[gortok]

We are not at a point as a country to have a serious discussion about governance.

The administration in charge (as recently as yesterday) still blames Biden for issues happening on their watch, even though he hasn’t been in officer for 16 months now.

This is not an administration serious about governing, and until we have an administration serious about governing and taking responsibility for their actions, we will continue to have this situation where half the country blames the half not in power for decisions it is making.

Congress of course is somehow worse, as instead of treating the executive like a branch of government they are meant to have oversight of, they abdicate their oversight role and roll over to the wishes of the present administration.

The net effect is those of us that live paycheck to paycheck (which is 2/3rds of Americans) are caught in the middle of a situation that would be deemed fantastical and not realistic to write about if it was described in a dystopian novel.

The Iran war continues with no oversight from Congress, and no authorized war while we pay the price. Vote them all out.

[UncleMeat]

Trump blames Biden for January 6th. When, you know, Trump was president and Biden had not yet assumed office. Dude is simply constitutionally incapable of being a serious person.

[miltonlost]

Vote out the Republican fascists actually abdicating responsibility. Dems can't do anything when they don't control legislature. Don't end up bothsidesing the last sentene when the rest of your comment is about the iffectualness of Trump and Republicans

[catigula]

The problem runs deeper than the current administration. Voting doesn't work.

The Biden administration isn't the antidote to our problems.

[win311fwg]

> Voting doesn't work.

It works fine to accomplish what it is intended to do: Pick a worker to hire.

The problem is that many assume it ends there and the employee will magically go off and do great things. That is not how it works. If you've ever worked with employees before, you'll know full well that you have to regularly communicate with them to keep them on track. Even if the most stellar employee in the world trying to do everything right will never be a mind reader.

When was the last time you spoke to the person you hired for the job of representative? I expect for most reading this, the answer will be never. That is what doesn't work.

[catigula]

Incorrect.

You can merely lie and spend money and get elected and then do the opposite. Rinse and repeat.

See: John Fetterman.

It doesn't work. It's fundamentally broken.

[win311fwg]

Their actions are recorded. You have full view if they are failing to do their job, and when they fail to do their job it is on you as their employer to bring the consequences. What did the people who hired John Fetterman do to stop his unacceptable behaviour? Nothing, right? That's the problem. Employees are not magical beings. They are simple, imperfect humans that need constant management. But there is this strange idea that voting is sufficient to act as the management layer. That is not how it works. Voting is only for selecting the employee you want to hire. You still have the be the employer after they are hired.

It is not fundamentally broken. The model proves to work perfectly fine in other contexts regularly. The trouble is that you, along with a lot of other people, are looking for magic so that you don't have to get your hands dirty. The harsh reality is that magic doesn't exist, I'm afraid.

[thunky]

> It is not fundamentally broken

It's corrupted by money, bribery, gerrymandering, an electoral system that is anti-democratic, and a two party system that has as a joint monolopy on power via division.

Corrupt means broken.

[win311fwg]

It is broken. As we already discussed, the employers are not fulfilling their duty as the employer. They think they can spend all day, every day, on the golf corse, metaphorically speaking, and everything will function hunky dory. That doesn't happen in the real world. Employees need management. Always have, always will.

It is not fundamentally broken. It is fixable by the people stepping up and doing what an employer needs to do. The reluctance to want to roll up sleeves is understandable, but magic doesn't exist. It is either let the employees run wild or stand up and manage them. Your choice.

[SoftTalker]

The problem as I see it is more about a real habit of blaming the other side and keeping problems alive as wedge issues than actually solving anything. This was a problem before, and always has been to some extent, but seems to have gotten much worse since social media and twitter became ways for memes to spread virally. So much easier to get outraged about something the other guy is or is not doing, than to do the work to come up with any solutions. And the country is pretty evenly divided on which side they like, so we're just treading water in sewage mostly.

