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Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

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Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#841

For a site full of engineers I'm surprised to see the discussion center on partisan politics, talking points, unsourced claims and demands for sources, bickering over every detail, when what I'd want to talk about among technical people is the fact that Biden hasn't actually won, based on the rules of the system. He claimed he won. So did Trump. Neither are backed by anything tangible, yet. It looks like the PA AG ha…

Engineers are dumb as hell in a lot of ways dude. Also the sun could blow up tomorrow and boy then we would all look stupid!

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#842

My biggest concern is how seemingly so many conservative people are becoming huge conspiracy theorists. I don't mean normal conspiracy theories like there being something more behind the JFK assassination, but like QAnon, Bill Gates injecting people with microchips, Pizzagate, etc. A lot of people in my own family in a rather backwards state believe that stuff. It's making me completely lose faith in this country and…

A well intentioned question: in your view, were the various conspiracy theories about Barack Obama that went variously unopposed, weakly opposed, or openly embraced by mainstream conservatives depending on who you asked, "normal" conspiracies or crazy conspiracies?

People who believe Obama was born in Kenya, who believe George Soros funds every leftist cause on the planet, or... you know the stuff... are believing things that are both nutty and really obviously false. Is that stuff really any less nutty than the QAnon stuff?

I guess I feel like that maximum level of craziness isn't really new.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#843
The division was created by all the media (social included) manipulation of reality perception. I bet that in 2016 a much higher percentage of votes were against Hillary. In 2020 the "against" was very likely higher. Division will likely keep increasing as everybody's media feeds become more and more tailored to the individual looking at them

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#844

There's a famous optical illusion with a spinning silhouette of a dancer. When you look at it, you'll swear it's spinning in one direction -- say, counter-clockwise. In fact, you'll be so sure it's spinning counter-clockwise, that the idea it could be spinning in the opposite direction will seem impossible to you. But if you stare at it long enough, and intently enough, you can make it spin the other way. I've notice…

Growing up in a country where I was in the ethnic majority, I went through a period of right-wing political bent as a teenager. Then I came to the US, where I found myself in the minority and leaning left. So I feel that I have some personal insight into the mindset that pushes people right. But... maybe it’s that my past right-leaning self was a teenager with half-baked ideas about the world, when I reflect on what drove me that way, I cannot point to any coherent, constructive thought, mostly feelings of entitlement and an unwillingness to put myself in the other’s shoes. And that’s what I see in the right-wing of today in the US. I guess I empathize with their fear and anger better because of my experience, but I don’t buy that their arguments are just a “different” way of looking at the world; a narrower, myopic way, maybe.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#845
When you look at countries that are unified and act as a cohesive state such as Switzerland, Korea, Norway, or Singapore, what they have in common is culture.

Los Angeles is nothing like Wichita. Beverly Hills is nothing like Miami. Multiculturalism produces many great subjects such as art, food, music, dance, poetry and great looking kids. But with amazing advantages comes equal disadvantages. These include racial tensions, religious tensions, political tensions, and gender identity strife.

Biden will probably fail at unifying our country though I hope not. How do you unify those who appreciate civil war monuments and "Dukes of Hazard" reruns with BLM supporters and Cardi B music videos?

The only way the United states would come together would be by way of a terrible unifying threat that scares the hell out of the nation or a "Grand White Swan" payout like universal basic income.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#846
Here is a simplifying view: In the US there are some people, less than 1% of the voting population, who have a lot of power and control of a lot of money and are looking to the political system to make more money.

This less than 1% do disagree among themselves, and that disagreement is the fundamental source of essentially all the political fighting.

For the other 99+%, there isn't much to fight about.

What the other 99+% want can be summarized in one word -- more. For more detail, they want the two biggies, peace and prosperity. For more, they want "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", financial and emotional security, love, home and family, good health, happy, successful children. There's not a lot to fight about there.

So, again, the fighting is from the less than 1% who want to use their money and power to get more money.

Of course, way more than 1% of the voting population are highly concerned about politics, are fighting, but, sorry, guys, they are foot soldiers, pawns, for the less than 1%.

