Trump got over "small hands"? Amazing.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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It is because you need to have people in the ballot all over the country to even be eligible. It takes a massive organization and funding to be able to do it. People won't be able to vote for your list if you don't have a local candidate of your list registered.
Revolution.
The Chinese had about four of them the past 100 years or so.
May 4th movement. Communist Revolution. The Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Then the past 40 years of economic growth wiping out abject poverty to be on the leading edge of several industries in the entire world a transformation unimaginable never seen in human history.
But that is not even the amazing thing.
The amazing thing is, just look at us, we have not changed one fucking bit, we still the fuck the same.
That is rather interesting I find.
As for the detractors, screw them, fucking assholes. Fuck them up.
My belief is that they got nothing left.
Not for the current struggle.
Maybe decades down the road, things could be different. But these next 10 years coming, very unlike anything will change as the West continues to slide.
I think the stupid shit they say is to convince themselves that they are still in the game. But that is their problem.
I noticed that when Iran attack Israel, they finally attacked them, Israel finally shut up about attacking Iran.
More of such events will be coming. In terms of war, in terms of industry, in terms of economics. The West is in full retreat whether they like it or not.
I dont think this is correct. If Vietnam today tried to fight US. Vietnam will likely get defeated quickly. The reason is demographics and wealth of society. Wealthy society just has much less people willing to fight and even fewer will want to sacrifice if they have smaller families and much larger older generation. and there is pointless to sit in trench waiting for ambush when Cruise missiles under 24/7 surveillance can destroy all the transport nodes.
In dedication to both respective nominees for the running to become the next/retain the U.S. Presidency. Courtesy: Wumao's/Little Pinks of Weibo, China.
You are brainwashed to believe culture revolution was a bad thing. Without Culture Revolution there would be no China today.
The US isn't a democracy because it wasn't set up as a democracy and the constitution reflects this.
It was set up as a federation of mostly independent republics which surrendered sovereignty to an extent necessary to form the federation and in which the federal authorities were elected in a manner that preserved state sovereignty.
The states were supposed to be democratic or not. The federation was only meant to keep them together.
All the innovations of US federal system - the separation of powers, the limitations on government power - were introduced to prevent the use of federal authority by a group of states to establish another imperial system - which ironically the US inevitably became, because while both sides (the Federalists/Hamiltonians and the Democratic Republicans/Jeffersonians) argued for "states' rights" both wanted to dominate the other side and exploit it to their advantage.
Hamiltonians initially wanted to use democracy at the level of electorate to expand their power and Jeffersonians wated to use democracy at the federal level to protect theirs. And then they changed stances when it better fit their interests and goals realigned and that's how the ever switching "Party systems" came to be, which continues to this day. Note: their goals never changed, just the political/electoral methods of achieving them. North/Coast vs South/Inland and establishment vs people dynamics are the same today as they were in 1790. It's their political rhetoric that keeps changing.
The US therefore became a federation explicitly to avoid the threat of the confederation (under Articles of Confederation) splitting and forming competing states and possibly joining the British colonies in Canada or allying itself with another European power. The US also became a federation because the war for independence was fought by an uneasy alliance of Southern landed gentry and Northern bourgeoisie which then transformed themselves into the Jeffersonian and Hamiltionian factions respectively. These two had fundamentally opposing worldviews. Southern gentry benefitted from large land holdings and slaves and wanted to restrict new arrivals. They were also interested in economic cooperation with Britain and favoured free trade with low barriers (tarrifs). Northern bourgeoisie benefitted from growing population and industrialisation and was heavily in favour of protectionism (tariffs) and expansionism. They were also more likely to align themselves with other European powers because their economic policies made Britain their primary competitor.
That alliance i 1780s wouldn't last if it wasn't supported by European powers, most importantly France. American Revolutionary War was "American Spring". The discontent was genuine. But the process needed external influence before it gained momentum. Without that external influence the US turned against itself, to the point where secession was threatened by the Northern states during the Hartford Convention in January 1815 during the ongoing War of 1812 (1812-15).
The US remained a single entity until the Secession War because Andrew Jackson's (then general, later president) success at New Orleans during the Hartford Convention in 1815 broke the Federalist Party. Jackson later used his popularity to enter politics with a populist platform of "Jacksonian democracy" i.e. universal male suffrage. Partly for personal reasons - if you know how he lost to Quincy Adams in 1824 despite having majority, but operating in the old "indirect" system.
