English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

03:00

If you don't want your vote "thrown away", then you always vote for Putin. Everybody knows that.

The smaller the district, the greater the diversity.

The greater the district, the lesser the diversity.

Just add a 0 if you prefer math that way: 5,380 districts, one representative each. Wouldn't that be the most awesome thing!

Multiply by 9 would work better than by 10 for people who need to count on their fingers using whole numbers only. That way you should just shrink both axes by thirds.

I've kind of run out of things for the Senate to do, I confess.

But hey, they've got the same problem.

Their job is to not get things done.

This is not the way democracy is supposed to work.

alphabet

I blame capitalism for some reason or other.

tchrist

A Constitution whose creation required, and would only be possible with, severely undemocratic compromises indispensable for getting buy-in from the southern slave-lord states, will forever ill serve its people. It's just very hard to fix that basic evil.

@Robusto I had not realized that terrible thing till I pulled up the chart.

Cerberus

@tchrist It would allow for more parties.

However, there is also a mixed system.

Where the total number of seats a party gets must be proportionate to its total votes, but the candidates from the list get seats based on how many votes they got individually.

tchrist

03:16

Would you rather be able to vote for somebody from your own neighborhood?

Cerberus

Alternatively, there can be a system where each seat requires a number of votes (roughly proportional); whenever a candidate doesn't get enough votes, his votes are passed on to someone else on the party's list of candidates.

@tchrist No, but you can have that in a mixed proportional system.

It is not entirely one or the other.

tchrist

Again, the whole party-before-people thing is anathema to our way of thinking.

Cerberus

Do you understand the two mixed systems I laid out?

Maybe my explanation is too compact.

tchrist

There's no reason to have names on the ballot if you don't get to vote for people.

Cerberus

I think we talked about this years ago.

tchrist

03:17

probably

Cerberus

@tchrist Then I must have explained it incorrectly.

tchrist

I really am past my use-by date.

Cerberus

Yeah I am tired as well.

Vikas

@alphabet I have a question. I often read the phrase "registered democrats", "registered republicans". Do you have a system in USA where each voter has to already decide which party he or she has to vote for? So if you are registered republican, does it mean you'd vote for republican candidate only?

tchrist

Well, best-by time.

Cerberus

03:19

@Vikas Voting is secret, so you can always vote for whomever you choose and nobody can compel you to do otherwise.

tchrist

It was a nasty broken-up night last night, and even so I finally threw in the towel and got out of bed at ten to four.

alphabet

@Vikas So: if you want to vote in a party's primary elections, when you register to vote you (usually) need to also register as a member of that party. You do not have to vote for members of that party.

Cerberus

A short night.

tchrist

Because of time stolen while in bed.

Cerberus

Sleep is difficult.

Vikas

03:20

@Cerberus OK. So what's the purpose for registration for a particular party? We do not have such system.

tchrist

I'm usually in bed my now, although not always asleep by now.

@Cerberus STAYING asleep is more difficult than falling asleep.

Vikas

@alphabet Primary elections == Where you decide which candidate would run for President?

tchrist

@Vikas It has to do with the party's lock on power. They control the primary system that drives out moderates and pulls in the crazies.

Cerberus

@tchrist Same for me.

Although going to bed is also difficult psychologically...

alphabet

@Vikas Where you decide which candidate your party should nominate for the presidency.

Vikas

03:22

@Cerberus Ah

tchrist

@Cerberus Dark have been my dreams of late.

alphabet

@Cerberus No. You register as a voter, but (in some states) you have the option of indicating a party affiliation on your voter registration.

tchrist

Sometimes so dark I refuse to return to them after waking with a start.

Cerberus

@tchrist But enlightened by a great eye of fire?

@alphabet Ohh is that what they mean.

Then I always understood incorrectly.

tchrist

:66577406 Here in Colorado anybody can vote in whatever primary they please. They just are only allowed to vote in one of them. I really wish the alternate system had passed, though: top four vote getters advance no matter their party, then for the final vote everybody ranks them all one through four.

alphabet

03:25

@Cerberus Yes. "Registered Democrat" really means you registered as a Democrat, i.e. when you registered to vote you (on the form to register) listed your "party affiliation" as Democrat. You don't have to list any affiliation and you can still vote for either candidate.

tchrist

My primary ballot shows up in two sheets: one red and the other blue. I can only put one of the two, whichever I please, into the envelope.

