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On January 02 2021 05:30 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2021 19:47 iamthedave wrote:On January 01 2021 19:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 01 2021 16:15 StarStruck wrote:
The problem is it has led to direct harm. Democracy in the U.S. is dead. The System has always been broken and needs a true reform. In order for that to happen you need to tear down the foundation and build from scratch.
It's like having sheep lead the sheep. The way to beat shit like this is for every lie told lawsuits should be filed. This is how you beat Trump at his own game. 1,000s and 1,000s of lawsuits to rip him apart.
In either case Trump has already shown his next card. A new network dedicated to his base. Shit like this needs to be stopped to get rid of their propaganda.
Last time addressing misinformation was attempted, people started labelling and talking about fake news. it led to a president labelling everything he didn't like as fake news. Your problem here would be who's enforcing the rules? I think you're putting the chicken before the egg a bit; the reason the fake news stuff worked is because people's trust in the news is at a low, and their trust is at a low because nobody's doing anything to stop misinformation from dominating the public consciousness. Democracy has been dead in the States a long time ago. This isn't a question of rebuilding. They need to tear it down and build a new foundation. The US system is a complete nightmare.
Democracy is always imperfect, and, granted, american democracy sucks. It's not "dead" at all though. The fact that the people decided to remove Trump from office is the proof of it. If US democracy was dead, Trump (or someone else) would be in power for ever, à la Poutine.
The american system sucks, but it could be much worse. And the main problem of the country really is its people. It's hard to have a great and functioning democracy when half your country vote and support someone like Trump.
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Well less than half. The main problem with our system has been a persistent stranglehold on power by a minority that refuses to actually represent people or do their jobs.
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On January 02 2021 07:06 NewSunshine wrote:
Well less than half. The main problem with our system has been a persistent stranglehold on power by a minority that refuses to actually represent people or do their jobs. I think politicians that don't do their job keep getting re-elected is more a problem with the electorate then the system.
Kentucky Republicans could vote for a different Republican then McConnell for example. But they don't because they think he is doing a good job, apparently. Or he would not keep winning his primary.
And in a different system where seats are more proportionally distributed he would likely be high enough on the party list that he would still be given a seat.
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I'm also referring to things like absurd electoral districts resulting in situations where a huge number of people have votes that literally don't matter because they're gerrymandered into irrelevance. A single member of the Senate having the ability to completely shut down congress, by virtue of a single, slim majority they only still have because of said gerrymandering. And then those same people give Trump the green light to pack a conservative Supreme Court, that absolutely does not represent the whole country by any measure. A minority group has found out how to secure power so that nothing changes, so that they can continue to enjoy power indefinitely, and it's working only too well.
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On January 02 2021 08:13 NewSunshine wrote:
I'm also referring to things like absurd electoral districts resulting in situations where a huge number of people have votes that literally don't matter because they're gerrymandered into irrelevance. A single member of the Senate having the ability to completely shut down congress, by virtue of a single, slim majority they only still have because of said gerrymandering. And then those same people give Trump the green light to pack a conservative Supreme Court, that absolutely does not represent the whole country by any measure. A minority group has found out how to secure power so that nothing changes, so that they can continue to enjoy power indefinitely, and it's working only too well.
You can't gerrymander a Senate seat. Learn what you are talking about before yelling to the world your ignorance.
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On January 01 2021 19:47 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2021 19:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 01 2021 16:15 StarStruck wrote:
The problem is it has led to direct harm. Democracy in the U.S. is dead. The System has always been broken and needs a true reform. In order for that to happen you need to tear down the foundation and build from scratch.
It's like having sheep lead the sheep. The way to beat shit like this is for every lie told lawsuits should be filed. This is how you beat Trump at his own game. 1,000s and 1,000s of lawsuits to rip him apart.
In either case Trump has already shown his next card. A new network dedicated to his base. Shit like this needs to be stopped to get rid of their propaganda.
