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Forums - Politics Discussion - The US is ranked as a 'Flawed Democracy', what needs to change?

ConservagameR on 30 October 2022
the-pi-guy said:
ConservagameR said:

How I was participating?

Like how I was apparently asking too many questions?

Some of which were clearly rhetorical, some of which were clearly statements, and some others that were actually inquisitive?

What about the questions everyone else was asking me? Nothing was said about that. My questions are problems but theirs aren't?

The only real difference in the participation, was that my points were from a conservative viewpoint, and the others weren't.

Then when the conversation is ended, I basically shake hands and say good game like a good sport, and I get banned for it.

Firstly you were not banned for that post. That was just the most recent post. 

You're practically describing sealioning, which is widely considered to be trolling. 

Merriam-Webster: sealioning

Sealioning refers to the disingenuous action by a commenter of making an ostensible effort to engage in sincere and serious civil debate, usually by asking persistent questions of the other commenter.

There's a difference between

- asking someone genuine questions and caring about what their answer is. You know actually wanting to be part of the discussion and wanting to learn about someone's perspective

- just incessantly asking questions that you don't care about. This is generally considered trolling/harassment. And being polite is generally considered to be part of sealioning.

You were not banned for being conservative, you were banned for how you conducted yourself.

Ah I see. I wasn't the first to show anger or accuse someone else of an ism, etc, so they must have actually been the victim.

Getting mad or labeling someone a negative term makes them right and you wrong. I'll keep that in mind going forward.

It's not like a bit earlier in that thread it was mentioned that certain users were being targeted. I knew that bullseye shirt was a bad idea.

Paatar didn't seem to be happy or joyful based on the seemingly, sincere, questions and, polite, followups earlier here.

I wonder what type of disciplinary measures will be taken there?

I do find it odd that the Earth is clearly a sphere, and that I'm the one who pointed out how the conversation was kept quite civil.



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Eagle367 on 30 October 2022
Zkuq said:
Eagle367 said:

Hey mates, I don't just mean people blatantly exposing their intentions. I also mean anti democratic agents who take actions to undermine democracy while saying so. People like Trump. And I think ultimately stopping anti democratic forces from even participating is more democratic than letting them reign free. As I said, your freedoms end where another begins. You will be dooming your future selves and your descendants to tyranny and non democracy if you don't stop anti democratic forces in your current time. Thus restricting your choices to only democratic politics that is people who still fundamentally believe in democracy and don't wanna destroy it is vital. People like Imran khan, Trump, etc should be stopped for running once they show their anti democratic hands. That is basic safeguarding. I was using the most cartoonish out there example to make a point. Ultimately in a time dependant timescale, absolute democracies are less democratic than democracies with proper safeguards. The wainwright Republic fell to the nazis because it didn't have proper safeguards. And US will fall as well to fascism if it does nothing.

I don't think that's how it works. Banning people from being elected is a great chance for abuse: if at some point you do end up with someone undemocratic in power anyway, there won't be a democratic way to remove them from power anymore, since they can just decide that their opponents are undemocratic and thus unable to be elected. And even if you don't get that far, you can still be subtle enough to not be anti-democratic enough to get banned from elections. I don't think there's simply a way to effectively ban anti-democratic people from elections and positions of power without opening huge gaps for abuse of power, which is even worse than allowing those people to be elected. The way I see it is that there's two bad options, and the one that's common in democracies is the less bad one (just like democracy is compared to other forms of government).

Except I never said the PM or President or ruling party gets to decide on this shit now did I? A neutral election commission decides on candidate eligibility and judges not beholden to political parties decide whether someone is not fit for office or not. The point is to create roadblocks from dismantling democracy. Countries already decide whether someone is fit for running or not. A lot of countries have differing criteria.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

Hiku on 31 October 2022
ConservagameR said:

If Elon takes Twitter and makes it so that anyone who seems to be on the (far) left gets kicked off and silenced, because enough users are complaining, that would be wrong, for example.

Right. But any time I've ever asked anyone for examples of that happening on Twitter, it's just people breaking TOS.

ConservagameR said:

You can't really argue community guidelines, because those change depending on who's in charge, and we all know they'll change at Twitter, potentially vastly, once Elon is in charge. So were the old guidelines wrong, or will the new guidelines be wrong?

Well that's what I mean.
You're either saying that there are things in the guidelines that shouldn't be there, or that mods were not enforcing the guidelines, or that they did it incorrectly, etc.

