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

Chrkeller said:

And you aren't concerned that in a span of 2 months her lead went from 15% to 4%?  Seems like a crazy fluctuation within 60 days.  Personally it makes me question how accurate the original 15% was. 

Look, 2016 simply made me question polls and media.  This whole conversation really started when Bandorr falsely and wrongly accused me of being a conservative conspiracy nut.  My point is really simple, because of 2016 I'm just not convinced our predictions are as accurate as we think they are.  It changed my perspective.

Lots people think this November there will be a bunch of SCOTUS backlash....  I'm not convinced.  Time will tell.    

That large sway could be partially accounted for by then FBI director James Comey announcing the reopening of the Clinton email investigation just 11 days before election day.



To the privileged, equality feels like oppression. 

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Chrkeller said:
the-pi-guy said:

Most people do want these things depending on how they're asked

What the exact question that gets asked is important. If you ask if Americans want more gun restrictions for mentally ill people, the vast majority of Americans support that restriction. If you ask for universal background checks, the vast majority of Americans (Republicans and Democrats, both above 70%) support that.

If you start asking about blanket gun bans, then you start getting a lot more pushback against that, especially amongst Republicans.

Gallup polling

Vox polling on Republicans and Democrats

It's a similar trend with healthcare. It depends on what question you actually ask. If you ask about a single payer system, there's a lot more pushback for that. If you ask if there should be a medicare/medicaid option available for everyone, there's substantially more support for that.

A bigger issue at hand is that when you bring up something like "gun restrictions", people tend to assume that means the absolute most disagreeable thing it could possibly mean.   

Chrkeller said:

Being born and raised here.  Knowing how my friends and family vote.  Oh and I am a registered democrat and vote as such.  I'm just telling the truth, which upsets people.  The core beliefs of the average american isn't what people think it is.  This is especially true in the mid-west and south.  

Personally I think Republicans pick up sets this November...  if the average american believed what people think they do....  republicans would get decimated at the polls...  fact is, Republicans are not and are doing quite well over the last decade.  

No one here is upset by the truth. But these things are more complicated than you're talking about. 

A major issue at hand here is that there is a big difference between what most Americans think Republicans and Democrats are, and what the reality actually is. 


Republican voters tend to be more moderate than Republican politicians.

Now, a new study finds that members of Congress also believe that they represent staunchly conservative electorates that do not actually exist.

If you actually ask people about their positions, a lot of times they have positions that are very in line with a typical Democratic politician, and yet they vote Republican. And then they start talking about Democrats, and they have very extreme views on where they think Democrats are.

There is a big perception difference between where the typical Democratic and Republican politician is, and where their voters think they are. Republicans think Republican politicians are less extreme than they really are, and they think Democrats are much more extreme than they really are. 

As somebody who does statistics for a living, polls are questionable. 

That is true, but it is still the most accurate method that exists, and lightyears more indicative than citing your own personal experiences.
Poll after poll shows that universal healthcare is something most people in the US wants.
And that really says something when the GOP and right wing media spread misinformation about it every single day, fearmongering people into thinking USA will become socialist, Venezuela, communist, etc.

Every single developed capitalist nation on the planet has universal healthcare.
Because of that, it's very difficult to convince the majority of Americans that this is not normal or a bad idea.

Regarding working conditions. USA is also the only developed nation to not have guaranteed paid vacation. I imagine most ppl want that instead of their taxes going to bombs, etc. Though I haven't checked any polls on that.

Chrkeller said:

If people were anti gun, pro free college, universal healthcare, etc....  elections results would be a lot different.

Not neccesarily, because elections are not about just one issue. If it said "Universal healthcare: Yes or No?" on the ballot, then maybe. But elected officials represent many different political issues.
There's also gerrymandering and electoral votes (instead of popular vote) to consider. So even if someone/something gets the most votes, it doesn't neccesarily win in the US.

But lets say the Democrats get the majority of votes. Now you have more obstacles passing these bills through the house/senate.
Because again, it's not about who gets the most votes, but now it has to get two-thirds of the vote or get filibuster'd, etc.

And now people who voted for these politicians to make these changes see that nothing happened, and lose their trust in them (even though it was the Republicans who blocked the vote) because most voters don't fully understand how it all works.



Elon Musk bricked the twitter account of someone he doesn't agree with.

How do we know that he did this deliberately?
Source: Free speech

That's what he wanted. We can just make things up now.



Hiku said:

Elon Musk bricked the twitter account of someone he doesn't agree with.

How do we know that he did this deliberately?
Source: Free speech

That's what he wanted. We can just make things up now.

Shocking... not.

This could be very much expected from the moment on when he said that he would unban Trump's account if he buys Twitter.

Elon Musk got rich because he mastered the art of parting fools from their money, so turning Twitter into an echo chamber for the so-called American conservatives is sure to bring in a lot of money by raising the price of membership which all the fools will gladly pay to live in a world of the so-called free speech. He must have noticed how much money people have donated to Trump's cause in the last several years and wanted a piece of the pie.



Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.

RolStoppable said:
Hiku said:

Elon Musk bricked the twitter account of someone he doesn't agree with.

How do we know that he did this deliberately?
Source: Free speech

That's what he wanted. We can just make things up now.

Shocking... not.

This could be very much expected from the moment on when he said that he would unban Trump's account if he buys Twitter.

Elon Musk got rich because he mastered the art of parting fools from their money, so turning Twitter into an echo chamber for the so-called American conservatives is sure to bring in a lot of money by raising the price of membership which all the fools will gladly pay to live in a world of the so-called free speech. He must have noticed how much money people have donated to Trump's cause in the last several years and wanted a piece of the pie.

