#JAILTOTHECHIEF- Shit Just Got Real

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Fionalein

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Representative democracy is for me a nice concept on paper and failed idea in reality. It might have worked in the fledling phase of young democracies, when parties were still young and decisions were really being made bottom-up.

But nowadays parties are in most countries really top-down. You cannot rise up in the ranks if your opinion is too far away from the leading circle of a party; you simply won't get the necessary support to run for whichever mandate you want to. Then there's also the disastrouse instrument of the party whip.

This top-down hiearchy destroys internal discussion, makes it hard for people of different opinion to rise and creates a monoculture of opinions and stuff. It means that in reality a few people nowadays are shaping what a party is about, how they are going to vote and such.

Representative can mean two things IMHO by the way:

a) representing the constituency and
b) representing the society.

While a) might still be possible if a MP is working hard enough, b) definitely is not.

Most parliaments are not representing a modern society; in reality those are mostly stuffed with elder, white men who are typically teachers, lawyers or have been officers. Most parliaments are lacking really young members, women, minorities of all sorts and members of the poor working class. They are in that regard not representative at all.

What we really need today are other forms of democracy which are quite more resilient against the inteference of certain circles and really are working for the good of all people of a society. This is possible; representative democracy is definitely not the way to do it.
Sadly direct democracies are flawed too as they suck at protecting minorities...
 
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Romana

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He's a real estate con artist from NYC and has an Italian lawyer... why are you surprised?
I'm not. I'm a New Yorker, we knew about him all along. That's why he keeps wanting to punish NY.
More mob hit language, no matter how Republicanrs spin it:
 

Innula Zenovka

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That's absolutely no excuse to not fix the mess we are in.
That assumes any government can "fix the mess we are in," which, to my mind, hugely over-states the power of government.

The most we can reasonably expect of any government is that they attempt to address particular problems -- not solve them, necessarily, but at least do something to ameliorate the specific ill, at least for the time being -- without making matters even worse, either through poor planning and execution or unintended and possibly unpredictable consequences.

If they manage that, then I consider they've done pretty well and everyone's dodged a bullet.
 
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Chin Rey

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Representative democracy is for me a nice concept on paper and failed idea in reality. It might have worked in the fledling phase of young democracies, when parties were still young and decisions were really being made bottom-up.

But nowadays parties are in most countries really top-down. You cannot rise up in the ranks if your opinion is too far away from the leading circle of a party; you simply won't get the necessary support to run for whichever mandate you want to. Then there's also the disastrouse instrument of the party whip.
Don't judge representative democracy by the USA and the UK because they are not really representative. Both those nations have several significant flaws that aren't directly related to parliamentarism but seriously compromices its effectiveness:
  • They have long traditions of class segregation.
  • Their have very weak public education, especially when it comes to teaching social skills and critical thinking, two crucial factors for allowing people to make informed decisions when voting.
  • They don't have parliamentarism. Nominally they have of course but the lines between the three powers are so blurred there are hardly any checks and balances.
  • They don't have much independent critical media worth speaking of.
  • They are thoroughly corrupt. It doesn't matter if you legalize it and call it "donation", the elected leader are still obliged to do whatever whoever pay them wants.
  • They are fear based societies where conflicts tend to be escalated rather than resolved and the blame game tends to substitute for pragmatic soultions.
etc. etc.
 

Kara Spengler

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Kara Spengler

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I'm not. I'm a New Yorker, we knew about him all along. That's why he keeps wanting to punish NY.
More mob hit language, no matter how Republicanrs spin it:
The 'yet' heard around the world that was the start of the revolution ....
 
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Fionalein

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Just a silly question: are people tired of calling him out on his own Tweets or is de facto state media Twitter already moving on to stage 2 of establlishing a totalitarian regime by enforcing censorship?
 

Argent Stonecutter

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Censorship through embarrassment.
 

Brenda Archer

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Just a silly question: are people tired of calling him out on his own Tweets or is de facto state media Twitter already moving on to stage 2 of establlishing a totalitarian regime by enforcing censorship?
Twitter is not at all even handed in how it enforces its own rules. We really need a Left social media, but getting nontechnical users out of the corporate ones (where all their relatives and co-workers are) might be impossible.

It’s probably going to be a situation where communities migrate only when it becomes visibly intolerable (like the Tumblr censorship) or their hosts go out of business.
 

Kara Spengler

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Twitter is not at all even handed in how it enforces its own rules. We really need a Left social media, but getting nontechnical users out of the corporate ones (where all their relatives and co-workers are) might be impossible.

It’s probably going to be a situation where communities migrate only when it becomes visibly intolerable (like the Tumblr censorship) or their hosts go out of business.
Yes, they do not even try to hide it. He made a few tweets that were flagrantly in violation of the policies they had at the time. As expected, a lot of people reported those tweets. Their response? To change the policy to have an arbitrary "newsworthiness" exception.
 
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Kamilah Hauptmann

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Romana

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In a swing state, a vote for third party or no vote at all was half a vote for this.


Much more to come. For years. :)
I wonder how many of the people who approve of that have immigrants in their ancestry who came here with nothing but worked hard and built a life.
 

Brenda Archer

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I wonder how many of the people who approve of that have immigrants in their ancestry who came here with nothing but worked hard and built a life.
They weren’t left with nothing, though. Homesteaders received public assistance in the form of discounted, recently seized land. Immigrants going to religious settlements were set up in new situations by their churches. Employees of some factories were put in company built housing.

To say nineteenth century immigrants all made it on their own without any help is just false.
 
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