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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland22452 Posts
It’s wider civic society, it can be organised labour, moving further it could be more direct enfranchisement in decision making processes in institutions and employment. I mean living in a country that’s in a perpetual competition with Belgium amongst the developed world to have the longest period without a functioning legislature just voting is no guarantee of any kind of democratic representation. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3155 Posts
On September 08 2023 10:06 GreenHorizons wrote: TYTY! I mean I obviously think revolutionary socialism is already necessary, but if Trump wins, I don't know how electoralism can survive. As in I literally don't comprehend how people think they will win back power electorally against fascists that have already flouted the "checks and balances" being impeached 2 different times, indicted 4, tried to overturn the election (is still saying he was cheated), and is polling better now (ahead of Biden) than before his mugshot. Even if the fascists unexpectedly; have legitimate elections, allow the Democrat party participate in them, and they actually count their votes, it's not clear Democrats could win. I don't know if people caught wind that the Georgia trial will be televised, but I'm going to say now if they don't figure out how to make Trump look almost pitiably pathetic it's going to have the opposite impact Dems would hope. I think ChristianS said something a while back that continues to feel apt: I went back and reread the post where I wrote that. Quoted here, if anyone’s curious: + Show Spoiler + On September 26 2021 11:52 ChristianS wrote: Does a voting rights bill fix it? The nature of US politics is that Republicans will inevitably be back in power sooner or later, and so far they don’t seem to face any penalty in public opinion to openly despising rule of law and aspiring to violent takeovers. Gerrymandering is fucked but it’s a pretty slow way to seize power compared to, you know, just doing it. I mean, GH pointed out that “we need the Republican Party actually” is ridiculous for a Democrat to think. Which seems right to me. Nothing about the modern Republican Party seems capable of becoming compatible with democracy, let alone interested in doing so, and the public seems apathetic at best. Gorsameth pointed out we need two parties in our system, which seems right to me too. What disturbs me is that “the Republican Party is irredeemable and cannot realistically be reformed or replaced” and “our system cannot function without 2 parties” aren’t incompatible statements, but the implication of both being true is catastrophic. It feels like we’re all doing the math on our current velocity toward the cliff and distance from it and maximum braking force, but the math isn’t actually very hard. We just keep recalculating because the result we keep getting is unfathomable. My argument at the time was essentially: 1) The Republican Party openly despises rule of law and aspires to violent takeover of the government. They face no apparent electoral penalty for this, and there’s no signs they’re willing or able to change. 2) The nature of our 2-party system is that inevitably, sooner or later, one party is going to lose power, and the other gain it. 3) Therefore, inevitably, we will sooner or later be ruled by a faction that openly despises rule of law and aspires to violent takeover of the government. (I don’t think anyone else in the thread really engaged with it, so I’m not really sure how many people in the thread were on the same page as me. But at the time, at least, it didn’t seem that hugely controversial.) Anyway, now’s as good a time as any to revisit. Does any of that feel less true now than in September 2021? Maybe a little. The “no electoral penalty” part is less obvious to me now; it feels like the last few years have shown a fair amount of evidence that the public is not particularly receptive to a lot of modern Republican messaging. Zooming out a bit, they haven’t had an especially strong national election performance since 2014. Of course you’d hope “openly aspiring to violent takeover” would earn you a bigger electoral penalty than “only gained a few seats in the midterms, relatively weak compared to historical expectations” but, well, here we are. I don’t know how much that changes the trajectory. The best hope at that point is that Democrats manage to stop Republicans from any decisive electoral victories long enough that the Republican Party either dies off or is forced to remake itself somewhat. That probably requires at least keeping the WH in 2024, and maybe 2028. My gut feeling is their odds aren’t terrible on the former, no clue about the latter. But I would also say that some of the *other* doomsday scenarios have probably risen above “fascist takeover” for me in threat level. If “climate disasters destabilizing world economies and creating mass refugee crises” or “breakdown in world order leads to increasing wars of conquest, possibly escalating to something like a world war” get to us first, the domestic politics situation is probably going to be pretty radically remade by them. Not necessarily for the better, mind you, but if we’re predicting our trajectory it would be remiss to ignore the asteroid(s) we’re on a collision course with. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21109 Posts
The GOP had 3 years to get distance from Trump, they made some weak attempts but are utterly unwilling to abandon his base so they keep crawling back. I don't think gaining less seats then historical expectations is a sign that there are at least some electoral penalties. They still gained seats, which should be utter insanity for a party that openly supports an armed insurrection attempt. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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oBlade
Korea (South)4909 Posts
