The Most Powerful Question In American Politics:

[martins name]

"What are the top 3 most important political issues?"

I think asking this question is the biggest rhetorical leverage point rn.
American political commentary is insanely off the ball. Asking this question makes people reflect on their focus and recenters political discourse.

Yes, there are problems with overprescribing trans as a mental health solution but in reality, the number of Americans that have regretted a transition is extremely low.
Yes, woke is a problem but how many are actually tangibly hurt by it?
Yes, loose borders are a problem, but overhyped. How many Americans actually suffer from illegal imigrants?

These are real problems that should be talked about. But they should be talked about in proportion to how important they are compared to the most important issues.

The correct answer is:

• The government is bought off by big corporations. Politicians and institutions are corrupted. Ex: Military Industrial Complex & healthcare insurance.
• Lack of democracy. ranked choice voting to get away from the toxic 2 party duopoly and campaign finance reform.  Most politicians are bought and paid for by big money. This ties into the first point.
• Insane levels of inequality and wealth inequity. Universal college and healthcare as a remedy. 

EVERY TIME someone talks about woke, trans or whatever in a political context remind them of the top 3. Then compare its importance to the top 3 and point out they lack focus.

Every political commentator should be asked what their top 3 are. Then tell them they are wrong if they disagree with me. Then ask them what their audience would think is their top 3 according to how they choose to focus their coverage. It's probably something insignificant. Tell them they have the wrong focus.

The same thing should be said to politicians but replace coverage with policy platform.

Edited January 11 by martins name

[Devin]

5 hours ago, martins name said:

"What are the top 3 most important political issues?"

I think asking this question is the biggest rhetorical leverage point rn.
American political commentary is insanely off the ball. Asking this question makes people reflect on their focus and recenters political discourse.

Yes, there are problems with overprescribing trans as a mental health solution but in reality, the number of Americans that have regretted a transition is extremely low.
Yes, woke is a problem but how many are actually tangibly hurt by it?
Yes, loose borders are a problem, but overhyped. How many Americans actually suffer from illegal imigrants?

These are real problems that should be talked about. But they should be talked about in proportion to how important they are compared to the most important issues.

The correct answer is:

• The government is bought off by big corporations. Politicians and institutions are corrupted. Ex: Military Industrial Complex & healthcare insurance.
• Lack of democracy. ranked choice voting to get away from the toxic 2 party duopoly and campaign finance reform.  Most politicians are bought and paid for by big money. This ties into the first point.
• Insane levels of inequality and wealth inequity. Universal college and healthcare as a remedy. 

EVERY TIME someone talks about woke, trans or whatever in a political context remind them of the top 3. Then compare its importance to the top 3 and point out they lack focus.

Every political commentator should be asked what their top 3 are. Then tell them they are wrong if they disagree with me. Then ask them what their audience would think is their top 3 according to how they choose to focus their coverage. It's probably something insignificant. Tell them they have the wrong focus.

The same thing should be said to politicians but replace coverage with policy platform.

Put your last one first, then read them. Your last one is greed based, from lower class perspective, your first two are greed based from upper class perspective. You're arguing that it's okay if lower classes are greedy but not if upper classes are. Hope you can see that reasoning isn't going to get you far.

Edited January 12 by Devin

[Leo Gura]

The problem is that people don't have enough education, intelligence, and development level to vote based on logical priorities. They vote based on ideology and vibe. So all your logic is good but changes nothing.

Edited January 12 by Leo Gura

[martins name]

@Devin no it's based on creating a strong nation. These 3 issues have a majority support among Americans but they are transfixed by red harrings.

@Leo Gura What prompted me to write this was watching a debate/interview between Merriam Williamson and Tim Pool where TIm managed to center the whole conversation on boarder security and woke. The audience thought Marriam was an idiot. With this retorical tool Marriam could have steered the conversation back to her terf. 

I think there are a lot of smart people like this who would have a fair bit of sense knocked in to them if confronted like this. How do you think JP would react? He wouldn't go woke but I think he could see that the republican candidates that he have been talking to are fools.

