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[Vilanat]

Sam Harris did a pretty sober analysis of all of this in his periodic podcast, and its in line with what me, FD, Reelya, wierd and other people have been pointing out both prior to the election and now.

I feel most of you will apreciate the first half, since its everything everyone have been talking about since the start of the election, but a good deal of you won't like the second half, and thats the most important one.

Really?! seriously, really?! i doubt he would have survived these forums without being flagged and banned for being an "Islamophobe".

[TempAcc]

To use Trump's own words, winning the presidency but (maybe, the numbers won't be in until Monday!) losing the popular vote doesn't make him illegitimate or a fraud or anything like that. It makes him smart. Maybe the system is anachronistic and broken, but the popular vote is irrelevant because you don't need the popular vote to win. It's the system you have. If you don't need the popular vote to win, you don't predicate your campaign on it. If the popular vote mattered, you might've seen some Trump rallies in California! You don't optimize for something that is irrelevant to your victory.

Re: why the left is rapidly becoming just as toxic as the right: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/. Lots of good points made, but it's especially striking just how much of an echo chamber most people construct for themselves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are certain theories of dark matter where it barely interacts with the regular world at all, such that we could have a dark matter planet exactly co-incident with Earth and never know. Maybe dark matter people are walking all around us and through us, maybe my house is in the Times Square of a great dark matter city, maybe a few meters away from me a dark matter blogger is writing on his dark matter computer about how weird it would be if there was a light matter person he couldn’t see right next to him.

This is sort of how I feel about conservatives.

I don’t mean the sort of light-matter conservatives who go around complaining about Big Government and occasionally voting for Romney. I see those guys all the time. What I mean is – well, take creationists. According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country.

And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.

About forty percent of Americans want to ban gay marriage. I think if I really stretch it, maybe ten of my top hundred fifty friends might fall into this group. This is less astronomically unlikely; the odds are a mere one to one hundred quintillion against.

People like to talk about social bubbles, but that doesn’t even begin to cover one hundred quintillion. The only metaphor that seems really appropriate is the bizarre dark matter world.

I live in a Republican congressional district in a state with a Republican governor. The conservatives are definitely out there. They drive on the same roads as I do, live in the same neighborhoods. But they might as well be made of dark matter. I never meet them.

To be fair, I spend a lot of my time inside on my computer. I’m browsing sites like Reddit.

Recently, there was a thread on Reddit asking – Redditors Against Gay Marriage, What Is Your Best Supporting Argument? A Reddit user who didn’t understand how anybody could be against gay marriage honestly wanted to know how other people who were against it justified their position. He figured he might as well ask one of the largest sites on the Internet, with an estimated user base in the tens of millions.

It soon became clear that nobody there was actually against gay marriage.

There were a bunch of posts saying “I of course support gay marriage but here are some reasons some other people might be against it,” a bunch of others saying “my argument against gay marriage is the government shouldn’t be involved in the marriage business at all”, and several more saying “why would you even ask this question, there’s no possible good argument and you’re wasting your time”. About halfway through the thread someone started saying homosexuality was unnatural and I thought they were going to be the first one to actually answer the question, but at the end they added “But it’s not my place to decide what is or isn’t natural, I’m still pro-gay marriage.”

In a thread with 10,401 comments, a thread specifically asking for people against gay marriage, I was eventually able to find two people who came out and opposed it, way near the bottom. Their posts started with “I know I’m going to be downvoted to hell for this…”

Yep. Its like those people who can't believe Trump has been elected because "everyone on my friends list voted for Hillary!", except they just kind of forget they excluded anyone who didn't agree with them from said friend's list. The left, in its self righteous and warped perceptions of reality and unwarranted feeling of self importance has made itself weak by surrounding itself with its supporters, ignoring that the world outside is much bigger and more complex than the box it has barricated itself into. Instead of attracting and convincing people, it has switched to calling them names and trying steamroll them when they don't outright agree with its notions, and is now paying the price for it.
The US is in grave danger if the left does not reinvent itself.

Sam Harris did a pretty sober analysis of all of this in his periodic podcast, and its in line with what me, FD, Reelya, wierd and other people have been pointing out both prior to the election and now.

I feel most of you will apreciate the first half, since its everything everyone have been talking about since the start of the election, but a good deal of you won't like the second half, and thats the most important one.

Really?! seriously, really?! i doubt he would have survived these forums without being flagged and banned for being an "Islamophobe".

Which just goes to say just how insane the american left has become. AFAIK, Sam Harris was always a liberal, staunchly so, since he's a hardline atheist, but he chose to look at things with his own eyes instead of embracing the narratives that the rest of the left has fallen in love with. Its why I like him, among other reasons, even though I'm religious and don't consider myself a leftist, per se.

