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I don't care if it is ageist, nobody above the retirement age should be in government. The fact that our country is still mostly ran by the silent generation is absurd and a huge part of the problem in general.
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Aug 3, 2023 23:13
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Gumball Gumption posted:Oh no clue, I'm no expert. Though term limits would go a long way in the long term for having a younger healthy political body which isn't terribly radical or anything. I don't think I need a solution to point to a problem and think that it's bad for the long term health of the country. I asked because every democracy in the history of the world has had this problem so if it’s a problem for democracy then it’s one we’ve always had. We have term limits, we call them “elections”
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Aug 3, 2023 23:20
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I don't care if it is ageist, nobody above the retirement age should be in government. The fact that our country is still mostly ran by the silent generation is absurd and a huge part of the problem in general. I don't think people over 70 should get to vote. No long term outlook. I'm going to voluntarily stop after 70
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Aug 3, 2023 23:21
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Gumball Gumption posted:Elected officials who can't be removed from office due to not being capable of performing their role is bad for democracy. I think it's as simple as that. There needs to be a way to remove people who literally can't perform the job and have become a proxy for others to act through. No one elected their handlers, they elected the politician. That's not so easy. After all, removing elected officials from office is also bad for democracy. And "are they capable of performing their role?" isn't always a clear-cut question either. The whole concept is very vulnerable to anti-democratic manipulation and political maneuvering. The 25th Amendment at least has the advantage that we already have an elected position whose sole job is to be a backup for the president, which substantially limits the ability to politically exploit its use.
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Aug 3, 2023 23:22
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Sounds like you figured it out, Main Paineframe. We need Vice Senators.
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Aug 4, 2023 00:49
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When McCain died wasn’t his wife sworn in to temporarily fill in for him? It might have been a different senator but I seem to remember their spouse was the one that was just automatically accepted as their successor until they were formally replaced. I thought it was loving dumb as gently caress back then and I still do today.
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Aug 4, 2023 00:52
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Gumball Gumption posted:Oh no clue, I'm no expert. Though term limits would go a long way in the long term for having a younger healthy political body which isn't terribly radical or anything. I don't think I need a solution to point to a problem and think that it's bad for the long term health of the country. Unlike a mandatory retirement age for political office, term limits are not an experiment: we've seen them at the state level and know how they work and what they do. As it turns out, it gives voters less control over who represents them, while party insiders and special interests get more. Also politicians themselves are even more prone to see their seat primarily as a way to set up a sweet new job once they limit out, and less as a reason to serve their constituents since it's not like they have to be popular any more. Main Paineframe posted:That's not so easy. After all, removing elected officials from office is also bad for democracy. And "are they capable of performing their role?" isn't always a clear-cut question either. The whole concept is very vulnerable to anti-democratic manipulation and political maneuvering. Yeah, the "who decides when someone isn't fit to run/serve" question is tricky, since that's easily exploitable. A lot of Constitutional mechanisms were naively/ineptly designed due to adopting an 18th century beta version of constitutional republic and not updating it to fit the times, but making it hard to just disqualify popular candidates unilaterally actually seems to be a good call on balance given how common it is in failed democracies.Even if it sucks in the here and now.
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Aug 4, 2023 00:54
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Dull Fork posted:Sounds like you figured it out, Main Paineframe. We need Vice Senators. They're called Chief of Staff 
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Aug 4, 2023 01:26
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Boris Galerkin posted:When McCain died wasn’t his wife sworn in to temporarily fill in for him? It might have been a different senator but I seem to remember their spouse was the one that was just automatically accepted as their successor until they were formally replaced. I thought it was loving dumb as gently caress back then and I still do today. Nope. Under Arizona law, when an Arizona senator dies, the governor appoints a temporary replacement from the same political party until such time as a special election could be held. The replacement was John Kyl, who basically just took the seat, voted to confirm Kavanaugh, and then resigned the seat. That led to the appointment of a second replacement, Martha McSally, who held the seat through 2019 and 2020 until the special election was finally held (which she lost). There have been a few cases where a dead legislator's spouse gets appointed to replace them, though. I don't remember names, but the instances I can vaguely remember tended to involve relatively popular legislators dying during or shortly after an election that they won rather handily, leading to the relevant authorities being anxious to appoint someone with clear ties to that legislator rather than just picking someone off their own patronage list.
