We just need a national election to sort out this nonsense; once the various Right Wing fuckwíts get trampled after the 1st or 2nd round of counting, we can move on with pressing issues, rather than the perennially angry thinking brown people are the reason they can't afford a house.
the problem is that there is a certain quotient of the population that are susceptible to populism, and as the phrase goes "the lie is half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on".
It is so hard to counter BS on social media, something 45 exploited and continues to do so.
Indeed - I am forever thankful that we have PR-STV and not FPTP.
Keeps out the loons very effectively.
You have people who either are ignorant of the facts, or, when presented with them, refuse to engage with them. You see it countless times on this thread. Years ago, I categorised Trump supporters into two groups - the delusional and the disingenuous.
Plus, it is only human nature to be attracted to the scandalous headline as opposed to informative pieces. There is a reason why online media outlets go for click-bait articles.
That is in essence the battle with bullshitters. They often have very receptive audiences.
It is a cult. you can't argue with members of a cult.
Everything the GOP do is about limiting/controlling the flow of information.
They denigrate education for being "woke" etc. to try to dissuade their supporters from continuing education beyond High-school.
They try to control what students can/cannot learn in schools , again to limit access to information and to reduce their ability for critical thinking.
And now , in multiple States they are trying to change the laws on child labour to get them out of school even earlier .Again to feed their corporate backers with cheap , uneducated and unregulated labour, but also to keep them poor and uneducated.
To be honest - Their heinous efforts around Child Labour are not getting anything like the kind of media attention they should , it's appalling.
Check out this example of Dickensian awfulness from Alabama (of course)
Alabama, the report’s writers insist, is in the midst of a labor shortage. Who better to conscript into the depleted ranks of the workforce than the state’s surplus 14- and 15-year-olds?
Surplus 14 and 15 year olds!!!!! - What the Actual F*ck!!!!!
The GOP know that the more educated a person is , the less and less likely they are to vote for them.
So instead of trying to modify their message , they just try to keep the next generation of voters as poor and as uneducated as they possibly can.
OT but PR-STV generally gives more representation to the lunatic fringe and less to the majority, compared with FPTP. Look at the UK for instance, the numbers of seats are heavily biased to the majority, even if the majority only has 35% of the public support it gets more than 50% seats.. whereas over here you have multiple extreme parties represented in the Dáil, on both sides of the political horseshoe spectrum. Whether you're a leftist nutjob or a rightwing nutjob you're still a nutjob!
What extreme parties are represented in the Dáil?
I'm not sure the UK is a great example, given the latter-day Tories' dalliances with populism and increasingly right-wing lurches.
The left wing independents, the likes of PBP, as well as a number of small parties like Aontu, SD etc. The UK is a great example as it's right beside us and runs the opposite type of voting.
Note: I'm not saying they (or us) are more or less centrist because of it, merely speaking about which method represents the will of the general population better. So if there's theoretically an opinion poll of 100% of the nation, which method STV vs FPTP gets closest in number of seats
Aontú has precisely 1 TD, the leader at that and purely 'cos Peadar Toibin took his SF status and local vote with him. I'm not even sure if he has speaking rights (though someone can obviously confirm); PBP are perennial agitators whose bark is worse than their bite; and calling the Social Democrats "extreme" is ... well, it is itself an extreme opinion. They're a centre-left party at best, not remotely extreme.
The whole point of PR is that it broadly reflects the opinions of the population, that's the whole purpose of the thing. Whereas FPTP means you only need 50% +1 vote to win the whole seat, regardless what the voting stats reflect; extreme party as they are, UKIP once commanded 12% of the national vote yet had F All MPs in parliament.
There’s a reason his crowds never fill out.
They just move on to burning down hotels apparently
Aontu are an extreme left wing party now?? Next you'll be saying Joe Biden is left wing
Whereas FPTP means you only need 50% +1 vote to win the whole seat
In fact, you just need 1 more vote than the next best performing candidate. A gets 1500 votes, B gets 2000, C gets 2001 - C wins.
E Jean Carrol seems thrilled that so far the $83.3 M appears to be keeping her name out of his mouth - describing him as “a walrus snorting” and “a rhino flopping it’s hands.” As she put it, the man himself has no clothes, he is nothing, it’s the people around him and that dangerous populism that give him power, that make him “terrifying” but in the courtroom he shriveled to nothing.
Yes sorry, of course, was thinking of something else. Indeed FPTP is even stupider 'cos of the above & indeed you only need to out-perform everyone else to get the nod. As we have seen with the Tories, whose majority never reflected the national polling - but benefited from a lopsided electoral system.
My Pillow accomplice cries he’s losing everything after breaking the law
But you end up with the 30% of the population voting for something the majority doesn't want, but because the 30% have over 50% of the seats it gets called the will of the people when something gets done which most don't want.
"AS WELL AS"...
Majority can be obtained by plurality as well as outright majority. You've essentially proven my point there, FPTP exaggerates the majority (or plurality if you will) to the point that 30% of the vote gets 50% of the seats. STV exaggerates the minority, so a party with less than (1/167) of the national popular vote can get 1 seat.
Great argument for STV.
This is perfection-being-the-enemy-of-good territory: Aontú in 2020 got 1.9% of the populate vote vs. 0.6% of the available TD seats; not exactly a massive discrepancy here that one should be overly outraged. PBP got 2.6% of the vote vs. 3.1% of the seats. nobody's trying to claim PR is somehow always gonna yield an exact 1:1 ratio but it has proven to be a muc better reflection of the national vote than FPTP - or indeed the electoral college system in the US - where the system is very easily manipulated to allow minorities to win out.
STill waiting to understand how the SOcial Democrats are an "extreme" party, though I also realise we have gone massively off topic and are probably about to get a finger wagging by the mods. Though like I said the American electoral college system is a pile of nonsense masquerading as democracy at this stage.
Back to trump,
Could this be the sting in the tale of the New York civil suit?
It could be because that is clear cut Tax evasion/fraud with a clear "victim" and loss and if true he also misrepresented it in his declarations to congress during his time in Office.
So there could be trouble from multiple directions
'Tax Evasion makes me smart'
'Taxes are for little people'. It's around for nearly 100 years, but the many of the rich in America still profess it.
Tax evasion would sink him, definitely.
to the cult though just another 'witch hunt'
But the cult won't elect him on their own.
They don't realize that, and if nothing else Trump just wants their money.
In other news, the DOJ is still coming for them.
New segment about Rusty Bowers, devout Republican, MAGA campaigner, and Jan 6 cmte witness
