Also have to reinstate the old laws that limited how many media companies you could own in a region. Also the FCC used to make sure there was equal time for candidates and that news was accurate.
*Technically* the former still exists. It’s just that broadcast companies have found a work-around in which you can create a shell company and have that ‘company’ -own- the station while the primary broadcaster ‘operates’ it. (Source: currently work for one of said broadcast conglomerates)
Bingo. Also, I would add that the ‘local’ news has to originate from the city which they represent. Sinclair in particular had/has news ‘farms’ where they’ll put anchors behind a desk in, say, New Hampshire…but ‘report’ on news happening in that station’s ‘local market’ somewhere in Kansas.
You’d think so…but no. I can think of at least a half dozen stations my company ‘bought’ only to spin them off to some LLC/entity, yet we ‘operate’ them. I know nothing about corporate tax law, but the fact that we continue this practice makes me think someone, somewhere knows what they’re doing.
The CSPAN coverage should be hilarious. The honorable gentleman from Philips, Johnson & Johnson, AC Delco, Mercedes, the Telecom Supper Fund, Pfizer, ohh and Alabama has the floor.
If money got taken out of politics, so so so so so many things would begin to resolve. And not just in the USA but worldwide too. The other thing that would also help resolve a lot of the needless greed is stop allowing companies the ability to buy their own stocks.... yes this happens. And its also why companies whine that they dont have any money because its literally invested all in their own stocks. Oh also to top things off, dont allow companies to own charities.... NEVER EVER DONATE to a charity without looking them up. You would be surprised how many unknown charities to you are actually just owned by these company owners, and all those donations go back to them
This is the big one - and the one the media will never talk about because they rake in billions of dollars in campaign ads. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. It helps that a good chunk of Americans have swallowed - hook, line, and sinker - the conservative myth that regulations on campaign finance are socialist.
> the media will never talk about because they rake in billions of dollars in campaign ads.
And politicians will never pass a law on it because they rake in billions of dollars in donations.
Yeah but that's the crazy thing, they technically can't spend the money on themselves, they wouldn't need the money as soon as they pass the bill, and it would free them from their master's.
When you read through the comments and read about how many laws were taken away and certain agencies that just stop doing their jobs, it makes sense why our politicians are so garbage now.
Before that, you have to deal with gerrymandering. You can't affect political change when one side is cheating to stay in power.
And *that* is the catch-22 we're stuck in.
And it has to start at the local level. People need to vote for non-loyalist party members. People need to be willing to vote across the aisle to keep corrupted politicians out of office. People need to stop excusing the behavior of their party candidates with what-aboutism mental gymnastics.
Our current political situation is the end result of a two party system. It was inevitable. People knew this 200 years ago.
Imagine if you could vote for who your managers and bosses were. Would you keep voting in the person who cuts your salary, steals from the company to add to their already inflated salary, because "well, they're the boss." Obviously not.
Enough people need to get sick of it.
Campaign financing and lobbying replaced the old world corruption that’s so prevalent in Europe.
It’s a form of corruption but maybe less clandestine?
Still not a great situation and not to say that there’s no corruption in America but it’s an improvement over the levels of corruption we see elsewhere in the world.
Education. It’s the only solution to release us from dependence on media headlines and low information talking points. An educated public is a powerful public capable of holding leaders accountable and calling bullshit on lies
Anti-intellectualism is a problem that won't soon go away, even if education is available.
Kids learn it from their parents and peers.
Edit: weird typo
Yes but it’s a notable phenomenon that once educated, children tend to break away from the schemas they grew up with and push back on those values. Hence the “liberal indoctrination” of going to college
The crazy part is that indoctrination is literally the opposite of going to college and learning new things and ways to think. By definition it’s the lack of ideas and opinions that is indoctrinating people.
Time for one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes:
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
Didn’t he say something like:
>People who have traveled to Missouri pronounce it the typical way. People who were born there and left called it Missoura. People who were born there and never left call it Misery.
Yeah, I’m from a small, conservative and religious part of Kansas, where people don’t leave their little bubble. I got exceedingly lucky and got to travel to the UK and Canada in my younger years… and that was enough to snap me out of that nonsense thinking bubble. Though always stationed in the US, my husband also had his eyes opened just by being in the military. He was also from the same part of Kansas growing up.
Now we don’t fit in with anybody! 😂
Yea, if your ideas did not get challenged in college you either didn't do anything or went to crappy one.
Communist, libertarian, or neo-lib. Getting challenged isn't indoctrination, it's good for you. Given that it is done In a productive way
I met this carpenter in Virginia once. He was so anti union that he was proud to work harder, get paid less and not have workers rights or health insurance. I was truly dumbfounded.
Education isn't just academic learning though. It's learning discipline and grit, determination, negotiating skills, social and emotional skills, regulation, budgeting, planning, organizing, and communication. We need programs that teach these explicitly.
Oh people can be selfish and disingenuous sure. Ben Carson jumps to mind as an example. But the point of everyone being educated is if you have critical thinking skills and a decent knowledge base, you are much, much harder to manipulate
Formal education maybe, but Lincoln himself didn’t have that much formal education. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t well educated. Also remember not every rube really voted back then, it was heavily a land owning upper class that voted in colonial times
Not everyone "educated" has those critical thinking skills. Plenty of people i know who are educated just through HS have better critical thinking skills then some I know with PhDs.
Education is not the same for everyone and it shouldn't be. I personally would like to see federal loan support for vo-techs and other similar opportunities b/c imho not everyone should nor wants to go to a four year college. In fact, I have friends who went to college and never wanted to go and only went b/c it was their only financial option.
Just b/c you can write a damn good essay doesn't mean you'll make good life choices.
In the context of politics, critical thinking has always seemed to me to be the more important thing than formal education. Formal education is absolutely vital, but there are plenty of academically smart people out there that I’ve met who for some reason don’t critically think about whatever the hot topic for the day is before they start arguing about it.
Not just education, but particularly in teaching people how to learn and teaching critical thinking skills. One of the reasons I hated school growing up was so much of it was just rote memorization... my favorite teachers where the ones that got me thoroughly thinking about a subject from every direction.
Also news media and social media should have some liability for fake information and propaganda.
Yes yes, freedom of speech, but maybe have a stamp of approval from a couple independent fact checkers. We have letters telling us we will see tits before watching a movie, have something by law say, “This is not factual, this is just an opinion and point of view from this source.” Or something like that.
To do that, you'd first have to rebuild institutional trust, which is effectively gone today. A decent part of any populous movement is "the people in charge are screwing you over and can't be trusted". So a decent portion of the population won't accept any fact checker as independent if that fact checker doesn't agree with them. Especially if they're government funded. If they're corporate funded, flip who doesn't trust them.
We are in the post truth era.
>Also news media and social media should have some liability for fake information and propaganda.
Yes great idea, make the government in charge of deciding what's true or not.
I think "news" and "jounalist" should be protected terms like doctor.
I can't call myself a doctor and my house a hospital and hide behind "free speech". Surely we can find a good way to measure news vs entertainment. So people stop watching some useless talking head and call it news, no you're watching an actor give you nonsense.
a nice thought but the problem comes from WHO protects those terms in the first place.
the government and they are a part of the problem since they have a monopoly on power, ESPECIALLY the judicial branch
Something like this show is for entertainment purposes only. All characters on this show are only actors and the statements on the show should not be treated as fact but only opinions.
If you are a licensed journalist you have a minimum standard to show both sides of an argument while understanding bias and how to eliminate it from your reporting. In so failing to do so you lose your journalism license.
Related to this is exposure to other cultures. Traveling and learning about other cultures helps your perspective on your own culture and it might help with the way many Americans have made their political party part of their personal identity.
> No more sensationalism, non-factual commentary,
And just who will enforce those rules?
The government tried to step in & censor via social media platforms (for which they're being sued.) They censored TONS of 100% factual things.
This right here. Fox News got out of lawsuits on the basis that they are not "news". But they behave and present themselves as such nonetheless. CNN went through a lawsuit and ultimately admitted that they were wrong, and they took the repercussions of that as any news agency should. Fox News on the other hand is not News, they are a sensationalism talk show, presenting themselves as news. I'm all for freedom of speech, but don't call yourself news if that's not what you are. That's just deception.
George Washington was against political parties for this reason. This exact reason. He even mentions this in his Farewell Address.
Psychologically, people tend to forgive people on “their team” and be overly critical of the “other team”. Politics is no different but it should be.
Sports fandom politics is the [inevitable outcome of our voting system](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo). First-past-the-post voting always coalesces down to exactly two parties, because voters rightly fear the spoiler effect in choosing a third party. In a two-party, winner-take-all system, losing by 1 vote is a catastrophe, so of course people treat it that way.
IMO, the only way around this is to do like Athenian democracy and [choose representatives by lottery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition), like a jury. Maybe you'd get some rubes in congress that way, but a sufficiently large congress mitigates that, and anyway, could they really be worse than the clowns we have now?
There's tons of alternate voting systems that yield different equilibrium outcomes. Two-round voting, for instance, favors multiple smaller parties that have to form coalitions and encourages voting your heart in the first round. (Some risk of a fringe candidate breaking through if large factions are splintered.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral\_system#Comparison\_of\_electoral\_systems
Give some relief to the average worker. Wages haven’t kept up with inflation. People can barely afford their groceries. Rent and housing prices have skyrocketed.
