EPTThere are plenty of long winded explanations what "actual" conservatism looks like according to their own delusions but in practice it just boils down to "Fuck you, got mine!"
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Velr
Switzerland10741 Posts
There are plenty of long winded explanations what "actual" conservatism looks like according to their own delusions but in practice it just boils down to "Fuck you, got mine!" | ||
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oBlade
United States5629 Posts
On August 27 2025 07:49 Acrofales wrote: Pretty much. That's how gerrymandering works by its very nature. FPTP means that if you win by more than exactly 1 vote, you "wasted votes". So you redistrict so you win each of those districts by as close to exactly 1 vote as you can/dare, while making sure your opponent wins the districts you are inevitably uncompetitive in, with as much waste as possible. How close you can get to a single vote victory is of course the question. Maybe a 4-point margin right now is pretty safe, and based on current polling and some forecasting you're confident that it'll be safe for the next few elections. But polling is unreliable and forecasting something as unreliable as elections is going to be mostly noise this far out. So there's a decent chance your forecasts are wrong and 4% is nowhere near safe. Let's remember the ideal: 50%+1 vote victories. But those only take 1 person changing their mind or 2 extra people staying in bed for the election to go the other way. Now I'm no pollster. I don't have a clue what the GOP data says, but the slimmer the margins they're aiming for, the riskier it is. This is right, but it's also mostly wrong. But it's right in a way that is interesting and I didn't realize why people keep posting this conception of what gerrymandering is until now. Barely winning is not ideal. Crushing everything is ideal. One view of an ideal might be an infinitesimal margin above 50% in some districts only if you somehow have the ability to district a state that you are overall behind in. Then you can corral your opponents into a for-granted district and then claim all the rest by an arbitrarily small margin. By graph theory it's usually possible. Real world restrictions also come into play vis-a-vis maintenance of the semblance of fairness. Otherwise "wastedness" is not a binary condition. If you have 3 districts, that are 60/40, 60/40, and 10/90, the votes above 50 in the first two districts are being "wasted" in an abstract sense. But there isn't a solution where you can make them more efficient. If you take them out of the 60/40 districts to make it closer to 51/49, you are not advancing your position. You are moving them to the 10/90 district where they are far more wasted. If anything it's the 10 you want to go to 0 and strengthen your two wins. So here is the thing with redistricting. The number of districts is fixed. If you win 4 out of 5 districts at some margin, it's not more ideal to reduce your margin in the ones you win. By reducing the margin, you don't conjure the existence of more districts. (That would be a different problem, also interesting, for graph theory.) You have to look at the overall margin you already have. That's the base. The base is not 50/50. The base is your margin in the whole state. If you have a state where you're 60/40, and one district you're 55/45 and one where you're 65/35, the 65/35 is the one that's inefficient because the extra above 60 is making the 55/45 district weak. You want to decrease the 65 and transfer it to the 55, not decrease the 55 also and get it closer to 50 because muh FPTP. If you lead a state for example 60/40, not only would it be a bad idea to give your opponents some "set" districts they lead, while cutting all your winning districts to 51%, it's physically impossible. If you lead the state 60/40 that margin has to actually exist somewhere. If you led a state 60/40, the ideal would be districting so you win every district by 60/40 with a +20 margin. Take a pizza analog. You could cover 40% of a pizza with pepperoni. If that pepperoni is in a giant circle in the middle of the pizza. you don't want to cut a circle around that and give it to your enemy, you want to cut it like a normal pizza into 8~10 slices where each slice is 60% cheese and 40% pepperoni thereby beating the socks off your opponent in every single contest. Which again is usually possible by graph theory but slightly harder to do on a real world map within the realm of reason - gerrymandering historically meant like well beyond plausible salamander shaped and noncontiguous districts, not just districting with some murky perceived advantage. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4811 Posts
On August 28 2025 18:49 Velr wrote: The best description of actual conservative policies is "Fuck you, got min/more for me!". There are plenty of long winded explanations what "actual" conservatism looks like according to their own delusions but in practice it just boils down to "Fuck you, got mine!" Exactly. And the more extreme you get the more exclusionary it becomes. And then they weoponize it and cultivate it into something fearsome. Fascism is like the ultimate delusion for a conservative. It's a beautiful carrot that is presented, but they seem totally unaware of that biggest spiked stick that is hidden from them. With everything, when it seems too good to be true, it's probably a scam. Conservatives seem to fall for it every century or so. | ||
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LightSpectra
United States1580 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25530 Posts
On August 28 2025 18:25 lestye wrote: This reminds me of why it's hard to find Republican allies when it comes to local housing policy. I'd think Republicans would be anti-NIMBY, since NIMBY is almost everything Republicans hate, you have government interfering with property rights, they leverage the govt to prevent competition, but somehow they never really connect that dot. It's funny because I think 10 or 15 years ago, I know a lot of leftists/liberals would say conservatism is all about hierarchy. I thought that was abstract and conservatives just want "freedom" and less taxes. But over time I cant unsee them defend complete nonsense systems because they want to maintain hierarchy. Their principles completely go out the window if it compromises their position or the position of people they think have a divine mandate to be where they are in life. Conservatives will present themselves as inheritors of various noble traditions and principles, and hey some are. How many behave, either directly or by advocacy is in actuality often rather different, as you point out. HOAs are that in microcosm, and frankly quite bizarre to observe for us outsiders. And ofc yes I know they’re not exclusively the purview of conservatives. | ||
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Luolis
Finland7113 Posts
Republicans are the largest pieces of shit known to mankind. | ||
KwarK
United States42866 Posts
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/20/trump-says-us-will-not-approve-solar-or-wind-power-projects.html They're literally indistinguishable from cartoon villains. | ||
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KwarK
United States42866 Posts
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-08-25/trump-hegseth-national-guard-18876673.html each state’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard are resourced, trained, organized and available to assist federal, state and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances It's unfortunate that the actions that Trump will have taken triggered a nationwide wave of protests but we will find ourselves in such a bad state of affairs that Trump will have had no choice but to use the military against the American public. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4811 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11541 Posts
What will be left of democracy and the US in general in three and a half more years of this? | ||
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LightSpectra
United States1580 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23267 Posts
On August 29 2025 00:13 Simberto wrote: Half a year, btw. It feels like so much longer. This is just half a year of them being in power. Just the Musk DOGE saga feels as if was ages ago with all the bullshit spam that happened since. But it was this year. What will be left of democracy and the US in general in three and a half more years of this? I suppose it's a good sign they are still trying to rig the elections, rather than not even bothering? I don't know that Democrats winning control of the House, Senate, and Presidency wouldn't just lead to the next legitimately elected Republican being even worse. Especially after the Democrats inevitably fail to repair a fraction of the damage the last one (Trump) did. I know everyone here is pretty anti-AmeriMaidan, but there really isn't another viable (as much as a longshot as it might be) option. | ||
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