Prelude to the Apocalypse

[BryanM]

https://mobile.twitter.com/fightdenial/ ... 1119922176?

KEKW

Some people in that thread still buying the mirage of Warren, the kayfabe. lemme dig out that Valentino quote again...

ah there it is

The saddest part about that movie is the scene where, after the MC's parents tut-tut'ed his brothers for juicing... They cheer so loudly and look so happy when they get big numbers in the bench contest, versus the polite applause they give their weak, natty, smol son on his lifts.

[orange808]

Just one more reminder. Biden cannot win. If you didn't bother to vote or voted for Biden, you will pay dearly for it. We all will.

Sanders needs to drop out and announce a third party run. Biden can't win.

Let Trump and Biden split the Republicans.

Also, more people voted against Biden than for him. That's not in print anywhere this time. Funny how that works...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The reluctance of the Democratic party to adopt a competent voting system in their primaries plays a large role in why their elections are such a mess. The same actually applies to the Republican party. Plurality voting ("choose one"/first-past-the-post, the one in use in USA and Canada) is such a fundamentally broken means of electing officials that it's frankly shocking that it's still in wide use today. We'd have a much better view of which candidates are supported if, instead of "choose one then shut up" style plurality voting/polling, you could score each candidate as in Range Voting and give an opinion about all the candidates running in an election.

Any election system where having multiple similar candidates all hurts their chances (or helps their chances as in Borda voting, another awful system) is a fundamentally broken system. Same goes for any election system that punishes you for voting honestly for the candidate(s) you like, and rewards you for dishonestly voting (as in feeling forced to vote "strategically").

[Mischief Maker]

Health Insurance company stocks just shot up after yesterday's results.

[BryanM]

A lot of second guessing of strategy going on, but it literally doesn't matter unless your plan involves "permanently seizing control of television" within the next 36 hours or so.

I'm all about being as angry and petulant as possible, but thinking the few minutes the Sanders campaign has to speak to the elderly matters versus the hundreds of hours of propaganda around it... it's just desperate.

competent voting system

The outcome would have been the same. Party loyalists would consolidate around Biden, young and poor people are too busy just trying to survive to be aware that yesterday was a day where the lives of millions of people was extinguished.

As I opined before, process is just a boojum, another distraction from the simulation hellworld where a dictatorship is regulated by a glowing box that talks to people more than anything else in their personal worlds do. Politics sucks because the electorate sucks.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The outcome would have been the same.

No, it wouldn't. This exact sort of election has played out decade after decade in countless countries that use plurality or similarly flawed systems and we have mountains of evidence which consistently shows case after case where a reformed election process would have elected a vastly different (and likely better) candidate. Plurality election systems consistently struggle to elect good leaders due to its inherent design flaws.

[Bananamatic]

As I opined before, process is just a boojum, another distraction from the simulation hellworld where a dictatorship is regulated by a glowing box that talks to people more than anything else in their personal worlds do. Politics sucks because the electorate sucks.

1) equality should be reconsidered
2) equality is our number 1 western value even if it means that the dumb people get to vote and we never get anywhere as dumb people are easier to sway with bullshit and their votes count as much as yours do

you may pick only one

[BryanM]

No, it wouldn't.

You're right. Joe Biden would have 70% of the delegates right now instead of 53.4% of them. A worse outcome in my opinion, but a better one for the "I vote based on the name I hear the most on TV" crowd.

you may pick only one

I already explicitly chose #2?

Don't recall advocating throwing old people into jail or denying them the ability to vote to kill their grandchildren.

[orange808]

The elephant in the room is rather (or not) the ruling class will ever allow "unfavorable" election results to stand--at all.

[BryanM]

Nomiki had me going for awhile with this, but no. The superdelegates will be giving it to Biden if he loses like I said years ago. I always feel like a stupid shithead whenever that happens: "you idiot, why the fuck would something good happen?"

