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Comment by broken8ball | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit reductionist, no? Any and all embers of hope at eliminating wealth inequality are dashed as soon as they are much more than that, all at the behest of shareholders and lobbyists whose money conveniently slips into both blue and red pockets. At this point if you think voting is going to turn this around, man do I have a bridge to sell you. The only thing that will incite material change will be riot, miracle, meteor, or—hey, even more relevantly with another imperialist world war on the horizon—maybe a couple hundred nuclear-tipped warheads! We probably won’t get to vote on that one, ya think?

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> This is a bit reductionist, no?

No. But even if it was... your point is?

> At this point if you think voting is going to turn this around

Indeed I do. Republicans want small government (read: no regulation) and support conservatism (read: maintain status quo & low tolerance for others), while other parties are progressive (read: open to changes) and liberal (read: tolerant). Republicans in power are massively over-represented and have been for more than 20 years in the minority, and yet, they are stifling the majority while holding them hostage with illegal acts, such as fraud, efforts to prevent Blacks from voting, gerrymandering, or refusing to execute their sworn duties as elected representatives.

Residents of D.C. and Puerto Rico, US citizens, are being taxed without representation. Clearly this is unethical. If only they could exercise their right to vote, we wouldn't be having this problem. Or if some Californians moved into Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, again, the crushing yoke of Republican tyranny could be cast off, and the US would begin to operate as intended, i.e. as a republic.

If you don’t think both parties are a hoax in service of corporations & money interests, I got some land on the Moon with your name on it.

Both parties are capitalist, yes. But the parties do not approach capitalism and more importantly the role of government in capitalism the same.

So if you are a hard core communist or socialist, yes the parties are both capitalist and your ideological lens prevents you from differentiating, but for the vast majority of American's, one party is far superior to their everyday lives in meaningful ways than the other. As a reminder, the Democrat's Child Tax Credit program cut child poverty nearly in half after decades of stagnation and regression. No tax cut ever did anything like that for America.

> As a reminder, the Democrat's Child Tax Credit program cut child poverty nearly in half after decades of stagnation and regression. No tax cut ever did anything like that for America

As a reminder, the Democrat's themselves let that expire and threw all of those children back into poverty.

As a reminder 47 Democrats and 2 Independents supported extending it, 50 Republicans and 1 Democrat didn't.

Have you ever stopped and considered how suspect those numbers are?

Have you ever considerer that maybe, just maybe, it’s a stage to keep you in line? “Look, the people I support supported it but the evil bad Republicans didn’t. I need to fight harder to get the Dems, the good guys, in office.”

You fight harder and what happens? Well the “good guys” somehow stay magically balanced with the bad guys! But you fought your hardest and the system is “honest”, this is what always happens…may as well just keep working for the system without revolt.

You folks just see conspiracy everywhere. How about Joe Manchin is just not a good person and there are a lot of not good people in Congress and most of them have an R next to their name, but some have a D.

I promise you, the DNC isn't in the background somewhere coordinating how to keep people in poverty.

Everywhere? This is a specific and actual conspiracy occurring. Sort of like PRISM with the NSA. Or Hillary Clinton conspiring with the DNC to prevent Bernie Sanders from being the nominee.

Hate to break it to you, but humans in leadership have a LONG history of conspiring against their people. And when each state has a population bigger than Rome, are you really so naive to think that Roman politics has magically ceased?

There ARE conspiracies among our politicians — they are conspiring to keep you poor and themselves & their interests rich.

What a truly bizarre response. You are aware that these “other parties” you speak of are neither tolerant nor liberal in any genuine sense I hope. Perhaps the reason conservatism has been over represented these past 20 years is again, by design. The popular “left” politics in America are a farce and completely immaterial. They are merely a lacquer over the same underlying core values that drive all politics in the country. Just running off of recent memory: the opportunity to codify reproductive rights with federal legislation has been present since the docket for SCOTUS was announced nearly a year ago but completely ignored, the party has allowed itself to be held hostage by at least two of its own at the risk of not passing much needed laws to bend the curve of climate change, we have been put on a path toward nuclear war (the last two atom bomb were also dropped by dems, so go figure), the party continues to endorse placing migrant children in cages at the border, drops bombs on Yemen and Syria killing innocent civilians in the process, allows Guantanamo to stay open, and refuses to pass any kind of legislation to bring wealth inequality under control. None of this is tolerant nor does it represent changing in any way, unless you consider change to mean killing innocent people for no good reason. Allow me to quote the current sitting president, said to a group of campaign donors during the lead-up to the election: “Nothing will fundamentally change.” And, you will be surprised to find out, nothing has fundamentally changed.

> What a truly bizarre response.

This is an overreaction, but why not more when you had the chance. Allow me to participate similarly by asking, Why not naturally amplify such pince-nez takenabackedness one-step beyond it's fundamental exaggeration to the fabulous ends of beyond possible hyperbole and add the exclamation point? You were right there! REQ. TIA

For the most part, I feel your pain. But I see it as, for the most part, a bunch of imperfect people trying to do their best to do what they believe is right for everyone, upholding the Constitution and integrating modern complex social issues, labor, defense, etc., the country, to roll with the work of it, sometimes screwing up, but mostly being tripped by the vastly over-represented minority party that tell such near instantly and verifiably obvious lies to justify their agenda and get what they want, whether legislative roadblocks for the opposition, roadblocks to voting for voting groups that don't vote for them, while all of their major successes are astoundingly obviously ill-gotten by quasi-legal maneuvering, and by the numbers, sir, by the numbers alone, is not remotely representative of the needs or wants or best interests of 99% of the voting politic, citizens and residents of the United States, and boldly in plain site on all media refuse to abide by the letter or the spirit of the Constitution or the laws of the US, nor the laws of common decency, doing so not only without honor, but without even a shred, not even a shred of decency.

Among the top 1% (who are the only people who should rationally even be voting Republican), those in that small group who are actually Republicans and politically powerful are shitting on the American people while claiming to be inclusive of the American People. Gumming up the gears of honest government executed by a staff with integrity is not remotely what the Founders intended, and anyone that believes otherwise is an anarchist, which is really what the Republican members of the 1% are... they'd be perfectly satisfied if they didn't have to deal with government oversight, regulation and taxes, and could just exploit Americans for profit unfettered by law.

But this is just my vaguest impression of what's happening and has been happening in America for more than a few decades at least. One side is like Mr. Magoo, the other is shady as shit. Brilliantly but wickedly, stupid nanny issues (like gun or abortion) are used to distract otherwise rational voters into ignoring their own personal economic interests. It really isn't debatable what party a married father of two earning $32K should be voting for, and it is hurting America that so many like him are not operating in their personal economic interests, as the Framers of the regulated capitalistic economy intended, and it is really messing things up for... everyone but the rich, especially the uber wealthy. It should be a lot less expensive and easier for all the other Americans, the 99%, to live and breathe in America.

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