Vikas

> A state's primary election or caucus is usually an indirect election: instead of voters directly selecting a particular person running for president, they determine the number of delegates a candidate will receive from their respective state for each party's national convention. These delegates then in turn select their party's presidential nominee.

This right?

Mitch

@CowperKettle Chollet is a respectable thinker on intelligence.

tchrist

Yesterday's ballot was the front and back of two big pages long, so like four pages to fill out.

Cerberus

@tchrist Hmm probably slightly better.

alphabet

03:28

The main reason for doing so is that it can be a prerequisite for voting in that party's primary elections. But it's all very complicated and varies between states.

Cerberus

@alphabet But why does that option exist?

tchrist

@Vikas Perhaps. It's confusing.

alphabet

@Vikas Basically, but the primary system varies immensely between states so it's hard to generalize about them. And some states have caucuses rather than primaries, which...OK, this is all very hard to summarize.

Vikas

@alphabet So basically registering for a particular party to vote in Primary is optional?

alphabet

@Cerberus Mostly because it lets the parties ensure that no voters are allowed to vote in multiple parties' primary elections. Otherwise, you could support the Democrats by going to the Democratic primary and voting for the stronger candidate, then going to the Republican primary and voting for the weakest candidate.

Vikas

03:30

@alphabet I got the basic idea.

alphabet

Since you can only register to vote with a single party affiliation, you're forbidden from voting in any other parties' primaries.

But you don't have to register with any party affiliation--you just won't be able to vote in any of the primary races.

Vikas

@alphabet 👍🏽

Cerberus

@alphabet So parties have access to a government register?

alphabet

Actually--I think in Massachusetts unaffiliated voters can vote in primaries.

This is too complicated. I only pretend to understand it.

tchrist

The reason we don't have a third green primary ballot for that party is because all the red–green colorblind men would risk accidentally voting for the wrong party that way. :)

alphabet

03:33

@Cerberus All voter registration information is publicly available, so yes.

Or at least they're available to certain groups.

I forget.

Since this data includes your name and address, parties mostly use it to send you endless advertisements in the mail.

Ok. Here in MA access to the voter file is limited to:

> State party committees, statewide candidate committees, state ballot question committees, the jury commissioner, adjutant general, and any other individual, agency, or entity that the state secretary designates.

Enough people that it's not exactly a closely-guarded secret.

tchrist

More seriously, the dominant trend is to eschew identifying themselves as "being" of some particular partisan orientation. It's become unseemly or unwanted in more than a few circles. Nobody wants to be forced to be a member of either the local Elks Club or the local Rotary Club.

People aren't "joiners" so much anymore.

That includes with the old political parties.

Cerberus

I see.

tchrist

I never did come upon a Trump sign walking around my own neighborhood. I know there are a few registered Republicans scattered about here and there because I look at the street maps of such, but they didn't put up any signs near me. But that's also likely because they also didn't vote that way this time. It's a different demographic (professional-class white people, for the most part).

Cerberus

Wow, people putting up signs for parties.

Here you will occasionally see posters behind windows.

tchrist

Well, they put up signs for people. But one knows who's who.

There's one mixed marriage down the street from me where they only put up signs for local races.

Cerberus

03:42

Maybe signs would even be illegal here.

tchrist

The signs are in the yards.

Cerberus

I don't know.

It just isn't done.

tchrist

They can't be illegal because it's "political speech", but there are often covenants about how many, how big, how long they can remain up.

I think here you can only have two signs in your yard and they have to be down today.

No giant billboards.

But we don't allow billboards at all anywhere in my county. It's nice.

alphabet

@Cerberus We also have problems with people stealing signs of candidates they oppose. As I recall, there was recently a local race where someone's lawn sign kept getting stolen. They put an AirTag on to track it. It turned out it was the candidates opponent himself, going around the neighborhood and stealing all the yard signs of his opponent's supporters.

tchrist

We think it's crass consumerism that detracts from our appreciation of the aesthetics of the world. So we made it illegal.

This is what happens when you let progressives run things.

Cerberus

03:45

@alphabet Hilarious.

@tchrist Good.

Here only billboards rented out by the city council are allowed.

tchrist

@Cerberus It's all part of why "they" hate us so.

Telling them what to do, what not to do.

Cerberus

But they tell others what to do, too?

No abortion, etc.

I suppose that is because of the two-party system.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes but God is on their side, doncha know.