Last time addressing misinformation was attempted, people started labelling and talking about fake news. it led to a president labelling everything he didn't like as fake news. Your problem here would be who's enforcing the rules? I think you're putting the chicken before the egg a bit; the reason the fake news stuff worked is because people's trust in the news is at a low, and their trust is at a low because nobody's doing anything to stop misinformation from dominating the public consciousness.
Yeah. no. People don't trust the "news" because the "news" is shit. You can't seriously look at ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc. and feel like these are good "news" sources. Fake news stuff works because the "news" are nothing more than political arms of their respective parties (So Republicans who all ready don't like CNN, ABC, MSNBC, etc. is easy to believe they're "fake"...not like they don't lie all the time anyways...). They cover/omit what they feel makes their side look good or the other side look bad, tilt degree of coverage, manipulate, etc.
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On January 02 2021 15:47 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2021 19:47 iamthedave wrote:On January 01 2021 19:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 01 2021 16:15 StarStruck wrote:
The problem is it has led to direct harm. Democracy in the U.S. is dead. The System has always been broken and needs a true reform. In order for that to happen you need to tear down the foundation and build from scratch.
It's like having sheep lead the sheep. The way to beat shit like this is for every lie told lawsuits should be filed. This is how you beat Trump at his own game. 1,000s and 1,000s of lawsuits to rip him apart.
In either case Trump has already shown his next card. A new network dedicated to his base. Shit like this needs to be stopped to get rid of their propaganda.
Last time addressing misinformation was attempted, people started labelling and talking about fake news. it led to a president labelling everything he didn't like as fake news. Your problem here would be who's enforcing the rules? I think you're putting the chicken before the egg a bit; the reason the fake news stuff worked is because people's trust in the news is at a low, and their trust is at a low because nobody's doing anything to stop misinformation from dominating the public consciousness. Yeah. no. People don't trust the "news" because the "news" is shit. You can't seriously look at ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc. and feel like these are good "news" sources. Fake news stuff works because the "news" are nothing more than political arms of their respective parties (So Republicans who all ready don't like CNN, ABC, MSNBC, etc. is easy to believe they're "fake"...not like they don't lie all the time anyways...). They cover/omit what they feel makes their side look good or the other side look bad, tilt degree of coverage, manipulate, etc.
This was part of what I was getting at. In a post-factual society, how do you tackle misinformation?
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United States44450 Posts
On January 02 2021 15:41 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2021 08:13 NewSunshine wrote:
I'm also referring to things like absurd electoral districts resulting in situations where a huge number of people have votes that literally don't matter because they're gerrymandered into irrelevance. A single member of the Senate having the ability to completely shut down congress, by virtue of a single, slim majority they only still have because of said gerrymandering. And then those same people give Trump the green light to pack a conservative Supreme Court, that absolutely does not represent the whole country by any measure. A minority group has found out how to secure power so that nothing changes, so that they can continue to enjoy power indefinitely, and it's working only too well. You can't gerrymander a Senate seat. Learn what you are talking about before yelling to the world your ignorance.
I assume he was referring to the state boundary lines giving a minority of Republican voters a majority of senate seats.
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On January 02 2021 17:33 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2021 15:47 Wegandi wrote:On January 01 2021 19:47 iamthedave wrote:On January 01 2021 19:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 01 2021 16:15 StarStruck wrote:
The problem is it has led to direct harm. Democracy in the U.S. is dead. The System has always been broken and needs a true reform. In order for that to happen you need to tear down the foundation and build from scratch.
It's like having sheep lead the sheep. The way to beat shit like this is for every lie told lawsuits should be filed. This is how you beat Trump at his own game. 1,000s and 1,000s of lawsuits to rip him apart.
In either case Trump has already shown his next card. A new network dedicated to his base. Shit like this needs to be stopped to get rid of their propaganda.
