“We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet,” Trump said. “We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”
He said this in 2015, folks. And we still elected him. We’re fucked.
‘We’ didn’t elect him. A horde of deluded, ignorant douchebags in just the right states did.
No, a bunch of empty land elected him.
I can only imagine where the country would be if we reformed the Electoral College and the Senate. It’s absurd to be giving 1 million people in Hickle Dickle the same votes as 30,000,000 in another state. Or even worse, in the EC people in small states get 3-4 times the voting power as citizens of some larger states.
The idea behind doing that was so that the people in Hickle Dickle have their needs heard as much as the people from New Franciscago. Why? Because small towns have different needs than big cities, and it’s important to hear from the people living in each area.
However it absolutely needs an overhaul as A) the population difference between New Franciscago and Hickle Dickle have become obscene (you’re talking 30m vs 1m, when the reality is closer to 30m vs 100,000 or less), and B) the electoral college is becoming weaponized to override New Franciscago when it was supposed to balance the two and make sure Hickle Dickle still has its needs met.
The real problem happened in 1929 when Congressional apportionment was set at 435. Congress regularly increased in size before then. The population has more than doubled since 1930, yet the overall number of representatives hasn’t changed, which means each district gets bigger.
There are 990K people in the largest district by population currently, with 545k in the smallest. (Plot twist: that large district is actually Delaware, which still has only one district, somehow)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_congressional_districts
I have been saying this for years. The Senate is supposed to be where small states get an outsized voice, but by freezing the size of the House, small states have been getting an outsized voice in both houses on Congress and they’ve been getting a disproportionately high number of electors in the Electoral College.
Based on the 2020 census, Wyoming is the least populous state at 576,851 people. If that were used as the smallest number of people that could be in a district, the US’s total population of 335,073,176 would be divided into 580 congressional districts. Over a third of the population is being underrepresented because the House hasn’t added seats in almost 100 years.
Also we need to go back to giving the Senate back to state legislatures to appoint. By making it another smaller house, we have two places where the “Mob” can control instead of one chamber controlled by the people with another chamber controlled by the states.
State legislatures have had a diminished presence in state elections since the direct election of Senators. Also it would Remove the money from Senate reelection PAC’s, which is a win in my book.
Plot twist: that large district is actually Delaware, which still has only one district, somehow)
Because of the method used to calculate apportionment. It’s mathematically designed to assign each representative in a way that minimizes the average difference in population/representative.
It’s actually very good at doing that, it’s just that a few states are very small and still get the minimum one House Rep and two Senators and four are so big they blow the curve on the other end.
Frankly, we’d be better off in general if we merged some of the states that get one or two House Reps. We really only need one Dakota, for example.
The idea behind doing that was so that the people in Hickle Dickle have their needs heard as much as the people from New Franciscago.
No, not really. The actual idea behind the Electoral College (and Senators prior to the 17th Amendment) was so the state Hickle Dickle is in, collectively as a sovereign unit could have its needs heard, as expressed by its state legislature. It was basically intended to work like a parliamentary system (where the prime minister is chosen by members of parliament themselves, not by vote of the public), except with the power given to each of the state legislatures instead of Congress, for enhanced Federalism/separation of powers.
Electors don’t exist to change the balance the power between urban and rural; that’s a side-effect. Their real purpose is to compensate for the fact that different states have different legislative structures [for example: Nebraska is unicameral!] with wildly different ratios of constituents per legislator. They couldn’t do “one legislator, one vote” and have it be fair (read: normalized by population across states), so they did the next best thing and gave each state’s legislature a number of elector slots equal to that state’s representation in Congress, and let them choose people to fill those slots however they wanted.
People think the Electoral College and the Senate don’t work right, and that’s because they really don’t. But that’s not because they were designed poorly for what they were intended to do (limit “mob rule” and provide a voice for States as sovereign entities/the middle layer in the federalist separation of powers), but because we’ve subsequently fucked them up by bolting half-assed attempts at direct democracy to them in the form of the 17th Amendment, the Reapportionment Act of 1929, and state legislators abdicating their power to appoint electors and choosing them by statewide popular vote instead.
At this point, IMO, either implementing direct democracy properly (abolishing the Electoral College and the Senate) or going back to the original design would be an improvement over the broken status quo!
Don’t forget the tens of millions of Americans who stayed home because “both parties are the same”
Yeah, that’s always the problem. Sometimes it’s just a lack of motivation. Also don’t discount voter suppression, like how voting day still is not a holiday and there’s a significant lack of facilities in urban areas compared to suburban and rural regions. Nobody should have to wait in line for 5 hours (complete with BS like ‘giving them water is a crime’) to vote.
