Well yes, and respectfully, I think you have much to learn about American politics and how inextricably linked it is with capitalism.
Yeah, a significant number of people here thought that way in 2016…how did that work out?
Or in 2000 when voters rejected Al Gore’s establishment credo?
Or in 1980 when voters listened to a bad actor undermine confidence and trust in the government as a whole?
Your musings are not original, and frankly, somewhat uninformed and naive. There is an old expression here which advises not to “throw out the baby with the bath water”.
Despite this naked assertion, the election of the Jackass has ushered in an upheaval and breakdown which may indeed further solidify the stranglehold which corporate America has on our system, as well as complete the demise of fealty for our government as a system by, for and of the people.
When you try to compare one step in a “stairway to
tyranny” with another, it is easy to get mired down in details which can obscure the “big picture”.
Politics isn’t original, it’s pretty simple, tried and true. People want, people gather, people get. For instance, you are also saying everything one would expect a democrat to say. MSNBC, CNN and other centrist corporate media have basically played these points on loop.
2016, overconfident democrats lost despite Hilary securing a popular majority, and the dems still haven’t tried to fix the electoral system. They blamed Russia, Bernie, Williamson, sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and everything under the sun but themselves. You are doing the same here by saying it was the mentality of trying to back a non-establishment candidate that led to Trump’s election. Democrats need to learn to take responsibility for their failures.
2000, Despite Al Gore having to follow Clinton’s intern escapades, people actually elected him, he had the election taken away from him so what happened next had nothing to do with his establishment credentials not being appealing enough to people. More importantly, stop this voter-blaming it has gotten far too old. Democrats are not entitled to anyone’s vote.
1980, THEY BEAT THE COMMIES!!! While undermining all the social safeguards of American citizens backed by democrats like Clinton and Biden.
I really don’t want to list down every fuck up of democrats during their terms because from where I stand, the only thing Republicans do that is worse than the Democrats is they undermine democracy(which is enough to never vote for them). There is absolute parity in every other aspect between the two parties. They all drink from the same wells, check their donors. Their supporters behave the same way as well, I am not a US citizen but my brother has been for a while and the pattern democrats use in their talking points is exactly the same my republican brother uses for his. It’s the same pattern that AL and BNP supporters use here. Nothing original there.
Keep playing lesser of two evils and the lesser one will catch up. If you mean corrupt then say corrupt, don’t call it capitalist. It is not an unfathomable concept. So, I guess SuperPACs(systematic bribery) are the answer. Look at that, US politics isn’t that different from Bangladeshi politics after all.
And how do you not see a problem with the above statement. 1. There is no ‘We.’ You are the spokesperson for no one. 2. ‘A step’ is not an action in the way you are using the term. Even if every atheist on the planet took ‘a step.’ Nothing, zero, nil, de nada, zilch, zippo, nix, the big goose egg, would be accomplished. You are saying ‘NOTHING.’ 3. “Comfortable Position?” Does your self-aggrandizing pompous opacity know no bounds? You think you can swagger around and call the sacrifices atheists have endured ‘comfortable.’ Go fuck yourself. People have left friends, family, and loved ones. People have endured every hardship you have thus far mentioned and more. Who in the fuck are you to call other people’s struggle to free themselves from religion ‘comfortable.’ Go fuck yourself. 4. “We” would have swayed the election?" How ignorant are you? People have already expressed the fact that atheists do not all agree on shit. We are republicans and democrats, we are left leaning and right leaning. In fact, go take the political pole I recently posted or at least go look at the results of the people who did take the poll. THERE IS NO ‘WE’ IN ATHEIST POLITICS. ‘WE’ are allowed to disagree.
Stupidest comment of the century: You go girl. You go get those elite basters. You go take their power from them. What a fucking idiotic comment* What we need to do is get the name of your doctor and have the dosage level of your meds increased. Are the people you hang out with actually impressed by this juvenile take on politics and global issues? You sound like an idiot!
You know what: I could log into the merch page on this site and buy a $5 coffee mug. That simple act would do more for atheism than any of the shit you have posted. That is how detached from reality your inane bullshit is.
Well that’s just silly. I’m truly sorry if there is a language barrier that is preventing you from grasping the meaning and intent of my words, or if my expectations of others’ reading comprehension skills might be at fault.