Cerberus

Perfect.

tchrist

So that makes it ok. For them. Not for us.

alphabet

03:47

Is it really a democracy if everyone isn't constantly expressing their political views in the most polemical and annoying ways possible?

tchrist

They are constantly incensed that we outnumber them and therefore get to vote in our things and they don't get to vote in their things.

alphabet

@Cerberus Here's the story about that guy: As Election Day Nears, Yard Signs Disappear

tchrist

Yes-no choices will always be at the mercy of the tyranny of the majority.

Cerberus

@alphabet Oh, I'll believe it.

alphabet

@Cerberus The ones I see usually just have the candidates' names on them. Of course, sometimes people put up signs for other things:

Sep 23 at 5:08, by alphabet

I can't say I have any actual data on this. But here they tend to congregate in the moderately upscale, ultra-progressive suburbs--the kind where everyone puts a "Black Lives Matter" sign on their lawn but 98% of the residents are White.

Cerberus

03:49

@tchrist Less likely with more parties, though.

tchrist

@Cerberus Huh?

> Do you want to make a law against billboards: yes or no.

Fucking parties have nothing to do with it.

Cerberus

If you have more parties, one party won't have a majority, so no tyranny.

alphabet

If you're in a neighborhood where pretty much everyone votes the same way, the sign's purpose is mostly to make your neighbors think better of you.

tchrist

NO it is tyranny of the voters! Not the parties!! Billboard laws have no Republican vs Green versus Democrat verus Libertariat button. All ballot measures are all always YEA or NAY.

So the yes-voters in the majority get their way over the no-voters in the minority.

Cerberus

OK I suppose that can happen with referenda.

tchrist

03:52

Parties don't matter. This is also why the parties despise citizen advanced measures.

Most of the ballot this year was about those type things. Or it felt like it. Lots of verbiage in some of them.

Damn it: Ranked choice rejected nationwide. Idiots. Bastards. Ignorasses. Scheming powermad partisans.

> Ballot measures in Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado all failed easily last night, with voters rejecting similar ranked choice and open primary reforms that proponents argued would create more competitive political races, more choices and more moderate candidates.

Cerberus

Alas.

tchrist

I've heard the no-voters' arguments against it, interviewed after they voted. All were completely ignorant and wrong about what it meant and would mean.

Cerberus

Something similar happened in England some years ago.

alphabet

Ranked choice voting isn't perfect either; it tends to harm moderate candidates: even if you're every voter's second choice, if you're not many people's first choice you still lose.

tchrist

Oh?

That's a shame.

The ambipartisan system defends itself.

> In Missouri, voters approved a constitutional amendment that prohibits ranked choice voting. And Arizona voters turned down a major election overhaul package that included open primaries and ranked choice voting.

think_meaning_builds

03:57

20 million less than 2020.

tchrist

Well what do you expect from the slave lords.

@think_meaning_builds Covid was rough.

alphabet

Here we passed the "make high school diplomas useless" initiative, but not the "raise the minimum wage for tipped workers" one.

Uber riders can unionize. We will not be legalizing shrooms.

tchrist

@think_meaning_builds How long till President Vance?

alphabet

Somebody keep him away from those couches in the Oval Office.

Cerberus

Does Trump have any known health conditions besides obesity?

alphabet

04:03

Brain made out of cheeseburger syndrome.

Did you know that, in one of Trump's books, he invents something called the "Mar-a-Lago Diet" and claims that it will make you lose weight and stay in excellent shape?

Cerberus

That explains it, then.

alphabet

You will be unsurprised to learn that it mainly consists of him saying that you have to eat "the best foods."

Also: he claims that you can lose weight by eating pizza with a fork.

Granted: all the free press coverage he's gotten for his various absurd pronouncements has probably done a lot for his presidential bid.

Cerberus

I still don't get what makes Trump special to his voters, but OK.

He is just a random lowerclass American to me.

alphabet

@Cerberus That's why people find him "relatable."

Same reason they both bragged about being gun owners.

tchrist

@Cerberus Many suspect, with cause, that he has inherited his father's "senile dementia", possibly Alzheimer's, a progressive deterioration which afflicted him at least the last ten years of his life. He still lived till 93 though.

Cerberus

04:14

@alphabet But why not any other random person.

@tchrist Hmmm. That is perhaps not great.

alphabet

@Cerberus What do you mean?

tchrist

@Cerberus It's funny how clear that it is to you but not to so many here. I mean yes, the educated realize he is from the uneducated class, but many do not realize this.

Cerberus

You say he is relatable because he is so common. But a hundred million others should also be relatable. So why did he pop up?

@tchrist What do they then think he is?

tchrist

But his family should not be from the uneducated class. His sister the federal judge clearly was not. His niece the psychologist clearly is not. Yet he himself can somehow barely read. It is strange.

