As sad as that video was, it's even sadder to know that there's many others out there just like those 2. How did this country get so fucked up?
The nation was begun on a foundation of independence and anti-authority. While that made sense in a context of homesteading in the untamed wilds and throwing off the shackles of a tyrant king, it slowly morphed into a distrust of any experts or authorities, which has fostered a disdain for education and fostered the idea that educated people are the "elites" who have it out for the rural working man. It creates a large population that is rife for both misinformation (unintentional errors) and disinformation (intentional errors) to shape their world view, while being completely closed off to sources of actual information that could limit or eliminate those errors.
Point taken, and while I fully understand the premise, I don't get the gross division/dysfunction and downright hatred between the 2 factions of Dem/Rep. I still cannot justify/rationalize the concept of a 2 party system.
Social media happened. People want to cling onto conspiracy theories. Because they feel like if they do they’re ‘cutting edge’ and more in tune then the next person.
The two party system is an inevitable result of our political set-up. If you want more viable parties you have to get rid of "first past the post" (FPTP) voting (whomever gets a plurality of a single pass of voting wins) and the electoral college. The FPTP voting system discourages voting for anyone outside one of the major two parties because your vote will be "wasted" if it goes for a non-mainstream party that (currently) has no chance to win. That creates a vicious cycle, as people don't vote for smaller parties, thus the party can't grow, which makes them continuingly unlikely to get votes. If we used another voting system (like run-off voting or ranked choice voting), people could feel free to vote for the party that best represented them, secure in the knowledge that if their favored party wasn't a real contender, their vote could roll over (either in the run-off or by being reallocated according to their rankings) to one of the parties that was actually in the running. Thus, people both get to vote first for the party that represents them best and also have a say in who actually gets voted in, no vote "wasted." And smaller parties could slowly grow in terms of their vote share in the first pass. The electoral college, meanwhile, requires a party win an outright majority of electoral votes (a simple plurality isn't sufficient) to win the Presidential election, otherwise Congress essentially gets to select. That also has a chilling effect on multiple viable parties. When only two parties are winning electoral votes, one is guaranteed to get a majority (absent shenanigans like states refusing to certify results) but if three, four or five parties are getting electoral votes, there's virtually zero chance of anyone getting a majority--so Congress would get to decide every President. Remove those two things and you'll probably get your wish of getting away from two-party dominance. Until then, it's virtually impossible to have more than two major parties.
Why is because a large fraction of us believe that the handful of old white dudes who wrote the constitution ~250 years ago were infallible and their decisions cannot be questioned. People didn't believe that for the first 150 years or so, and felt free to amend the constitution, but somehow that's now heresy. barfo
I still have no idea if you believe the current 2 party system is the best avenue or not. Regardless, I believe there's got to be a better way.
I do not believe the two party system is in any way great, would like to see it go, however I see no realistic route to changing it. I'll be happy to be proven wrong about that. barfo
Same here...I don't have the answers and wish I did. But I do know that the last few years of hatred, venom, vitriol, etc. from both parties, have turned my stomach to the point of being very pessimistic about our future unless things change considerably...and soon.
Yeah, his racist ass supporters who we've literally been fighting with the past 8 months won't get an ounce of unity from me. They literally want me to die. FUCK THEM!
