Who'll be the next president – Google Search
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Can we talk about how terrible a piece of pro-hillary propaganda that was?
Namely this:
> America is ready for the leadership of a Hillary Clinton. A new history will be made when she becomes the leader of the free world. The world of women everywhere will change
Sure, this sounds very reminiscent of 8 years ago, but what's even scarier is the opening paragraph:
> She has paid her dues as a political candidate
Do people really think like this? All you have to do is "pay your dues" and you "deserve" it instead of voting on issues, track record & potential to make real change?
This is why we can't have nice things.
Yes. Source: Click around the Facebook comments of any substantially large digital publication. Tonnes of people don't even vote. Of those that do, most vote for the parties they're already loyal to. Of the few that are in the middle, most decide according to whatever is fashionable. It's a vanishingly small few that bother to evaluate issues, track records, etc.
It is all very calculated, and in my opinion, is the epicenter of what's broken in the US political system.
But, yeah, the disconnect is huge. I've seen Americans on the internet brag about not taking advantage of unemployment benefits, completely ignoring that they spent years paying into them for that exact reason. And, to be honest, ever since I've started looking at the government as an entity that I've outsourced a lot of my needs/wants to (roads, physical safety, parks, etc), I've been a lot happier paying taxes.
And it should be obvious that we're already in the end game for this strategy: if you vote against the other guy because he's evil, then your guy doesn't need to be good, he just needs to be perceived as slightly less evil. So it becomes a race to the bottom.
The cause of this seems to me to be the forced gerrymandering of voting districts so we don't get a meaningful voice in politics (other than as implied by the color of our skin, which is what the voting rights act requires).
But I think that, while getting rid of gerrymandering is a necessary part of any solution, the ultimate fix is to do away with the institutionalized two-party system. If today's problem is that the decision is binary (if I hate A then I must choose B), then offering three or more choices forces some thought and decision (at the very least: I know I hate A, but is B or C a better alternative?).
(I do think it's a pretty fatuous article, not that that's a huge surprise from the Huffington Post. But it's probably not far off the mark -- the factors it lists really are likely to make as much difference to whether anyone votes for Clinton as any details of her policies or past achievements.)
Obama was (and is) an outlier.
But I am curious whether that will hold -- whether candidates like Obama will remain outliers -- or whether that kind of thing will become the new normal.
Our political system is somewhat sick; having any record is a political liability. That is why our politicians almost all speak in tongues incomprehensible to any normal human being.
But the people favoring the established/experienced candidates are mainly the ones engaged and participating in the system which (perhaps insanely) doesn't include 98% of voters.
So I wouldn't be that surprised if candidates with very limited experience in government become more common.
When gjm11 said "justifying" they obviously meant "supporting". And yeah, after Obama's train-wreck foreign policy and complete disconnect with legislators on both sides of the aisle, it's pretty reasonable to highlight your experience as a positive quality.
Research Cheis Dodd's role in Congredd during 2006-2008. See what Bush was warning about in terms of the housing market and what the Democrat response was when Bush warned about Fannie/Freddie instability. He was essentially laughed at by Chris Dodd and friends.
This instinctive anti-Reublicann sentiment is depressing because it seems like the Democrat marketing machine has done a good job obfuscating the issues. Whenever someone gets close to real scrutiny of the issues, they conveniently pull 'racism' or 'war on women' out of a hat. Meanwhile, I bet a majority of Americans can tell you the name of the Charleston shooter but have no idea what percentage they paid in Federal income tax or payroll taxes last year. Rand Paul released his tax proposal and more people seem to be concerned about a stupid flag. These supposedly 'big' news stories aren't that important. They're distractions. Who gives a flying -- what race that white NAACP lady was? Who cares what comic book the Charleston shooter read when he was 15? Distractions. Give them bread and circuses..
America's incredible post-war boom and burgeoning strong middle-class all happened at a time when the very wealthiest had very high tax rates.
[1] http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/...
Most people on HN are probably too young to remember a republican president before GW Bush.
Actually it was the Republican marketing machine's "southern strategy" that started that. When you decide to explicitly become the-party-that-appeals-to-racists it takes a really really long time to dig yourself out of that hole. Especially because right now is when the people that grew up with those messages are in/coming-to power.
They also co-opt the previously fairly moderate evangelical crowd with red-scare tactics around the same time.
Or Reaganomics, or the wars they got us into, their rabid support for the military and uber-rich in our country, the list goes on.
Look, we likely will have to filter any story where a candidate is mentioned because its been obvious for far too long that their supporters who are in the press will slip in favorable or unfavorable stories as they are instructed to do so all under the guise of hard journalism. Best yet there are entire groups devoted to landing such stories onto as many sites as possible.
We have two years of war on women, etc, crap coming, because we live in an age where politics of identity are more important that what you stand for and when what you stand for isn't popular to throw out the race/sex/etc card.