Cerberus

And his parents?

tchrist

04:18

@Cerberus They think he's somehow "upper" class because of his long assembled image of wealth. But money does not make class.

Cerberus

Perhaps his sister and niece emancipated but he did not?

@tchrist Right.

tchrist

@Cerberus I don't know much about his mother. His father was certainly smarter than he is, but that says little. Trump has, or once possessed, a certain kind of know-how that covers up for his gaps, or did for some time.

alphabet

I don't think anyone--not even his supporters--believe that he's "upper class." They believe that he's a rich person who, for some reason, acts like a normal person.

Cerberus

Hmm.

tchrist

Plus remember that most of his "wealth" image is part of the illusion. Not real.

alphabet

04:21

He popped up because he decided to run for president and was unexpectedly good at it.

Cerberus

Just low intelligence and a bad character then?

tchrist

Yes.

Mostly bad character.

alphabet

Trump is, in an objective sense, "educated" in that he graduated from college, which puts him ahead of much of the country and most of his supporters. But pretty much all politicians have, including the insane ones.

tchrist

His intellectual abilities have deteriorated significantly over the past perhaps fifteen years. You can tell by listening to him speak on recordings. He could form coherent sentences and arguments and paragraphs extemporaneously. His active working vocabulary was much larger then, and his syntactic constructions more elaborate. That's all gone now.

alphabet

He acts "lower class," of course. I think this is maybe 50% a deliberate performance and 50% his personality.

tchrist

04:23

James Comey judged him to be of above-average intelligence nearly a decade ago.

But of the lowest possible character.

Now there are other compounding factors that change that picture.

alphabet

But nobody thinks he's upper class; his supporters despise the upper class and it's why they like him.

tchrist

He has zero attention span. None.

alphabet

Granted, the actual upper class--the elite--hasn't done much to earn it any favor in the eyes of the public.

tchrist

How much of that is simple age-related loss, how much is part of his dementia pattern, and how much, heck I dunno, is from his lifetime of disgusting "fast" food poisoning his brain, nobody can say.

Cerberus

Perhaps his mind will deteriorate fast over the next year or so.

tchrist

04:27

I cannot conceive of the beast taking up so much of my brain again for the next four years. I absolutely cannot. I'm in denial.

@Cerberus Hence my question about President Vance.

They'll try to hide it, of course, as even now they do. But it will get out.

alphabet

I think it's been speculated that Reagan's dementia started during his time in office.

tchrist

He's an extremely easy target for manipulation. Not just Putin and Xi but people like Musk. And they and many, many others will certainly all continue doing so.

alphabet

cough cough like Biden and Netanyahu cough

tchrist

He's the "useful idiot" they've always wanted.

Cerberus

@tchrist One wonders whether he would be better.

tchrist

04:32

@Cerberus Of course he would. But he's still a tool of the evil ones.

Cerberus

Oh, that is something.

tchrist

He would be more predictable and probably less cruel.

There is a sadist's delight in some of the cruelties that Trump imposes.

But Vance does not have the charisma to be a cult leader.

So that's a problem.

alphabet

@Cerberus I think Vance would be much worse, for my part. He has friends that literally want to turn America into a monarchy.

tchrist

I do really believe that he's mostly run by advisors and consiglieri these days, the ones who fed him federal judges and justices, the ones who created Project 2025. They'll be making all the screening and ranking choices for cabinet and staff and much more. You know it has to be this way: he has no mind for minutiae.

alphabet

Trump's a wannabe strongman also. But Vance regularly hangs around with people who have detailed plans for establishing a dictatorship. I think Trump mostly spends time with whoever says the nicest things about him.

Cerberus

04:38

@alphabet That sounds a tiny bit far fetched.

tchrist

I wonder who will live with him in his Great White Mansion. Melania? Unclear.

Cerberus

@tchrist And who are these people? Are they just very conservative, or are they also anti-democratic and/or crazy?

tchrist

The Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation (sometimes referred to simply as "Heritage") is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1973, it took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage Foundation studies, including its Mandate for Leadership. The Heritage Foundation has had significant influence in U.S. public policy making, and has historically been ranked among the most influential public policy organizations in the United States. In 2010, it founded a sister organization, Heritage Action...

