It'll never happen in the US, not when one side actively tries to stop or make it difficult for people to vote
The Trump Presidency : Part 2
- Thread starter The Boy
- Start date
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Ashwin @AR87 are here to discuss two "on-paper" not great results for United over the last week, but are there positive signs of progress despite what the ex-United pundits are saying?
They also preview the big game Europa League game against Lyon.
Grim
Nah the Dems are on the hook, you can cry idiot at people not voting but it's always the political parties responsibility to win elections. They're the only ones who can lay out a winnable platform no one else, and if it isn't then feck knows why I keep reading pragmatism when they appease the right.
I wonder how much elections would change if you allowed people to vote against a candidate if they didn't want to vote for a candidate. Would enough of the people who abstained have voted against Trump to net off his total? Have I solved democracy? I think so
People need only look at history to see where voting can truly matter, if there whole excuse is “my vote won’t make a difference anyway”. There have been many cases where if the amount of people with that opinion just voted, they could literally have changed the outcome
Idk, the way things are going at the moment, I’m getting very sympathetic with Plato’s philosopher kings.
A system that rely on the vast majority of individuals making rational choices every single time just to stay afloat is pretty terrible by design. As much as we hate to see people falling for demagoguery, there’s simply not enough guardrails in the system to prevent demagoguery in the first place. The people who abstained/voted Trump over Gaza is probably minuscule in number vs the people who voted on vibes/who promises more free shit/groups to blame.
Plato was a great lad, but he wasn't the last great political theorist or philosopher concerned with the nature of power, and in his defence, we have gathered quite a bit of data along the way.
Democracy is not just a straightforward tyranny of the majority, for it to be it's best version of itself there are many many factors that currently fall short. And even it's best version is corruptable so must be maintained.
It's a sign of how frustrating progress is when we all know Plato's thoughts. They should be utterly redundant but alas, they're not.
We had lots of government funded adverts encouraging people to register to vote before the deadline
In any normal election cycle I’d agree with you. But doing your bit to keep this scumbag out of office should really have been more than enough of a reason to get anyone who cares about America/the world to vote for Harris (which equates to voting against Trump anyway)
Whatever the criticisms and faults of Churchill I still like the quote "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others".
Yeah, the fat prick.
I was on vacation and didn't check the forums for over a week. Come back and yep, still the same debate.
And this is only going to be the tip of the infectious disease iceberg.
We just need to see Rasmus huffing and puffing to distract us for a bit, the we can reconvene.
Didn’t we all acknowledge a thing on here recently that comments like this were no longer tolerated? No need to fat shame a historical figure
If he is looking up from his fiery abode, he won't mind any dissent from Ireland, "a mere fly on the wheel of British Empire."
And this is only going to be the tip of the infectious disease iceberg.
He’s such a total fecking disaster across the board. With global consequences. Right now we’re all sweating about him wrecking the economy, which distracts from stuff like this, as well as the cruelty to minorities and all the corruption.
And somehow the arguably most serious consequence of all barely gets a mention - the massive setback to attempts to rein in climate change.
How many elections are you meant to keep doing this? Particularly when the "least bad" option continues to get worse each time.
Between two choices? One being worse than the other? On voting day? Every time. If you have an issue and really want to solve it, the magic happens through activism and participation.
There's a dang Cheeto in the White House!
In theory, I'd agree with that. In reality, I can see why people would abstain this time. If the Dems had won, they'd have absolutely zero incentive to change and next time around I'm sure it would have been the exact same scenario
With a literal fascist, who broadcast his intentions, in the mix? Not me. This is the one I definitely would have voted in.
No they aren't.What does this even mean? On the hook from who? The voting police? The Almighty? You?
From anyone with a brain.
What does this even mean? On the hook from who? The voting police? The Almighty? You?
