I dont think they realized that. As a student of Ancient Greek, and self-educated in the Greek classics who knows the myth, I had to repress a laugh. IEDM are not renowned for their discernment. They’re kind of a Cato Institute wannabe. Or Canadian French counterpart to the Fraser Institute. I’m trying not to insult anyone here but knowing the ‘War on Christmas’ opinions of some of their members, it’s becoming harder as years pass.
10 Likes
Train-borne, short range tactical nukes
Drug tunnels along the Mason Dixon line
Daughters of the Confederacy as a political party
King Sam Houston of Texas
BBQ outlawed in the North
Oil embargoes in the South causing massive deforestation in the North to fuel power plants
Greenland actually invaded by Bloomberg shock troops
Enigma Machines found for pennies in 5 and dime stores around Virginia
Hiroshima, Nagasaki… And Pensacola
So much winning.
3 Likes
A less-incompetent Trump would have already used Covid as an excuse to imprison every non-white person in the country. And would have successfully manufactured several more coups.
Incompetence is not the problem. Malice is.
8 Likes
Some filmmakers created an alternate-history mockumentary based on that premise in 2004. Haven’t seen the film so I can’t really speak to whether the satire lands well or not.
4 Likes
Apartheid South Africa Will build a time machine in some timeline and bring ak47s down to the CSA.
2 Likes
So you want to allow only rich people who have money already to be in elected office ?
2 Likes
Related:
The U.S. has been in slow decline for at least a dozen years, and by my reckoning almost 20. The last five years has been an acceleration of this trend, and anyone who thinks things will go back to normal if Biden wins (including Biden himself) is fooling himself.
ETA: Right now, I find myself advising the young people I know who are headed off to university in 2021 to seriously consider studying outside the U.S., and as for myself I’m planning to spend most of the year outside the country of my naturalised citizenship going forward. Whatever happens on 3 November, the U.S. is going to be in for a very rough four years at a minimum.
13 Likes
S. M. Stirling’s Draka series posited this. The Confederacy relocated to South Africa and eventually conquered the world. The most disturbing part was that he seemed to admire them.
1 Like
I think Vietnam, and Nixon were the turning points.
1 Like
BBQ would be renamed “Freedom Ribs”.
1 Like
Opposite of that. I would love a penniless servant like Ammon Hennacy to be a Senator. Or I’d love a very wealthy person with integrity (no name coming to mind) - I just don’t want it to be a job where you get more money than you are paid.
I’m suggesting the funds to run for office would be provided by government and all media would be free, too. These are not difficult ideas to implement. The FCC even has provisions for public information on candidates, for example. You shouldn’t need a warchest to run for govt.
I know jobs need salaries. You should receive your salary for whatever office you’ve been elected into - I think Senators get $150K - Not bad.
What I’m saying is your decisions in office are only reasoned on your own morals and the city or state you’re representing. You evaluate your votes and bills on benefit and need to the country.
First year of this, I challenge, there would be gun laws, gerrymandering clean up, environmental laws, etc. From both sides of the aisle. (Nixon was an environmentalist, for example) - Without corporate corruption and paid-for puppets, the country would do fine, and quickly.
Basic one page law: If you take any money from a lobbyist or end up in a job after that with a company, which would obviously indicate corruption, you go to jail for misuse of the office. It would be a felony to profit from being a Senator.
Trust me, the right people would show up to take the jobs these very evil corrupt people would give up.
Ottawa, Canada…
I’m kind of holding my breath for Nov 3.
I want to say Yes it’s over!
I wonder if we’ll be needing better national defenses. …Canada has the Bomb, and isn’t afraid to use it!
Then the power shifts to those who get to decide which candidates qualify for those funds.
“Whichever ones gather the requisite number of signatures,” you say? Then the people who get to run for office are the ones who can organize petition-gatherers. Which is to say, those who can command money and resources.
Also, does that mean people who aren’t running for office are no longer allowed to run ads that make a case for or against any candidate or their platform? Good luck with that.
Sometimes the policies that seem simple to implement at first glance get hopelessly complicated when you get to the details. That doesn’t necessarily mean that publicly funded elections are a bad idea, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking it would be an EASY task.
