this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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I prefer bringing up that in US "democracy" some votes count more than others. When trump won, more people voted for Clinton and for some reason yanks seem to be totally ok with this.
We are not ok with this, but changing the way it works is a herculean task. The people that it currently works for are very invested in keeping it that way.
But why is nobody even protesting it? Seems kind of a cornerstone of democracy, no? How could anything coming out of this system have any legitimacy?
Because it's easier for people to pretend already being busy (focusing on and protesting nonsensical and completely irrelevant shit) vs actually focusing on the primary and relevant things that are actually impacting their lives.
This is the most honest reply so far.
The media has done a pretty good job convincing the vast majority of Americans that we are the pinnacle of democracy and any change to that is either fascism or communism. Wanting a better system is intentionally painted as un-American.
"The media" sounds like a convenient scapegoat. Who gives a fuck about how things are painted? Do you really just go "well, I guess I better waive my right to having my vote count equally, don't want the neighbours to think I'm un-american" or is that just an excuse for lethargy? I don't mean to antagonise you but I think you should ask yourself some tough questions once in a while.
You have a great points, though your scenario is a bit too simple.
It's not that we're so fat and lethargic that we can't be bothered to get off the sofa long enough to effect meaningful change. It's that "the media" is gargantuan and goes far beyond the synthesized news cycles and reports. The OG social media outlets like churches, work culture, family structure, regional Identities, and every other socialized structure you can think of manifests itself into these ideals that have been pummeled into our head since the first time we stood up in preschool and recited the pledge of allegiance.
Making it more complicated is that our real concerns like, paying our bills, feeding our families, getting Timmy to soccer practice, protecting our kids, being a good employee so we don't lose our job, being a good dad, being a good son, keeping our relationships healthy, etc., etc. is condensed into an infantesimally small amount of time. When you finally get to stop you've only got the bandwidth for bullet points. It's not laziness, it's exhaustion. It's not lack of self-reflection, it's overclocking. We have an entire backbone population that's absolutely exhausted and still feeling like failures because somehow the American dream is feeling like a greasy, over-hustled nightmare that we're constantly struggling to live up to.
This cycle does lend itself to your headlines of gun violence, gladiator arena us v. them politics, and on, and on. The system with which we now live is a constant grinder that no longer leaves time for, nor praises individualism and ideas. It's a finely tuned revenue machine built on an overhauled slavery model that instead praises corporatism, classism, ruling parties, and residual monthly income... with a smiley face of nationalistic exceptionalism posted on the packaging.
Apologies for being so long winded, but some sympathy for the devil might be in order. We're largely not a bad people. Most of us are kind, optimistic, and try very hard to change the things we see out of place. The problem is we're becoming more and more just white noise in the background. A sort of spectre of idealisms past.
You make it sound like you're just a cog in a machine with no agency and I do believe that's what it feels like (other countries are in late capitalism, too) but you're not if enough of you band together. You're not forced to watch your life pass before your eyes, you choose to play along with the machine's game. Hell, you even got the guns to take what should be yours and you just use them to shoot at little paper targets.
I don't think of you as fat and lazy or the devil. It's just frustrating to see your potential go to waste like that.
I concur with all of your statements, to include the one concerning the realization of being a cog in the machine.
I have several errands to run, and would love to continue the discussion when I return, if you're amenable, of course.
I am and I'm looking forward to it. It might take a while before I can reply, though, so please don't think I'm ghosting you.
Great argument. Now instead of preaching to the choir, which is to say someone who already understands and agrees with you, why don't you elevate your message to all 400 million of us? You know, really get to the ones who don't understand they're being manipulated?
No? You won't do that? Don't you care about our right to vote and this democracy? Maybe you feel like it's just not your job. I don't know, sounds like another way to say you're just too lazy.
I don't mean to antagonize you, but you're the one insinuating that it just takes one person being unhappy about the system to change it. So you should ask yourself the same questions about why you can't do it yourself. Even if you don't live in the US, you have about the same resources as I do.
You took a comment that addressed noone in particular a bit personal and now pretend it was meant to start a revolution on a very niche corner of the internet. Not quite what I consider worth my time.
You wouldn't consider this addressing me in particular? Looks a little like you're avoiding a response because you don't have a good answer.
In any case, have fun preaching to people who live in a complex system about changes you don't really understand. For what it's worth, entertaining the naive notion of
Isn't really worth my time either.
That sentence upset you to the point you feel the need to insult my intelligence, misrepresent what is written, forget that "you" can mean people in general and ignore any clarification. That's regrettable as I'm sure you do actually understand what I'm trying to say here but can't address it over a perceived slight.
That sentence doesn't make sense addressed to people in general. No one says, "I didn't mean to antagonize you" to a large group of undefined people. Antagonize is pretty specific to a single subject.
Also, what clarification? The only response you made was to dutifully inform me that my challenge to your logic was beneath replying to.
Lastly, it's pretty clear what you were trying to say. That if only people realized that being un-American isn't the end of the world, maybe systemic changes could start happening.
What I'm saying to you is, about 150 million of us are so brainwashed and vehemently against opening their minds to that sort of change that they regularly float the idea of rounding up the rest of us to execute.
That's what our media does to us. And by "media", I don't mean the boogie man you decided that I meant, I mean conservative outlets like Fox News that captivate millions of our population and constantly send the message that the people actually trying to change things are evil and corrupt. That advocate for locking up the poor and shooting the protesters.
If you really think that can be overcome by a plurality of us "asking ourselves the hard questions", you're woefully naive about the actual situation.
If you want to paint me as the type to be offended at a perceived slight, understand that the slight in question is proposing an overly simplistic solution to a gargantuanly complex problem half a century in the making like we just "forgot" we can change the system.
I'm not trying to paint you anything, I'm just reading your replies. At least I did until now.
Likewise.
In America politicians choose their voters
Are those voters people with agency or just cattle? You realize your group is a lot bigger than the group that you watch exploiting you, right?
Isnβt that true for any representative democracy especially when gerrymandering is allowed? In Aus you can easily have a party win more than 50% of the vote but not get in because the votes were concentrated in vast-majority seats.
It absolutely isn't. There is no inherent reason why votes can't be added up and tallied in a straight forward way in a representative democracy.
It's not inherent to representative democracy but let's be honest most systems we use have flaws like that, including Europe.
(An exemple in Europe would be choosing only one individual to vote. Which divide voters of two close candidates and lower both of their score.)
And that's probably why we feel like most representatives democracy can't escape some of thoses problems.
Mathematically though there is some systems that have been proven to not have those same flaws.
Problem is, of course how hard it is to fix a system that can only be changed by the people that it favors.
No, that's not an example of votes not counting equally...? Am I misunderstanding your example?
You don't need some mathematical proof to just count all the votes and see which candidate got more votes. It's how most elections throughout the world work.
In Europe, the countries i know of at least, count each vote equally.
What i meant was that it doesn't mean it's a perfect system if your goal is democracy.
Other factors can totally break the purpose of counting votes equally altogether and end up with a unsatisfying result. And my exemple is as such.
(I live in France, we have equally counted vote but with this issue, and some other neighboring countries have it too. If you're interested i can explain more what the issue is...)
(I guess Australia, for the user you were replying to originally, have it's own issues too, not that i'm familiar with them.)
Mathematicians worked on how different suffrage creates different results.
There are plenty like the majority judgement but one that i particularly like is Condorcet's method to solve the problem.
It happens in Spain too. Huge difference in the number of votes needed in Barcelona to get a representative, compared to rural provinces.