Fear is most often the reason with added inexperience of people not knowing what a dictatorship entails.
Restore regulations on “news” mass media, and regulate their political advertising. Including social media.
Reform campaign financing. Apply the fixes recommended by SCOTUS in Citizens United.
State-level voting reform, including universal and automatic mail-in ballots, and ranked choice voting.
There is reality, and then there is each individual's perception of reality. Each person believes with near-absolute certainty that their personal model (based on a tiny slice of actual events, the majority of which are first run through third parties for ~interpretation and adjustment) of reality is accurate, and often enjoy chuckling at other people's models, but the unfortunate fact is that no person has an accurate model - and perhaps more importantly: hardly anyone seems to realize this (in depth, and on a continuous basis).
My money and politics teacher @ CMU - John Delano said something that has always stuck with me when in doubt about motivations - “in politics, follow the money”.
I suspect you actually don't, due to the underlying complexity and ineffable, counterintuitive nature of the subject matter.
> but I will not be gaslit.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes, including low self-esteem.
There is gaslighting, and then there is psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy - and then there is each individual's knowledge (actual and perceived) in each field, all of which is implemented by the human mind, which is not well understood at all, but understood well enough that it is known to be very imperceptibly deceiving.
> Some sources are better in quality than others, considering multiple sources is better, critically considering the information in those sources and discussing it is the best.
I completely agree, and nothing I said suggested the contrary. Although, you may have the intuition that it implicitly communicated it, just as you seem to have the intuition that I am gaslighting you.
> It is entirely possible to still get at the truth.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not - it depends. And sometimes, that which is considered to be true, is not actually true.
> The propaganda is the USA is bordering absurdity in its believability.
100% agree - to me, it passed surreal levels years ago. Even more surreal is the percentage of intelligent people who seem to believe that they have a firm lock on "the truth" about a system this complex, despite often having extensive background knowledge in the complexity that lies within far simpler systems.
> The president says exactly what he means, and his words are interpreted by others like a horoscope to mean whatever they want.
Serious question: how is it that you came to know the beliefs of other people? Trace the lineage of that belief in your own mind, and see what you come up with.
This is not conspiracy theory or trolling, it is the result of scientific investigations performed over decades by specialists in various overlapping fields, who are doing their best to understand the mysteries of the human mind. And scientists aren't the only source of substantiation - not that long ago philosophy and literature were very seriously by a lot of serious people, and may have a thing or two worth learning.
https://thundergodblog.com/2015/07/26/a-brief-history-of-the...
https://www.azquotes.com/author/6592-Frank_Herbert
It's hard to resist picking a side and getting down into object level mudslinging in the information war currently playing out in the media (mainstream and social), I'm very often guilty of it myself. But I propose that there is another alternative available: that of a disinterested (as possible) 3rd person observer who engages his/her mind with the abstract perspective of the battle, observing with playful curiosity the rhetorical strategies, strange supernatural beliefs, and various other absurd behavior that until recently only the human mind was capable of producing. Not only is this perspective far more interesting, but once you do it for a while some interesting new thoughts might come to mind, like "Just what exactly is going on on this planet? These humans have the ability to have a realtime video conversation with someone half way around the world, or deliver a package there by the next day, yet at the same time millions of their offspring die every year due to a lack of the basic essentials required to sustain their lives, and all they seem to do is post short "tweets" to each other lamenting that "nothing can be done". What mysterious force underlies this madness?"
Agreed, which is why I believe we should take a more scientific approach to discussions. For example:
>>> Those adults watch a few conspiracy YouTube videos and Fox News and consider themselves educated and informed.
Is this statement True? At best, it has some truth. But this type of language and thinking is incredibly common right here on HN, a place we consider to be a place of quality discussion. For sure, things are better here than most other places, but it is still chock full of objectively incorrect statements and erroneous thinking, much of it being very nuanced and easily dismissed by "don't be pedantic", "you know what I meant", etc.
Science does not operate by ignoring details or requiring listeners to infer things from vague messages, and this is why it produces successful results. The way we manage and discuss affairs on planet earth however, is almost entirely operated in this non-scientific, error-riddled form.
To be clear, this is my personal opinion (an estimate) about reality. What matters is what the true state of reality is, and almost no one seems to care about that, at least based on discussion and voting patterns here.
I wonder if some sort of a browser addon that added a metadata layer to forums would be helpful in surfacing these things, such that patterns could be recognized over time, which might bring to mind ideas of how we could improve our thinking and discourse.
Passing and extending the Patriot Act was bipartisan.
I'm not so sure about that. Especially given that only ~42% of eligible voters cast votes in the 2016 US elections[0].
