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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It also baffles me how in the States voter suppression is so easily accomplished as by simply reducing the number of polling places. In France, you're not supposed to have less than one polling place for 800-1000 people.
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."We have an electoral college too (it elects our senate), but it's comprised of downticket elected people (mayors etc.) and the people's vote is about putting them in these downticket offices in the first place, not about choosing whom they're supposed to vote for.
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."Forgot for a second that people outside Arizona might not be familiar with our lovely former Maricopa Sherrif, Joe Arpaio, so here's the basics: anytime you hear about racism directed towards Latinos, unlawful enforcement of immigration laws, or just in general racism and racial profiling surrounding the area around the US-Mexican border, that's him. He just got kicked out of office, and he started in 1993, so while I want to be ecstatic that he's finally gone, Trump getting the title of President-Elect makes it feel like a Pyrrhic Victory.
A Pyrrhic Victory is when you lose the war because of how you won the battle. It doesn't just mean winning the battle but losing the war.
Rather, the style of short-term "victory" must be what causes the war to be lost.
For example, if the American public turn against the Republicans, it'll likely be because of their current victory and them screwing around with it.
However, voting out a local asshole didn't cause Trump to win; thus it's not an example.
edited 8th Dec '16 5:14:46 AM by BonsaiForest
Alright, so I kind of misused Pyrrhic Victory; too bad there's no trope for 'won the battle, but lost the war'.
Spin machine works very fast, arguing with a couple more intellectual right-wingers on facebook that the Democrats did not just engage in identity politics and racebaiting, that we had a strong economic platform and actually won on people who were more concerned about the economy, the big loss was on terrorism and, yes, racism.
But it's disturbing how quickly Clinton's entire economic platform is being buried and people are reducing the Democrats' loss to "cared about minorities in exclusion of whites."
I presume it's advance covering their asses for when it turns out that automation isn't reversible.
Oh, and for some reason the Department of Defense decided to attack Colin Kaepernick on Twitter
. They took it down, of course.
SpookyMask: Unless you can somehow conjure up a significant other that ticks every Author Appeal box of mine that can distract me from all of this, you can forget about things changing
It's only going to get worse when Trump gets to install his cronies into office. Naturally, like the nearly 1000 hate crimes in the past month alone, it'll be completely ignored by the media in favor of treating him like an "outrageous" reality TV star for more ratings as they gut the nation and order deniable hits from his legion of thugs on Twitter let alone when they can order the CIA to do it.
People have no idea what the have just unleashed.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all" Futurama, Godfellas![]()
Nine times out of ten, hysterically screaming "Won't somebody please think of the children!?" is a ploy to do something really bad, because if you're against it you clearly don't care what happens to the kids.
edited 8th Dec '16 6:43:44 AM by Zendervai
"So wait, you guys are still in doomsday apocalypse end of the world mode?"
Not really — if it an apocalyptic scenario or the more likely torrent of mediocrity, it's still something we as a country brought on ourselves and richly deserve to suffer for because we, as a civilization, are utter rubbish. A lot of innocent people who didn't vote for Trump are going to suffer having Trump's yoke around their necks, and that's where our sympathy and our support — political, moral, financial — should be directed. We'll also have to start looking locally, to our states, cities, and neighborhoods, because the opportunity for sweeping reform has ended, probably forever, and while cities like Boston and San Francisco and Seattle and New York, and the blue states, will probably endure as progressive bastions, America as an idea, a creature rooted in liberal democracy, is probably finished for good.
At best, all of us will be on our deathbeds before they even begin to undo the damage Trump's administration will have caused. Reagan's influence is still being felt, and he was elected thirty-six years ago, when my mother was sixteen. Trump's reactionary leadership will be even harder to undo. I hate the idea of existing in a liminal era of rebuilding, transition, and repair, because I'm actually a little worried that America will be utter shit for the entirety of my lifetime.
edited 8th Dec '16 6:55:16 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Idiots already think that the Pizzagate moron who tried to investigate one of the pizza chains at gun point is a false flag operation, because said moron is a failed actor and has few gigs on, I shit you not, short movies and he played the gunmen in one called Something about pizza
.
Also another reason why information bubbles and the lack of basic skepticism on social media harms democracy.
Commentary: Facebook and Twitter’s real sin goes beyond spreading fake news
By Philip N. Howard
Social media companies are taking heat for influencing the outcomes of the U.S. presidential election and Brexit referendum by allowing fake news, misinformation campaigns and hate speech to spread.