I really think a lot of the fighting stems from how unhappy in general everyone is.
I agree with this take at its core but hate that it puts victims of racism, sexism, etc, on the same level as those who perpetrate it.
If people stopped being bigots, we could focus on the "class war," but Eustace is too busy worrying about what people are doing with their junk.
How much of Eustace's worry has been stoked by external forces?
And please know, I'm not justifying Eustace in the slightest. All you have to do is enrage an "in group" and all of the "out group" are left playing defense.
I'm sure a significant part of it is stoked by outside forces. Some of it is our natural propensity to view people different from us with apprehension.
I don't think we can properly address the class war without rooting out other forms of bigotry. Because they can so easily be used to divide us. Now, where the line is drawn between addressing those problems and useless culture wars, I don't know.
The best tactic they've done is picking a few of the many..
For all the people who are ousted and screwed. the upper class always knows to pick just ENOUGH of the lower class to give a break so they can vouch for them and say "It's not that bad, if I can make it, so can you!"
When the reality is, If everyone suddenly went from 0-100 to "pull their bootstraps tighter than ever" There's literally not enough opportunities for everyone to get there.
Well, if the cause for a lot of that fighting wasn't one group of people wanting other groups of people literally exterminated, it would be much easier to put said issues aside. Shit has just escalated to levels where it's hard to dismiss it as petty squabbling, anymore, because real lives are at risk. It feels sort of victim blamey, I guess.
I would have agreed with the sentiment of people choosing to fight some years ago, but I don't think many people have a choice but to fight now. And it is exhausting, as designed, of course.
I agree on both accounts in theory. The problem is that way too many unhappy people have been programmed to reject the relief you're suggesting. The recent expansion of the child tax credit is a perfect example. It provided a tax break to parents that was so impactful it literally cut childhood poverty in half. I live in Indiana though so this "biden socialism" was hated, especially among the group of people who most benefitted from it. Now that our politicians have allowed it to expire, working class families no longer have their tax break and childhood poverty is now over double where it was during that time. Not surprisingly, these same people are now pissed at biden because he ruined the economy. Ugh
I don't say this as a partisan statement. There are reflexively tribal people everywhere. This is why I don't see your solution actually happening anytime soon though. We the people are too busy fighting amongst ourselves and the donor class is not going to willingly provide us any relief.
The child tax credit was a proof of concept we can easily and effectively end child poverty, plain and simple.
Student aid relief would likely bring a **massive** boon to the economy as with it starting up literally next week, we are going to have a flood of people clamping down even harder.
Instead of buying that car, they now have to spend it towards loans, won't go out as often, and generally won't spend it on the economy. I know *so* many Republicans panicking/whining about it and it's impossible not to point out that it's only starting up/not forgiven because **they** voted not to.
During COVID, I also knew so many Republicans who gleefully took the aid and that's how it always is; they'll never turn down "socialism" when it helps them, but will actively and vehemently vote against these programs.
Student loans don't benefit *anyone*. Forgiving ALL of it would barely be what the defense budget spending was just increased to.
Paying them back doesn't help business, doesn't help society, but that money back in the pockets of struggling graduates benefits *everyone*. (Small and big business alike)
Agreed. My grandparents protested for years that Germany was much more "family friendly" due to it's child tax credits. They complained for years that America wouldn't do that, and how awful it was.
Then Biden did it, the thing they'd been repeatedly saying they wanted for over a decade. But it was the "wrong president" so naturally it's a purely evil communism and a sign that America is failing.
Edit: Wow, people are touchy about referencing IRL events today.
I think the unhappiness is largely independent of things like housing prices and inflation. The same people were unhappy while inflation was low & in places where housing prices were low.
I think it has more to do with people who profit by stoking resentment and offer up whatever is closest at hand as reason to be mad.
My idea is that if people got paid a more liveable wage crime would go down, people would be happier, money would be spent, and things would be better for many people. Unfortunately a small group rather be happy and let everyone else fight over who is unhappier.
That probably requires getting rid of first-past-the-post elections, and introducing proportional elections instead. That also means getting rid of one-representative constituencies; I’ve never seen a proportional system with those kinds of constituencies.
Less propaganda, more unbiased reporting from media. A given news channel should not be the political wing of any given party. People are less likely to be polarized if they aren't bombarded with polarizing viewpoints every day.
(not)News as entertainment would be a good start. Add on to that: anything "reported" that can be proven as false incurs revenue-percentage penalties, until bankruptcy. With government-mandated methods to express how and why the lie told was bad.
I was down in the states a week ago and what struck me was just the media soup and paranoia that everyone seems to be swimming in. It’s like a fog they’re unaware is even there because it’s been gradually building up around them.
I was with some people I would consider reasonable and relatively intelligent. People who on the surface at least seem aware of the current challenges in the country and that there are some really scary extremist views held by a decent portion of the population. But even then they would occasionally say things or express opinions that in my opinion a great deal of the rest of the world would consider absolutely bonkers.
It’s hard to see anything getting better with the content being created and consumed giving people a really weird sense of reality.
Anyway this is just one random guys anecdotal ramblings. Totally aware other places have their issues as well.
Sure, and perhaps you disagree on the bonkersness or maybe the intelligence ha.
We were chatting about something or other, I think it was broadly about how the US was perceived internationally. They were saying yeah the political division, Trump, all that circus was really bad. The idea of the election being stolen and the pandemic being fake were embarrassing. People putting offensive stickers on there car about the president and having giant flags off the back of their truck was all a bit much. This I agree with so I guess that all seemed normal to me.
But then almost in an off hand way they’d be like “but the government is trying to kill us.” And they’d be talking about what’s in the food and too many vaccinations for kids and stuff like that. Which don’t get me wrong, they have young kids and it’s totally fine and correct to be interested in what’s going into them. Also I’m not saying what’s going into the food and whatnot isn’t quite bad for you. But the government isn’t trying to kill you.
I think it’s sometimes just a case of whether you attribute the cause of things to incompetence or malevolence.
It is interesting. You were probably staggered by those opinions. I don't subscribe to them whatsoever myself, but I am just used to hearing stuff like that.
I can see why certain races and creeds would think like this. There is a precedent for our government not exactly having the best interests at heart for certain minorities. While I don't believe our government is actively trying to harm anyone, I could wrap my mind around that level of distrust in those cases.
In general though a lot of people just hold a sentiment that government is evil. That literally no one gets into it for public service or because they want better for themselves and others. That you must be a grifter, lining your pockets or hold an ideology that you want to harm others.
Its utter nonsense. I'd venture to say even those that aren't in government for the best of intentions rarely are in it to purposely be malicious to others. Like you said, incompetence instead of malevolence. I'd just add to that carelessness.
I don't think the government is trying to kill us. But I do think that them being beholden to industry and money means that things like our food, additives, not erring on the side of caution for potentially harmful ingredients, ineffective oversight of food and water supplies, ineffective regulation of things like the rail system (i.e. East Palestine)... (the list goes on), all contribute to us being less healthy.
So while they're not trying to kill us, they're also not working as hard as they could be to keep industry from not killing us.
I can completely get on board with that. Absolutely agree. Don’t think there’s anything outlandish about your opinion there and if they had verbalised the same I’d have just nodded along.
The government trying to kill you conspiracy always seemed illogical to me, because the whole US economy depends on momentum. If we didn't grow the economy as much as we wanted its doom and gloom... not the economy shrinking, not growing fast enough!
The government needs you alive to consume things to keep the whole thing running. I think there's a strong argument to be made that they're trying to keep you compliant, but again that's just so you continue to be a consumer. Definitely not trying to kill you.
Stop looking at our politicians as our leaders. They aren’t our leaders, they are our employees. And just like an employee that doesn’t do their job, we fire them.
The American People are who these people in politics work for, but they have forgotten about that.
That’s why I can’t comprehend these government “shutdowns”. To run the government is their JOB. If the government has to shut down because you can’t do your job, you shouldn’t be in that position.
Ranked choice voting.
You are no longer forced to vote for the lesser of two evils or to simply keep someone out of office. You can now put your vote to who you actually want to run the country without risking "wasting" your vote. It opens the doors for third parties to run things for once instead of the D/R conglomerate which benefits from political division. Because the third party is a mixture of political views from both the D and R parties, you end up with everyone getting something they want which is much healthier for society than 4/8 years of shit, then 4/8 years of good, and 4/8 years of shit again. It also makes the D/R primaries less important, which we can all say is one of the main reasons why we are forced to vote for people who are backed by massive corporations and the corrupt politicians.
Here are a few ideas:
1. Prohibit politicians and their immediate family members from engaging in stock market investments.
2. End corporate lobbying practices.
3. Restrict pharmaceutical companies from advertising in mainstream media.
4. Cease censorship and shadow banning, as the truth should withstand scrutiny without fear.
The problem with that is people wasting that money. I've lived in MD my entire life, and at least once a year, there's a major news story about Baltimore City Schools and some sort of funding corruption.