What's most troubling about that statistic is that more eligible voters did not vote than voted for any of the presidential candidates.
Without ascribing motives or intentions, it's not clear that your statement is supported by the facts.
I don't know what the motives/intentions of those non-voters might be. Given that I always vote in every election, because I see it as my duty and responsibility as a citizen, and because that's how we choose the path our government (and, more broadly our society) will take. Especially in local and state elections, where my vote (given the smaller size of electorates in such elections) is more consequential.
In any case, while voter suppression and disenfranchisement are all too common in the US, such activity doesn't explain why nearly half of eligible voters abdicated their responsibility and gave away their opportunity to create the government they want to have.
[0] https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/post-election-2016/voter-tu...
You have that backwards. 42% did not vote; 58% did.
Still way too low, though.
>You have that backwards. 42% did not vote; 58% did.
>Still way too low, though.
Yes, you're absolutely correct, and I got it backwards. I need to proofread better.
Thanks for calling me out on this.
I'm gonna challenge this assertion. I would actually assert the opposite: that trust is one of the worst poisons.
Why? Because trust breeds weak restrictions (checks/balances), and weak restrictions are easy for dictators to exploit, thus undermining democracy.
Rather, I say you want those in a democracy to assume everyone (including everyone within their own party) is a potential tyrant and to structure (and enforce) the restrictions accordingly.
Where the US in particular has really fallen down, in my opinion, has been the enforcement of those rules upon those in office because of partisan favoritism. Perhaps those showing favoritism haven't realized that in the bigger picture, although favoritism is convenient, it undermines the whole system in the long run.
I am not located in the US and there is no law that declares it mandatory in my country, but there is a political culture that a successor administration doesn't reverse the policies the predecessor has enacted in the previous term. That is to give it a chance to have an effect. There can be exceptions of course but there is a general understanding and it is regarded as good conduct to adhere to it. Honor amongst thieves perhaps, but it doesn't have to always end in nepotism.
Xenophobia, racism, and war are deeply routed in the culture, and date far before 9/11. We're simply witnessing the culmination of the slow erosion of checks and balances over centuries, which has exposed the raw flaws that have existed since the beginning.
Spending hours per day following and discussing politics for emotional and intellectual reasons, instead of power-seeking organized action destroys democracy.
>"For most people who are political junkies, their news consumption is not really geared toward information that is going to help them be active citizens in the community. And even if it is, they’re not being active in the community. Most people who are daily news consumers belong to zero organizations and have worked zero times in the past year with other people on a community problem. So, most people are not doing anything."
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/11/21172064/politics-is-for-power...
I suspect social conservatives have so much power in the US because they attend church and that forms a nexus of political organization.
I actually see this is a really important factor, and the people who are doing it are kind of like Bruce Willis in the sixth sense. It's so easy to rationalize as "being informed". This combined with the massive amounts of information, misinformation, and disinformation at your fingertips is just too much stuff, all the time.
I think it's more that it's easier to agree on things as a conservative. "I don't want rapid social changes" is pretty much the defining trait of someone being conservative, and since it's based on the past or present, there isn't much room for interpretation or different viewpoints. For progressive voters, they want things to change, but there are a ton of different ideas for how they want things to change, so you see a lot of "snake eating it's own tail" as groups don't agree on how things should change. Conservative politicians can just sit back and go "look at the crazy libs tearing themselves apart" and get people to vote for them.
1) Agree on a set of problems are valid problems faced by everybody- say high cost of housing, expensive healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, police violence, children being raised in single-parent households, a completely worthless education system, non-compete agreements, war on drugs, prison reform, etc. Maybe someone thinks one problem is more important than others, but it doesn't matter- pretty much everybody can agree that these are problems. You don't need to trivialize things that other people think are important.
2) Discuss the causes of the problems. Again, there might be disagreement, but you can get some facts. If you approach it as a problem to be solved, people can agree.
3) Discuss possible solutions to the problems. Doesn't need to be 100%, and think about how hard these solutions are to implement. For example, with police serving warrants- maybe you limit it to waking hours, except for hostage situations or some immediate emergency. That's low hanging fruit. If you can fix a bunch of small things, it can still make a big difference.
Whenever I discuss politics with people, that's how I approach it. You can't take an all or nothing approach, it's just not feasible. But if we break down big problems into small problems that people can understand, we can slowly make progress.
I expect them to have more in the future as they are outbreeding (republicans VS democrats) pretty handily. [1]
Although not every kid votes for the same party as their parents, most do. And generally this swap trades places both ways, evenly.
[1] https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/republicans-have-mor...