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Aug 4, 2023 01:39
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Fart Amplifier posted:The person they were responding to was making a similar claim that would use polling data to prove: that Trump and Biden are not running neck in neck. It's a little closer than I'd like. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/
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Aug 4, 2023 01:50
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Main Paineframe posted:Nope. Under Arizona law, when an Arizona senator dies, the governor appoints a temporary replacement from the same political party until such time as a special election could be held. The replacement was John Kyl, who basically just took the seat, voted to confirm Kavanaugh, and then resigned the seat. That led to the appointment of a second replacement, Martha McSally, who held the seat through 2019 and 2020 until the special election was finally held (which she lost). That used to be the main way women ended up in office, when they were appointed or elected to succeed a dead husband. It's happened relatively recently but was mostly a thing in decades past when it was rare for women to have successful political careers of their own. So far as I know though, it's never happened automatically: it's just that "how about his wife?" is a common suggestion for replacement appointments.
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Aug 4, 2023 01:54
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Madkal posted:Seeing that this is Trump I wonder how many warning he will get for every time he violates the gag order. A news update I heard today also said he's "not allowed to commit any more crimes" which made me chuckle. Not only for how stupid it is (people should not commit crimes regardless) but also for the idea that I genuinely wonder if he can actually abide by it.
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Aug 4, 2023 01:58
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Boris Galerkin posted:When McCain died wasn’t his wife sworn in to temporarily fill in for him? It might have been a different senator but I seem to remember their spouse was the one that was just automatically accepted as their successor until they were formally replaced. I thought it was loving dumb as gently caress back then and I still do today. Mel Carnahan, the dead MO governor that beat John Ashcroft in 2000 was kind of like this. He died in a plane crash too close to the election to remove him from the ballot, so the campaign selected his widow Jean as an unofficial stand in, and the newly ascended Lt. Gov. promised to appoint her to the vacant seat if Carnahan won on election day. Here in the Texas state house, we've had wives fill in for Reps on military duty. Rick Noriega, who would go on to lose to John Cornyn in '08, his wife Melissa filled in for him for 8 months when he was deployed in 2005, but she was also a former Houston city councilmember so it's not like she was a neophyte. E: boy that sure wasnt worth it huh https://twitter.com/kkruesi/status/1687268018441572352 zoux fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 02:01
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Killer robot posted:That used to be the main way women ended up in office, when they were appointed or elected to succeed a dead husband. It's happened relatively recently but was mostly a thing in decades past when it was rare for women to have successful political careers of their own. So far as I know though, it's never happened automatically: it's just that "how about his wife?" is a common suggestion for replacement appointments. On a similar note, segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace got around term limits by having his wife run in 1968 and she won in a landslide. Except then she died in office barely a year later and Wallace didn’t control the lieutenant governor.
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Aug 4, 2023 02:04
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zoux posted:Mel Carnahan, the dead MO governor that beat John Ashcroft in 2000 was kind of like this. He died in a plane crash too close to the election to remove him from the ballot, so the campaign selected his widow Jean as an unofficial stand in, and the newly ascended Lt. Gov. promised to appoint her to the vacant seat if Carnahan won on election day. Knowing that John Ashcroft lost an election to an actual cadaver brings just a small mote of joy to my day. Every day.
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Aug 4, 2023 02:04
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Then acourse you got Ma and Pa Ferguson. James "Pa" Ferguson was impeached, removed, and barred from holding office in 1917 after he zeroed out the UT budget because they wouldn't fire certain professors who were also political rivals of his. So, he had Miriam, his wife run in 1924, they were absolutely, blatantly running her as a puppet for Pa, and she won and became the state's first female governor. quote:During her campaign, she said that voters would get "two governors for the price of one". Her speeches at rallies consisted of introducing him and letting him take the platform. A common campaign slogan was, "Me for Ma, and I Ain't Got a Durned Thing Against Pa." Patricia Bernstein of the Houston Chronicle stated "There was never a question in anyone’s mind as to who was really running things when Ma was governor."