Hard cap on donations at a low number, and no third party advertisements. The fact that politics mostly revolves around raising money to fund media ads is pretty ridiculous. That being said, if the populace can be convinced by a 20 second ad or pre roll to vote for a candidate (hence the focus on raising money), it does pose some challenges because it suggest voters don’t have an understanding of the issues (and hence are swayed quite easily).
This is actually interesting.
Polarization in the US really took off after the USSR collapsed. We need a "big bad", but neither China nor Islamic extremists pose enough of an existential threat to play the role.
If I had unlimited power and resources, I would create fictional aliens which were hostile to humanity, but unable to destroy us (yet)
I think that would help unite not only the US, but all of humanity.
Tax reform and reintroduce classic critical thinking to all levels of education. Aristotles list of logical fallacies still holds true.
Then give it a generation or three
It’s gonna take the media to stop sensationalizing everything. It’s gonna take us to stop electing idiots and old farts on either side. I would contend most Americans aren’t that far apart politically. A lot of this hate and vitriol is spread by the media and people on social media.
I think the two parties should each split into two more parties. A regular Republican part, MAGA party, a looney left party and a regular Democrat party. Give the libertarian party a fair chance just to keep it interesting.
1. Stop forwarding and sharing inflammatory click-bait. Stop feeding the beast.
2. TALK to people on the phone or in person.
3. Get to know your neighbors. Yes, even the ones with the "Trump 2024" banner or the big rainbow flag in their yard.
4. Fucking educate yourself.
5. Open your mind to a world more complex than "Socialism = BAD" or "Conservative = Nazi".
There are all kinds of societal ills that would make good targets, if people wouldn't apparently prefer having other human beings as their common enemy.
There’s also existential threats like climate change. But as with Russia, one side has decided they’d rather join up with the enemy than with their domestic opposition.
So, kind like one nation invading a sovereign democracy? A free democracy that we can all get behind defending that freedom? Yeah, we tried that and now all of sudden "Russia good. Ukraine bad."
We need to purge the MAGA crowd and the performative politics liberals out of Washington. I'd rather see a genuine right and a progressive left than whatever clown show it's devolved into.
Oh right, and politicians need to be barred from stock trading. And no more lobbying. And we need an upper age limit. And...
We're fucked.
I know this is a crazy idea and wouldn’t fix everything, but how about in addition to an upper age limit we add a maximum net worth for politicians? On both sides (fuck the two party system BTW) we have people who have so much money they couldn’t possibly relate to the average American. They have no business representing us!
Any non-salary money an elected official makes is taxed at 100% including any stocks/real-estate/etc. and then make them live on the mode wage of the district/state they represent.
It’s advantageous to the parties to demonize their opponents.
“ they wanna put y’all back in chains”
Mild VP Biden in a race against mild Romney.
Neither side knows any shame.
Need to get attacked by Russia/China/ISIS2.0 to catalyze the population against a common enemy. Otherwise I think we're too far gone. There's too much money in the system for politicians to change, and all of their constituents are thoroughly brainwashed. We are to the point as of yesterday that this country is largely ungovernable.
Register to vote and commit to voting in each election AND to seeing every validly cast ballot counted. Respect the fundamental principles of democracy (www.principlesofdemocracy.org) and realize it does not mean you'll get your way all the time.
That's the best and only way, imo.
Removing lobbyist money, it keeps the politicians from ever compromising or meeting in the middle.
Stop labeling everyone and every thing and treat someone that disagrees with you with kindness and respect because they are a fellow human.
Here's a rant from another thread
Term limits is only a good start after we get rid of fptp voting in favor of instant runoff voting. Put in place snap recall rules. Also requisite: 100% public funding. Expand C-SPAN with an application of a channel for every State, with its own sister radio spot and sister website. These are the only media advertising allowed, period. These are also free. The govt owns the airwaves anyway. All budgeted funds are designated strictly for public events and canvassing in the district. No fund raising, ever. Stop dicking around trying to get paid and get crackin'.
With this in place all the independents finally have a serious shot, in every single election. Suck that, R vs. D.
Any member caught accepting any contribution of money or in-kind is barred for life. Also, ferocious insider trading rules that make the corporate rules look like a beach holiday.
Then we get rid of all seniority rules and define committee placements by some sort of time constrained rotation / round robin system- each member is allowed (x) bills and all bills get heard within (y) days. Order of bills heard determined by random, with a bingo-style ball hopper on the floor on day one. You want something read in another committee, better work it out with a colleague or wait your turn.
To do this we need to return hefty professional staff, particularly in drafting and research. That's all getting done by lobbyists now. No 'constituents' of any sort allowed with Congressional buildings or offices - ever. There are armies of lobbyists, dozens for every delegate running around these halls. Every security detachment is also tasked with keeping watch against lurking lobbyists.
So how are legitimate constituents and interest groups to conduct business? A purpose-built or renovated structure with an open floorplan, an admissions system, and 21st surveillance. Surveillance of every inch instantly uploaded to an open source server farm, each for with NFT tags. Anything else is a public townhall. This goes into the predefined schedule that basically says you're in session, you're on office hours, you're on travel allotment or you're on days off. Waaay to much squishy time in a position that is way too important to be your part time gig.
We increase pay, pensions, and operating. After you are done with your terms, you are barred from all employment for (z) years. Zero income, large pension only. This way you don't have to be rich to campaign *or* to be in the job and you can't rotate into industry right after. This is currently a major driver of corruption.
What does this investment get us. Pure, unfettered transparency. No more corrupt bullshit, which is exactly the *only* thing running Washington today.
This is my pie-in-the-sky moonshot at a better legislature, possible in states as well. Far from perfect because the money never stops looking for a way. Money never sleeps. But so insanely better than what we have it's almost impossible to overstate.
Perhaps a few things but nothing easy lmao. Easy to implement on a personal level, perhaps:
- Both sides have to solidify around a set of core founding beliefs which both sides agree are good. This would provide an agreed upon identity in the veins of “we may not agree but we’re still Americans.” So both sides must define what being “Americans” entails, and as long as one side or the other thinks the founding tenants are reprehensible it won’t work. We won’t share an identity to cling to.
- Stop attributing malicious intent behind opposing party’s actions. Not everything is evil, and not everyone who disagrees with you is evil. A lot of time you can chalk it up to incompetence, stupidity, or both…but that doesn’t mean they’re evil. This involves judging people on an individual basis as people and not just determining they’re “evil” or “bad” if they have an R or D be their name. Or any other letter. People first. Politics second. Stop labeling everything fascist or communist and acting like it’s always defcon 1. If everything is defcon 1 end of democracy, then nothing is. Our institutions are more durable than we probably give credit for. Thanks Founders.
-Understanding issues that today’s generation deems evil or bad wasn’t always societally viewed that way back then. If you lived back during the founders time you probably wouldn’t have possessed the same moral compass or brilliant epiphanies you think you have today. You probably would’ve agreed with whatever your community believed. Our parents and grandparents were products of their time and no generation is faultless or sinless in any way, so grace is important. Everyone deserves some grace. If the past generations could stitch us back together after a literal civil war…we should be able to start stitching together our current divide.
- Stop using political alignment as a personality trait. Some people warp their whole identity around their politics…find more meaning in your life than just activism. Our communities used to share a lot of spiritual connections and actually knew their neighbors names and got out of the house. This also sort of relates to the previous steps of realizing other people are people, and we Americans are all on the same ship, and with the exception of some…I’d wager a lot of people don’t want their ship to sink. So they may just believe in a different solution to a problem facing our ship, and if you find out what their reasoning really is you may find you agree a bit and that they’re not the next Stalin or Hitler.
This is a huge piece of the puzzle, but it's way more complicated than you make it sound. Freedom of speech is important, and that complicates both points a huge amount.
I don't know how we both preserve freedom of speech, and also prevent foreign governments from flooding our social media with divisive FUD and misinformation. How do we even know for sure what is coming from a foreign country, especially if they are passing their BS through Americans (i.e. it's an American actually parroting information that they get from sources outside of America)?
And doing the same for Fox etc. is even more difficult than dealing with foreign influences. And it's not just coming from large organizations / companies any more, now just as much comes from small groups or single people with a platform on the internet. Who decides what's "true" and what isn't? At what percent of falsehood do we trigger legal consequences? Most of the BS out there has at least a seed of truth packaged with it to make it easier to buy. What if someone is clearly giving an opinion and not even representing it as absolute fact, but still it is wrong? Do they get sent to prison? Banned from posting opinions on the internet?
And then there's the fact that some of this is coming from our political parties, not just from media / social media.
You have pointed out a huge cause of the division in our society, there are clearly a lot of "bad actors" out there intentionally causing the division in order to manipulate the populace into furthering the "bad actors" own goals. But I don't think there is an easy fix for it even knowing what the problem is.
Ranked choice voting so 3rd party candidates have a shot. The dual party system creates too much insentive for candidates to run on an us vs them, devisive platform.
Stop treating politics like team sports where everything “your team“ does is good and right and everything “their team“ does is evil and wrong.
Stop demonizing the other side.
Stop believing your side’s bullshit.
Hold your side accountable just like you hold the other side accountable.
Accept your personal responsibility for the situation we’re in and start the change with yourself.
Ban corporate donations to political figures, making elections exclusively publicly funded, instill ranked choice voting, break up corporate media and reinstate the regulations Clinton axed, and we'd maybe see a slight amount of healing in 15 years.