Being from Tennessee he was not a Virginian (Virginia at the time dominated federal politics - "Virginian dynasty" of presidents: Jefferson, Madison and Monroe 1801 to 1825) but still was considered "Southern" while his political views made him popular with lower ranks of society in the North. He was also an expansionist and anti-Indian. Jackson (rather than Lincoln) was the American Julius Ceasar, except without assassination. Jackson's influence and expansion of the franchise transformed the country and delayed the inevitable fracture during the Antebellum. It also likely seeded all the current problems.
Before Jackson majority of states elected the president indirectly and voting rights were limited to small group of property owners. It was fairly meritocratic despite being elitist, and also had little real power. While the trend was toward greater enfranchisement Jackson turbo-charged it. However he did not reform the overall federal system which caused the US to be what it is today - a very expressive and dynamic democratic process occurring in a very narrow Overton window defined by the establishment. Jackson provided not democracy but a "Jacksonian democracy" that is an illusion of democracy. He provided people with an ability to scream in the streets in support of candidates selected in the old way, while not giving them actual power to influence the government. In a way without Jackson, the original system would either fracture earlier or would force genuine reform. It's not Jackson's fault - at the time his ideas were revolutionary, matching what only Revolutionary France has introduced.
Jackson wanted to use American democracy to get rid of the national bank. He got his wish. Then he left office and national bank returned soon after but American democracy never recovered.
So when you think of early US the correct analogy is contemporary EU and not the US of post-Reconstruction era.
The EU currently is structured very much in a manner resembling early US and the main tension is between "Europe of Nations" (mostly supported by outside powers, just like the Southerners in the US) and "Nation of Europe" mostly backed by the core industries and European middle-class bourgeoisie.
It's literally the same process, just in a different setting. Even the economic and political motives are the same.
The story of "American democracy" today is New Deal/WW2/Cold War establishment propaganda built on the memories from the Progressive Era. It's an ad for consumption of the established system. It's the Europe of nations pretending to be an European nation.
Now interestingly the US has had another (r)evolutionary period during the Gilded Age when electoral participation was high and resulted in the Progressive Era when candidates from third parties would get close to 1m votes - including Eugene Debs, a Socialist (1912, 1916, 1920).
Obviously the pseudo-democratic FPTP system created for giving votes to the oligarchy but not the people in 18th century Britain played a part by introducing an inevitable electoral mechanic.
However that shift in electoral preferences happened because the entire society shifted toward more democratic stance and that was perceived as a threat by the establishment which at the time was in the Republican party, which in 1920 did something very important that most people forget about. It stopped the reapportioning of Congress after every census.
seats in House of Representatives:
105 in 1790 at 4m pop,
213 in 1820 at 10m pop,
292 in 1870 at 39m pop,
386 in 1900 at 76m pop,
435 in 1910 at 92m pop
and ever since.
That gave Republicans temporary hold on the government during the 1920s but when Great Depression hit Democrats under FDR managed to force popular support through the FPTP system. That in turn meant that FDR could use that rigged system to protect his power (and his New Deal which was a reactionary measure in disguise) which he did four times. And afterward Democrats having become the establishment party held an uncontested rule until 1994 with the US being a de facto one-party state. Why change what works for you?
And this is another example of the fundamental flaw of "Jacksonian democracy". The undemocratic early US had a more democratic federal system while the more democratic middle US had a less democratic system. Democracy is not about just the participation in elections but also what influence the electorate has over the authorities. Universal suffrage with limited influence result in electoral dictatorships like in contemporary Russia. Or the US - except the dictatorship is harmonic (two body mechanic).
And this is also why the US is the cradle of the contemporary Culture War - they need something to motivate the electorate (because literally every vote counts in FPTP) without giving them anything that can threaten the extremely lucrative system of harmonic electoral dictatorship.
And that's why there is such an overwhelming narrative of "democracy" in a system that is fundamentally undemocratic. It is a motivator which also uses a clever trick of conflating the genuinely democratic "small d democrats" and the maliciously anti-democratic "capital D Democrats". And why so many moderate Republicans cling to old not-so-democratic methods of governance as "what gives power to the people" because historically... that's what kind of worked in the US.
Note how states in Europe had to work hard to develop their democratic standards - revolutions, overthrows, coups, dictatorships, revolutions etc lasting 1-2 or more centuries. The US got there early and then it only kind of went forward and simply got lost because it came too easy to quickly.
Anyway, hopefully you learnt something from this.
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FriedRiceNSpice
Captain
Well, I suppose if you look at it from the context of the Cultural Revolution creating enough chaos and leaving enough of a power vacuum for Deng Xiaoping to ascend to the top position and be able to garner enough support to carry out his vision for the future of China.
If you talk to people that actually lived through that time period, you will clearly understand why it was not a great time for most people in China. Basically wasted the potential of almost an entire generation.
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