• prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    Good luck trying to get an American conservative to understand what the second map represents. I means shit, they refuse to grasp the concept of “per capita” because they know it makes them look bad.

    • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      gasp Are you suggesting, good sir, that republiQans may in fact not be arguing a particular point in good faith???

      NO! I cannot believe it.

    • niktemadur@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I can hear their goddamned chants…

      Every square yard counts!
      Every square yard counts!

      When it suits them. That is basically how it does work, to their benefit. If it benefitted Democrats, well then… “that’s entirely different, see?”, they’d be screaming to high heaven at the “unfair librul conspiracy to take over the government!”

        • Gork@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          Trump comes up with the strangest lines, I swear.

          Despite the constant negative press covfefe

          It was a Perfect phone call

          We’re going to win bigly

  • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    Why don’t the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?

    Americans seem to have forgotten about federalism. You don’t need the same laws governing all 340 million of you.

    The EU is a patchwork of rights for example. Poland doesn’t have marriage equality and only permits abortions in case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother. The Netherlands has marriage equality and abortions on demand up to 24 weeks. The union is not endangered by this.

    Hell, Canada does federalism better than you, with a relatively weak federal government that needs to be always consulting with the provinces. Provinces retain much of the income-tax revenue and get to experiment much more meaningfully with different policy mixes, under a multi-party system.

    • Emerald@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?

      Because there will be a lot of people in those areas who are not happy living under an ancap dystopia. Those states may even try to trap them there like Texas wants to do.

      Imagine a couple moved to one of these ancap dystopias and have a kid. That kid turns out to be a big leftist and they hate not having rights.

      We can’t just forget about the other states and only care about some. At that point, you can consider the United States to have fallen.

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        So long as there is free movement of people and basic democracy, if people hate it they can leave it or change it.

        • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          That also supposes that everyone can afford to move to somewhere they would like to be. There’s a reason the right wants people to stay where they are regardless of political affiliation. Those states tend to be full of poor folks living where they can afford to live. Not everyone has the privilege of living in a place that treats them they way they’d like to be treated.

          • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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            4 months ago

            No, I said freedom of movement AND basic democracy. It assumes that people have enough democratic rights that they can organize to change the laws in their own community.

            It is a truism that oppression exists and that it affects exactly the people who can’t escape it. There are no shortcuts to freedom unfortunately. The American solution has been that some external authority, the federal government comes and resolves this. For the big things, slavery, apartheid, I get it. But for things below the threshold of crimes against humanity, it becomes trickier because then control of the Big Saviour starts being a critical battleground, it can turn into the Big Oppressor, and basically you might end up with the unworkable federalism you currently have.

    • bonus_crab@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      That was the ideal, but every ounce of freedom given to the south has been used to torment the vulnerable, so they kept losing supreme court cases and having amendments added to the constition that give the federal govt. more power because its needed their state governments from being evil.

      See slavery, the black codes, jim crow laws, womens rights, religious freedom, environmental protectionism, coal mining in appalaicha, etc.

      You still cant hold office in 7 states in the south if youre an athiest btw.

    • مهما طال الليل@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Why don’t the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?

      If we assume that the Democratic Party actually wants to do good and not just what their donors want. They still have to contend with a Senate that’s is biased towards the empty states, and even the House of Representatives is somewhat biased but not as bad.

      Now if the Blue States (or even Counties) form some kind of union to transcend the USA, things might begin to happen.

      The EU is a patchwork of rights for example

      The EU is a confederacy. It has a much weaker central government and much stronger states. The US could go back to a confederacy model.

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        What’s stopping California or Vermont or whatever from enacting state-level Universal Health Insurance programs or free university or whatever else?

        • مهما طال الليل@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          The Commerce Clause is one often cited by conservatives. I am not a lawyer but if they can abuse it you bet they will even if that’s not what it was meant for.

          • bastion@feddit.nl
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            4 months ago

            The commerce clause doesn’t apply to in-state systems unless they interact with a foreign nation, native tribe, or another state.

            What kind of abuse is even possible here?

            • مهما طال الليل@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              I saw it brought up against states setting their own emission standards. I don’t agree with it but it is something I have seen them argue.

  • PunnyName@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    This country was founded on the idea that land is power and land owners get to vote.

    We need to change that. Peacefully first. But if that doesn’t work…peaceful protesting only works for so long.

  • evidences@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I doubt anyone will disagree with me but “look at how red this map is” is the stupidest arguement.

    Last year after ana election my dad reposted a map on Facebook like this but for the single issue on our states ballot. The comment from the original poster was something like liberal cities decided this all counties need representation. Of course the counties that weren’t blue were mostly populated by cows.

    But like seriously this was a direct popular vote on a single issue you can’t get a more representative election than that one.

  • Fisherman75@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    What’s the medium sized red dot just north of LA? I live around there and it makes sense but there’s a lot of small-ish towns around here and I don’t know what it represents. What population patterns do these dots represent? I’m guessing the red dot is either Visalia, Tulare County, San Joaquin Valley in general, or Fresno.

    • ylph@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The dots are counties - the largest red one above LA is Kern county - Tulare county is the smaller red dot above it to the right

      This is a clearer version of that map. The other two much smaller red dots above LA are Kings and Inyo counties - this map is based on 2016 presidential results, as Inyo went blue in 2020 (by only 14 votes though)

  • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Who’s read an argument that’s something like “if we change this, then elections will always go blue, and red areas will feel unheard and _____”

    It’s argued the blank is something bad but I can’t recall what it was 🤷‍♂️ IDK if it was civil war/secession bad or what

    • مهما طال الليل@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      I remember a coworker from Utah once telling me that farmers are the most disadvantaged minority or something. Basically his argument was it is better that rural areas get more representation and people in the cities don’t need to be represented as much. For him it was an easy argument to make since it is the status quo and serves his interests.

      The people who want to change things are who need to come up with either strong arguments to win public opinion or increasingly evident win their rights by direct action. No one who benefits from the current system will give up anything.

  • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Issue with this (because of first past the post) there are still a significant number of people voting the opposite way of who wins in their electorate, for the most part.

    • Crowfiend@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      As others have said, yes it is. Unfortunately it’s also a strong representation of how the voting process operates in the US. At the local level (towns and cities), individual votes matter. However, for something like the presidential election (for example), then the votes are averaged by county and state.

      So what happens is everyone from a county votes, and if that county is more of one side than the other, that entire county is “voting x/y”. Then the counties across the state are compared, and that state is declared as “voting” for either side. Then nationally, each state is counted as either/or, so even if the more populated cities vote one way, if enough of the rural population votes the other way, the rural side wins, and the urban side loses.

      It’s almost as if the system urgently needs reform. Too bad the powers in charge of that were elected specifically because of it.