It's a very broad question, but seeing the latest extremely worrying news from where I am made me wonder: how's everyone else getting on? Now that we're moving past the lockdowns and furloughs, do things look hopeful where you are?

Things in the UK are pretty bad right now - huge inflation, energy prices hitting points that will seriously harm people's financial stability just to stay warm in winter, unending political scandal, increasing pollution, and little real sign of a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm fortunate enough to be able to handle it at least for now, but I'm genuinely worried for those around me and for the country as a whole.

The pandemic hit us all hard, but it's difficult to gauge how hard. Obviously Brexit is an extra anchor around the UK's neck, but then the US has the legacy of Trump and mainland Europe has a war on the doorstep, so we're far from the only ones with problems. Are we in a uniquely bad position, or is this how everyone's feeling right now?

This might just be because of the change I’ve made in my online behavior, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I’ve talked many many times about my long stint on Twitter. Specifically the brief stint where I was highly active on leftist twitter from early to mid 2020 (where I managed to get around two thousand followers which seems crazy to me now considering I’m just a random guy). Back then tensions were high. People were getting laid off, high profile civil rights protests were happening, and there was nothing much to do but to be online. Personally my internship I had lined up during the summer (since I was just about to graduate college) ended up getting cancelled which led me to a period of depression. It’s also the reason I started spending so much time on Twitter and what led me to drink heavily and gain a bunch of weight. I imagine a lot of people who became extremely online during this period were in similar boats.

Anyways, I made a couple of online friends during this time period. It initially started as “Bernie” or “Rose” twitter. We were all pretty normal social democrats supporting Sanders for the presidency (which before Super Tuesday seemed like a big possibility). And then when it became clear that Biden would be the democratic nominee, a lot of people ended up going to the dark side. They started using hammer and sickle emojis on their display name. Started talking about how they were going to read Marx and Lenin (but they never did). They started making memes about how awesome Castro and Mao were. Bios went from “BernieOrBust” to “Marixst-Leninist-Maoist.”

A lot of talk started happening of “grow your own garden the end of the world is near” and also “arm yourselves comrades the class war is among us.” Somehow everyone became very fond of the second amendment. There were twitter accounts LARPing about joining the Socialist Rifle Association, e-girls were taking provocative pictures of themselves posing with automatic rifles in front of a Soviet flag. It became a whole thing. Some of this online behavior was covered in articles like The Cut's Before We Make Out, Wanna Dismantle Capitalism?

I ended up disconnecting from all this around September/October of 2020. I actually ended up voting for Biden in November which I wasn’t planning on when I was addicted to Twitter. I go a little bit into this detox here.

Fast forward to this year. A wave of mass shootings happen. Something that used to be a normal thing pre-pandemic but which stopped/slowed down thanks to lockdowns and schools remaining closed. With all of this in the news again, I start thinking back to the friends I used to have. And their gun loving, revolutionary wanting, “libs get the bullet too” type of tweets that they were writing back in 2020. I don’t remember most of them let alone their names. But I do remember a few.

I look them up. And there are dozens of tweets about the need for gun control. They’re talking about how nobody actually needs guns, and all of the typical liberal arguments in favor of gun control. A stark contrast to what they were saying before. They still have “socialist” in their display names and bios, though from the retweets I saw of them they were no longer following the “Mao is cool” type of people. For lack of a better term, they calmed down. They don’t long for a revolution to happen. They don’t want blood on the streets.

I think what had happened is that they all forgot what mass shootings were. How destructive they were. And now that society is mostly back to normal, including mass shootings, they remembered what that was like.

Now this is too niche of a corner on twitter to talk about in terms of larger online behavior. But back in 2020, I did predict that when Biden became president a lot of these online socialists would retreat into the liberals that they used to be. And it seems like that has happened, at least to some extent.

I mean, I’m glad for them. They seem more balanced, and it’s good that they eventually found themselves like I did (even if I did it a little quicker than they did). But it is still an interesting progression that a lot of my former online friends took.

Hi tildos. I am curious on your thoughts on the stability of the US in the short-medium term. What I'm worried about is the combo of a majority of Republicans having beliefs divorced from reality due to a sophisticated propaganda network, increasing "othering"/hatred of non-repubs, fascism becoming more popular among young people and the brazen mask-off takeover of the govt.

From my understanding these sorts of things (civil war, country breaking up) tend to happen very slowly, then all at once. I am very worried we are approaching the "all at once" stage. Is this reasonable? Is a civil war likely? Balkanization of the US? Something else?

What could be done to prepare? I have European-immigrant parents, so would getting citizenship in their country be prudent? Learning other languages? (I know english, mediocre grasp of birth-language, poor/middling spanish). Buying a rifle?

I am starting to regret choosing to attend a university in Texas haha with these prospects.

How do you see the next 5 years playing out, politically, economically, socially, militarily? In areas that hit closest to you? I feel I'm not confident in making a forecast more specific than “nothing good will happen." And yet I have to make huge decisions about where to live and work.

It's because they believe(d) he can(could) tear the whole thing down, so they can rebuild a theocratic empire on its ashes.

I was listening to Ian Masters' Background Briefing from sometime in the past few days, and he had some lady on who said it. She was speaking about the idiotic ruling from FLA on the mask mandate, then pointed out that this judge was one on the approved list from the Council for National Policy. Apparently Trump agreed only to appoint judges from this list, among other concessions, in order to gain evangelical support. And then she said, they want to tear down all American institutions, so they can install a theocracy instead. It finally all made sense.

This is terrifying to me. I was brutalized by evangelical fundamentalist religion growing up, and am still severely impeded by the trauma in my adult life. I would much rather live in a world where every lunatic open carries a fully automatic submachine gun than live in a theocracy.

I was recently informed about the Council for National Policy. They're a force for evil. A highly effective force, that his been working mostly in secret since at least the 80's to turn America into a Spanish inquisitors pipe dream.

This still doesn't quite explain why middle class Baptist Jane would vote for Trump, I guess maybe racial fear? Paternalistic conditioning?

I try to be solutions focussed generally speaking, but I don't see one right now, sadly. I aim to start looking and thinking..

What I meant is a world without any barriers whatsoever for the circulation of people. Each country would have border checks for things like explosives, heavy drugs, and weapons, but apart from that everyone would be allowed in, always. I'm not sure about economy measures, trade barriers, and circulation of goods, though.

But please, feel free to interpret "world without borders" however you wish! ;)

A friend shared a troubling website with me. I'm not 100% sure why I found the site so troubling, but one thing that stands out is its slick sophistication. There are two primary facets to this sophistication: the organization and the presentation. https://defeatthemandatesdc.com.

The presentation is, at very first glance, about what I would expect from a leftist or progressive group. It didn't take long for me to detect something was off, and an a quick reading of what they are after confirms it's neither leftist nor progressive. But that very first impression, which was followed by a sense of confusion as part of my subconscious detected the true message, was unique for me, I can usually detect political bias instantaneously. (This is a curse more than anything else, a symptom born from trauma, but that's another discussion.)

