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Top Republicans stand by president's poop video (www.motherjones.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The warnings were there when the George W. Bush administration was doing all the things. We should have learned then never again to vote Republican, but we did. Twice. For the same monster both times.

We need to be having a sober conversation as to why and how that happened, given democracy doesn't work when people vote based on vibes or propaganda feels.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    given democracy doesn’t work when people vote based on vibes or propaganda feels.

    Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of people are primarily vibes driven. Everyone is, in some cases or other. For example, a lot of otherwise reasonable people will flip their shit if you suggest eating less meat for environmental or animal welfare reasons. You just get excuses and variations of "but i like it" and "but i'm a good person".

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    democracy doesn’t work when people vote based on vibes or propaganda feels.

    That is the line of reasoning that leads to anti-democratic authoritarianism. Humans use heuristics and emotion to make decisions the vast majority of the time. We might call that a values-based judgment if we are being charitable.

    The current leadership uses notions of loyalty and in-group/out-group membership, and their MAGA supporters are swayed by disgust emotions manipulated by propagandists. However, I'll admit that I'm driven by sense of fairness, or even moral outrage at naked corruption and abuse of power, waste, etc. We all do it. When people are hurting, you have to give them a solution that feels good -feels like it will make things better. Sending a strong message that crony capitalists are siphoning all the wealth off the middle-class to make you poorer, and they need to be taxed into the dirt feels like vindication and something that could work, for example. You have to hit both sides of the human coin.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    No, this is a line of reasoning that leads to something different than what we got, which could be authoritarianism, or could be a better democracy... or we could try sortition, eliminating the role of the politician, entirely.

    This was established in the Federalist Papers, that democracy works when the constituent a) knows their personal best interests and b) votes accordingly. In fact much of the post Southern Strategy GOP movement towards authoritarianist domination of the federal theater has been focused on getting constituents to vote against their own best interests, whether in favor of vibes or towards single issues (e.g. abortion access, gun control) or based on cultural pressure (liberalism = communism).

    There are many directions we can go to make the system more democratic, many of which include moving away from FPTP elections (which promote a two party system, making third parties untenable) but we've also had some success in actually educating the constituency and instilling in them a sense of duty to do their civic homework and know what they're voting for.

    If people didn't respond to these, then Trump would have won in November 2024 by a much wider margin than fractions of percents spread across several battleground states, and he wouldn't have needed the support of the EC and gerrymandering to give the illusion of a mandate. The GOP and its vibes-based voting system is propped up by a trillion-dollar propaganda machine to keep Americans uninformed and believing in the Joe Rogan way of life.

    If that's the best that democracy can do, I will be the first to dispose of it for something better. But I believe democracy can absolutely do better.

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