Last time addressing misinformation was attempted, people started labelling and talking about fake news. it led to a president labelling everything he didn't like as fake news. Your problem here would be who's enforcing the rules? I think you're putting the chicken before the egg a bit; the reason the fake news stuff worked is because people's trust in the news is at a low, and their trust is at a low because nobody's doing anything to stop misinformation from dominating the public consciousness. Yeah. no. People don't trust the "news" because the "news" is shit. You can't seriously look at ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc. and feel like these are good "news" sources. Fake news stuff works because the "news" are nothing more than political arms of their respective parties (So Republicans who all ready don't like CNN, ABC, MSNBC, etc. is easy to believe they're "fake"...not like they don't lie all the time anyways...). They cover/omit what they feel makes their side look good or the other side look bad, tilt degree of coverage, manipulate, etc. This was part of what I was getting at. In a post-factual society, how do you tackle misinformation?
Actually post factual stuff are coming much more from internet, alternative media and social media than traditional media. Fox might be the exception but it was designed from the beginning as a propaganda machine and right now even them are pissing off Trump's morons because their limit on how much they are ready to lie is too low.
CNN is not great but it's certainly not the culprit of the post factual moment we live in. One America, some radio hosts and the myriad of doubtful "news" sites you find from twitter and facebook are much better example.
I think post factualism is a result of people mindless and radical defiance against everything "establishment" and their inability to hierarchize sources. Mainstream media is as much to blame for people believing stupid shit such as Trump winning the election or democrats being pizzeria rapists as the scientific community is for people believing that vaccines give autism, that the earth is flat or that the moon is made of cheese. The NYT is not perfect but maybe you should trust it over that shaddy "news website" that no one ever heard about that got linked from that maga account on twitter even though the first is "establishment" and the second one isn't.
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On January 02 2021 17:43 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2021 15:41 Wegandi wrote:On January 02 2021 08:13 NewSunshine wrote:
I'm also referring to things like absurd electoral districts resulting in situations where a huge number of people have votes that literally don't matter because they're gerrymandered into irrelevance. A single member of the Senate having the ability to completely shut down congress, by virtue of a single, slim majority they only still have because of said gerrymandering. And then those same people give Trump the green light to pack a conservative Supreme Court, that absolutely does not represent the whole country by any measure. A minority group has found out how to secure power so that nothing changes, so that they can continue to enjoy power indefinitely, and it's working only too well. You can't gerrymander a Senate seat. Learn what you are talking about before yelling to the world your ignorance. I assume he was referring to the state boundary lines giving a minority of Republican voters a majority of senate seats.
He specifically mentioned electoral districts, not state boundaries.
The senate system was specifically designed to prevent minorities from getting steamrolled, anyway. That's the whole point of it.
In fact, originally, senators were not elected by the populace, but selected by state legislatures. That shows what the original spirit of the senate was.
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On January 02 2021 17:33 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2021 15:47 Wegandi wrote:On January 01 2021 19:47 iamthedave wrote:On January 01 2021 19:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 01 2021 16:15 StarStruck wrote:
The problem is it has led to direct harm. Democracy in the U.S. is dead. The System has always been broken and needs a true reform. In order for that to happen you need to tear down the foundation and build from scratch.
It's like having sheep lead the sheep. The way to beat shit like this is for every lie told lawsuits should be filed. This is how you beat Trump at his own game. 1,000s and 1,000s of lawsuits to rip him apart.
In either case Trump has already shown his next card. A new network dedicated to his base. Shit like this needs to be stopped to get rid of their propaganda.
Last time addressing misinformation was attempted, people started labelling and talking about fake news. it led to a president labelling everything he didn't like as fake news. Your problem here would be who's enforcing the rules? I think you're putting the chicken before the egg a bit; the reason the fake news stuff worked is because people's trust in the news is at a low, and their trust is at a low because nobody's doing anything to stop misinformation from dominating the public consciousness. Yeah. no. People don't trust the "news" because the "news" is shit. You can't seriously look at ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc. and feel like these are good "news" sources. Fake news stuff works because the "news" are nothing more than political arms of their respective parties (So Republicans who all ready don't like CNN, ABC, MSNBC, etc. is easy to believe they're "fake"...not like they don't lie all the time anyways...). They cover/omit what they feel makes their side look good or the other side look bad, tilt degree of coverage, manipulate, etc. This was part of what I was getting at. In a post-factual society, how do you tackle misinformation?
