American Politics

[Heather]

>Bush vs Gore
Let's also not forget that that was the eighth time in American history that the Electoral College McFucked up and the loser of the popular vote was elected.

[Princess Ana]

Do we mention the Supreme Court case and general amount of suspicion around the events surrounding it?

Granted, it is definitely not in the same league as Trump crying that the election is rigged and he wants to hold the whole thing up longer than it should 2016 is bad enough.

[Rangeet]

The really funny part of this story is where Trump says "I've been very good at predicting things.

[Shuckle]

Originally Posted by Snorby

I mean, if you want to make the umbrella that massive, any two things can be made alike. Are North Korea and the UK the same because they're both places on Earth? Are Bobby Jindaal and Donald Trump alike because they're both Pro-Life? Are William Henry Harrison and Thomas Jefferson the same because they were both Presidents? Are the grass and the sky the same because you see them both when you walk outside?

For example, yes, both parties want bigger government in some areas and smaller in others. However, that doesnt make them the same. The Democrats want to control the economy more but loosen restrictions on more social, personal things. The Republicans want the exact opposite.

Many things that link you gave us lists are outright falsehoods. The likes of Ted Cruz absolutely do not support Keynesian economics and anyone who thinks that needs to take economics again.

Even if all 100 were actually correct, that wouldn't change the fact that it shows just 100 similarities. Just the 111th Congress worked with over 13,500 pieces of legislation. That means even if EVERY THING THAT THE ARTICLE CITES CAME UP (they surely didn't), less than 0.7% of legislation dealt with would have received bipartisan support. To imply that less than 1 in 100 acts of congress receiving bipartisan support makes the parties equal is woefully ignorant. At that point, why don't we say George Washington is Hitler because they both inspired their citizens and were important leaders in their time?

"By looking at the differences between individual members of the two parties I can clearly see that they are very different."

They're polarized, sure, and disagree frequently and publicly - but both parties are trying to do what is best for the country. Morally, ethically, financially, legally, and constitutionally.

Do you think that guns should be taken away from gun owners who do not abuse their right to bear arms by hurting others?

Do you think that the nation has a moral responsibility to pass laws that protect all its citizens regardless of color, sex, sexuality, or creed?

Do you think that Muslims have the right to practice their religion in a manner that does not interfere with the rights of others?

The Democrats want to control the economy more but loosen restrictions on more social, personal things. The Republicans want the exact opposite.

Wrooooooooong. Democrats lean authoritarian and Republicans lean libertarian. I am aware that there are exceptions. We're just talking about party averages here.

Democrats seek to restrict people's abilities to abuse the rights of others. They don't "loosen restrictions," they impose restrictions that end well for disenfranchised groups of people. Ex. Obamacare succeeded in providing affordable healthcare across the country by restricting and wrangling with health care providers and insurance companies that did not meet a minimum standard of care or abused their clients, then providing tax credits to the consumers to sign up for better and now-cheaper insurance plans.

It failed by forcing many people to leave health care providers who may not have met those minimum standards but who were very helpful and personal to many people - those getting specialized and individual treatment from organizations who fell short on required kinds of general care, for example. It also didn't predict that people are apparently total idiots who don't understand what "insurance" is.

Republicans seek to loosen financial, social, and personal restrictions. They favor deregulation and the relaxing of restrictions. This is good in many ways because it allows citizens to live without restriction or silencing, and it's very in line with what the Constitution says about the country. However, like above, the rights granted by this philosophy come at the cost of others' rights, and it's not always the government's rights the way Republicans want it to be.

If you ask a Republican about gay marriage, they'll probably say something like "I don't oppose it in general and I don't hate gay people, but I don't want my church to do it." The general feeling is that of being forced to be tolerant and compliant. Funny and not understandable to you, I know. Trust me, I know, I don't understand it perfectly either. But Republicans don't understand many things about Democrats! Like how Democrats claim that the :^) is a hate symbol when it's clearly just a smiling frog

You're about to reference abortion rights as an example of why Republicans want to restrict social and personal freedoms. Many Democrats oppose abortion as well - you can find shitloads of them in New England. The battle between a women's right to choose and an unborn child's right to live does not fall along party lines, but instead along religious lines. It's not a Republican thing. The reason Republicans tend to oppose abortion is because religious communities tend to be Republican. This is in turn because religious communities tend to do many of the things that the government does under a Democrat system. They see the government as being too expansive and too restrictive of their right to practice their religion, and they consider many public services as the government sticking its fingers into places that they are already handling.

You'd be hard pressed to find examples of Republicans doing anything but trying to lift restrictions and deregulate industries.

