Agreed with both of you, there should only be extreme cases where it is illegal imo, but some of those would surley include existing presidents. Voting is completely strange to forbid to anyone pretty much to me.
I am no fan of Trump, but the alternative would be far worse -- preventing felons for running for office would allow a corrupt president to imprison their political opponents on bullshit charges and run effectively unopposed.
Aren’t there 22m people in Florida? Three quarters of a million having a conviction feels like a lot. Isn’t that like 3.5% or something?
Yeah, I'm not sure of what kind of number/scale would be normal/typical, admittedly it's not a topic I looked into extensively.
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Ah fair enough. I’m no expert and have no idea what would be normal for a percentage rate including sentences served etc tooYeah, I'm not sure of what kind of number/scale would be normal/typical, admittedly it's not a topic I looked into extensively.
I should clarify - the number isn't necessarily those who are currently incarcerated, it can include those who have already served their sentences.
The number of Florida residents who have had felony is supposedly higher, because 775k supposedly include those who served sentence but cannot pay back the resitution/fines/fees.
This is the article I'm basing the 775k off
(discourse: I'm a Florida resident. Clean record, and vote blue
It should but, well, our ancient ass constitution didn’t account for thatAgreed with both of you, there should only be extreme cases where it is illegal imo, but some of those would surley include existing presidents. Voting is completely strange to forbid to anyone pretty much to me.
I don't even know how this works where I live
Are gun rights very divisive in American public opinion?I've been observing and it seems that the thread alone has quite a few different attitudes towards traditional gun rights?
To an extent. I’d say you’re hardcore gun folk don’t want any type of red flag laws or anything of the sort done to minimize gun violence, often times just solely blaming mental health or cities, but everyone else at least want the basics so something can be done about it. Of course, folk will have different views on it but common sense stuff to address it is constantly blocked by a mixture of lobbying and folk who see guns as a religion
Well they didn't used to but in my experience they're beginning to. And sadly what they have to say is that they're very very bad and should be severely restricted if not practically removed. I've heard multiple conversations both around town and from people I personally know who use the argument that "democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner," and that "America was never meant to be a democracy, it was meant to be a republic." SO yeah, the same types of people who freak out about MAH GUNSS are now also saying that voting is a form of tyranny and should be abolished, leaving only a select, qualified few (usually revolving around church or landowning status) to be able to select our representatives and the representatives alone should then make all the decisions.
Very yes. There's the "you can take them from my cold, dead hands" types and the "private ownership of any firearm should be illegal and all firearms should be confiscated and destroyed" types, and everything in between. Personally I know quite a few of the first type (they are very loud and proud about it) and I also know people who believe having something small like a handgun for personal protection is morally okay as long as ownership is registered and regulated and tests and background checks are required (which is basically California state law right now). I don't know anyone in person who is 100% completely anti-gun but I know they're out there because of what I see people saying online.
Thanks for such a nuanced note, I've recently been reading a book called Radicalism of the American Revolution, which deals with how modern American democratic politics and individual rights have realistically transformed and taken shape through countless conflicts from the republican ideals of the founding.It seems valuable to use the book's research methods to study American representative government and gun rights.
The rhetoric was always there with the whole “We’re republic, not democracy tho” but it’s been ramping up more and more as they have drifted further and further into fascism and realize that they don’t have the votes to maintain their majorities. It’s definitely terrifying because we all know where fascism leads to and it’s never good for folk in the outside groups or even in the inside group, unless they’re rich or well connected. It’s why I don’t think I can ignore any election from here on out
www.khou.com
excuse me because neither me or any of my ancestors ever lived in a democracy what is the different between a republic and a democracy
???
A pure “democracy” would mean if you get the most votes, you win. But the US is not set up like that. We have states which all have equal power in the senate no matter their size (2 senate seats per state) and the house which disproportionally favors smaller states (that’s a bit more complicated to explain. There is a minimum amount of representatives each state has and a total number of representatives in the House, so no matter how big your state’s population gets, you aren’t getting more House seats). Basically, we vote for representatives in the government, but my vote in New York is weighed differently than somebody voting in Kentucky because the House and Senate members from Kentucky represent far fewer people per representative.
how this system come to be ? what kind of benefit the american founding fathers saw in this system that made them chose it over the normal every one has one vote system?
I think the idea was foreseeing rapid growth of coastal/built-up areas compared to farmers in remote areas, and the agreement of being ‘united states’ was to avoid rural/remote states effectively becoming irrelevant and voiceless once the heavily populated areas ended up with 10x the population. Or even 65x now, given the population of California vs Wyoming. The problem is that it’s swung the other way now, in that the vote of someone in the latter is now worth 65 times a vote cast in the former as both have the same representation in the senate, so you end up with a tiny amount of people having a proportionately vastly bigger say (or representation) in important decisions, as each of their senators represents millions fewer people. Swing it the other way with true proportionate representation via population and you end up with the coastal areas having a far, far bigger say in things with far more representatives than smaller states. Something quite hard to agree on when arranging an alliance hundreds of years ago.
This is what people (especially politicians in lower-populated states) say it's for, which sounds like a somewhat noble effort when it's put that way, but sadly a big factor as to why they did it was (as is often the case in America) racism.