Do you really want a third Bush in the White House for a third Iraq war?
Alternatively, do you really want a Bush picking the next two or three Supreme Court judges? It would set back the country into the 1960s. Voting rights, equality, access to abortion. All rolled back to 1960s with an imbalance of power in the supreme court.
Wherever the Clintons have gone, scandals and coverups seem to follow them - which should be a clear red flag to anybody with a half a brain.
Anyway, I don't think anyone really thinks like this, or at least a lot fewer than the people who talk like this. This is the kind of stuff that people come up with when they are already convinced and trying to make their case and not how they become convinced.
There is a common fallacy (or cognitive bias, I'm not sure what to call it) that affects almost everything we think but seems particularly pervasive in politics.
We use far more rational arguments to justify or argue for our positions and opinions than we do when adopting them. Adopting opinions is emotional (a bundle in itself), associative. Rational thought plays a part, but it's much smaller than we like to admit. We also see the logic in arguments with the logical conclusions we have already reached far more readily than the other way around.
"she has paid her dues" and "the world of women everywhere will change" seems convincing to someone who is already convinced. I doubt it convinces anyone (or many, anyway). In this case, it's almost testable. There are people on the other side of politics who are woman and have paid (or will have paid) their dues. If Hillary loses and one of them runs next time, do you think she'll switch?
Before you down vote because you think I'm anti-H.C., I'm not. Nor am I pro-H.C. I've not made up my mind yet.
Interestingly, this HN thread is already the top search result, despite this thread only being an hour old.
Who will be the next president? Google says Hillary Clinton The Next Web - 34 mins ago
We've seen oddly partisan answers on Google before (remember its answer to “What killed ...
I opened on an incognito window and it gives me answers similar to the ones posted above.
Edit2: for the curious, the link it gives me is "Diego Maradona would like to be the next president of FIFA"
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/06/diego-maradona-would-like-to...
http://i.imgur.com/VMrkvTn.png
Edit:
Changing language to English helps.
(hacker news is the first 'real' link)
Of more concern is the possibility that Google is increasingly correct, and the algorithms and heuristics it uses know us better than we know ourself. Nothing's going to fuck with democracy more than the knowledge that free will is a myth and the outcomes for Very Important Things are already decided.
Media in the UK are stopped from reporting on Exit Polls before elections and there's a move to ban all polling because knowing how people will vote is enough to adversely affect elections. I can see this being applied to issues like this, but even that's problematic. I don't know if a machine accurately telling everybody who will win is better or worse than a machine only telling Important People who will win.
<rant> This site is getting worse and worse for people abusing the negative karma feature </rant>
See: Italy, and a dozen other examples from Europe over the last 70 years
If your culture is rotten, your politics will be rotten, regardless of whether you have 2, 5, 27 parties.
Sure, if you managed to get enough "viral" support and maybe some wealthy investor you could mount a campaign big enough to get into a debate but the frameworks that have grown around the two-party system make it very difficult to take advantage of any popularity boost.
Trying to compete with the two established parties in a "winner takes all" system would require working against the entire political system which is overwhelmingly made up of people in those two parties.
It's designed this way. Many minority opinions are minority because they are bad and should never be implemented.
Disenfranchising minorities is a bad way to run a democracy.
Absolutely true, but it is remarkable that the Danes had 10 parties to choose from at our election for parliament last week and the US is supposed to be able feel represented by only two parties.
Denmark is pretty much as homogeneous a society as it is possible to be in a modern world and yet we have 10 parties, granted many have very similar policies. It's completely unrealistic that a country of 320million people should feel that their views should represented by two large parties, when 5.5million people in a small Scandinavian country need 10 parties (9 of which managed to get seats in parliament)
I think you mean homogeneous.
If the Americans are happy with the system, then then there's no issue, but if a large population group feels unrepresented then I don't think it's a fair system. There's a valid point to be made in terms of the size and diversity in the US might pose a problem for a parliamentary style of government, in as so fare as a plethora of parties could gridlock legislation.
For example, whether you love or hate them, the tea party has almost been a third party in America. Yes they ran as republicans so they'd have a chance, and do agree on a lot of things, there is no question that there are also lots of things mainstream republicans and tea party candidates disagree on.
While we stick to the 2 parties, there is a wide spectrum of viewpoints still available within those parties. The republican primary in particular will show that not everyone agrees.
The goal is to represent all the citizens' wishes as best as possible when taking decisions about issues of common interest. And the more power is concentrated in unaccountable parties, the less chances we have at doing that.
Italy may have more than 2 parties, but they are already moving towards a less democratic system where only 2 of them matter. They are already at the point where the only way to access significant positions is through a party. Independents are heavily penalized and mostly eliminated from the picture.
Then there's the lack of internal democracy in those structures supposed to democratically represent the people. Party members are forced to respect party lines instead of what they personally believe, and in some cases the party line is dictated by a single person - the founder/CEO/father-figure of the corporate party (Berlusconi, Grillo, etc.).