OBVIOUSLY, as you all WELL know because you tend to be Democrats, the removal of these restrictions usually ends up in someone's rights being infringed on. Most of the time, a restriction the Republicans want gone is something that would allow them to abuse or discriminate against some kinds of groups.

Does this make sense?

[Snorby]

Originally Posted by Shuckle

"By looking at the differences between individual members of the two parties I can clearly see that they are very different."

They're polarized, sure, and disagree frequently and publicly - but both parties are trying to do what is best for the country. Morally, ethically, financially, legally, and constitutionally.

Do you think that guns should be taken away from gun owners who do not abuse their right to bear arms by hurting others?

Do you think that the nation has a moral responsibility to pass laws that protect all its citizens regardless of color, sex, sexuality, or creed?

Do you think that Muslims have the right to practice their religion in a manner that does not interfere with the rights of others?

Once again, if you make the umbrella broad enough, any two things can be made similar. A poor man and the rat who lives in his basement are both working to provide food for their respective families. This does not make them alike. Of course a political party would be pushing the political agenda they believe to be right. But if you can only find similarities between two things on the most basic of levels, they're fundamentally dissimilar.

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

I'm not even going to bother responding to the rest of your post because it is so condescending and makes so many unsubstantiated assumptions that I would rather not read it again.

[Mozz]

Shuckle, why do you think that Wall Street supports HRC 99% to 1%? The 'moderate' Democrats are just as in the pocket of big business as moderate Republicans. Wall St. does not want to change the status quo, whether that's Trump or Bernie.

[Doppleganger]

Rich Wall Streeters (is that a term?) and boomers near retirement don't want a change to the status quo. Because they've been paying very high prices for stocks in the status quo and don't want to watch their fortunes halve or worse.

Me? I'm allllll fine with the stock market going thermonuclear. It's a great way to make me rich!

[Shuckle]

Originally Posted by Mozz

Shuckle, why do you think that Wall Street supports HRC 99% to 1%? The 'moderate' Democrats are just as in the pocket of big business as moderate Republicans. Wall St. does not want to change the status quo, whether that's Trump or Bernie.

HRC isn't a liberal Democrat and Trump isn't a conservative Republican.

Originally Posted by Snorby

Once again, if you make the umbrella broad enough, any two things can be made similar. A poor man and the rat who lives in his basement are both working to provide food for their respective families. This does not make them alike. Of course a political party would be pushing the political agenda they believe to be right. But if you can only find similarities between two things on the most basic of levels, they're fundamentally dissimilar.

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

The most basic level is that both parties are (mostly) made of humans who (usually) eat and breathe.

It's pretty commonly acknowledged that the main difference between the parties is execution nowadays; Republicans don't like the way Democrats do things and vice versa. Looking at the things they generally want (ex. "responsible gun control" and "individual equal rights") is a good way to tell if the parties are truly polarized over something - ex. abortion, immigration, etc.

Tbh this argument is silly, accomplishes nothing, is based on a very tenuous "fact," and goes absolutely nowhere so I vote we drop it on the grounds that there's nothing to argue.

I'm not even going to bother responding to the rest of your post because it is so condescending and makes so many unsubstantiated assumptions that I would rather not read it again.[/COLOR]

I'm sorry about the tone of my post. It's not that important anyways, it was just a strongly worded nitpick.

[Shuckle]

Spoiler: show

Remember when I said weird shit about BLM being a "conservative" group that "used conservative cultural markers"?

This is what I mean.

Kind of highlights how stupid the racial tensions are in America. Most of the people clashing belong to the same cultural spirit of rural low-income America. They have the same background. Really, we're not so different after all.

Also the comments section for this video is remarkably mature. Perfect satire!

[Doppleganger]

That actually brings up a good memory when I was in Alabama. I went to a Hardees and there was this white guy and black guy in the line ahead of me and they just started chatting it up like it was nothing.

That said though, I think the racial tension thing is a culture clash between socioeconomic status, not a matter between people of the same status. Policemen tend to not be poor, rural white men. They tend to be among the higher social status in a rural community - not the top, like the guys who become managers of some generic industry, but significantly higher. And I think that's what causes the friction.

[Princess Ana]

Where is that SNL skit where Alec Baldwin imitated Trump so I can use it to justify my world view.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Emi

Where is that SNL skit where Alec Baldwin imitated Trump so I can use it to justify my world view.

Which one. He's been on the show now about twice as much as Larry David (playing Bernie Sanders) has been. In the last month alone, he's made no fewer than three appearances, playing Trump in SNL's roast of all three presidential debates.

