

The internet has been a blight on democracy.
The internet has been a blight on democracy.
If your income is 9+ figures, the media comes to you to find out what you think about it.
Cool. Now release the Epstein Files.
Batman questions anyone and anything and has a plan for any eventuality, PARTICULARY those that pose a global scale threat. It’s nothing personal, it’s just reasonable precaution. That’s basically his true superpower. He also does trust Superman as a person, as a colleague and friend. I don’t think he ever considers there to be a true risk that Superman turns on humanity of his own will. However, Superman is susceptible to mind control, to magic, to unpredictable forms of kryptonite. And he is not the only living Kryptonian in existence either. It would be stupid not to plan for such threats.
Lex depending on the version, may or may not think that Superman actually poses a willful threat to humanity. But even if he also trusts that Superman is what he appears to be, a selfless hero that only wants to help people, he probably hates that idea even more. He usually doesn’t distrust Superman’s intent. He hates what it says about and does to human-kind, and by extension, himself. He things depending on an alien demigod will make humanity weak and complacent. He thinks that Superman holds the Earth back from reaching their potential. That it permanently neuters them from become Supermen themselves. So he makes it his mission to ruin Superman however he can. If he can kill him, good. Not a problem anymore. If he can publically discredit him, sow distrust across the globe, that’s good too, maybe better. People who distrust him won’t depend on him and may, in fact, fear him. As a result they are more likely to better themselves, their technology, their science, to rival and fight back against Superman.
TL:DR: Batman takes precautions. Lex hates and attempts to kill or sabotage. They’re not the same.
If you ever watched The Colbert Report back in the day, he played a version of himself as an extreme conservative. It was parody, but plenty on the right who only half paid attention though that he was being genuine. Trump is a moron and would totally have been one of them and wanted to hire the guy who said ridiculous shit on television.
If The Colbert Report were still on TV, Trump would have appointed him to Secretay of State.
Stuff removed, stuff added, everything pulled tight. It’s like taxidermy but for still alive vanity-obsessed women, and it often looks like it too.
A lot of Theo-Bros that want women to be chained to their husbands by outlawing no-cause divorce. Then they will redefine narrow rules for which causes are justifiable causes. They’re already trying to legalize child marriage. They’ve already made single living a poverty lifestyle for most. So they are happily coercing women into marriages and locking them in there because they know sane woman would not willingly partner with them for their whole lives, and getting rid of their choice is easier (for them) than being a person they would choose.
It sucks because I genuinely liked that show growing up, but Dean the person is antithetical to Superman the character
Yes, I did mean in the ideal sense, there is a functional purpose for raising the prices of foreign goods IF there is a domestic alternative you wish to boost or expand. But the mechanism for the benefit, IF(big if) there is one, is the increase in price. Tariff (ideally) equals targetted price increases. Saying tariffs might raise prices is like saying stabbing you might wound you. I might have a good reason for wounding you, I might not, but the wounding will happen as a direct consequences of my stabbing you, regardless.
Districts each get a seat. That is the part you are not getting. That is what gerrymandering manipulates. You seem to think that the districts are voting blocks with equal say (1 vote each) in an election of a single seat (thus why you think Blue wins it all) but that is NOT how districting and gerrymandering works in the US (where the word comes from and the only place it is really used, btw). I dont know why you are quoting definitions at me like I dont understand the concept.
I am not conflating anything. I am deliberately ignoring anything not in the info-graphic that presumably wants to teach us something.
You specifically brought up that other people are saying that there are better systems, which is exactly what I was responding to and saying you were conflating with the “perfect” term used in the info graphic. So no, this is bull.
You are the one conflating the abstract presentation on this graphic with some specific real-life situation.
The abstract presentation in the graphic is a hypothetical that EXPLAINS the real-life situation. Gerrymandering is not a concept in a vacuum. It is a thing that happens and show a simplified version of it here demonstrates how manipulative it is in a digestible way. That is the point. It’s not a mathematical or logical axiom that exists purely in and of itself. It is a pretend situation meant to parallel a real life one and demonstrate a form of political manipulation.
The graphic literally illustrates that one of two teams “wins”. In the “perfect” case that is blue.
They win majority of the district. Not all of the seats. I don’t know why you’re are being so obtuse about this. It’s pretty apparent to everyone else. And it is exactly how districts in real life work
That is an assumption you are making based on some real world system that is not depicted here.
Yes, becuase the purpose of this info graphic is to show how Gerrymandering works in real life. Gerrymandering has nothing to do with taking individual seats. Ever. Period. It is about taking outweighed control of a multi-seat body. That is the ENTIRE point of gerrymandering, a subject that is not obscure in the slightest.
I don’t criticize the result. I just don’t think it’s perfect.
What then would be the “perfect” result between only two parties running, and 60% support going to the blue party? Whether for 1 seat or for 5 as IS SHOWN in this graphic?
People here keep telling me the system is bad but it’s the best we have.
If that is your definition of perfect that I suppose we just have a vastly different understanding of perfection.