I'm really worried about infectious disease, both home (measles, polio, etc.) and abroad (HIV, emergent viruses, etc.). The insanity around mRNA vaccines means we are seeing the shelving of a vital tool in rapid response to emergent serotypes and bugs. Couple that with the gutting of funding of basic research as well as tropical medicine departments (probably for being woke since they are focused on treating "those types of people") and the next COVID seems not too far away. Add the US withdrawal from WHO, the likely shift in CDC priorities (ie, studying the "link between vaccines and autism" while slashing pretty much everything else) and yeah, terrifying.
The last few pages are a good example of the dangers of being too online.
What does this even mean? On the hook from who? The voting police? The Almighty? You?
When the “most bad” option is Donald Trump the answer is every election.
You people are never going to agree on this.
The thing about voting is that you're not making a decision that only impacts you. If you want to take a moral stance on something that only influences your life, then that's perfectly fine. When it impacts other people's lives it then makes a lot more sense to consider the least bad option, if you are an empathetic person at least. This is especially true when one of the options was fecking Donald Trump backed by project 2025 on a final term.
Not this time. Low turnout helped the Democrats, and third party voting of course always does. It just wasn't enough.
The Government doesn't run elections in the US, that's a power invested in the States and boy the don't half come up with some shite.We had lots of government funded adverts encouraging people to register to vote before the deadline
In Georgia for example, if you were in queue to vote it is illegal for meto give you a bottle of water or some food to keep ypu going whilst you wait, it can still be pretty warm in GA at that time of the year and you might have to queue for hours on end, partly because they shut down a big chunk of the polling places so that the lines get so big it discourages people from bothering - guess which party is in charge in Georgia!
I would have too but I can still understand people who didn't. It's probably because I'm looking at this from an outside perspective but to me, Trump's fascism is basically him just turning America's fascism onto its own people.
In a way yes, but it was obvious he was going to, so for me abstaining was someone just not fully understanding what was happening.
What you highlight there is part of why and how we can sleepwalk into fascism. We have been weaned at the teat of a corporate fascist structure for so long, it is not clear to everyone when actual fascism shows it's face.
How long will it be before blue states start requiring proof of vaccination for common diseases like measles to enter the state? Difficult to enforce obviously but you gotta start somewhere
I think at this point, it's only to question whether the US ever deserved to be called a democracy to begin with, similarly to how historians view the Weimarer republic. Few will disagree with the notion that the election system in the US with the electoral college, gerrymandering, the two-party system, filibustering and so forth is deeply flawed. You can make a case that Trump's GOP exposed these flaws to such an extent that it becomes a disqualification factor.
Musk standing in front of an audience and handing out $1million cheques to voters in an election for justices.
I think this signals the beginning of the end for democracies around the world. Hilarious that the US has considered itself the authority in determining which elections are fair around the globe.
I think this signals the beginning of the end for democracies around the world. Hilarious that the US has considered itself the authority in determining which elections are fair around the globe.
What do you mean by actual fascism? What's different in how Trump is behaving compared to how America has behaved under previous presidents, other than he's doing it to American people/institutions?
You missed my point. I'm not saying that at all.
I agree, our thresholds for what counts as a democracy is quite low these days.
Yes, this is a problem that Trump has his own vocabulary, which plays differently with the world outside 'Trump Towers/Mar-a-largo'.
I suspect Trump's use of the word 'good' in respect of Putin is that he expects Putin to 'come good' and play ball etc.'make the deal work'... nothing to do with Putin's morals or behaviour.
Trump is increasingly becoming a President who lives in a 'glass house' and knows it's not advisable therefore to 'throw stones' etc.... especially at someone else who has been residing in a 'glass palace' for sometime now!!
There are already a number of leaders around the world who operate from 'glass enclaves'; Putin, Xi-Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Erdogan,...Trump (with his talk of a third term) is increasingly likely to be looking to join this 'band of brothers'.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. All of those things suck, but none of them disqualify a system from being a democracy. What we are seeing is the inherent weaknesses in a system and how democracy can move towards authoritarianism but that doesn't mean it was never a democracy to begin with.