A Boring Dystopia

It's one of those things that are obvious to reasonable people but it's nice to have proof for when you run into unreasonable people who deny it.

i love getting scolded about voting when even if I personally managed to pull off a miracle and convert one thousand people to vote for biden, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

It's been trending for some time. Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" describes a host of national policies that were intensely disliked when they began and only became normalized after years of mass media manipulation.

The Drug Wars, opposition to the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements, most of our wars after WW2, our large scale claw backs of social spending and ballooning security state budgets, our habit of subsidizing sports stadiums and toxic waste sites, etc - all need regular continued media investment for fear of a popular turn.

SCOTUS widened the spigots for political spending in pursuit of these goals. But it's not like the WSJ or AM Radio or the cable news companies weren't already flush with propaganda before the CU decision. It's not like CU was necessary for the volume of social media manipulation, either.

Could we start discussing credible strategies to reverse this situation, or at least improve that number somehow?

I say this constantly, and everyone nods along happily when I say it, but almost nobody does it. What is it? It's getting involved in your local politics.

The federal government, the US congress and senate and all the executive branch.... they're all supported and propped up by powerful institutions within the states that got powerful because nobody paid it any attention and still don't. People get elected to represent us who run without opposition and then we wonder why nothing seems to change.

If you get involved with knowing who in your neighborhood, your school district, your city, your county and your state represent you, and then challenging that representation in any way you can, from actually running all the way to just getting on those horrible neighborhood forums and holding yard-sales to get to know your neighbors.

GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS. Jesus, this country is terrible about this one huge thing that could change everything, which is reforming communities. We scream and cry how bad the world is and make ZERO effort to make it better by forming support systems within neighborhoods. I mean fuck, most suburban neighborhoods have nothing else to do, might as well have some bake sales and yard sales and jogging groups and other things to help get to know each other, right? Or has all our cynicism completely overshadowed any possible chance of ever forming friendly communities in the US?

Get involved with Represent.Us, the site that was linked to.

They have a pretty good strategy, and they have been making progress.

Governance is discouraging because it’s complex. And when things are complex, it’s difficult to see progress and it’s easy to predict that there will be problems.

It’s also difficult (and unrewarding) to have serious conversations about this stuff on social media.

The posts get too long, with no satisfying simplistic conclusion, and even if you make an incredible magnum opus of a post that acknowledges enough complexity to be realistic while also being short and snappy enough to catch people’s attention… it drops off of the trending posts algorithm after a day.

And FPTP

Duh? We know already know this. Their main concern is staying in office for as long as possible and see how ~~badly they can fuck up the country.~~ much they can grow their own bank accounts.

The destruction of the country is just a byproduct of their greed. :(

Quintuple the number of seats in each district, use Sequential Proportional Approval Voting to elect the five members of each district.

Do you think it's gotten any better?

careful lol, it’s 10 years old. sep 18, 2014. not sure if that was a typo or an exaggeration but it is technically a mistruth.

https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-

I don't think people realize how much graft is built into the system.

• Bribery is near impossible to prove. (Thanks SCOTUS)
• You can effectively keep left over campaign funds.
• Insider trading does not apply to you.
• Your paycheck is expected to cover 2 offices, staff at each, 2 homes, frequent travel between them, and your political advisors.
• Fundraising is organized by the party, stay on their good side and you get help and resources to raise money. Introduced to the right people, etc. Get on the wrong side and get cut off.

It's no wonder our elected representatives treat small donations like mana from heaven, we're effectively paying them. And they treat the capitol building like a stock trading room because that's their real retirement fund, their key to independence from the party.

Representatives chosen by sortition like jury duty would be more representative compared to what we currently have, and that's such a wild thought.

In Germany we only vote on Sundays and it's super easy, barely an inconvenience. We're still lucky when more than two thirds vote. People are in general are lazy and stupid.

as long as they vote along party lines more than according to what the politicians do, number of votes does not improve this.

Sorry but mandatory vote solves nothing. You'll still have a lot of people alienate about politics and now they had to vote and they'll make their choices like a popularity contest.

Unfortunately, I think it's exactly the opposite. They don't have to do anything that people want to vote for them anyway.

You can vote for whichever politician you like, so long as it's AIPAC approved.

That would be nice in the future. Unfortunately, the modern Web is not even in the ballpark of being secure enough for something like that (and it's trending worse, not better).