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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.

#431

Post by gigatexal »

gnopgnip wrote: post #421
gigatexal wrote: post #138

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.

By what measure is the US more divided than in the past?

Oh I dunno: murder of minorities by cops, vilifying an entire nation (Mexico and all the build the wall talk), increasing protests, blatant racism, nationalism being ever more accepted, to name a few.

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

#432

Post by lreeves »

Grakel wrote: post #343

The media doesn't have a role in declaring victory in elections.

The media in this case is using approximately grade 6 math skills to tally up electoral college votes and declare that beyond most reasonable doubt Biden won. I think you're overestimating what their role is here. They were also very cautious and could have made a declaration earlier than they did.

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

#434

Post by austincheney »

Nesco wrote: post #408

Personally I think we are watching the slow death of the USA. May be from France I am not getting all the subtle details about the situation on the ground but the country seems to be completely divided. There is almost nothing now that holds America coherent as a country. It has too much variance to form a sensible cluster. It went from a basically almost racially homogeneous, English speaking, Christian - with a lot…

Most of the country is not divided at all. There are differences of opinion sure, but not some kind of epic division. The media likes to focus on the extremes because they make the most noise and say the craziest things.

Democrat representatives recently voiced an analysis that the crazy extreme minority of the party cost them seats in the House because the majority of voters don't want extremes or crazy.

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

#435

Post by Ygg2 »

deftnerd wrote: post #179

I've always felt that the Trump presidency served as an effective form of "Chaos Engineering". Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered. The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to ma…

Chaos Engineering only works if the next administration is willing to work on the underlying problems, rather than just preventing next Chaos Monkey event.

E.g. imagine after using Chaos Monkey to demonstrate the flaws in structure, instead you just fire the people that made it in the first place.

I'm not holding my breath for that one. Lot of Dems campaign sponsors don't want to fix those issues.

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

#436

Post by akudha »

deftnerd wrote: post #179

I've always felt that the Trump presidency served as an effective form of "Chaos Engineering". Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered. The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to ma…

Indeed.

He was completely incompetent in everything he tried to do. Imagine how bad it would be, if he was actually competent. There is a good chance someone exactly like him can come along in the future, except more competent - that is scary to think about

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

#437

Post by throw0101a »

bfieidhbrjr wrote: post #224

It's amazing. My friends on the left think the only reason for voting trump is racism, and friends on the right think the only reason for voting biden is socialism. Where did all the intellect go? The social dilemma documentary I think is very useful. It feels like social media bubbles are a large component, although of course there have been many contentious elections in the past. Being centrist I can relate to part…

> My friends on the left think the only reason for voting trump is racism […]

While saying the "only" reason is too strong, there have a number of studies showing it was a key factor:

* https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096518000367

* https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0002716218811309

* https://doi.org/10.1086/700001

* https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2018.1441844

* https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2017.1378296

* https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfx048

* PDF: http://acme.highpoint.edu/~msetzler/Why_Did_Women_Vote_for_D...

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

#438

Post by weaksauce »

deftnerd wrote: post #179

I've always felt that the Trump presidency served as an effective form of "Chaos Engineering". Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered. The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to ma…

unfortunately unless we fix the ills that he exposed those that want to exploit it will be far more competent at enabling fascism.

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

#439

Post by JulianMorrison »

deftnerd wrote: post #179

I've always felt that the Trump presidency served as an effective form of "Chaos Engineering". Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered. The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to ma…

Okay, but... next time, please do not give Chaos Monkey the nuclear launch codes?

I believe it genuinely was touch and go a few times there.

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

#440

Post by justin66 »

deftnerd wrote: post #179

I've always felt that the Trump presidency served as an effective form of "Chaos Engineering". Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered. The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to ma…

> Regardless of your views of Trump's politics, his administration and method of leadership has exposed a lot of flaws in how our government has been designed and engineered.

> The postmortem of the last 4 years should be analyzed deeply in order to identify the weak points in the infrastructure of our government in order to make improvements.

In many cases a thoughtful analysis will reveal that the "flaw" that was exposed was that a particular function of government required good people being elected and good people being appointed. In those cases it might be a mistake to attempt to update the design or structure of government, when the solution is a lot simpler.

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