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Do you think the US will fail as a Democracy within your lifetime?

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Hayabusa Rider said:
We'll be fine, but I just wish we'd own up to our reality. The actual freedom of choice isn't there. We have candidates vetted by the party and the party owns them and consequently the government. We're along for the ride. Consider- Who did we really have to choose from who could win? Obama was guaranteed one spot and the Reps owned the other. "Me too" candidates? Who?
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And who are you blaming? These rogue parties that are an island unto themselves? No they consist of Americans voted for by Americans and right now stupidity seems to have the upper hand. Those calling everyone fascist or anti constitution are the ones voting for those that are exactly what they are complaining about.

You keep saying we don't have choices, we do, but to get good choices we have to out number the idiots who keep pushing such crappy choices.
 
ivwshane said:
And who are you blaming? These rogue parties that are an island unto themselves? No they consist of Americans voted for by Americans and right now stupidity seems to have the upper hand. Those calling everyone fascist or anti constitution are the ones voting for those that exactly what they are complaining about.

You keep saying we don't have choices, we do, but to get good choices we have to out number the idiots who keep pushing such crappy choices.
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We? OK.

Let's see how that works, but before you explain let's look at some facts. The Republicans and Democrats have well funded and organized machines. Parties have one overriding mandate- win. If you can demonstrate otherwise, be my guest. Now someone wants to toss their hat into the ring and not be bound by the political or ideological baggage of either party. How does that work? From a practical standpoint it doesn't. In theory, yes, just like everyone can be President, or everyone can be a millionaire if they work hard enough, or even a janitor can be CEO if he works hard enough, because our society is a meritocracy. I admit it's a comforting delusion to think there are practical alternatives, and if you need that so be it, but you are going to have a hard coming up with a realistic scenario where the mouse roars and unseats the lion.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
We? OK.

Let's see how that works, but before you explain let's look at some facts. The Republicans and Democrats have well funded and organized machines. Parties have one overriding mandate- win. If you can demonstrate otherwise, be my guest. Now someone wants to toss their hat into the ring and not be bound by the political or ideological baggage of either party. How does that work? From a practical standpoint it doesn't. In theory, yes, just like everyone can be President, or everyone can be a millionaire if they work hard enough, or even a janitor can be CEO if he works hard enough, because our society is a meritocracy. I admit it's a comforting delusion to think there are practical alternatives, and if you need that so be it, but you are going to have a hard coming up with a realistic scenario where the mouse roars and unseats the lion.
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Thats because you think that in order to change things you have to change the system or from the outside, I disagree, you change that from the inside. And I can give you a perfect example; the tea party. Unfortunately they are idiots and have made things worse but they changed the republican party from the inside. There is no reason why it can't be done again other than the idiots yelling louder than the smarter more rational people. Drown out the stupid and the system can be changed or brought back to order.
 
ivwshane said:
Thats because you think that in order to change things you have to change the system or from the outside, I disagree, you change that from the inside. And I can give you a perfect example; the tea party. Unfortunately they are idiots and have made things worse but they changed the republican party from the inside. There is no reason why it can't be done again other than the idiots yelling louder than the smarter more rational people. Drown out the stupid and the system can be changed or brought back to order.
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But you have only two sellers in the marketplace of ideas. Is the totality of human knowledge and understanding really just liberal/democrat and conservative/republican? Sometimes a situation calls for some flexibility, but institutions don't really allow change. True the Tea Party had an effect, but would you really mistake them for anything but Republicans?

I have no faith in our political system, but I believe that human inventiveness gives many options. What we have is running through molasses.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
But you have only two sellers in the marketplace of ideas. Is the totality of human knowledge and understanding really just liberal/democrat and conservative/republican? Sometimes a situation calls for some flexibility, but institutions don't really allow change. True the Tea Party had an effect, but would you really mistake them for anything but Republicans?

I have no faith in our political system, but I believe that human inventiveness gives many options. What we have is running through molasses.
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No, the tea party doesn't equal republicans, hell today's "republicans" aren't even republicans. The republican institution has whole heartily changed.
 
ivwshane said:
Thats because you think that in order to change things you have to change the system or from the outside, I disagree, you change that from the inside. And I can give you a perfect example; the tea party. Unfortunately they are idiots and have made things worse but they changed the republican party from the inside. There is no reason why it can't be done again other than the idiots yelling louder than the smarter more rational people. Drown out the stupid and the system can be changed or brought back to order.
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Since most people are selfish and motivated almost solely by self-interest, I doubt most people will be voting money out of their pockets anytime soon. And since the "leach class" is creeping towards a majority, we're pretty well boned. The only reason that democrats aren't guaranteed the oval office and congress is because of creative gerrymandering by republicans. But that can only last so long.
 
