That one country shouldn't fight for a suicidal county for sure. It seems clear to me that certain treaties no longer bind similar ideals and I think a period of isolationism is due for everyone. Best of luck.

UCyborg wrote on Yesterday, 16:54:

World would be better if this one stupid country with its psycho president didn't stuck its nose into everything.

I'm still baffled how he managed to get elected not just once, but TWICE.

We dont allow conspiracy theory here, but I will do my best to answer your question earnestly, all the same.

More or less:

The US political system does not tolerate 3rd party voices meaningfully. As such, the system stabilizes on 2 basic ideological camps.
Generally speaking, "Negative Emotional Experiences" have stronger memory potentiation than positive ones. This is not a suggestion, this actually holds up to scrutiny.
As such, it is "advantageous" to both ideological encampments to demonize the other, and assign blame of any and every negative emotional episodic memory with the actions of policies of the *other*, while attempting to distance themselves from the same action by the other camp.

This evolution gives rise to specialized propagandist thinktanks that specialize in shaping the emotional perceptions of the electorate within target demographics, such as Heritage Foundation, and company. These groups cluster around "Political Action Committees", and other funding vehicles, to push specific narratives and policies designed to foster this ideological isolation and emotional reinforcement in the electorate, in order to more reliably and assuredly produce real voting results at election times.

Many many Many decades of this later, you have the kind of post-modernism that Jean Baudrillard waxes philosophical about (literally.) Things have long since stopped being about actual things that happened, and are now entirely based on symbols of, representations of, and emotional perceptions of, past events or policies. Much like the "Hatfields and McCoys", at some point, nobody even remembers what the initial points of policy disparity *even were*, only that "The other party" is bad, and to blame, and must be stopped at all costs, with only bland and flimsy generalizations given, instead of specific, actionable policy contentions. As such, any actual ability to establish dialog between the parties breaks down, since nothing of any actionable substance exists to be communicated or worked on in the first place. There is only "Our Policy" (which is intrinsically good) and "Their policy" (Which is intrinsically bad).

These same groups (thinktanks and PACs) are specifically engaged in political engineering through public perception management, and make extensive use of targeted advertisement, social engineering with preferred entertainment sources or figures, and statistical application and study of things like Sunk Costs, and Blowback effect. They use these tools to select policies, agendas, and investment strategies that will be most favorable to the ideological encampment they service, with no other considerations taken. (Like what is *quantitatively or qualitatively best FOR THE NATION*)

Generally, people in the US (I happen to live here), are already suffering from "Information overload" and "Attention deficits". Meaning, the electorate is becoming less and less *capable* of observing, understanding, and voluntarily counteracting the political machinations of these interest groups.

Conditions are favorable to, and continue to become *MORE FAVORABLE TO*, the policies and practices of these kinds of political engineering groups, with a naturally more and more ideologically segregated and less and less rational national mindset about any specific sets of policies.

Due to this, a breakdown in actual quality of candidates emerges, as the candidates *THEMSELVES* are products of many decades of this political manipulation process, and *THEMSELVES* hold unrealistic, non-specific, generalized and non-actionable views about policy. Since the public is likewise losing the ability to discern this, or to discern actionable policy from nonactionable policy, through purposeful activity of these groups, there is no balance or check against it. It just continues to snowball.

Our current political deadlock in the legislature, with people there that very clearly should not be there, and people holding high offices that have no real qualifications to support them holding them aside from generalized emotional or general political-alignment ones, with a highly polarized electorate, *Naturally Follows.*

I do *NOT* enjoy having this revelation.

wierd_w wrote on Today, 16:22:

.......... Due to this, a breakdown in actual quality of candidates emerges, as the candidates *THEMSELVES* are products of many […]
Show full quote

..........
Due to this, a breakdown in actual quality of candidates emerges, as the candidates *THEMSELVES* are products of many decades of this political manipulation process, and *THEMSELVES* hold unrealistic, non-specific, generalized and non-actionable views about policy. Since the public is likewise losing the ability to discern this, or to discern actionable policy from nonactionable policy, through purposeful activity of these groups, there is no balance or check against it. It just continues to snowball.

Our current political deadlock in the legislature, with people there that very clearly should not be there, and people holding high offices that have no real qualifications to support them holding them aside from generalized emotional or general political-alignment ones, with a highly polarized electorate, *Naturally Follows.*

I do *NOT* enjoy having this revelation.

The above post is one of the most succinct and accurate explanations of the current US (and maybe the world's) political situation I've read.

Basically why the American people get to choose between a giant douche and turd sandwich every election. (Thanks South Park...)

I probably differ politically than most of the posters here, and since Vogons is one of my few political free sanctuaries of the internet, I try to stay away from the subject like the plague... 🤣

If I wanted to be blasted by political ridiculousness I could go to Reddit or turn on CNN\MSNBC\FOX.

I literally get angry thinking to myself while in the voting booth (in both Presidential and mid-terms) that the names I get to choose from are supposed to be the best candidates that this nation can produce.... It is literally insulting as I can think of scores of other names that should be on those ballots, yet we get to choose from the ridiculous characters put forth from both parties.

It is like some sort of dark comedy.

All we can do is pull the lever for the ones that we "hope" will align with the policies closest to ours.

Roll the dice and place your bets....

For those of you outside of the US, This is also why you see the giant swings of American priorities every 4\8 years.

One party goes crazy implementing fringe crap aiming to correct the "injustices" of the other.

Then the other party does the same thing when the first one is voted out.

The glorious topping of the cake is when one party will call out the other for the exact actions that they themselves did 4/8 years ago.

Both sides do this frequently and I just can't take anything that they say seriously.

There doesn't seem to be a focus on the shared challenges of Americans.

All you hear is that the other side is evil, when the side that is making the accusations is just as bad.

Currently all you hear on one side of the media is that everything evil in the world is the Orange Man's fault.

If the cackling idiot would have won the other side would be doing the same thing.

For those of us that aren't trapped in our phone screens we realize that all of this is just two sides of the same crap sandwich.

For both sides, It's never about the good of the American people (or the world in fact).... it's all about who "wins".

No matter if you call yourself a liberal or conservative, there hasn't been much "winning" for decades.

Just the two cents of an old man in the country.... so mileage may vary.

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 12:28:

Also pretty hard to enslave someone who simply removes all tech from their life and goes and lives as a hermit in the mountains.

Unfortunately we have very few examples of resistance to draw upon and even then it's exchanging one illiberal nightmare for another:

Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada (born 19 October 1967) [...] is an Afghan cleric who is the supreme leader of Afghanistan under the Taliban government. [...] A highly reclusive figure, he has almost no digital footprint except for an unverified photograph and several audio recordings of speeches.
Akhundzada does not use modern technology, preferring to make phone calls on landlines [and] communicates with Taliban officials via letters.