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Aug 4, 2023 02:23
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Main Paineframe posted:Nope. Under Arizona law, when an Arizona senator dies, the governor appoints a temporary replacement from the same political party until such time as a special election could be held. The replacement was John Kyl, who basically just took the seat, voted to confirm Kavanaugh, and then resigned the seat. That led to the appointment of a second replacement, Martha McSally, who held the seat through 2019 and 2020 until the special election was finally held (which she lost).
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Aug 4, 2023 03:10
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zoux posted:Then acourse you got Ma and Pa Ferguson. James "Pa" Ferguson was impeached, removed, and barred from holding office in 1917 after he zeroed out the UT budget because they wouldn't fire certain professors who were also political rivals of his. So, he had Miriam, his wife run in 1924, they were absolutely, blatantly running her as a puppet for Pa, and she won and became the state's first female governor. George Wallace couldn't run for reelection due to consecutive terms served, so his wife ( Also his wife had cancer. Also the doctor hadn't told her about the cancer, only Wallace. The cancer devoured her to the point they needed a closed casket at her funeral. edit* sorry, got his wives confused. He married 16 yo Lurleen when he was 24 which was not scandalous back then, and is probably not that scandalous in alabama now. His second wife was 20 years younger than him. FizFashizzle fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 03:43
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I don't care if it is ageist, nobody above the retirement age should be in government. The fact that our country is still mostly ran by the silent generation is absurd and a huge part of the problem in general. I think there needs to be some way to disqualify people from holding office, but I'm not sure age is the right fit for it. You can get dementia in your 30's if you're very unlucky. At the very least getting diagnosed for certain conditions should fast-track you for retirement, and an independent body ought to screen people for that, but then we're in a screaming row about who gets to decide who is technically suffering from life-impairing mental problems. In a sane world, people who are obviously too old to function wouldn't be able to win elections at all, that's where the problem needs to first be settled.
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Aug 4, 2023 04:05
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Kalit posted:This definitely wouldn’t work on a state or federal level due to the percentage of home ownership. If it was specific for a medium/large city, maaaaybe? But then I feel like you’d end up with the rental market diminished and have a hosed city budget. Most places do this already though, usually with something called a "Homestead exemption" If you can prove the place you own is a primary residence, you get a discount off the property taxes, in some places it's like > 50%. They also add additional excise taxes past a certain number of properties.
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Aug 4, 2023 04:18
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1687198419910275072 That's why all his co-conspirators have the same lawyer, to get around that requirement.
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Aug 4, 2023 04:19
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I don't care if it is ageist, nobody above the retirement age should be in government. The fact that our country is still mostly ran by the silent generation is absurd and a huge part of the problem in general. Instead you've got a lower age limit of 35 for the highest office, for... some reason.
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Aug 4, 2023 04:24
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Instead you've got a lower age limit of 35 for the highest office, for... some reason. Not just president. You have to be 30 to be a senator and 25 to be a representative.
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Aug 4, 2023 04:34
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Mendrian posted:I think there needs to be some way to disqualify people from holding office, but I'm not sure age is the right fit for it. You can get dementia in your 30's if you're very unlucky. Historically, we have had a disqualification mechanism, in the form of "if someone seems like they're not physically or mentally able to hold office, no one will vote for them and they'll lose the election in a landslide". That's why, for example, FDR went to great pains to conceal his polio-caused health issues, and why there was quite a bit of attention paid to Fetterman's campaign-trail stroke.
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Aug 4, 2023 05:25
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David Brook has written something. I know the general rule is to comment when posting singing like this. I’m not going to do that. This isn’t a normal OPed. It’s going to take me a while to be able to have the words for what I think about it. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy-educated.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare “NYTs” posted:
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Aug 4, 2023 06:17
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david brooks develops class consciousness in the nytimes Op-Ed page. The writers room has really outdone themselves this time.
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Aug 4, 2023 06:56
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Brooks comes uncharacteristically close to talking about the role of the media wrt Trump, but he gets carried away talking about anti-woke stuff that nobody cares about and Josh Hawley's imaginary multiracial working-class GOP. His argument about the Trump indictments misses that Biden won lower income voters, Trump won higher income voters, the working class lives mostly in cities because those are the places where people live, and "working class" is not the same as "white voters without college degrees".
