Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

@Kiryu-Chan
I do think this one is important not to do. People often have trouble understanding nuance and so they consider all “corruption” the same.

@marinus18
Again, The Onion already tackled this: People want to see simple answers to complex problems and prefer to be “simple” than to understand complex issues, be it because they want things to seem easier or are unable to understand due to lack of information or too much misinformation.

@Meanlucario
They also like to compare it to things that are more familiar. You can see this in how effective deficit hawking can be even though it’s entirely fictional. With national economies, especially one as big as the US welfare is easily affordable and actually quite cheap considering a large amount of welfare money is collected back.
But people can’t really wrap their heads around how big the US economy really is and just how many resources it has at it’s disposal. They themselves struggle to get by so they assume their financial situation is indicative of the country as a whole.
There is this notion that welfare is like luxury spending but it just doesn’t work that way. Welfare spending is a big economic positive and is really investment considering how much of it is collected back. But the idea of good stuff for free just goes against people’s mentality of “no free lunch”. That if they get stuff for free somewhere that means it will get worse for them somewhere else but that’s just not true.

Also with “taxes” they think of them as similar to taxes for themselves. But in a capitalist economy taxes for capitalists are very different and also are on capital, not spending money.
As a worker in a capitalist system you are just insignificant and the economy is so big that it’s more accurate to pretend it’s infinite than to actually try to comprehend it’s real size. People don’t like feeling like they are insignificant.

There are simple answers though to some things. The reason there is poverty is capitalism. The wealth of the national is in the hands of capitalists and they want to use it to lord over others rather than share it. If a worker has what they need they are much more likely to talk back to their boss.

The right wing economic solutions usually feel a lot more complex and convoluted to me. Because they have to bend over backwards to justify not taxing the people who have more money than they need and not giving people money who need it. They must also justify that corporations can do no wrong in pursuit for profit and governments can do no right in their economic activity. That government projects can never be productive or profitable even though they easily can be. After all if government or Co-op projects can be profitable the divine role of capitalists might be questioned.

It’s just that “socialism” comes with so many assumptions on what it wants that people dismiss it without seriously thinking about it. Which means fascism has pretty much a monopoly on populist rhetoric.

@Meanlucario
IMO no democratic country should allow voter registration of individuals who don’t know the basics of their countrys constitution.

And this would be a very easy ABCD test and would save so much in terms of understanding what one is voting for.

@Meanlucario
Question: What are you going to do about inflation?

Answer: A lot.

That’s what plenty of people are like, I swear.

I came across some unhinged political books today. One was claiming that the Democratic party was a criminal organization and the other was titles “How to talk to Liberals (if you have to).” I looked up both authors and their unhinged tweets made me decide to just toss the books. There’s being politically right, than there’s being a Republican.

@Zaknel
This is the video if you’re curious.

Unfortunately these have historically only been used to make it harder for minorities to vote, mainly blacks. They could just put in very vague questions that have no clear right answer so they can pick and choose who has the answer “right”.
Good understanding of the social and political structure is indeed very important but voter registration shouldn’t be a thing. It’s main purpose is to filter out people who don’t have time to get registered or don’t have the motivation. This helps the republicans as they have a large indoctrinated and highly motivated base that will jump through any hoops to vote.
Putting in competency tests like constitutional tests or literacy tests was banned because they provided too much opportunity for bad faith actors to disenfranchise minorities who would vote against them. You can also put in biased questions to filter out people who’s political opinion you don’t like.

You don’t want to have any rules in the system that say “These citizens aren’t allowed to vote” as that could present an opportunity for definitions to be stretched or things to be twisted.

@Meanlucario
I think the second one is more troubling. The first is just a stupidly false statement but the second actively says to avoid talking and encourages you to be disingenous towards them. To not actually listen or take seriously what they have to say.

There really is only one way to bring inflation down quickly and that’s price controls. Everything else will take years to be felt at all. Longer term solutions would be anti-trust to increase competition and higher capital taxes combined with higher minimum wages to increase purchasing power and decrease the money supply.

Soo… what are the chances of the Second American Civil War?

@Background Pony #6471
Extremely low. The divisions are between people that live in the same cities and states, there’s no geographical area that could rebel without a civil war of its own from street to street.

Just to remind everyone of trumps OMB Pick Russel Vought.
Also another one of who Russel Vought is.

@Redberry Bite
Let’s hope they’re not crazy enough to dissolve the Democrats.

