windsock

You think that the rate of gun violence in NYC is why they vote Cuomo and not because they're 80% Democrat with a population of almost 9 million?

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RYM
Last.fm

Dude111

Anyone wanna guess who might win? (RED/BLUE)

The Batlord

The pitfalls of the American electoral system are not secret. The American public either knows or stays willfully ignorant. If the public as a whole made a concerted effort to be civically engaged (even on a basic level that I imagine all but the most overworked could manage) then we could make gerrymandering, the electoral college, voter disenfranchisement, etc into issues that politicians would be forced to listen to. We do not. Apathy is a vote too and the people have voted to let politicians act as aristocrats.

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OccultHawk

The potential to be good is meaningless. I’m talking 2.4 centuries of bad.

Americans who still believe in democracy are like a battered woman beaten to a pulp everyday for years. Eyes blackened. Bones fractured. Repeat. Genocide slavery war war war stolen oil stolen palm oil stolen rubber products - bikini atoll Vietnam drug war prisons for profit weapons proliferation arming Angola arming Iraq arming Afghanistan Obama arming Vietnam Central America Cold War nuclear testing in Nevada chemical weapons plant in Utah - biological weapons research - rain forests destroyed coral reefs destroyed mass extinctions- and finally the granddaddy of them all global warming- every last drop of oil - fracking strip mining mountain top removal “clean” coal LBJ Nixon Reagan Bush Bush and ladies and gentlemen Donald J Trump. But this battered woman still clings to the ideal she had in her head of who this man was when she married him the way we lovingly look at the dreams of our founding “fathers” - still without scorn because we can’t bear to face the horror that everything we believe and cling to is a goddamn lie.

All brought to you by the American Voter.

****
Your
Excuses

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Behold the Writing of THE LEGEND:

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The Batlord

Eugenics in the United States

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Lisnaholic

^ In light of our recent debate, I had to raise my eyebrows when I saw your pronoun, OH - no need for you to shouder so much of the blame.

Also, I'd suggest, don't be so hard on Democracy because this is only part of the equation:-

USA is internationally ranked as "Flawed Democracy", but (from memory) Britain, the Scandanavian countries, New Zealand and others are down as "Full Democracy" and by most people's standards they are pretty enviable places to live with some enlightened policies about health care, human rights, environmental protection, etc.

If the USA wants to get back into the Full Democracy club, they need to address the counter-democratic practices of the electoral college, gerrymandering and voter suppression. Then, as elphenor says, guys like Ted Cruz & Brian Kemp wouldn't be winning elections imo. - which, I just realise, is what 66Sexy is saying:-

^ I respect your passion about the worst sins of the US, but there are positive signs too, e.g. the Civil War came to an end, there is no longer slavery, women can hold office, etc.
Also, two quibbles about your list of horrors:
- that nuclear stuff looks terrible in hindsight, but was a reflection of how threatened the US felt at the time.
- "rain forests destroyed": where were they, exactly? Perhaps they were cleared away to build Route 66, he asks facetiously.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Janszoon

This made me laugh: https://mobile.twitter.com/MattOswal...C1239.850.html

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

The Batlord

I'm honestly curious just how much of European relative non-****tiness is made possible by the exploitation of the third world by American imperialism helped along by bigger EU nations like Germany and England. I doubt they're immune to the zero sum game of what we do to the rest of the world and yet they prosper. And the amount of money going into America is a large part of why our democracy is going to hell.

I might just be presumptuous but I can't help but suspect things aren't as picturesque as they kinda sorta seem in certain parts on the other side of the pond.

You mean how we pay poor Pacific countries, with little to no source of income besides selling fishing rights to the West and Japan, to bomb part of what little landmass they actually have (these countries being made of collections of tiny tiny tiny coral atolls that generally don't even have arable land) and if the fallout ends up giving a few fishermen cancer then phfffffffffft they're not Americans and nobody really knows what even goes on over there anyway.

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Lisnaholic

^ Yes, The European nations are guilty of terrible exploitation of third world countries - you don't even need to put America in the equation to accuse them of that systematic historic exploitation. I mentioned Europe in defense of OH's suggestion that America was evidence enough to condemn Democracy in general.
And yes, plenty to complain about in Full Democracy countries, but my feeling is that the democratic model is the best way to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number, with stuff like healthcare, human rights, etc.

^ As I said myself, terrible in hindsight. I'm alarmed at the damage that has been done to the environment by developed nations, hence that Watchdog thread. Both nationally and internationally it is usually the rich people damaging the environment of the poor people and that's disgraceful.

I guess the point I was making was the lesser one that we should make some allowance for historical context and be careful about condemning decisions in the past on the basis of today's standards/knowledge. In that Cold War era there was genuine fear that Russia might launch a nuclear attack on the US and the true damage of nuclear fallout was barely understood.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

The Batlord

But I suspect that the "need" to exploit other nations and maintain our military hegemony causes Americans to vote for politicians who are willing and morally deficient enough to enact tyranny worldwide, whereas many Europeans nations are allowed to reap the benefits of what America does while also having the luxury of electing more egalitarian or seemingly egalitarian leaders, whereas if we didn't exist they'd have to do the dirty work themselves and Europeans might not elect the leaders that they currently do.

Not to mention that America reaps the lion's share of the economic benefits from our imperialism, which corrupt our political system, whereas European nations probably get only a fraction of those benefits and so perhaps do not have nearly as corrupting an influence as billions upon billions of dollars flowing into their coffers.

This is again largely supposition on my part as I am no expert on modern Europe so I don't know how true it is but I am suspicious that European democracies are allowed to be less politically corrupted since they don't have to be the imperialist boogeymen that we are.

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