Nebor said:
Since most people are selfish and motivated almost solely by self-interest, I doubt most people will be voting money out of their pockets anytime soon. And since the "leach class" is creeping towards a majority, we're pretty well boned. The only reason that democrats aren't guaranteed the oval office and congress is because of creative gerrymandering by republicans. But that can only last so long.
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Exactly. At which point the Pubbies will drop the last vestiges of difference and become Democrat II.
"I say my opponent's 0.1% tax on titanium goes too far!"
"And I say my opponent's 0.1% tax on titanium doesn't go too far enough!"
 
JEDI said:
- Corporations and special interests $$$
- voters vote for those who promise the most out of the public treasury
- Politicians wont do anything unless it's an emergency or public outcry
- Cabinet Secretaries switch sides and work for the very corporations/industry they were charged in over seeing. ie: Big Pharmacy
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Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim YouTube Video

Video description:
There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That's the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig. With rapid-fire visuals, he shows how the funding process weakens the Republic in the most fundamental way, and issues a rallying bipartisan cry that will resonate with many in the U.S. and beyond.

Or, his latest book. Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress

Book Description
In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government—driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.

Lessig takes a systems view. He doesn't blame one, or another, political party. But he looks at the election funding process ... and finds it wanting.

Uno


From my perspective, Lessig is most articulate on this issue.
 
werepossum said:
Exactly. At which point the Pubbies will drop the last vestiges of difference and become Democrat II.
"I say my opponent's 0.1% tax on titanium goes too far!"
"And I say my opponent's 0.1% tax on titanium doesn't go too far enough!"
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Hey, so I'm still waiting on your ideas on how we are going to descend into Red China-Dom. A general timeline would help too. Don't worry about being super specific.
 
The US hasnt failed as a Democracy, what has failed the US is the people. This country is far more divided today than it was in the past, we have multiple voting "blocks" today who each will vote one way if promised enough goodies for doing so. The melting pot concept giving way to the multi-cultural concept is the biggest reason for that failure, instead of telling new arrivals you are Americans [period], we instead slap a sticker on their back saying welcome your our new Asian-American! OR Hispanic-American etc. Is it a surprise that these groups vote for whoever promises the most handouts to them, or will go out of their way to accommodate them ? Even Lincoln said a house divided cannot stand, yet our Government policy since the 70s is to divide the people any way they can.
 
peonyu said:
The US hasnt failed as a Democracy, what has failed the US is the people. This country is far more divided today than it was in the past, we have multiple voting "blocks" today who each will vote one way if promised enough goodies for doing so. The melting pot concept giving way to the multi-cultural concept is the biggest reason for that failure, instead of telling new arrivals you are Americans [period], we instead slap a sticker on their back saying welcome your our new Asian-American! OR Hispanic-American etc. Is it a surprise that these groups vote for whoever promises the most handouts to them, or will go out of their way to accommodate them ? Even Lincoln said a house divided cannot stand, yet our Government policy since the 70s is to divide the people any way they can.
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Uhmmm, about that Lincoln guy: we had a civil war that produced about a million overall casualties and god knows how many civilian deaths. This happened when the US was far more ethnically homogeneous than it is today and without these 'handouts'.

If you haven't noticed, our ethnic voting blocs are basically 'white people' vs. 'everyone else'. Maybe there's something more to it than all those damn dirty foreigners.
 
Hayabusa Rider said:
Been a long time, but the sophistication of techniques has improved. You might say they haven't but political ads work. Who has the funds? The Republicans and Democrats. The chance of a Bull Moose equivalent is slim to none.

Here are some stats.

Considering that no campaign finance reform that I know of which has a chance of passing gives any third party a chance in reality, not theory, there's no real choice.

If Gandi/Jesus/Kennedy were to run with a vastly superior platform it doesn't matter if you like him. The two parties and their financial base would crush him. It's hard to imagine another outcome in the real world.
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Your thinking is a bit muddled on this IMO. On the one hand, you seem obsessed with "2 parties" being the problem. That is rather arbitrary. Not only have we always had 2 parties (even Bull Moose didn't actually win), it's not like the politics are tremendously better in other democracies which have 3 or more viable political parties. I've never seen you are anyone else actually make that case. Take Israel, for example, where you have all these fringe parties getting seats in their legislative body due to the proportional system, and these fringe parties then hold the major parties hostage because some of them are needed to form a coalition.

