> If you only view the world through the snippets that are noteworthy enough to make headlines or get a lot of votes on Reddit, you end up with a very skewed view of what the world is like.

I think this very much depends on where you live. I'm not responding to reddit videos, I'm responding to events that my family and some friends who are in public education.

There's a huge amount of history there, though. It didn't just get formed this week. It's got some members who have been on the court since the early 90s. Some since the late 90s and others in the aughts. The SCOTUS has long-lived institutional memory and norms of behavior. It's members also tend to become somewhat isolated from what's going on in the culture outside.

Interesting! Glancing at the board, there is a clear makeup of highly educated, decorated, democratic, liberal-ish people. I would be hard pressed to call this setup one that focuses on "wildly diverse viewpoints".

I actually don't think this is the case. Almost all of these in the US are largely bipartisan, not nonpartisan. In some cases they also tend to self select for people that favor certain viewpoints. NIMBYism is prevalent in local government, for example.

They're optimized to serve the interests of the two prevailing parties in the US, which aren't the only two legitimate viewpoints.

I am not super familiar with US judicial bodies and what their mandate actually entails, but, in general, what judges do fundamentally revolves around interpreting laws and/or constitutions.

Twitter does, of course, also have to comply with law. In regards to this council we are however specifically focusing on an area, that is not already decided by law. Coming up with a decision in a "wildly diverse group" without the need to argue along law (because that is not what your mandate asks for), is a very, very different setup.

I feel the other examples are problematic for other reasons, i.e. "city councils": In the EU people get elected into these positions and no one mechanism will be placed for them to have "wildly different viewpoints". They get elected to get something done, which will then revolve around making compromises, or just not being involved in the process.

Wtf, pls go on

And you have Bernie supporters shooting up GOP softball games, democrats setting fire to court houses, and radical groups running over Christmas parades attendees because they were white.

Still not as bad or unstable as the 1960s.

It's not lone wolf terrorism though, it's an organized + well funded movement to end US democracy. They control a bit over 50% of the Republican party, and a growing percentage of the courts (including the supreme court).

Heck; Biden is would be considered right wing in most developing countries, and here's his take:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

> Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.

I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.

These are hard things.

But I’m an American President — not the President of red America or blue America, but of all America.

And I believe it is my duty — my duty to level with you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful.

And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.

They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.

(Sept 1, 2022)

In Arizona, bands of visibly-armed thugs are parking themselves around mail-in voting points taking videos and pictures...and even following people in their cars to see where they go. There's a 75 foot distance law, but that doesn't mean much.

What happens if the also-armed liberals get sick of this crap, and the confrontations escalate?

It's not civil war, but it can lead to ugly conflicts.

> Is Canada on the verge of civil war?

So, the difference between the two countries is that this viewpoint in Canada is a fringe one, while in the United States, it enjoys popular support among mainstream politicians and media. Oh, they don't directly endorse violence, but they are very happy to call for someone to 'remove this turbulent priest'.

That's the difference between fringe lunacy (present in every country, shit happens, you deal with it and move on), and the peaceful political process unraveling.

Just a reminder - one of the presidential candidates in the past two elections has yet to concede that he lost the popular vote in 2016, as well as the popular vote and the electoral college in 2020[1]. This sort of insanity is so far beyond the political pale in Canada, I can't even envision it.

[1] My state's gubernatorial candidate has also yet to concede that he lost 43-56 in 2020. Why even have elections if the losers don't accept the results?

The thing isn't so much that there are incidents of violence, but rather that there are ideas where violence is both logical and even moral.

Let's take Trump's election fraud claims for example; if you genuinely believe that the election was stolen then violence would be a very reasonable and even moral action in literal defence of democracy. I sure hope a lot of people would rise up if such an event would ever actually happen. Of course, Trump's claims are a load of utter nonsense, but my point is that people seem to genuinely believe it and that violence is a logical and moral result.

This is what worries me. That there's the occasional nutjob or conflict that gets out of hand: yeah, that's "normal". But these kind of ideas ... I'd say not so much. That we haven't seen more violence leads me to suspect many "election deniers" don't actually believe Trump's claims as strongly as they say they do.

There's merit in that comparison but there was nothing like an armed group storming the Capitol with a goal of preventing a fair and honest election. What makes the civil war questions more worrisome to me is how bare-knuckle politics has become so accepted by mainstream Republicans: when Nixon's misconduct came out, his party support eventually declined and had he not resigned, most members of his party would almost certainly have voted for impeachment. Today we're seeing the results of a generation of ideological purges where more significant acts have been met instead with near-unanimous agreement to hold the line and the few dissenters have been evicted from the party.