• DarkGamer@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    There’s nothing really that can stop it.

    Things that can stop it:

    • The passage of time, Republicans skew older*
    • The death of religion, the irreligious are unlikely to vote Republican* and Americans are moving away from religion
    • Education, those with degrees tend to vote Democratic*
    • Election reform that doesn’t give outsized power to rural states
    • Legal consequences for lying to the public in the guise of news
    • Ranked choice voting that allows for viable political competition from other parties both on the right and left

    *https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-profiles-of-republican-and-democratic-voters/

    What does the opposite of stopping it:

    • Fatalism that makes the good people who outnumber the bad not show up to vote
    • Hector_McG@programming.dev
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      1 year ago
      • Fatalism that makes the good people who outnumber the bad not show up to vote

      It’s the same as the “all politicians are the same” moan.

      No, they’re not. It’s the crooked ones that want you to believe that they’re all the same, because that’s what keeps the crooked ones from being voted out.

    • Rottcodd@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It should be noted that the last three of those things require the exercise of authority to enact, and that authority is vested in people and institutions that flatly will not exercise it in pursuit of things that will in any way undermine their privilege or that of their wealthy cronies and patrons, and all of those things would do just that.

      This is where it becomes relevant that the Democrats are only relatively less corrupt than the Republicans. They feed at the same corporate trough as the Republicans - they just have to, and do, play a somewhat different game to stay in office and maintain their privilege.

      The Democrats have already demonstrated that when they have uncontested power - the presidency and congressional majorities - they will still find a way to fail to actually deliver. That’s not just supposition - it’s established fact. It’s what they’ve already done. There’s certainly no reason to believe that they’re going to do any differently in the future.

      Now that’s not to say or imply that I disagree with you fundamentally. The first half of your list would at least slow the decline and putting Democrats in office would be broadly better than putting Republicans in office.

      But the Democrat establishment, and the DNC in particular, is too corrupt and too compromised to provide more than token opposition to the oligarchy.

      Elsewhere in this thread, a poster wrote of the possibility of the Republicans self-destructing snd the Democrats fragmenting. I don’t think that’s particularly likely, but it is attractive, since it would serve not only to eliminate the most overtly corrupt and destructive party but to provide a rallying point for those who call for genuine reform - the handful of actually decent politicians of the AOC/Sanders type could potentially have some real influence instead of just being lone voices made ineffectual by their subservience to a well-established and thoroughly corrupt party hierarchy.

      Again though, I don’t think it’s at all likely.

    • CapgrasDelusion@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Election reform that doesn’t give outsized power to rural states

      I completely agree with you about voter apathy, but this one in particular I don’t know how you get past. You need 2/3rds just to get an amendment for it up for a vote that you then need 3/4 of each state to pass. As long as a quarter or more of states are rural we’re kind of screwed on that one. I don’t see it happening in my lifetime at least.

      The rest are spot on. Also, Jack Fucking Smith. It’s not just the news that needs consequences.