I am superstitious about the whole "Bernie take my energy" for the genki dama meme, too. My energy is proven to kill everything it touches, so refrained this year but apparently still caring counts.

[orange808]

Nah. Common trash like us don't matter. Doesn't matter what we think or care about.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Joe Biden would have 70% of the delegates right now instead of 53.4% of them.

According to what data?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Joe Biden would have 70% of the delegates right now instead of 53.4% of them.

According to what data?

You are too hopeful because you don't have to live here. :p

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Whatever I "am" is not relevant to the discussion. All I'm doing is attempting to make people aware of the broad work of Warren D. Smith and co. who have amassed a huge amount of test data mathematically showing that the current electoral system in use in the United States is fundamentally broken.

If folks are going to take the pessimistic attitude of "I refuse to believe changing things will fix anything, therefore we should keep using a system known to be fundamentally broken even when a far better alternative that's mathematically demonstrable to be superior exists", then I can't be of any further help.

[BryanM]

Nah. Common trash like us don't matter. Doesn't matter what we think or care about.

By the principle of solipsism I'm the only mind I can be certain actually exists. If I'm really the only conscious simulant in this simulation, I'm the most important being here.

As I said, superstitious as hell. I much prefer thinking of myself as garbage.

According to what data?

Crosstabs of 2nd preferred candidates. Bloomberg helped Sanders much more than Warren hurt him.

Our staggered election primaries work similar to the sort of systems you and CGP Grey endorse. They sound great to people who like facts and logic, but a staggeringly huge portion of the electorate does not function on reason or logic. It's clear we love aristocracy, personality, and whoever the TV tells us to vote for. (The owners of TV will never tell us to vote for someone that would decrease their wealth or power.)

If there's any overarching ideology in the current electorate, it's that the bulk of republicans care about guns and cruelty to scapegoats, while democrats care about having a calm placating voice on their tv telling them everything is fine and they have nothing to worry about.

Whatever I "am" is not relevant to the discussion. All I'm doing is attempting to make people aware of the broad work of Warren D. Smith and co. who have amassed a huge amount of test data mathematically showing that the current electoral system in use in the United States is fundamentally broken.

If folks are going to take the pessimistic attitude of "I refuse to believe changing things will fix anything, therefore we should keep using a system known to be fundamentally broken even when a far better alternative that's mathematically demonstrable to be superior exists", then I can't be of any further help.

We already had this discussion. If we had the power to "fix" the system, the system wouldn't need fixing.

I'll provide a rebuttal to this first line in one of your links: "Gore lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush (at least according to official vote totals) because of the spoiler effect of the 97488 Nader voters in Florida."

Much like Hillary's loss in 2016, the total was so close that nearly anything could have changed the outcome. Outside of matters of strategy, such as Gore supporting decriminalization of weed or anything remotely leftist, mechanical issues:

* The palm beach butterfly ballot cost a ton of Gore votes. (This was similar but worse than Sanders getting put on a second page in some Texas ballots.)

* Florida law dictates that any ballot where voter intent is clear still counts. There were punch cards in more impoverished areas with machines unable to cleanly cut through them - these were the infamous "dimpled chad" fiasco. Overwhelmingly black and gore-leaning communities were impacted by this. A full count of the votes would have resulted in a president Gore, but the Gore campaign didn't ask for one in their lawsuit and the supreme court put an end to it before it could come up.

So the process elected Gore president, even with the dirty tricks, but the people with power selected a different outcome. This is all publicly known information.

I would like to be exposed to real-world examples of electorates not being beholden to party loyalty and such however.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

We already had this discussion. If we had the power to "fix" the system, the system wouldn't need fixing.

You're making the unstated assumption that it's impossible for us to ever fix the system and to gain the power to do so. If you assume the defeatist attitude that such a thing is fundamentally impossible and therefore why bother, then of course your self-fulfilling prophecy will come true and nothing will ever change. That's too weak-willed for me, however. No matter how stupid or bleak our political system is, throwing away even the possibility of change is basically no different than wholeheartedly supporting the status quo.