But Facebook and Twitter’s real sin was an act of omission: they failed to contribute to the data that democracy needs to thrive. While sitting on huge troves of information about public opinion and voter intent, social media firms watched as U.S. and UK pollsters, journalists, politicians and civil society groups made bad projections and poor decisions with the wrong information.
The data these companies collect, for example, could have told us in real-time whether fake news was having an impact on voters. Information garnered from social media platforms could have boosted voter turnout as citizens realized the race was closer than the polls showed – and that their votes really would matter. Instead, these companies let the United States and UK tumble into a democratic deficit, with political institutions starved of quality data on public opinion.
Legally, social media companies aren’t obligated to share data in the public interest. And what they can share is always shaped by users’ privacy settings, country-specific rules about selling personal information, and the particular deals companies like Facebook and Twitter make with third party businesses. But they are now the primary platforms for political conversation. As such, they should act in ways that support democratic practices, especially around sensitive political moments like elections.
Facebook and Twitter have the ability to reach, and target, millions of voters. From the minute you sign up on one of these platforms, the companies use data about your behavior, interests, family and friends to recommend news and new social connections. And they sell this data to other companies for even deeper analysis on what you might buy and what you think about important social issues.
By examining data about the connections you make and content you share, social media companies can make powerful inferences about whether you are likely to vote, how you are likely to vote, and what kinds of news or advertisements might encourage or discourage you to engage as a citizen.
Social media firms regularly study the news consumption habits of users, producing fine-grained analysis of the causes and consequences of political polarization on its platform. To that end, only Facebook and Twitter know how pervasive fabricated news stories and misinformation campaigns have become during referendums and elections. They know who clicked on what links, how much time each user spent reading an “article,” and where the user was physically located.
If the companies merged user data with other datasets – say, from credit card records or voter registration files – they may even know the user’s voting history and which political groups the user has donated to. These companies know enough about voter attitudes to serve up liberal news to liberals and conservative news to conservatives, or fake news to undecided voters.
During the recent U.S. presidential election, there was a worrying amount of false information on both Facebook and Twitter, and research suggests that many users can’t distinguish between real and fabricated news. My own research on this “computational propaganda” shows that Facebook and Twitter can be easily used to poison political conversations. Trump campaigners were particularly good at using bots – basic software programs with communication skills – to propagate lies. Bogus news sites were started just to make money for their founders, but undoubtedly influenced some voters' view when manipulated images and false reports went viral.
Several major U.S. tech companies have since announced steps to reign in fabricated news. In response to criticism about the spread of misinformation on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg described in a post some of the projects the company already has underway, including making it easier for users to report fake news. Facebook has also updated its advertising policies to spell out that its ban on deceptive and misleading content applies to this type of content. Google has said it is working to prevent websites that spread bogus news from using its advertising platform. But more can be done.
While social media use has been on the rise, our systems for measuring public opinion have been breaking down. Telephone- and internet-based surveys are increasingly inaccurate. With so many people on mobile phones, consuming political content that comes to them through friends, family and Facebook, traditional polling companies no longer get a full picture of what the public knows and wants.
For modern democracies to work, three kinds of polling systems need to be up and running. First, nationwide exit polls, which identify mistakes in how elections are run, helping to confirm or refute claims of fraud. For several decades exit polling was coordinated by major news outlets, but the coalition broke down in the United States in 2002 and 2005 in the UK. Today, exit polls are run haphazardly, and are more about predicting winners and outcomes than systematically checking the results.
Second, democracies need a regular supply of public policy polls so that journalists, public policy makers, civic groups and elected officials can understand public opinion before and after voting day.
Third, democracies need “deliberative polls” that put complex policy questions to representative groups of voters who are given time to evaluate the possible solutions. These kinds of polls engage citizens about public policy options through extended conversations with experts and each other. They lead to more informed decision-making.
Companies like Facebook and Twitter manage the platforms over which most citizens in advanced democracies now talk about politics, and they could be the critical new platforms for these polling systems. They could never completely replace existing techniques for measuring public opinion. But our existing polling systems are weakening, and social media platforms have an obvious role to play.