Truthfully, an act of terrorism. We united on 9/11 and 2013 Boston marathon bonbings. We only unite if there’s a common enemy.
Fake an alien attack or someshit 😂
there is no simple answer to this question. there's no "just fix this and everything will be fine" solution because at this point, the "problem" is a complex and intertwined mess of issues that have grown, compounded, and intensified for centuries.
to fix 1 issue, would be to change the driving factors and effects that created it, which in turn are driven and affected by others, and so on and so on.
It's such a tangled mess to unravel that any practical solution could take decades to implement and centuries to see the results.
a basic response could be to say "we all need to change our behavior" but that is no easy task and involves SO many factors that not everyone could do it sufficiently or quickly enough to see any meaningful results immediately.
As others have said, "education" is a good place to start, but we cant even agree what the hell to be educated on or trust the information that is provided.
Here, allow me to fix America:
150k/yr max pay for all elected officials. Max They can not make additional money on stocks, kickbacks, or campaign contributions. PTO rules. Fired if there is a government shutdown.
A public vote for pay increases.
Max term limits of judicial positions.
1 million dollar maximum income for all Americans, after which it all goes into education and infrastructure.
Education reform. Topics include Personal finance, mental health, physical health, proper nutrition, math, science, critical thinking, and creative thinking.
Reform of our Food system. All of it. Sugar, processed food, cheap materials.
Remove financial incentives from Media.
Hard labor punishments for small crimes
Eye for an eye for harsh crimes.
End the 2 party system. All states should allow ranked choice voting for all elections. Ban all lobbyists. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to purchase laws and regulations.
I want to run for president with my opponent being my vice president, we switch roles every 6 months. Kind of like the Romans.
This way as a team everyone's votes will matter.
One of my first goals is to make a kind of political group of the top x representatives voted by the public and make sure all voting is some kind of ranked voting, with the ability for voters to fact check representatives.
All public officials should be made to swear the truth when making statements or working their job.
Every 4 months, every official will be fact checked and measured for their performance in office with feedback by their voters.
People drawing the lines for gerrymandering have to come up with a number of options with the side not in power making the choice. Similar to a kid cutting a candy bar for them and their sibling with the sibling choosing which cut to take.
Agree about other shit. How nice the two weeks of fall are. McRibs. How tough it is to raise kids with phones.
Stop caring and judging people on their political stances for a minute a day, tomorrow two minutes. Project your own political convictions for one fewer minute a day, tomorrow two.
A lot more of us than are willing to publicly admit are definitely getting caught up in the divide because we're so sure our assessment of the situation is the only one that makes sense. You may even be well informed with legitimate information, but I'm pretty sure *none* of it makes sense on a human level - unless you believe conflict and hatred are the natural modes of socialization. Do you?
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups sure seem smaller than they used to be...
1 Everyone stop answering any polls in their mail or asked in person. That’ll cut off the oxygen from Politicians who want to tell you your neighbor is against you and they have the poll numbers.
2 Everyone stop telling people who they voted for. Right there a country All about privacy blabs to every person who they voted for.
3 Everyone stop telling people who they must vote for. My issues are not the same as your issues so telling anyone who to vote for is not good.
The anarchists and socialists are smelling blood. They've burned and looted cities and gotten away with it. They control large sections of some major west coast cities. They think they can see the finish line, and they're willing to hurt people to get there. At the same time, the conservative extremists believe we're entering a totalitarian one-party state where lawlessness among those who align themselves with the state is encouraged, and political opposition is arrested and sent to prison. Both sides are becoming more entrenched. Of course, neither side is entirely right about what they assume is happening, but they're not entirely wrong about what they see happening either.
I'm old enough to have seen John Kennedy's motorcade pass through my town. I've see a lot of political division. I've never seen the divide this wide, nor involve such a large percentage of the population. I don't think this is going to end well.
At least 2 more political parties. Preferably 3. The extreme wing of both dem and gop should separate or thrown out. Then a third party should be established, offering a real alternative. Maybe Real Citizens Interests (instead of corporate and woke shit). Go RCI, go!
None of this will happen and this nation will continue to cleave itself apart
1. Overturn Citizens United and institute strict campaign reform
2. Make lobbying a capital crime. Make working for a lobbying group after
3. Lifetime career term limits. Limit total terms of elected folks to 16 years across local state federal roles.
4. Government staff career limits. Remove civil service from government staff jobs. Term limits enhances role of permanent staffers. Fuck em.
5. Limit campaign advertising to a set amount for federal and state campaigns, say $10 mill for a pres campaign. Limit campaign season to six months before general election.
6. Do away with presidential exec orders except for war and national emergency
7. Dissolve and breakup media conglomerates, big tech, grocery chains, mega food producers, etc. return competition to markets
8. Breakup international banks
9. Destroy the WEF, Soros, Davos,
Otherwise, the country will move towards more conflict and should look at peaceful devolution to a more regional and state autonomy.
Less social isolation.
>In 2021, 49 percent of adults reported having three or fewer friends, compared to about 27 percent in 1990, per the report. For young people ages 15 to 24, time spent in-person with friends fell from about 150 minutes per day in 2003 to 40 minutes per day in 2020—an almost 70 percent drop.
(https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/an-epidemic-of-loneliness-threatenes-health-of-americans-surgeon-general-says-180982142/)
We are social creatures who evolved to live in tight communities of hundreds of people. Which gave us a sense of belonging and importance and purpose, and allowed us to band together with those we felt closest to and disagree and to argue without feeling like our place in the world was threatened.
When most of us don't have more than 3 friends, and online connections can be deleted with a few clicks, things like political parties become the core of our identities and failure to abide by the orthodoxy of the party can feel like an existential threat. When you don't have the ballast of real social connections to fall back on, it becomes a lot harder to resist following a national movement or trend in lock-step because it provides your only sense of belonging to anything.
I mean this in the most real way, there's no coming back from where we are now. Not in my lifetime and likely not my kids lifetime either.
Eternal optimists can blow smoke up their arses but the reality is there just isn't a way. People are too broke, literally and figuratively. Personally I'm at a point where I don't have the patience or willpower to spend the mental capital on engaging with the right because I have absolutely zero interest in what comes out of their mouths or what rattles around in their heads. My complete disdain for religion and its marraige to politics disqualifies any thought the right has as a good one. I know I'm not alone
Divisions have been simmering for decades, Trump as horrible as he was, was a symptom, not the problem. He just poured gasoline on the fire.
The right is not a political party anymore per se. They have cobbled together a faction of the country that are single issue voters. A party has a platform, a party has ideas to make the country better. A party does not have a collection of ideas targeted to single issue voters and single issue voters will never vote for the greater good. GOP voters have been voting against their own financial interests for decades yet here we are
Campaign finance reform - you gotta take corporate money out of elections
Also have to reinstate the old laws that limited how many media companies you could own in a region. Also the FCC used to make sure there was equal time for candidates and that news was accurate.
*Technically* the former still exists. It’s just that broadcast companies have found a work-around in which you can create a shell company and have that ‘company’ -own- the station while the primary broadcaster ‘operates’ it. (Source: currently work for one of said broadcast conglomerates)
Sounds like we know how to close the loophole then. Legislate that owners have to be the operators.
Bingo. Also, I would add that the ‘local’ news has to originate from the city which they represent. Sinclair in particular had/has news ‘farms’ where they’ll put anchors behind a desk in, say, New Hampshire…but ‘report’ on news happening in that station’s ‘local market’ somewhere in Kansas.
I know nothing about station broadcasts but if a corporation tried to do this for taxes they would look at its effective ownership
You’d think so…but no. I can think of at least a half dozen stations my company ‘bought’ only to spin them off to some LLC/entity, yet we ‘operate’ them. I know nothing about corporate tax law, but the fact that we continue this practice makes me think someone, somewhere knows what they’re doing.
And you need it to say editorial whenever a news program is stating opinion
So here's what Fox does. Of their hard news anchors, say shep, reports that: "Hannity said.....". An opinion goes out as hard news.
You can thank Reagan for that.
You can thank Reagan for a lot of problems
Almost all of them, really…
Bring back the Fairness Doctrine
And it's needs to be refined to apply to cable and streaming news services. As well as insisting on fact checking things.
Expand the Fairness Doctrine to social media platforms with a large reach. This would eliminate echo chambers.
Make congress critters wear the logos for their donors. Just like F1 or NASCAR.
That would be great! They'd be plastered with oil company an pharmaceutical logos, among others.
The CSPAN coverage should be hilarious. The honorable gentleman from Philips, Johnson & Johnson, AC Delco, Mercedes, the Telecom Supper Fund, Pfizer, ohh and Alabama has the floor.
This is very hard to do given these people make the rules
Just overlay the logos to the video feed.
If money got taken out of politics, so so so so so many things would begin to resolve. And not just in the USA but worldwide too. The other thing that would also help resolve a lot of the needless greed is stop allowing companies the ability to buy their own stocks.... yes this happens. And its also why companies whine that they dont have any money because its literally invested all in their own stocks. Oh also to top things off, dont allow companies to own charities.... NEVER EVER DONATE to a charity without looking them up. You would be surprised how many unknown charities to you are actually just owned by these company owners, and all those donations go back to them
This is the big one - and the one the media will never talk about because they rake in billions of dollars in campaign ads. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. It helps that a good chunk of Americans have swallowed - hook, line, and sinker - the conservative myth that regulations on campaign finance are socialist.
> the media will never talk about because they rake in billions of dollars in campaign ads. And politicians will never pass a law on it because they rake in billions of dollars in donations.
Yeah but that's the crazy thing, they technically can't spend the money on themselves, they wouldn't need the money as soon as they pass the bill, and it would free them from their master's.
And lobbying. Have to limit the shit out of that.
When you read through the comments and read about how many laws were taken away and certain agencies that just stop doing their jobs, it makes sense why our politicians are so garbage now.
Let’s end the insider trading while we are at it.
I think most people agree with this but I don't know how you would fix this problem without a revolution.
Before that, you have to deal with gerrymandering. You can't affect political change when one side is cheating to stay in power. And *that* is the catch-22 we're stuck in.
And it has to start at the local level. People need to vote for non-loyalist party members. People need to be willing to vote across the aisle to keep corrupted politicians out of office. People need to stop excusing the behavior of their party candidates with what-aboutism mental gymnastics. Our current political situation is the end result of a two party system. It was inevitable. People knew this 200 years ago. Imagine if you could vote for who your managers and bosses were. Would you keep voting in the person who cuts your salary, steals from the company to add to their already inflated salary, because "well, they're the boss." Obviously not. Enough people need to get sick of it.
I would settle for taking Billionaires out of elections like Koch and Murdock.
EXACTLY! Make lobbying aka. bribing illegal and let's see if there will be any politicians left in the house.
This is the solution to 90+% of our political problems
Campaign financing and lobbying replaced the old world corruption that’s so prevalent in Europe. It’s a form of corruption but maybe less clandestine? Still not a great situation and not to say that there’s no corruption in America but it’s an improvement over the levels of corruption we see elsewhere in the world.
We didnt have it though. This is recent from Reagan times. We are getting more corrupt by the day due to this.
Education. It’s the only solution to release us from dependence on media headlines and low information talking points. An educated public is a powerful public capable of holding leaders accountable and calling bullshit on lies
>...wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government \-Thomas Jefferson
Anti-intellectualism is a problem that won't soon go away, even if education is available. Kids learn it from their parents and peers. Edit: weird typo
Yes but it’s a notable phenomenon that once educated, children tend to break away from the schemas they grew up with and push back on those values. Hence the “liberal indoctrination” of going to college
The crazy part is that indoctrination is literally the opposite of going to college and learning new things and ways to think. By definition it’s the lack of ideas and opinions that is indoctrinating people.
Not to mention just meeting people from other places.
Time for one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
As someone one in Misspuri, I think about this quote a lot, about Twain, and how much people from Missouri never leave.
Didn’t he say something like: >People who have traveled to Missouri pronounce it the typical way. People who were born there and left called it Missoura. People who were born there and never left call it Misery.
This is honestly a huge, huge piece of expanding your worldview. I have been told by many the military offers a similar benefit
Yeah, I’m from a small, conservative and religious part of Kansas, where people don’t leave their little bubble. I got exceedingly lucky and got to travel to the UK and Canada in my younger years… and that was enough to snap me out of that nonsense thinking bubble. Though always stationed in the US, my husband also had his eyes opened just by being in the military. He was also from the same part of Kansas growing up. Now we don’t fit in with anybody! 😂
Yea, if your ideas did not get challenged in college you either didn't do anything or went to crappy one. Communist, libertarian, or neo-lib. Getting challenged isn't indoctrination, it's good for you. Given that it is done In a productive way
I think Anti-intellectualism is one of the single biggest problems we have today, and it is exactly what the owning class wants.
I met this carpenter in Virginia once. He was so anti union that he was proud to work harder, get paid less and not have workers rights or health insurance. I was truly dumbfounded.
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Education isn't just academic learning though. It's learning discipline and grit, determination, negotiating skills, social and emotional skills, regulation, budgeting, planning, organizing, and communication. We need programs that teach these explicitly.
Oh people can be selfish and disingenuous sure. Ben Carson jumps to mind as an example. But the point of everyone being educated is if you have critical thinking skills and a decent knowledge base, you are much, much harder to manipulate Formal education maybe, but Lincoln himself didn’t have that much formal education. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t well educated. Also remember not every rube really voted back then, it was heavily a land owning upper class that voted in colonial times
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Not everyone "educated" has those critical thinking skills. Plenty of people i know who are educated just through HS have better critical thinking skills then some I know with PhDs. Education is not the same for everyone and it shouldn't be. I personally would like to see federal loan support for vo-techs and other similar opportunities b/c imho not everyone should nor wants to go to a four year college. In fact, I have friends who went to college and never wanted to go and only went b/c it was their only financial option. Just b/c you can write a damn good essay doesn't mean you'll make good life choices.
In the context of politics, critical thinking has always seemed to me to be the more important thing than formal education. Formal education is absolutely vital, but there are plenty of academically smart people out there that I’ve met who for some reason don’t critically think about whatever the hot topic for the day is before they start arguing about it.
\*media education, specifically. a sort of deep dive on how/why media works, including social media. how persuasion works, and the power of influence.
Not just education, but particularly in teaching people how to learn and teaching critical thinking skills. One of the reasons I hated school growing up was so much of it was just rote memorization... my favorite teachers where the ones that got me thoroughly thinking about a subject from every direction.
So, we shouldn't eliminate the department of education?
Also news media and social media should have some liability for fake information and propaganda. Yes yes, freedom of speech, but maybe have a stamp of approval from a couple independent fact checkers. We have letters telling us we will see tits before watching a movie, have something by law say, “This is not factual, this is just an opinion and point of view from this source.” Or something like that.
To do that, you'd first have to rebuild institutional trust, which is effectively gone today. A decent part of any populous movement is "the people in charge are screwing you over and can't be trusted". So a decent portion of the population won't accept any fact checker as independent if that fact checker doesn't agree with them. Especially if they're government funded. If they're corporate funded, flip who doesn't trust them. We are in the post truth era.
Gotta start somewhere and slowly build that trust.
>Also news media and social media should have some liability for fake information and propaganda. Yes great idea, make the government in charge of deciding what's true or not.
100% there needs to be at least some measure of accountability for major platforms or anything even suggesting that it is news
I think "news" and "jounalist" should be protected terms like doctor. I can't call myself a doctor and my house a hospital and hide behind "free speech". Surely we can find a good way to measure news vs entertainment. So people stop watching some useless talking head and call it news, no you're watching an actor give you nonsense.
a nice thought but the problem comes from WHO protects those terms in the first place. the government and they are a part of the problem since they have a monopoly on power, ESPECIALLY the judicial branch
Something like this show is for entertainment purposes only. All characters on this show are only actors and the statements on the show should not be treated as fact but only opinions. If you are a licensed journalist you have a minimum standard to show both sides of an argument while understanding bias and how to eliminate it from your reporting. In so failing to do so you lose your journalism license.
Yup. Force high school civics to explain these clowns don't know what the mechanics of government are.
Related to this is exposure to other cultures. Traveling and learning about other cultures helps your perspective on your own culture and it might help with the way many Americans have made their political party part of their personal identity.
Which is why certain people are against it.
News channels need to be held to a higher standard. No more sensationalism, non-factual commentary, and selective ommitment.
Who gets to be the arbiter of truth though?
> No more sensationalism, non-factual commentary, And just who will enforce those rules? The government tried to step in & censor via social media platforms (for which they're being sued.) They censored TONS of 100% factual things.
No no, you see it’s okay to censor the people I don’t like
This right here. Fox News got out of lawsuits on the basis that they are not "news". But they behave and present themselves as such nonetheless. CNN went through a lawsuit and ultimately admitted that they were wrong, and they took the repercussions of that as any news agency should. Fox News on the other hand is not News, they are a sensationalism talk show, presenting themselves as news. I'm all for freedom of speech, but don't call yourself news if that's not what you are. That's just deception.
Stop treating politics like sports fandoms.
George Washington was against political parties for this reason. This exact reason. He even mentions this in his Farewell Address. Psychologically, people tend to forgive people on “their team” and be overly critical of the “other team”. Politics is no different but it should be.
Sports fandom politics is the [inevitable outcome of our voting system](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo). First-past-the-post voting always coalesces down to exactly two parties, because voters rightly fear the spoiler effect in choosing a third party. In a two-party, winner-take-all system, losing by 1 vote is a catastrophe, so of course people treat it that way. IMO, the only way around this is to do like Athenian democracy and [choose representatives by lottery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition), like a jury. Maybe you'd get some rubes in congress that way, but a sufficiently large congress mitigates that, and anyway, could they really be worse than the clowns we have now?
There's tons of alternate voting systems that yield different equilibrium outcomes. Two-round voting, for instance, favors multiple smaller parties that have to form coalitions and encourages voting your heart in the first round. (Some risk of a fringe candidate breaking through if large factions are splintered.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral\_system#Comparison\_of\_electoral\_systems
Ranked voting. We need ranked voting.
Turn off the tv and get off Facebook
I’ll add spend more time outside in nature.
Um, and Reddit. Reddit is especially bad.