So I'm wondering what specifically it is that you have a problem with.

ConservagameR said:

This is why the free market and capitalism are both so great and so terrible. It allows for businesses like Twitter to exist, and it also allows them to be purchased and changed. Which is better or worse depends on your personal outlook.

I'd argue that one person controling any platform where ideas are exchanged is a bad idea.
We have multiple moderators who discuss issues as a group for this reason. If one overlooks an important detail, three others may catch it. If one person thinks we should go with solution #1, and five others think we should go with solution #2, we try to find a compromise that everyone is happy with. And/or we go with what the majority thinks.

ConservagameR said:

You know there are laws about certain speech, but few laws, as the more speech you can justly allow, the better. There are also rights, both of which, including laws, aren't always upheld and aren't always punished as they should be. How do we fix that? More policing at different levels? Isn't that a bad thing?

I agree they will erase some lines, which is good, depending on what's erased. When you have people like Mark Zuck, admitting the FBI was giving him a heads up to squash upcoming stories that are likely misinformation, only to find out they were always legit, that's a big deal and needs to be fixed. The way to fix it is to allow media to choose what to allow and what not to, without being pressured by the government or authorities, because that can go both ways.

I think the government should only get involved if the platform fails to moderate content that goes into illegal territory.

But the biggest problem with twitter are shitty people, and missinformation.
And I only imagine those problems getting amplified with Musk in charge.

Shitty people and missinformation will be the biggest winners coming out of this, imo.

Last edited by Hiku - on 31 October 2022

Zkuq on 31 October 2022
Eagle367 said:
Zkuq said:

I don't think that's how it works. Banning people from being elected is a great chance for abuse: if at some point you do end up with someone undemocratic in power anyway, there won't be a democratic way to remove them from power anymore, since they can just decide that their opponents are undemocratic and thus unable to be elected. And even if you don't get that far, you can still be subtle enough to not be anti-democratic enough to get banned from elections. I don't think there's simply a way to effectively ban anti-democratic people from elections and positions of power without opening huge gaps for abuse of power, which is even worse than allowing those people to be elected. The way I see it is that there's two bad options, and the one that's common in democracies is the less bad one (just like democracy is compared to other forms of government).

Except I never said the PM or President or ruling party gets to decide on this shit now did I? A neutral election commission decides on candidate eligibility and judges not beholden to political parties decide whether someone is not fit for office or not. The point is to create roadblocks from dismantling democracy. Countries already decide whether someone is fit for running or not. A lot of countries have differing criteria.

But then there's the issue of ensuring neutrality. How do you choose the people that uphold neutrality? How do you ensure the people will continue to be chosen in a neutral manner? At the moment, I can't see a way to ensure it. In my eyes, it's just another potential hole in the system, one that will seemingly work as long as everything's fine but is the first thing to go once someone anti-democratic comes to power. The people voting the anti-democratic people from power is the best roadblock, as far as I can see, because it keeps the power in the hands of many instead of few.



bdbdbd on 31 October 2022
Eagle367 said:
Zkuq said:

I don't think that's how it works. Banning people from being elected is a great chance for abuse: if at some point you do end up with someone undemocratic in power anyway, there won't be a democratic way to remove them from power anymore, since they can just decide that their opponents are undemocratic and thus unable to be elected. And even if you don't get that far, you can still be subtle enough to not be anti-democratic enough to get banned from elections. I don't think there's simply a way to effectively ban anti-democratic people from elections and positions of power without opening huge gaps for abuse of power, which is even worse than allowing those people to be elected. The way I see it is that there's two bad options, and the one that's common in democracies is the less bad one (just like democracy is compared to other forms of government).

Except I never said the PM or President or ruling party gets to decide on this shit now did I? A neutral election commission decides on candidate eligibility and judges not beholden to political parties decide whether someone is not fit for office or not. The point is to create roadblocks from dismantling democracy. Countries already decide whether someone is fit for running or not. A lot of countries have differing criteria.

You know, you seem to be the one that has anti-democratic sentiment. The current US system HAS the commission that decides the candidate's eligibility, which is the electoral college - this actually is one of the things that makes US a flawed democracy. All your roadblocks to protect democracy, are just ones that aim to dismantle it. 



Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

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Hiku on 01 November 2022
Hiku said:

But the biggest problem with twitter are shitty people, and missinformation.
And I only imagine those problems getting amplified with Musk in charge.

