DiscussMormonism.com

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 25, 2021 2:48 am

“I think the problem with Conservatives is they pretty much have a sort of monolithic view of Dems or Liberals because they themselves have a sort of monolithic view to their ideology. Here in America free market deregulation is GOP capitalism. Republicans worship that form of capitalism …”, and it’s their God. And their God is hungry for more, more, more until It’s consumed everything, even the consumers themselves. Sad.

- Doc

Yeah. People who are strongly aligned with Democrats or Republicans tend to see the "other side" as monolithic. Truth is that there are a whole lot of us who do not fit those stereotypes. I was an independent who once was a registered Republican. I did not join the Democratic Party because I realized that I did not want to enlist in what was good for the party organization. It was very difficult for me, knowing that Hillary Clinton could be a competent president, but at the same time being aware of the fact that she was a horrible politician, ever to get on the Hillary train other than to vote for her as the vastly better alternative to Donald Trump. Still, I thought it was mistake for the DNC to back her. Problem was that she had a lock on the DNC organization and was not going to sit idly by while an outsider took the nomination from her.

That is the kind of garbage I have problems with. There is an organization mentality that is difficult for individuals to overcome or stand back from. There are those who find the organizational point of view easy to fall in line with for what they perceive to be the greater good. I have been told more than once that someone who perceived I was on their side said to me, "Well, we know that this is a big problem, but we can't acknowledge it." In other words, for the organization, you must wink at certain things. One of my glaring character flaws is that such winks do not sit well with me, and so I have a hard time joining teams.

Kishkumen wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:34 pm

Yeah. People who are strongly aligned with Democrats or Republicans tend to see the "other side" as monolithic. Truth is that there are a whole lot of us who do not fit those stereotypes. I was an independent who once was a registered Republican. I did not join the Democratic Party because I realized that I did not want to enlist in what was good for the party organization. It was very difficult for me, knowing that Hillary Clinton could be a competent president, but at the same time being aware of the fact that she was a horrible politician, ever to get on the Hillary train other than to vote for her as the vastly better alternative to Donald Trump. Still, I thought it was mistake for the DNC to back her. Problem was that she had a lock on the DNC organization and was not going to sit idly by while an outsider took the nomination from her.

That is the kind of garbage I have problems with. There is an organization mentality that is difficult for individuals to overcome or stand back from. There are those who find the organizational point of view easy to fall in line with for what they perceive to be the greater good. I have been told more than once that someone who perceived I was on their side said to me, "Well, we know that this is a big problem, but we can't acknowledge it." In other words, for the organization, you must wink at certain things. One of my glaring character flaws is that such winks do not sit well with me, and so I have a hard time joining teams.

Yes. I can completely relate to everything here.

Kishkumen wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:34 pm

There is an organization mentality that is difficult for individuals to overcome or stand back from. There are those who find the organizational point of view easy to fall in line with for what they perceive to be the greater good. I have been told more than once that someone who perceived I was on their side said to me, "Well, we know that this is a big problem, but we can't acknowledge it." In other words, for the organization, you must wink at certain things.

Problems of the kind you point to here might indeed be avoided if there was a radical refoundation of the ways in which western democracies organised their political affairs. That is however nowhere in prospect, and there is not even a hint of consensus as to what such a refoundation might involve.

However, while the prevailing mode is still that of choosing governments by the mass vote of all adult citizens, the organisation of political parties is, whether we like it or not, pretty well the only way we have of getting together a bunch of potential elected officials who more or less agree on what they consider to be central issues, and then persuading people with a very limited attention span to vote them into power.

Yes, the result can be a lot of compromises and even contradictions. And in order to support the group that you hope will put desirable policies into practice you will leave it to the opposition to say every negative thing that can justifiably be said about your group and its leaders. But the alternative of simply saying that one is somehow too pure-minded or morally sensitive to take part in the sometimes grubby process of democratic politics is a choice that will end up leaving politics as the preserve of the utterly self-seeking, unscrupulous, and uncaring.

Chap wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:42 pm

Problems of the kind you point to here might indeed be avoided if there was a radical refoundation of the ways in which western democracies organised their political affairs. That is however nowhere in prospect, and there is not even a hint of consensus as to what such a refoundation might involve.

However, while the prevailing mode is still that of choosing governments by the mass vote of all adult citizens, the organisation of political parties is, whether we like it or not, pretty well the only way we have of getting together a bunch of potential elected officials who more or less agree on what they consider to be central issues, and then persuading people with a very limited attention span to vote them into power.

Yes, the result can be a lot of compromises and even contradictions. And in order to support the group that you hope will put desirable policies into practice you will leave it to the opposition to say every negative thing that can justifiably be said about your group and its leaders. But the alternative of simply saying that one is somehow too pure-minded or morally sensitive to take part in the sometimes grubby process of democratic politics is a choice that will end up leaving politics as the preserve of the utterly self-seeking, unscrupulous, and uncaring.

The worst thing about our situation is that we essentially have two choices. Two parties. Everything is molded in reference to the duopoly. These are the two tribes that make our cultural landscape what it is, and I really don't like it. I don't want to join in the nasty struggle between two orthodoxies, two extremes, two sets of super-wealthy oligarchs who decide who our leaders will be. I hate being forced into this kind of situation. It is nasty, narrow-minded, and depressing. I understand that my reaction isn't the truly rational way of going about these things. It is better to have some tiny say than to have none, and my tiny bit is only diminished by my refusal to join a side. Or perhaps, one could argue, my say is amplified in some way by being one of those people whom the two sides have to seek to appease to reach their sliver-thin majority at the ballot box.