Regarding the organization, it seems focussed and professional. There's some real effort and intellegince both behind the design and messaging at least. If that is representative of a larger effort, that indicates significant funding and effective organization skills at play. I can't quite articulate what's differnt from previous and ongoing, similar efforts. There's something, fundamentally different here that projects real power, depth, and sophistication, and that is deeply disturbing. Efforts like whatever was behind Jan 6 seem chaotic and angry. This effort feels more collected, dispassionate, focussed, and expansive.

Firstly, it seems pretty clear polling Hispanic/Latino people as one unified populace isn't working well, given how Cuban Americans have a large presence in the Republican party instead of the Democratic one and that ignoring the race of the people polled is likely very unhelpful and means statements made about Hispanic people probably don't apply to all or maybe most of them.

Secondly, while polling is largely associated with politics, I think it isn't the only place that it could be useful. For example, a large question in many relationship-related subreddits and is if something you do or would like to do is normal, and I think polling on what people want/would want from people they would partner with would be good. (Although this might be more a semi-pragmatic thing, given that a lot of this talking seems to think "normal" and "ok" are the same, which is not really true.)

So I’m curious if there are any other Californians here looking at the ballot for the recall of Governor Newsom and scratching their heads like me. A group of Trump supporters got up enough votes to hold a recall of the governor, and we have to vote in the next few weeks. The ballots arrived this week and there are 2 votes we have to make: 1) Should we recall the governor? And 2) Which of these 46 (not joking!) people should replace him. Unfortunately, of the 46 possible replacements, I’ve heard of 2 of them: Caitlyn Jenner and Angelyne. Neither appear to have any relevant experience. (I’ll give Ms. Jenner the benefit of the doubt that she’d at least give a voice to an underserved portion of the population, though.)

This opinion piece from the LA Times makes the point that if the recall succeeds, there are no viable Democratic candidates despite the state leaning Democrat by a 2 to 1 margin. (Furthermore, I can’t find any place that even has statements from each of the candidates like our elections usually do. Found it!)

I don’t know how likely the recall is to succeed, so it may be a non-issue, but I’m a little concerned that there could be some dumb situation where not enough people take it seriously and only people who are pissed that they have to wear masks vote and we end up with some far right talk show host as our governor for the next year and a half or more. Anyone else have a strategy here?

I don't understand why people think an individual vote changes anything. I don't mean this as an insult, I just don't understand by what mechanism my vote matters. To be clear, I am not saying you shouldn't vote, simply that one persons vote is a neutral act.

I assume that if I vote in an election my vote will literally be counted; the votes for one candidate will go from 100,000 to 100,001. In tiny elections, it is possible, not likely, for a single vote to change a result. However, arguing for a system from its top 0.1% best case scenario is a bit disingenuous. In 99.9% of elections, it does not come down to one vote.

I have also been told I should just choose the candidate that is closest to my beliefs or even put in a blank ballet. In the US, a 3rd-party candidate will not win any non-local election; in other countries, I understand that it is different, but I can't speak from personal experience. And its not like I would ever choose any of the main party candidates; some are much worse than others, but none represent my beliefs. My understanding of this idea is that what is being valued is the performance of representation, not my actual representation in the system. 'The medium is the message', or who you vote for does not matter, what matters is that you vote.

I've heard people say something to the effect of 'if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the political system'. This idea ignores the fact that not voting is an explicitly political act. I am engaging with the system by refusing to play what I perceive to be a rigged game.

But its not like the political system changes whether I vote or not; its not like anyone can know if I voted or not, unless I tell them or wear one of those 'I voted' stickers. I've heard people argue that if everyone thought this way, then the OTHER SIDE would win. But other people's decision to vote or not isn't my responsibility.

Is there something I am missing?

EDIT:

I changed my formatting to be more clear and edited the text, as a few responses seem to have missed some of my points.

This past year and a half I've been in a strange sort of depression over the dysfunction of human society, especially in how nations around the world have collectively dealt (or failed to deal) with the coronavirus.

I'm trying to get myself out of this funk. I'm normally a doer, not a sit-on-my-butt-er. I'm trying to think about the nature of human problems, see the problem space along different dimensions, and find high-leverage points for solutions. Trying to outline the problem "stack" so to speak.

This is a lot of paper napkin thinking from me. There are going to be a lot of naive thoughts here. But I'd like to have an open conversation, so we can stumble on some new interesting insights, rediscover what others already have, and not get too bogged down in "well, ackchyually..." nitty-gritty details.

The pandemic is a relatively 'easy' problem — at least if you compare it to the threat of an incoming extinction-level asteroid, a wandering black hole, or a dying sun, which would require technical solutions impossibly beyond our current capabilities. In those scenarios, we can only pray and party. But for the pandemic, we had the political tools: Taiwan showed us how a combined approach of strict border controls with hotel quarantining (no kindly asking people to maybe please quarantine — travelers will quarantine), wearing masks everywhere, extensive contact tracing, and cross-governmental data-sharing, can successful contain the virus. Now we have technological tools: a myriad of vaccines.

Yet...

• It's been nearly a year and a half. A concerted global effort could have ended the crisis within a month or two early on, right? Granted, this would entail giving up our human rights for a short while — but that seems way better than dragging it for so long. Instead we watched as we tried to carry on as normal as possible and the virus spread like wildfire.
• A third of U.S. adults are unvaccinated despite being eligible and there being plenty of vaccines to go around (in the US at least).
• Significant numbers of people believe wacky stuff: COVID isn't real, masks don't do anything, and so on.

From what I observe: nearly all human problems are policy problems. The human race has sufficient material and technological resources to solve most problems. Underlying those policy problems are coordination problems — coordinating people on the facts, solutions, and implementations.

1. Human problems
2. ... are policy problems
3. ... are coordination problems

So the human race has a bunch of solutions, institutions, and tools to help with the coordination problem:

• the UN and other intergovernmental bodies like the WHO to coordinate at the international level
• National institutions to coordinate
• Newspapers to spread information and generate consensus

But as we well know, these coordination solutions have problems. Now I'm thinking what are the coordination sub-problems.

• Incentive problems / The Game: Broadly in game theory speak, some players are incentivized to not cooperate, even if at the detriment of everyone. This seems to me to be the crux of the coordination problem.
• Culture problems: This is a whole nest of problems.
  • Cultural norms around equity. I think that this is a big one. It's been shown that different societies have different norms and ideas about what's fair and equal. The norms often develop around economic realities. Forager societies favor egalitarian distribution over meritocratic distribution as high cooperation is required between members: unequal distribution threatens relationships and cooperation. Perhaps our merit-based norms may need to shift from a pre-industrial era where people more or less produced what they consumed — to a new era of automation and robotics, where a relative few produce most everything.
  • Cultural norms around consumption and transmission of information. This stems from our education culture. Media consumption in our societies — western and non-western alike — is passive. Socratic seminars are rare in schools: pupils receive lessons passively from their teachers. Most people aren't educated or trained on how to have open discussions or on how to avoid rhetorical fallacies.
• Education problems: there is only so much information can do if people don't know how to process information.
  • Mentioned above cultural norms around how we consume and transmit information.
  • Statistical thinking. The abuse and misuse of stats in popular discourse.