Nope. I do not object to supporting a non-establishment candidate, but rather, supporting a non/establishment candidate for the reason you stated:
And you seem ok with the world-wide consequences as we are now seeing.
Al indeed was elected by the people…by a shockingly low margin. I will give you a pass for not having experienced first-hand how he was perceived and how his establishment credentials were or were not accepted. The fact of Ralph’s belligerent refusal to accept defeat when it was clear that it might allow the Bush machine to return to power, and there was still time to support Al, remains.
Yeah, no…they are to blame. And so are you.
HaHaHaHa…”American Propaganda…the best that money can buy”
Nope. That is reflective of a disconnected observer.
Well, while I am glad you have your one opportunity from which to form your opinions, it might benefit you look around a bit more.
Jibber jabber… by definition the lesser of two evils is the correct choice…blah blah
Perhaps there is a language crevasse here.
From my point of view,
the system we have has been corrupted by Citizens United, the Corporatization of the Democratic Party, individual personal greed, cultivated apathy, manufactured distrust of the government, multi-generational lobbying interests and a cornucopia of other destructive capitalist influences.
The effect(s) could be described, as by president Jimmy Carter:
CARTER: It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president.Jul 30, 2015.
Typical democrat aversion of accountability and delusional talking points. There may have been a time when democrats had something distinct to offer, I wasn’t born then. Very insightful quote from Carter where he correctly didn’t direct blame to either party as he knows both are just as complicit in the corruption. You repeatedly circling back to the system is corrupt, makes me feel right at home.
Bush’s war on terror was terrible, but aside from that what worldwide consequences? The formation of ISIS? Complete inaction against Pakistan after Bin Laden was found within miles of a Pak Army base? Democrat or Republican, every party has only tried to destabilize this region through Pakistan, so no, I don’t see any difference in their foreign policy and its worldwide consequence. I cannot say with absolute certainty that Gore wouldn’t have done what Bush did because Bush didn’t think up any of the shit he did, he merely followed instructions. I don’t trust politicians enough to be certain of their kindness, if you do, good on you for being such a romantic.
Trump or Biden, Nixon or Carter, they can’t keep their noses to themselves and do everything to undermine democracies in this region. Domestically all I see is dishonest pandering using identity politics and indiscriminate screwing of everyone not wealthy. There is nothing to learn about US politics, it’s the same shit as everywhere else.
I think he was talking about Presidential elections using the Electoral College system, which means candidates can win the election without a majority of the votes. There is a school of thought that this favours Republican presidential candidates, as poorer dense urban populations traditionally vote Democrat.
I think s/he was suggesting that the Democrats should have eliminated the Electoral College. If that’s the case, then s/he doesn’t understand what would be necessary for that to happen. Instead, it seems s/he arbitrarily blames a political party for its continued existence.
That’s the impression I got as well. It requires an amendment to the constitution.
" over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College – without any becoming law.
In part, that is because the Electoral College is constitutionally mandated, and abolishing it would require a constitutional amendment"
I’m arguing against the kind of flawed narrative I hear in favor of parties among party supporters. I have no interest in getting anyone to change their allegiances. It won’t happen, that is a clear reality. Doesn’t happen here, won’t happen elsewhere every party has their support base for a reason. I simply hate it when people who vote for parties despite their flaws try to justify the flaws instead. From where I stand, it feels like the Democrats only do lip-service to their voters, while Republicans do what their base wants and makes everything worse. The reason I am specifically talking about the Democrats is because that is where the swing AAA voters generally vote because they have nowhere else to go and they’re not even getting the appeasement. If we need to start small, it doesn’t come any smaller than this. Everything from not voting, voting independent, voting democrat and republican are all completely valid and influential options. I would rather all AAAs that don’t vote, vote and fill out the exit polls. When you get to the point you can strategize the voting, you will be rewarded with political influence. Not that complicated.
To be honest, I think it’s all hogwash. The reason democrats whine about it is because they are not as effective at using the system as the republicans are. You all know the rules, you all play by the same rules, if you can’t strategize winning the election despite winning the majority of the votes that’s on you. Democrats would use every dirty trick the republicans use if they had thought of it first.
Yeah, it’s obvious, you missed a lot. But there’s still time. Although I had a front row seat to a number of significant political events, I am still learning details which were not apparent or even available at the time.