For convincing the general public should be coupled with stage blue marketing that appeals to national greatness. Left leaning populist policies and blue vibes, like Obama. There is a lot of populist energy that I think can be channeled in a good direction with the right marketing. These top 3 have majority support among Americans, it's the focus that's off.

Top 3 + blue vibes = epic win

[Bobby_2021]

12 hours ago, martins name said:

Universal college and healthcare as a remedy. 

Universal college is not necessary although it's pretty good. I don't think it's needed. People who want to learn things will learn on their own in the age of interest.

We need to set up a lot of labs & infrastructure for building and practice. It's okay even it's partially govt subsidised. 

Free health care yes. But you should not have to wait 5 days to see to see a doctor. I think we need a combination of both. For mission critical injuries and medical care we need paid ones and free is for other ailments. Health care delayed is health care denied. 

And UBI will also be nice.

These are really the only solutions we have at the moment. 

[sholomar]

In Germany's Weimar republic I read they had a system where the political parties got power based on the percentage of the total vote, rather than getting all of the win just by getting a majority vote. That seems like a system that could work in theory. It would give smaller parties more of a say rather than the two sided oligarchy we have now.   It's not happening any time soon though. Play by the rules of the game you are given. Life isn't terrible in the West. It could be better, it could be worse. No perfect system to manage human nature.

The rise of modern monetary theory, quantitative easing, and "crony capitalism" with "too big to fail" and "bail out everything" mentality in my opinion is a negative. It encourages reckless speculation and then bails out the speculators.

Edited January 12 by sholomar

[Nilsi]

31 minutes ago, sholomar said:

In Germany's Weimar republic I read they had a system where the political parties got power based on the percentage of the total vote, rather than getting all of the win just by getting a majority vote. That seems like a system that could work in theory. It would give smaller parties more of a say rather than the two sided oligarchy we have now.   It's not happening any time soon though. Play by the rules of the game you are given. Life isn't terrible in the West. It could be better, it could be worse. No perfect system to manage human nature.

The rise of modern monetary theory, quantitative easing, and "crony capitalism" with "too big to fail" and "bail out everything" mentality in my opinion is a negative. It encourages reckless speculation and then bails out the speculators.

That’s roughly how German politics still works today.

In reality those minor parties will still be outvoted by the majority on most issues, so it mostly just slows down the political apparatus by way of endless debating.

[martins name]

4 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Universal college is not necessary although it's pretty good. I don't think it's needed. People who want to learn things will learn on their own in the age of interest.

Big changes has to happen to education, but people also need resources to spend time getting an education. In Sweden you get money if you study so anyone can do it. People generally work their ass of in higher education. So it seems to work. We need to reliably and systematically be able to educate people. To me this is non negotiable. Have you gone through higher education, if so what?

There needs to be more trade schools in America also.

52 minutes ago, sholomar said:

In Germany's Weimar republic I read they had a system where the political parties got power based on the percentage of the total vote, rather than getting all of the win just by getting a majority vote.

I think this is called a parliamentary system. We have it in Sweden an lots of Europe. The American system can work it just needs ranked choice voting.

[Leo Gura]

11 hours ago, martins name said:

 

@Leo Gura What prompted me to write this was watching a debate/interview between Merriam Williamson and Tim Pool where TIm managed to center the whole conversation on boarder security and woke. The audience thought Marriam was an idiot. With this retorical tool Marriam could have steered the conversation back to her terf. 

I think there are a lot of smart people like this who would have a fair bit of sense knocked in to them if confronted like this. How do you think JP would react? He wouldn't go woke but I think he could see that the republican candidates that he have been talking to are fools.

Tim Pool and JP are culture war crusaders and ideologues. You are never going to change their minds. Nor the minds of their hardcore fans. The whole right-wing information ecosystem is a dysfunctional, cancerous, delusional, toxic mess and those two pour gasoline on the dumpster fire to earn their tens of millions. That's their game.

Edited January 12 by Leo Gura

[martins name]

@Leo Gura They will never accept green but they could get behind someone like RFK.