[akudha]

Exploiting wedge issues is how the game of politics is played, isn't it? This has been the playbook forever. Find (or create) an enemy (real or imaginary) and rally supporters against them and keep the wedges/enemies in place, so it can be exploited forever. This is true nearly in all democracies. It would be nice if it wasn't but somehow politics generally seems to attract/promote the worst people in society.

It is upto to the voters to see past this.

[triceratops]

> Voting doesn't work

Disparaging democracy doesn't work. Saying shit like this is worse than not voting.

EDIT: Downvoted for defending democracy. I do love democracy :-D

[JumpCrisscross]

> Disparaging democracy

The ancient Athenians knew that elections favored the rich. That’s why they incorporated selection by lot into their system. Our modern understanding of democracy has fetishized elections to the point that some voters might see hundreds of them in a year, including for positions that shouldn’t ever be elected (e.g. judges), while still having little to no actual civic power.

[triceratops]

How will you get selection by lot into the current system without violence? Voting.

[JumpCrisscross]

> How will you get selection by lot into the current system without violence? Voting

Oh totally agree. But also civic involvement. The returns to even small amounts of civic engagement in America are so ridiculously high because most of the population doesn’t do it. If like 5% more of the electorate called their electeds at least twice a year, that would represent a 25% increase in civic engagement, enough to break constituencies.

[thijson]

I think the Athenians named our current system an oligarchy. Selection by lot would take a lot of the corrupting influence of money out of the system too. There would need to be safeguards though, similar to how juries are protected during a trial.

I read somewhere recently about how congress should be much bigger than it is currently due to population growth, and how that would make all the redistricting that currently happens irrelevant.

[catigula]

The "just vote" lot are the perfect pressure release valve for the failed system.

Out of control inflation? No healthcare? Endless war?

Just vote! You just have to vote for a democrat!

It's time to say no to these charlatans. If people lose hope in the system, that's when it can change.

[triceratops]

> You just have to vote for a democrat!

Or a third party.

> If people lose hope in the system, that's when it can change

There's only 2 ways it can change: voting or violence. You're saying voting doesn't work. That means you're advocating violence.

[pixelatedindex]

> Just vote! You just have to vote for a democrat! It's time to say no to these charlatans.

Biased much? Why not say no to Republicans, they put us in this mess time and time again.

[boppo1]

Nah, voting doesn't work because to become a candidate necessarily requires backroom dealing at odds with the interests of common voters.

We need sortition.

[triceratops]

How will you get sortition without voting for a pro-sortition candidate?

[buellerbueller]

I've thought a lot about this, because my state is heavily gerrymandered, and the legislature keeps voting to undermine several recently passed amendments (abortion rights, marijuana) to our state constitution. They also tried to change the threshold for passing a referendum from 50% + 1 vote to 60%, when it was clear that there was enough support to pass the abortion rights amendment.

You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum.

Fuck what the professional politicians think of sortition; do an end run around them, because professional politicians are the problem.

Get this accomplished in enough states, and then you have a level chance of doing an amendment to the US Constitution.

[triceratops]

> You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum.

Aka...voting.

If you truly believe "voting doesn't work", as you first said (EDIT: that was someone else whose username starts with a "b" sorry), then this referendum won't go anywhere either.

[avaer]

Since many people reading this probably don't know: voting is not the only, or even the original form of democracy.

Representatives in ancient democracies were selected by sortition, which is based on statistics, not popularity or money.

[triceratops]

The only way to peacefully change how representatives are selected is...voting.

[thunky]

Nobody voted in Kamala Harris and somehow she became the only choice besides Trump.

[rubzah]

Saying it seems to have become a taboo, probably because of the existential horror of it possibly being true.

[triceratops]

Is there an alternative?

[AnimalMuppet]

Say the truth; take the downvotes.

But I would say that the voting that matters most is voting in primaries. Get rid of the ideologues and zealots on both sides; get some people who can think rather than just yell.

[triceratops]

Agree. Voting doesn't just mean voting in regular elections for legislators and executives. Vote in every election you are eligible for.

[ramon156]

Not doing anything is also not working. Denying it is worse than saying its broken. It's clear as day.