Among others.

There are very serious articles about young adolescents being radicalized into fascist movements and personal testimonials of such in YouTube, along with many videos, most commonly by leftists about how this works and very rarely a guess at what to do about it.

There are also often memes about young people entering politics, like this video or this video assuming that and then satirizing how young, presumably privileged people when it comes to social matters (because otherwise bad personal experiences will inform your beliefs and this will be more than a poorly done intellectual exercise to you) flip flop between every political belief like it's nothing, alongside memes satirizing how young conservatives are introduced to their politics by edited clips of what are supposedly SJWs out of context and how farcically (distressingly) ridiculous it is to be introduced to your beliefs by these videos, especially when these sometimes real but extreme regardless examples of the left's presumed irrationality are much less harmful than the conservative extremes.

A lot of this talk and memes concerns or satirizes radicalization of people after they've been politicized and occasionally in the case of the serious articles, what to do with it. But I feel this focuses more on the consequences, which is fine, but not everything worth looking at.

So back to the title question, how do you think someone/people should be politicized?

The US, EU and assorted allies have gradually gotten into the habit, in recent decades, of using targeted sanctions (a lot) against both individuals and govts when the targets do something the West does not approve of.

Do they work? Do they help?

I think Obama-era sanctions on Iran played a part in getting Iran to at least consider the nuclear accord that Trump promptly renigged on ... but I also think Rouhani also wanted to develop a better relationship w/the US (and I'm sure he had at least grudging support from the Ayatollah), and gladly used the sanctions as the justification for speaking to the Great Satan.

Details aside, I think sanctions helped in that case. I can't think of any other examples where they were effective in helping achieve their intended effects.

OTOH, I think aggressive sanctions against North Korea have, at best, done no good at all, and have probably made the situation worse.

Any other successes come to mind?

A political example might be the fact that according to gallup, people have supported a popular vote for the US presidency for more than 75 years (this article is 20 years old, but the numbers still stand), albeit the partisan difference in opinion seems to be more recent and it's not clear if people knew what to replace it, or if they knew about all the other faults in the US political system.

Other more cultural examples might be things like romans drawing dicks on Hadrian's wall, eating fast food and their timeless graffiti, surrealism being 100 years old as opposed to 'Zoomer humor', etc.

So, what are your examples?

For those not aware, packing the court in this context refers to expanding the size of the U.S. Supreme Court so that whoever's in power can nominate judges they prefer to the newly-created seats, thereby creating a favorable majority for them where there might not have been one previously. It was attempted once in 1937, but failed, and has not been attempted since.

As for term limits, Supreme Court justices have none; the position is for life. The reasoning for this is primarily so that they can't be influenced as easily for political gain, as they've already achieved the final step in their careers.

Personally, the concept of court-packing has worried me no matter who does it, because from what I can tell (though granted I've not researched this), the Supreme Court has thus far done a decent job of avoiding partisanship; I'm concerned packing the courts would damage this precedent. I do believe that term limits could work, though I suspect they'd require a clause prohibiting justices from holding any jobs after their term expires, lest they become politically influenced by down-the-line job offers.

That said, what's your take?

^{(By the way, CGP Grey has a great video on some parts of the Supreme Court if you're interested in learning more about it)}

Asked mainly because

Conservatives say that's one of the things they believe in

It often seems to be wrong or misused ("if everyone just used masks and stayed home the pandemic would have ended long ago") ("not using masks during a pandemic has consequences for other people and thus doesn't belong in personal freedom")

A definition for stuff that fits the question could be this:

• The credit or blame for consistently failing or succeding at it is largely on you

• While you can ask for advice to get better, you have to do it yourself

So the main examples that come to my mind are largely (well) personal:

• Being motivated and committed to work towards what you want

• Being hygienic

• Being good at socializing and figuring out what's your relationship with other people gonna be

• (although obviously, given socializing depends on other people, this is very dependent on them doing the same and accepting/recognizing you or your choices and so is more accurate on progressive or apolitical social environments)

Which is good but doesn't explain it being used as a political belief.

Voting is determinative, especially where the constituency is precisely known, as with a legislature, executive council, panel of judges, gerrymandered electoral district, defined organisational membership. If you know, with high precision, who is voting, then you can determine or influence how they vote, or what the outcome will be. Which lends a certain amount of predictability (often considered as good), but also of a tyranny of the majority. This is especially true where long-standing majorities can be assured: legislatures, boards of directors, courts, ethnic or cultural majorities.

The result is a very high-stakes game in establishing majorities, influencing critical constituencies, packing courts, and gaming parliamentary and organisational procedures. But is this the best method --- both in terms of representational eqquity and of decision and goverrnance quality?

Hands down the most fascinating article I've read over the past decade is Michael Schulson's "How to choose? When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the dark", in Aeon. The essay, drawing heavily on Peter Stone, The Luck of the Draw: The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making (2011), which I've not read, mostly concerns decisions under uncertainty and of the risk of bad decisions. It seems to me that it also applies to periods of extreme political partisanship and division. An unlikely but possible circumstance, I'm sure....

Under many political systems, control is binary and discrete. A party with a majority in a legislature or judiciary, or control of the executive, has absolute control, barring procedural exceptions. Moreover, what results is a politics of veto power, where the bloc defining a controlling share of votes effectively controls the entire organisation. It may not be able to get its way, but it can determine which of two pluralities can reach a majority. Often in favour of its own considerations, overtly or covertly --- this is an obvious engine of corruption.

(This is why "political flexibility" often translates to more effective power than a hardline orthodoxy.)

One inspiration is a suggestion for US Supreme Court reform: greatly expand the court, hear more cases, but randomly assign a subset of judges to each case.[1] A litigant cannot know what specific magistrates will hear a case, and even a highly-packed court could produce minority-majority panels.

Where voting can be fuzzed, the majority's power is made less absolute, more uncertain, and considerations which presume that such a majority cannot be assured, one hopes, would lead to a more inclusive decisionmaking process. Some specific mechanisms;

• All members vote, but a subset of votes are considered at random. The larger the subset, the more reliably the true majority wins.
• A subset of members votes. As in the court example above.
• An executive role (presidency, leader, chairmanship) is rotated over time.
• For ranged decisions (quantitative, rather than yes/no), a value is selected randomly based on weighted support.

Concensus/majority decisionmaking tends to locked and unrepresentitive states. Fuzzing might better unlock these and increase representation.