Shitty people and missinformation will be the biggest winners coming out of this, imo.

This aged well.

Head of Twitter tweets unfounded conspiracy theory from the same publication that broke the amazing story on how Hillary Clinton has died and been replaced by a body double. That's who Elon Musk trusted with this story.

He deleted it, but not before thousands of his fans re-shared the story.



Eagle367 on 01 November 2022
Zkuq said:
Eagle367 said:

Except I never said the PM or President or ruling party gets to decide on this shit now did I? A neutral election commission decides on candidate eligibility and judges not beholden to political parties decide whether someone is not fit for office or not. The point is to create roadblocks from dismantling democracy. Countries already decide whether someone is fit for running or not. A lot of countries have differing criteria.

But then there's the issue of ensuring neutrality. How do you choose the people that uphold neutrality? How do you ensure the people will continue to be chosen in a neutral manner? At the moment, I can't see a way to ensure it. In my eyes, it's just another potential hole in the system, one that will seemingly work as long as everything's fine but is the first thing to go once someone anti-democratic comes to power. The people voting the anti-democratic people from power is the best roadblock, as far as I can see, because it keeps the power in the hands of many instead of few.

Democracy is an active process and depends on good faith people. I think it's another layer of protection, not a weak point. Of course it doesn't guarantee anything but i think it creates an added safeguard. And many democracies already have this to varying success. 



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

Eagle367 on 01 November 2022
bdbdbd said:
Eagle367 said:

Except I never said the PM or President or ruling party gets to decide on this shit now did I? A neutral election commission decides on candidate eligibility and judges not beholden to political parties decide whether someone is not fit for office or not. The point is to create roadblocks from dismantling democracy. Countries already decide whether someone is fit for running or not. A lot of countries have differing criteria.

You know, you seem to be the one that has anti-democratic sentiment. The current US system HAS the commission that decides the candidate's eligibility, which is the electoral college - this actually is one of the things that makes US a flawed democracy. All your roadblocks to protect democracy, are just ones that aim to dismantle it. 

Actually the roadblocks prevented a dismantling of democracy in the US. The electoral college sucks and isn't a protection. But the actual protections stopped Trump from taking over. You are just construing my argument in the worst light and joining it to an anti democratic institution like the electoral college. We both know the electoral college does more than determine eligibility.  It essentially selects the leader. It doesn't dictate who can run, it dictates who wins and Americans vote for the electors in the EC, not directly the president. A completely different thing from what I said. You could have pointed to BC NDP if you actually wanted a better example.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also

Zkuq on 01 November 2022
Eagle367 said:
Zkuq said:

But then there's the issue of ensuring neutrality. How do you choose the people that uphold neutrality? How do you ensure the people will continue to be chosen in a neutral manner? At the moment, I can't see a way to ensure it. In my eyes, it's just another potential hole in the system, one that will seemingly work as long as everything's fine but is the first thing to go once someone anti-democratic comes to power. The people voting the anti-democratic people from power is the best roadblock, as far as I can see, because it keeps the power in the hands of many instead of few.

Democracy is an active process and depends on good faith people. I think it's another layer of protection, not a weak point. Of course it doesn't guarantee anything but i think it creates an added safeguard. And many democracies already have this to varying success. 

I think this is where we have to agree to disagree, since we see the same thing, but where I see it as weak point, you see it as a functioning safeguard. (We could probably go more into depth with this, but I suspect it wouldn't be very fruitful without a humongous amount of effort.)



Eagle367 on 01 November 2022
Zkuq said:
Eagle367 said:

Democracy is an active process and depends on good faith people. I think it's another layer of protection, not a weak point. Of course it doesn't guarantee anything but i think it creates an added safeguard. And many democracies already have this to varying success. 

I think this is where we have to agree to disagree, since we see the same thing, but where I see it as weak point, you see it as a functioning safeguard. (We could probably go more into depth with this, but I suspect it wouldn't be very fruitful without a humongous amount of effort.)

I agree with you there. And I see where you are coming from. It took this long just for me to get to the point where others understand my actual point. Threads aren't a good way to discuss topics like these. But these topics are more relevant than ever since democracies around the globe are under threat in various ways. And I feel the only way to discuss this properly is through audio. Either that or really long desertations like they used to write books refuting each others' points back in the day hahaha.



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also