On September 08 2023 17:35 Gorsameth wrote: To be fair to GH, the problem is more the US specific system then democracy in general. In just a popular vote like most democracies Bush Senior would have been the last Republican President, over 30 years ago. Both Bush Jr's first win and Trump won with a minority of the vote. Its the FPTP combined with the electoral college that really creates this drive to the bottom. Because only the tiny % of swing votes in specific states actually matter. Everyone else is mostly fluff. Because that is only applicable to the presidency, it's probably not applicable as a blanket criticism of the US. Democracy isn't just the presidency. You have to ask first, why do people only care about the presidency? Because they aren't involved actively in politics. Why aren't they involved actively in politics? Because they're busy, because they're poor and don't have a lot of time in life because corporate elitists who also control the government are squeezing them, and because from the top down the media (run by the same corporate elitists) tells them what should matter to them, and without time to actually engage in the processes necessary to a democracy besides the mechanical aspect of voting (ex. thinking, debating, creating ideas and solutions, and connecting with other people and voting for people besides presidents) - without having or taking that time, extraordinary inertia sets in. That inertia results in no audits on competence or effectiveness or honesty or results. Incumbency becomes paramount because it represents the hypermodern political ideal of almost certainly barely not losing forever. Except the electoral college, everything is voted for directly, whether at the municipal, Congressional district, or state level. The problem is simply that almost nobody is engaged at those levels because they don't have time or don't care, the media don't care to help them care because there's no money in it, and it doesn't matter because most people just get essentially picked for those kinds of nominations as long as they'll toe the existing party line and vigilantly defend the interests of the people who the money comes from - because most candidates don't have or can't get the money to go it themselves, or if they could don't want to take the risk of running to lose for nothing. The result is an illusion of choice. It's not that only a small number of voters decide elections, it's that there is only a small amount of any real choice. The key axis to analyze US politics now is not left vs. right but establishment and anti-establishment. The reason Bernie/Trump/Obama/Kennedy voters have a lot of overlap is not that they're crazy, it's that they're a significant percentage of the people who are thinking independently. Where GH is correct is that voter apathy on the part of Democrats especially is holding back the entire country. Republicans also have voter apathy and essentially both sides are extraordinarily risk-averse. This is why McConnells of the world get re-elected due to incumbency despite having like a 10% approval rating in their own party. People are too afraid to vote in a way that will risk short-term loss. However, if you take away the issue of term limits, this doesn't apply - at least to Republican voters. Evidence: They hate their own representatives so much that when given the first chance they elected an atheist pro-choice New York Democrat to be their president instead. What do Democrats do? Their side has a problem insofar as the way the DNC and the media stack the deck. First against Bernie, now against Kennedy. I'm not saying Bernie or Kennedy should win their party's nomination necessarily, but if they are to lose, it should be fairly. Why can the parties do whatever they want? Because from the top down, they arrange it, and from the ground up, people let them. The fundamental problem is not D vs. R but better Ds vs. Ds and better Rs vs. Rs. Once you have vibrance within the parties, then you can have vibrance between them, then this "oh the presidency is decided by only a few voters in swing states" disappears as people start to accept they can vote for whoever has the more robust ideas, which arguably neither side has had for 50 years. I'm not interested in a Democrat who wants Pence over Trump but will never in a million years vote for Pence, just wants Pence to lose. I'm interested in a Republican who will vote for Kennedy and a Bernie bro who will vote for Trump because they are showing us the direction to fix the system as long as we can cultivate and propagate that attitude further. Republicans are working on it but the Democrats' lack of internal auditing is one of the biggest problem in US politics, because as the larger party, their shadow looms large over our future. It's hard to even articulate the Democrat party's platform at the moment. Deference to authority was not characteristic of them 50 or even 20 years ago. But Republicans' was. We need actually both sides to be critical of authority. The left's revolution may have occupied Wall Street, but the Republicans' one occupied the White House. As much as I would blame the media and corporations, the truth is voting is free. There's no excuse for letting democracy lose to capitalism. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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oBlade
Korea (South)4909 Posts
Your own article is from a year and a half ago, reporting on a year before that, and it says 14% of people believe it, which actually means 4% because you have to subtract the 10% of people who just say whatever (10% of people would vote for "Deez Nutz" when polled). And 1 in 3 of them like Biden. This is not a significant force in Republican politics today nor ever was. The fact that for example a QAnon member wants to build a wall and thinks Comet Pizza is a satanic church doesn't mean at all that a Republican who wants to build the wall has adopted something from QAnon, it's the QAnon person who has identifying beliefs in their own subset. No more than you and Hitler sharing a liking of dogs makes you a Nazi. Strictly speaking even a Democratic voter who thinks Trump is going to invoke the Insurrection Act and come back to power is objectively closer to whatever QAnon is - but again it's impossible to pin down because there is no QAnon organization.  Assuming you meant Merck rather than Merrick, for example, because Merrick Garland has been getting a lot of flak recently, making value judgments about different pharmaceutical companies probably isn't a conspiracy theory. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland22452 Posts