You are arguing against a point no one made.
This way it's the most limited choice possible: like the school bully who asks you whether you want to be hit with the left fist or the right one :-)
Let's be intellectually consistent instead of just bashing the U.S. because it's fashionable.
Speaking of intellectual consistency, the British taxpayer gets more money from the royal family than the family gets in taxes. The government administers estates owned by the royal family and takes the revenue - the net cash flow is about £100M annually from Lizzie and crew to the UK taxpayer. This isn't soft measures like "enhances tourism". It's direct income from the estates.
If the UK gummint were to cut them off, the Windsors could take back control of their estates, and the gummint would be that much in the red. Continuing in the vein of intellectual consistency, the UK is a representative democracy - the people who pass law are voted in by citizens. The monarch does not make law, so elections for the monarch are meaningless in the context of law- or policy-making.
You can hate on the royal family all you want, but it doesn't change that they contribute more financially than they get, and they don't get to make law. And the UK has a multipolar political system, though it's stupid FPTP voting method gives it a lot of similarities to a two-party system. Ultimately though, your hated royals actually inhabit a country with more political choices for the proles than the US has.
King of Sweden... I'm less familiar with.
That's not the same couple of families winning every time.
Seriously read through the other countries and then go to the US. You will laugh, I promise...
Limiting it to presidents is kinda silly.
Political dynasties are real.
It's bad enough now that we've had 4 terms of bushes, and that hillary's a lock for the democratic nomination. my point stands already.
We have pretty much exactly the government my mom wants. Harsh drug laws, extreme jail sentences, generous social security, lots of regulatory protections, etc. Probably the only light between her and Obama is she dislikes his foreign policy (she's from a Muslim country, which makes her exceptional there) and dislikes the trend towards legalized gay marriage and weed (positions well represented by the republicans, who she sometimes wants to vote for). Her biggest disagreements are with laws that derive from Supreme Court dictates (e.g. free speech protections).
These positions derive from an coherent worldview--one that has a low opinion of individual humans and values authority and the idea that people need to be told what to do for society to function smoothly (a common viewpoint not just here but across Asia).
So again, what about democracy in the U.S. isn't working? We have pretty much exactly the kind of government you'd expect given the views of our voters.
Unresolved issue comes up, party forms specializing in said issue, if party gets support big parties integrate unresolved issue, issue is now resolved.
And you got it completely around! In america your mom gets the government she is been told to want. That is why you have a two party system. Barrier to entry is "spent multi hundred millions on media control, if that's not possible you wont get votes, ever" and that's well backed by facts.
The motivating philosophies behind American voting patterns are present all over the world: distrust of individualism, strong reliance on government to organize social affairs, condemnation of speech that tends to upset the social order, etc. Whether you're talking about a New England farming town or a Bangladeshi village, these viewpoints are recurring. There is a good reason why: they are beneficial in a society with limited resources that must work closely together to survive.
Are you saying it's not broken and manipulated?
I have an epic speech ready to prove you wrong if so.
paper here(paper by google): http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.03519v1.pdf
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/05/26/why-is-google-givin...
All this teaches us is to take Google's first answer with a huge grain of salt, if not almost immediately discard it in favor of further research, even when there's a "simple" question like "how tall is something" (remember Google got Stephen Colbert's height wrong as well: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/21/google-stephen-colb...).
I didn't get the one intended by parent from Google though.
I thought it would make a nice addition to this story, juxtaposing people's desire for easy answers with an example of the type of easy answers Google provides folks. It could have kicked off a discussion about the very, very fine line between "helping people" and "telling them what to do"
Only now I can't find that quote anywhere on the internet. Huh?
But what he said does have truth to it. Most people are employees (they need to be told what do do). It's just an easier way to live.
*Edit: I forgot. So many people on HN work for Google and I can't criticize the king.
[0] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/05/26/why-is-google-givin...
It's scary because the political machine (the "news" and media) probably gives off a signal that a deep neural network has learned. It might be that simple.
Our entire democracy could be exposed for the sham that it is. It doesn't matter what a candidate has done or says they're going to do, it only matters what media keeps saying about it 24/7.
I've seen this over and over. I'd tell someone about a particular congressmen's voting record and bills he's sponsored and they'll say "wow, that guy sounds too good to be true, I'd vote for him", then tell them it's Ron Paul's voting record and they'd say "That guys is crazy" and then repeat everything they've ever "heard" about him.
That's just one example, but voters only know candidates by the media's labels, not by their actions or platform.
I hate to see when this generation grows up and Twitter and Reddit are the sole sources of political information.
The "hands up don't shoot" is a good example. Forensic evidence came out and it was proven that this never happened, yet it didn't fit the political narrative. CNN and most of the mainstream news continued to push it as if it was fact.
Is this an American problem?