If you are to keep the society "free" (preserve liberty), you don't tackle it.
Enemies of liberty have correctly identified disinformation as the chink in the armor of free societies. It's called subversion. There's nothing you can do without some degree of authoritarianism.
Most western countries have been subverted imo. Embracing leftism and government intervention.
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Conspiracy theories and pseudoscience have always been popular, this is much older than the internet and 24h news channels.
There's a whole lot of factors involved but the main culprit is that education is based on authority rather than understanding, it's "this is what you need to know" rather than "this is how we know what we know". And that authority is easy to undermine even by the simple observation that the body of "this is what you need to know" changes significantly in time.
Why is evolution not going to end up obsolete like miasma theory? If the hundreds of hours of biology class in K12 equip people with little more than recency to answer that, it's no wonder that there's a massive amount of people that discuss whether evolution is true the same way they discuss what's the prettiest color.
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On January 02 2021 20:25 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2021 17:43 KwarK wrote:On January 02 2021 15:41 Wegandi wrote:On January 02 2021 08:13 NewSunshine wrote:
I'm also referring to things like absurd electoral districts resulting in situations where a huge number of people have votes that literally don't matter because they're gerrymandered into irrelevance. A single member of the Senate having the ability to completely shut down congress, by virtue of a single, slim majority they only still have because of said gerrymandering. And then those same people give Trump the green light to pack a conservative Supreme Court, that absolutely does not represent the whole country by any measure. A minority group has found out how to secure power so that nothing changes, so that they can continue to enjoy power indefinitely, and it's working only too well. You can't gerrymander a Senate seat. Learn what you are talking about before yelling to the world your ignorance. I assume he was referring to the state boundary lines giving a minority of Republican voters a majority of senate seats. He specifically mentioned electoral districts, not state boundaries. The senate system was specifically designed to prevent minorities from getting steamrolled, anyway. That's the whole point of it. In fact, originally, senators were not elected by the populace, but selected by state legislatures. That shows what the original spirit of the senate was.
I think the whole senate should be disbanded, there is no need for 2 chambers like that, and the way the seats are distributed to make sure smaller states get a say is horrendously undemocratic and oldfashioned. California has close to 20 million inhabitants per senate seat while 7 states have less than 500k per seat. It isn't about parties either, Sanders is from one of those small states and GOP hold all 4 seats in very populated Florida and Texas.
Say what you want about history, consitution, the right of smaller states etc, but you can't get away from that this is absolutely ridicoulus. Other countries have regions and even "states" too, and have solved it much more elgeantly, through giving slightly more seats per capita in a SINGLE parlament.
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A middle ground would be a maximum representation of a senator between smallest state pop/largest state population. For every 10n people (where n = # people in smallest state), you get one extra senate seat.
Ex. smallest state is Wyoming at ~580k. For every 5.8m people in your state, you get one extra senate seat.
Cali: 7 senate seats
Texas: 5 senate seats
Florida: 4 senate seats
NY: 4 senate seats
PA: 3 senate seats
Any state bigger than around Wisconsin has more senate seats.
Still a biased system, but less so.
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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
On January 02 2021 18:25 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2021 17:33 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 02 2021 15:47 Wegandi wrote:On January 01 2021 19:47 iamthedave wrote:On January 01 2021 19:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On January 01 2021 16:15 StarStruck wrote:
The problem is it has led to direct harm. Democracy in the U.S. is dead. The System has always been broken and needs a true reform. In order for that to happen you need to tear down the foundation and build from scratch.
It's like having sheep lead the sheep. The way to beat shit like this is for every lie told lawsuits should be filed. This is how you beat Trump at his own game. 1,000s and 1,000s of lawsuits to rip him apart.
