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Rage_Like_Nic_Cage t1_ivk3qkl wrote

Kinda wild that democracy is backsliding so quickly and there is hardly any sense of alarm or urgency form those at the top. Other than saying “vote harder” they seem to have no plan on stopping this kind of shit.

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C_The_Bear t1_ivk9sm4 wrote

“The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it… It’s easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident”

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retroracer33 t1_ivkmsgu wrote

This is one fo teh reasons the dems are struggling. You can't keep campaigning on the idea that the democracy is in a death spiral (which it is), but then get in office and proceed to do business as usual. It's like the house on fire "This is fine" meme.

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Rage_Like_Nic_Cage t1_ivknm04 wrote

Yup. Trump is/was a symptom, not the cause. And while that symptom clearly made everything unequivocally worse, Biden and the dems campaigning on “everything going back to normal” without addressing the root issues is nothing more than a pausing the backsliding, if that.

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King_of_the_Nerdth t1_ivl9677 wrote

Democrats haven't any power to stop it though. You'd need a whole lot larger share of congress to be able to make any change happen.

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Haunting-Ad788 t1_ivlebce wrote

We could start fucking arresting politicians that participated in January 6th for a start.

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_Iro_ t1_ivlrkkp wrote

The primarily conservative Supreme Court wouldn’t comply, which ties back to their point about Democrats not having the necessary political power to push back against extremism

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hitlerosexual t1_ivq4j5q wrote

Mobilizing in ways that are outside the establishment might help a bit. the GOP is straight up ready to wage a hot civil war and the Democrats are still putting all their chips on established institutions and legislation to save us. I'm not saying the Democrats should start to fund paramilitary groups like the right has been (although if you're a democrat it'd be wise to consider preparing for things to get ugly because the right wing terrorists groups sure as shit are) but at the very least they should start being significantly more active in union organizing and mobilization, and should work on creating new institutions outside of the government that help to push the agenda. There's a million right wing news outlets and and meanwhile the "left wing" news outlets are either barely left of center, like MSNBC, or obscure and not commonly known, like Mother Jones. Institutions will not save us when the far right controls the narrative, nor will they save us from the American troubles that we are currently in.

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VioletBloom2020 t1_ivm2f7n wrote

There’s a guy running for office in NC that was there Jan 6. Ugh

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8BitSk8r t1_ivmdjlh wrote

This is these people don’t get. Dems can’t do anything because Manchin and Sinema side with republicans.

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King_of_the_Nerdth t1_ivmxsf1 wrote

If we had just one more Dem senator, it wouldn't have mattered. But people endlessly cast blame on those two, so much so that they're going to lose their seats and we'll then have nobody but Republicans to blame. Somehow, we won't blame Republicans right now? For every vote that Sinema and Manchin blocked, 50 Republicans also blocked it.

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8BitSk8r t1_ivnuooy wrote

While I completely agree republicans are fully to blame for being the party of “no”, I can’t let those two off the hook. They blocked so much progress. This sountry could have been a much better place if they weren’t corrupt.

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King_of_the_Nerdth t1_ivolotp wrote

Sounds like a way of thinking that Republicans are just itching for you to believe. We might even lose Mark Kelly's seat now.

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UncannyTarotSpread t1_ivk5b5b wrote

They think their wealth and power will insulate them from the results

And it may! … for a while.

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PacmanIncarnate t1_ivkzn1z wrote

Democrats don’t hold enough seats in congress to pass laws without Republicans. Their majority is so narrow that every single democrat in office essentially holds a kill switch for anything to move forward. That’s a lot of kill switches.

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Bedbouncer t1_ivlhw4r wrote

So it was never really a majority, since you can't get Democrats to all agree even with "the sun is hot".

"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." - Will Rogers

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DrunkLastKnight t1_ivmggoi wrote

Biggest ones are Manchin and Sinema that are majority of the issue outside of Republicans blocking

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nativeindian12 t1_ivlodfw wrote

They tried passing that voting rights act which had a lot of positive changes but Manchin and Sinema fucked it as per usual

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Transmatrix t1_ivm2mx9 wrote

True, but imagine if they’d tried as hard as they did when attempting to pass the infrastructure bill. Really feels like this was a “we tried” just so we could say we tried type of effort.

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DrunkLastKnight t1_ivmgagd wrote

I would normally say that but with as close as they are in numbers, almost anything the Republicans dont want will get filibustered. But this stuff has been onoing for ages where like nothing gets really done and hasnt at least since Obama

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wanderingmanimal t1_ivkyo6i wrote

“We never thought it would happen here” are the words we will be hearing ten years from now…if not days.