[BryanM]

No, I'm making the assumption that if we had full gay space communism, fixing the process would be superfluous to the goal of having full gay space communism.

I do nothing but whine about how much I would like to have power already without having to wait for the generational transition to finish exerting itself. Even registered my complaint about it yesterday at my local polling station.

(I don't even disagree with you that it's something we should do btw.)

[orange808]

So funny.

As if the masters of the universe are that lazy. You honestly think they weren't terrified by these scrapes? They will blunt the generational transition in many ways. You'll never touch the levers.

The first move will be to stop your ability to communicate outside your immediate social circle with strangers using the internet. You will be moderated. Simply purchasing and properly moderating Twitter and Reddit should be enough to control the election in four years.

The boomers had children and they will soon take the reins. Not GenX, actually. It's the chosen few that were groomed to keep this going.

Beyond that, it's about passing laws to moderate the internet against "foreign interference" and use that shadow power to stop dissent. Doesn't matter if you believe, all they have to do is pass laws and issue executive orders.

They will change campaign laws to stop small donors, too. They will say it was a foreign interference thing.

Grans and grampa raised chosen GenXers to carry their agenda. Millennials will be raised by mum and daddy to do the same. Don't forget your station. The chosen few among your generation are small clones of their parents and grandparents. The beast will never get old.

There is no path. Even if you did somehow win an election, the ruling class would use the military to stop you before you got anything done. The United States isn't going to change a thing.

[BryanM]

Yeah, the internet fuckery isn't even necessary that's the great thing about liberal capitalism - letting the slaves bitch and moan lets them feel like they're free. And the jokes about elon cubes are also a euphemism for graves.

In the early days of this thread I used to talk about how people as a whole don't change, the circumstances around them do. Thus technology is the core source of all change. Eventually it will get to the point where they'll have to expand the welfare state ala Yang's UBI, or they'll have to start killing way more of our own citizens than we already do.

It's grimdark all the way out. I know it's denialism and delusion, hence... why this is the Ghostbusters thread now.

[orange808]

And, now we're going to spend billions on Coronavirus when it almost exclusively kills olds?

The threat to young people is no worse than the flu. It's nothing.

Why can't I vote on that?

They need to start a GoFundMe and stop asking the big gubment to pay for this. It doesn't involve me. Why should I care?

A 10% mortality among olds? So? I'm not old. Also, did these people take care of themselves? Maybe they are personally accountable!

Boomers raised me to think this way. Why am I not allowed to be the person I was told to be?

And, is this God's will? Can't stop that. It's a virus and all good Reaganites know that viruses are sent from God to punish evil people. Yeah. I remember what you said, mum and dad.

Let the olds fend for themselves. Covid-9 won't hurt young people.

[chempop]

[quash]

And, now we're going to spend billions on Coronavirus when it almost exclusively kills olds?

The threat to young people is no worse than the flu. It's nothing.

Why can't I vote on that?

They need to start a GoFundMe and stop asking the big gubment to pay for this. It doesn't involve me. Why should I care?

A 10% mortality among olds? So? I'm not old. Also, did these people take care of themselves? Maybe they are personally accountable!

Boomers raised me to think this way. Why am I not allowed to be the person I was told to be?

And, is this God's will? Can't stop that. It's a virus and all good Reaganites know that viruses are sent from God to punish evil people. Yeah. I remember what you said, mum and dad.

Let the olds fend for themselves. Covid-9 won't hurt young people.

Boomers are the chosen generation for a reason, but I don't know if we're ready for that discussion yet.

[orange808]

And, now we're going to spend billions on Coronavirus when it almost exclusively kills olds?

The threat to young people is no worse than the flu. It's nothing.

Why can't I vote on that?

They need to start a GoFundMe and stop asking the big gubment to pay for this. It doesn't involve me. Why should I care?

A 10% mortality among olds? So? I'm not old. Also, did these people take care of themselves? Maybe they are personally accountable!

