Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djsumdog | Hacker News Reader

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There is a deeper problem here, and it's that voting in America doesn't provide the citizens with evenly distributed representation. I'm not talking about the electoral college. I'm talking about first past the post. In Australia, you literally cannot throw your vote away. It's order of preference with instant run-off. Maine just passed ranked voting laws for their state, and I'm curious to see the effects.

The US is an Oligarchy. Some people are really angry right now, because their stawperson didn't get elected. But they weren't angry for the past eight years of domestic spying, predator drones and kill lists. This anger only helps solidify the rule of the elite, because it keeps Americans fighting each other, and not the war industry or the banks or various other entities that can basically get their laws passed no matter who is elected.

http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a...

I really like the EFF, and I'm glad they're fighting for our rights to speech and privacy, no matter which party is in office.

I'm mainly writing this comment to say "+1". Because my analysis is basically the same, but trying to convey it to anyone else seems impossible.

This story in particular is a very clear indicator of what Obama has been the whole time - a mere salesperson for the oligarchy. The standard backstop excuse, that he "needs to compromise to get anything done", doesn't work when it's his last days of office! But the sunk cost fallacy is a powerful thing that causes people to overjustify their choices.

They're receptive when the criticism is leveled at the "other team", but given an opportunity to vote for "their team" they'll fall right into line. This time it happened with Trump voters, because "the media establishment HATES him". So they're all convinced he will actually change things in their interest - nevermind the Obama they've been hating on for the past 8 years ran on the exact same message! The best I've been able to do is to preemptively ask them to try to evaluate his actions on whether they're actually disrupting the status quo we all hate so much, or just pandering to polarizing surface issues while leaving the fundamental corruption intact. But I don't have hope that a year from now they will remember such criticism as being from an a priori perspective rather than simply shoring up their defensive ranks over the moral panic du jour.

How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them Hitler was coming to power? The same media that created Broadway shows to lambaste the last President for being a war-monger are crying tearful farewells for Barry because he said something about climate change once. All the willful ignorance I see day in and day out gets harder and harder to take.

Wow, with such a biased estimation of events, you must be talking about your own willful ignorance.

"Barry because he something about climate change once." If you willfully ignore everything that has happened, then perhaps you're not impressed or don't see drastic differences.

"How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them Hitler was coming to power?" Which is of course not in the least bit realistic.

Sure, one can create strawmen all day, and use those strawmen to push whatever argument they want, but nobody is the wiser for it. If you actually try to look at the world with as clear eyes as possible, rather than through the most rosy-colored or other filtered view, you will have a better chance of getting through days without them being hard and also of convincing people of your points of view.

The Obama part was a bit of hyperbole, not a strawman. But people really were saying Trump is literally Hitler. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-road-ahead_us_57e03b...

Uh, your article does not support your thesis.

And it's not a mainstream perspective, it is at best a hyperbole of people saying hyperbolic things.

Two hyperboles don't make a right.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-actu...

2. https://www.salon.com/2016/12/20/14-signs-show-trumps-politi...

3. https://newrepublic.com/minutes/124205/yes-donald-trump-fasc...

4. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/foul-stenc...

5. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbe...

6. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/america...

1. "It’s ridiculous to compare any living person to Hitler or Mussolini."

2. No mention of Hitler. A point by point comparison to a historical and previous description of fascism.

3. Not Hitler, talks about conservatism and totalitarianism.

4. No mention of Hitler anywhere.

5. " I am not suggesting that what is happening in the United States replicates in every sense what happened in Italy and Germany. "

6. "The Republican presidential candidate is not a Fascist, but his campaign bears notable similarities to the reign of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini."

Compare these viewpoints to the claim of "But people really were saying Trump is literally Hitler."

Edit: I should also say that I don't doubt you could come up with something somewhere where somebody claimed that Trump is "literally Hitler." However, it is not a prevalent or even mainstream viewpoint. Even calling Trump a fascist, and defending it based on evidence, is a pretty extreme and rare viewpoint.

His point was broadly about the tone in which Trump has been described in the media, and how that contributes to the division that currently exists in America.

"How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them Hitler was coming to power?" vs. "How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them a fascist was coming to power?" isn't a very meaningful distinction to me in that context. Your mileage may vary. Many mainstream outlets have expressed that opinion for a long time, and it's a point of view I've seen defended here on HN many times in political threads. I don't think it's a fringe viewpoint at all.

There's a difference between what all these people are warning of, and then "literally Hitler" of starting a world war and imprisoning all political opponents and then executing millions of the prisoners like cattle in an industrial processing plant.

The "literally Hitler" smear is an attempt to distinguish that careful, and important distinction, so that the entire thought can be dismissed as ridiculous.

Looking at each of those articles where they say "not hitler, but he still is making noises like he'll be bad," do you think that needs to be walked back? Were they ignoring reality, or facing an unpleasant reality?

"Literally Hitler" is not a thoughtful, fair, or even useful characterization of these viewpoints.

Literally Hitler and literally fascism are both just bedwetting.

I think I misunderstood what you were calling "unrealistic". It doesn't matter whether Trump is really like Hitler. People really did make that comparison, and now the people who were convinced by those arguments are stuck on high alert. As Pigo said, it's going to be very hard to talk those people down to a point that we can have a productive political conversation.

I've seen people saying it's illegal to be Muslim now. You can't underestimate the intelligence of people on social media and rioting cities. Maybe it's different where some of you live, or some of your online circles.

Preferential voting is a bit useless in a presidential election isn't it? With only two major candidates, wouldn't that result in someone getting like 90%+ of the vote?

Side note: As an Australian, it absolutely blows my mind that voting is not compulsory in more countries. I have no idea why voting isn't compulsory, like taxes.

I used Australia as an example, and yes, I have several Aussie friends who say, "Well we pretty much have a two party system now."

Do you have any insight as to why this is? Do people just not mark more than one or two preferences, given that they have more choices? I understand the "big" parties work hard to get there, and they'll work even in the limits of a system to stay on top.

I also had Australians tell me about the "top" and "bottom" of the ballot. The bottom can have a long scrolling amount of entries, and Australians who care will go to various websites where they can input their issues, get a list of which MPs agree, print out this list and take it into a voting booth to see which parties they should vote for. O_o I've been told most Australians only fill out the top.

The top/bottom of the ballot thing is rubbish. Basically each senator is aligned with a political party, if a party has 2 or more candidates in the running for senator (I think?) then they get an "above the line" box. And if you desire, you can tick the above the line box to let that party place your vote for you.

So what ends up happening is instead of a diversified senate with plenty of conflicting opinions and a broad knowledge base acting as the gatekeepers of whatever ridiculous legislation the lower house can dream up, we end up with the two major parties controlling the whole senate.

And whenever that's not the case (which sometimes happens due to the preferential voting) the media runs a huge billion dollar campaign about how the entire country is going to stagnate into a giant flaming pile of shit unless one of the major parties gets a majority in the senate and is allowed to push all their horseshit through unopposed. Then next election the uneducated masses vote against their best interests in droves once again.

The system is fucked. I don't see an easy solution, it's not like forcing below the line voting would be any better because then all the braindead racist bigots like Pauline Hanson would be voted in in a landslide due to sheer media coverage and we'd lose any lesser named senators that managed to grab an infinitesimal piece of power by aligning themselves with a major party.

Maybe if someone has a good solution they could enlighten me, I'd love to hear it.

EDIT: I should mention, if you elect to vote below the line you have to literally number every senate candidate, which is generally 50-100 boxes. The system itself is imposing a huge barrier to the average person placing an educated vote.

With preferential voting we would have more than two candidates. FPTP causes the two party system

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