Notes

1. A selection of articles on Supreme Court reforms and expansion, from an earlier G+ post: https://web.archive.org/web/20190117114110/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/9btDjFcNhg1 Also, notably, court restructuring or resizing has been practiced: "Republicans Oppose Court Packing (Except When They Support It)".
   • Jonathan Turley at WashPo, suggesting 19 justices:
     https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fate-of-health-care-shouldnt-come-down-to-9-justices-try-19/2012/06/22/gJQAv0gpvV_story.html
   • Robert W. Merry at The National Interest, agreeing:
     https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/court-packing-revisited-7123
   • Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times:
     http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-scotus-20180629-story.html
   • Jacob Hale Russell, at Time, suggests 27 justices:
     http://time.com/5338689/supreme-court-packing/
   • And Glen Harlan Reynolds, at USA Today ups the ante to 59 justices:
     https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/02/make-supreme-court-lots-bigger-59-justices-more-like-america-column/749326002/
   • Dylan Matthews at Vox, pointing at several other suggestions:
     https://www.vox.com/2018/7/2/17513520/court-packing-explained-fdr-roosevelt-new-deal-democrats-supreme-court
   • From the left, Todd N. Tucker at Jacobin:
     https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/supreme-court-packing-fdr-justices-appointments
   • Scott Lemieux at The New Republic:
     https://newrepublic.com/article/148358/democrats-prepare-pack-supreme-court
   • Ian Millhiser at Slate:
     http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/02/fdr_court_packing_plan_obama_and_roosevelt_s_supreme_court_standoffs.html
   • Zach Carter at Huffington Post:
     https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hey-democrats-pack-the-court_us_5b33f7a8e4b0b5e692f3f3d4
   • A pseudonymous piece by "@kept_simple" at The Outline:
     https://theoutline.com/post/5126/pack-the-court-judicial-appointment-scalia-is-in-hell
   • And a dissenting opinion from Justice Thomas Josh Blackman at National Review:
     https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/supreme-court-nominee-court-packing-not-feasible/
   • As well as some alarm klaxon sounding from The Daily Caller:
     https://dailycaller.com/2018/06/28/democrats-pack-supreme-court/

I have tried to answer this myself and come up empty handed. When a U.S. president leaves office, they take intimate awareness of many national secrets with them (weapons systems, intelligence gathering techniques, etc.). What prevents a former president from selling this information to the highest bidder?

Most California voters received their ballots this week, and as usual there are a bunch of propositions to vote on that we’ve barely heard of because nearly all election discussion is about national issues. So, what are you using to study up?

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I read the Wikipedia article about "gaslighting" and know it comes from a 1944 film of the same name in which an abusive husband gradually dims the gaslights at home – while denying doing so – to drive his wife mad.

Yet whenever I see the term used (which happens a lot, lately) I can't make the connection. It seems people use it for the simple act of lying or denying something, which to me is mostly just... lying, not "gaslighting". Any kind of stupid, misguided act is getting the sinister "gaslighting" stamp as if it some 5d chess move when it simply looks like incompetence. The core principle of it seems to revolve around having a plan to psychologically manipulate someone but I mostly don't see the plan nor the actual goal. If anything untruthful you say about an important topic is "gaslighting", then the term doesn't seem to have a lot of value on its own. Wikipedia actually mentions "unconscious" gaslighting which seems to contradict its purpose of actually wanting to manipulate someone.

So, given its popularity, I'm curious if there might be a (succinct) definition of the term that helps me understand it properly? Do you think it's just a trendy term to throw at politicians doing shit you don't like? Am I missing an important detail?

With the ever-growing stream of acquisitions and mergers, it got me thinking: Why do we permit companies to do this?

What would the harm be in banning this practice? If a company is becomes insolvent, release all of it's IP to the public domain, dissolve all patents/trademarks, and sell off physical assets to pay debtors (first of which should be former employees IMO, but that's a separate discussion).

Edit: I think my original intention of the post to kick off some interesting discussion has worked. Thank you to all current and future posters!

In my country (Brazil), it's probably the "Centrão". It's basically like, a dozen or so centrist/center-right/random parties who vote together as if they were a bloc for reasons which can only be explained with corruption, which seems to be the case. (The Wikipedia article ^(PT-BR) straight up says that it's a group that tries to approach the executive for political favors so yeah.)

I'm not sure how we deal with the US, given how much the US has to cite as strange, but a lot of the stuff on this site is already dedicated to the US.

Not submitting a link. Last thing that scumbag needs is web traffic.

But...let's suppose every one of this items actually came to pass in a reasonable form. There is some stuff there even I would legitimately want. So let's see the good/bad of Trump's lies, and discuss.

I'm bolding things that are (IMHO) obviously very, very bad. Italicizing ones that might be good, but are likely just lies. Striking out anything that is blatant pandering that the president has 0 ability to act on.

The purpose of this mental exercise is to see how people who don't keep up with politics might fall for the rhetoric. Know your enemy and all of that.

JOBS

• Create 10 Million New Jobs in 10 Months
• Create 1 Million New Small Businesses
• Cut Taxes to Boost Take-Home Pay and Keep Jobs in America
• Enact Fair Trade Deals that Protect American Jobs
• "Made in America" Tax Credits
  • I like the idea of trying to locally source stuff. Tax Credits are not how to do it.
• Expand Opportunity Zones
  • Eh, sounds good on paper...but will likely just be another loophole.
• Continue Deregulatory Agenda for Energy Independence

ERADICATE COVID-19

• Develop a Vaccine by The End Of 2020
• Return to Normal in 2021
  • Maybe if we actually did what we needed to do. I don't have my hopes up.
• Make All Critical Medicines and Supplies for Healthcare Workers in The United States
• Refill Stockpiles and Prepare for Future Pandemics
  • Yay for fixing your fuck-up way too late?

END OUR RELIANCE ON CHINA

• Bring Back 1 Million Manufacturing Jobs from China
• Tax Credits for Companies that Bring Back Jobs from China
• Allow 100% Expensing Deductions for Essential Industries like Pharmaceuticals and Robotics who Bring Back their Manufacturing to the United States
• No Federal Contracts for Companies who Outsource to China
  • Outsourcing bad. But China isn't the only place.
• Hold China Fully Accountable for Allowing the Virus to Spread around the World
  • God. Damn. It. I have no words.

HEALTHCARE

• Cut Prescription Drug Prices
• Put Patients and Doctors Back in Charge of our Healthcare System
• Lower Healthcare Insurance Premiums
• End Surprise Billing
• Cover All Pre-Existing Conditions
  • Wait, didn't ACA do that?
• Protect Social Security and Medicare
  • They obviously mean by increasing age to collect, privatizing, and actually trying to dismantle it. But you know...would be good if they did the opposite of what they've tried to do the last 2+ decades.
• Protect Our Veterans and Provide World-Class Healthcare and Services
  • How about for everybody else too?

EDUCATION

• Provide School Choice to Every Child in America
  • Yea, let's do away with church/state separation and also enable crippling debt from kindergarten. /s
• Teach American Exceptionalism
  • I have no words. This is basically the worst thing ever.

DRAIN THE SWAMP

• Pass Congressional Term Limits
• End Bureaucratic Government Bullying of U.S. Citizens and Small Businesses
  • Nice soundbite...but 'End Bureaucratic Government' is code for "Let's stop regulating to prevent discrimination and other things that are generally good ideas"
• Expose Washington’s Money Trail and Delegate Powers Back to People and States
• Drain the Globalist Swamp by Taking on International Organizations That Hurt American Citizens
  • Yea...cause the USA is the bastion of all that is good and does no wrong /s

DEFEND OUR POLICE

• Fully Fund and Hire More Police and Law Enforcement Officers
• Increase Criminal Penalties for Assaults on Law Enforcement Officers
• Prosecute Drive-By Shootings as Acts of Domestic Terrorism
• Bring Violent Extremist Groups Like ANTIFA to Justice
  • Somehow I think the actual Nazis won't be targeted by this.
• End Cashless Bail and Keep Dangerous Criminals Locked Up until Trial
  • End monetary Bail. Anything else: bad.

END ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND PROTECT AMERICAN WORKERS

• Block Illegal Immigrants from Becoming Eligible for Taxpayer-Funded Welfare, Healthcare, and Free College Tuition
• Mandatory Deportation for Non-Citizen Gang Members
• Dismantle Human Trafficking Networks
• End Sanctuary Cities to Restore our Neighborhoods and Protect our Families
  • I can't bold this one hard enough
• Prohibit American Companies from Replacing United States Citizens with Lower-Cost Foreign Workers
  • Nice soundbite, but give Unions power again and those kinds of problems will resolve themselves.
• Require New Immigrants to Be Able to Support Themselves Financially

INNOVATE FOR THE FUTURE

• Launch Space Force, Establish Permanent Manned Presence on The Moon and Send the First Manned Mission to Mars
• Build the World’s Greatest Infrastructure System
• Win the Race to 5G and Establish a National High-Speed Wireless Internet Network
  • Not sure who you're 'winning' against, but whatever.
• Continue to Lead the World in Access to the Cleanest Drinking Water and Cleanest Air
  • Um....yea.... how about everybody gets those things?
• Partner with Other Nations to Clean Up our Planet’s Oceans

AMERICA FIRST FOREIGN POLICY

• Stop Endless Wars and Bring Our Troops Home
• Get Allies to Pay their Fair Share
• Maintain and Expand America’s Unrivaled Military Strength
• Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans
  • That sounds a lot like 'Continue with Endless Wars'
• Build a Great Cybersecurity Defense System and Missile Defense System
  • Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped bombing everybody else this wouldn't be needed.

Sorry, couldn't resist adding my additional commentary. So yea, looking over it again...very, very bad. But enough gems in there that the uninformed that only hears about those might fall for it.

Share your thoughts and feelings on how the convention went, and what you think it means for the remainder of the race. Did it change how you plan on voting or participating in the election? Who were the stand out speakers that you would like to share with others? Will you be watching the Republican National Convention? What were the biggest stories to come out as a result of the convention?

Politics Disclaimer: As we discuss the sensitive topic of politics, please remember to comment with an open heart and remember the other person behind the screen. Be generous with your interpretations of others and realize you might have to agree to disagree. When in doubt, read the Tildes Code of Conduct.

One of the most notable aspects of political discourse today is how many of the problems we have seem to have relatively simple solutions for how consequential they are:

To reduce wealth inequality, we can use progressive taxation, antitrust, support of unionization so that poor people/workers have a large stake in their wages.

To give poorer people equal opportunity, we can use welfare initiatives like free (as in paid by taxes/free at the point of use) college, better pay for teachers and more equitable resource (as in textbooks, tables, chalk distribution for schools so poor people get more equitable education to rich people.

To reduce crime, violence and repeat sentencing we can reduce poverty (see the top question), encourage mental health initiatives and do not have cops take thatand have jail be rehabilitative rather than punitive.

To make make software less centralized and invasive, we can require Internet companies give you full, immediate disclosure of all the forms your data will be used and let people opt out of all of them, delete all their data, and also enforce antitrust when it comes to social media platforms (I.E Facebook should not own Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and their new TikTok analogue and the first thing you should see when logging into any of them is a list of ways these companies will collect your data and let you opt out of all of them and be as anonymous as you please)

To make sure democracy is indeed representative of the people and works well, we can introduce a parliamentary system or multi-winner congressional seats and institute STV or RCV or just approval voting if you really can't have more than 1 representative for an area (the US senate is cucked)

To make more progress in stopping COVID, we can have mass testing by the government, people must take social distancing seriously and wear masks, medics need to be taken seriously and properly supplied with PPE and all that.

Given these solutions, what are large problems we have/will have that we genuinely don't have an answer to instead of just not wanting to do something about it?

A few examples that come to my mind are:

How do we get corrupion out of a government? Since the vast majority of stuff I have mentioned in this post would be done by governments and governments under extensive corruption cannot be trusted to regulate anything.

How do we regulate news outlets to be fair and objective? We can get news outlets to be publically/popularly funded instead of ad(large-corporate)-funded and enforce antitrust, but that doesn't stop bias, outright lying and sensationalism.

How do we get peple to change their minds? Evidence of everything I've mentioned in this post is more than around, but that hasn't convinced Republicans/conservatives. For some people groups, acceptance has literally been a decades-long political campaign to be recognized as normal or ok.

EDIT: 3 4 more.

How do we get people to befriend eachother and be social and tell apart those who genuinely don't want to do this and those who do but don't know how to or don't like to/aren't good at doing it in the ways usually available?

If we choose to let the population decline (see the climate change question), are we fully prepared for the consequences of having a society that will be growing older and older, perhaps indefinitely?

If we choose to not let the population decline and seek to keep birthrates at replacement level, how do we convince people to do so? If we don't/can't and start using things like artificial wombs to have children, who will take care of them? Do we make orphanages socially acceptable/valued and well-funded? Do we turn kindergartens and schools into a 24/7 institution and add in non-study things like housing and video games, and make teachers basically parents, but with many children to take care of?

If electoralism fails, what can we do to still have a voice in the world? Can we do anything?

(Yes, I know "socialism" and "capitalism" are vague terms, hence why you should probably very much clarify what type of "socialist" system you want, since "socialism" can be anything from market socialism, Marxism-Leninism, Syndicalism, democratic socialism, Trotskyism, anarcho-socialism, anarcho-communism, Luxemburgism, etc. Also, I'm a far cry from informed in this, so please correct me when needed.)

So anyway, if you call yourself a socialist or at least want to abolish capitalism, why?

So for the best reasons I have seen are:

• Capitalism is inherently hierarchical and incompatible with democracy, which is egalitarian.

Obviously not all types of socialism (I.E, most types of socialism that have been tried for more than a few years because they weren't overthrown or voted out) are egalitarian however and many of these systems are completely centralized.

• Big companies will naturally use the state to their own advantage, as capitalism is driven by self interest instead of any vague marker of "competition".

The main argument against this is that you definitely regulate capitalism to be more competitive with stuff like antitrust without abolishing the whole thing.

I live in Portland, Oregon, and have attended a few protests/rallies in the time I've been here, but admit I am not a regular attendee. The few times I have gone were to organized rallies that had a planned out route to walk, which then dispersed when they were done.

The last one I went to had a few bad actors in the crowd; individuals who would bash the windows of buildings and actively tag everything they went past. These were mainly buildings of big institutions like Bank of America, Nike, Wells Fargo-- whenever I'd look to see where that broken glass came from, my thoughts were pretty much "Woah! Don't break window-- oh... yeah I guess fuck Bank of America." And when we were done, we'd arrived at the justice center where it felt like there was no plan left, a lot of shouting and tagging had started, along with a few fires-- my wife and I thought "we did our part, this wasn't what we signed up for, let's leave." And that was that.