On the other hand, you seem to understand that money is the real problem with the system. I fully support reforming campaign finance. I want public funding for campaigns. If that increases the number of viable political parties, fine, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is candidates are beholden to whoever funds them.
 
eskimospy said:
Hey, so I'm still waiting on your ideas on how we are going to descend into Red China-Dom. A general timeline would help too. Don't worry about being super specific.
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We won't turn into a Red China style communist country. Americans don't want the government to tell them what to do. But they do want the government to give them money. So they vote for the money. That comes with some strings (control) but I doubt it'll ever become truly oppressive. But as the producer class continues to shrink, and the leach class continues to grow, our infrastructure will continue to degrade, our credit rating will worsen, and we'll just be a shell of what we once were. Things won't really go to shit until the day that someone's government allowance won't buy them enough food to survive on.
 
eskimospy said:
It's always interesting to read threads like that. Americans have a bizarre tendency to believe that they live in a time of deterioration, beset by threats from all sides, etc.

America will be fine, the complaints in this thread are the same complaints that people have been saying for two centuries now.
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Yep.

I defy the naysayers of contemporary America to come up with a period in our history when there was more freedom and less political corruption. People conveniently overlook Jim Crow, anti-Semitism, oppression of women, child labor, poll taxes and literacy tests, internment of the Japanese, the lack of rights of defendants, the Great Depression, "fault" divorce laws, medicine before antibiotics, . . . .

People always focus on what they don't have, not on what they do have, and think that their romanticized version of the past was reality.
 
current failure will increase in velocity resulting in brake away states reclaiming lost state sovereignty and independence. In the end and sooner then you think liberals will have no place to go as fighting in the streets erupts due to valuations no longer being believable.
 
The United States is doing just fine thank you very much. The average American lives better than kings and emperors did a mere 200 years ago. We just like to bitch and moan and predict disaster, its what we do best. We will be ok until the oil runs outs and that won't happen for centuries.
 
IGBT said:
current failure will increase in velocity resulting in brake away states reclaiming lost state sovereignty and independence. In the end and sooner then you think liberals will have no place to go as fighting in the streets erupts due to valuations no longer being believable.
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😕

That's some tasty word soup you cooked up there.

Did you post your text file of buzz words by mistake?
 
eskimospy said:
Hey, so I'm still waiting on your ideas on how we are going to descend into Red China-Dom. A general timeline would help too. Don't worry about being super specific.
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You'll grant me that the Republican Party cannot long continue to compete as the anti-immigration, small government, anti-payola party, correct? We want our government cheese and we'll accept ever-increasing limits on our freedom to get it.

Perhaps you'll also grant me that the two parties are more alike than not. Most bills already go through on a bipartisan basis, and regardless of the GOP's campaign rhetoric their spending when in total power approximates the Democrats'. That is a tacit agreement that votes are more easily bought than earned, no?

You'll also note that since Kennedy's immigration bill, we increasingly take our legal immigrants from poor brown and black people. These groups tend to vote Democrat, and it ain't because your white guys are prettier than our white guys. These groups also tend to have more children and have them earlier. Coupled with immigration reform (aka mass amnesty) and demographics have inevitably turned against the GOP.

Given these things, either the GOP becomes the Democrat Party, or the GOP becomes increasingly powerless and geographically limited. Thus we either become a nation with one party rule, or we become a nation of two parties with the same platforms and goals. (This ignores the future rise of a La Raza party, but La Raza differs from the Democrats only in how wide the benefits should be distributed.)

Nebor said:
We won't turn into a Red China style communist country. Americans don't want the government to tell them what to do. But they do want the government to give them money. So they vote for the money. That comes with some strings (control) but I doubt it'll ever become truly oppressive. But as the producer class continues to shrink, and the leach class continues to grow, our infrastructure will continue to degrade, our credit rating will worsen, and we'll just be a shell of what we once were. Things won't really go to shit until the day that someone's government allowance won't buy them enough food to survive on.
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Americans still say that, but we no longer really mean it. Look at the number of people who believe Social Security will not be there for them but don't want the responsibility of handling their own mandatory retirement money. Hell, look at the support for Bloomberg's nanny state. If we can't freely decide how big a Coke to drink, can we really pretend we're still running around on our hind legs?
 
eskimospy said:
SO WHEN IS THIS DOWNFALL HAPPENING??? Can't anyone give me at least a general roadmap?
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To be fair we still don't have a firm date for the fall of the Roman Empire. Things kind of change slowly until you look back and you're not in the US of your grandparents any more. Though that probably holds true throughout our history. The country has to change with the times. Question is will our core values still hold through the changes.
 
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