All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[JimC]

Sean Hayden wrote:

...I believe a lack of universal healthcare and welfare are the most significant hindrances to a more civilized US...

I agree, but that is definitely a "systems problem"...

[Hermit]

Telling people that more democracy will lead to better outcomes...

is not what Monbiot said.

[Sean Hayden]

He has said that more democracy will lead to better outcomes. Unless he means something else by "full participatory democracy", that isn't at least somewhat appropriately described as "more democracy".

[Hermit]

He has said that more democracy will lead to better outcomes.

Once again, where did Monbiot state categorically that more democracy leads to better outcomes? Timestamp, please. Shouldn't be difficult for you to locate if it exists. There's only 7 minutes to listen to.

To save time, skip through to the 5:22 mark. That's where he starts commenting on participatory democracy.

Here is the link to the video, so you won't have to go looking for it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqhxXiEMekw

[Sean Hayden]

Nowhere has participatory politics yet been allowed to fulfil its promise. There is no principled or technical reason why the majority of a municipal or national budget should not be set through public deliberation, following the techniques pioneered in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. There is no principled or technical reason why the monthly voting process for improving life in Reykjavík could not be applied at the national level, everywhere. The call for full-scale participatory democracy is as revolutionary as the call for the universal franchise was in the 19th Century. What is needed is a vehicle similar in scale to the Chartist and suffragette movements.

https://www.monbiot.com/2020/09/18/demo ... evolution/

"Nowhere has participatory politics been allowed to fulfill its promise." Later he uses participatory democracy for politics. It's clear that he thinks we aren't democratic enough, that we should become more democratic, and that by doing so things will improve. Shortening this to "more democracy leads to better outcomes" is not a terrible misrepresentation of his thinking.

[pErvinalia]

I think Hermit has missed the forest for the trees.

[JimC]

"More democracy by a better educated general public leads to better outcomes"

That's not Monbiot, that's a little known political philosopher from Oz...

"Jim's Philosophy" - we'll come to you, and sort out all your ethical problems for a surprisingly low cost...

[pErvinalia]

Jim's Mowing wasn't quite a success, so you may as well go with Jim's Philosophy..

[Seabass]

47.1% of the US electorate voted for this man.
73,965,176 Americans voted for this man.
For president.
Five years ago, I wouldn't have believed it possible. It's just too absurd. The man has been a punchline since the 80s, ffs. How can so many people be this crazy? It just blows my mind, still. And he's not going to go away after the 20th, is he. Fuck me.

[Brian Peacock]

I guess what I'm questioning more and more is our leader's tendency to make clear distinctions between themselves and us, questioning the nature of the feedback between politicians and the populous and asking if "We, The People" elect them to work for-and-in our interests why are a lot of important things seemingly getting worse for us rather than better. If the answer to that is that we've just got what we voted for then I'd ask who voted more inequality, falling wages against prices, increasing levels of individual and household debt, failing public services, greater job insecurity and poorer workplace protections, higher levels of evictions and repossessions, not to mention environmental degradation, global heating and planetary death?

Indeed. But millions don't see it that way. People will defend their right to lower pay, less vacation, higher risk of cancer, and more. A person will vote to limit welfare, and then complain when they can't find a way to cheat Uncle Sam on taxes. Tell them everyone needs help sometimes and they'll agree, but swear others are taking advantage.

If true, then my question is who's telling us these are the kind of things that are good for us? If these things are value-based where are we getting our values from? But if these things are features of the systems we've created then what's stopping us from creating new, different, better systems?

Again, I can only encourage us to acknowledge the people problem. I don't think there's a neat relationship between our systems and our values, much less our personalities. Some of what goes into our systems is intended to account for this and to allow us to function despite our differences. But your questions here are close to straying into thinking about how to design the system so as to eliminate at least some our differences i.e. how can we design a system that instills the right values? I think this sets an unrealistic expectation.

That's my biggest issue with the video you posted. I think he encourages people to have unrealistic expectations. People are enormously problematic. Deliberations don't typically settle matters to a majorities satisfaction. Telling people that more democracy will lead to better outcomes, and using a fantasy depiction of deliberation looks like some kind of motivational populism to me.

Do you think we might have reached peak progress, at least in the social-economic sense?