Afterwards we'd attended (virtually) the city's town hall meetings wherein the police budget was gutted a little bit (not nearly as much as we'd have liked), Jo Ann Hardesty (who's our greatest ally as far as I'm concerned) assured us it was a big step, we trusted her, and have since decided to stay home.

But, as you've seen, the protests continue: people are getting picked up off the streets by non-identified DHS agents, local government has expressed disapproval but it's getting ignored, and fascism is essentially in full effect.

Since then we've asked ourselves "shouldn't we go back out there?" "what if we get arrested?" "people are already getting arrested, and the majority of them are likely people of color." But we wrestle with it, "we're not rich-- we're barely scraping by-- we'd be more helpless if we were arrested and our jobs were taken than if we'd stayed where we are and just donate what we can and volunteer where we can." We attend city hall meetings and add our voice where we can, we volunteer for organizations when possible (mostly stuff through HRC), but anytime we take a break or have a free weekend, there's just this nagging thought of "shouldn't we be doing more?"

Have you wrestled with these thoughts? Why or why don't you join protests? What do you do in place of it?

Hello again!

There have been quite a few posts on Tildes as of late that have rubbed my opinionated brain the wrong way. The purpose here is to have a conversation about apathy in general, less focused on political or social issues and more on why we've seen an increase in apathy. This isn't a public shaming or an attack on anybody in particular. Apathy is at an all time high universally, and we've had several conversations here on Tildes where it has come into play in front of important issues.

...Everything's fucked. We are totally and utterly done for. 2020 is the worst year ever, I want a time machine. We are all going to die. Why does any of this even matter?...

I think we've all seen some variant of that sentiment this year, especially on the internet. It has been rough: COVID-19, the rise of fascism, climate change and ongoing political and social strife around the world. It is quite the cluster! It has been almost impossible for most of us to not look away at some point or another: turn off the news, disconnect the internet, run off into the woods (that's me!), self-isolate (thanks 'rona!) This is all entirely understandable. It's perfectly acceptable to do this for mental health reasons.

Let's be real though, 2020 has been rough, but let's get even more cynical, shall we? In the last two decades we've seen endless war and suffering in the middle east and elsewhere, we've noticed an ongoing rise in extremism all over the world, we saw the towers fall, we've witnessed school shooting after school shooting after school shooting after school shooting, we have (Yes, we. You may have voted for someone else, but we all have a hand in this democracy.) put a fascist in office (yeah, that was going on 4 years ago), we've seen so much horrible shit happen.

2020 isn't the outlier, I'd posit it's a combination of being the culmination of decades of growing strife and the sudden realization that total societal collapse (in a way) and the dangers that much of the 3rd and developing worlds have been facing for centuries can happen right here, right now, in our comftorable first world nations.

So looking at these factors, it is easy to see why apathy has grown, right? I mean, in the face of all of this adversity it'd be hard to not get discouraged. We see the powers at be spins their wheels and balk at solutions; train after train screaming down the tracks, the brake lever sitting right there, we scream and scream, "PULL THE FUCKING LEVER"... they don't. For whatever reason, be it money or self interest or whatever... they don't. So yeah, fuck this system! These people are supposed to do our bidding and they don't. These leaders can't even lead, so why the fuck do we even bother? How many times does this happen? How many people do we need to elect to fix our system? How many votes, protests, rallies, legislative sessions, meetings, politician offices, social media posts? How much effort have we put in, how much does it take? I'm so fucking tired. I give up. Why the fuck do we even bother?

We've all been in this place, and I think some of us don't want to think about it. We don't want to question why we feel this way, why political and social systems are broken, FUBAR. I'd suggest that some people feel a related guilt, they know they could be doing more but... insert excuse here. I'd venture to guess some people just honestly don't care, true apathy. Fueled by a lack of empathy that in my opinion comes from the numbness associated with witnessing atrocity after tragedy after trauma via the internet. This doesn't account for all of the apathetic populations in the world, but I think topically it covers a good portion.

So what do we do? I could rant all day about why we need to be on the streets. I could lecture about how a functioning society is a privilege and that it takes good willed effort to maintain. I could soapbox for the rest of my life about how a functioning democracy is not just a privilege but a requirement and that, it too, takes effort. That's not what I want to do though! Me or somebody else talking to people about apathy most often turns into talking at the apathetic masses. Talking at isn't a conversation and it almost never bears fruit.

So Tildes, I defer to you. What do you think we need to do to reform our society and political system to a functioning point? How do we stoke people to make the effort? As it is currently, that won't happen in America it seems. So what's the solution? We know why there is apathy, how do we beat it?

Asked mainly because:

1. I'm 14, so I've only been seriously politically engaged/active for a few months at best (for context, here I am not knowing that voter suppression is even a thing literally 6 months ago, go a few more months back and I'm not sure if I even know Biden is a candidate)

2. In r/politicalcompass (a sub I probably frequent too much) people often posted their 'political journeys' showing how their political beliefs have changed but:

   • There's not enough context for you to know what has changed and why they have changed

   • These changes often happen in a span of 5 years, which seems pretty unlikely (the part about your political beliefs changing is mostly aimed at 40+people who have seen enough change in the world (although from what I've heard from you, barely) to change your political opinions

   • It's literally a sub trying to boil down political opinions into a square/cube, so what else could I possibly expect.

I think the biggest effect of this will be that a lot of white suburban Klobuchar-ites will be more apprehensive of keeping the police as it is and a lot of progressives (like me, I always thought it was a class matter disguised as a race one) will take identity politics and racism more seriously and see themselves as privileged white people because it's become pretty hard not to. There will also be a lot of people in poor countries who will relate to the experience of being brutalized by the police and see the US as increasingly like them. I'm Brazilian and I honestly can't really see how is the US any better than my country anymore and in my state I scarcely see the police with more than batons and only in Rio de Janeiro (where drug gangs hide in the mountains and the state government is run by the party led by a former military officer) is the police really comparable.

Organizers might see that strength in numbers does little against FOX News and other media outlets so serious organization (proper mottos for example) might be taken more seriously.

Black people might be energized enough by this to turnout at an equal rate to white people despite the institutional barriers, which hasn't happened since Obama.

There's a lot of unrest in the US lately, with protests going on in several cities.

How do you feel about the state of things in the US, regarding racism, police brutality, etc...? What's your viewpoint on the protests? How do you see the situation evolving? Some fear deadly confrontation between military police and civilians.

Have you had the misfortune of having a negative encounter with police officers? Care to tell your story? Have you participated yourself in one of these protests? What was your experience like? If you haven't, do you keep yourself informed? Where do you primarily find news? What's the general mood in your neighborhood, in your community, in your city?

We've seen protests pop up a lot more in recent years in various parts of the world - eg. Hong Kong, Lebanon, France, etc... Do you feel that this is symptomatic of a larger, global unease? Or can the US protests be considered wholly specific?

I am an introvert, I hang around online most of the time. But, I've cut off most of the social media in past couple of years, now my online presence is reduced to whatsapp, tildes, youtube and sometimes reddit. I take in news from well respected sources, although most of them are left leaning.