Boomers raised me to think this way. Why am I not allowed to be the person I was told to be?

And, is this God's will? Can't stop that. It's a virus and all good Reaganites know that viruses are sent from God to punish evil people. Yeah. I remember what you said, mum and dad.

Let the olds fend for themselves. Covid-9 won't hurt young people.

Boomers are the chosen generation for a reason, but I don't know if we're ready for that discussion yet.

Chosen to grow up in the postwar boom--without personally experiencing the terrible events that destroyed capital, upended the status quo, reduced the population, sparked investment, and made the post war boom possible?

That kind of "chosen"? (Without experiencing the horrors of the war?) Yeah, a few Americans went to Vietnam. That's nothing compared to what Europeans and Asians experienced during the great wars.

Boomers protested Nam because they could die. It wasn't about anything but the fact that they were personally in danger. It wasn't about "peace".

That kind of "chosen"?

[quash]

Refer back to what our good friend Yuri said about how long it takes to demoralize a generation, between ten and twenty years. Now think about how at least once a decade we run in to an economic pothole that we patch up with debt and fiat currency. Combine that with the fake wealth of the boomers, who don't necessarily have more money but can leverage more debt than their kids and grandkids, and voila, you've set the stage for the controlled demolition of a country. Everything else is just an accessory to this; the only real issue we have is that nobody really knows who controls the money supply and we're all somehow okay with that.

[ED-057]

We already had this discussion. If we had the power to "fix" the system, the system wouldn't need fixing.

So you're flip-flopping on the reform-the-party-from-within plan? Back to accelerationism then? At least there are market crashes and pandemics to get excited over.

BTW, did anyone watch the third-party debate in Chicago? I wanted to watch this, and since I wasn't prepared to assume that it would be available to download after the fact (which would make too much sense) I even set my alarm so I could visit the freeandequal site at the appointed time. They claimed there would be a live stream. And during the time when the debate was supposed to take place the site still claimed that there would be a live stream. No indication that there actually was a stream at that very moment. The only video to be seen was a 15-second pootube 'trailer' and both the "read more" and "live stream" links led directly to the same page that contained them. And the page is trash that doesn't render correctly in palemoon. Lame.

[Queen Charlene]

at this point i had already given up on this country going anywhere good several years ago. love and care for the people around you. at this point it's all we've got lol.

[BryanM]

lol@ how joe and obama endorse republicans but republicans never endorse them back. and everyone knows this. freakin' democrats man, they eat that "bipartisan" shit right up...

[Mischief Maker]

Hey guys, put the razor blades down.

Biden has a slim lead over Bernie after all the Super Tuesday red states, but Bernie crushed him in California. Now that Warren's out, Joe won't be able to hide his obvious and growing senility in the debates by the network keeping the debate camera focused on the kid's table squabbles. Instead of Bernie clinching the nomination from the start, it's now a legit race along the lines of 2008. Bernie's in a much better position now than he was at this point in 2016, and he nearly caught Hillary that time.

The brokered convention shenanigans are now off the table and it's a two person race, to be decided by raw numbers of butts in the seats. Do you have the Bern app? Do you know that you can make calls for Bernie from the comfort of your own home? If you've never done door canvassing, it's substantially less scary the first time if you do it with a friend.

The MSM wants you to think it's over already, don't let them manufacture your consent.

[Specineff]

Biden has a slim lead over Bernie after all the Super Tuesday red states, but Bernie crushed him in California.

The MSM wants you to think it's over already, don't let them manufacture your consent.

This. Was going to point out how no one is bringing up Bernie's success over there, while trumpeting Biden's as if it were the ultimate coup de grace.

[BryanM]

It's not over, but the delegate math is going to be rough and a lead was essential to absorb the nightmare hellscapes that are Florida and New York.



.... oh god. The one question Trump can blow Joe out of the water with at a debate: "Hey Joe, what was the name of the president back when you were vice president?"