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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.

#441

Post by binthere »

OJFord wrote: post #426

> Kamala Harris also made history as the first Black woman to become vice president, an achievement that comes as the U.S. faces a reckoning on racial justice. The California senator, who is also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government, four years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Can someone explain that last senten…

You are slicing her up not the article. It is simply stating that no woman has ever achieved a ranking as high as she did and it also happens to be a woman of color. I don't think it's that hard to understand, is it? Also, this is indeed significant because it puts hope to so many woman and woman of color that they can achieve it too and not be afraid of be who they are in America.

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

#442

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#443

Post by ehejsbbejsk »

softwaredoug wrote: post #81

On 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.

I am pretty certain Facebook has the data to crunch very accurate predictions in elections large and small.

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

#444

Post by sova »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #411

To me what this election (as well as the 2016 election) illustrates, is what a poor set of choices we have had. In no sane world should it have been difficult for the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump in 2016. He had no history in political office, and he lost the popular vote to just about the worst candidate the Democrats could have put up. Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton t…

Score Voting is the solution -- give candidates a score from 0-99 and take the highest average score. Works great to decide Olympian Gold/Silver/Bronze medalists. Plus, no vote is wasted, and bicameralism is transcended.

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

#445

Post by leftyted »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #411

To me what this election (as well as the 2016 election) illustrates, is what a poor set of choices we have had. In no sane world should it have been difficult for the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump in 2016. He had no history in political office, and he lost the popular vote to just about the worst candidate the Democrats could have put up. Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton t…

> Likewise this time around, nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits. They voted for him because he's not Donald Trump.

Yeah, same here, but that's because we live in progressive bubbles. Dem voters chose Biden over many other candidates that progressives preferred.

> We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there.

You cannot imagine someone actually liking Biden without being soft in the head. And other people cannot imagine someone liking Trump without being racist. But these assumptions prove nothing except lack of imagination.

People need to understand how heterogenous the US is...in every way. We have to regain the ability to see the world from other people's perspectives and extract the grain of truth from those perspectives.

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

#448

Post by polynomial »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #411

To me what this election (as well as the 2016 election) illustrates, is what a poor set of choices we have had. In no sane world should it have been difficult for the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump in 2016. He had no history in political office, and he lost the popular vote to just about the worst candidate the Democrats could have put up. Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton t…

I've had people literally tell me they didn't care if it was Hitler, they would vote for him over Trump.

And they're weren't making a joke, they were dead serious.

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

#449

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

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…

Yeah, there's a lot of really dumb straw-manning going on.

A good phrase I ran into is "strategic empathy". Like Sun Tzu teaches:

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

Sadly, humans seem allergic to this kind of thinking. As Orwell writes in "Notes on Nationalism":

"The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also – since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself – unshakeably certain of being in the right."

The smart (if mistaken) reasons to vote Trump were always trade and the Democratic Party's abandonment of Labor.

And Republicans, on the other hand, who think Biden is a socialist are delusional.

It's possible, though, that people aren't as dumb as they seem. For an individual, pretending not to empathize with the opposition is probably safer in a tribalized society. So perhaps that's what we're really witnessing.

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

#450

Post by Ataraxy »

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…

It's probably because so called centrists don't stand for much of anything beyond trying to gain a social edge by pretending they're above it all when they aren't. It's an excuse to attempt to distill belief systems into a very narrow point of view precisely like you've described with the whole "only reason" nonsense. I'd really appreciate it if one could describe why they consider themselves one since it's totally meaningless to me when someone self identifies as a centrist.

Just like in marketing it's all about how you frame a question to a person. Realistically most people share common beliefs at the fundamental level in what they want to see out of the power structures in our society. In other words, the vast majority of people in this country want to improve upon their material conditions. The rest of the circlejerk is just grifting.

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