The antišŸš«-derailmentšŸšƒ & threadšŸ§µ hijackingšŸ”« threadšŸ§µ ā‰

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Most people seem to overlook the most important thing about Trump: he was voted in. Meaning, a majority of Americans thought he was the right man to represent them at the helm of the most powerful nuclear power in the world.

Trump is a symptom of the state of education in this country, and its constituentsā€™ complete inability to apply critical thinking. Thatā€™s what sad and scary about him.

And just to be fair, itā€™s not limited to the US: there are idiotic and dangerous elected representatives aplenty the world over. But always remember: they represent those who elected them.

Can you tell I donā€™t have much faith in humanity? :slight_smile:

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FTFY

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Thatā€™s inaccurate. 48.89% of the votes that happened to be cast that year went to our esteemed president. The remainder selected the other option (not including all those who chose not to, or were stopped from, casting their vote)

I completely agree that education improvements will positively effect the rationality of the decisions made by the electorate in the long term, but it will have little to no effect on the existing adult populace. There are a host of systemic reforms that we need to make yesterday to prevent unfaithful representatives from voting against their constituents best interests. Also, Finland =/= US. I wish it did.

But they just donā€™t. All over the globe, ā€œelectedā€ leaders exist who do not represent their electorate, because there is rampant voter disenfranchisement. They only represent ā€œthe majorityā€ because everyone else has to climb uphill both ways to even get a fraction of a say in political dealings.

Iā€™m sure you agree with me on many of these points, but I feel like they need to be qualified further to yield anything resembling a productive conversation.

Yes I know about the electoral college skewing the system. But my point was, even 10% of the population thinking Trump is anything other than a rich buffoon says something about the country.

The system is fucked up in a number of ways. But you know what? Ultimately, people who believe they live in a democracy should accept that the outcome of the democratic process is something that represents them as a society.

If the premise if that the US is a democracy, Trump therefore must be the best the American society can come up with. If thatā€™s not an acceptable conclusion, then it means the US is not a democracy - in which case you can either take up arms or move elsewhere where real democracy happens. I did the latter.

Thatā€™s definitely the case. A representative democracy is is less than a direct democracy at the best of times, but the US is more of an oligarchy or corporatocracy at the moment.

I respect that you decided to leave instead of trying to overcome the insurmountable issues this country has (Iā€™m seriously considering doing the same) but those arenā€™t the only two options. We can navigate a lane between revolutionary anarchy and apathy, and we absolutely have to do so for the sake of the rest of the Earth. We may miss our mark a bit and may incidentally instigate a brief period of turbulence, but the majority is on our side and we have the ability to overcome moneyed interests for the betterment of society. You and I may give up, but the fight will continue indefinitely until we collectively meet our demise.

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Itā€™s so hard to get the ā€œif you donā€™t like it, you can just leaveā€ crowd to understand this point right here. Really well stated, mate. Iā€™ve also found myself more and more considering leaving.

Good luck with that. I donā€™t have enough years left in me to play idealist. Besides, I donā€™t really give a fuck about the rest of the Earth: I do what I need to do for my family and me, including getting as far the hell away as possible from problems created by incurable morons, that I have zero chances of fixing.

My opinion is that itā€™ll take another wold war to fix the US (and they wonā€™t have the good role in that one), and my hope is that Iā€™ll be long dead when it comes.

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Main problem with democracy (which is still the best available form of politics, imho) is that the majority of people are sometimes stupid, influenced idiots who can be pushed in either direction by media or corporations. I live in germany, and to be honest, Iā€™m relatively happy with the way it is here (especially compared to a lot of other countries), but when I turn on the TV and see what people are influenced withā€¦ what they even acutally believe to be trueā€¦ thatā€™s frightening. And they say, ā€œwell, that is right, it must be cause I saw it on TVā€. So we have a bunch of people who actually use their brain and who are able to view problems from various angles and discuss about it and all, and we have a reeeeally great amount of people who simply take for granted what others tell them.

And in a democracy, guess who has more power, ultimatelyā€¦

Iā€™m a bit late to the party butā€¦

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Democracy only works when the people makes informed decisions. That implies two things:

1/ Independent media that endeavours to report and analyze facts without pushing an agenda.

2/ An educated population able to comprehend and critically analyze the raw facts, and other peopleā€™s analyses of the facts for themselves.

The former is missing in the US - as indeed in most of the world - and the latter is fast disappearing.

It would take massive investments in public education and at least a generation to reverse the trend, something the current crop of rich fucks in power have no interest in doing. Thatā€™s why I say the US is pretty much hosed, until the next world war shakes things loose for good.

Acutally, rich fucks in power rarely want to change how things work - because they are just in power because of that.
Still, I am idealist / optimist / naive enough to hope that we might evade another world war - simply because war has changed a lot since the last two. And because there are people who fall into your category 2. And I hope they will push things forward fast enoug - to be honest, I donā€™t care so much about the dumbasses, I just hope some brilliant minds will keep on working towards singularity or something similar. And I hope I will live to see that dayā€¦^^

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Anybody that experienced the Install video issues from my custom payment thread, I have now remedied
Dropbox Crashed
Google Drive wouldnā€™t embed
Now a ā€œYouTube unlistedā€ link, tested and working
Apologies for that

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Keeping is as non-anything as I can. This perfectly sums up how I feel this year.

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Related;

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Damnit, Iā€™m at the hospital being tested for the stupid virus. Been stuck here for 2 hours nowā€¦

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Gotta get the vaccine for it, I hear it comes with free implants :wink:

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Hope youā€™re all good mate.
I hope you took your doNExT with you.
Plenty of doctors that can implant it for ya.
That will kill some timeā€¦

Actually itā€™s an entire wing of the hospital dedicated to COVID-19. They donā€™t deal with anything else there.

Anyhow, Iā€™m back home. I donā€™t think I have it. I just went to the doc this morning for general physical exhaustion that has been going on for over a month, annoying sinusitis-like pains behind my eyes since last week, and very mild motion sickness and shivers since Friday. The doc says I might be a ā€œlong-timerā€ - i.e. a case of COVID-19 who experiences mild symptoms that come and go, and take forever to clear, but no actual flu-like symptoms.

I think I just need new glasses and vacations personally. For the vacations, itā€™s taken care of until I get the results on Thursday, as my employer doesnā€™t want me back until then :slight_smile: