Comment by leifaffles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leifaffles | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Here's a sampling of the top comments in this thread:

* "protesting is virtually impossible"

* "The law making process is so clearly broken"

* "society will be warped into some dysfunctional dystopian end game"

* "the US doesn't have enough accountability for its leaders"

* "digital technology delivering us a single party state"

* "Dystopian police state here we come"

* "protest has been criminalized. The people who protested Trump's inauguration are facing what amounts to life in federal prison."

Which are all just elaborate ways of crying "I don't like this bill. It must be unfair!".

I'm gonna break something to you: it's not unfair. Stop being an immature baby.

Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. That's a result of multiple successful midterm elections and the recent presidential election.

If you don't like this bill, go vote for someone else in November instead of offering your elaborate theories of how US politics is "fundamentally broken" because you didn't get your way.

Your critique is worthless. There is a huge difference between "fair" and legally conducted. Yes, this bill seems to have been passed in accordance with the laws of the United States of America by duly elected officials. That does not make it good or moral, or fair.

America has committed genocide, it has tolerated and supported slavery, it has enacted policies in support of eugenics. All legal, all duly enacted by elected representation in Congress and the presidency. But in each of those cases it was thoroughly right and proper for American citizens to criticize the wrongful acts of the government and to call, vociferously, for a change of policy.

The same is true today. And it is in keeping with the foundational constitutional freedoms of this republic (the right to free speech, to petition the government for the redress of grievances, the right to assembly) to do so now.

Elections in which the majority of voters voted against the current President, as well as for the opposition party in Congress. US politics is fundamentally broken because the majority does not get its way, nor does the party getting the lion's share of votes get a say in major policy.

While you are absolutely correct that the presidency was won by the minority of voters, its not really correct to say the same for congress. Within the house of reps where everyone is up for election every 2 years, the republicans won the popular vote. The senate is trickier as only a 3rd of senators have an election at any given time, thus the differentials are skewed based on which states are voting at a given time.

in 2016: democrats won 53% of the vote, republicans 43%

in 2014: democrats won 43% of the vote, republicans 52%

in 2012: democrats won 53% of the vote, republicans 43%

Part of the problem when comparing popular votes nationally is that you often have situations in CA where the two candidates running for office in the general election are both democrats. when the sum total of those votes is 10m, or the differential between the number of votes the republicans received nationally and the number democrats received nationally, is it fair to complain about a lack of representation? Other times within house races there wont even be a challenger.

US politics was intentionally designed such that the majority doesn't get its way. It's the single major innovation in liberal political philosophy in the past 500 years.

Saying "it's not democratic!" isn't a useful comment.

We know.

How about saying replacing the current system with proportional representation? Is that a useful comment?

There are good reasons not to have proportional representation, at least not purely proportional.

One downside to strictly proportional representation is that a concentrated majority can make decisions without collaborating/cooperating with the minority.

Example: Coastal states with large populations could just ignore the other states with small populations.

The US bicameral congress balances the proportional House against the non-proportional Senate.

The alternative right now is the minority having total control over nearly all federal and state bodies of government in the nation. I'll take the 'risks' of proportional representation over that...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com