this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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A lot of my American friends are buying into this both sides thing, they say prices are up and the democrats aren't doing enough to deal with the climate so neither really care about anything...
I've been an eco obsessive since the 90s so to me it's painfully clear the night and day difference between the two parties, trying to explain it is so hard because they've got their talking points like more drilling under Biden than Trump but when you try to talk about the lag effects related to leased land it's all just hand waved away - they've seen people talking about it as true and not mentioning that lease sales are at all time lows which will result in significantly less permits in future years so it's 'Biden bad, end of story.' Saying 'they say there'll be less but they say anything, they said there would be less now' totally ignoring the logic of the argument.
Right wing psychological experts plan these talking points and seed them, the left falls for them every time it's so frustrating.
I think part of the problem is people want the world to be simple, the immigration issue is another thing a lot of my left voting friends are struggling with at the moment, blaming the housing crisis on immigration for example then I point out immigrants working construction is super common and they say why don't they work instead of being put up in hotels so I say there's a complex process involved in getting a right to work designed to protect American jobs and many are rejected and returned to their country of origin without obtaining this right... but again 'it's super complex and messy but they're trying to improve things' is easily shrugged off just like with the climate argument by saying 'they only say they're trying, trying means nothing only actions matter'
The problem is the two parties play totally different games with totally different objectives. One is trying to tangle a ball of yarn into.a mess and the other is attempting to untangle it and knit a cardigan.
Building on this metaphor, one of my single biggest frustrations with the left is how many of them won't accept anything short of a fully knit cardigan; unless they get exactly what they want, they'd rather just hand it over to the tanglers.
The issue that I am passionate about is election reform. Including things like getting rid of gerrymandering, making voting more accessible, making the houses more representative of the people, and breaking down big donor influence on elections and policy. Neither of the big two parties comes close to making any of this happen.
If these things are not fixed, the parties in control can do whatever they want. They can keep us divided by shouting about one passion-based issue in public then doing nothing about it while serving big donor interests in legislation.
I don't see how any mainstream issue matters when you can't trust elected officials to act on any issue you care about. That is unless you are one of the self-interested donors who writes your own bills. Then it still doesn't matter which party is in power because you can control them both.
Off topic slightly, but I've seen on Lemmy lately where people are saying "get rid of gerrymandering" and I'm curious about the argument for this.
Honestly, I'd love for it to happen, but I assumed it was impossible in a Representative Democracy because of how the system/math worked. Kinda of an inherit problem. Mostly because the ways I've heard to remedy this issue is to distribute districts in such a way that they more closely resemble their population ratios. However, isn't this also a form of gerrymandering? Districts are getting set to way we think they should be. Not saying that wrong persay, just feel like a bandage solution. Like we're beating a nail in with a wrench. In a way though, this reminds me of the Observer Effect in a way
There isn't a perfect way to draw districts. I like sortest splitline for its simplicity and impartial strategy.
The best solution I can see is to evolve the House of Representatives into a body of proportional representation. This could be done in state level houses as well. Single winner, or other small number of winners elections should have ranked choice to make it harder for parties to maintain dominance.
This was more of the point I was trying to hit but couldn't think of
no.
gerrymandering is editing the borders for your party's gain.
If it's done to be balanced and representive, then it isn't gerrymandering.
there's a super simple solution: stop having the ruling party be allowed to draw the lines. Have the whole thing be controlled by ordinary government bureaucrats. No-one elected involved at any point.
then, suddenly, impossible for gerrymandering to exist, outside of criminal interference.