M1ch431

Voting harder for Democrats isn't the solution, that's for sure.

If Democrats wanted to take responsibility, they would've shifted to the left and appealed to the many countless disenfranchised voters.

I feel it's fair to say that both major parties are traitors to the American people at this point.

I've moved on, I'm just informing others that the Democrats are responsible for the situation we're all in more than most know.

Thanks for your concern.

Imagine the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and mainstream media colluding in 2015 to boost Trump as a pied piper candidate because they thought he was "unelectable" - and Hillary losing to him.

Oh wait, that's reality. You don't need to imagine.

It’s not a lack of trustworthiness or sanity, but the impression of.

I disagree. The situation here in America is quite insane.

Off the top of my head: microplastics/PFAS contamination in and around our food/etc. and response has been very lackluster (and many individuals likely don't follow best practices to avoid microplastic leaching and to avoid contaminating their food with the chemicals found in non-stick surfaces), there's a fresh water shortage crisis that we are unprepared to deal with, there is widespread PFAS contamination and other contamination of our fresh water, contaminated biosolids are being using to fertilize crops and are causing PFAS contamination of soil, water, and agriculture, fracking has the potential to contaminate groundwater and air and the practice is supported by politicians on both sides (see the EPA's final assessment, and look at places affected like Dimock, PA), there are many instances of toxic dumping by corporations with no response or remediation (e.g. by Tyson).

Some crises are more reported on than others, but it's pretty clear our country's water supply is overwhelmingly in jeopardy, with only about 100 chemicals regulated out of many thousands (e.g. see the EWG's reporting on this issue). Our food quality is generally in the gutter and is in desperate need of regulation and we also have a topsoil crisis.

We also generally have a health care crisis, a housing/homelessness crisis, we have an economy that doesn't work for the majority of Americans, 1/3 of Americans don't vote in the presidential election and are disenfranchised or politically apathetic, and the list goes on.

News organizations, and the experts that are generally put forward, only seem to care about maintaining positive public perception of authority and governance - likely to maintain public order. There are plenty of experts who are sounding the alarm or are working diligently to address these issues, but these people usually aren't the same people that are on mainstream news telling us everything is okay.

And I disagree with your assertion that American leadership, particularly the presidency, has been trustworthy or sane across the decades. There are so many points I could argue, but at this point I've already spent too much energy on this response and we likely just don't see eye-to-eye on these issues - which is fine. I could elaborate further, but I feel there are many others better equipped to comprehensively critique recent presidents.

I think he's keenly appealing to a feeling most people resonate with: distrust of politicians.

It pains me to give him any amount of credit, though. Thanks for the context.

It's fair to point out that people lean towards emotions, but I'd argue those emotions aren't always invalid at their root.

I think most of the issues with potentially dangerous viewpoints lie in the inherent polarization and untrustworthiness of media. Even the sources seen as most trustworthy omit key facts and relevant details.

News isn't news. It's become entertainment and what amounts to corporate propaganda. All of these organizations are attempting to get clicks and engagement as their primary focus. Tribalism, fear, and hate are frequently invoked, politics and bias is enmeshed with reporting, critical thinking and discernment isn't encouraged (which is also a failing of education), and gaslighting has arguably become a profession. Critical and divergent perspectives are generally suppressed or smeared, as well.

I understand why people turn away from liberal sources. I also understand how people get stuck in conservative echo-chambers. Hate, distrust, and concern are usually the emotions at the root of one's engagement with conservative or conspiratorial sources. These organizations and influential conservative individuals appeal to these people's vulnerabilities and latch on. They are confident, they are emotional and passionate, and they are seen as more grounded than more reliable sources.

It's a form of radicalization - these people may have some good reasons to not trust authorities, but it's all effectively lost to them once they are immersed in the slop they tune into.

We need to repair trust and restore sanity to our institutions and positions of leadership. Things just aren't working in our society. I think it's imperative that we separate news and entertainment, improve our education system, increase accessibility of higher education, and make government more transparent.

I'd say a lottery based on merit would be appropriate to choose leadership in certain areas for a reasonable duration. Determining merit could be a sticky issue if misapplied though, and could lead to some of the issues we deal with now.

Perhaps people could vote on a pool of experts for the final decision, with each expert advertising the solutions or progress they hope to achieve during the term of their leadership. It could just amount to people voting on the methods each expert chooses to accomplish their goals, depending on how specialized the office is.

As for leading the country, I am unsure if such an office is necessary. I am personally not a fan of the centralization of power when society is this profoundly sick. We need to patch the leaks in our ship before we can worry about captaining it.

People just aren't buying appeals to authority anymore. They are demanding more.

In the US, people just don't seem to trust the status quo. The government is very, very corrupt and has been for a long time. Corporations are shady and many have been implicated in some pretty damning controversies that have affected our health with relatively little consequence. Regulation essentially doesn't exist.

