United States Politics Thread 46

[Moose-tache]

I once created a hypothetical State "Columbia," which was just a combined Idaho and Oregon (I have since learned that similar proposals already existed). The idea was that while Oregon is fairly safely blue, and Idaho is very safely red, combined they would become the most contentious state in the country in several of the last elections. If your goal was to create a state that federal politicians care about, they would care a lot about Columbia. Now I wonder if you could do the same thing on a national scale: redraw the states to mix disperate cultures and politics as much as possible.

EDIT: Utah+Colorada, at least in the last election, would be pretty even. But Minnesota+ND+SD would have come down to less than two thousand votes in 2020! And those states actually have a lot in common culturally.

[Nachtswalbe]

Some idiot supporting the “National Divorce” https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamasNemesi ... 7359030272

[Nachtswalbe]

Maybe a solution to incipient authoritarianism among the “anti wokes”, technocrats etc is to promote a sort of socially radical utilitarianism. Basically the state doesn’t care about your race/religion/gender/language group and enforces tolerance with an iron fist as long as you Serve the State - kinda like a non-military version of starship troopers.

Or a less discriminatory version of Neoreactionary idea of “governance without politics(conflict)”

The state is pro-personal freedom while being anti-political freedom and theoretically anti-political and literally ruled by bureaucracy

The State would divest itself of traditional national symbols and even the flag itself, referring itself only as the The Republic or The United Republic.

[Nortaneous]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAz1FjSWYAE ... ame=medium
There are advocates of “National Divorce” along red-blue/urban-rural lines

The problem with that would be that it would allow the Republicans to lord over the red areas, when the real goal ought to be to exclude them from power in as much of an area as possible.

why

Maybe a solution to incipient authoritarianism among the “anti wokes”, technocrats etc is to promote a sort of socially radical utilitarianism. Basically the state doesn’t care about your race/religion/gender/language group and enforces tolerance with an iron fist as long as you Serve the State - kinda like a non-military version of starship troopers.

Or a less discriminatory version of Neoreactionary idea of “governance without politics(conflict)”

The state is pro-personal freedom while being anti-political freedom and theoretically anti-political and literally ruled by bureaucracy

The State would divest itself of traditional national symbols and even the flag itself, referring itself only as the The Republic or The United Republic.

"as long as you Serve the State" isn't even trying for the impossible liberal goal of governance without a vision of the good

[Nachtswalbe]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAz1FjSWYAE ... ame=medium
There are advocates of “National Divorce” along red-blue/urban-rural lines

The problem with that would be that it would allow the Republicans to lord over the red areas, when the real goal ought to be to exclude them from power in as much of an area as possible.

why

Maybe a solution to incipient authoritarianism among the “anti wokes”, technocrats etc is to promote a sort of socially radical utilitarianism. Basically the state doesn’t care about your race/religion/gender/language group and enforces tolerance with an iron fist as long as you Serve the State - kinda like a non-military version of starship troopers.

Or a less discriminatory version of Neoreactionary idea of “governance without politics(conflict)”

The state is pro-personal freedom while being anti-political freedom and theoretically anti-political and literally ruled by bureaucracy

The State would divest itself of traditional national symbols and even the flag itself, referring itself only as the The Republic or The United Republic.

"as long as you Serve the State" isn't even trying for the impossible liberal goal of governance without a vision of the good

That’s the point. It’s trying to be tolerant out of pragmatism, and ultimately focused on its survival and if pragmatism aids survival, so be it

[Travis B.]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAz1FjSWYAE ... ame=medium
There are advocates of “National Divorce” along red-blue/urban-rural lines

The problem with that would be that it would allow the Republicans to lord over the red areas, when the real goal ought to be to exclude them from power in as much of an area as possible.

why

Umm why would you think that one might want to permanently exclude the Republicans from power? I can't see any reason why this would be a bad idea. There is not a single good thing in the Republicans' political program. (Note that I do not mean establishing a one-party state, but rather moving the Overton window sufficiently that the Republicans have no chance of holding political power.)

