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Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

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You're mistaking the stereotype for the people in charge of the policy. If you want to destroy GOP institutions, start with country clubs and sinking private yachts. nationalize car dealerships. break up the megacorps.

>nationalize car dealerships

Or just allow direct sales.

And breakup Paramount+ CBS CNN Showtime HBO Warner Bros TNT TBS MTV DC Studios Nickelodeon Comedy Central Cartoon Network. And the other media empires!

The problem with that is those networks are pretty tiny if you don't count sports. Mr. Beast has more viewers the CNN's top show.

But the people of the stereotype helped those idiots to come to power.

> destroy GOP institutions, start with country clubs and sinking private (…)

Wouldn’t that validate the rhetoric that Democrats have the same methods as the Nazis: Threats, destruction, (racial preference), and social censorship?

You actually don't need to engage with the arguments of people arguing in bad faith.

Sure, but its against the "actual" bad guys this time.

Everyone thinks they're the good guys, even the bad guys.

Yeah, or, hear me out, we could stop with the stupid culture war crap and get back to running the country like adults?

It takes two to tango. Every progressive I know would be thrilled to stop with the culture war BS. However, MAGA refuses to just let people live their lives the way they want.

> Every progressive I know would be thrilled to stop with the culture war BS. However, MAGA refuses to just let people live their lives the way they want.

Are you using some nonstandard definition of "progressive" and "MAGA", or do you genuinely have the belief that the left wing is closer to the center majority of this country in "culture war" matters than the right wing?

Spoken like a true culture warrior! It's not a matter of who is "closer", rather it's a matter of which party leans into politicizing the policing of cultural choices in the first place.

I don't believe that the "center majority" matters. People have a right to live their lives even if the "center majority" disagrees. At one point the "center majority" thought that slavery was alright, that didn't make them right.

Techo bros control everything now and they want us in our silos.

I read this as techno bros. Frankly that wouldn't be a bad life.

bah meant 'tech.' I’ll leave it unedited and accept my shame.

They’re all so upset that they have nothing worth saving and they take it out on everybody else with wanton destruction.

Crypto should be first on the chopping block. Then they should designate A16Z a national security risk just like they did with Anthropic.

SpaceX should be nationalized to restore the capabilities that were lost when DOGE and Musk gutted our national science agencies.

NASCAR is awesome. Don't diss NASCAR.

PACs.

Casual racism.

Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country and fix how our officials are elected. I wish I had the answer on how to solve this, but alas… I’ll defer to people who are smarter than me.

No hope even with that, as long as Citizens United is still alive and kicking.

> Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country

Parliamentary systems with many parties run into a different kind of dysfunction. Belgium didn't have a government for like two years relatively recently because they couldn't form a big enough coalition. In a democracy, there is no magic bullet that does not involve the quality of the demos.

What is your idea of democracy that needs to be restored in this country?

More power to voters; make their votes count. Encourage run-off voting, etc. We don’t need to turn the US into a parliamentary government. Those are different matters. Things like ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, multi-member districts, electoral college reforms. We don’t necessarily need a large number of parties…

At this point, the political parties are incentivized to suppress votes and/or redistrict things to make voting favorable for their party. Negative partisanship becomes a too-effective political strategy. There are other issues such as focusing on swing state politics (rather than representing their constitutents) and primary capture of ideologically committed voters (reinforcing and/or encouraging extremism).

I agree, there is no magic bullet... but a two-party system has a tendency to devolve into a winner-takes-all mentality. It also increases polarity in every country where a two-party system has ever existed (primarily US, UK, Canada).

What happens when the two party no longer represents the majority of Americans and American interests?

Canada doesn't have a two party system.

neither does the US, but effectively? it’s not as polarised as the US

It is not effectively a 2-party system at all. 6 of the last 8 federal elections have resulted in minority governments.

You're selling yourself short here given that your response is the most intelligent of its 8 siblings.

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