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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
From my perspective, the elephant in the room is that the geographic isolation of rural Trump supporting communities prevents them from emphasizing with the social developments and conflicts largely confined to the cities that most of us urban dwellers have taken for granted.
Thus, the clearest remedy for the federal and state governments to cooperate in overseeing a mass migration from the densely populated urban centers to surrounding rural regions, developing infrastructure and allowing the country folk to socially and psychologically connect with the city folk they so long have resented. The problem is that, unlike the old Soviet Union, the modern US doesn't have the political capital among its citizens to commit to such a sweeping social project.
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Oh I agree with you, their system is horrible, and doesn't even come close to making up for the drawbacks of non-democratic rule with the paltry improvements on the issues I mentioned. (I'm not advocating for it, just saying that if people find the particular problems with democracy I mentioned intolerable, they should look at what their other options are) Yet they're slated to displace the United States as a global hegemon in the near future, and are even better than Trump at defying expectations of imminent collapse. Which suggests they're doing something right.
Advances in medical technology could very easily offset their demographic problems, and they're actually taking climate change seriously in contrast to the United States and Russia.
edited 4th Apr '17 2:46:44 PM by CaptainCapsase
We have to understand that since Obama, charisma become more and more favorable trait amount candidate and yes I said since obama because he used a simple slogan to seel is policy while Trum being the cheap knock off he is just did the same but in the other direction.
If you compare Trump to other republicans you can see they are too old school, to soft, more wiling to used dogwhistle than populism, the only acusation of elitism I can pin on H Ilary is pretty much that: she sound like good politician but not someone who can really inspired like Obama.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"In....West Virginia? Which would go red no matter what? Why is I never see you attack voter suppression with the same fervor, btw? Because that sure as hell swung Wisconsin.
So your point of "but the primary" fails?
Oh, give the Young Turks bullshit a rest, will you? Boo hoo, Sanders had to sell himself to the Democrats to win the Democratic nomination. And all those open Primaries in the South, but they weren't really trying there and black voters are the old confederacy, so it doesn't really matter as much.
So Bernie couldn't even win 'safe blue states.' Like California. New York. Massachusetts. Connecticut. Maryland. Oh, he didn't win Virginia, either.
And Bernie lost a fucking primary to begin with. How does this assist your overall conclusion? What we know is Clinton lost by 100 thousand votes only after the FBI director inappropiately inserted himself in.
None of those are self evident. And the socialist guy who tells them they don';t know what it's like to be poor if they're white? Yeah, good luck.
No. You don't get to brush off the massive amount of forces working against her because it's convenient for your narrative. It was not a bad campaign alone which sunk her. She could have made those errors and still won if not for Comey.
The rest is an overly hysteric article against Perez that ignores his actual work. Oh people thought Perez would do a better job and thus far he's made Ellison a key part of his role. IT also goes to what I said: you overlook Perez's policies and history because you need a villain in this. And if the REAL Tom Perez won't do...
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2018 and 2020 will be the true test of which faction here is right and which is wrong. Though I have a bad feeling even that won't stop the blame game.
I'm sorry as well for being kind of snide and adversarial in my own responses, and am in turn grateful for your own apology. I really do agree with you in principle on the issues I think, despite the heated exchanges we've had in the past.
edited 4th Apr '17 2:56:30 PM by CaptainCapsase
I do actually agree with the premise that many, many voters need to be spoon-fed oversimplified concepts because they have neither the attention span nor the willingness to actually listen to an hour-long speech about foreign policy. This does not, however, mean we need to start pandering to racists and the like. We just need to learn how to summarize important shit into snappy sound-bites like conservatives do with their toxic doctrine.
That's part of the reason Obama was so successful. He didn't just have great ideas and progressive policies. He could also make them snappy. He was a very funny guy who said shit in terms that the uneducated, ign'ant assholes like me understood.
With Obama, it was really easy to feel like he got us because he had a profound sense of humor that resonated with us and he knew how to make points on our level. I remember during the Congressional shutdown, he made a speech about that infamous Republican line:
"We're going to get something out of this and I don't know what that is."
And rather than talk about the dangers of obstructionism or the effects of budget disagreement, Obama laid it out plain in words we understood: "If you just refused to do your job and said that at work, you'd get fired!" Yes, we would. It was a complex concept communicated in a way that the simple man can easily grasp.
edited 4th Apr '17 3:00:10 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Because I have nothing to say about it besides "it's bad". -shrugs-
Because the only Democrats in the south are black, right? It wasn't a sweeping generalization, it was a pointed attack from Bernie to black voters, huh? Just to let you know I'm rolling my eyes here.
Obama didn't win in safe blue states like California, New York and Massachusetts. Guess he was weak too.
Because a primary isn't a general election. It's a choice among Democrats with some independents. It takes no account into how the candidate would play in a general election.
A strong candidate could've crushed Trump despite that. Clinton's favorablity numbers were almost as abysmal as Trump's during the election, ya know.
The socialist part definitely is. He markets himself as a Democratic Socialist.
Said socialist is the most popular politician atm. His approval numbers are higher than Obama's.
She could've had a good campaign and won despite what Comey did. -shrugs-
Thanks for side-stepping the article. Now go after it by making rational points as to why you think it's all nonsense.
I mean you even said no one urged Tom Perez to run. I linked you an article stating otherwise.
And the article goes pretty in-depth as to why Tom Perez was even pushed to begin with when Ellison's record is just as good and had the support of the left.