[PanH]

It is NOT direct democracy, it does not claim to be, and never has. The claim that the US is a democracy is a filthy lie promulgated by people who have never had a civics lesson in their lives, and are not qualified to comment about the government they criticize.

You assert that the imbalance in power is bad, and make assertions about this. Say it is patently false-- Yet you are forgetting how the US was formed, and why it is the way it is.  It was formed much the way the EU did-- each state was its own unique territory, a small nation, unto itself, more or less. Each had its own laws, customs, culture-- No state wanted any other to be able to just take the reigns of power and run with them.  That negative sentiment the EU feels about Belgum and Germany being little dictators? Yeah, we didnt want that.

When we initially formed our government, the framers of our government had nothing to look at really except the British parliamentary system. But there is a problem-- We DONT have a monarch, We DONT have nobles.  How the hell do we do the Magna Carta, and the House of Lords without a king, and without nobles?!  The answer, is elected representatives, of which the president is the prime representative. But how do we get the president to not always come from the same damned state all the time representing the same increasingly influential people?  We divide the power, and we make it very hard to consolidate that power.

Yes, the electoral college is "unfair", in that it denies the majority the power of being tyrants.

That is a GOOD thing.

Does it matter if it's the majority which has the power of being tyrants, or simply the electors of swing states ? Quite literally it means that not all citizens have an equal vote, even inside a state. The state which opinion is fixed are the ones who have the less power through their representation.

And that has nothing to do with the label 'democracy'. The USA and most 'democratic' countries would be correctly labeled as democratic republic anyway, and more importantly, it's not a good authority argument for the EC (it was like this, don't touch it).

[UXLZ]

Yes, the electoral college is "unfair", in that it denies the majority the power of being tyrants.

Aaaand gives it to the minority instead. The article you gave me to look at literally talked about the Swing States being the only ones that really mattered in a presidential election... Just like you say that

the only people who complain about it every 4 years, are the losers.

the only people who want it to stay are the ones who benefit or are afraid of the own alternative. To use your own analogy, instead of a big wolf eating a little sheep it's a little wolf eating a big sheep. Still a wolf eating a sheep either way around... You just like the little wolf, so it seems perfectly fine to you.
The part that's actually the fundamentally flawed and broken part of the electoral system isn't necessarily the EC itself though, it's the winner-take-all first-past-the-post.

[LoSboccacc]

Spoiler: that photoshop skillz tho (click to show/hide)

[Antioch]

Yes, the electoral college is "unfair", in that it denies the majority the power of being tyrants.

Aaaand gives it to the minority instead. The article you gave me to look at literally talked about the Swing States being the only ones that really mattered in a presidential election... Just like you say that

the only people who complain about it every 4 years, are the losers.

the only people who want it to stay are the ones who benefit or are afraid of the own alternative. To use your own analogy, instead of a big wolf eating a little sheep it's a little wolf eating a big sheep. Still a wolf eating a sheep either way around... You just like the little wolf, so it seems perfectly fine to you.
The part that's actually the fundamentally flawed and broken part of the electoral system isn't necessarily the EC itself though, it's the winner-take-all first-past-the-post.

This.

claiming the system protects the "sheep" is just plain untrue when the sheep (loser) gets literally zero representation under the system.

And its not even the democrats that are the worst off now, its the third parties that just get zero representation, why vote for someone when it does not translate in any way to representation?

[wierd]

The aggressive left angle I totally agree on, and mentioned myself many times.

He's a bit too heavy on the islam angle though. Yes, many people are worried, and it really is NOT a good idea to emulate the disasterous actions of Europe, given that we have gotten to see the results from start to finish. A deep introspection of the core cannon of islam indicates a very "We are the chosen! All the others must pay tribute to us, or die!" theme.  Then again, so does the core cannon of Judaeism. Naturally, the two hate each other.

But there are moderate jews, who arent all on a "God loves ME the MOST, and you can just suck it!" kick-- just like there are practitioners of Islam that do not have their elitist variant.

The problem, is the percentages, and degree of violent forced adoption of these two. Moderate jews vastly outnumber moderate Moslems, especially in these hotbed counties getting blown up.

When you meet a jew in this country, they are basically just like anyone else, except they have a different winter holiday and eat bland food.

You meet a Moslem in this country, and they by and large flip the fuck out if you draw a picture of Mohamed, or poke fun at their cultural foibles.  Jews dont flip the fuck out if you eat bacon in front of them. They just abstain when you offer them that double bacon cheddar melt. They have public comedians who flaunt jewish foibles openly, and do not get any flak for it. (Mel brooks anyone?)

Realistically, Christians shouldnt have any depictions of Jesus, god, angels or any such spiritual figures, as the bible blatantly forbids the creation of iconic images and idols of any kind. (obligatory) But do christians flip out at people wearing crucifixes? No. Most dont even realize that one of the commandments says not to use iconography in the worship of god. Like, AT ALL.

