Good luck trying to get an American conservative to understand what the second map represents. I means shit, they refuse to grasp the concept of “per capita” because they know it makes them look bad.
gasp Are you suggesting, good sir, that republiQans may in fact not be arguing a particular point in good faith???
NO! I cannot believe it.
Why don’t the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
Americans seem to have forgotten about federalism. You don’t need the same laws governing all 340 million of you.
The EU is a patchwork of rights for example. Poland doesn’t have marriage equality and only permits abortions in case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother. The Netherlands has marriage equality and abortions on demand up to 24 weeks. The union is not endangered by this.
Hell, Canada does federalism better than you, with a relatively weak federal government that needs to be always consulting with the provinces. Provinces retain much of the income-tax revenue and get to experiment much more meaningfully with different policy mixes, under a multi-party system.
That was the ideal, but every ounce of freedom given to the south has been used to torment the vulnerable, so they kept losing supreme court cases and having amendments added to the constition that give the federal govt. more power because its needed their state governments from being evil.
See slavery, the black codes, jim crow laws, womens rights, religious freedom, environmental protectionism, coal mining in appalaicha, etc.
You still cant hold office in 7 states in the south if youre an athiest btw.
Why don’t the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
Because the red states have outsized influence over federal law, and they can outlaw the social democratic policies at a national level.
End Blue to Red state subsidies.
let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
Because there will be a lot of people in those areas who are not happy living under an ancap dystopia. Those states may even try to trap them there like Texas wants to do.
Imagine a couple moved to one of these ancap dystopias and have a kid. That kid turns out to be a big leftist and they hate not having rights.
We can’t just forget about the other states and only care about some. At that point, you can consider the United States to have fallen.
Why don’t the Blue states just enact social democratic policies and let the Red ones rot in their ancap dystopias?
If we assume that the Democratic Party actually wants to do good and not just what their donors want. They still have to contend with a Senate that’s is biased towards the empty states, and even the House of Representatives is somewhat biased but not as bad.
Now if the Blue States (or even Counties) form some kind of union to transcend the USA, things might begin to happen.
The EU is a patchwork of rights for example
The EU is a confederacy. It has a much weaker central government and much stronger states. The US could go back to a confederacy model.
What’s stopping California or Vermont or whatever from enacting state-level Universal Health Insurance programs or free university or whatever else?
Massachusetts has that, or as far as we can. You’ll find a range of policies with each state being different but “blue” states leaning in one direction and “red” states leaning in another. There are several states with variations in at least some free college, and some states with much better health insurance coverage
We have “universal” coverage, building on Romneycare, but are still subject to the same framework as everyone else. We still need to honor everyone else’s insurance providers, the whole patchwork of profit takers and inefficiencies. By ourselves we can only do the same thing better, but we can’t change the paradigm
It’s been a long time coming but tuition is finally free at state universities and colleges. It was even retroactive for the school year: in April 29, I got a refund of all the tuition i had paid for my kid for last school year
Nothing other than cost and logistics. Massachusetts had “RomneyCare” before ObamaCare existed for the country as a whole.
The fact that now state-level reforms and policies aren’t pursued is partially a symptom of the American people become national-authority simps.
And it’s partially because Democrats and Republicans seem determined to make everyone follow their interpretation of the rules. Most of American politics at this point seems to be about “hurting the right people.”
Lastly, most key wedge issues in the United States are often fundamentally moral questions that relate to constitutionality, making it impossible to allow some states to, for instance, hold slaves, allow child labor, allow abortion, allow religious fascism in public schools, allow racial discrimination, etc., without other states prevailing on the bedrock morality of the constitution.
I.e., the United States does not, as a singular country, remotely agree on fundamental ethics that can form a foundation for a coherent nation that would then allow for more state-level experimentation. The are certainly “different” states though. Look at Vermont vs. New Hampshire for instance. They’re quite different despite being bordering states.
Yes, I agree. That’s why I wrote that Americans have forgotten how to do federalism. Like, I get that states rights used to mean fucking slavery and you needed a strong central government to keep the southern racists from lynching people, but how else are you going to manage such a vast space and remain a democracy in the 21st century?
The moral issues you guys are culture warring over are nowhere near as grave as slavery or segregation now.
Not only that, but you have also concentrated the arbitration of these cosmic moral wedge issues on like what 10 people? President, SCOTUS, and whatever Manchin figure is the Senate kingmaker of the year. No wonder it’s breaking at the seams.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned that the United States has basically become national authority simps. “Voting” these days for most people is synonymous with presidential elections.