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Fortunoxious t1_ivlx3ao wrote

The ways that MAGA mirrors the types of movements that lead to genocide are so fucking alarming. If they continue to reflect history, we’ll see mass slaughter. I’m so disappointed in my fellow human, we never learn.

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sariisa t1_ivqpz7d wrote

Will be? Have been since Jan 6 at the latest

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TaliesinMerlin t1_ivltlf2 wrote

I mean, there have been plenty of alarms from President Biden, the January 6th committee, former President Obama, and others.

The issue is that, within democratic norms, what can they do besides speak on the issue and hope voters respond? They don't have a sufficient number willing to act on voting rights reform in the Senate or roll back the filibuster to allow them to act. They can't act unilaterally lest they violate the very norms they seek to protect.

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No_Extension4005 t1_ivmewis wrote

Yeah, I'm not an American so I might get stuff wrong. But it looks like if they wanted to nip it in bud, they'd basically have to purge a good chunk of the Republican party from office make large changes to the electoral system. Like introducing measures to ensure that everyone can and will vote (like making it a public holiday and introducing mandatory voting), getting rid of anti-voter laws states have introduced, and giving extra weight to votes in urban areas.

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TraeYoungsOldestSon t1_ivnmqbc wrote

Mandatory voting? Why? Like yeah, people should vote but how do you even enforce making them do it? And extra weight to votes in urban areas???? What? That sounds like straight up nonsense. Stooping to conservative's level by cheating to win is not the answer. Anyone who upvoted you should be embarrassed, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

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No_Extension4005 t1_ivntets wrote

Benefits of mandatory voting:

- Improves candidate choices and protects against demagogues: Because now everyone who is politically moderate has to vote, it becomes a lot harder for extremist candidates to get into office and stay in power. So, it doesn't pay to energize your base at the expense of everything and everyone else. Meaning, politics become less polarized. Combine it with ranked voting and smaller parties can gain influence in politics, moving away from a two-party system.

- Remove voting restrictions: When voting is a civic responsibility, governments NEED to make it easier for people to vote. So, measures need to be taken to improve accessibility to polling locations and ensure that external interferences such as weather, transport, and restrictive employers can be worked around easily.

- Stimulate political interest: When voting is a duty, a greater portion of the public will take an interest in politics; leading to a better informed and politically aware population in general.

​

I should add that I think the electoral college should be scrapped, but the other thing I was trying to express may have come out wrong.

Basically, in the 18th century the Connecticut Compromise was made at a time wherein the United States was significantly more agrarian and had a smaller population. The compromise was that number of senate seats would be weighed equally among states regardless of the size of a state's population. You get two per state. So now you have cases where a state like say, Wyoming with a population of 577,737 people is as represented in the Senate as roughly 38.95 million people living in California. Despite California having about 98.51 times the population. And things like this mean there is currently a rural bias wherein your vote for the senate has a lot more influence than someone from an urban region.

Another thing is that it used to be that the US congress would grow with the population, but then the house size got capped in the early 20th century after a census dispute. Now the population is nearly 75% larger than it was at the time a cap was placed on the number of seats in the House of Representatives, leading to situations where candidates represent very different numbers of people. So, someone can get into the house on 500,000 votes, but it might take another representative a million to get in, depending on where they are.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/25/politics/voter-inequality-us-democracy-what-matters/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/upshot/as-american-as-apple-pie-the-rural-votes-disproportionate-slice-of-power.html

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thatnameagain t1_ivlprte wrote

Biden has given several primetime speeches about this, the 1/6 committee was easily the biggest congressional story of the year, and basically every top democrat has repeatedly said this is urgent. What you're perceiving is the media not taking it urgently enough,

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PeteButtiCIAg t1_ivk5glt wrote

Democracy is directly opposed to concentrated power. Why would the people at the top oppose backsliding?

Edit: and more importantly, why are you expecting them to?

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mcs_987654321 t1_ivlp1fw wrote

But even then, the incentives in a functional democracy are actually aligned to avoid collapse, if only because you have enough varying interests within the “concentrated power” crowd that refuse to concede their chance to have a turn at the helm.

Of course if you let enough nihilists who genuinely don’t give a shit either way accumulate enough money, and erode the foundational structures that keep the democratic process on track…yeah, things go downhill pretty fast.

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PeteButtiCIAg t1_ivlp96l wrote

What are you citing here? Because I'm getting strong "invisible hand" vibes.

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mcs_987654321 t1_ivltu5e wrote

Oh, a super mish mash of classical and modern political theory, probably with some unconscious influence of sub-game economics thrown in… but definitely NOT some kind of Adam Smith “it’ll all work out in the end” blue sky thinking.