Nope, you missed again. I made it a point to state my view was that the system had been corrupted. That is not the same thing as saying the system is corrupt…the system is just that, a system. It is the people and corporations who have been allowed to corrupt the system that are the problem, and that is correctable. The system can only be as good as the people trusted to operate it. Whether or not minimizing the corrupting effects of moneyed interests this far along, is even possible, is an open ended question. (fyi I am cynical about the chances of this)
Wow, are you really that obtuse?
Yeah, the plague was bad, but aside from all of the dead people what worldwide consequences?
You decided my reference of worldwide consequences now was related only to Bush specifically? How did you come to that conclusion? Do you really not see any worldwide consequences beyond what your myopic view of your little sphere of experience allows? (you may need to get out more)
I notice you omitted the part of my response where I quoted you as saying:
We? Yeah, let’s send them a message. Fuck the consequences. Consequences? What consequences?…sheesh
Every administration here has consequences for the world. Even the ones brought to power by “honest ideological motivations”. Of course those consequences are far worse when power is gained from reactive and spiteful motivations.
Even those I may view somewhat favorably have had negative effects on other countries due to their foreign policies and manipulations of markets, etc., which are largely only apparent after the fact.
I can see why you might think that, and I hate to break it to you, but many people here really don’t care about your region or most others except western Europe. Apathy is largely what has allowed U.S. interventions in many cases. Just as you are woefully uninformed about American politics, so are people here concerning other regions, including me.
What you have described is a stability created by instability. You don’t seem to grasp how interventions serve the purpose of furthering the sick goals of “new world order” by weakening perceived threats to that goal. “order through chaos”…
NEWS FLASH
The U.S. has been trying to destabilize other countries for as long as it has had the wherewithal to do so. (Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Korea,The Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Brazil, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Nicaragua,Haiti, etc., etc., ad nauseum…all in my lifetime).
NEWS FLASH
Some countries are unstable on their own. Not much effort is needed.
NEWS FLASH
Oil, oil oil.
Are you so bereft of the ability to zoom out that you cannot see that the more recent (past 100 years) destabilizing of governments is most often done so in the ongoing efforts to manipulate and control the oil market? Do you understand why Iraq’s oil had to be kept in the ground? Do you grasp why Mossedegh was a threat to the oil pigs? etc., etc., ??
Are you naive enough to think that any one politician can somehow circumvent the overwhelming power of the corporations? Or one political party beholden to those same corporations for the money to buy their elections? Do you understand the importance of minimizing the influence of money in politics?
Well, respectfully, I think you might want to try to let go of some of your obviously jaded thinking, if indeed you are planning on relocating here. There is always more to learn about U.S. politics, and that certainly goes for me too.
Btw, why are you coming here if you think
???
If indeed you relocate to Texas I wish you well and hope that you find a conduit for your political aspirations, as long as they are peaceful
This isn’t really a conversation guys…
This thread began with…
It went through a hurricane of assertions, unsubstantiated claims, globally amorphous blustering bullshit, and someone was able to whittle it all down to "He wants to see an end to the way we elect presidents in America? HUH?
I think it is more likely, that someone tossed the man/girl a peanut, and he snatched it up, “Yeah yeah that’s what I mean.” And, he/she/it/they/them is going to drop it and move on to the next snack as soon as they/them/he/she/it realized they/them/she/he/it has been owned.
You specifically mentioned the electoral system, and specifically mentioned the democrats, my post was addressing that, and nothing else.
The flaws evident in the Electoral Colleges system are evident in many other democracies, certainly in the UK, the main difference is that altering or abolishing the Electoral Colleges in the US would require an amendment to the constitution, and as I pointed out there have been 700 attempts to do this in some form over the last 200 years, so as @CyberLN said, blaming the Democrats seems arbitrary.
Well this might be true in the US (you have made a bare assertion), but the US is disproportionately religious in comparison with other developed western democracies. FYI publicly declaring oneself an atheist in the US would pretty much destroys one’s chances of ever attaining public or political office. So the idea that allowing the Democratic party to woo atheists and agnostics would usher in sweeping change seems dubious to me.