@Background Pony #6471
But also the first American civil war was in large part driven by the slave owning oligarchy who paid for the propaganda. That freedmen would steal land from whites, bring chaos, rape woman and so on. Without that people would have never fought.
Cause really most people in the south were not willing to die to protect the profits and power of the slave owners.

Also the industrial oligarchy of the north didn’t mind the war and even liked the southern oligarchy being destroyed so that market capitalism would be without rival in the US. The slave holding oligarchs were a major hindrance in US industrialization and after the civil war industrialization indeed accelerated even faster which let to the industrial oligarchs essentially ruling the country during the gilded age.

Part of the whitewashing of the confederacy has been that it was some kind of widely supported popular uprising against Government tyranny but it was nothing like that. It was very top down largely driven by the slave holding oligarchy who paid mercenaries and paid for propaganda. Much of the propaganda that they used back then is still the same the use today. About the “radical left” republicans, the preservation of “Christian ideals”, the protection of “small businesses” and all the usual vague buzzwords. There was a big conservatism ideal against the industrial north and it’s oligarchs and against modernization in general. A lot of the confederate propaganda has stayed the same, modernized of course but the basic premise of it has remained largely the same. Especially after the reconstruction fell apart this propaganda was assimilated by the south as it’s core identity.

@marinus18
It’s obvious that the efficiency of the American democratic system is becoming increasingly poor, and it has become a tool for corrupt politicians to amass wealth. It’s time to establish a new system; why not try socialism?

@Stellark
Isn’t that what resulted in Bernie Sanders not getting the Democrat nominee?

@Background Pony #1C91
Bernie Sanders advocates for democratic socialism, which is akin to the reformed capitalism seen in Northern Europe. It is evident that the United States struggles even with the reform of its capitalist system.

It’s clear that socialism is currently very difficult to achieve in the United States.I was just talking off the cuff.But why not learn from Western and Northern Europe and implement reformed capitalism?This would involve basic methods such as taxing the wealthy more,providing more social benefits,and investing in infrastructure？

@Stellark
Socialism is democracy. The main point of socialism is to expand democracy to the workplace and that managers and executives should serve workers the same way politicians serve their constituents. The basic premise of socialism is that the wealth of society should be controlled by that society and not by a handful of oligarchs. That since the wealth of managers comes from the workers and the consumers they should be serving those workers/consumers rather than the capitalist middleman.
The difference between socialism and communism is that in communism the capitalist middleman is gone entirely while in socialism they are still there but just no longer all powerful. Anarchism takes it a step further still with them saying managers shouldn’t even exist and any kind of social hierarchy is bad.

Socialism grew out of liberalism and is largely based on the same principles. That if feudal lords shouldn’t dictate the economy and political systems capitalists shouldn’t do that either.

And Europe is morphing more and more towards the US being envious of it’s power and things like scapegoating and blaming workers for being “lazy” are becoming more common. Even American things like toxic prudishness are becoming more common. The US should look towards the 1950’s and what it did well in that time. Almost all the things Bernie Sanders wants are things the US used to do when he was young. Europe hasn’t really gone left, it’s just gone not as hard to the right as the US did, yet. Europe is kind of on the same trajectory as the US, it’s just a couple decades behind.
There is also a massive fear that if we tax companies they will leave so we are more or less at their mercy. Therefore people blame migrants as scapegoats instead cause that’s much safer.

Trump can’t enact everything Project 2025 promises.

Many of the things he promised require an act of congress to even be possible. And since not all GOPers like Trump, and they have a slim majority in Congress, much of what he promised will not go through.

Not without him declaring martial law and carrying out the Night of the Long Knives on his administration. And that will lead to a coup at beast, and a civil war at worst.

The question is, how do the Democrats apply social democracy or democratic socialism without using the word “social?” Because when Sanders called himself a socialist at one point, it crushed his chance of running as a president eight years ago because of how many Americans view very negatively towards the word “socialism” without knowing what it actually means.

@Background Pony #6471
That, i agree with.

Hasbro is being sued in a class action lawsuit because the value of its shares fell. We don’t even live in The Onion or South Park anymore, we live in South Park’s version of The Onion.

@Wiimeiser
I’m beginning to think we live in a Babylon Bee (the conservatives’ Onion) timeline.

@Background Pony #10F6
To beleive that the military won’t just go along with it isn’t total delusion. But of course, that means potential civil war.