[Yimpa]

3 hours ago, martins name said:

They will never accept green

 

[Vrubel]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Tim Pool and JP are culture war crusaders and ideologues. You are never going to change their minds. Nor the minds of their hardcore fans. The whole right-wing information ecosystem is a dysfunctional, cancerous, delusional, toxic mess and those two pour gasoline on the dumpster fire to earn their tens of millions. That's their game.

It’s worth humbling yourself and listen to intelligent people speak even if you don't agree with them. Nobody should dismiss intelligent people just because they are right leaning. 

 

[Yimpa]

Do not underestimate the power of an intelligent ego. They have a gigantic influence on the masses. 

[Bobby_2021]

14 hours ago, martins name said:

Big changes has to happen to education, but people also need resources to spend time getting an education

I wonder how of this can be solved with simply uploading lectures to the internet.

This wouldn't work for medicine or law, but they probably make enough to pay off their loans. But for other fields similar to tech all of that can be learned from the internet for free. I think we need to innovate more to find ways to make education accessible yo everyone.

For doing practical stuff, you need to set up labs and infrastructure for doing practice. This should really be the only function of college. Doing research, getting society forward and doing lab work.

Not teaching theory. People should lean that on their own. This should bring down the costs. 

[Bobby_2021]

You should push policies that are easier to administer.

Tax the rich is not easy to administer to reduce inequality. The best thing you can do it is to push for UBI atleast for bottom 80% of the people. UBI is fairly easy to get by.

Affordable housing is another important thing but it's incredibly difficult to come by. 

[martins name]

7 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

wonder how of this can be solved with simply uploading lectures to the internet.

There still needs to be space and resources for people to spend years learning. Also, the pressure of tests keeps the discipline high. At mass if people are trusted to be self driven in their education it's just not gonna work. There is great benefit to the social aspect of schools too. An online based system would be like students during the pandemic. Test scores have gone down. It doesn't seem to work. I saw my brother get into collage when the pandemic hit. He broke down crying once because of how much it sucks to be isolated online like that. Eventually, online lessons integrated with physical learning spaces and digital networking in those spaces is the way to go, but it's just not functional yet.

7 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Tax the rich is not easy to administer to reduce inequality. The best thing you can do it is to push for UBI atleast for bottom 80% of the people. UBI is fairly easy to get by.

I've been planning to make a thread on UBI. But in short, it wouldn't work if it's at a level where people could sustain because it would open up the possibility to work on passions that are not valued by other people. How many young guys' passion is video games? If those passions would be valued then they would be paid for them, then UBI isn't necessary. It would tear apart the system.

 

Where are you from?

[Hardkill]

Again, this is why we desperately need a powerful liberal/progressive media ecosystem that can drown out the right-wing media ecosystem and can promote left-wing policies in a much more entertaining and provocative manner, widespread progressive grassroots activism that overwhelms the right-wing movement on the ground throughout the whole country, Democrats need to continue to be more aggressive with their attacks towards the Republicans and bad-faith conservatives without backing down, and another once in a generation charismatic liberal/progressive leader like TR, FDR, JFK, or Obama. Once we have all those factors in place, then liberalism/progressivism will rise again as the dominant political force for decades just like it was during the progressive era in the early 1900s progressive era and the political dominance of the liberal consensus during the mid-1900s.

Edited January 14 by Hardkill

[Hardkill]

On 1/11/2024 at 2:56 PM, martins name said:

The correct answer is:

• The government is bought off by big corporations. Politicians and institutions are corrupted. Ex: Military Industrial Complex & healthcare insurance.
• Lack of democracy. ranked choice voting to get away from the toxic 2 party duopoly and campaign finance reform.  Most politicians are bought and paid for by big money. This ties into the first point.
• Insane levels of inequality and wealth inequity. Universal college and healthcare as a remedy. 

