What changes are necessary to restore sanity and functionality to politics and government?

[cwjerome]

My take: The corrupt and rigged duopoly has perverted democracy and civil discourse into a toxic, dysfunctional, and increasingly dangerous mess.

Setting aside specific policy issues, I think the best change can come from structural fixes to put more power into the peoples' hands and not the parties:
1. Broad implementation of some version of ranked choice voting across the country
2. Improve ballot access to make it easier and more fair
3. Stop political bribery and pass ethics laws
4. End gerrymandering
5. Maybe... term limits
6. None of this will have enough impact unless people break free of the tribal, emotional, binary thinking that plagues the political landscape.

 

[eelw]

Public stoning of the orange monkey

 

[feralkid]

Cranial enemas to remove shit from brains.

 

[dank69]

Make it illegal to lie on public airwaves/broadcasting. Also, hard no to number 5. 1-4 would be great but good luck.

 

[ivwshane]

We need more representatives. 700k-1.2 million people per rep is way too little of representation.

Campaign finance reform would be next.

 

[Paratus]

Three ghosts visiting about 30% of the country on Christmas Eve.

 

[Jaskalas]

Public stoning of the orange monkey

If taken literally, do remember that violence begets violence. And the supply chain abhors such a disruption. Careful what you wish for.

Cranial enemas to remove shit from brains.

Education, on how to process information. How to learn. How to think for themselves. How to judge information and messengers. How to value peer review over a tweet.

Humans naturally have !@#$ for brains, it is up to society to form something... better. We must be conditioned towards the correct beliefs, or we will believe anything.

 

[tweaker2]

Make it illegal to lie on public airwaves/broadcasting. Also, hard no to number 5. 1-4 would be great but good luck.

That right there is the whole Repub strategy for winning elections going down the flusher. The Repub leadership have to repeatedly lie (the bigger the better) or they will lose elections because they support a list of unpopular policies that negatively affects the middle class and the poor of whom represent the vast majority of the nation.

The Repub leadership have successfully managed to convince their working class members that every lie, every insane conspiracy yarn, every bit of misinformation and every dodge they make avoiding the facts and truths about just whose interests their leaders actually represent must be believed and spread as gospel in order to be a loyal member of their party. They must pledge their loyalty to Trump, the most notorious liars of all the other many liars in their party.

Their insanity is their reality because insane people have no idea they're insane. Kudos to Rupert Murdoch for a job well done.

 

[senseamp]

Declare war on Canada and immediately surrender.

 

[Lezunto]

The problem with term limits is that unless the system is dramatically changed, those with the power to control most of the mass media will be elevated into power positions to choose our leaders.

 

[emperus]

1.) Bring back the fairness doctrine. More has to be done about fox news and it's ilk.
2.) Get rid of partisan gerrymandering.
3.) Either Get rid of the electoral college or make senators proportionate to population not land. Both aren't necessary to ensure minority rights. At this point the right has unfair advantages in the house (gerrymandering), senate(land over people) and supreme court (selected by a minority senate with a president who won a minority of the vote). The minority has used all the rules of power to stay in power.