[Nachtswalbe]

https://www.ecosophia.net/that-untraversed-land/
Railing against universities:

Universities are a great example. A century and a half ago most people didn’t go to university. Doctors and lawyers entered the field by apprenticeship—you went to work for an established practitioner, learned the ropes, and passed state exams. Engineers and architects did the same thing. Schoolteachers had an even simpler route: bright kids who didn’t have other prospects got put to work teaching younger children, and as soon as they graduated from school themselves they’d find a job in a school somewhere. The system worked very well, not least because it was an effective means of social mobility: young people could enter the professions irrespective of the social class of their parents, so long as they were smart and willing to work hard.

[Nachtswalbe]

Has anyone heard of Chris chan?

[Travis B.]

Has anyone heard of Chris chan?

Heard the name, all I know about her is that she's some sort of Internet "celebrity" who is, from what I read now, accused of some sort of sex crime that I haven't bothered to look into.

[Nachtswalbe]

Has anyone heard of Chris chan?

Heard the name, all I know about her is that she's some sort of Internet "celebrity" who is, from what I read now, accused of some sort of sex crime that I haven't bothered to look into.

tldr: she became infamous for a poorly drawn comic series. trolls (different groups including kiwifarms) drove her crazy, and she was never in a good position to begin with (living at home with her mom in her 30s, never having a job after several meltdowns at work etc). then she committed incest on her mom

[Moose-tache]

The problem with that would be that it would allow the Republicans to lord over the red areas, when the real goal ought to be to exclude them from power in as much of an area as possible.

why

Umm why would you think that one might want to permanently exclude the Republicans from power? I can't see any reason why this would be a bad idea. There is not a single good thing in the Republicans' political program. (Note that I do not mean establishing a one-party state, but rather moving the Overton window sufficiently that the Republicans have no chance of holding political power.)

The goal of the Democrats should be to eliminate the Republicans, but it's important they not succeed. It's like a courtroom: each side wants the other to lose, but both sides need to have a realistic shot at winning. The fact that the Republican party platform is currently absolute banana-rockets is irrelevant to the ideal government structure and the need for contentious political parties. Improving the GOP leadership so that they actually serve conservatives well* would do much more good than trying to ice out conservatives from democracy.

* The Republican party is currently way behind average conservative voters on issues of gun control and green energy, and to a lesser extent taxation, healthcare, and military adventures.

[Travis B.]

The goal of the Democrats should be to eliminate the Republicans, but it's important they not succeed. It's like a courtroom: each side wants the other to lose, but both sides need to have a realistic shot at winning. The fact that the Republican party platform is currently absolute banana-rockets is irrelevant to the ideal government structure and the need for contentious political parties. Improving the GOP leadership so that they actually serve conservatives well* would do much more good than trying to ice out conservatives from democracy.

* The Republican party is currently way behind average conservative voters on issues of gun control and green energy, and to a lesser extent taxation, healthcare, and military adventures.

What I mean by exclude the Republicans from power is to reduce it to the status of, say, AfD, and have multi-party democracy to its left, i.e. move the Overton window so that it is without practical power. Of course, this is probably not possible in the US due to the nature of the electoral system here, vis-à-vis parliamentary systems with proportional or mixed representation.

[zompist]

The goal of the Democrats should be to eliminate the Republicans, but it's important they not succeed. It's like a courtroom: each side wants the other to lose, but both sides need to have a realistic shot at winning. The fact that the Republican party platform is currently absolute banana-rockets is irrelevant to the ideal government structure and the need for contentious political parties. Improving the GOP leadership so that they actually serve conservatives well* would do much more good than trying to ice out conservatives from democracy.

Abstractly, yes, a two-party system works when both parties pay most attention to the center, and thus correct their excesses. The usual way for a party to tell that it has excesses is that it keeps losing elections.

The theoretical system isn't working right now. For historical reasons, mostly, the GOP has way more power than it has votes. And at the same time it's given itself over to paranoid fantasies which in turn motivates it to hope for fascist one-party rule. No one knows how to fix it; the centrists within the party are laughably unpopular.

The Labour Party seems just as broken, though in a different way, and no one knows how to fix that either. (And they'd better figure it out before the Tories drive the Scots out of the UK, cementing their hold on power even more.)