If the Republicans allowed real democracy to happen, they’d never get elected. They’ve said this pretty openly.
They used to claim they were the vast majority, silent majority, and so on, but it seems like they changed their tune on that and now it’s “we don’t need a majority! We’re a constitutional republic”
Weird. I didn’t know not casting a vote meant you were responsible for the person that millions of other people did vote for.
(for the record, I voted)
I think everybody in a democracy-ish country is responsible for their voting choice. Choosing to abstain is a valid option, and should stay that way.
However, if you have a preference between the candidates, by abstaining you are mathematically helping the other guy. That’s especially true in our two-party FPTP elections in the US.
Edit to add: it should go without saying that this assumes you have the capability to vote one way or another. You know, since we have a political party that wants it to be difficult to vote.
It does
A quick browse of this community will show you that a large percentage of the users here fall into that category.
We have to go see Bill Gates
This line… Lol
“Hi Bill, you’re the CEO of the internet, right? I’m going to need you to turn it off for me. Thanks.”
He saw that South Park episode and thought it was a documentary.
Well he doesn’t know Al Gore personally, for some reason he never seemed to show up to Epstein’s parties
tfw someone breaks it to him that he’ll have to call Al Gore…
It’s amazing, he’s said so many terrible things, I’m still learning about stuff like this he said years ago.
Ironically he got elected in large part because of his always online meme army. I’m guessing that part of the Internet sticks around.
That’s just locker room talk…
“He could invoke powers we’ve never heard a President of the United States invoke—potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil,” he added. "We don’t know because the things that are in there, the emergency powers of the president, aren’t widely known to the American people.
Wow, it’s almost like we’ve consolidated too much power in the Executive Branch and should do something about it before a despotic asswipe gets elected by an unhinged, manipulated populace.
Again. With nothing to lose this time…
Worse, he’s got everything to lose if he doesn’t find power to abuse to get him out of the hole he’s currently hanging over.
This was on the principle that only the most intelligent and qualified would serve…wich tbh…they should have seen it comming
No matter where an election is coming up - people tend to vote against their interests. This meme popped up in my head when I read this thread:
Unless their interest are not obvious to you in so far as that they are voting to maintain a racist hierarchy and privilege that equates to tangible benefits.
More than 50% of white american women voted for trump. Trump is a sexist, they know this. They also know that he will maintain their racist advantages over blacks, mexicans, jews, natives, asians you name it. So they voted for the ability to call the cops on you and have the police shoot you if they see you in their neighborhood.
It is basically a cast system that they voted for. Just in this case the cast system is based on racism.
Anybody knows a better explanation, please, feel free to reply and give your view what the benefits or expected pay-offs were for voting trump as a poor white woman.
edit: i forgot to mention what the expected reward is: if blacks, gays, jews, mexicans, asians, natives are beaten into submission and constantly harassed, then they can’t compete with them for jobs as well, and their kids won’t be able to compete with their kids either, as they will be constantly harassed, bullied and even murdered by the police and other racists.
Regarding your edit: This might be the reason, why people tend to vote against their interests. To weed out competition. For instance, people would happily vote against free school lunch - even if the option of free school lunch would benefit them - just because some different ethnical and/or political group would not receive that benefit either.
I see a very similar behavior in German politics right now: The right-wing party (AfD) is gaining popularity and the conservative party (CDU) is going to lose voters towards them. In order to appeal to voters they want to (very oversimplified) alter social welfare benefits to the worse and keep minimum wage from rising, all while claiming that immigration (among other things) is the issue. But those who are voting for the right wing party and the conservative party as well are the ones who clearly would benefit from better social welfare an a higher minimum wage. These people would rather decline any improvements regarding social welfare and minimum wage, so that others (immigrants for example) would not benefit from them either.
Edit: typos
More than 50% of white women voted for Trump? Do you have a source for this?!
I’m genuinely asking here, because that’s gross as fuck if true. I’m a white woman. I couldn’t imagine voting for that POS, however, my mother is suuuuuuper into the “Bible” so I know she did. My parents are unfortunately super fans of his. I didn’t think that there were that many like her though.
Edit: I was so appalled I looked myself. I did find a bunch of stuff supporting it like truthout andthe guardian, which is absolutely fucking infuriating to me.
I did see that when it came to women with college, more did vote for Clinton than Trump, but it wasn’t enough to outweigh when combined with those who lacked a college education.