As an example, let's take one of the issues, say, health care. Glancing at history, US health care has come a long way since the lone country doctor with a one horse carriage. In terms of current US medicine, he was not very good. Point: Health care has changed a lot and is still changing, rapidly. So, what solution we come up with should accommodate such change.

Health care can be really expensive, and we need a solution for that. We need in some sense to level out the costs, make them predictable. Ways have been private medical insurance, health care membership organizations, and government provided health care.

So, here are the main concerns: Private health insurance is too expensive for a major fraction of the population, so those people look to other options. Then for the other options, concerns are quality of care (it might be too cheap and not very good -- loved ones could die), waiting times, and big tax increases. Point: These are all issues, but some examples can show that we should be able to do quite well on all the issues of quality, waiting times, costs, etc., well enough that we should not have much to fight about.

And there has been the issue of private insurance and "pre-existing" conditions. We can all agree that it would be nice for private insurance companies to ignore such data, conditions. And the richer US states did have laws forcing the insurance companies to so ignore. But maybe now the US is wealthy enough to so ignore for everyone. Hopefully. So, we can all agree or nearly so. Not much to fight about.

So, what is the cause of the the fighting? With some approaches and situations, for less than 1% of the voting population, there is or can be a lot of money involved, or a lot of power and then a lot of money.

My view is that we can go down the list of main political topics and conclude the same -- for 99+% of the voters, there's not much to fight about except some people, less than 1%, want to fight to make money, big money.

But for various policies, operations, programs, etc., it really is possible just to make a mess, to create waste. At least the 99+% can be against the waste!

E.g., for the $trilions W and Obama spent on Gulf War II, was that from (a) people who were in line to make money from the effort or (b) just waste? I'd say, some of (a) but mostly (b). Point: Not all the issues are about the less than 1% seeking money and, instead, there can also be ordinary waste.

Bottom line: The 99% should throttle the less than 1%, settle differences, and get on with life.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#847

There's a famous optical illusion with a spinning silhouette of a dancer. When you look at it, you'll swear it's spinning in one direction -- say, counter-clockwise. In fact, you'll be so sure it's spinning counter-clockwise, that the idea it could be spinning in the opposite direction will seem impossible to you. But if you stare at it long enough, and intently enough, you can make it spin the other way. I've notice…

Makes me think of San Francisco Bay Area politics, where progressives have become so progressive that they in one breath say that all minorities should be accepted and that the environment is precious, but in the next espouse policies and weaponize environmental legislation to prevent immigrants from entering while simultaneously destroying the environment, as though there's no internal contradiction in those actions.

It's like people don't recognize what they truly think and do, but instead imagine themselves as a reflection of some ideological group they associate with and apply that image to their ultimately selfish motivations.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#848

There's a famous optical illusion with a spinning silhouette of a dancer. When you look at it, you'll swear it's spinning in one direction -- say, counter-clockwise. In fact, you'll be so sure it's spinning counter-clockwise, that the idea it could be spinning in the opposite direction will seem impossible to you. But if you stare at it long enough, and intently enough, you can make it spin the other way. I've notice…

I personally find it hard to look at the right as anything but poison.

I can disagree with you on economic ideologies, I can disagree with you on military spending, how to treat the drug epidemic, how to solve the incarceration problem, etc. However when one side literally empowers those that executed my family in WW2, it is no longer a disagreement, but a fight for my life.

Re: Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

#849

What is really keeping me up at night is the existential problem the US faces for the next 50 years: the ever increasingly large divide that is the polarizing of the electorate. We have to come together as Americans or someone will divide and conquer us.

I feel like a big reason for the divide is the filter bubbles[1] the public has trapped themselves in. I wanted to force myself to read news from both sides of the divide rather than simply NPR, which was my go-to source for several years. In spite of RSS readers being essentially dead, there are still RSS feeds available. So I mashed up feeds from 10 left and right leaning sources each and created Smash the Bubble[2…

nice website friend. it'd be nice if i could see which domain you're taking the article from without having to hover over the link
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