Sure it’s still a mere faction of wider conservatism and the GOP, but it’s not insignificant. Certainly wields a much more impactful crack of the whip than the far left do on the Democratic Party | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21109 Posts
but yeah sure, that branch of nutcases has no influence... | ||
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Taelshin
Canada395 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21109 Posts
On September 11 2023 16:53 Taelshin wrote: @gorsameth Could you link the Jewish space laser's quote, I've heard about it but never seen it. | ||
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lestye
United States4133 Posts
I think we had tons of people who were straight up QANON believers. It was scary shit if the Red Wave happened. Not to mention the whole Sound of Freedom culture war was sanitized QANON rhetoric to make it palatable to mainstream audiences. | ||
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Dan HH
Romania8945 Posts
On September 11 2023 04:46 oBlade wrote: Your own article is from a year and a half ago, reporting on a year before that, and it says 14% of people believe it, which actually means 4% because you have to subtract the 10% of people who just say whatever (10% of people would vote for "Deez Nutz" when polled). This is especially funny given how you just talked up Kennedy. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland22452 Posts
On September 11 2023 17:35 lestye wrote: Also I think they're ignoring the 2022 election. You COULD ARGUE that MTG was flirtatous with the QANON crowd, perhaps appease it, but I don't think she was an unapologetic supporter. I think we had tons of people who were straight up QANON believers. It was scary shit if the Red Wave happened. Not to mention the whole Sound of Freedom culture war was sanitized QANON rhetoric to make it palatable to mainstream audiences. Which is a rather excellent example of how rhetoric is sanitised a bit and re-injected with a similar ideology behind it. You go from the actual QAnon shit about liberal paedophile islands and elites feasting on the adenochrine of youngsters to ‘this is the film the liberals didn’t want you to see’, with all that entails. Must say I wouldn’t recommend it but if one wishes to run an experiment, make a minute criticism of that film in a space where conservatives hang out and count how often you get called a paedophile enabler, or worse. The pipeline to palpability is why precisely this stuff is actively dangerous and detrimental to civil society. If it remained unfiltered and was the preserve of a minority of conspiratorial cranks, it wouldn’t have the capacity to cause any real wider damage. Mainstream conservatism the world over has incorporated these segments in the belief that they could be subsumed and moderated, when the opposite has largely occurred. Or a just straight up ‘well it’s still better than left wing politics’ calculation | ||
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Simberto
Germany11156 Posts
On September 11 2023 17:24 Gorsameth wrote: https://twitter.com/JustinGrayWSB/status/1354870334655262724 The style in that post is so fucking disgusting. "Well i don't know anything about it, but will insinuate everything with lots and lots of JAQing off. But if someone were to try to sue me, i can always claim that i stated clearly that i don't know anything and am just asking questions. But here are the things i obviously insinuate about the (((New World Order))). Not saying anything here. It seems that my bracket keys were stuck there. Anyways, just asking questions, i just read a lot." | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland22452 Posts
On September 11 2023 21:54 Simberto wrote: The style in that post is so fucking disgusting. "Well i don't know anything about it, but will insinuate everything with lots and lots of JAQing off. But if someone were to try to sue me, i can always claim that i stated clearly that i don't know anything and am just asking questions. But here are the things i obviously insinuate about the (((New World Order))). Not saying anything here. It seems that my bracket keys were stuck there. Anyways, just asking questions, i just read a lot." It’s the most blatantly anti-Semitic conspiracy mongering I’ve ever seen an elected member of a Western legislature ever put out there, least in modern times. Makes some of the rights transparent concern trolling on the topic even more laughable. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland22452 Posts
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Mohdoo
United States15264 Posts
On September 08 2023 21:22 WombaT wrote: Plus one can make the argument that voting every so often is really just the bare bones minimum of what constitutes democracy in real terms. Hence the rather specific language of ‘electoralism’ that GH uses. It’s wider civic society, it can be organised labour, moving further it could be more direct enfranchisement in decision making processes in institutions and employment. I mean living in a country that’s in a perpetual competition with Belgium amongst the developed world to have the longest period without a functioning legislature just voting is no guarantee of any kind of democratic representation. My 2 cents is that even if all you do is write "Karl Marx" or "your mom", you must vote. | ||
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