Those are sufficient excuses that prevent countries from signing free trade deals with other nations: we don't trust the health of your political system to sign a free trade deal with your nation.
In a world without an electoral college, I’m not sure you can say this.
Almost every state is winner take all in electoral votes.
I suspect there are a lot of discouraged voters who don’t vote, because they live in states where their opinion is overrun by the political slant of the state’s majority.
In a direct popular vote, their vote counts a lot more.
They don't support imperialism, but they also don't care enough to be against imperialism. They care about egg prices or their favorite culture wars more than about people dying elsewhere.
I think it’s more complicated - this feels like a psychology and biology issue.
Those things are naturally closer to them which then means they generate stronger emotions. Just intuitively, emotions fuel pretty much all decisions. I mean, if heroin didn’t feel good people wouldn’t do it. If fast food didn’t taste good people wouldn’t eat it. Conversely, negative emotion create patterns of behavior.
Our behavior is complex and choice is a spectrum. I don’t really choose to brush my teeth, it just kind of happens. I can stop, but I don’t. I look around me and nobody stops brushing their teeth. Perhaps brushing our teeth is so popular because it creates positive emotions. Less shame, less worries, more comfort.
I think, those in power harness this quite effectively.!
People have choosen to believe obvious lies because they wanted them to be true, not because they thought they were true. It's as much their fault as the politicians who lied to them.
They know enough to understand which way should their ignorance be pointed to support their worldview.
I've seen this countless times, I'm from eastern Poland, we had our own MAGA ruling for 8 years, and eastern Poland is where most of their voters come from.
When it benefits these people - they understand enough to know what the mainstream opinion is and they don't oppose it.
When it does not support their worldview - they suddenly stop believing the experts or forget what the expert opinion is.
Ignorance is not the root cause. It's a protection mechanism.
It's fascinating to watch at first, but after 8 years of this I'm just tired.
> They know enough to understand which way should their ignorance be pointed to support their worldview.
Again, you assume or are you god? Did you mind read everyone? Otherwise there's no way to really tell. Are the votes public? What people say might not be what they vote for.
> I've seen this countless times
As in you've looked at everyone in existence?
> Ignorance is not the root cause. It's a protection mechanism.
Again how do you draw this conclusion that 100% or at least >70% are like this. It's like you decide for them. So even if they're ignorant you're going to rule otherwise.
> It's fascinating to watch at first
This is worse than stereotyping. What's fascinating is listening to your reply.
> That's not what people voted for (agreeing with the government)
I could play your game (asking at every point how do you know). And we will get to the point that we both agree it's just our interpretations of facts.
Now that we established that - can we return to a regular discussion?
I live among such people. They are my family and my neighbors. We talk about this. My uncle has a company distributing pig feed. He's doing it for 20 years. He pays taxes. When our Polish MAGA introduced a tax reform that they reverted next month (becuse it was self-contradictory) - he defended them and argued his taxes will be lower when it was mathematically false.
He's not stupid. He have choosen no to understand something he's good at - because he wanted to preserve his political beliefs.
My father is a teacher. He argued previous government "never raised teachers' salaries" and that his beloved MAGA government did. In reality (and I know that because my wife also was a teacher at the time) - it was the other way around. I've googled the data on the official government website. He did not changed his mind.
These are 2 examples out of dozens.
It's like talking with flat-earthers. It's not that they never encountered anybody to teach them science. They did, and they actively choose to ignore it. In fact they have to know the mainstream position at least well enough to know what not to believe.
It did because that's exactly what people want, it's just that many people will tell you otherwise because they live in an information bubble and cannot believe that there exists voters outside of their bubble.
Same with opinions on HN. People here don't realize they're in a bubble and their opinions aren't representative for the masses. If you tell them that you get downvoted and flagged.
But the US doesn’t have direct presidential elections. It has an archaic, anti-democratic system called the Electoral College, which grants land in Wyoming greater relative weight than people in Texas.
Don't forget: Only about 2/3 of eligible voters voted. So those 1/3 who didn't vote, effectively voted for (or at the very least, condoned) the winner.
They didn't physically vote, but by not-voting, they are literally saying "I'm OK with whoever wins."
A huge number felt they had to vote for the lesser of two bad choices. I think many that voted for Trump were naive and are genuinely surprised at what they are seeing. At least I’d like to think so, despite what you might find on forums.