I most certianly did not say that this is the best system we could have, but you confusion is because you are conflating vastly different things. When people are talking about different voting systems that would be better, that assumes that there is more than 2 choices in the matter. If there are only two, such as is in this example, the voting system resolves to being identical to First Past The Post, so it doesnt matter, FOR THIS ONE EXAMPLE. In real life, things are not that simple, but that doesnt matter when we are talking about a simplified hypothetical like this. That is the point.
What do you mean “likely pushing up cost of electronics”. That is the literal point of a tariff, to push the prices up and make competing goods more appealing to consumers. The only way it doesnt raise prices is if importers just eat the cost, which they will almost certainly not do and, frankly, shouldn’t do.
Your example is literally what is being illustrated. There is some disconnect you are suffering. There isn’t only one seat they are competing for. There are 5 districts with 5 seats and depending on how you divide the districts, fairly or intentionally gerrymandered, you can get a fair outcome or outcomes that heavily favor one party. Even if they WERE competing for one seat, then blue winning that seat would still be the correct outcome in this case, so even if your misunderstanding the hypothetical were accurate, I dont get why you have a problem with the end result.
Ok, so there is an election system like the one I criticized in the US, just not in every state.
Would you then say, that this is better than “winner takes all” and that “blue wins” is not perfect?
No… because in the example, it was NOT winner take all. Blue won the majority of districts. Red won the other districts. Nobody took all. I feel like you are trying really hard to misunderstand a VERY simple hypothetical example. Yes, winner take all states for electors is bullshit, but that is NOT what is happening in the example, for the love of god!
“Not my fucking job”
As I said elsewhere, if there is only two parties/candidates running for each of these seats and the districts are divided this way then there is no functional difference between Ranked Choice, Approval, Proportional, or First Past The Post. The results would be 100% identical in any of those systems. In this specific situation, the result is “perfect”, as it says. Under different circumstances, it would be less than perfect, but that is not how hypothetical work, my guy.
What do you think “districts” means? Each district gets represention for the whole body, whatever body that may be. If you need that explained to you, okay, but don’t then lecture others on minutae of semantics when you arent familiar with what the word “district” entails.
And the U.S. President is not elected like this, no. There is no districting involved in US Presidential elections, at least not currently and not directly. It is far stupider than that, unfortunately. Each state has so many districts on the federal level based on population of the whole state (minimum 1), and each district gets a federal representative in the US House of Representatives wing of congress. Each state also gets 2 and only 2 Senate seats regardless of population in that wing of congress. The Presidency is actually determined by the votes of Electors in the Electoral College. Each state gets as many Electors as they have seats in both the Senate and House, and it has nothing to do with how the districts in that state are subdivided or what party their Representatives are from.
Now, each state gets to determine for itself how they run their elections, how they assign their Electors, and even whether their electors are required to vote the same way as their state, so things can be pretty complicated. In many states, it is winner take all for that state’s Electors, with the winner being the one with the plurality of votes in a FPTP election, which is dumb as fuck. Some others assign their Electors proportionally. There is even a slowly growing coalition of states that, once they reach a plurality of Electors in the coalition, have agreed to no longer assign their Electors on a state by state basis, but on the national popular vote instead. Again, within each of these states, rules differ on the relative power of the Electors themselves to vote according to their own desires even if that goes against the state’s popular vote. They could, also, if they wished, leave each House-tied Elector up to each individual district, or just decided the Electors without considering or even having a democratic vote at all, neither or which currently happens, though. It’s a giant fucking mess, it leads many many people in hard red or blue states to just to just not bother as their vote will be overwhelmed anyway, which is why the Electoral College should just be eliminated and replaced with a national popular vote. But that is a whole other story.
Here’s the problem with your conclusion, who then decides who gets to vote? By what criteria? How much support would you need? How are you going to take the right away from people? Through violence? Even if there was popular support among some partition of people against everyone else voting, how big would these partitions have to be to be justified? If 20 percent thought the other 80 percent should be subject to their votes alone, is that cool?
Say, it wasnt that extreme… say 97 percent of people believe the other 3 shouldn’t vote. 100 percent of those in the 97 percent outside of some some group X or above some minimum attribute Y believe that those in X or those who are lesser than Y should not get to vote. Maybe those people are those with low IQs or those in some cult or those who have been convicted of crimes more than once, etc. The bigger group of people peacefully and democratically narrow democracy and now they hold dominion over the nonvoter for the good of all…
What then stops them from doing the same again and again? You likely think that you will still have power, be a part of the ruling class. But what stops the rest of the voters from doing the same to an arbitrary group that you belong to? What if they say that only land owners should vote? Only those who trace their ancestry back to founding members of rhe nation? Only those who meet a certain level of capitalistic investment in the economy? Only those who wish to preserve the existing culture and way of life? Only those who believe in defending that way of life through force? Only those who belong to a specific religion and belive it has be the model for the governance of the nation? Only those that support their one party leader? Only those who literally worship this leader as a god and hold his dynasty as divine? Each step can be fully justified and will have the precedent set that all they need is the consensus of those who would usurp power from those who would be excluded by the new rules in order to strip them of their vote and any other rights they see fit. The ruling class gets smaller and smaller and more like minded, power hungry, violent, and unconcerned with the welfare of the people.
You see how your position is pretty problematic and opens a giant can of worms of abuse and autocracy?