In either case Trump has already shown his next card. A new network dedicated to his base. Shit like this needs to be stopped to get rid of their propaganda.
Last time addressing misinformation was attempted, people started labelling and talking about fake news. it led to a president labelling everything he didn't like as fake news. Your problem here would be who's enforcing the rules? I think you're putting the chicken before the egg a bit; the reason the fake news stuff worked is because people's trust in the news is at a low, and their trust is at a low because nobody's doing anything to stop misinformation from dominating the public consciousness. Yeah. no. People don't trust the "news" because the "news" is shit. You can't seriously look at ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc. and feel like these are good "news" sources. Fake news stuff works because the "news" are nothing more than political arms of their respective parties (So Republicans who all ready don't like CNN, ABC, MSNBC, etc. is easy to believe they're "fake"...not like they don't lie all the time anyways...). They cover/omit what they feel makes their side look good or the other side look bad, tilt degree of coverage, manipulate, etc. This was part of what I was getting at. In a post-factual society, how do you tackle misinformation? Actually post factual stuff are coming much more from internet, alternative media and social media than traditional media. Fox might be the exception but it was designed from the beginning as a propaganda machine and right now even them are pissing off Trump's morons because their limit on how much they are ready to lie is too low. CNN is not great but it's certainly not the culprit of the post factual moment we live in. One America, some radio hosts and the myriad of doubtful "news" sites you find from twitter and facebook are much better example. I think post factualism is a result of people mindless and radical defiance against everything "establishment" and their inability to hierarchize sources. Mainstream media is as much to blame for people believing stupid shit such as Trump winning the election or democrats being pizzeria rapists as the scientific community is for people believing that vaccines give autism, that the earth is flat or that the moon is made of cheese. The NYT is not perfect but maybe you should trust it over that shaddy "news website" that no one ever heard about that got linked from that maga account on twitter even though the first is "establishment" and the second one isn't.
Yeah that’s a pretty important distinction. ‘Establishment’ along with ‘snowflakes’, ‘elites’ and ‘MSM’ are terms in this context I could happily go without seeing ever again, given how nonsensically I see them attached to the ravings of lunatics.
While a flawed and frankly deeply irritating individual, if my ex subsequently makes atrocious decisions to get in relationships with awful men those can’t really be laid at my door.
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On January 02 2021 20:48 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2021 20:25 BerserkSword wrote:On January 02 2021 17:43 KwarK wrote:On January 02 2021 15:41 Wegandi wrote:On January 02 2021 08:13 NewSunshine wrote:
I'm also referring to things like absurd electoral districts resulting in situations where a huge number of people have votes that literally don't matter because they're gerrymandered into irrelevance. A single member of the Senate having the ability to completely shut down congress, by virtue of a single, slim majority they only still have because of said gerrymandering. And then those same people give Trump the green light to pack a conservative Supreme Court, that absolutely does not represent the whole country by any measure. A minority group has found out how to secure power so that nothing changes, so that they can continue to enjoy power indefinitely, and it's working only too well. You can't gerrymander a Senate seat. Learn what you are talking about before yelling to the world your ignorance. I assume he was referring to the state boundary lines giving a minority of Republican voters a majority of senate seats. He specifically mentioned electoral districts, not state boundaries. The senate system was specifically designed to prevent minorities from getting steamrolled, anyway. That's the whole point of it. In fact, originally, senators were not elected by the populace, but selected by state legislatures. That shows what the original spirit of the senate was. I think the whole senate should be disbanded, there is no need for 2 chambers like that, and the way the seats are distributed to make sure smaller states get a say is horrendously undemocratic and oldfashioned. California has close to 20 million inhabitants per senate seat while 7 states have less than 500k per seat. It isn't about parties either, Sanders is from one of those small states and GOP hold all 4 seats in very populated Florida and Texas. Say what you want about history, consitution, the right of smaller states etc, but you can't get away from that this is absolutely ridicoulus. Other countries have regions and even "states" too, and have solved it much more elgeantly, through giving slightly more seats per capita in a SINGLE parlament.