Was going to reply similarly. Basically, if you ever ask yourself “why did America do that?” 9 out of 10 times it’s rooted in racism.
so why they did not change that after the civil war
Westward expansion had created a lot of rural, nonslave states following the war and it’s hard to remove the power systems when you need the votes of the people who benefit from it to vote against it. Aside from that, even from the Union perspective the war was never about addressing racism or systemic reform, emancipation was only adopted as a goal once the war had already began, in part to further the perceived moral divide between the Union and Confederacy for diplomatic reasons, in part because Lincoln and his allies were legitimately abolitionists who wanted to end slavery eventually anyway, and in part to encourage slave revolts in Confederate territory.
Basically, the first form of US government, the Articles of Confederation which had a weak dlfederal government and strong state governments, failed so they needed something new, but in order to get the rural slavery dominated southern states to give up their power, there needed to be compromise.
Geez, that’s awful, I had no idea beyond the superficial, thanks for the link
Do the Palestinians currently being bombed by weapons supplied by the United States not get this designation of humanity?
It is beyond insane that people refuse to recognize that it can get so, so much worse in Palestine if Trump is president again.
Unless you’re going to explain how Trump will make lives for Palestinians even one iota better, this is a bullshit attempt at a gotcha.
Again, it's very difficult to actually imagine how Trump will make the situation worse in a meaningful way:
Personally, I'm not even saying "don't vote for Biden." I think people should vote for however helps them sleep at night. But if your attempt to dissuade those unhappy with Biden is hypotheticals about how Trump is worse, it's a losing argument.It's nearly impossible to imagine a worse situation for Gaza than the one Biden is currently enabling.
Humanitarian operations ‘near collapse’ in Gaza, says World Food Programme
UN says 1m people face catastrophic levels of hunger as food aid piles up on Egyptian side of borderwww.theguardian.com
It doesn't matter what scary What If you conjure up when you're talking about Trump when we're looking at a total, utter, unprecedented collapse within Gaza right now. Biden actively wants this and saying he's just being led by the nose by Bibi is utterly foolish. Biden is a staunch Zionist and has been his entire political career. He's still sending billions to Israel:
Biden administration plans to send $1bn in military aid to Israel: Reports
Request for tank ammunition, tactical vehicles for Israel despite Biden’s earlier pause on bombs over Rafah assault.www.aljazeera.com
People like Biden who have worked in American politics for decades are part of the reason we are in this crisis.
I'm sorry that you see it this way, cannot pretend to understand your situation and remain unconvinced that your choice benefits you. But it is your choice.
Plenty of minorities in this country and not all of us see eye to eye nor does any one minority speak for all. For many people and I, as a minority, Trump getting in is a net negative as that'll more or less mean fascism taking hold. You're talking about having disabilities, well I'm pretty sure they wanna do away with any protections or healthcare coverage for that alongside whatever abortion or workers rights are left among the various states. Not even getting into defunding schools, reversing green energy initiatives, deporting protesters here on visas, etc. Project 2025 is enough of a reason for me to vote against Trump. Keyword being against. I haven't really ever voted for a presidential candidate
"If you don't vote for Joe Biden because he is committing genocide then you don't care about the disenfranchised" is pretty fucked up rhetoric.
You might wanna learn what fascism is if you genuinely believe that both parties are fascist parties. It's not just being bad. By that logic, they've both been fascist since forever
Historically, liberal movements and parties trend rightward as material conditions contract and worsen, many of them outright supporting fascist causes. This is because both liberalism and fascism act in the interests of protecting capital, but both are reflection of different stages of prosperity and social disarray within liberal capitalist societies. Joe Biden has worked in politics for 50 years and even by his own party's standards has been on the right wing side of things. He's a self-declared proud Zionist (a movement that would probably be recognized as fascist if not for decades of propaganda and whitewashing) and his administration has been showing unprecedented support for arming Israel. He even undermined Israeli peace discussions as Obama's VP.
I asked how Trump would make things better. You responded that you can’t imagine how he’d make them worse. Not only isn’t that an answer to my question, it just shows a failure of imagination. There are a lot of ways for things to get worse. You’re talking about a guy who just this week was throwing out the word Palestinian as an insult to describe Chuck Schumer. I don’t get the sense he’s going to even bother pretending to talk about peace.
Most of the examples you laid out are a result of a split Congress and democrats having to compromise with republicans. You can’t say “and then this bipartisan bill cut spending that helped me!” without explaining how that’s the fault of democrats. Holding out for some bill that literally will never pass is not only not a solution, it will cause harm to everyone as we’d likely face yet another government shutdown and there wouldn’t be funding for anything. Congress is unquestionably broken. But we don’t fix it by ignoring it or by voting for the people running on breaking it further and who don’t even believe it should ever work.
It’s not much but I think there is a good chance that the US’s relationship with Israel will receive more criticism from the media overall if Trump is the one in charge, like we see/saw with immigration and border policies. Maybe TikTok will become an important instrument of free press again.
Oh that I agree. A lot of liberal folk tend to tend right ward as they get older, either because of them gaining more wealth and wanting to avoid paying taxes to their mindset regarding social issues not moving forward as more issues are being understood and they feel that the ones they supported were the end all be all of it. If you add in being rightfully criticized for not trying to understand more modern concerns, you get folk like JK Rowling
I'm sorry but Palestinians are dying NOW. They're being bombed and starved NOW. They are being genocided NOW. All this talk about "Trump will be worse" is meaningless because Israel's extermination of the Palestinian people is happening this very instant and under Biden's administration.
That's something I've been pondering, though I'm pessimistic that this scenario would happen. I don't think the media writ large is particularly motivated by pure partisanship, and I suspect that the Democrats would try to flank the Republicans from the right and accuse them of being insufficiently bloodthirsty.