@Fighteer: The point is, however, that a President needs to be a salesman first and foremost. That's reality; if you "refuse to accede to such a world," then you're yelling at the mountain and telling it to move. And part of being a salesman is being able to condense everything into a pitch that you can deliver to someone over the duration of an elevator ride. You have to have an underlying plan, of course (preferably not one studded with magic asterisks), but voters are going to vote based on the elevator pitch.
My two cents on the slogans vs. In-depth policies: The "solution" if you want the second is to overhaul education, especially civics (or whatever name is given to the part where you're supposed to learn about how government works and politics). Until such a thing is possible, the Democratic party should give the candidates they run some classes in acting and oratory and get a good advertising team.
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KVEven if people have a civics education, the "you have two minutes to make a pitch" rule is still going to be around. So the Democratic Party still needs to be able to come up with Presidents who can communicate, who can be face men for their policies, and who can come up with good one-liners when the situation calls for them.
Heck, that was part of why Romney went down despite Obama's hatedom having built to a nuclear fury. (The other part was that Romney was successfully tagged with a catchy meme about an Etch-A-Sketch, which dominated the discussion even on the right wing.)
Yeah, I'm basically with Tobias on this one.
The simple fact of the matter is that most people don't really understand the nuances of policy, their government, or economics very well, because to properly understand those things you have to spend some time and trying to seriously wrap your head around it. Only the very invested ever do so.
So it IS important to be able to deliver things in a simple way that the layman will understand. Being able to have nuanced discussions of policy without having to rely on that is a long term problem that can only really be fixed with better education.
Donald Trump Finally donated his salary to the NPS, keeping his campaign promises. The problem is his budget, also calls for massive cuts to the Department of the Interior. The Sierra Club and several park rangers were not impressed, calling it a publicity Stunt.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/03/news/trump-salary-national-parks/
So what do you guys think?
Edit: Sierra Club also calls it a "Giant Fake Check"
edited 4th Apr '17 3:36:59 PM by megaeliz
I posted this several pages back, but I don't know if anyone noticed.
https://twitter.com/burnedyourtweet
I swear, this is one of the most strangely satisfying things ever. It's really stupid but, it just feels good watching trumps tweets go up in flames.
Also since he donated his salary he can get a tax deduction. For whatever donating $78,333.32, gets you.
He proposes cutting 12 percent from the Dep. of the interiors budget. this means that would take 1,531 more Trump paychecks to make that up.
Also it could apparently cover about a half day of the security at Trump tower.
(and do check out burned your tweet, made my day the first time I saw it.)
edited 4th Apr '17 3:47:59 PM by megaeliz
And that would be the real reason he donated it, publicity's a bonus.
@Ramidel: well, yeah, it wouldn't solve every problem with elections-as-marketing, but it should help by creating a higher percentage of informed voters. You'd probably have to add some "news analysis" and/or rhetoric classes if you want to "immunize" people from that style of politics, and since we're here, some regulations on news and advertising.
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KVPersonally I think we need a complete overhaul of the Public School system. The current system focuses to little on actual life skills, such as how to look critically at news, how to be an involved citizen, and practical skills in general. Many people come out of school not knowing anything about civics, or other ways to participate in Government beyond voting in presidential elections.
edited 4th Apr '17 4:08:30 PM by megaeliz
Borrowing another system that worked for us (and one that might be practical/feasible to implement in the US), I'd have the following subjects be mandatory in high school for multiple years:
1) Political/social science. Essentially a civics 101 course. How Congress vs. state legislature works, how the branches of government intersect, critical reading of popular and politicized media. Have a little bit of econ 101 or geopolitics in there for good measure.
2) Religion. Doesn't need to be super involved, just go through the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), maybe Buddhism if there's time. Cover their history, their belief systems, maybe have programs where you visit institutions practicing a particular faith (though I do not trust the red states with that kind of power), but most importantly, cover them from a secular perspective.
3) Philosophy. Maybe I'm just a bleeding-heart humanist at heart, but I get really goddamn tired of the 'lel what's philosophy good for' memes. It's actually extremely useful for navigating the modern world.
edited 4th Apr '17 4:04:52 PM by math792d
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Add something on how propaganda (and all of those "technically not advertising" things) works and I think that seems like a good list. Except maybe the religion part, I don't trust local US politicians (or those in my country, for that matter) to not pervert that into "Islam terrorists, Jews greedy, convert to MY sect of Christianity or go to hell". And philosophy as philosophy, not (history of) philosophy but without teaching how to do philosophy at all.
Guys, about Russia. I kinda wish the media didn't start with it until after the investigation was done, I know there is more proof of it and I know their is genuine concern of incompetence and or malice instead of naked racism but I don't want this to turn into the Democrat's version of the "Birth Certificate Controversy" A.K.A "Birther Theory" in the minds of mostly apathetic swing voters.

>Chinese model
>responsive authoritarianism
The Chinese model is anything but responsive. It is a quagmire of internal politics, backstabbing and cronyism. All the things you listed, the experts rule, the meritocracy and long term planning simply don't exist.
The only long term adaptations the Chinese Communist Party took towards China population and territory were merely to keep their rule as the only one viable and to attempt to address any existential threat to the CCP. Everything else long term or short term that doesn't fit their political goal of being the defacto rulers of China in the foreseeable future isn't even an issue worth addressing.
What does exist is a tight information control that keeps scandals and corruption away from the public (and those are only out when it is convenient for them like as an excuse to get rid of political rivals) and the propaganda arm being strong and widespread enough to convince people at home and abroad that their political system is harmonious, stable and capable. Which for anyone keeping tabs on the East Asian News & Politics thread knows that the Chinese government being a suitable replacement for democratic government is a sheer myth.
Inter arma enim silent leges