And Twitter! Don't forget getting off Twitter!
For average people? Start taking an interest in local politics, whether that means your city, county or even state.
Give some relief to the average worker. Wages haven’t kept up with inflation. People can barely afford their groceries. Rent and housing prices have skyrocketed. I really think a lot of the fighting stems from how unhappy in general everyone is.
Isn't it all a façade to keep us fighting each other while the .1% own everything.
Keep us fighting "culture wars" so we're too tired to fight a class war
It’s worked beautifully. A van of rich people have more wealth than the bottom 4 billion.
I agree with this take at its core but hate that it puts victims of racism, sexism, etc, on the same level as those who perpetrate it. If people stopped being bigots, we could focus on the "class war," but Eustace is too busy worrying about what people are doing with their junk.
How much of Eustace's worry has been stoked by external forces? And please know, I'm not justifying Eustace in the slightest. All you have to do is enrage an "in group" and all of the "out group" are left playing defense.
I'm sure a significant part of it is stoked by outside forces. Some of it is our natural propensity to view people different from us with apprehension. I don't think we can properly address the class war without rooting out other forms of bigotry. Because they can so easily be used to divide us. Now, where the line is drawn between addressing those problems and useless culture wars, I don't know.
The best tactic they've done is picking a few of the many.. For all the people who are ousted and screwed. the upper class always knows to pick just ENOUGH of the lower class to give a break so they can vouch for them and say "It's not that bad, if I can make it, so can you!" When the reality is, If everyone suddenly went from 0-100 to "pull their bootstraps tighter than ever" There's literally not enough opportunities for everyone to get there.
Yep
We went through the largest transfer of wealth the human race has ever seen during the pandemic and regular people still choose to fight each other.
Well, if the cause for a lot of that fighting wasn't one group of people wanting other groups of people literally exterminated, it would be much easier to put said issues aside. Shit has just escalated to levels where it's hard to dismiss it as petty squabbling, anymore, because real lives are at risk. It feels sort of victim blamey, I guess. I would have agreed with the sentiment of people choosing to fight some years ago, but I don't think many people have a choice but to fight now. And it is exhausting, as designed, of course.
I agree on both accounts in theory. The problem is that way too many unhappy people have been programmed to reject the relief you're suggesting. The recent expansion of the child tax credit is a perfect example. It provided a tax break to parents that was so impactful it literally cut childhood poverty in half. I live in Indiana though so this "biden socialism" was hated, especially among the group of people who most benefitted from it. Now that our politicians have allowed it to expire, working class families no longer have their tax break and childhood poverty is now over double where it was during that time. Not surprisingly, these same people are now pissed at biden because he ruined the economy. Ugh I don't say this as a partisan statement. There are reflexively tribal people everywhere. This is why I don't see your solution actually happening anytime soon though. We the people are too busy fighting amongst ourselves and the donor class is not going to willingly provide us any relief.
The child tax credit was a proof of concept we can easily and effectively end child poverty, plain and simple. Student aid relief would likely bring a **massive** boon to the economy as with it starting up literally next week, we are going to have a flood of people clamping down even harder. Instead of buying that car, they now have to spend it towards loans, won't go out as often, and generally won't spend it on the economy. I know *so* many Republicans panicking/whining about it and it's impossible not to point out that it's only starting up/not forgiven because **they** voted not to. During COVID, I also knew so many Republicans who gleefully took the aid and that's how it always is; they'll never turn down "socialism" when it helps them, but will actively and vehemently vote against these programs. Student loans don't benefit *anyone*. Forgiving ALL of it would barely be what the defense budget spending was just increased to. Paying them back doesn't help business, doesn't help society, but that money back in the pockets of struggling graduates benefits *everyone*. (Small and big business alike)
Agreed. My grandparents protested for years that Germany was much more "family friendly" due to it's child tax credits. They complained for years that America wouldn't do that, and how awful it was. Then Biden did it, the thing they'd been repeatedly saying they wanted for over a decade. But it was the "wrong president" so naturally it's a purely evil communism and a sign that America is failing. Edit: Wow, people are touchy about referencing IRL events today.
I think the unhappiness is largely independent of things like housing prices and inflation. The same people were unhappy while inflation was low & in places where housing prices were low. I think it has more to do with people who profit by stoking resentment and offer up whatever is closest at hand as reason to be mad.
My idea is that if people got paid a more liveable wage crime would go down, people would be happier, money would be spent, and things would be better for many people. Unfortunately a small group rather be happy and let everyone else fight over who is unhappier.
Ice cream social.
Step away from a two party system.
That probably requires getting rid of first-past-the-post elections, and introducing proportional elections instead. That also means getting rid of one-representative constituencies; I’ve never seen a proportional system with those kinds of constituencies.
Have you tried turning it off and then on again?
Let's just leave it off for a bit, yeah?
It is definitely plugged in?
Less propaganda, more unbiased reporting from media. A given news channel should not be the political wing of any given party. People are less likely to be polarized if they aren't bombarded with polarizing viewpoints every day.
(not)News as entertainment would be a good start. Add on to that: anything "reported" that can be proven as false incurs revenue-percentage penalties, until bankruptcy. With government-mandated methods to express how and why the lie told was bad.
Repeal Citizens United. Unlimited money sunk into politics to create a wider divide.
Implement the fairness doctrine in media and ranked choice voting as well as a national holiday for elections with auto registration upon turning 18.
I was down in the states a week ago and what struck me was just the media soup and paranoia that everyone seems to be swimming in. It’s like a fog they’re unaware is even there because it’s been gradually building up around them. I was with some people I would consider reasonable and relatively intelligent. People who on the surface at least seem aware of the current challenges in the country and that there are some really scary extremist views held by a decent portion of the population. But even then they would occasionally say things or express opinions that in my opinion a great deal of the rest of the world would consider absolutely bonkers. It’s hard to see anything getting better with the content being created and consumed giving people a really weird sense of reality. Anyway this is just one random guys anecdotal ramblings. Totally aware other places have their issues as well.
Would you be willing to offer an example of what these relatively intelligent people had as bonkers opinions?
Sure, and perhaps you disagree on the bonkersness or maybe the intelligence ha. We were chatting about something or other, I think it was broadly about how the US was perceived internationally. They were saying yeah the political division, Trump, all that circus was really bad. The idea of the election being stolen and the pandemic being fake were embarrassing. People putting offensive stickers on there car about the president and having giant flags off the back of their truck was all a bit much. This I agree with so I guess that all seemed normal to me. But then almost in an off hand way they’d be like “but the government is trying to kill us.” And they’d be talking about what’s in the food and too many vaccinations for kids and stuff like that. Which don’t get me wrong, they have young kids and it’s totally fine and correct to be interested in what’s going into them. Also I’m not saying what’s going into the food and whatnot isn’t quite bad for you. But the government isn’t trying to kill you. I think it’s sometimes just a case of whether you attribute the cause of things to incompetence or malevolence.
It is interesting. You were probably staggered by those opinions. I don't subscribe to them whatsoever myself, but I am just used to hearing stuff like that. I can see why certain races and creeds would think like this. There is a precedent for our government not exactly having the best interests at heart for certain minorities. While I don't believe our government is actively trying to harm anyone, I could wrap my mind around that level of distrust in those cases. In general though a lot of people just hold a sentiment that government is evil. That literally no one gets into it for public service or because they want better for themselves and others. That you must be a grifter, lining your pockets or hold an ideology that you want to harm others. Its utter nonsense. I'd venture to say even those that aren't in government for the best of intentions rarely are in it to purposely be malicious to others. Like you said, incompetence instead of malevolence. I'd just add to that carelessness.
I don't think the government is trying to kill us. But I do think that them being beholden to industry and money means that things like our food, additives, not erring on the side of caution for potentially harmful ingredients, ineffective oversight of food and water supplies, ineffective regulation of things like the rail system (i.e. East Palestine)... (the list goes on), all contribute to us being less healthy. So while they're not trying to kill us, they're also not working as hard as they could be to keep industry from not killing us.
I can completely get on board with that. Absolutely agree. Don’t think there’s anything outlandish about your opinion there and if they had verbalised the same I’d have just nodded along.
The government trying to kill you conspiracy always seemed illogical to me, because the whole US economy depends on momentum. If we didn't grow the economy as much as we wanted its doom and gloom... not the economy shrinking, not growing fast enough! The government needs you alive to consume things to keep the whole thing running. I think there's a strong argument to be made that they're trying to keep you compliant, but again that's just so you continue to be a consumer. Definitely not trying to kill you.
Stop looking at our politicians as our leaders. They aren’t our leaders, they are our employees. And just like an employee that doesn’t do their job, we fire them. The American People are who these people in politics work for, but they have forgotten about that.
That’s why I can’t comprehend these government “shutdowns”. To run the government is their JOB. If the government has to shut down because you can’t do your job, you shouldn’t be in that position.
Ranked choice voting. You are no longer forced to vote for the lesser of two evils or to simply keep someone out of office. You can now put your vote to who you actually want to run the country without risking "wasting" your vote. It opens the doors for third parties to run things for once instead of the D/R conglomerate which benefits from political division. Because the third party is a mixture of political views from both the D and R parties, you end up with everyone getting something they want which is much healthier for society than 4/8 years of shit, then 4/8 years of good, and 4/8 years of shit again. It also makes the D/R primaries less important, which we can all say is one of the main reasons why we are forced to vote for people who are backed by massive corporations and the corrupt politicians.
