Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

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> A republic, as far as I understand it, implies that a (thoughtful, responsible, .., elected) minority is afforded the delegated power to legislate, judge, and administer.

Elected, yes. Thoughtful and responsible depends on your point of view. For example: there is a substantial contingent of people in the U.S. that want the country to be a Christian theocracy. (Most of these people believe that this is how things used to be, and they want to return to those halcyon days.) And so, unsurprisingly, these people vote for representatives who they think will advance that goal. So, for example, is Roy Moore "thoughtful and responsible"? If you're a member of this contingent then you probably think he is. If you're not, then you probably don't.

Likewise, there is a substantial contingent of people who are scared witless at the thought of terrorism, and think that it's worth trading in the odd civil right to insure that terrorists are not "free" to plot our destruction unmolested. There is a substantial contingent of people who are unrepentant racists who think black people are less than human and the root of all evil. Likewise for Muslims. All of these people not only don't care when "the bad guys" have their civil rights violated by the cops, they think it's a feature. They see the cops as courageous defenders of their point of view against the corrupting influence of pluralism and wussiness. The vaguaries of our electoral system make a difference at the margins (e.g. by gerrymandering) but none of these things would be possible if there were not millions of people who thought that it was good and proper.

The irony is that by blaming the system instead of acknowledging that the outcomes we see are the result of democracy working exactly as intended you are actually contributing to the problem, which is that everyone retreats into their echo chamber and spends their energy vilifying anyone who doesn't agree with them instead of working constructively to figure out how all 7+ billion of us are going to get along on this little planet.

> The irony is that by blaming the system instead of acknowledging that the outcomes we see are the result of democracy working exactly as intended you are actually contributing to the problem, which is that everyone retreats into their echo chamber and spends their energy vilifying anyone who doesn't agree with them instead of working constructively to figure out how all 7+ billion of us are going to get along on this little planet.

But I am not blaming the system.

I pointed out bad faith actors in the system, which in my view, are contributing to the dysfunction of the process, and have poisoned political discourse in this nation. I don't remember the exact date when we crossed the threshold but do remember noting a somewhat abrupt introduction of extreme vulgarity and uncivility into televised political shows at some point in 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

The various POVs you mention are noted and point well taken. But were not these strains of thought present in the 80s, 70s, and before? I haven't watched TV in decades, but the few times I am exposed to it by force (visits to family, public spaces, etc.) my skin literally crawls, regardless of which point of view is being voiced. It's like the planet of the vulgarian apes. Don't you think the public that is exposed to this /garbage/ day after day has been conditioned to act in the same manner?

> Likewise, there is a substantial contingent of people who are scared witless at the thought of terrorism, and think that it's worth trading in the odd civil right to insure that terrorists are not "free" to plot our destruction unmolested.

This is the only POV that I find unacceptable. This view -- propagated from on high from -- is the factual "blaming the system". The clear subtext of this manufactured view is that our system is fragile and inadequate in face of enemies and needs corrective measures that alter the very nature of our system. Yes, the people were scared, but it was not the people who pulled the Patriot Act out of God knows where and passed it without even an attempt at deliberation.

They could have been offered other remedies, but were not. They could have been reassured by national leadership that we can prevail without disfiguring our national character, but were not.

Americans torturing and torture shows on cable TV.

Disgraceful.

Wagging fingers is one of the more boring forms of political discourse, and no matter how unacceptable you find an opinion, you will never finger-wag someone out of one.

You are wagging fingers also, and therefore boring.

Honestly, I've been finger-wagged out of an opinion or two, so "never" is too strong. Frankly, I challenge you to name any form of "political discourse" that regularly changes opinions. In my experience political discourse in general rarely accomplishes anything other than preach to the choir and cause opponents to dig in.

I'm not telling you what to do, which is a necessary component of the finger wagging. I do enjoy when people accuse me of the actions they are taking, though. Very human. Very, very human.

In my language, finger wagging is scolding someone, for what they've done (or failed to do). It's not telling them what to do.

You were certainly wagging your finger at a fingerwagger.

> But I am not blaming the system.

You wrote:

> The 'actual problem' seems to be in the selection/delegation process.

That sounds like blaming the system to me.

Problem "in", not problem "is".

(In case you're interested, Pierre Sallinger touches on the post '72 role of the media in the selection process in his 1995 c-span interview: https://www.c-span.org/video/?67372-1/ps-memoir [edit: jump to 44:56])

That seems like splitting a pretty fine hair to me.

As a system administrator: No. It's not. A broken system and a system being misused are two entirely different things. It could be suggested that a system is broken if it can be misused and indeed an ideal system will be incapable of misuse. But I've never met one yet.

Do you claim here that elections (who votes, where, how often, in what conditions, for whom, for what, etc.) aren't part of "the system"? That probably isn't your intention, but you seem to hold the parenthesized conditions blameless, offering instead some sort of caricature of a Trump voter for criticism. Incidentally, if the participation of all those apparent cretins is "democracy working exactly as intended", how should we characterize previous elections in which they did not take part?

I was referring specifically to this:

> The 'actual problem' seems to be in the selection/delegation process.

ISTM there are problems in that process. Even if there aren't, there could be, and preemptively declaring such out of scope certainly wouldn't help solve those.

One has long suspected the insidious idea that the Founders etc. did such a Good Job that we mustn't criticize any current incarnation of the institutions and traditions they created. One used to hear this silly idea from "strict constructionists", but recently it seems to come mostly from devoted supporters of the status quo.

Of course there are problems in the process, but they pale in comparison to the fact that there are vast and fundamental differences in people's quality metrics, and even in what they mean by words like "freedom" and "equality" (e.g. is allowing gay marriage "equal rights" or is it "special treatment"?) So the whole premise of electing reasonable people to run the government is doomed from the start because Americans don't agree on what "reasonable" means. No amount of tinkering with the process is going to fix that.

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