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Aug 4, 2023 07:08
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Of course the problem is education. The entire column just keep bumping up against the money thing, only to increase the volume on the insistence that it's all about elite ivory tower academia. If only we were more accommodating to the stupid oafs, maybe Trump would go away. Shut up about wealth inequality! Edit: It's like most elaborate allegorical retelling of the Oil Can scene in The Jerk. Gyges fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 07:10
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It's basically the same poo poo of when for your entire life you aren't allowed to acknowledge material conditions at all, (because that makes you a filthy red) to the point where you don't even know how if you wanted to, analysis ends up entirely about the trappings of class through a lens of cartoon stereotypes, and an excuse to beat on the same punching bags as ever. We see this op-ed more or less every week from the useless middle.
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Aug 4, 2023 07:30
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Natty Ninefingers posted:david brooks develops class consciousness in the nytimes Op-Ed page. The writers room has really outdone themselves this time. uhhh i think that's less class consciousness and more turning up the racism/RETVRN dial, friend--he doesn't want elites to release power but to get way, WAY more trad "" posted:“History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. what he means here is that the ruling elite should show "leadership" by clamping down on the "caste privileges" of having out gays and integrated schools and not ostracizing single mothers HookedOnChthonics fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 07:38
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Gyges posted:Of course the problem is education. The entire column just keep bumping up against the money thing, only to increase the volume on the insistence that it's all about elite ivory tower academia. If only we were more accommodating to the stupid oafs, maybe Trump would go away. Shut up about wealth inequality! Right? He seemed to brush right up against the idea that the educated elite always call the shots and that a lot of normal people can never gain access to that level of education but he never addresses the ideas of affordable college, generational wealth and near impossibility of upward mobility. Then somehow posits Donald Trump as the logical answer (for many people) to all that entrenched wealth and power. A man who was born rich for one thing.
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Aug 4, 2023 12:52
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https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1687199702180319237 For those not familiar with said movie, this was the turbo-racist movie starring Jim Caviezel that came out earlier this year about child trafficking!
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Aug 4, 2023 12:53
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Bellmaker posted:https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1687199702180319237
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Aug 4, 2023 13:01
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What do people think is most novel in the Brooks oped? (The way that i'm phrasing this seems snarky, but I'm genuinely curious.) Seems like the same safe class self criticism that is often his wheelhouse. Like isn't that what bobos in paradise was about? https://www.amazon.com/Bobos-Paradi...mcx_mr_hp_atf_m
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Aug 4, 2023 13:05
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BiggerBoat posted:Right? He seemed to brush right up against the idea that the educated elite always call the shots and that a lot of normal people can never gain access to that level of education but he never addresses the ideas of affordable college, generational wealth and near impossibility of upward mobility. Then somehow posits Donald Trump as the logical answer (for many people) to all that entrenched wealth and power. A man who was born rich for one thing. I mean, he's so close to grasping that the answer to these issues is socialism, and people who can't get socialism, turn to fascism instead. . . . but he just can't get there, mentally. It's like watching a Renaissance astronomer derive calculus from first principles, just so he can figure out how many epicycles to add to make sure the planets all orbit correctly around Earth.
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Aug 4, 2023 13:34
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Brooks is close to correct like an anglerfish is close to a lightbulb. It’s a hook.
