Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
@921
I have an answer to this, actually. I don't think socialism is bad either. You can't say that in the U.S. really, because in the U.S. socialism means China or Russia, not any of the other places that are currently doing it without a problem, for example Canada, and no one here looks beyond the first two. But I'll bite, since my answer to this isn't "socialism all the way". we need the following, however we can get them:
People in power who don't pick outgroups. Trump called Mexicans rapists. Republicans think that gay people should just go away and would rather this whole racism thing just vanish as well. Healthcare is considered a privilege for the working. A roof is considered a privilege for the working. If you're blind and need benefits you can't save money because wondering where your meal comes from tomorrow is also a privilege for the working. We do this all over. Maybe fixing some of it is socialism, but when everyone in power says "group x doesn't matter" or "Group y sins against god" or "Group z would be able to deal with their problems, but they're not trying hard enough", that's a good way to make people really angry and anti-establishment. If you're anything but a white christian male, there's loud and outspoken voices working hard to dismiss you all the time.
Fair elections. Register people to vote automatically. Make elections national holidays. Better vote-by-mail. Get rid of the electoral college. Stop people in power from fiddling with the maps to make sure that people will vote for them by getting rid of our system where your vote matters more or less depending on where you live. Tellingly, Trump and the entire Republican party are against all of this, or at least they are by enough that even noncontroversial things like national holidays for election day which could be pushed through and universally praised don't get the time of day. Until some or all of this happens there's no consequence for being unpopular as long as you're not unpopular in 6 or 7 states and you can just ignore most of the country.
Judge term limits. The U.S. is supposed to be 3 equal branches of government, but in practice it's almost a dictatorship. Whoever gets all the judicial seats wins well beyond their turn in congress, by something like 50 years. This should be reformed. Rather than deciding on how things will be for the next 5-10 years, every election that involves the supreme court decides how it will be for the next 30-40 years at least, if not longer. And everyone forgets about all the other lifetime judges that never come up that just quietly get nominated. The judicial branch has more power than anyone else now, because that's where the buck stops. That puts a hell of a lot of consequence in something that shouldn't have that much consequence in it, if we're all going to say "You voted for the opposite party, but we can still be friends", votes need to not count for literally the rest of your life if they're made in the wrong election. At the moment some elections count on the order of electing a king, and there's no way to go oops we made a mistake as a country and go back on it later unless we can decide to flat out amend the constitution.
Finally, figure out how to do projects that take longer than 4 years. When congress flips, everything gets thrown out. Fixing health caer for example is probably a 10 year initiative. But you only get 4 years to do it in, 8 if you're super super lucky, then the next group comes in and tears it all down. Other things, for example investing in infrastructure, are 20 to 30 year projects and you see no benefit until they're done. Police reform without throwing things out and starting over is also probably longer than 4 years. Until we start fixing this one, we'll keep having protests and direct action and such, only to take a couple steps forward and then stop because the political will isn't there to finish it. I don't know how to fix this one. I suspect it's more procedural than anything, for instance making bills only be about one topic, so that you can pass all the things everyone agrees on.
But I don't think it's reasonable to start from "there is no answer". There's a lot of answers. If everyone in power all said "It's time to fix politics, never mind my personal power", it could be done really, really quickly. The problem with these answers, though, is that we're stuck in a place where the only thing that gets you voters is big and flashy social signalling. Facts don't even matter anymore. Hell, look at this thread. You get to just pick whatever supposed facts you like. We don't teach critical thinking anymore really. People, now, don't seem to understand that the world is a material place, and it's debatable whether there are even absolute truths. So I doubt any of this will happen, at least, not until it's too late and the U.S. is a giant dumpster fire. It's a giant dumpster fire now, compared to what it used to be, and if we get Biden it's going to go back to simmering instead of boiling for a while, but compared to what it could be, what I think it will be in my lifetime, this is just a little bit of smoke.
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