Even after significantly limiting myself from news and social medias I cant help but feel world is getting worse everyday. Climate change, Increasing support for far right politics, increased consumption of fake news/propaganda etc..

I am going through some personal job related issue myself, I don't know what I am working towards. Why the hell should I waste my energy and time if I can't even see a better future? I don't think I am depressed, I am sad and frustrated that I dont have anything to look forward to.

Surely there are people in here who dealt/ dealing with this. How do you cope with this? what do you tell yourself when you see another fuck up from the world?

P.S: English is not my first language.

I'll start here in Brazil (these aren't all the parties BTW):

PT (Workers' party)

The generic center-left party. Likes adding or maintaining public services, likely stained for a generation with Dilma Rousseff being impeached and lula jailed (although he left recently) And badly crashing the economy thanks to Car Wash (although Moro seems to have proven himself to be rather less than impartial and it's not like they were the only ones involved.) They might not if/when Bolsonaro proves himself much worse than anything PT did but right-wing media will do their work here. They're also supported by a lot of people in the rural Brazilian Northeast which is probably pretty religious and conservative, but I don't think we see that in their legislation.

PSDB (Brazilian Social Democratic Party)

Not actually for social democracy, really more of a generic center-right party. Usually privatization/"efficiency" oriented party. Not very socially conservative but not socially liberal. Was going to die thanks to being establised for too long and having a bad record (they had the other impeached president in Brazil) but then Doria rode the Bolsonaro wave, although COVID has shown this a purely electoral move.

PSL (Social Liberal Party)

The current party of our president, although him being incompetent has led to people considering breaking up his party, but he'll just move to another one with a generic feel-good name (alliance for Brazil). Not actually socially liberal (this is a recurring theme), more a generic right-wing populist/Whatever Bolsonaro does party.

Partido Novo (New Party)

Generic capitalist party. It's Founders are owners of large Brazilian banks so I don't really imagine them caring about the actual ideology of classical liberalism and competition/meritocracy too much (even if they throw that term around a lot) and are more focused in big business corporatocracy.

REDE (Web of sustainability)

Generic green/environmentalist party. Was expected too be a frontrunner in the last presidential election but instead only got a sad 1% of the vote in the first round.

PATRIOTA (PATRIOT)

Hyper-Christian militarist party. Unironically wants to write a new constitution with a 'religious character'.

The guy who ran for president under them actually went to a mound in Israel to pray. Absolute meme candidate last election but you never know if next time they run someone serious.

PDT (Democratic "Workerist" Party)

Seems to be the Democratic Socialist/Social democratic analogue to the progressive movement in Brazil but I can't say for sure since people aren't hellbent on policy in any Brazilian circles and most of the most blatant problems in the US aren't as obvious in Brazil.

These are 7/33 political parties.

Fun facts about Braziliian parties: there are Democratic and Republican parties in Brazil and both are right-wing, capitalist parties. How's that for indulging in confirmation bias?

The Green party in Brazil also exists alongside REDE, meaning there are 2 environmentalist parties in Brazil.

There is a Brazilian women's party, but:

• It doesn't describe itself s feminist but 'feminine'

• When it was created it's congress members were 20/2 male

• They all shortly abanoned the party 2 moths later

Impying it's more likely than not some sort of corruption-related scheme.

There are 6 far-left/genuinely socialist parties currently listed;

The Brazilian Communist party

The Unified Socalist Workers' party

Popular unity (?)

The party of the Operary cause

The Communist party of Brazil (???)

Socialism and liberty party

That's a strange lot of infighting for some reason.

Is socialism achievable in our lifetimes? I'm M/29/India. I haven't read Marx or Kropotkin.

1 Honestly, at some point you have to ask yourself: if our economic system doesn't secure public health and well-being, and doesn't protect and regenerate ecology, then what's actually the point?

2 This economic crisis is revealing that the main reason we all have to work for wages isn't just to buy the things we need, but to pay rents and debts - in other words, to give money to the holders of capital.

If capitalism is preventing a large majority of human population from leading happy and dignified lives, then why can't we change the economic system?

I think it's clear that all tildes political discussion leads to intractable arguments. Considering tildes was created to foster high quality discussion, I was wondering if it's even possible to have nuanced political discussions online. In person discussions work for me because I have base levels of respect for all the people I talk to, but that's quite difficult to get online. Are we doomed to snark and condescension filled megathreads, or is there a better way to structure the conversations? Are there additional political ground rules that need to be set up?

From the NY times

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was reassessing the future of his presidential bid on Wednesday after a crushing round of primary losses left him with no realistic path to the Democratic nomination and the 2020 race itself looked increasingly dormant because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Mr. Sanders’s campaign has stopped actively advertising on Facebook and its campaign manager sent an email to supporters without asking for donations — the kind of steps that other candidates have taken before ending their campaigns. Mr. Sanders’s aides said he is not suspending his campaign at this point, even as some Democrats have become increasingly vocal that he should consider leaving the race.

Even among Democrats who view Mr. Biden’s eventual triumph as inevitable, there is a belief that contested primaries are good for the party, making some of them reluctant to call for Mr. Sanders to withdraw. In Wisconsin, Democratic officials worry that if Mr. Sanders drops out before the state’s planned April 7 primary, it could dampen his supporters’ enthusiasm, depress turnout and hurt progressive candidates for state and local offices.

Mr. Sanders also views the coronavirus crisis as a moment when the progressive agenda he has championed for years is especially vital, and he is eager to leverage his influence for good at a time when issues like health care and economic inequity are so resonant, some allies say.

And top advisers see potential for him to continue to shape the narrative around how the country should be responding to the crisis and are holding out hope that they can harness existing virtual infrastructure to allow him to get his message out and keep his supporters engaged — a tacit admission that the campaign is no longer trying to win.

The above paragraphs show that yes, Sanders knows his electoral situation is done for, despite never clearly indicating if he is dropping out.

Some suggested Mr. Sanders should declare a moral victory — Democrats have moved broadly toward his progressive policy platform since he began his first presidential campaign — and throw his support to Mr. Biden.

“It’s time to throw in the towel knowing that he has won the battle of issues,” said Wilbur Colom, a D.N.C. member from Mississippi. “The Democratic Party has moved within inches of his revolution on all major issues. We all are feeling the Bern.”

From the Star

Charles Chamberlain, chairman of the progressive group Democracy for America, said Sanders can play a potentially “critical” role in unifying the party by continuing his campaign.

“Bernie has already made it clear that he will 100% support the Democratic nominee and that he’s going to campaign for Joe Biden if that’s who it is,” Chamberlain said. “The reality is, that’s not 100% true for all Bernie Sanders supporters. So there is a real value to Bernie staying in the race as long as possible to bring those people into the party deeper.“

That underscores the sensitivity of how Sanders proceeds. Justin Bamberg, a South Carolina state representative and Sanders supporter, said it’s wrong to assume that, if the senator quickly drops out, his backers would unite behind Biden.