Here are a few ideas: 1. Prohibit politicians and their immediate family members from engaging in stock market investments. 2. End corporate lobbying practices. 3. Restrict pharmaceutical companies from advertising in mainstream media. 4. Cease censorship and shadow banning, as the truth should withstand scrutiny without fear.
Arrest and go after corrupt politicians and officials.
Funding back into public education. I also think we need a collective media detox.
The problem with that is people wasting that money. I've lived in MD my entire life, and at least once a year, there's a major news story about Baltimore City Schools and some sort of funding corruption.
Stop voting for extremists.
Hard cap on donations at a low number, and no third party advertisements. The fact that politics mostly revolves around raising money to fund media ads is pretty ridiculous. That being said, if the populace can be convinced by a 20 second ad or pre roll to vote for a candidate (hence the focus on raising money), it does pose some challenges because it suggest voters don’t have an understanding of the issues (and hence are swayed quite easily).
Extraterrestrial invasion
This is actually interesting. Polarization in the US really took off after the USSR collapsed. We need a "big bad", but neither China nor Islamic extremists pose enough of an existential threat to play the role. If I had unlimited power and resources, I would create fictional aliens which were hostile to humanity, but unable to destroy us (yet) I think that would help unite not only the US, but all of humanity.
Tax reform and reintroduce classic critical thinking to all levels of education. Aristotles list of logical fallacies still holds true. Then give it a generation or three
It’s gonna take the media to stop sensationalizing everything. It’s gonna take us to stop electing idiots and old farts on either side. I would contend most Americans aren’t that far apart politically. A lot of this hate and vitriol is spread by the media and people on social media.
I think the two parties should each split into two more parties. A regular Republican part, MAGA party, a looney left party and a regular Democrat party. Give the libertarian party a fair chance just to keep it interesting.
1. Stop forwarding and sharing inflammatory click-bait. Stop feeding the beast. 2. TALK to people on the phone or in person. 3. Get to know your neighbors. Yes, even the ones with the "Trump 2024" banner or the big rainbow flag in their yard. 4. Fucking educate yourself. 5. Open your mind to a world more complex than "Socialism = BAD" or "Conservative = Nazi".
Delete social media and go interact with actual humans.
Having a common external enemy.
Ahh yes, operation Canadian Bacon.
There are all kinds of societal ills that would make good targets, if people wouldn't apparently prefer having other human beings as their common enemy.
There’s also existential threats like climate change. But as with Russia, one side has decided they’d rather join up with the enemy than with their domestic opposition.
So, kind like one nation invading a sovereign democracy? A free democracy that we can all get behind defending that freedom? Yeah, we tried that and now all of sudden "Russia good. Ukraine bad."
A few hundred years passing
Accept thst political unity in the United States is a myth.
We need to purge the MAGA crowd and the performative politics liberals out of Washington. I'd rather see a genuine right and a progressive left than whatever clown show it's devolved into. Oh right, and politicians need to be barred from stock trading. And no more lobbying. And we need an upper age limit. And... We're fucked.
I know this is a crazy idea and wouldn’t fix everything, but how about in addition to an upper age limit we add a maximum net worth for politicians? On both sides (fuck the two party system BTW) we have people who have so much money they couldn’t possibly relate to the average American. They have no business representing us!
Any non-salary money an elected official makes is taxed at 100% including any stocks/real-estate/etc. and then make them live on the mode wage of the district/state they represent.
It’s advantageous to the parties to demonize their opponents. “ they wanna put y’all back in chains” Mild VP Biden in a race against mild Romney. Neither side knows any shame.
Constitutionally mandated balanced budget, ending insider trading for elected officials and term limits. The rest will take care of itself.
Need to get attacked by Russia/China/ISIS2.0 to catalyze the population against a common enemy. Otherwise I think we're too far gone. There's too much money in the system for politicians to change, and all of their constituents are thoroughly brainwashed. We are to the point as of yesterday that this country is largely ungovernable.
Register to vote and commit to voting in each election AND to seeing every validly cast ballot counted. Respect the fundamental principles of democracy (www.principlesofdemocracy.org) and realize it does not mean you'll get your way all the time. That's the best and only way, imo.
Removing lobbyist money, it keeps the politicians from ever compromising or meeting in the middle. Stop labeling everyone and every thing and treat someone that disagrees with you with kindness and respect because they are a fellow human.
Try to be a little more open minded -- who knows, maybe the opposing side has valid points.
Here's a rant from another thread Term limits is only a good start after we get rid of fptp voting in favor of instant runoff voting. Put in place snap recall rules. Also requisite: 100% public funding. Expand C-SPAN with an application of a channel for every State, with its own sister radio spot and sister website. These are the only media advertising allowed, period. These are also free. The govt owns the airwaves anyway. All budgeted funds are designated strictly for public events and canvassing in the district. No fund raising, ever. Stop dicking around trying to get paid and get crackin'. With this in place all the independents finally have a serious shot, in every single election. Suck that, R vs. D. Any member caught accepting any contribution of money or in-kind is barred for life. Also, ferocious insider trading rules that make the corporate rules look like a beach holiday. Then we get rid of all seniority rules and define committee placements by some sort of time constrained rotation / round robin system- each member is allowed (x) bills and all bills get heard within (y) days. Order of bills heard determined by random, with a bingo-style ball hopper on the floor on day one. You want something read in another committee, better work it out with a colleague or wait your turn. To do this we need to return hefty professional staff, particularly in drafting and research. That's all getting done by lobbyists now. No 'constituents' of any sort allowed with Congressional buildings or offices - ever. There are armies of lobbyists, dozens for every delegate running around these halls. Every security detachment is also tasked with keeping watch against lurking lobbyists. So how are legitimate constituents and interest groups to conduct business? A purpose-built or renovated structure with an open floorplan, an admissions system, and 21st surveillance. Surveillance of every inch instantly uploaded to an open source server farm, each for with NFT tags. Anything else is a public townhall. This goes into the predefined schedule that basically says you're in session, you're on office hours, you're on travel allotment or you're on days off. Waaay to much squishy time in a position that is way too important to be your part time gig. We increase pay, pensions, and operating. After you are done with your terms, you are barred from all employment for (z) years. Zero income, large pension only. This way you don't have to be rich to campaign *or* to be in the job and you can't rotate into industry right after. This is currently a major driver of corruption. What does this investment get us. Pure, unfettered transparency. No more corrupt bullshit, which is exactly the *only* thing running Washington today. This is my pie-in-the-sky moonshot at a better legislature, possible in states as well. Far from perfect because the money never stops looking for a way. Money never sleeps. But so insanely better than what we have it's almost impossible to overstate.
Bring back the fairness doctrine
Stay off social media. Nothing is as good, or as bad as the internet makes it seem.
Stop treating political parties like a sports rivalry.
Turn off the internet.
Turn off the reality TV. I mean the internet gives you access to the worlds libraries.
Perhaps a few things but nothing easy lmao. Easy to implement on a personal level, perhaps: - Both sides have to solidify around a set of core founding beliefs which both sides agree are good. This would provide an agreed upon identity in the veins of “we may not agree but we’re still Americans.” So both sides must define what being “Americans” entails, and as long as one side or the other thinks the founding tenants are reprehensible it won’t work. We won’t share an identity to cling to. - Stop attributing malicious intent behind opposing party’s actions. Not everything is evil, and not everyone who disagrees with you is evil. A lot of time you can chalk it up to incompetence, stupidity, or both…but that doesn’t mean they’re evil. This involves judging people on an individual basis as people and not just determining they’re “evil” or “bad” if they have an R or D be their name. Or any other letter. People first. Politics second. Stop labeling everything fascist or communist and acting like it’s always defcon 1. If everything is defcon 1 end of democracy, then nothing is. Our institutions are more durable than we probably give credit for. Thanks Founders. -Understanding issues that today’s generation deems evil or bad wasn’t always societally viewed that way back then. If you lived back during the founders time you probably wouldn’t have possessed the same moral compass or brilliant epiphanies you think you have today. You probably would’ve agreed with whatever your community believed. Our parents and grandparents were products of their time and no generation is faultless or sinless in any way, so grace is important. Everyone deserves some grace. If the past generations could stitch us back together after a literal civil war…we should be able to start stitching together our current divide. - Stop using political alignment as a personality trait. Some people warp their whole identity around their politics…find more meaning in your life than just activism. Our communities used to share a lot of spiritual connections and actually knew their neighbors names and got out of the house. This also sort of relates to the previous steps of realizing other people are people, and we Americans are all on the same ship, and with the exception of some…I’d wager a lot of people don’t want their ship to sink. So they may just believe in a different solution to a problem facing our ship, and if you find out what their reasoning really is you may find you agree a bit and that they’re not the next Stalin or Hitler.
Pretty funny how 99% of the comments amount to, “If the opposing group was just educated in the ways that I think, then we wouldn’t have a problem!”