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Aug 4, 2023 14:01
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Considering where Brooks was 10-15 years ago that column is actually really impressive. There are some conservative pundits who have just been like, "gently caress this, I'm out" during the Trump era, like Nicole Wallace, and basically just joined Team Lib like they had always been there, but Brooks has been clinging to his self-image as a conservative and a Republican despite clearly noticing that there's not really any reason to. So now he's reduced to coming up with reasons why other people do. Brooks is way too old to decide that "actually, I've been wrong about socialism my whole life," but he does point out some legitimate problems in the piece, doesn't he? He doesn't attack the idea of "wokeism" so much as he just explains - pretty well, I think, better than these things usually do - why it bothers some people so much. And his explanations of how class conflict flows through generations are pretty good. My biggest problems with it (aside from Brooks being pathologically unable to name actual solutions because of his ideology) are 1. Ignoring that faction of "the elites" that directly funds the right wing and intentionally makes the working class angry, in the way that the liberal elites carelessly are. 2. Kind of glossing over that while there are a lot of them, working class Trump voters are not necessarily representative of the average member of the working class, or representative of the average Trump voter. It's also, like, incredibly inward looking - are "we" the bad guys? Like, I feel like I'm reading Brooks's inside-baseball conversation with one of the six guys in America who holds his precise political views. Which, it's interesting, but why not talk to us instead, David? Maybe you want to say "sorry"? e: Somebody in the comments compared Brooks to Peggy Noonan, which, I don't know if they meant it this way, but 
Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 4, 2023 14:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean, he's so close to grasping that the answer to these issues is socialism, and people who can't get socialism, turn to fascism instead. . . . but he just can't get there, mentally. It's like watching a Renaissance astronomer derive calculus from first principles, just so he can figure out how many epicycles to add to make sure the planets all orbit correctly around Earth. Try this half formed argument on for size- In my opinion the reason this critique smells like socialism is because it is derived from ex trots that went to the national review like james burnham (see his managerial revolution and the machiavellians.) Someone like David Brooks draws more centrist end of the critique whereas someone like sam francis represented the racist right wing of the critique- The whole "the old bourgeois is gone and now we have a managerial elite." However, its origins are heavily intertwined with anti-communism so someone like David Brooks who came into the tradition from the right is unlikely to redirect this intellectual lineage back to its socialistic origins. Here's a quote from sam francis in 1996 making a case for the buchananite wing of the party (a movement that trump has cribbed tons from): "The significant polarization within American society is between the elites, increasingly unified as a ruling class that relies on the national state as its principal instrument of power, and Middle America itself, which lacks the technocratic and managerial skills that yield control of the machinery of power. Other polarities and conflicts within American society—between religious and secular, white and black, national and global, worker and management—are beginning to fit into this larger polarity of Middle American and Ruling Class. The Ruling Class uses and is used by secularist, globalist, anti-white, and anti-Western forces for its and their advantage." https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/from-household-to-nation/
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Aug 4, 2023 14:15
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Natty Ninefingers posted:david brooks develops class consciousness in the nytimes Op-Ed page. The writers room has really outdone themselves this time. Nah, David Brooks has been like this for a long time, because he's got a lot of personal resentment against people who went to top schools. As a Jewish kid who went to a state university, he reportedly didn't really fit in among the parade of rich WASPs working at places like the Weekly Standard. And when he was hired by the NYT as a token conservative he found that his co-workers there hated him even more than the conservative journalists did, something he chose to blame on them being ivory-tower intellectuals who were out of touch with REAL AMERICANS like himself. On top of that, he's mentioned that that his parents (both of whom are professors) aren't particularly supportive of his tendency to never let facts get in the way of his preferred narrative, although he frames it as the result of baseless slander from the journalistic class turning his own parents against him. Brooks is like that - he tends to blend his own personal resentments and humiliations into his own conservative ideology. For example, he developed his strong hatred for marijuana because he once showed up to English class mega-stoned on a day he was due to give a presentation, and is forever haunted by the embarrassment of incoherently stumbling through his presentation in front of the whole class.
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Aug 4, 2023 14:28
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean, he's so close to grasping that the answer to these issues is socialism, and people who can't get socialism, turn to fascism instead. . . . but he just can't get there, mentally. It's like watching a Renaissance astronomer derive calculus from first principles, just so he can figure out how many epicycles to add to make sure the planets all orbit correctly around Earth. So kind of like the guy who figured out the oddities in Uranus's orbit was caused by another planet and predicted Neptune's location (it was found within a year using his math) ...but couldn't figure out why Mercury's orbit was so erratic, threw up his hands and said there was a planet even closer to the sun perturbing Mercury's orbit. Only in Urbain Le Verrier's case the missing piece of information he needed to accurately math out Mercury's orbit was Einstein's relativity, while in David Brook's case he's missing the ability to extract his head from his own rear end.
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Aug 4, 2023 14:37
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