he didn't win anything
Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
791–800 of 1001 posts
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#792OK, so the transition from Make America Great Again slogan to Make America Decent Again (and Better) reality is inevitable and welcome. It is easy to get overjoyed by results of the U.S. Presidential Election (and some celebration certainly is in order). Uniting the country is definitely a commendable goal, though it is easier said than done. The election results across all levels clearly illustrate just how divided…
Please don't assume that 'one side' has the unilateral moral authority to 'make things better and less divided'. This implication directly contradicts the part about 'unity'. 'One side' having the run of the system will absolutely lead to greater divisions. Trump is gone, I think most reasonable people will take solace in that. Now that he is gone, having regular checks and balances is a 'good thing'. Having the 'oth…
It's hard for Senators to break ranks if bills are never brought to a vote.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#793Most people (in this election) are more voting against something they hate rather than for something they actually like and want.
Agreed, but what other choice was there given the system?
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#794The country may be divided. But those divisions are manufactured and exacerbated over the last 4 years by a made-for-TV president. I couldn't help but think, in looking at various TV news channels this past week, that this is all sport. Big numbers on the score board and the play-by-play constantly flashing on the screens. We're the spectators, and the politicians are players on the field. Trump played the field bett…
To extend your analogy, the players on the field only have so much they can do--Trump included. Might be worth asking who is in the owner's box, who is betting on the game, and why are we in the stands cheering so aggressively for either side in the first place.
With Trump out in January, I hope more people are critical and skeptical of the various institutions in our country that wield the actual power. For a more in depth analysis, would highly recommend Glenn Greenwald's take: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/no-matter-the-liberal-metri...
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#795OK, so the transition from Make America Great Again slogan to Make America Decent Again (and Better) reality is inevitable and welcome. It is easy to get overjoyed by results of the U.S. Presidential Election (and some celebration certainly is in order). Uniting the country is definitely a commendable goal, though it is easier said than done. The election results across all levels clearly illustrate just how divided…
Generally I agree with your statement here. But realize you said “we need to find common ground” then went on to say the dems need total control to progress their agenda. These conflict. This attitude is a reason for the division, and are just plain one sided. If you wanted common grounds you’d want the two parties to work together, not one have total control of the entire gov.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#796One of the things this election, and the last four years, has shown me, is the impact of technology on our political discourse. It hasn't been a "good" insight. Federal Election records indicate that the leadership of technology companies overwhelmingly supported a set of values that their employees appear to just as overwhelmingly reject. That dissonance is really quite remarkable. I see one of the fundamental chall…
All of the self driving car research will eventually be used to make self-driving tanks and other automated weapons of war. All technological innovation ends up being used for war eventually; it's just a question of whether the military or the public gets to use it first.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#797OK, so the transition from Make America Great Again slogan to Make America Decent Again (and Better) reality is inevitable and welcome. It is easy to get overjoyed by results of the U.S. Presidential Election (and some celebration certainly is in order). Uniting the country is definitely a commendable goal, though it is easier said than done. The election results across all levels clearly illustrate just how divided…
Generally I agree with your statement here. But realize you said “we need to find common ground” then went on to say the dems need total control to progress their agenda. These conflict. This attitude is a reason for the division, and are just plain one sided. If you wanted common grounds you’d want the two parties to work together, not one have total control of the entire gov.
Well, let me literally reproduce my other comment in this thread, which was a reply to another person. It is not that easy to find, so, for your convenience, I'm reposting it below. While it talks about "checks and balances" point, I think that exactly the same argument can be made about "common ground". I hope that it makes sense to you.
As for your argument on checks and balances - yes, generally, it is definitely a very good thing. However, when one side uses their position of chamber majority not to collaborate and compromise, but to throw a wrench into "wheels of democracy" and gridlock the Congress (especially, considering the voting record of the current majority in the Senate and essentially zero breaking ranks history), which might be extremely unproductive and even damaging to the lives of the American people, that IMO does not represent the "checks and balances" that you're talking about.
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#798On the data nerd side I continue to be shocked at how people misinterpret the certainty of polls/forecasts. Forecasts give us probability distributions based on historical polling error data. Not infallible predictions the expected value will 100% happen. It’s fairly revealing of society’s general innumeracy, just as it was 4 years ago when Trump won.
But the polls then and now weren’t just bad, they were shockingly bad and not representative of any real population that matters in an election. I’d expect something like this from junior engineers looking at metrics for the first time, but these are supposedly the most respective organizations in their field that have failed spectacularly for the second presidential election in a row. What value do they possibly ser…
Nate Silver gave Biden a 90% chance of winning, citing 3-4 tossup and 3-4 likely states. I don't see how his predictions don't look reasonable. Silver gave Trump a 27% last election - that's a very reachable percentage . Polls have considerable margin for error. It's standard for people to take a poll result as an absolute prediction and then rail against any error but that's not the fault of the poll itself. [2]
[1]https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
[2]https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-pollsters-have-cha...
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#799For me the bottomline of the Trump administration is that he has started zero new wars, sparing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. As an outsider I hope that the US will not go back to its foreign military interventions.
Would it reassure you to know that the foreign military interventions never actually stopped? https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/trump-yemen-war-civilian...
Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
#800The country may be divided. But those divisions are manufactured and exacerbated over the last 4 years by a made-for-TV president. I couldn't help but think, in looking at various TV news channels this past week, that this is all sport. Big numbers on the score board and the play-by-play constantly flashing on the screens. We're the spectators, and the politicians are players on the field. Trump played the field bett…
What division? Nobody I know, in person, goes to protests or stops talking to each other because of how they vote. I literally mean nobody. No division. The most extreme is that some people I know cry when an election doesn’t go their way and then their friends make fun of them.
Division is a perception created by keyboard warriors and news that needs something to report on and the rest of us find crazy people entertaining. If you turn the news off and step away from social media the artificial insanity goes away.
I do understand some major metros have witnessed massive protests this year with large scale property destruction. From the outside looking in it looks like communities with a lack of diversity and severe economic stratification. I say that because I live in a major metro that experienced none of that insanity and this major city is either or about to be the most diverse major US city and is very healthy economically.