Kishkumen wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 26, 2021 1:14 pm

I understand that my reaction isn't the truly rational way of going about these things. It is better to have some tiny say than to have none, and my tiny bit is only diminished by my refusal to join a side.

Try joining a political party and playing an active role in its policy-making?

It really doesn't hurt! You can of course instead join a pressure group for an issue that really does concern you, and work on that. But if you simply decide to limit yourself to your own purely personal concerns, then where are you? As you know, the Greeks did have a word for that ... though its meaning has changed in its journey into English in an unfortunate sense that certainly cannot be applied to yourself ...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kishkumen wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 26, 2021 1:14 pm

Chap wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:42 pm

Problems of the kind you point to here might indeed be avoided if there was a radical refoundation of the ways in which western democracies organised their political affairs. That is however nowhere in prospect, and there is not even a hint of consensus as to what such a refoundation might involve.

However, while the prevailing mode is still that of choosing governments by the mass vote of all adult citizens, the organisation of political parties is, whether we like it or not, pretty well the only way we have of getting together a bunch of potential elected officials who more or less agree on what they consider to be central issues, and then persuading people with a very limited attention span to vote them into power.

Yes, the result can be a lot of compromises and even contradictions. And in order to support the group that you hope will put desirable policies into practice you will leave it to the opposition to say every negative thing that can justifiably be said about your group and its leaders. But the alternative of simply saying that one is somehow too pure-minded or morally sensitive to take part in the sometimes grubby process of democratic politics is a choice that will end up leaving politics as the preserve of the utterly self-seeking, unscrupulous, and uncaring.

The worst thing about our situation is that we essentially have two choices. Two parties. Everything is molded in reference to the duopoly. These are the two tribes that make our cultural landscape what it is, and I really don't like it. I don't want to join in the nasty struggle between two orthodoxies, two extremes, two sets of super-wealthy oligarchs who decide who our leaders will be. I hate being forced into this kind of situation. It is nasty, narrow-minded, and depressing. I understand that my reaction isn't the truly rational way of going about these things. It is better to have some tiny say than to have none, and my tiny bit is only diminished by my refusal to join a side. Or perhaps, one could argue, my say is amplified in some way by being one of those people whom the two sides have to seek to appease to reach their sliver-thin majority at the ballot box.

I hear you, Reverend. I don’t think the stranglehold that the parties have on our system is health at all. Post COVID, my personal plan is to work toward some form of ranked choice voting in my state. Voters are reluctant to vote for third parties out of fear they will be throwing their vote away. Ranked choice voting removes that obstacle.

Right now, political compromise is dead at the federal level. If third parties won enough votes in Congress such that no parties had a majority, the major parties would have to go beyond playing to their respective bases and compromise in order to get the votes off the third parties.

Not going to happen overnight. But as long as both parties can bet on playing to their respective bases to win it all, I don’t see the current situation getting any better.

By the way, this will likely mean I’ll be working along side libertarians, with whom I have serious political agreements. But while I can’t see voting for a libertarian candidate, I think libertarians should be able to vote for their candidate without fear of casting a meaningless vote.

Chap wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 26, 2021 3:16 pm

Try joining a political party and playing an active role in its policy-making?

It really doesn't hurt! You can of course instead join a pressure group for an issue that really does concern you, and work on that. But if you simply decide to limit yourself to your own purely personal concerns, then where are you? As you know, the Greeks did have a word for that ... though its meaning has changed in its journey into English in an unfortunate sense that certainly cannot be applied to yourself ...

If I could find a political party that was viable and anywhere close to my views, I might just do it. The Athenians at the height of their democracy did not have political parties and chose people by lot to fill offices. So, given the fact that our system is almost nothing like the Athenian system--in some ways a good thing and in others perhaps not--I am not concerned about being called an idiot in the Greek sense of the word. Our system is much more like the Roman one. It was a system in which individual votes were pretty close to meaningless until the vote for choosing magistrates was lost altogether under the emperor Tiberius. Rome also did not have political parties. It had wealthy families with dependents that pushed for the interests of those families. So, yes, our system is somewhat more like the Roman one, and it will probably end in the same place because wealthy interests dominate things to such a great extent within the corporate-manipulated-and-purchased duopoly.

Res Ipsa wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:34 pm

I hear you, Reverend. I don’t think the stranglehold that the parties have on our system is health at all. Post COVID, my personal plan is to work toward some form of ranked choice voting in my state. Voters are reluctant to vote for third parties out of fear they will be throwing their vote away. Ranked choice voting removes that obstacle.

Right now, political compromise is dead at the federal level. If third parties won enough votes in Congress such that no parties had a majority, the major parties would have to go beyond playing to their respective bases and compromise in order to get the votes off the third parties.

Not going to happen overnight. But as long as both parties can bet on playing to their respective bases to win it all, I don’t see the current situation getting any better.

By the way, this will likely mean I’ll be working along side libertarians, with whom I have serious political agreements. But while I can’t see voting for a libertarian candidate, I think libertarians should be able to vote for their candidate without fear of casting a meaningless vote.

Yeah, I would have a difficult time working with Libertarians. There are aspects of their philosophy that I like, however, at least for strategic reasons. I think an aversion to legislating on matters of personal conscience in areas of substantive disagreement is good, for example. Other than that, it has become such a haven of sociopathic selfishness and disconnection from reality that I doubt I could stomach a fair portion of the people I would be forced to interact with.