That being said, for many people, issues like abortion, trans and gay segregation/discrimination, legal slavery of prisoners, mass and school shootings, and the rates of violence and murder against: Indigenous, black, etc men and women are fairly serious and important issues that are, if not equal, relatively close in terms of moral outrage to lynching and slavery. I can understand that you don’t see it that way though.
Who is going to fund it?
The Commerce Clause is one often cited by conservatives. I am not a lawyer but if they can abuse it you bet they will even if that’s not what it was meant for.
The commerce clause doesn’t apply to in-state systems unless they interact with a foreign nation, native tribe, or another state.
What kind of abuse is even possible here?
I saw it brought up against states setting their own emission standards. I don’t agree with it but it is something I have seen them argue.
Luckily for the red side, the system’s designed so that sand can vote
and their votes count more than your city votes!
I can hear their goddamned chants…
Every square yard counts!
Every square yard counts!When it suits them. That is basically how it does work, to their benefit. If it benefitted Democrats, well then… “that’s entirely different, see?”, they’d be screaming to high heaven at the “unfair librul conspiracy to take over the government!”
Every square yard counts!
Every square yard counts!“Never fight uphill me boys!”
But it was too late.
Gettysburg. Wow.
Trump comes up with the strangest lines, I swear.
Despite the constant negative press covfefe
It was a Perfect phone call
We’re going to win bigly
This country was founded on the idea that land is power and land owners get to vote.
We need to change that. Peacefully first. But if that doesn’t work…peaceful protesting only works for so long.
¡VIVA LA PROLETARIAT! DEATH TO THE RICH!
I doubt anyone will disagree with me but “look at how red this map is” is the stupidest arguement.
Last year after ana election my dad reposted a map on Facebook like this but for the single issue on our states ballot. The comment from the original poster was something like liberal cities decided this all counties need representation. Of course the counties that weren’t blue were mostly populated by cows.
But like seriously this was a direct popular vote on a single issue you can’t get a more representative election than that one.
My favorite thing to do with these people is to ask them “okay, would it be alright if these issues were decided on a per-county basis then?”, if they say no they’ve outed themselves as just wanting to hold as much control over others as possible from a minority position, if they say yes ask again but with individual towns, if they say yes to that, then you narrow it down to individual people, then they tend to get mad when they realize what you’ve done
then you narrow it down to individual people, then they tend to get mad when they realize what you’ve done
That’s anarchocapitalism…
Land doesn’t vote. People vote.
Why does land determine who tells me what to do then?
Because the US electoral system is fundamentally broken?
What? It’s a worldwide thing, not just the US
Yes, to some extent it happens everywhere but the US has reduced the phenominon to its grotesque final form.
No, it happens to the same extent in basically anywhere that’s populated and can afford to enforce it
Ya…ok…
Sam Kinison reference. You are a gentleman and a scholar.
“We have deserts in America. We just don’t fucking live in them!”
I don’t think it is relevant.
The xkcd points out distribution and population.
The second map highlights how much more democratic the us is than republican and that is it obviously a broken system that republican’s have a chance of winning
agreed - love xkcd, happy to see it anytime, but it’s very specifically out of context here.
Population maps are what it’s about.
Hey, that’s not fair. Some of that is also sagebrush and pine trees. And some of it is cool rocks.
there’s no lying like lying with maps
(for those ggr nerds, yes, “the map was a lie”)
Well Biden just stepped down from the elections
I loved finding this out from a random comment on Lemmy. The interweb’s still got it!
How come they always color the places that don’t have anybody there as red?
Why can’t blue take it?
It’s the same reason all around the world: India, China, Australia, Venezuela, Romania, Kenya: Hicks.
Hicks are everywhere. And they vote for regressive authoritarians for any number of reasons, most of them wrong.
I love classism
Oh there you go bringing class into it again
Again?
Oh, xd
Who’s read an argument that’s something like “if we change this, then elections will always go blue, and red areas will feel unheard and _____”
It’s argued the blank is something bad but I can’t recall what it was 🤷♂️ IDK if it was civil war/secession bad or what
I remember a coworker from Utah once telling me that farmers are the most disadvantaged minority or something. Basically his argument was it is better that rural areas get more representation and people in the cities don’t need to be represented as much. For him it was an easy argument to make since it is the status quo and serves his interests.
The people who want to change things are who need to come up with either strong arguments to win public opinion or increasingly evident win their rights by direct action. No one who benefits from the current system will give up anything.
That huge red circles Phoenix right?
Why would a popular video game character get his own spot on this map?
Ace Attorney is just that popular in Arizona
Eat your hamburgers, Apollo…