Two chamber systems work well enough elsewhere. Having two parties only is the main problem. Imagine having one or two independent or green senators right now, it would be a whole different dynamic.
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On January 03 2021 01:06 schaf wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2021 20:48 Slydie wrote:On January 02 2021 20:25 BerserkSword wrote:On January 02 2021 17:43 KwarK wrote:On January 02 2021 15:41 Wegandi wrote:On January 02 2021 08:13 NewSunshine wrote:
I'm also referring to things like absurd electoral districts resulting in situations where a huge number of people have votes that literally don't matter because they're gerrymandered into irrelevance. A single member of the Senate having the ability to completely shut down congress, by virtue of a single, slim majority they only still have because of said gerrymandering. And then those same people give Trump the green light to pack a conservative Supreme Court, that absolutely does not represent the whole country by any measure. A minority group has found out how to secure power so that nothing changes, so that they can continue to enjoy power indefinitely, and it's working only too well. You can't gerrymander a Senate seat. Learn what you are talking about before yelling to the world your ignorance. I assume he was referring to the state boundary lines giving a minority of Republican voters a majority of senate seats. He specifically mentioned electoral districts, not state boundaries. The senate system was specifically designed to prevent minorities from getting steamrolled, anyway. That's the whole point of it. In fact, originally, senators were not elected by the populace, but selected by state legislatures. That shows what the original spirit of the senate was. I think the whole senate should be disbanded, there is no need for 2 chambers like that, and the way the seats are distributed to make sure smaller states get a say is horrendously undemocratic and oldfashioned. California has close to 20 million inhabitants per senate seat while 7 states have less than 500k per seat. It isn't about parties either, Sanders is from one of those small states and GOP hold all 4 seats in very populated Florida and Texas. Say what you want about history, consitution, the right of smaller states etc, but you can't get away from that this is absolutely ridicoulus. Other countries have regions and even "states" too, and have solved it much more elgeantly, through giving slightly more seats per capita in a SINGLE parlament. Two chamber systems work well enough elsewhere. Having two parties only is the main problem. Imagine having one or two independent or green senators right now, it would be a whole different dynamic.
There are technically two independent senators currently.
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It’s getting kind of blatant with the criticism of the Senate for helping large states not dominate a country of many states precisely because some people wish the larger states possessed the ability to dominate in greater measure.
It’s desirable that these kind of people wedded to those kind of wishes are frustrated. They have a message that rarely resonates outside of populous urban centers, they don’t want to change it, they’ve given up persuasion, they just want to force feed it to the rest of the country. A simple re-read of the last dozen or so posts should make this kind of thinking dead obvious.
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On January 03 2021 01:41 Danglars wrote:
It’s getting kind of blatant with the criticism of the Senate for helping large states not dominate a country of many states precisely because some people wish the larger states possessed the ability to dominate in greater measure.
It’s desirable that these kind of people wedded to those kind of wishes are frustrated. They have a message that rarely resonates outside of populous urban centers, they don’t want to change it, they’ve given up persuasion, they just want to force feed it to the rest of the country. A simple re-read of the last dozen or so posts should make this kind of thinking dead obvious.
The thing is, how much of the country's population is represented by "large" states has only grown since the country's inception. In 1770 the difference in population between the most- and least-populous states was about a factor of 20 (~447k in Virginia vs. ~23k in Georgia). In 2020 that difference is something closer to a factor of 70 (~570k in Wyoming vs. 40 million in California). Attempts to protect a minority from being dominated by a majority need to be tempered by how much of a minority you're actually giving power relative to how much of a majority. The kind of balanced power structure that made sense in 1770 hasn't actually scaled to the realities of the country's population distribution in 2020, and "because that's how it always was" is not a good enough defense of those systems to not consider amending them.
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EPT