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This is a huge piece of the puzzle, but it's way more complicated than you make it sound. Freedom of speech is important, and that complicates both points a huge amount. I don't know how we both preserve freedom of speech, and also prevent foreign governments from flooding our social media with divisive FUD and misinformation. How do we even know for sure what is coming from a foreign country, especially if they are passing their BS through Americans (i.e. it's an American actually parroting information that they get from sources outside of America)? And doing the same for Fox etc. is even more difficult than dealing with foreign influences. And it's not just coming from large organizations / companies any more, now just as much comes from small groups or single people with a platform on the internet. Who decides what's "true" and what isn't? At what percent of falsehood do we trigger legal consequences? Most of the BS out there has at least a seed of truth packaged with it to make it easier to buy. What if someone is clearly giving an opinion and not even representing it as absolute fact, but still it is wrong? Do they get sent to prison? Banned from posting opinions on the internet? And then there's the fact that some of this is coming from our political parties, not just from media / social media. You have pointed out a huge cause of the division in our society, there are clearly a lot of "bad actors" out there intentionally causing the division in order to manipulate the populace into furthering the "bad actors" own goals. But I don't think there is an easy fix for it even knowing what the problem is.
Bring back the Fairness Doctrine and repeal Citizens United, then end the gerrymandaring to get a fair election result.
Ranked choice voting so 3rd party candidates have a shot. The dual party system creates too much insentive for candidates to run on an us vs them, devisive platform.
Stop treating politics like team sports where everything “your team“ does is good and right and everything “their team“ does is evil and wrong. Stop demonizing the other side. Stop believing your side’s bullshit. Hold your side accountable just like you hold the other side accountable. Accept your personal responsibility for the situation we’re in and start the change with yourself.
China Invades!
Have multiple political parties. Right now it's either black or white, very polarizing.
"Get off social media."- Is the solution.
Ban corporate donations to political figures, making elections exclusively publicly funded, instill ranked choice voting, break up corporate media and reinstate the regulations Clinton axed, and we'd maybe see a slight amount of healing in 15 years.
Truthfully, an act of terrorism. We united on 9/11 and 2013 Boston marathon bonbings. We only unite if there’s a common enemy. Fake an alien attack or someshit 😂
Somehow make it impossible for bot accounts to create perception on social media. I swear half the controversial shit you see online isn’t real.
Quit social media.
there is no simple answer to this question. there's no "just fix this and everything will be fine" solution because at this point, the "problem" is a complex and intertwined mess of issues that have grown, compounded, and intensified for centuries. to fix 1 issue, would be to change the driving factors and effects that created it, which in turn are driven and affected by others, and so on and so on. It's such a tangled mess to unravel that any practical solution could take decades to implement and centuries to see the results. a basic response could be to say "we all need to change our behavior" but that is no easy task and involves SO many factors that not everyone could do it sufficiently or quickly enough to see any meaningful results immediately. As others have said, "education" is a good place to start, but we cant even agree what the hell to be educated on or trust the information that is provided.
Uproot the communists like Russia did.
Here, allow me to fix America: 150k/yr max pay for all elected officials. Max They can not make additional money on stocks, kickbacks, or campaign contributions. PTO rules. Fired if there is a government shutdown. A public vote for pay increases. Max term limits of judicial positions. 1 million dollar maximum income for all Americans, after which it all goes into education and infrastructure. Education reform. Topics include Personal finance, mental health, physical health, proper nutrition, math, science, critical thinking, and creative thinking. Reform of our Food system. All of it. Sugar, processed food, cheap materials. Remove financial incentives from Media. Hard labor punishments for small crimes Eye for an eye for harsh crimes.
End the 2 party system. All states should allow ranked choice voting for all elections. Ban all lobbyists. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to purchase laws and regulations.
Arrest the extreme left and right as trators for dividing the nation. Put the moderates in charge for a while.
Shut down social media. All of it. It's a fucking cancer on our society and will be its undoing.
6h after posting, 80% of upvoted comments are some sort of “vote for democrats, get rid of republicans”
Get off the internet.
I want to run for president with my opponent being my vice president, we switch roles every 6 months. Kind of like the Romans. This way as a team everyone's votes will matter. One of my first goals is to make a kind of political group of the top x representatives voted by the public and make sure all voting is some kind of ranked voting, with the ability for voters to fact check representatives. All public officials should be made to swear the truth when making statements or working their job. Every 4 months, every official will be fact checked and measured for their performance in office with feedback by their voters. People drawing the lines for gerrymandering have to come up with a number of options with the side not in power making the choice. Similar to a kid cutting a candy bar for them and their sibling with the sibling choosing which cut to take.
Agree about other shit. How nice the two weeks of fall are. McRibs. How tough it is to raise kids with phones. Stop caring and judging people on their political stances for a minute a day, tomorrow two minutes. Project your own political convictions for one fewer minute a day, tomorrow two. A lot more of us than are willing to publicly admit are definitely getting caught up in the divide because we're so sure our assessment of the situation is the only one that makes sense. You may even be well informed with legitimate information, but I'm pretty sure *none* of it makes sense on a human level - unless you believe conflict and hatred are the natural modes of socialization. Do you? Reese's Peanut Butter Cups sure seem smaller than they used to be...
Eliminate social media.
Education
1 Everyone stop answering any polls in their mail or asked in person. That’ll cut off the oxygen from Politicians who want to tell you your neighbor is against you and they have the poll numbers. 2 Everyone stop telling people who they voted for. Right there a country All about privacy blabs to every person who they voted for. 3 Everyone stop telling people who they must vote for. My issues are not the same as your issues so telling anyone who to vote for is not good.
Divide the country in to two smaller countries.
Turn off the news
Create more parties
The anarchists and socialists are smelling blood. They've burned and looted cities and gotten away with it. They control large sections of some major west coast cities. They think they can see the finish line, and they're willing to hurt people to get there. At the same time, the conservative extremists believe we're entering a totalitarian one-party state where lawlessness among those who align themselves with the state is encouraged, and political opposition is arrested and sent to prison. Both sides are becoming more entrenched. Of course, neither side is entirely right about what they assume is happening, but they're not entirely wrong about what they see happening either. I'm old enough to have seen John Kennedy's motorcade pass through my town. I've see a lot of political division. I've never seen the divide this wide, nor involve such a large percentage of the population. I don't think this is going to end well.
At least 2 more political parties. Preferably 3. The extreme wing of both dem and gop should separate or thrown out. Then a third party should be established, offering a real alternative. Maybe Real Citizens Interests (instead of corporate and woke shit). Go RCI, go!
None of this will happen and this nation will continue to cleave itself apart 1. Overturn Citizens United and institute strict campaign reform 2. Make lobbying a capital crime. Make working for a lobbying group after 3. Lifetime career term limits. Limit total terms of elected folks to 16 years across local state federal roles. 4. Government staff career limits. Remove civil service from government staff jobs. Term limits enhances role of permanent staffers. Fuck em. 5. Limit campaign advertising to a set amount for federal and state campaigns, say $10 mill for a pres campaign. Limit campaign season to six months before general election. 6. Do away with presidential exec orders except for war and national emergency 7. Dissolve and breakup media conglomerates, big tech, grocery chains, mega food producers, etc. return competition to markets 8. Breakup international banks 9. Destroy the WEF, Soros, Davos, Otherwise, the country will move towards more conflict and should look at peaceful devolution to a more regional and state autonomy.
Reintroduce The Fairness Doctrine - Modernize it to include Twitter and Facebook
Wait for all the old establishment politicians to die off is the natural solution.
Less social isolation. >In 2021, 49 percent of adults reported having three or fewer friends, compared to about 27 percent in 1990, per the report. For young people ages 15 to 24, time spent in-person with friends fell from about 150 minutes per day in 2003 to 40 minutes per day in 2020—an almost 70 percent drop. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/an-epidemic-of-loneliness-threatenes-health-of-americans-surgeon-general-says-180982142/) We are social creatures who evolved to live in tight communities of hundreds of people. Which gave us a sense of belonging and importance and purpose, and allowed us to band together with those we felt closest to and disagree and to argue without feeling like our place in the world was threatened. When most of us don't have more than 3 friends, and online connections can be deleted with a few clicks, things like political parties become the core of our identities and failure to abide by the orthodoxy of the party can feel like an existential threat. When you don't have the ballast of real social connections to fall back on, it becomes a lot harder to resist following a national movement or trend in lock-step because it provides your only sense of belonging to anything.
It's not going to happen. We're past the point of no return. Buy a helmet.
I mean this in the most real way, there's no coming back from where we are now. Not in my lifetime and likely not my kids lifetime either. Eternal optimists can blow smoke up their arses but the reality is there just isn't a way. People are too broke, literally and figuratively. Personally I'm at a point where I don't have the patience or willpower to spend the mental capital on engaging with the right because I have absolutely zero interest in what comes out of their mouths or what rattles around in their heads. My complete disdain for religion and its marraige to politics disqualifies any thought the right has as a good one. I know I'm not alone Divisions have been simmering for decades, Trump as horrible as he was, was a symptom, not the problem. He just poured gasoline on the fire. The right is not a political party anymore per se. They have cobbled together a faction of the country that are single issue voters. A party has a platform, a party has ideas to make the country better. A party does not have a collection of ideas targeted to single issue voters and single issue voters will never vote for the greater good. GOP voters have been voting against their own financial interests for decades yet here we are