I feel like a bit of an arrogant twat even entertaining the question. But, because it's fun, I'd say we have a lot of room for growth. I believe a lack of universal healthcare and welfare are the most significant hindrances to a more civilized US.

I'll happily acknowledge the people problem. Like you said, people will effectively vote for lower wages and fewer holidays, worse schools and poorer health outcomes, rollbacks in environmental laws that will increase their cancer risk or state-backed usury, etc etc. People will vote for warmongers who say they're walking the path of peace, corporate shills who say they're on the side of the little guys against the elites, serial philanderers and perverts who extol the virtues of traditional family values, sworn law-and-order types who break the law for profit and lolz and then functionally excuse themselves from the consequences, committed democratic constitutionalists who sidestep democratic processes and undermine the conventions of government, avowed free-trade advocates who institutionalise monopoly control and hand out contracts to their friends, allies, and even themselves... The list goes on - and on.

The 'people problem' problem is that collectively we keep falling for the expensively advertised self-promoting narratives of chancers, charlatans, bare-faced liars and (judging by where we are now) sociopathic narcissists whose personalities and actions border on psychopathy - and the systems of checks and balances we've developed to protect us from malign ne'er-do-wells don't appear to be checking or balancing those who aspire to, acquire, or utilise the power of the state in their own interests and against our own.

We vote for these peace-loving-anti-elitist-family-values-law-and-order-freedom-and-liberty-fair-trade-democrats for good reasons: we actually think all those things are good things to vote for. Those peace-loving-anti-elitist-family-values-law-and-order-freedom-and-liberty-fair-trade-democratic narratives tell us about who we'd like to be and what we'd like to stand for as a society or a nation; they tell us what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be a proper patriot, what our values are. Surely these are good values, the right values, values we can all get behind regardless or in spite of our differences on this-or-that particular issue, eh(?) When chancers, charlatans, and liars tell us stories which reinforce these values in order to persuade us to vote for them can't we call that an exercise in 'motivated popularism' too? We sure like to believe them don't we?

I'm also more than willing to acknowledge that there's no "neat relationship between our systems and our values", but that's not to say there's no relationship - there clearly is: it's just, well, complicated.

Take that magnificent document 'The Constitution of the United States' for example - a document which literally defines a nation into existence. It starts with a declaration of values: things we can all get behind -- justice, social peace and order, collective protection, the securing of the kind of liberty that comes with a freedom from tyranny, the advancement and enhancement of individual and collective prosperity and well-being, etc -- and the justifying, legitimising force of that declaration is backed by the idea that everyone in this newly constituted society will essentially and fundamentally be considered equal, and therefore guaranteed equal rights, protections and privileges in accordance with and pursuance of those values. In the context of its times that was a pretty big deal! After setting the secene the document then goes on to outline the systems that are to be put into place in order to achieve these, the nation's, goals; systems which at their root express certain held common values and attempt to put them into practice under the auspices of a freshly minted state.

Of course there's a lot to talk about regarding to what degree that project has been successful, or not - where and how it has (or does) work and where and how it hasn't (or doesn't) - but my point here is that there's a clear and direct relationship between broadly agreed social values and the operation of the democratic state - in this example, and I believe in many others. (And when I say 'broadly agreed social values' there I mean human social values that appear to be in the same ballpark across all societies even while there's variation within that wider, but not boundless, set).

Oooff! That took me a bit by surprise!

So the point I wanted to address was the idea that advocating for a system change in the administration of state power towards towards something like direct or deliberative democracy (not the same thing, but similar-ish) is just a kind of exercise in political nest-feathering, just something to achieve particular political ends which favour particular political ideals - an exercise in 'motivated popularism' as you so concisely put it. Well, perhaps it is, perhaps, but if so does that necessarily make it dubious, and in practice would it look substantially different to the non-direct/deliberative systems we have at the moment, which simply is to ask: aren't the systems we've inherited and devised of late not also exercises in nest-feathering to achieve particular political ends which favour particular political ideals? Here I think the question unavoidably turns to what political ideals and ends we're actually talking about in relation to these systems - what popular ideals direct/deliberative democracy are trying to express, what they might be motivating us towards, and what ends those kind of systems might achieve.