Key figures, wealth, etc. Shouldn't influence their power to this extend. The general public isn't silent, it's silenced.

[fullshark]

It's at best a weak check by the populace on two rival gangs of the ruling class. It's certainly not what its proponents claim it to be.

[triceratops]

I see, you prefer your gangs unchecked?

[fullshark]

I clearly did not say that, re-read and try again.

There's a lot of thoughtful responses to your histrionics, I suggest you take a breath and actually engage with the ideas contained within them.

[triceratops]

> There's a lot of thoughtful responses to your histrionics

Sorry, can you please point to one of these thoughtful responses? I've seen one idea suggested: "sortition". But no ideas for how to get it peacefully without voting it in. I engaged with all these comments and asked this question.

"Voting doesn't work" is a cynical, doomerist, thought terminating cliche. I don't want this mind virus to propagate. You may call my comments "histrionics". But instead I suggest you take a breath and think about where calling voting and elections "useless" leads.

[wat10000]

Voting works fine, people just don't do it very much.

People complain about their choices. Meanwhile, there's atrocious turnout in the primaries which determine those choices.

[triceratops]

Agree. There's a direct line from Robert A Heinlein:

"When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."

to the anonymous scholar who first said, probably as a joke:

"If violence didn't work you didn't use enough".

Whatever you think of voting and democracy, the alternatives are far more unpleasant. Vote every time, without fail.

[s1artibartfast]

How does more voting resolve anything? Split up fans are still split opinions and bad politicians are still bad politicians. A 51 49 election still has the same outcome if 10 million or 100 million people voted. It seems to me that people will need to not only vote but change their voting criteria

[wat10000]

I'm specifically thinking of the primaries here, where you often have more than two candidates and it's not a 51/49 split. I think it's very likely that the people who currently sit out the primaries would vote differently from the people who show up. It's a pretty small minority who vote in primaries, and those who do will tend to be a lot more politically active than average.

Far too many people complain about the bad candidates in the general, and don't do the most basic thing to influence that.

[s1artibartfast]

Ah. One of the various forms of ranked choice or approval voting in the general would also solve this.

I agree that mixing of the party primary system and the governmental election process is a problem leading to dominance of finge views.

[timacles]

The politics in this country have been intentionally broken going back to Clinton and Obama. It is impossible to make meaningful change anymore.

Add in the propaganda convincing 2/5th of the country to consistently vote against their own interests and fundamentally misunderstand core issues, and it is difficult to see what can be done in the next 10 years.

The USA has had a hostile takeover by oligarchs. We are a country who serves only corporations and those who own them. Regular people have been almost completely removed from the process

[p-o]

It's interesting how you elect to name two presidents in an era that were democrats while conveniently omitting the republican president in between. With all his baggages, I find this quite convenient.

[pstuart]

It's an interesting point. With Clinton, l'affaire de bj was a willful attempt to take the president's private life public as a means of congressional focus. It should be noted that until then, this was effectively off limits. It was an open secret in DC that his predecessor, Bush the 1st, kept a mistress for years and that was never discussed publicly.

In the case of Obama, the GOP noted that their top priority was to make him a 1-term president and that meant attempted sabotage of any legislation that might make him look good.

Neither man were perfect presidents, but compared to the current regime it is night and day.

[nickff]

The Lewinsky Affair got traction because Clinton used his position of power (literally in the Oval Office) to take advantage of a young subordinate, in a time when ‘sexual harassment’ was becoming a hot topic. Then lying about the affair made it much worse (as cover-ups often do). It was definitely used against Clinton by his opponents, but the way he abused his position, then perjured himself was truly shameful.

[UncleMeat]

Clinton as a sex pest is a more recent narrative. At the time the media coverage was not about how he was abusing an intern. It was about how he was debasing the office and how Lewinsky wasn't even that hot. It was certainly not the narrative from the right that Clinton was an abuser.

