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hard not to feel intensely irritated at people like this but on the other hand a big chunk of people, probably most, are just never going to become politics obsessives. even basic political literacy requires a healthy information environment www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

in other words, algorithmic social media should be burned with fire

yeah like, in order for someone to know something, they must learn it either through experience or instruction, and the system of communicating the stakes of elections is just totally broken bsky.app/profile/ecow...

probably half of the mainstream media was destroyed by Facebook and Google, replaced by social media which *intentionally prioritizes* hysterical lies and conspiracy theories. what remains of the MSM is largely owned by right-wing oligarchs or dimwitted conservative failsons

scream at idiot voters all you want if that makes you feel better (it kinda does tbh) but a large chunk of voters have and always will be idiots, we need some way of herding them away from the cliff

the other thing about social media of course is that it has broken the brains of Republican (and many Dem) electeds, and none worse than Elon Musk's. voters deluded and elites driven stark raving mad www.economist.com/briefing/202...

Unfortunately we’re seeing first hand why first-past-the-post is kind of a shit system.

FPTP can work when parties are allowed to have a platform and party discipline. It's not the best system but you don't *have* to run it the way the US does.

Yeah, I don’t know if that’s truly possible with how messy humans are. Duverger’s law means that FPTP (at least the way the US does it) is always destined to consolidate into two parties. Third parties will only ever be spoilers for the big two.

Imagine if the U.S. had a real multiparty system. If we had four left-of-center parties and Biden, Schumer, and Jeffries were determined to be wet noodles in the face of Trump... the resistance would simply gravitate to the other 3 parties and the Democrats would just die off. Problem solved.

Or each of the four parties would just be led by Biden, Schumer and Jeffries. People overly romanticize multiparty systems, they are pretty much similar to two party systems. It's all just coalitional politics.

No, those three would be same party, then the Bernie/Aoc soc dems, then the Jay Inslee greens/pacific block, the Civil rights party with Clyburn and Crockett, then some asshole Macronist party with Manchin and Adam Kinziger- a mess, sure, but current leadership would be same party

In theory, U.S. parties function as coalitions. In practice, not so much. For example, in a multiparty coalition, the progressive wing would get 40-50% of Democratic leadership positions and ranking committee assignments. But, Centrists reject any obligation to compromise in a two-party system.

Side note: I think this is also why Australian voters have consistently refused to cut ties with the English monarchy, because for too many of them President = US Politics

Parliamentary republics are a thing, though there's not enough awareness of them, so I can sympathize with the Australians.

Something I've been thinking about is, if we get out of this mess, how can we make these ideas toxic enough to be less of a threat. And I think part of that has to be a government that's way more comfortable with propagandizing the good things it does for people.