, etc - all need regular continued media investment for fear of a popular turn.
SCOTUS widened the spigots for political spending in pursuit of these goals. But it’s not like the WSJ or AM Radio or the cable news companies weren’t already flush with propaganda before the CU decision. It’s not like CU was necessary for the volume of social media manipulation, either.
No the decisions weren’t necessary for all that, but for the one simple graph tracking campaign costs it was particularly salient.
I remember watching this nearly 6 years after release and how relevant it still was. It still is relevant. End Citizens United if you want to even begin to take our country back.
I understand that this is a doomer sub but man. When you manage to get away from all this social media bullshit for a while then try to poke your head in you realize how relentlessly negative it is at all times, because nobody wants to actually do anything about anything, including go the fuck outside and forget about it for a bit, and everyone with any ambitions of sanity leaves.
Could we start discussing credible strategies to reverse this situation, or at least improve that number somehow? Absolutely the fuck not, never, ever ever. The shit is very literally crazy, I don’t know what I was trying to expect.
But this post is so much like the other posts on the rest of the site it took me a minute to notice where I was. Might as well stop acting like this is just one community, it’s everything.
Could we start discussing credible strategies to reverse this situation, or at least improve that number somehow?
I say this constantly, and everyone nods along happily when I say it, but almost nobody does it. What is it? It’s getting involved in your local politics.
The federal government, the US congress and senate and all the executive branch… they’re all supported and propped up by powerful institutions within the states that got powerful because nobody paid it any attention and still don’t. People get elected to represent us who run without opposition and then we wonder why nothing seems to change.
If you get involved with knowing who in your neighborhood, your school district, your city, your county and your state represent you, and then challenging that representation in any way you can, from actually running all the way to just getting on those horrible neighborhood forums and holding yard-sales to get to know your neighbors.
GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS. Jesus, this country is terrible about this one huge thing that could change everything, which is reforming communities. We scream and cry how bad the world is and make ZERO effort to make it better by forming support systems within neighborhoods. I mean fuck, most suburban neighborhoods have nothing else to do, might as well have some bake sales and yard sales and jogging groups and other things to help get to know each other, right? Or has all our cynicism completely overshadowed any possible chance of ever forming friendly communities in the US?
GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS.
I move every year because my rent keeps going up and I can’t afford to stay. In some places ive been they offer a discount the first year then it goes up to the “normal rate”.
Sorry to my MAGA neighbor that broke my headlight, I can’t afford to stay and educate you.
If sad facts just bring you down instead of making you act to fix them, then you are part of the problem.
Ok, so now what? You’re going to shit on people for being depressed about the state of the world and feeling powerless because of how powerless they are?
If you want people to engage in solutions I’d recommend not belittling them for succumbing to apathy in the face of overwhelming opposition.
Get involved with Represent.Us, the site that was linked to.
They have a pretty good strategy, and they have been making progress.
Governance is discouraging because it’s complex. And when things are complex, it’s difficult to see progress and it’s easy to predict that there will be problems.
It’s also difficult (and unrewarding) to have serious conversations about this stuff on social media.
The posts get too long, with no satisfying simplistic conclusion, and even if you make an incredible magnum opus of a post that acknowledges enough complexity to be realistic while also being short and snappy enough to catch people’s attention… it drops off of the trending posts algorithm after a day.
As long as there is money to be made in politics the common man will be trodden upon. Good luck getting the people making all the money to change the laws.
I mean that is basically how social media and news etc. work. Negative emotions are the strongest, and possibly produce the most reactions. And that’s what all of this lives from. Probably one of the reasons why the human world is slowly gonig to shit (well there I did feed it^^). I think though it’s really difficult to combat this shitty political situation we’re in basically worldwide, it’s almost self-driving into a well not so human-friendly (nor life at all) world.
But I obviously agree. Just actually do stuff that doesn’t feed this downward spiral. I.e. do stuff with friends, pursue hobbys, do sports etc. Be a good example for others (e. g. show that a more climate friendly life doesn’t need to degrade happiness, or could even be helpful). That IME leads to much more happiness, healthier life (physically and psychological), less misanthropism etc.
Expand the house. Drop the ratio to something much closer to the original one, (1 representative for 30,000 people). It’s theorized that a ratio around 1:100,000 is low enough to provide more accountability. It would mean a house around 3600 representatives but they’d be very responsible to their local communities. And we could institute a system where only senior members are in D.C. with others joining them only for very sensitive meetings that couldn’t be held using the secure intranet the military has.
This expansion would obliterate party control and lobbying. There’s just too many representatives at that point and too many seats to fund. The price tag of campaigning would drop precipitously, making elections intensely local again.
Duh? We know already know this. Their main concern is staying in office for as long as possible and see how badly they can fuck up the country.
Duh? We know already know this. Their main concern is staying in office for as long as possible and see how
badly they can fuck up the country.much they can grow their own bank accounts.The destruction of the country is just a byproduct of their greed. :(
MJ’s “They Don’t Care About Us”, still relevant to the times.
Same with Stevie Wonder’s “You Haven’t Done Nothin’”
We are amazed but not amused
By all the things you say that you’ll do
Though much concerned but not involved
With decisions that are made by you
George Bush doesn’t care about Black People
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You don’t vote for people who don’t represent you.
Our first past the post voting system is mathematically flawed to always result in a two party system through strategic voting.
People are not free to vote for who best represents them because they would let someone who represents them even less win the election.
While this spoiler effect is inherent in First Past The Post voting, there are other voting systems where there is no spoiler effect.
So here we are, chained in the trunk of the car these two legacy political parties drove off a cliff into a river.
And the Water rises… take a deep breath.