But yeah: plenty of supporting evidence - even given the natural tendency for wealth and power to accrue/compound - that democracies can and do hold up pretty well, so long as you have: 1) some level of variation and competition within the 0.01% and 2) a somewhat functional rules-based system that doesn’t have obvious forum shopping workarounds.

There’s also probably a 3) in the mix that involves the relationship between political/financial and military power, but that’s outside my wheelhouse and has its own particular dynamics and forces.

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PeteButtiCIAg t1_ivlv9zu wrote

Those are some pretty big caveats. The reason I asked is because I was troubled by the cornerstone of "giving a shit". I'm honestly even more troubled now, haha. I've been looking at what we can expect post QE, especially as sovereign debt crises seem to be popping up everywhere. I can see opposed interests continuing (to some extent), but I'm not sure we have models for this level of accumulation. What are the examples?

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mcs_987654321 t1_ivm28zb wrote

Historical examples don’t work all that well as proxies, just bc of the amount of confounding factors and unique tensions inherent to a particular time/place…but feel like the British parliamentary system starting from the Carolean era is a pretty solid example.

Crazy concentrations of power and wealth, all kinds of evil fuckery (many having to do with colonial endeavours), but also a fairly stable country that has mostly rolled with the punches, all things considered.

Of course the UK is also currently shitting the bed, so that’s not exactly encouraging…but yeah: “worst option except all the other ones”.

Still think that democracy is remarkably durable, but also agree that we’re experiencing pretty extreme stresses/conditions, and that structurally flawed systems are going to collapse.

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clock1058 t1_ivscmvr wrote

>Of course if you let enough nihilists

i dont think u understand what nihilism means

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ekaceerf t1_ivktoxi wrote

The past 2 years were just a hiccup on the road to fascism and the end of democracy.

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asdaaaaaaaa t1_ivkje83 wrote

> Kinda wild that democracy is backsliding so quickly and there is hardly any sense of alarm or urgency form those at the top.

Almost like they're well connected and have enough money/power to not worry, and plan to use this chaos to profit more. If they cared, this would have been handled already, I know how law enforcement works when they're properly "motivated".

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shfiven t1_ivlsbpl wrote

We're basically at the point where we need UN peacekeepers at our elections and democratic leadership is like "oh gee it's bad but whatchagonna do, am I right?"

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-RadarRanger- t1_ivm58xr wrote

>Other than saying “vote harder” they seem to have no plan on stopping this kind of shit.

One party is working hard to ensure that if an election doesn't come out the way they want, they can ignore it and certify it their way. And they've got their members believing this is good for them!

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Husbandaru t1_ivkx05p wrote

The national guard should be at these places to make sure things like this don’t happen.

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mcs_987654321 t1_ivlnmio wrote

So: the backslide is real, but would just caution about the risk of distraction/confirmation bias when it comes to news items like this one.

Bc voter intimidation is DEFINITELY happening in all kinds of shitty new ways (weird door knocking “audits”, ballot box “surveillance”, etc)…but # of reports of intimidation to a hotline is a shitty way of trying to calibrate the extent of this.

Bc election security is obviously a much more prominent issue than in the past, and that alone will make people more likely to make a report. Also: there are a handful of folks in every community who will file a report about anything (along with some who never, ever will).

All that to say: it’s important to use good metrics to get a sense of just how much aggression/intimidation is taking place and in what form, and stuff like # of reported incidents isn’t one of them.

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evilpercy t1_ivmk87m wrote

Voteing is the main tool to change things.

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thudly t1_ivmtp4t wrote

> those at the top

...don't want democracy. The people want the nation's wealth fairly distributed, and their voting might facilitate that. The pricks on top want authoritarianism, but only if it's somebody friendly to their interests.

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Such-Wrongdoer-2198 t1_ivk6cdl wrote

These kinds of incidents aren't so bad. No official intimidation, and nothing that would really interfere with voting. Also if there are reports it shows people are taking it seriously.

The long lines in Atlanta (which I haven't heard of this year) are a bigger concern for me.

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CaptainWaffleIron t1_ivkrejf wrote

Outcome wise what is the difference between official and unofficial intimidation?

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Such-Wrongdoer-2198 t1_ivkwebd wrote

"The authorities" hold the monopoly of force, so there's not really a "greater authority" to appeal to.

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CaptainWaffleIron t1_ivl16bx wrote

So because the government isn't the perpetrator of the intimidation then it wasn't that bad? Functionally speaking what is the difference between government intimidation and an act of intimidation by the general public? You're just one of those wingnuts that thinks the state is the boogey man while ignoring the actual problems.

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Such-Wrongdoer-2198 t1_ivl2zpr wrote

Not "it wasn't that bad", "it isn't as bad". I want voter intimidation investigated and prosecuted. But when it's the government there isn't likely to be any investigation (if there is any reporting).

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