Maybe the Moslems are just more observant of their religion-- If that is the case though they are more likely to follow the "God loves MEEEEEEEEEE the MOST!" doctrine it is enshrined around.  A thing that causes this kind of jihadism. It is intimately tied to the strong orthodoxy of the religion, much like the orthodox zionists in Israel are causing all manner of horror to palestinians there.

If there is to be a hope of a more moderate incarnation of that faith, it needs a place to set down roots, away from the mullahs and fatwas of the middle east, away from the boko harams kidnapping school girls to sell into sexual slavery, away from the beheadings, and other attrocities of religious power. That can conceivably happen here, but only if the extremists do not batter down the doors and overwhelm the moderates with sheer numbers.  There are many studies about human behavior that suggest that there are special "tipping point" numbers, after which group dynamics cannot shift.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fenvs.2014.00035/full

So, to preserve the possibility that such a dynamic can take root here, we need to restrict the flow of the dangerous orthodoxy into the country. 

Sad truth. But there it is.


on EC:

You guys DO realize, that the number of electors that you get, is based on the number of representatives the state has, which is based on population, right?

Each U.S. state is represented in the House in proportion to its population as measured in the census, but every state is entitled to at least one representative. The most populous state, California, currently has 53 representatives. On the other end of the spectrum, there are seven states with only one representative each (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming).

From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives

It does NOT "replace a big wolf with a big sheep"  It removes the wolf's teeth. He still stays quite big.

[Neonivek]

Here is sort of the problem with the electoral college after all arguments are done. Forget the myths, forget the downsides, forget the benefits.

EVERYONE, with few exceptions, thinks America is a democracy. Everyone, with few exceptions, holds that one person equals one vote.

If you asked who elects the president they would most likely say "The People". If you even mention the electoral college or the State votes they will say "It is just a formality"

The thing is... The Electoral College is the longest lasting lie in history. It was created to give the people the illusion of choice and to curtail democracy because "The average voter is too dumb to know what is good for them".

Why the heck are we still using a system that... Systematically avoids what the Americans believe in?

Heck even the courts often hold that the it is a democracy since Faithless votes, to my knowledge, are one of the intentional aspects of the system... Yet most states make it illegal.

[wierd]

Because without it, it would be the united states of California, Florida, Texas, and NewYork.

All those other states? Economic slaves. Fuck em.

Also, the belief that one person = one vote, is the result of poor civics and american government education. Placating that is a part of the problem, not a solution.

[Neonivek]

Because without it, it would be the united states of California, Florida, Texas, and NewYork.

All those other states? Economic slaves. Fuck em.

Also, the belief that one person = one vote, is the result of poor civics and american government education. Placating that is a part of the problem, not a solution.

Except that because votes wouldn't ALL go to the person who "wins" those states... It means that they would actually have to go to other states for more votes.

So someone who gets 51% of the votes in Florida, for example... Only gets that 1% of an advantage.

So unless California, Florida, Texas, and New York suddenly become SUPER polarized... It just doesn't happen.

In fact it would mean even the non-swing states would be important... to both parties... and the Swing States would still be important.

And while one COULD say that the less populated states would be less important... It isn't like they were before.

[wierd]

newsflash. Only ONE of those is a swing state.


TX is so red, you couldnt possiby make it any redder.

Ca and NYC are so blue, you couldnt possibly make them any bluer.

Fl is the swing state.

To whit:

California election results, in general and by county

Texas election results, same

New York election results, same

Florida results, same

[Neonivek]

newsflash. Only ONE of those is a swing state.


TX is so red, you couldnt possiby make it any redder.

Ca and NYC are so blue, you couldnt possibly make them any bluer.

Fl is the swing state.

Aren't you... Solving your own problem there?

[Antioch]

newsflash. Only ONE of those is a swing state.


TX is so red, you couldnt possiby make it any redder.

Ca and NYC are so blue, you couldnt possibly make them any bluer.

Fl is the swing state.

Texas still only had 52% voting Republican, California had only 61% democrat. New York had 58% democrat.

And that is with third party votes being pointless.

And you are saying yourself that these states oppose each other in the first place, why would democratic California cooperate with Republican Texas?

[wierd]

I am saying, that these states would dominate, and take any real voting power away from the other states.

Kansas? A measely population like that!? Fuck them, their opinion does not matter.

(It would take a coalition of basically every other state to overpower any kind of platform alliance between Ca and Ny, for instance. THAT is what you are championing for with popular vote.  You complain about people being disenfranchised inside a populous state-- you would be disenfranchising ENTIRE STATES)

[Antioch]

I am saying, that these states would dominate, and take any real voting power away from the other states.

Kansas? A measely population like that!? Fuck them, their opinion does not matter.

No presidential candidate gives a shit about Kansas now, so how exactly would things be different?