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Comment by tdb7893 | Hacker News Reader

I'm less convinced this was planned because I've met people like this in real life. Criticizing someone for showing disrespect while being incredibly disrespectful yourself seems like abusive parent 101.

Also, the fact they talk down to him about the war in Ukraine of all things is pretty shocking, like he wouldn't be there if he didn't understand the situation in Ukraine (it's not like he was there being extorted for minerals because he thinks things are going amazingly). It seems weird from a global policy perspective but on brand if you're just an asshole. Either way, truly an embarrassing day to be an American.

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Yes I hope this wakes people up and inspires the country to elect sober thoughtful people again. I'm pretty cynical though so I've learned not to expect much from modern politics.

One thing that gives me hope is that politics has always been a mess (there are some times of stability but they never last forever). Though I think a big thing we need to do is strengthen democracy in the US, get rid of first past the post elections, gerrymandering, the necessity of large donors required for campaigns, unequal representation in Congress, etc. I think if we break the two-party system politics in the US would look better.

Restructuring the elections, congressional seat allocation, etc. would require Constitutional amendments. Unlikely to happen. It is baked in the cake that individual votes are weighed unequally between the 50 states of the Republic. The only other way to do it would be an organic mass migration of voters that equalizes the population in all 50 states. The Census would eventually reflect this and the seats and electoral votes would be equal in all states, as I understand it.

We already have a "third party" now in the sense the GOP is unrecognizable from 20 years ago; the old GOP died out, like the Whig Party.

> Restructuring the elections, congressional seat allocation, etc. would require Constitutional amendments. Unlikely to happen.

As a Brazilian, I think it's unfortunately more likely than you think. Here in Brazil, we got a completely rewritten constitution (the 1988 constitution) after our USA-backed military dictatorship ended. So if the current USA government becomes a dictatorship (which unfortunately does not seem unlikely enough right now), there's a good chance the USA will also get a brand new constitution after all that mess ends, hopefully one with better electoral mechanics.

> Restructuring the elections, congressional seat allocation, etc. would require Constitutional amendments.

That's not always true. Proportional representation in the House would help a lot, and that could be done by passing a regular law. (The current "one member per district" law is only from 1967: [0])

[0]: https://act.represent.us/sign/proportional-representation/

I will add, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta... was created to "convert" the Electoral College into a popular vote.

The only way that can happen is if several red state legislatures agree to the Compact. This Compact is useless to replacing the Electoral College if only blue states sign up; these states would have voted blue in an election, anyway. It tips over to 270 if several red states sign up and allocate their electoral votes against the wishes of their own red state constituencies. Would that be democratic? It is obvious why the growth of the compact has stalled at 209 votes; it is irrational for a red state to join it. It is also true in the mirror image if it were a "red state 270 vote compact," no blue state would join it.

I agree, but we're essentially asking for a unicorn for each of those favors. Just getting one of those done with the current societal setup could easily be a decade+ of very heavy campaigning. I'm not convinced I'll see all 5 in my lifetime, and I'm not super old as is.

It is more possible now than ever though with unprecedented communication. But to paraphrase Warren Buffet a bit: "We (the rich) are a lot better at this and we're kicking your ass right now". Imagine if we could have even a fraction of the youth anger from Tiktok aimed at such issues above.

I have seen some people start to realize that Trump isn't this infallible hero over this, so it is working. But Some fans will diehard, very very hard over trump. Just gotta keep chinking at the armor, almost everyone will have a breaking point.

You underestimate how important it is for people who perceive themselves as alpha males not to admit they were wrong about someone for eight years. Ain’t going to happen, they are already falling in line.

typical abuser mind games. Nothing Zelensky said is proportional to what Trump or Vance said.

For his base, they won't care, and this event will justify the next few actions that the US takes.

I'm an American and what's actually embarrassing to me is the hundreds of millions of dollars we have spent keeping a meat grinder running that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands to a million good men and women. Likewise the Biden family's involvement in corruption in Ukraine stinks to High Hell and I cannot be moved to regard these two phenomena as coincidental.

I actually do not care one bit where the line on the map is drawn between Ukraine and Russia and I find it very weird that so many of us claim to. Think what could have been done instead, with all the wasted lives, time, and money. THAT, is embarrassing!

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