this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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"saving democracy" tho; lol. if he wanted to do that, why the fuck is he running again?
edit: that feels more like 'dangling democracy over a trumpian abyss to jack off his own geriatric ego'.
He's certainly not destroying it.
Oh, yes, the only two options. Death or life support. No way to improve it.
How could someone improve democracy and who would it be?
Edit: weird that I would be down voted for asking who and how to improve democracy.
Okay, while I think the other person's complaints are unreasonable and dishonest, I really need to answer this sincerely, because it's genuinely important that people understand.
Ways that American democracy can be improved:
Eliminating lobbyists
Capping how much money can be spent on political campaigns
Capping individual donation sizes
Capping donation frequency
Implementing a cardinal or ordinal voting system (such as approval or single transferable vote)
Making voting more accessible
Removing the possibility of gerrymandering
Outlawing political parties
Making voting mandatory
Several other things who's scope mean they probably don't count (like better education, which would help citizens perform democracy better, but also clearly falls outside the scope of the list) or that I am otherwise forgetting.
Edit:formatting.
Edit2: I never intended to answer "who" because that question doesn't have a single answer; the president can't do those things, and it's silly to expect them to.
Unfortunately, I don’t see how any president can do any of those. The best he can do is appoint competent justices and try to persuade Congress
So in this case, expand the Supreme Court? And at least mention these issues at all?
Correct; the president can't do those things, hence why the other commentor's complaints didn't make sense. I was answering the question of how.
Then why is Biden being credited with SAVING DEMOCRACY?
Personally, I don't credit him with "saving democracy" however, putting Trump in the White House would endanger democracy as an institution because his faction would have enough control to implement their will without being checked.
You didn't answer who. Who is so much better than Biden that they would be able to do all of this.
Despite his age, Bernie Sanders is still the most qualified person to be president. He would get more done and made election reform a focus of his campaigns.
I love Sanders but he couldn't do all of that. He also supports Ukraine but is willing to sacrifice Ukrainians and Ukraine territory in a squabble over money to support Ukraine. This weakens democracy and strengthens Putin's resolve to continue plowing through Ukraine.
Remember how I said the other commentor's complaints didn't make sense?
So are you saying there isn't someone who could do all of that?
Yes; of course there isn't. It requires a movement, not a person. Every election season I am baffled by how everyone is willing to blame or credit the president for literally everything. You asked how, and I answered. That was the entire scope of my comment.
Does that translate into not voting in this upcoming election?
No. Why would it?
Who would you vote for?
Biden, because that gives us the least damaging distribution of future world-states.
Not only did they not answer the question of "who", they instead listed off a wish list of things no president is able to do unilaterally. Like, those are all good things, but blaming the current incumbent / candidate for not doing those is a completely ignorant take (if not intentionally moving the goalposts).
We need better civics lessons both in K-12 and maybe some kind of adult education classes.
Too many people's expectations of our government are way too high. We can't even feed hungry children in school, how are we going to outlaw lobbying?
Because they need to be in the opposite order. If we can't outlaw lobbying, then lobbyists will simply pay to undo the school lunches.
This is usually met with appeals to emotion - "how dare you sacrifice children, my child will starve to death tomorrow if you don't trade everyone's representation".
The only unilateral goal in the meme was destroying "democracy" because Trump instigated January 6th. Everything else was a goal that required bipartisan support.
https://daily.jstor.org/lawrence-lessig-how-to-repair-our-democracy/
Great, a usual list of improvements but you didn't answer who. Who will be so much better than Biden and would accomplish this?
Lawrence Lessig...
The problem isn't that we don't have solutions. The problem is that, collectively, we don't have the will to implement them. It's like effective Climate Change policy or Covid policies. At best, we're getting half measures because people rather have their popcorn and circuses than saving their children. Biden doesn't represent a solution, he represents a theater of a solution.
He isn't running.
he's keeping anyone else from saving it. anyone whose chances are more than ’questionable'.
How is he not saving it from Trump?
he's the worst dipshit that could be running here, sucking up all the support for the smallest permissible 'better', when you have enough bipartisan issues to get support from both the left and sane-right if you ran anyone else. biden is not defending democracy; he's dangling it over a cliff with Donald trump at the bottom.
Neirher West nor Stein would do anything different. In fact both of them want to give in to Putin and weaken democracy world wide. Who could do it better?
anyone. else. literally anyone on my block, including many of the pets.
and if 'west' and 'stein' wouldn't do anything different than biden, they're shit too. your whole argument is that the entire democratic party is worthless, that none of them have any virtue to counter trump, just the exact same calculated amount of vice less, the smallest amount so we can say they're not quite the same, following them down the intellectual lacuna, using them as a wind break?
that seems like a party I'm literally never going to vote for.
Then who? Do you have any specific person in mind?
anyone else! is al gore still alive? Michelle Obama? Bernard sanders? my roommate? my roommate's dog? any school aged child?
would be better than either of these two.
Those people are not running and Bernie is playing penny pincher with Ukraine aid which strengthens Putin which weakens democracy world wide. Since they are not running does that translate into not voting in this election?
nobody else is running because biden's hogging the stage.
you know, I could handle a few bad policies from Sanders in return for stopping the world war Joe biden us so eagerly rushing towards and getting healthcare, maybe reinstating the epa.
Sanders would further a world war by pushing for peace with Putin while he is winning which means he gets what he wants and then will just treat this treaty like all the others...a break so he can build up for the next invasion. Ukraine has to be able to defend itself and push Putin back or this just all happens again in a few years and be even worse. God forbid he weakens NATO which just proliferates nuclear weapons by weakening the U.S. nuclear shield forcing European countries to get nukes themselves.
notice youre completely not mentioning any other conflict. cool.
Doesn't matter if his behavior in any one conflict leads to a world war.