[pixelatedindex]

Ironic because Trump said (and did) far worse things in 2016 and didn’t affect him one bit

[nickff]

I purposely avoided any comparison between Clinton and other presidents, as many have done bad things, and it is difficult to rank them all. I just wanted to address the parent comment's minimization of Clinton's wrong-doing, as evidenced by this quote: "l'affaire de bj was a willful attempt to take the president's private life public"

[psadauskas]

This didn't start with Clinton or Obama (interesting you skipped over a much larger contributor). As usual, "Reagan made everything worse".

When he was governor of California, he ended free college tuition for the UC state schools, because some hippies at Berkley were protesting the Vietnam war.

When he was campaigning for president, he popularized the idea of the "welfare queen", and got poor white people to vote against their own interests because there were some hypothetical single black mothers abusing the system.

When he got into office, he cut taxes, mostly for the wealthy, but also a bit for the middle class. He expected that he could use that as an excuse to then cut social programs to keep the budget reasonably balanced, but once people have benefits they don't want to give them up. He was forced to not go through with the cuts, doubling the federal budget deficit, and kicking off the trend of deficit spending (except for a brief period under Clinton in the late 90s that W then squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Reagan also perfected the process of:

1. Complain that government programs are bad or inefficient. 2. Use it as an excuse to cut their funding. 3. Government programs get worse as a result. 4. Goto 1.

He didn't start any of these trends, but he did ramp them way up, and we've been on that trajectory ever since.

[JumpCrisscross]

> We are a country who serves only corporations and those who own them. Regular people have been almost completely removed from the process

Regular people removed themselves when we chose cultural flashpoints over material wealth.

[piva00]

Even though the forever pursuit of more material wealth is exactly what brought the USA to this point.

[JumpCrisscross]

> though the forever pursuit of more material wealth is exactly what brought the USA to this point

I disagree. It’s the corruption of democratic politics with money. And rage-based content providers (on cable TV and social media) who take any consumer/worker surplus and ram it into invented culture wars.

[piva00]

I don't think we are disagreeing, expanding my point: the forever pursuit of more material wealth narrowed whatever was the USA's vision as a nation.

More material wealth showed other good indicators for society being correlated to it, culminating in the misguided ideology with Reagan that only caring about advancing material wealth is enough to advance society.

Since then the whole point of the USA is to further material wealth, and the belief that societal benefits will inevitably trickle down from this advancement. My firm belief after 40-50 years of empirical data about this experiment is that it was completely misguided and missed the forest for the trees.

Within this ideology all the issues you brought up branched from: corporations and moneyed interests got even more power; to keep power those moneyed interests need to corrupt democratic processes.

Rage-based content providers is just another facet of power maintenance mechanisms, if you have capital and want to push your agenda you need the media for it, and since your main purpose is to have an audience to push this agenda you will, inevitably, rely on content that is easy to churn out while keeping this audience, hence the rage-based content landscape that is very prevalent in the USA.

[s1artibartfast]

I think people have different connotations for the word wealth. For some that means people being able to afford housing, Healthcare, or taking a day off to spend with their children.

I think it is simply wrong on the facts that the national government has been primarily focused on raising national GDP and material well-being, or that it has done a good job.

The topic of growth is almost absent from campaign messaging, and investment in infrastructure for the future is a minuscule part of budgets.

If economic growth was the priority, we would see streamlined code and legislation throughout the country and focus on improving them. Politicians would be spending their time trying to figure out how to lower the costs of High-Speed Rail or Bridges or houses.

[timacles]

Don’t blame regular people when billions were spent on lies, disinformation campaigns and rug pulls. We are being systematically manipulated.

I know plenty of good honest people who simply don’t know what’s going on and cannot navigate today’s political landscape

[s1artibartfast]

In the attention economy I think there is still plenty of blame to assign to the voters.. they are the ones that care more about culture war topics then the peace and prosperity of their children.

[timacles]

OK sure go blame them. Now what do you have?

[s1artibartfast]

The idea that the policially interested should focus on their attention on their priorities and vote for them. Reward politicians with your values.