For that first part to work we must vote for better candidates at the lower level and stop voting for the media selected consensus candidate in primaries.
Otherwise we’re just disengaging from the system and letting two people pass the presidency back and forth.
Take a moment to stop focusing on the day-to-day so we can go out and water our trees.
2nd amendment. 😎
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Perhaps the automated drone army is nearing completion.
Then finally us useless eaters can finally be dealt with.
Each congressperson represents too many people.
We need to add seats to the House of Representatives.
Quintuple the number of seats in each district, use Sequential Proportional Approval Voting to elect the five members of each district.
Let’s add some seats to the Supreme Court while we’re at it.
We can’t do that or Republicans will never have control of government.
I mean that’s a good thing, and we’ll finally have some semblance of representation, but it’s exactly why we can’t do it. :(
Abolish the electoral college
And FPTP
The fact that I’m 100% confident this will never happen, and absolutely needs to, convinced me to leave the states.
It’s been gaining in popularity among Democrats, but I can’t fault you for not holding your breath.
Still voting in the states, mind you. Dual citizen 🥳
Idk why you’re being downvoted for this. You’re required to file with the IRS if you live and work abroad, you absolutely should be voting.
We are cosmic beings of chaos at the infinite center of creation. Anyone who thinks we should care about a few grumpy clicks ought to be sold to a cat food company.
And the Senate, while you’re at it.
This study is bunk.
Researchers critiquing the paper found that middle-income Americans and rich Americans actually agree on an overwhelming majority of topics. Out of the 1,779 bills in the Gilens/Page data set, majorities of the rich and middle class agree on 1,594; there are 616 bills both groups oppose and 978 bills both groups favor. That means the groups agree on 89.6 percent of bills.
That leaves only 185 bills on which the rich and the middle class disagree, and even there the disagreements are small. On average, the groups’ opinion gaps on the 185 bills is 10.9 percentage points; so, say, 45 percent of the middle class might support a bill while 55.9 percent of the rich support it.
Bashir and Branham/Soroka/Wlezien find that on these 185 bills, the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time.
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study
Inb4 10 downvotes and 0 replies.
I think the fact that there are ~40% of bills that both rich and middle class Americans oppose is pretty solid proof that congress doesn’t give a shit about what American citizens want them to pass… or am i misinterpreting this?
Also, why the focus on rich and middle class? Is the vast majority of america not “lower”/working class? Edit: it seems like the entire conclusion of the study is based on the influence that money has in politics.
One thing that does have an influence? Money. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a “statistically non-significant impact,” economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence.
Of course if you focus only on people with money then you will come up with a conflicting result… so yeah. I also feel like I am missing something here.
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This study is bunk.
the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time.
Okay, but there’s a large third traunch of voters you’re neglecting
The poors aren’t people silly!
They were also neglected by the people who made the study the link in the post is talking about, so the study is still bunk and we should perhaps do another one
What does bunk mean here?
And a lot of this comes from not fucking voting. I seriously wonder how things would be if voting was mandatory and everyone was given appropriate time off to do it.
In Germany we only vote on Sundays and it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience. We’re still lucky when more than two thirds vote. People are in general are lazy and stupid.
“Super einfach, kaum eine Unannehmlichkeit!”
Ryan, that you?
Unfortunately, I think it’s exactly the opposite. They don’t have to do anything that people want to vote for them anyway.
Blue Fash on Lemmy:
People on this website are understandably losing their minds because we’ve let this type of politics fester so much that the stakes are genuinely high this election cycle. But the stakes are only so high because we keep attempting the same thing over and over again. At this point, I’m not even advocating for a third party. I just want Democrats to do better instead of being less crappy than the other guys.
as long as they vote along party lines more than according to what the politicians do, number of votes does not improve this.
Sorry but mandatory vote solves nothing. You’ll still have a lot of people alienate about politics and now they had to vote and they’ll make their choices like a popularity contest.
mandatory vote solves nothing
It theoretically solves structural disenfranchisement, as a mandate to vote is implicitly a mandate to allow people to vote.
In practice, though? States can still layer on all sorts of Jim Crow shit to screen out the lower classes again.
You can vote for whichever politician you like, so long as it’s AIPAC approved.
That would be Australia. We are less extreme than the US but still succumb to fear tactics. We did manage to get marriage equality despite a conservative government so there’s that.
Make voting the last part of doing your taxes. You get $5 for voting. The person is already verified when submitting, piggyback on that process.
Isn’t that how it works in Australia?
Yeah, it’s not like the public pays particularly well unlike bribery, I mean lobbying groups.
I don’t think people realize how much graft is built into the system.
- Bribery is near impossible to prove. (Thanks SCOTUS)
- You can effectively keep left over campaign funds.
- Insider trading does not apply to you.
- Your paycheck is expected to cover 2 offices, staff at each, 2 homes, frequent travel between them, and your political advisors.
- Fundraising is organized by the party, stay on their good side and you get help and resources to raise money. Introduced to the right people, etc. Get on the wrong side and get cut off.
It’s no wonder our elected representatives treat small donations like mana from heaven, we’re effectively paying them. And they treat the capitol building like a stock trading room because that’s their real retirement fund, their key to independence from the party.
In the last 5 years alone, the 200 most politically active companies in the U.S. spent $5.8 billion influencing our government with lobbying and campaign contributions. Those same companies got $4.4 trillion in taxpayer support — earning a return of 750 times their investment.
An no one bats an eye… you should be rioting in the streets
If we replaced first past the post voting with a more representative electoral system, we could inject competition into the electoral process.
Then maybe they would have to care.
Representatives chosen by sortition like jury duty would be more representative compared to what we currently have, and that’s such a wild thought.