FFS. This stat actually massively upsets me.
Exit polling shows Trump 39 Clinton 54 for 2016,
Trump 44-Biden 54 for 2020.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/
Alarming that it went up, though.
Those numbers are for women as a whole. Looking just at white women, using the same sources:
2016: 45% Clinton 47% Trump
2020: 46% Biden 53% Trump
He’s also promising to go into people’s houses at night and wreck up the place.
Arrroooooo!!
I feel a jowl movement coming on!
And sell our children’s organs to zoos for meat?
I literally just watched this scene minutes before I read this.
“Things the person speaking does not fully understand for $200.”
Wait until he hears about amatuer radio licensing, unlicensed spectrum, and experimental radio. It will blow his fucking mind.
I bet he actually thinks that all data is transported by fortune 500 companies that will do as he says “or else.”
If Trump elected, America has “turned off its brain”, I say
If Trump elected again*
Turned its brain back off
No, I’m pretty sure he got it right the first time.
Thankfully, he thinks unplugging the router in the Oval Office breaks it for everyone else, too.
He’ll just keep hitting the reload button in his browser. Makes it hard for anybody to read anything.
My thoughts and prayers have started ringing to the tune of "please gods may Trump have a heart attack / stroke at the worst possible time for the Republicans and spare the rest of the world another term of American foreign policy behaving as though it was conceived by racist, classist and eight kinds of phobic Elmer Fudd "
If thoughts and prayers actually worked, Donald Trump’s head would have exploded like a scene from “Scanners” on one of his countless TV appearances.
That actor is my friend’s dad!
Please Donald piss off the wrong people. I double dog dare you.
If the Internet goes off, it means most of the US will be pissed off at him. Cellphones would be basically useless.
His followers wouldn’t be able to access their favorite propaganda and conspiracy theories, either, so maybe they’d sober up a bit. Either way, it would not be good for him.
I mean, he can’t. Even if he claims to have the executive power, even if he found a bunch of lackeys willing to try to do it for him, he can’t do it. Whatever he did would be unenforceable. You can’t just turn off the Internet. That’s literally the reason we invented it in the first place, it’s a communication network resilient against nuclear strikes and war and bad-faith governance all at once.
He could probably make it very hard to use, given a lot of time, but he’d be eaten alive by the angry populace long before it ever reached that point.
Who are the wrong people? Have people similar to them offered significant resistance to past fascist regimes?
Yes.
The first time they lost because liberals actively embargoed them while selling guns and oil under the table to the fascists.
I’m not sure you’re talking about the same thing billwashere was talking about, but I’d like to hear more of your thoughts.
It was built to survive a nuclear war.
It will survive Trump.
Even if I have to drive a station wagon full of backup tapes myself.
There are countries that turn off the internet all the time. There’s a only a few major Telcos that control all backbone infra. It could definitely happen
External connections? Probably.
Low-latency internal connections? Sure.
But when you can send IP packets over pigeons things get harder to disrupt.
Hence the station wagon.
Do you think that’s a realistic way to keep sufficient modern Internet traffic moving?
No, but it will keep some things moving. Ham radio and mesh networks will help, too.
once the internet is off the rest of the world will not be witness to the awful crimes they will commit against the public… :/
The internet has gone to shit. Let’s hear him out. Speaking as a web developer who just sat through a wireframe meeting, I’m not completely averse to the internet disappearing.
computers were a mistake (I’m a software engineer)
I’m starting to lean towards the industrial revolution should never have happened.
“In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”- Douglas Adams.
DevOps Engineer here and I sometimes want to be Amish and surround myself with nothing but wood and stone.
He already turns everyone else off, so why not?
Please, ask him to download it before turning it off.
That’s the sort of thing that leads to actual unrest.
That’s how rulers consolidate loyalty and power.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Donald Trump may turn off the internet if elected to a second term in the White House, a former staffer has warned.
Miles Taylor, Trump’s former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was asked on MSNBC about what potential damage the former president, who is the frontrunner in the GOP primaries, could do in government without breaking the law.
I think Americans still don’t understand the full extent of the president’s powers and things Donald Trump could do, bubble-wrapped in legalese, that would be damaging to the republic."
“He could invoke powers we’ve never heard a President of the United States invoke—potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil,” he added.
In a Republican debate later that month, Trump said he was “open to closing areas” of the internet to prevent terrorism.
Removing internet service in certain areas of the U.S. would require multiple companies to turn off their cell towers and fiber networks, and to restrict satellite access to people living in those regions.
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