[Princess Ana]

Oh well that goes to show how much I keep up with SNL.

I mean it was more a jab at the fact that Shuckle is using an SNL skit to justify his views of BLM instead of using, well, virtually anything else that would make sense in that context: BLM speeches, rallies, opinions and views of prominent BLM activists and so on and so forth.

[SoS]

God Tom Hanks needs to do more comedy

[Princess Ana]

Yeah he was pretty damn good in that skit I'll admit.

[Stealthy]

Black Jeopardy always delivers the laughs.

[Shuckle]

Originally Posted by Emi

Oh well that goes to show how much I keep up with SNL.

I mean it was more a jab at the fact that Shuckle is using an SNL skit to justify his views of BLM instead of using, well, virtually anything else that would make sense in that context: BLM speeches, rallies, opinions and views of prominent BLM activists and so on and so forth.

It's satire babe, I can and do use Onion articles to illustrate my point on some issues.

I've talked about BLM before and that will probably never change. The mission of BLM is to end police and court injustice. This is a goal everyone can and should get behind. Full stop. Don't try to think of anything beyond that. It ends in tears and the realization that BLM was created by 3 college students after they took 1 seminar about community organization.

[Princess Ana]

Don't call me babe. Please.

[Mozz]

Originally Posted by Shuckle

It's satire babe, I can and do use Onion articles to illustrate my point on some issues.

I've talked about BLM before and that will probably never change. The mission of BLM is to end police and court injustice. This is a goal everyone can and should get behind. Full stop. Don't try to think of anything beyond that. It ends in tears and the realization that BLM was created by 3 college students after they took 1 seminar about community organization.

Oof

[Concept]

Originally Posted by Heather

>Bush vs Gore
Let's also not forget that that was the eighth time in American history that the Electoral College McFucked up and the loser of the popular vote was elected.

This isn't so much an electoral college fuck up as the way your electoral system is designed. The US being a federal nation, the electoral system isn't intended to put the winner of the popular vote into the White House; it's intended to elect whoever can best lead the 50 individual states, with states weighted according to essentially how important their support is (which is in turn related heavily to their population - iirc states get one EC vote for each senator and representative, and the number of representatives is determined by population). If your presidential elections never elected the loser of the popular vote, that would be a failure of what your system is intended to do.

Whether you think your system should be designed that way is a separate question.

>Rangeet

So, short version of this; I'm not trying to equate Republicans and Democrats here. Hell I'm pretty heavily Democrat with a few exceptions. Are you familiar with the work of a psychologist (and Nobel Prize winner in Economics) Daniel Kahneman? His book Thinking, Fast and Slow popularised a viewpoint in psychology (although the idea long predates him) that essentially argues that the reasoning we give when asked why we make a particular choice actually bare little to no resemblance to the reasons we actually made that choice. A number of brain scan studies have allowed scientist to quite reliably predict what choice someone will make between two things before they're aware of having made it, and also that the areas of the brain that light up when they're asked to explain their choice are entirely different from the ones that light up when actually making it. The conclusion; the logical arguments we put forward as the reasons that we believe something have nothing to do with why we actually believe it, and we're basically incapable of admitting this to ourselves. Combine that with the idea that debating/arguing evolved as a form of exerting social dominance (and that therefore people who were more willing to change their viewpoints in light of counter evidence faced a serious evolutionary disadvantage) and you reach another conclusion; for any position we feel strongly about, the arguments we put forward for it could be - and honestly, quite probably are - complete gibberish, but we'd be almost biologically incapable of realising it.

Let's take this into the realm of politics now. I could sit here waxing lyrical about the virtues of gay marriage or cannabis legalisation or socialised healthcare until the cows come home. I could produce all sorts of logical arguments and statistics in their favour. However, the psychology argues that a) I've actually picked my positions based on illogical cognitive biases, I just think I picked rationally and b) there's no reason whatsoever to assume that there's any resemblance between what feels like an objective good argument to me and actual, objective truth. The two pounds of fat sitting inside my skull is quite capable making me think I've worked out the objective right answer but equally incapable of working out an actual, objective right answer. In fact, since psychologically speaking I've picked my positions on my deeply held beliefs arbitrarily out of hundreds or thousands of possible positions chances are I'm wrong on all of them. Maybe on a grand scale or maybe only in minor detail, but wrong nonetheless.

Tl;dr version; the science argues that no matter how watertight a logical argument in favour of a position you or I strongly support looks to us, it's almost certainly wrong in at least some aspect - and we'd be almost completely unable to finds its flaws or even acknowledge them if pointed out to us. It also means that no matter how strong your argument may seem to you, there's zero reason whatsoever for you to believe you're more likely to be right than someone who holds the exact opposite viewpoint to you on every single issue, so acting like your view is superior to theirs is at best ridiculous and rather unhelpful in a civilised, democratic society.