Who is we? As @Cognostic has explained atheists and agnostics are not an homogenous group, and I am inclined to agree with him that trying to make them one seems counterintuitive, at least in the US where most atheists relish being free of dogma and doctrine to think critically as individuals.
Again I am dubious, and again not just because atheists and agnostics as a demographic in the US are widely feared and even reviled. I’d think that would need to change first and foremost, getting someone who is openly atheist elected to political office, or indeed any public office, might be a good start.
When I used to attend meetings of the “peace brotherhood”, one of the first things they always emphasized was to always support the actions of the “brotherhood”. If Osama attacks New York, you have to say he was right to have done so in front of the infidels, as a duty to Islam. This shit dates back to the 8th Century in Islam but since Islam was plagiarized, it probably goes back centuries or millennia further. Partisanship is a trait as old as politics itself which you are the perfect embodiment of. The Democratic party is a party that actively panders to groups that openly advocate for the execution of apostates and atheists and doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of a larger set of its voters, which is getting bigger. Islam gets clear representation, but AAAs can’t? The entire strategy of the democratic party has been based on representation and identity and yet they have you convinced that they don’t need to do any of that for you, but you will still have to vote for them. It could be that you don’t put much weight into being an atheist, which is fine, but I do. It was a lot of work being acknowledged in my government paperwork as one, and it has actively made my life more difficult being open about it. If this hasn’t happened to someone else it’s perfectly understandable to take it for granted, I wish I could. It feels like a fair assumption that most AAAs in the US would be opposed to Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christians backed (and represented) Republicans, so shouldn’t all AAAs be voting for the Democrats?
Any AAA vote not going to the Democratic party then is a failure of the Democratic party, but they have you making their case for them. If that is not partisanship, I don’t know what is. As it has been correctly pointed out, AAAs are very diverse and they tend to vote as they please, including not voting, as is their right. I would rather the AAAs that do not vote, to go out and vote for random candidates and not be put off by the thought of voting for the Democrats, because it can be understandably revolting to participate in a system represented by these two parties. When someone asks me if they should vote for BNP, I say they are a party formed by wealthy Rajakars (1971 war criminals and traitors) whose properties were seized during AL’s first term in a bid to Socialize the economy and they have been and continue to be funded by entities (namely the US and Pakistan) to destabilize the region and keep it under their control. What I don’t say is BNP is more corrupt, or more bloodthirsty, or power hungry because those would either be blatant lies or wishful thinking. All I hear from you is delusional partisanship. This is the main reason I am opposed to political consolidation among AAAs, there is no room for rational thinking in this kind of partisan behavior and why I am putting my time to try and find if there is another way, only to circle back to the nonsensical blind trust towards a party.
I think you and I mean very different things when you say ‘woefully uninformed’ because when you say those words you probably mean I won’t be able to name every member of your congress and what I mean by those words is you wouldn’t be able to locate where I am from in a map. That is mostly our fault as we are not important enough yet to anyone for them to actively remember who or where we are. The US is not just the most important and influential nation in the world in terms of geopolitics it is also the loudest, and the rest of the world is forced to know a lot more about US politics than US citizens know about the rest of the world. I do not say this from a place of contempt, that is what a secure nation is supposed to provide to its citizens, where knowing about the rest of the world is entirely optional. In a bid to do so Democrats and Republicans both funded Al-Qaeda, The Taliban, Pakistan and they both run on funds from the Military Industrial Complex. They both oversaw wars, for every Iraq war, you have an Afghan revolution, the world is not a better place because a democrat or republican sits in the white house, but because of the opportunities presented to the Military Industrial complex to make money. Neither stops them.
I am not a US citizen, but your arguments sound a lot like the people who said, “you don’t know enough about Islam, so you cannot criticize it (and thus leave it)”. It’s a bad argument, you can know enough to know if something is wrong, and you may argue, I don’t, but respectfully, I don’t trust your judgement because I see a clear bias.
Well of course you are entitled to your opinion.
Since you have incorrectly translated my words to indicate to you that I am guilty of “delusional partisanship”, I will gladly accept your departure from our discussion, as you are clearly much more experienced with what is delusional than I.
Stop it. There’s no reason to gloat…Ok, there are plenty of reasons. What can I say, even in the face of overwhelming facts, I sometimes like to imagine that there really is an OZ…
.
Edit (pay no attention to the chimp behind the curtain)