Cerberus

@tchrist That would be a bit of a contrast.

alphabet

@Cerberus Not at all:

> These three—Thiel, Vance, Masters—are all friends with Curtis Yarvin, a 48-year-old ex-programmer and blogger who has done more than anyone to articulate the world historical critique and popularize the key terms of the New Right. You’ll often hear people in this world—again under many layers of irony—call him things like Lord Yarvin, or Our Prophet.

Cerberus

04:40

@tchrist But how crazy / anti-democratic are those now?

tchrist

@Cerberus Mrs and Mr Ivanka haven't been seen in his orbit lately.

Cerberus

@tchrist I meant literally, the colours.

tchrist

@Cerberus They did Project 2025, remember.

Cerberus

Or is Melania not from Greek melaina "black".

tchrist

oh hah

alphabet

04:41

> the way conservatives can actually win in America, [Yarvin] has argued, is for a Caesar-like figure to take power back from this devolved oligarchy and replace it with a monarchical regime run like a start-up. As early as 2012, he proposed the acronym RAGE—Retire All Government Employees—as a shorthand for a first step in the overthrow of the American “regime.”

tchrist

Yes, it's not the Latin honey one, pretty sure.

alphabet

> What we needed, Yarvin thought, was a “national CEO, [or] what’s called a dictator.” Yarvin now shies away from the word dictator and seems to be trying to promote a friendlier face of authoritarianism as the solution to our political warfare: “If you’re going to have a monarchy, it has to be a monarchy of everyone,” he said.

Cerberus

@tchrist But I don't know how anti-democratic those are.

tchrist

Wrong vowels.

alphabet

His buddy literally wants to make America a dictatorship.

Cerberus

04:42

@alphabet Well that is one person.

tchrist

@Cerberus They may be Lawful Evil. :/

alphabet

@Cerberus Vance is affiliated with multiple people in this world. Trump, to my knowledge, really isn't, since he only listens to people willing to praise everything he does, not to people with coherent ideologies of any sort.

tchrist

@Cerberus They're theocratic if you look deeply enough.

Cerberus

@tchrist Does that mean not anti-democratic and not crazy impulsive or traitorous?

alphabet

Oh, he also recently converted to "radical" Catholicism, which involves quite a lot of people who want to end democracy.

tchrist

04:47

@Cerberus We should be careful just exactly what we mean by all those words. They espouse an insane "unitary executive theory" that makes the President a sort of supreme power onto himself with unchallengeable powers over the entire executive branch, civil service be damned and many more besides. You can see what fruit that has brought to bear via the Supreme Court's presidential immunity debacle. Is that anti-democratic in your eyes?

Cerberus

@alphabet Who, Vance?

tchrist

To be treasonous in the United States has a very narrow meaning. It is the only constitutional crime.

alphabet

@Cerberus Yes. Trump is not the religious conversion type.

Cerberus

@tchrist Umm I don't really understand this. I am talking about the organisation who has been drawing up lists for officials that Trump can appoint. What can we expect of these officials? Are they like the Barrett judge or Pence: highly conservative, but not anti-democratic nor cronies of Putin? Or are they more like Giuliani and that man from Breitbart: crazy and incompetent and anti-democratic?

tchrist

But as veiled theocrats, you can certainly expect them to do everything they can to discard freedom of and from religion, bringing (Judeo-)Christianity in as THE state religion. Again, is that anti-democratic to you?

@Cerberus Oh I misread you. I thought you asked about the group doing the vetting, not the people they'd choose.

alphabet

04:51

This issue with Vance isn't related to the "unitary executive" issue--which Trump does support--it's about objecting to democracy on principle.

Cerberus

@tchrist Basically, no, as long as the democratic processes are kept intact and they can be voted out of office again.

@tchrist Actually, both. I assume they will resemble each other?

tchrist

I think that what the new supreme court justices whom they've gotten installed are highly anti-democratic but not crazy per se.

Cerberus

Why are they highly anti-democratic?

tchrist

Because they destroy constitutional guarantees that no man is above the law. Plenty more.

Look at what they did with the Citizens United decision, which now allows unlimited dark money in elections.

Look at what they did when they gutted the Voting Rights Act.

Both of those are things I consider highly anti-democracy in purpose.

So now the old slaver states are back to al their countless same-old/same-old voter suppression and intimidation tricks that were forbidden them under the Voting Rights Act. They couldn't do anything like that without the Justice Department's review and approval. Now they can, and do. Even the Republican Party itself is free of its old fetters about all this. It's a fiasco.

That's as anti-democratic as I can imagine.

We have a king now. And the slavers are winning again.

They deny people their democratic rights, with malice and glee and smugness.

It is execrable.

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