If experts explained why certain "controversial" things are safe and laid out the science and reasoning, a lot of these concerns would likely vanish.

But, we generally don't address concerns, even concerns that seem fairly legitimate to the people that hold them. We attack these people, calling them names - effectively pushing them further down their rabbit holes. Plenty stand to profit off of their fears and encourage their (potentially dangerous) perspectives.

And we definitely don't address legitimate concerns properly (from experts or otherwise), which adds fuel to the fire (and adds legitimacy to these bad actors who are quick to point out these issues) and more trustworthy sources are silent.

This is all a failure of media, government, leadership, and education. I reason that distrust in experts is a symptom of those failures.

This is obvious bait, but I'll bite a little.

The real experts, that sound the alarm and call us to action, are largely silenced or ignored. These people are not in leadership or positions that hold any meaningful power or influence. Our actual leadership is mostly unqualified and playing team politics and tug of war while nothing gets done and the plane crashes.

Can you blame people for raising their hands and suggesting that the pilots, who are crashing the plane through their apathy and inaction, be removed?

Direct democracy would be a wonderful concept for humanity to explore. And the experts who are on the side of progress should be allowed to spearhead initiatives to solve the various crises our species and planet faces.

Whether they use them intentionally or not, we need voting reform. In the 2024 election, third-parties barely made a dent — they weren't a spoiler.

FPTP is exactly why third-parties can be a "spoiler". There are plenty of valid alternative voting systems to explore that are way more fair and democratic.

And it doesn't sound very democratic of the Democratic Party to repeatedly and systematically restrict ballot access through lawsuits. Ballot access is hard enough for third-parties to achieve in most states.

Maybe there would be more than Side A and Side B if we had voting reform and Democrats didn't systematically sue third-parties off the ballot.

People (not just authoritarians) criticize Side A because they have way more tallies than most have been led to believe. Everybody who pays any amount of attention knows that Side B has a lot of tallies. What good comes out of specifically pointing out the tallies of Side B when literally everybody on non-conservative social media is blasted with the knowledge of those tallies? If you want somebody to preach to the choir or inform you about Side B's tallies, just ask. If you think people paying attention to or being informed about Side A's tallies is dangerous and harmful, just say so.

Side A tolerates third-world exploitation (labor, resources, goods) that the US economy still relies on, they tolerate the US economy still relying on slavery and child slavery, they tolerate or support US imperialism and regime change, they refuse to address or come up with solutions for the fresh water crisis (by 2030, demand will exceed supply by 40%), they refuse to properly address many issues that the US people face (the economy, the housing crisis, the health care crisis, etc.), they support harmful policies like fracking, they have allowed corporations/et. al to go out of control under their power, and they generally have not advocated for strong regulation and protections for the American people. Yes, Side B is undesirable, but Side A is insufficient.

If Side A's hands are always tied in a two-party system, then they should impeach the bad actor, push voting/election reform and term limits, and hold fair and democratic primaries and elections. Side A not propping up extreme right-wing candidates (like Trump) and telling the media to take them seriously would be nice, too.

1/3 of Americans don't vote and plenty of people only voted Kamala because they didn't want Trump (and there are other factors than Gaza, misogyny, and Jill Stein voters at play to explain why people didn't come out to vote for her). Plenty of people probably don't want Trump (or anybody like him) if they've been paying any attention and didn't fall for the propaganda.

Side A would get bonus points for not alienating progressives, for supporting the loosening of requirements for ballot access (and stop engaging in lawfare to restrict ballot access), and for supporting fair and inclusive debates on public property where they would have to address perspectives and topics that are potentially uncomfortable or inconvenient for them.

I realize there are plenty of unserious actors who run for president (like Kayne West) who would try their best to poison open debates and abuse expanded ballot access, but there has to be some fair mechanism to filter (openly racist and insane) people like him out. Perhaps a competency test of sorts with independent observation would be appropriate.

And I realize a lot of people find Jill Stein to be harmful (and individuals like her), but maybe we shouldn't arrest her (or any other presidential candidate) and put her in a black site, shackling her to a chair for 8 hours, because she wanted to be present at the presidential debate?

This is an unprecedented time for the American people, with human rights and due process in jeopardy. We are facing multiple serious crises with no solutions or progress in sight - voting and election reform, in addition to term limits, are all urgent and necessary.

I don't care if you want to vote for Side A no matter what — we can only suppress criticism and stay in denial of major issues for so long before (e.g.) the fresh water crisis hits us and humanity is completely and utterly unprepared.

We don't have a hate boner. We see "decentralized" being thrown around like a buzzword and we know that it really doesn't apply to their platform.

It's like the Libertarian Party taking the word "libertarian" and flipping the meaning to describe their ideology.

It's a distortion of the spirit of the word and actual libertarians obviously want to clear up the misunderstandings that result from being introduced to the concept of libertarianism through such a group.