Also, the federal government should return more political footballs to the local level to stop distracting from their actual jobs

[virgildotcodes]

I mean, I also have times where I find myself blaming people for being so stupid.

That said, you have to realize that this has been a very intentional propaganda effort by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades. Disorganized masses are largely powerless against that sort of effort and the outcomes are predictable.

[JumpCrisscross]

> this has been a very intentional propaganda effort by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades

There is no evidence it was highly coordinated and many reasons to believe it’s emergent. Cable TV and then social media created systems competing for attention. The content originators became increasingly decentralized, increasing both diversity and ruthlessness.

> Disorganized masses are largely powerless against that sort of effort

Historically untrue. Starving, uneducated masses are easy to repress. Distracted masses only so long as they look away. And I think we’re seeing signs the American voter isn’t looking away.

[virgildotcodes]

> There is no evidence it was highly coordinated and many reasons to believe it’s emergent. Cable TV and then social media created systems competing for attention. The content originators became increasingly decentralized, increasing both diversity and ruthlessness.

Hmm, not sure how you could conclude this given the abundance of evidence regarding the activities and influence of people like the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Peter Thiel, the fossil fuel industry in terms of the global warming discourse, the general corporate and wealthy forces shaping Republican/Democrat policy over the last ~50 years.

The media influences alone that fuel the sensationalization of these issues are transparent, as are the threads that bind these media groups and those in power over them.

Look at what's happening to CBS and will soon happen to CNN due to the Paramount merger and the Ellisons/Bari Weiss for example.

> Historically untrue.

What? In what part of history have disorganized masses shown themselves to be powerful against "the intentional propaganda efforts made by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades" that I'm referring to?

Almost by definition the successful grassroots movements of the past that have created change were organized, no? I also don't believe there's ever been as effective a media (social and conventional) apparatus in human history as we've had the last half century.

> Starving, uneducated masses are easy to repress. Distracted masses only so long as they look away. And I think we’re seeing signs the American voter isn’t looking away.

I mean, this conversation started over the culture war bullshit that seems to have about as good a grip on Americans' attention as ever, although I agree that the material economic conditions are degrading so badly that they are more and more becoming the priority consideration.

That said, channeling that anger towards scapegoats like immigrants or jews etc is an old and effective playbook and I don't see why we wouldn't call that distraction.

[JumpCrisscross]

> not sure how you could conclude this given the abundance of evidence regarding the activities and influence of people like the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Peter Thiel, the fossil fuel industry in terms of the global warming discourse, the general corporate and wealthy forces shaping Republican/Democrat policy over the last ~50 years

Because for each of these there are a hundred other monied interests, and they're all in covert or open conflict with each other.

> Look at what's happening to CBS and will soon happen to CNN due to the Paramount merger and the Ellisons/Bari Weiss for example

Yes, that's one group overtly taking over a platform. The fact that they're behaving differently after Weiss should give pause to the hypothesis that this is all already co-ordinated from the shadows.

> what part of history have disorganized masses shown themselves to be powerful against "the intentional propaganda efforts made by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades" that I'm referring to?

Every regime fighting survivial deploys all means available to it in its fight. That includes the media. Disorganised groups have overturned concentratios of power far more pronounced than what we have in the U.S. (We have high inequality. But our elite is still usefully fractured.)

> channeling that anger towards scapegoats like immigrants or jews etc is an old and effective playbook and I don't see why we wouldn't call that distraction

Here I agree. But there are also powerful immigrant-born Americans and Jewish Americans who obviously don't want to be part of that, and who have influence over money, power and media.

Everyone is trying to consolidate power. But that's an exclusionary imperative. Hence, political competition.

[lossolo]

Seems like free speech didn't help Americans avoid becoming economic slaves.

[khriss]

> The politics in this country have been intentionally broken going back to Clinton and Obama.

Ahh yes, the presidents from the other party, including the one currently in office, who runs arguably the most brazenly corrupt administrations in US history, having tripled his family's net worth in a single year is of course entirely blame free /s.