Comment on Humans, I tell you
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 2 days ago
Look at the post-Watergate era. Even people who truly hated Nixon, like Hunter Thompson, were content to let him rot after he resigned.
Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan, Roger Ailes, and the Right looked at all of Nixon’s mistakes and determined to avoid them in the future.
The free press was Nixon’s biggest enemy and Reagan started killing it as soon as he got in.
kingofras@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s almost like you can’t endlessly keep updating your DemocracyOS. The more ‘vulnerability patches’ you install, the more sluggish it gets until eventually you realise you got to throw the whole thing out and buy new hardware and switch to Linux.
It’s the very annoying human (animal?) trait of: we rest during peace time, which includes our vigilance sadly. And that is very thing that leads us back to wartime.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’d argue the exact opposite.
The civil war kicked off after the second longest pause to constitutional amendments in history, only topped by the current one.
Just like any other system, you need to keep security patches coming or else malicious actors will step in an wreck everything.
kingofras@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The civil war is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the usa. It didn’t kick off, and it was never truly over.
It’s a fundamental difference in ideology but somehow they wanted to continue as one nation rather than 2. It’s why there’s a 2 party system, where one party is called “the democrats” — in a democracy!
The 2 party system is the muted continuation of the war, and they are having one last good go at pressing all the buttons in the control room.
In a struggle between 2 ideological parties, the most fundamentalist and amoral ones tend to be more successful for the same reason the jihadists have so much control over the Middle East. One lives for the cause, while the other just wants to live life.
Tldr; no amount of patching can ragdoll something like the usa. Only when you see a nation that ideologically divided would you name it The United States.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Can I have some of whatever you’re smoking?
Two party systems are a consequence of something called Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, specifically as applied to First Past the Post voting. Which is technically Duverger’s Law
If you want a video instead, this one is a classic.
The names of things rarely have any actual meaning behind them, especially not political names, which were originally chosen to make people think they were patriotic for supporting said party. Or are chosen by the opposition.
But yes, the tensions that caused the war did exist before the shots were fired, that’s how civil wars work. And yes, reconstruction was halted and reversed by Johnson.
But the TLDR, being a defeatist is worse than useless, work towards a better tomorrow today. Also, civil wars, the kind with neighbors shooting neighbors and all, are fucking nightmares. Don’t try to start it all early, it will come all too soon on its own, the fascists will make sure of it.