Tbf I've heard of this happening to people who haven't interacted with him, so its probably a system error. 
But free speach people didn't like it when Twitter shut down missinformation, so they should have no problem when it's aimed at Elon now.

I'm unsure what his motives may have been coming into this, but I think he doesn't know what he's doing.

Basically as I understand it, he bought it with money he doesn't have that became a debt that Twitter now owes and has to pay by next year.
Twitter does not generate 1B per year, which may be one of the reasons he's trying to charge people for the blue checkmark.



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Hiku said:
RolStoppable said:

Shocking... not.

This could be very much expected from the moment on when he said that he would unban Trump's account if he buys Twitter.

Elon Musk got rich because he mastered the art of parting fools from their money, so turning Twitter into an echo chamber for the so-called American conservatives is sure to bring in a lot of money by raising the price of membership which all the fools will gladly pay to live in a world of the so-called free speech. He must have noticed how much money people have donated to Trump's cause in the last several years and wanted a piece of the pie.

Tbf I've heard of this happening to people who haven't interacted with him, so its probably a system error. 
But free speach people didn't like it when Twitter shut down missinformation, so they should have no problem when it's aimed at Elon now.

I'm unsure what his motives may have been coming into this, but I think he doesn't know what he's doing.

Basically as I understand it, he bought it with money he doesn't have that became a debt that Twitter now owes and has to pay by next year.
Twitter does not generate 1B per year, which may be one of the reasons he's trying to charge people for the blue checkmark.

I heard a theory he doesn't have the money because he was supposed to get funding from deals with Russians. Because of the war and sanctions it fell through. So he's posting some pro-Russia bs in a desperate attempt to end the war quickly.

But what the hell, why call this a theory? Someone write an article, make it news and post it on twitter!



Hiku said:
ConservagameR said:

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

When your terms of service are like most, at to, rules, rules, rules, oh, and we can discipline or ban you for anything just because we feel like it, then ya, obviously every time they take action it's people breaking the rules.

What kind of civilized democratic society or company makes rules like, when the management is displeased they can justifiably chop off you head?

-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.

Guidelines should be quite specific. I'm just in a bad mood or I don't like your hat color, isn't a reasonable reason to discipline someone.

Getting banned for asking too many questions, many of which weren't even questions, just because the person being asked didn't like it, seems ridiculous. Then to assume I didn't care about the answers makes no sense either since the questions all made a point based on the topic being discussed. Why asking some questions, which the answers to will prove my point, isn't an acceptable way of making a point, makes very little sense, other than to silence someone you simply don't agree with. It does make sense, if you're on the side of an argument that you're losing that you wish to win but don't think you can with words.

-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.

How diverse the mods are matters quite a bit. That's why Elon has mentioned the Twitter team or council, will be extremely diverse for this reason. If you have nothing but white people, wouldn't the likelihood of racism be higher? If everyone is conservative wouldn't the likelihood of politicism be higher? If the majority of the group see's things one way, and they operate mostly in a democratic fashion, then what about the minorities most of the time?

-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 lies is simply life. While a minority, some good people can become shitty and liars, just like shitty liars can become good people. Most people tend to be somewhere in between that, and can swing from side to side quite a bit on some occasions.

If you're going to have an open platform, then it has to be just that, open to everyone, besides those who break the law, as you said. If you're going to pick and choose who speaks and what's seen, now you've got to play by different rules since you're not an open platform, or at least you're supposed to, if the rules were being properly enforced that is.

I take it you're against the governments actions of working with (large) platforms to silence things like misinformation, which isn't illegal?

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

As to the N word Elon article, if you spent any time on 4chan at all, you'd know they are mostly to blame, as they did that as a community to simply rub it in the faces of those on Twitter who were happy about how things used to be and who didn't like Elon taking over now. They do things like this all the time to stir the pot, though it's rarely to simply cause chaos, as the majority of the time they're simply making a point. Those specific threads there weren't full of racist pics either, but of NPC pics with tears, and much laughter about those unhappy with Elons ownership.

Some, like the media, know this looks bad on them, and will hurt their own use of Twitter, so they spin it to make it seem like there's a huge increase of racists on the platform. While a tiny minority might actually be saying the N word as actual racists, the vast majority are just rubbing in Elon's control over Twitter now.



Hiku said:

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.

Elon was replying to Hillary's early conspiracy theory misinformation about the attacker being a Maga conservative or that Maga conservatives led to him becoming radicalized.

There is far more pointing to him being a liberal coincidentally.

What did I recently learn about getting ahead of the narrative as to pointing out who the bad guy is and how I'm the victim apparently?



ConservagameR said:
Hiku said:

This aged well.

(image)

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.

Elon was replying to Hillary's early conspiracy theory misinformation about the attacker being a Maga conservative or that Maga conservatives led to him becoming radicalized.

There is far more pointing to him being a liberal coincidentally.

What did I recently learn about getting ahead of the narrative as to pointing out who the bad guy is and how I'm the victim apparently?

Apparently you didn't learn anything. I don't think you can produce a credible source that points to the culprit being more of a liberal than a fan of right wing conspiracies.



Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.

ConservagameR said:

Elon was replying to Hillary's early conspiracy theory misinformation about the attacker being a Maga conservative or that Maga conservatives led to him becoming radicalized.

There is far more pointing to him being a liberal coincidentally.

What did I recently learn about getting ahead of the narrative as to pointing out who the bad guy is and how I'm the victim apparently?

Uh what? That actually happened, his daughter confirmed that he wrote those things.

Elon Musk replied with an article that claimed that the person was a gay prostitute that Pelosi just had an argument with. That's called spreading misinformation, it's not fighting it.