1 Like
I see them more as very early indicators. As bad as those two situations were, at that point there was still some level of normalcy (at least as understood by white people who are now between age 40-80): the post-war economic anomaly was still in effect; the middle class wasn’t yet winnowed down; unions were still strong; companies that produced goods and services were more important to the market than financial services; an internationalist outlook and diplomatic norms were still in place; the idea that government was the enemy was still a fringe one; and stupid, ignorant and/or deranged people couldn’t be elected president (I’m sure others can add similar elements). I peg the definitive end of all that to the market crash of April 2000, and it’s been a slide downhill from there.
3 Likes
Okay, everyone who is alive gets to run for office. No power decides. There’s already clear indicators of voices online. If you can persuade with a moral compass it’s already in you to run. But we could all run. We all get $500 a year, either for video games or running for office.
What an exhausting attempt at rewriting my proposal. I didn’t say any of that. I’m saying no money needed, EVER. No petitions for getting on a BALLOT, make it all write in. Trust me, polling and other media would predict the candidates just fine. Just fucking run. It’s paid for by guaranteed money from the state.
YEP. Dude, you can’t advertise for cigarettes now on TV. Laws against ads work.
Thanks!
Yeah but mine’s easy. I’m actually describing the original idea of the Constitution. It has been corrupted beyond a basic idea of whomever runs on a ballot is voted to represent others, not themselves.
Sure, but, again, making any money gained from being a Senator ILLEGAL would define what the job is, and is not. Then work up from that.
You sure are interested in keeping money in politics, I’ll give you that. But it’s an easy thought experiment to say as a rhyme: “But it doesn’t need to be. Just make money a felony”
When I drove from New York to Los Angeles with some friends in the late 1980’s the thing that struck us most was the abject poverty so many Americans live in.
Places like West Virginia and Mississippi (for example) are obviously well known as very poor states, but it seemed to us that almost everywhere had pockets where the people looked like they didn’t get enough to eat, and their housing was obviously sub-standard.
From what I understand things have not got better, for many anyway.
7 Likes
Canadian here. Two thoughts
As suggested upthread, well getting a Bomb might not be a bad idea. Even 10 years ago the idea would have sounded totally nonsensical. But now, well, its an empiracal fact that if you have The Bomb, the US doesn’t invade you (cf North Korea vs Iraq). And we have the uranium, the know-how, and a hell of a lot of real-estate. May be it is time we thought about setting up a “Toronto Project” somewhere in the back end of Saskatchewan. Just In Case.
But the other thought, I’ve had for a while, is that blaming various US leaders and movers and shakers is hardly the point. The US is a democracy, and there appears to be a hard core of 40% of the US population that will vote Trump No Matter What. That is effectively a majority, because the other 60% seems to be sort of normal people, divided amongst themselves more often than not.
I mean every country, democracy or not, has a certain percentage of fools and fanatics in its population, but nothing like that. Where on earth did these people come from? We need to understand that, it is so mind boggling.
If the US can’t figure out what do with that hard undigestable insane lump, I cry for the future of the world.
9 Likes
OK, let’s say a few thousand people decide to run for office. They are each given a $500 budget to do so. Who wins? Probably not one of the thousands of people you never heard of before, because 500 bucks won’t get you one decent commercial. So you’re still left with the people who were already well-known enough to get name recognition before they decided to run: the rich and famous.
Candidates don’t materialize out of the ether into the national consciousness based on ideas alone. There are giant political machines at work, all the time, just to make sure certain people are well known enough for you to even have an opinion to offer to those pollsters.
Ain’t no way no how the courts are going to uphold a law that says the Sierra Club isn’t allowed to ask you to vote against the candidate who is planning to cut down the redwoods for scrap paper.
The people who WROTE the Constitution quickly realized that some of those “basic ideals” weren’t workable in a real world setting. When the Constitution was being drafted Alexander Hamilton argued against the existence of political parties. Then he founded one.
More like “I disagree that the proposals you’ve outlined so far would remove the effect of money in politics.”
Can we reduce the the corrosive effect of money on the political process? We absolutely can and must. But it’s a helluva lot more complicated than just saying “OK, we can’t let money influence politics anymore!” because the devil remains in the details.
(laughs) Not sure you’d ever be fun to collaborate with on any project or idea. How mentally flexible are you capable of being on other topics? You’re rewriting my points, too. For example the $500 would just be free cash for fun. There would be no budget needed.
Think simpler, friend. You’re insisting this is complicated. I’m saying it isn’t.
I’ll leave the conversation here just saying you’re arguing for an already mad system to stay in place. All your examples are based on that system.
Money can absolutely be removed from politics. Ideas are free and so is the passage of law.
Talk to ya later.
1 Like