With the data at their disposal and the platforms they maintain, social media companies could raise standards for civility by refusing to accept ad revenue for placing fake news. They could let others audit and understand the algorithms that determine who sees what on a platform. Just as important, they could be the platforms for doing better opinion, exit and deliberative polling.
This year, Facebook and Twitter watched as ways of measuring public opinion collapsed. Allowing fake news and computational propaganda to target specific voters is an act against democratic values. But withholding data about public opinion is the major crime against democracy.
edited 8th Dec '16 7:04:56 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent leges![]()
This. As uncomfortable as it is to admit, the fact is that 25% of Americans voted for Trump, and another 50% didn't see fit to vote against him. This election represents a failure of us as a people, and we've thus accelerated our slide into totalitarian theocracy. Give me one shred of evidence to suggest otherwise.
I think the ultimate inconvenient truth of America is how truly unexceptional we really are and always have been. Our industry is gutted, our status as a center of trade and finance was only truly dominant when the world was bombed to oblivion and faced steepening competition since; we glorify our military as they continue to lose wars or win useless victories, and still believe that the machismo inherent to military action has left us with anything except empty coffers and resentment overseas, our children are middling in their education and our adult population is breathtaking in its utter stupidity and passivity, our religious organizations are reactionary, our science is underfunded and undermined, our politicians are sclerotic and hidebound or outwardly malevolent, and we look the other way when our militarized police force guns people down disproportionately or without cause, our newspapers and news channels have scarcely reported on anything worthwhile in twenty-five years, and we're so deeply hypocritical that we can compartmentalize voting for a spray-tanned fascist and still claim to be good people.
I disagree with Trump's thesis that America can be made great again, because there was never a time when we were great.
edited 8th Dec '16 7:29:13 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Depressing as this election and the aftermath of it has been, it's also been quite liberating for me. It's proven beyond a reasonable doubt that my fellow Americans (how I loathe myself for saying that) are all stupid, selfish, and utterly repugnant people, and that I no longer need to feel even the slightest twinge of conscience in viewing them as either tools (in both senses of the word) or obstacles since, in their view, that sort of mindset is a virtue worthy of praise and reward. I don't need to worry about actually being decent towards other people anymore, because they don't fucking deserve decency.
I hate everyone, and I can be at peace with that now. So thank you, Trump voters!
Someone did tell me life was going to be this way.To be fair, Zephyr, I think many countries suffer from many of the same problems. I don't think America is uniquely mediocre. If there's anything uniquely horrible about it, it's american exceptionalism, aka a refusal to accept its own problems in lieu of a masturbatory nationalism without critical self-evaluation.
I more subscribe to the idea that Humans Are Flawed more than anything else.
I understand this election has been very depressing but I don't think this is a healthy view to take in pretty much any situation. Remember that Trump lost the popular vote. Most people who decided to vote thought he was scum.
edited 8th Dec '16 7:58:41 AM by Draghinazzo
"Spin machine works very fast, arguing with a couple more intellectual right-wingers on facebook that the Democrats did not just engage in identity politics and racebaiting, that we had a strong economic platform and actually won on people who were more concerned about the economy, the big loss was on terrorism and, yes, racism.
But it's disturbing how quickly Clinton's entire economic platform is being buried and people are reducing the Democrats' loss to "cared about minorities in exclusion of whites."
Yeah, it's annoying that the news networks are now trying to rewrite the Clinton campaign as a failure, and that the Democrats picked a "bad" candidate. Last time I checked, a bad candidate doesn't win the popular vote.
edited 8th Dec '16 8:02:17 AM by speedyboris
@Zephyr: America is also home to the finest academic institutions in the world, and American corporations are generally on the cutting-edge of research.
But there's a massive divide in American society between the haves and the have-not's. That division is only getting worse with time. I just wish working class whites and working class minorities would realize their struggle is one and the same.
edited 8th Dec '16 8:18:45 AM by CaptainCapsase
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Thing about that is, most did not vote for Trump. Clinton actually beat Trump by over 2.5 million votes. The reason he was elected because of the quirks of our electoral system (a system designed theoretically to keep demagogues out, but ultimately favors right-wing demographics by weighing the vote of small states more).
I can certainly sympathize with holding Trump voters in contempt for what happens next, but just remember that there are much fewer of them then you think, and it's certainly no where near everyone.

Mostly I'm pissed off that voter suppression caused Arizona to swing red, even while we finally rid ourselves of the menace of Sheriff Arpaio.