So pragmatically speaking, what do we do about this? Withdrawing from the electoral system entirely by refusing to vote just cripples it, it solves nothing. The best I can come up with starts with education in an effort to make the population at large less susceptible to logical fallacies anecdotal evidence. The best we can do individually is vote based on the strongest arguments we have ans hope that any small correlation between an objective argument and our individual subjective argument tells out in sufficiently large numbers of voters - the "wisdom of crowds", as it were. Moreover, we should favor electoral systems that end up requiring compromise to pass legislation, rather than those that allow cohesive groupings to assert their view unilaterally (see also; why I'm opposed to the existence of political parties in general).

[Heather]

Originally Posted by Concept

This isn't so much an electoral college fuck up as the way your electoral system is designed.

That's precisely what I mean: by a design flaw it picked the candidate that a majority of the country voted against. If that isn't a gaffe, then what is?

[Princess Ana]

I'm gonna be quite honest most of America's voters are dumb and the Founding Fathers kind of expected this would be the case.

A number of brain scan studies have allowed scientist to quite reliably predict what choice someone will make between two things before they're aware of having made it, and also that the areas of the brain that light up when they're asked to explain their choice are entirely different from the ones that light up when actually making it. The conclusion; the logical arguments we put forward as the reasons that we believe something have nothing to do with why we actually believe it, and we're basically incapable of admitting this to ourselves.

Alternative Conclusion: Our brain delegates different areas of the brain to do different things and that they are still all interconnected anyways, because that's really what it sounds like to me. This is actually _really_ common even for something as simple as speech: speech is affected by several different parts of the brain at any point.

[Concept]

Originally Posted by Emi

Alternative Conclusion: Our brain delegates different areas of the brain to do different things and that they are still all interconnected anyways, because that's really what it sounds like to me. This is actually _really_ common even for something as simple as speech: speech is affected by several different parts of the brain at any point.

Which is.. what I said? One part is (so the argument goes) doing the actual decision making and another is coming up with the rational-sounding reasoning we give when asked why we made that choice. The point is that the rational, reasoning bit isn't engaged until after the decision has already been made which means it - and the rational arguments it comes up with - play no part in actually making the decision. For those things we have gut feelings about, the arguments we give for believing those things are nothing to do with why we believe them so much as they are merely for justifying ourselves afterwards. I'm not pulling pop science conclusions out of thin air here, this is a well established position (albeit not universally accepted) amongst researchers with decades more experience and expertise than you or I will ever have.

Of course this whole idea makes people very uncomfortable because we like to think of ourselves as intelligent, rational beings who've distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom in some meaningful way when in reality our entire selves is merely the product of two pounds of fat in a vat of chemicals and several hundred million years of evolutionary tinkering.

Amusing/interesting side note; the results of these kind of experiments (and, relatedly, many experiments in cognitive bias) show greatly reduced results amongst people on the autistic spectrum. They're demonstrably less burdened with some of the idiocies of our evolutionary history.

[Sparkbeat]

Originally Posted by Heather

That's precisely what I mean: by a design flaw it picked the candidate that a majority of the country voted against. If that isn't a gaffe, then what is?

But it doesn't? That's a misunderstanding of the electoral system. You can't vote against anyone. It would just mean more people voted for one candidate over another.

But yeah the whole system sucks because states are just so big and have so many different kinds of people, and the winner take all system of American politics just isn't practical anymore because of the diversity within states themselves.

[Concept]

Originally Posted by Heather

That's precisely what I mean: by a design flaw it picked the candidate that a majority of the country voted against. If that isn't a gaffe, then what is?

You're coming at this from the assumption that the more accurately an electoral system represents the majority opinion, the better it is - this is not a given. Historically speaking* the system you use to elect your President is a compromise between those who felt as you do and those who viewed the federal system more as akin to states as almost independent nations who happened to collaborate together on on a very narrow, strictly defined range of matters where it was in their mutual interest. If you take the latter view then it's more important that the President commands the confidence of the bulk of state governments, rather than the bulk of the population. The compromise they reached was to do it on a state basis but to weight the states votes by their population.

Of course, the idea of the US federal system as almost independent nations that collaborated on specific areas kind of fell apart when their right to self determination (as represented by their right to withdraw from the union) was trampled all over in the Civil War. On balance with the alternative being slavery, this was a necessary evil.

*I may have a very simplistic view of American history, not being American myself, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.