[alice]

The Labour Party seems just as broken, though in a different way, and no one knows how to fix that either. (And they'd better figure it out before the Tories drive the Scots out of the UK, cementing their hold on power even more.)

Simplifying things somewhat, the Labour Party's problem is a mixture of several factors:

- it's an uneasy coalition between the idealistic leftists and the pragmatic centrists, neither of whom wants to be there but both know they have to otherwise the left-wong vote would be split, which is a death sentence under FPTP
- the centrists regard the leftists as anachronistic embarrassments
- the leftists regard the centrists - indeed, anyone further right than JEZZA!!! - as essentially hard-line Tories in disguise
- the press is quite happy to present the party as consisting entirely of leftists ("ED MILLIBAND's FATHER WAS A MARXIST!!!")
- enough people adore Boris to make it virtually impossible for any leader with less charisma to get much attention
- Scotland still hasn't forgiven them for cuddlng up to the Tories in the independence referendum

Ideally, the leftists would secede and the remainder would join with the LibDems to make a new centre-left party, but this is not realistically going to happen.

Oh, and if the Tories really want to "drive the Scots out of the UK", they're being very subtle about it. The very idea that some people in Scotland are prepared to even think about independence is anathema to the right wing, as is the idea than Ireland would be better off reunified. But that's a separate matter.

[Nachtswalbe]

https://mobile.twitter.com/yungneocon/s ... 2304039937

[MacAnDàil]

https://www.ecosophia.net/that-untraversed-land/
Railing against universities:

Universities are a great example. A century and a half ago most people didn’t go to university. Doctors and lawyers entered the field by apprenticeship—you went to work for an established practitioner, learned the ropes, and passed state exams. Engineers and architects did the same thing. Schoolteachers had an even simpler route: bright kids who didn’t have other prospects got put to work teaching younger children, and as soon as they graduated from school themselves they’d find a job in a school somewhere. The system worked very well, not least because it was an effective means of social mobility: young people could enter the professions irrespective of the social class of their parents, so long as they were smart and willing to work hard.

I don't get the impression that there was more social mobility prior to WW2, rather than less, so, if anything, universities inceased social mobility. I don't know why you shared this though.

[Ares Land]

https://www.ecosophia.net/that-untraversed-land/
Railing against universities:

Universities are a great example. A century and a half ago most people didn’t go to university. Doctors and lawyers entered the field by apprenticeship—you went to work for an established practitioner, learned the ropes, and passed state exams. Engineers and architects did the same thing. Schoolteachers had an even simpler route: bright kids who didn’t have other prospects got put to work teaching younger children, and as soon as they graduated from school themselves they’d find a job in a school somewhere. The system worked very well, not least because it was an effective means of social mobility: young people could enter the professions irrespective of the social class of their parents, so long as they were smart and willing to work hard.

The historical agreement is weird. Doctors and lawyers were already going to university in the Middle Ages.
Engineers were indeed learning on the job in the 18th century -- but not anymore in the 19th century.
Apprenticeship was not a means of social mobility.
People entered apprenticeship based on who their family knew. I mean, the way it happened is that they went to work with family friends.

That said, yeah, there's a lot of good to be said for apprenticeship and we should be having more of it.

(On the other hand, the single biggest problem right now with American universities is that they're horribly expensive. I know the solutions are too socialist to contemplate, but it doesn't have to be this way.)

[MacAnDàil]

Also, French unviersities have more training sessions for students that they have to look for. Many of my students get them with family friends.

[Nachtswalbe]

https://twitter.com/YosarianTwo/status/ ... 1901948928

[Nachtswalbe]

Evangelical clergy and the like tend not to view the idea of rights (as part of a social contract) very highly.
To quote Wikipedia on sexual-minority rights:

In 2009, N. T. Wright noted that, in popular discourse, there has been a "supposed modern and scientific discovery of a personal 'identity' characterised by sexual preference, which then generates a set of 'rights'..

In my experience, such clergy preach the importance of unconditional, binding personal relations and dislike any form of 'contractual' relations which are conditional and allow options to leave -- one's sense of duty to the church or family or whatever should overrule any dislike