Those points need to sold to the public in a very emotionally compelling way:

• "Big corporations and the rich have been slowly taking over the entire country and if we don't stop them, then not only will they have bought off the entire government they will be able to buy every American citizen as their wage slaves through commercial slave trades." 
• "The wealthy elites and corporate tyrants have already rigged all of our elections and have been gradually destroying our democracy. Also, Donald Trump, the MAGA Republicans, the right-wing megadonors, the corrupt Republicans in Congress, the authoritarian GOP governors, the Republican state legislators who have implement racist gerrymandering, the very corrupt conservatives federal-level justices (especially those on the US Supreme Court), the radical right-wing racists such as KKK, Neo-Nazis, human sex trafficking rings, Proud Boys, and QAnon have all rigged the elections in favor of the white christian people in this country."
• "The Billionaire crime lords and mega corporations like Amazon are the real culprits who have been truly responsible for having caused such historic levels of economic inequality and wealth inequity in our country that are now comparable to what they were on the eve of the Great Depression. They've been able to get away with lobbying the politicians in Washington to pass laws that allow these corrupt private enterprises and rich robber barons to steal even much more money from the middle class, working class, and the poor. Moreover teachers, military soldiers, policemen, firefighters, and other people in the public sector are all getting skinned alive by the rich and the corporations. Big pharma and private health insurance companies have running one of the biggest scams ever in the history of the world as a massive cartel that have let millions upon millions of innocent sick people needlessly suffer and die. Corporate greed has also been the main reason as to why our national debt is the highest it has ever been in US history and still keeps getting worse. We need to lock these corporate criminals and predatory rich elites in prison."

[martins name]

@Hardkill Amen

[Bobby_2021]

 

On 1/13/2024 at 8:14 PM, martins name said:

I've been planning to make a thread on UBI. But in short, it wouldn't work if it's at a level where people could sustain because it would open up the possibility to work on passions that are not valued by other people. How many young guys' passion is video games? If those passions would be valued then they would be paid for them, then UBI isn't necessary. It would tear apart the system.

After thinking a bit about it UBI will be nothing more than throwing money at their problems.

For example if you give UBI per month of 1200 usd, then they would simply increase the rent because there are more people who could pay that money and soon exacerbate the problem.

We need to get the system corrected first, which starts from affordable housing. This is the bed rock of any good social policy. We need to build more affordable housing. Housing crisis is an everything crisis.

And restrict blackrock and other trillion dollar firms from playing in the property market. It's cruel to use places for peaceful families into tools for speculation and profiteering. 

I remember Leo saying that most people today live like cornered rats hindering any chances of the being conscious citizens. Housing seems to be a good way to keep them grounded. 

10 hours ago, Hardkill said:

Again, this is why we desperately need a powerful liberal/progressive media ecosystem that can drown out the right-wing media ecosystem and can promote left-wing policies in a much more entertaining and provocative manner, widespread progressive grassroots activism that overwhelms the right-wing movement on the ground throughout the whole country, Democrats need to continue to be more aggressive with their attacks towards the Republicans and bad-faith conservatives without backing down, and another once in a generation charismatic liberal/progressive leader like TR, FDR, JFK, or Obama. Once we have all those factors in place, then liberalism/progressivism will rise again as the dominant political force for decades just like it was during the progressive era in the early 1900s progressive era and the political dominance of the liberal consensus during the mid-1900s.

This is not a democrat vs conservative problem. And the solution comes in policies that are neither going to neatly fit into any one category.

The solution comes in innovative ways that requires out of the box thinking. The current system doesn't give a pathway to solve the problem that it creates on it's own. It's not that advanced.

You need to come up with a solution and promote it regardless.

One such example is using nuclear energy to solve the climate crisis. Not many people think about it and liberal hate it while conservatives love it. So the solution can piss off either side depending on the scenario.

Anyways that's is not of our concern. You need to nail down the policies so simplistically and they should be fairly easy to implement. I don't think UBI will work in this rotten system.

Removing corporation from buying up properties as investments is a good move. In fact some progress has been made in this realm. This is also an increasingly blue states problem.

Forgive the student debt. The tution costs has been jacked up recklessly and forced upon kids who weren't even old enough to know what they were getting into.