“It’s a mistake for the party, regardless of whether the nominee is Biden or Bernie, to think that beating Donald Trump in and of itself will be enough motivation for the average person living their day-to-day life to come out and be excited about voting in November,” Bamberg said.

I agree. Biden needs to emphasize that he can be trusted to keep his promises of endorsing and then carrying out Warren's plan despite their controversies and that the bernie or bust folks won't gain nothing from a Biden presidency.

Admittedly I deleted and re-uploaded this because I was worried I had posted the original thread too soon.

A'ight, here we are. Spreadsheet time.

When will the debate be broadcasted?

The debate will be recorded March 15th, 8-10 PM ET. (1-3 AM UTC)

Where will it happen?

In the CNN studio in Washington DC. Note that they moved it from Phoenix due to the Coronavirus.

Who will moderate it?

Dana Bash and Jake Tapper from CNN and Ilia Calderón from Telemundo.

Where can I watch this?

It will most likely be livestreamed in CNN's YouTube channel. it was livestreamed on CNN's website.

So, what's new and how will this change anything?

This is the first and possibly the last one-on-one debate in the primary between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden and (also due to Coronavirus concerns) It has no live audience. It will also occur before some of the largest states in the primary vote.

So what do you think should happen? What questions should be asked? What should the candidates do and what should we talk about?

(You could replace FPTP with STV to keep the districts that elect representatives in the house intact.)

I'll start.

The Democratic party breaks up into the neoliberal and progressive parties.

The neoliberal party is where centrist candidates like Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg go.

The progressive party is where progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren go.

The Republican party might lose a large part of their electorate to the libertarians, since many Republicans are more concerned about letting business prevail and don't really want cultural conservatism.

Andrew yang maybe also leaves the Democrats and founds his own party, the party for online reform.

The greens also become significantly more popular but they may have too much in common with the progressives.

The Senate could be changed to include as many seats as the house for proper representation.

I'm Brazilian, and personally (in the most radical, electability-indifferent and honestly meme-y campaign) would go for Bernie with the campaign finance and tax reform but with a platform for civical reform like putting STV as the nomination method for our chamber of deputies and supporting automating or funding new technologies to replace menial labor, like funding lab grown meat to replace all farming companies and labor now or robotics to automate large parts of the industrial and service sectors and use that money saved from not paying wages to people doing bad jobs to fund free universities and better schools/wages/welfare/infrastructure to the people once doing that work, along with adding civics and economics as subjects in school and always including notes as to where do you use the content you're learning, along with requiring subsidiaries to go independent or drop their branding. Clearly this isn't very realistic so feel free to expouse absurd policy.

The nice thing about electability being uncertain is that you can choose the candidate you think is best.

Unfortunately I have lost faith in my ability to decide that. Studying candidates' policies seems useless since, after all, Congress makes the laws. We are likely to see either stalemate or centrist legislation regardless.

Maybe I should decide based on foreign policy instead? Most people don't do that but I don't see why not. Any recommendations for interesting articles to read?

New debate, new thread. (Unfortunately somewhat late as the debate was streamed right at the time I wrote this post.)

The debate was being live streamed in CBS's channel in YouTube.

Twitter is one of the debate partners so expect a few questions from there.

The south Carolina primaries are due February 29th and there willl be no more debates until after super tuesday so this debate is pretty important.

I find this to be a pretty important question when news organizations like Fox News are literally aiming to help the Republican Party to stay on power, CNN and MSNBC promote centrist candidates and media aggregators ranging from r/the_donald to r/chapotraphouse banning anyone who opposes them. Thing is, these are the most well known examples. How could we tell faulty media sources and aggregators apart from good ones in mass? Do you think that's possible?

This is a question I've been thinking about a great deal in the context of changing global power dynamics. Rising authoritarianism, militarism, fundamentalism, and other ailments of our times are getting in the way of dealing with universal threats to humanity, like climate change, pandemics, and even asteroid impacts.

But nationalism has such a grip on people's psyches... Parts are nostalgic, and parts are about tribal sense of belonging and purpose. Tonight, I watched a Chef's Table episode about a young Russian chef on a mission to make Russian cuisine great again (not his words). The interesting thing is that Mukhin essentially acknowledges that he's helping Russian cuisine become great not by denigrating other nation's products, or clinging to an idealized version of his home food, but through intentionally discovering what is worthwhile elsewhere and at home. It got me thinking about what's been lost in a globalized world, what could be found in isolated places, and what it would take to let people bridge local interests and universal values.

I'd also watched Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins over the weekend. Ivins' writing on Texas state politics as a microcosm and foreshadowing of current U.S. concerns is essential. Then I read Citylab's old story on the paralysis of New York subway system development.

It occurred to me that the U.S. has become fractally parochial, with increasingly local or corporate interests thwarting any exercise favoring broader national or regional goods. The original framing of the nation in the U.S. Constitution has significant flaws because of the original tension between sovereign state interests, and the federal system. We're not learning from the rest of the world very well, either.

I'm curious about whether Tilders think there's such a thing as positive nationalism, capable of both unifying localities and maintaining or growing what's good about a culture in the face of potentially hostile competing nations.

• Do you think there are positive aspects to nationalism, and if so, what?

• Do you think nationalism has been, on balance, a positive or negative force in your country in the past?

• Do you think nationalism is, on balance, a positive or negative force in your country right now?

• Do you think your country could have a positive version of nationalism in the future?

• Is it necessary to exclude or mitigate influences from elsewhere in order to maintain the original nature of your national culture?

If I may ask, please include your nationality when responding.

An odd question to ask, I'll admit, but I think it's worth asking.

It's hard to have a public conversation today about political or politicised topics because people will pipe up and tell you that you're crazy and your ideas are completely backwards. And the reason why people say this is often driven by conflicts between personally held values rather than the ideas themselves. As a result, these conversations usually end up with both sides arguing past eachother and no concensus is ever made; nobody is happy.

One of the more common reasons for these arguements is typically because one party believes in egalitarianism - the belief that all people should be treated the same - and the other one does not. It's particularly strange to see given that so many countries have egalitarianism as a cornerstone to their government and laws. Yet we still see many people trying to take away rights and freedoms from certain classes of people.

Regardless of any particular conversation, what do you think is the best way to convince someone in the value of egalitarianism? How do you convince someone that they're not part of a higher class who has power over another?

Just a question. Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of them saying they already have a vote against removal of Donald before a court appearance.

Sorry if this is the wrong sub tilde for this. It just pisses me off.

"'I'm not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here': Graham predicts Trump impeachment will 'die quickly'" in Senate https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/14/politics/lindsey-graham-trump-impeachment-trial/index.html

Admittedly highly unlikely ... but also becoming less inconceivable by the day. She is 2nd in line after Pence.

So, let's just say, 3-5 months from now, They swear in Pelosi as the next POTUS. What does that do to both Repub and Dem Primaries? What does it mean for the next election? Does the US keep itself together long enough to have an election?

Heck, while I'm asking, what about a President Pence in 3-5 months. That's at least an order of magnitude less unlikely. How would that play out?

PS: Somebody recently started a 'what do you daydream about' thread ... so, you-know ... this.