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[Max™]

I mean, dude straight up said that we should avoid parties and factions and here we are.

Some moron at Fox thought it was smart to let a vapid bimbo do more than serve as scenery and the idiot claimed America was great since we defeated Communist Japan to disprove Cuomo saying it was never that great.

I mean, we were great because we beat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan who allied with them... but you probably aren't allowed to disparage Nazis at Fox anymore because hey, there are good people on both sides right?

[Kagus]

don't let anyone factionalize our nation

Keep people united, got it.

don't let any part of the government over extend its power to any other part of the government

Keep people separate, got it.

All right I'm done where's the beer?

You tell me, Georgie.

[Max™]

Well, keep the mechanism of governance from being split against itself, that oversimplification loses far too much information.

[WealthyRadish]

I mean, we were great because we beat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan who allied with them... but you probably aren't allowed to disparage Nazis at Fox anymore because hey, there are good people on both sides right?

The deeper irony would be that the credit for defeating Germany lies mostly with the USSR, which makes it tempting to look at this sort of gaffe as a particularly turgid protrusion into Orwellia, but from viewing the clip it looks more like a slip that has unintentionally articulated much of the hollowness of patriotic appeals today in their substance and presentation.

[Trekkin]

don't let anyone factionalize our nation

Keep people united, got it.

don't let any part of the government over extend its power to any other part of the government

Keep people separate, got it.

Well, yes, that is the fundamental flaw with democracy: it is constantly balanced between dysfunction and dictatorship. America, being designed by people with the resources to ride out temporary dysfunction on their farms/fiefdoms, was engineered with its infamous "checks and balances" to favor dysfunction over dictatorship via inter-branch gridlock on the assumption that enough other people's lives would be destroyed by persistent inaction for the masses to rally around one of the aristocracy before they needed to be concerned.

[Max™]

I mean, we were great because we beat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan who allied with them... but you probably aren't allowed to disparage Nazis at Fox anymore because hey, there are good people on both sides right?

The deeper irony would be that the credit for defeating Germany lies mostly with the USSR, which makes it tempting to look at this sort of gaffe as a particularly turgid protrusion into Orwellia, but from viewing the clip it looks more like a slip that has unintentionally articulated much of the hollowness of patriotic appeals today in their substance and presentation.

That's shallow irony at best, as it isn't really ironic at all, and I refuse to abide by the use of the word in that sense as anything but an inferior broadening due to that silly canadian wench.

[Kagus]

That's shallow irony at best, as it isn't really ironic at all, and I refuse to abide by the use of the word in that sense as anything but an inferior broadening due to that silly canadian wench.

Broadened by that Canadian broad?

[WealthyRadish]

I mean, we were great because we beat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan who allied with them... but you probably aren't allowed to disparage Nazis at Fox anymore because hey, there are good people on both sides right?

The deeper irony would be that the credit for defeating Germany lies mostly with the USSR, which makes it tempting to look at this sort of gaffe as a particularly turgid protrusion into Orwellia, but from viewing the clip it looks more like a slip that has unintentionally articulated much of the hollowness of patriotic appeals today in their substance and presentation.

That's shallow irony at best, as it isn't really ironic at all, and I refuse to abide by the use of the word in that sense as anything but an inferior broadening due to that silly canadian wench.

You don't think it's ironic that someone boasting about their country's defeat of communists would mistakenly use a war won by communist allies as an example?

[Trekkin]

I refuse to abide by the use of the word in that sense as anything but an inferior broadening due to that silly canadian wench.

Ironically, the people still incessantly whinging about what is or is not ironic are way more ironic than those of us who have accepted that it ironically doesn't mean anything anymore.

[smjjames]

don't let anyone factionalize our nation

Keep people united, got it.

don't let any part of the government over extend its power to any other part of the government

Keep people separate, got it.

Well, yes, that is the fundamental flaw with American style democracy: it is constantly balanced between dysfunction and dictatorship. America, being designed by people with the resources to ride out temporary dysfunction on their farms/fiefdoms, was engineered with its infamous "checks and balances" to favor dysfunction over dictatorship via inter-branch gridlock on the assumption that enough other people's lives would be destroyed by persistent inaction for the masses to rally around one of the aristocracy before they needed to be concerned.

Fixed it for you since it's not neccesarily a flaw of democracy in and of itself, but is certainly a flaw in the way it's designed, as you say.

[Trekkin]

I'm curious how you build a democracy where people can't decide to elect one king and an array of yes-men, and also where they must decide to keep the government running.

[scriver]

Ironically, the people who whine about the wrong use of irony is in turn wrong.

[smjjames]

It's not the people that are deciding whether to keep the government running, it's the representatives that are doing that, which is why the US is called a representative democracy.

Not sure what you're getting at with your post though Trekkin.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm curious how you build a democracy where people can't decide to elect one king and an array of yes-men, and also where they must decide to keep the government running.

A British democracy where the Monarch is unelectable and therefore cannot be elected, while a Prime Minister with a cabinet of yes men would not be able to get anything done because all other branches of government could overturn them as easily as turning their hands. The only thing is that there is no obligation to keep the government running, so it can be dissolved and remade when necessary

[Trekkin]

It's not the people that are deciding whether to keep the government running, it's the representatives that are doing that, which is why the US is called a representative democracy.

Not sure what you're getting at with your post though trekkin.

That any democracy gives people the power to make it not a democracy anymore, either through a consensus that effectively centralizes operational control of government in oligarchic/monarchic numbers of people or through a lack of consensus so fundamental that the people or their representatives cannot actually reach a consensus capable of processing the business of government, so Kagus' flippancy above is actually more clever than he intended: functioning democracy requires a middle ground between complete unity and endless squabbling, albeit one that is to some extent tunable through legislation.

Ultimately, someone has to make the decisions that keep the budgets allocated and the trains running and so forth. Letting the people decide those things also lets them let someone else decide those things, or fail to decide those things. Pre-deciding those things by providing defaults just makes both those outcomes the same.