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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

“We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar,” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!”

It's just so self fulfilling. Someone is being very stupid. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's him. Possibly it's both of us.

But there is no way out of the conclusion that the country is (at least) a near majority of very stupid people. Not merely mistaken or holding different values, but genuinely incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy.

Of course if I'm the stupid one, maybe my reasoning there is also wrong. I know I conflated individuals and groups in a less-than-rigorous fashion.

But either way I feel unable to find a solution to this conundrum. Certainly I can't if I'm stupid. And if a majority of voters are stupid, then it undercuts the principle that enables us to live in the same region together. I am rapidly running out of ideas to continue that.

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> genuinely incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy

Having spent some time in the US, my theory is that things have got so complicated over there (or more precisely nobody is incentivized to make them simple), that it has fried people's minds. They just respond to the last stimulus, having given up trying to make sense of anything, as they attempt to get through each day as best they can.

Healthcare is the obvious example, but I'd say that that is representative of most things in the US, in terms of being a minefield where one foot wrong can wreck your life.

I think about one third who heard what they wanted to hear in his campaign promises, one third completely against and one third who consider themselves "apolitical".

With any luck the midterm elections will allow sanity to return.

As far as I can tell, those who heard what they wanted in his campaign promises are reasonably satisfied that they are getting it. There's some loss of approval as reality precludes some options, but that happens to everyone.

Nor do I think the "apolitical" will become any less so. I see no reason why the midterms should give radically different results.

Now, it just so happens that historically things swing a bit back at midterms, and given how close things are that's enough to sway the entire power structure. It's an unfortunate reality of voting: a one-vote margin is no different from unanimity.

Even so I do not expect the overall tone to change any time soon. Those proportions seem fairly durable.

I think you will be disappointed but we'll see.

Voting for masses lead to this. Voting with some IQ tests, education or income/wealth background check would at least improve it. not a perfect solution but way better than random people voting all. Everyone needs to driving license or other licences to do things. Voting is more important but no selection????

Then the people who create the test gets to choose the voters.

My opinion is that we should open voting further. If voting works at all, it's only because you don't do any selection on the voter base, and hope some kind of "wisdom of crowds" kicks in.

As far as I'm concerned everyone who lives here should vote. Felons, infants, people in jail, anyone who can pull a lever or an unambiguous gesture. I'd even include fetuses if they could. If the law affects you then you should have a say.

This is undoubtedly a stupid idea. But the current system is clearly broken and I'd be willing to at least try taking the principle seriously.

The pre-Civil-Rights South is not what comes to mind when I think of beacons of enlightenment and freedom.

Ah yes, segregation at the polles. The true definition of freedom and democracy.... Give me a break.

> segregation at the polles

I disagree with it. But I think it is worth discussing.

We don’t have universal suffrage. The most-successful democracies in history never did. In our day-to-day lives and commerce we weigh opinions based on their source. And the current system isn’t working, in many cases because the majority votes for something stupid.

The current system isn't working because, we know from comparative study of modern democracies, the US has all of the features that contributed maximally to disfunction: strong presidential system, unequal legislative representation, and first-past-the-post single-member-district elections for both houses of the national legislature.

We could fix those peoblems, or we could add additional problems by layering even more broken systems that the US (among others) has tried before and rejected on top of the existing problems.

None of this is an argument for or against playing with the notion of one (citizen, non-felon, adult) person one vote.

I don't believe that fixing those problems would solve the underlying issue, which is that the voters themselves have a deep antipathy towards each other. We could alter the rules to try to reduce the effects of it, but I don't expect it to reduce the underlying division that leads us to push the rules to (and past) the breaking point.

Plus, of course, there is little appetite for any given set of fixes. We can easily calculate who will benefit, and because of the division I mentioned, half the people will oppose the change just to avoid losing influence.

I'm hard pressed for a solution short of starting over from scratch, which would at least make some of the existing alliances moot.

> I don't believe that fixing those problems would solve the underlying issue, which is that the voters themselves have a deep antipathy towards each other.

The evidence is very strong that the reduction of the dimensionality of discourse and the polarization are a direct result of those features of the electoral system.

> I'm hard pressed for a solution short of starting over from scratch,

That's not only not a solution, it is not even an actual option. You can't start from anywhere except where you are.

> which is that the voters themselves have a deep antipathy towards each other

They don’t. The only solutions to deep-rooted antipathy are forgiveness and annihilation. We aren’t anywhere close to that, despite what idiots want to manufacture.

> I'm hard pressed for a solution short of starting over from scratch

This is meaningless at best, stupid at worst.

we are seeing what democracy leads to. Intel stake bought via democracy? lol. give me a break

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