We can look at the recent example of deliberative democracy in relation to the change in Ireland's constitutional laws which criminalised abortion. Participants to the citizen's assemblies were invited by lot and asked to consider abortion in broad terms, and at the conclusion of the process to make recommendations for the government and parliament to consider. Those who accepted the invitation were given a dispassionate explanation of the current laws, their history, and implementation, examples of different systems from around the world; they took verbal and written submissions from medical experts, religious representatives, political parties, stakeholders and vested interests; they could request more information as they saw fit and call witnesses; and they were made fully aware that they were deliberating on behalf of all citizens and that their conclusions would only form recommendations to parliament and wouldn't automatically result in either a change in the law or in things remaining the same. As far as possible an open conclusion was built in to a process that was overseen by an independent body with no vested interest in the outcome.

The Irish parliament and government adopted this course of action for good reason. Abortion was highly politicised and the country had a 100-year long history of political and religious alignment making it almost impossible to discuss the issue, let alone reach a political consensus on a constitutional amendment - and yet the broad view among the population and the even the political classes was that anti-abortion laws just weren't working for the benefit of women or society at large. Something had to be done and yet political processes were unable to achieve the kind of consensus needed to do anything about it.

In the end the assemblies recommended that abortion should be decriminalised and abortion services should regularised with other nations, the parliament broadly accepted the recommendations and held a referendum on the constitutional matter, and Ireland voted. Although campaigns both for and against the constitutional question were often highly political and politicised the deliberative process was a concerted attempt to de-politicise an issue that had a broad impact on society and on women in particular. Now I'm sure a good proportion of the population weren't happy with the result, and no doubt the votaries of Catholicism were particularly aggrieved, but as a society a broad consensus was arrived at and expressed, and even those who weren't happy with the outcome could at least see the that the democratic utilitarian argument had been articulated and widely endorsed. At least nobody but the usual blowhards are calling it an undemocratic disaster.

This is not to say that there's a strong argument for all of government to work this way, for citizens to have direct input into economic or foreign policy, public spending, civil order or national defence, but in a situation where political consensus on an important issue cannot be arrived out -- either for party political, historical, or systematic reasons -- and where a good argument can be made that the current systems or laws are working against the interests of citizens -- say in terms of healthcare or social welfare or housing or food poverty etc(?) -- why might we be inclined to think that direct/deliberative democracy is somehow an inferior, dubious exercise in 'motivate popularism'? Isn't that, you know, poisoning the well a bit?

Aren't all political arguments moral arguments -- arguments over values and how they're expressed and put into practice in society -- and in that sense isn't all of politics an exercise in motivated popularism -- in motivating the populous based on the articulation of values -- and couldn't things like deliberative democracy represent systems which motivate people to engage and interface with political and democratic processes more directly -- processes which are supposed to express our broad values and underpin our societies in fundamental and important ways anyway -- as well as a de-politicised means of exploring where the consensus actually lies?

Asking for a friend.

[Svartalf]

47.1% of the US electorate voted for this man.
73,965,176 Americans voted for this man.
For president.
Five years ago, I wouldn't have believed it possible. It's just too absurd. The man has been a punchline since the 80s, ffs. How can so many people be this crazy? It just blows my mind, still. And he's not going to go away after the 20th, is he. Fuck me.

In an old gangster film, a famous French speech writer had a character say "Fools will dare anything, that's how you know them."

[Tero]

best Trump Giuliani Barr cartoon

trump nice country.jpg (57.04 KiB) Viewed 1466 times

[Tero]

Trump pardon for Rudy's pals probably mot coming.

[Tero]

WaPo: Trump’s political operation has raised more than $150 million since Election Day, mostly from small dollar donors, “using a blizzard of misleading appeals about the election“

Vincent J Battaglia
@vin_battaglia
Just wait until he licenses his name encased in the seal of the Presidency for a “limited edition” My Pillow.

Ben Salt
@hellobensalt
Replying to
@jaketapper
But a David Icke fanatic with a degree in Reiki, Homeopathic Reptilian Studies and Venezuelan Voting Algorithms told me that satanic, blood-sucking commie liberals stole the election.

So does the president!

IT MUST BE TRUE!

[Tero]

Barr gets vacation all December. He was asked to WH to be dismissed:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Acosta/statu ... 5654188032