2016 Politics - All The Marbles, Lost

[Lord_Plecostomus]

Ok some of you may have heard that Trump won... just stay calm for a moment there is a solution. It's called take a deep breath, do what you can to help those targeted by people claiming to act in his name, and give the man a fair chance to lead. That's what I did in every single election where MY candidate did not win. I and the other folks who want Trump should be afforded the same fair treatment. As I said there are those who mistakenly act in Trump's name to bring ruin to us all... Go forth and enlighten them as to the error of their ways. I followed Trump from the beginning and this is not what he asked us to do.

Now: Some well meaning civic minded folks are starting a petition and lawsuit to force the Electoral College into voting for Hillary, stating that their decision goes against the will of the people. Well that's just daft in and of itself but nevermind... lets all be bad losers for a moment and remember that we in recent memory had to have the courts appoint a president previously. That was a dangerous precedent and not how Democracy works. If your candidate loses pick up the pieces, go home and try again next time. It's that simple. Court intervention has zero place in our process. The court should have never intervened in Bush's case and it should distance itself from choosing the president this time too.

Perhaps the founding fathers were right, the common man is too stupid to participate directly in government and we need to remove the option for the people to contest a legal election through nonsensical lawsuits and petition processes.

If we are going to go that route I propose the courts also overturn the following as well. We The People demand it:


1) Immediately overturn the results of the World Series. I mean I know that one team really put in the effort to win and all that but it goes against the natural order of things. The fans of the other team should not have to suffer the ignoble fate watching their team lose. Right?

2) All of last years Oscar winners should give back their trophies and forfeit their win. Some of those folks have no prior acting experience and therefore are not fit to win at all. Only experienced actors with experience in acting should win at all ever because that's just the natural order of things.

3) Clearly Ms America needs to give her stupid shiny hat back and return those flowers. The other girl clearly should have won because we the people demand it. On top of that she has no prior experience being Ms. America. Only those who have prior experience with being Ms. America should participate at all, let alone win. Mob rule all the way baby. The HELL with what the judges thought or what the other 50% of the nation thinks.

4) That family that won five years worth of free sandwiches from Runza should forfeit and redistribute their winnings to the rest of us who participated. Some of us really wanted the Morgan family to win, but they didn't. That's just not fair to our favorites and shows the system only benefits those who put in the time and effort to win. How can we as a society collectively do such a thing as we have done since time immortal?! I demand the courts step in and give me free sandwiches.

5) Lets go back in time a bit. I am a Buffalo Bills fan. My team lost the Superbowl a bunch of times in a row. How awful. Traumatic. It breaks my heart to this day. I demand that the supreme court retroactively declare the Buffalo Bills the winner of those match-ups. It's only fair. I don't care if my team played awful, forgot their helmets or lost because the wind blew the ball away from the goal-posts... It's a simple matter of getting what I want and the hell with the rest of you. Society owes me this and I don't give a poop about what sort of precedent this sets. It's all about me, baby.

I am going to enlist the media to highlight the sad unfortunate number of rabbits that get hit by cars every day in this nation. Clearly this is going on in direct response to all the things I mentioned above, it's not a simple matter of rabbits getting run over every day on the highway as they have been since we started driving. No this is a direct result of us not getting our own way. Someone clearly called out and said "run over rabbits because we aren't getting our way! Rise!"


...if you've made it this far without having an aneurysm or stroke, congratulations. Thank you for reading my little bit of satire on recent events. I hope you pause for a moment and realize what you are asking when you demand the courts overturn an election victory. It happened once in our lifetimes. It can never happen again. Ever again. If you support that petition if you support that lawsuit you are an enemy of Democracy unlike any this nation has ever faced.

And I will not stand for it.

Democracy has lead Trump to be our elected leader. This is the way it is. Stop supporting the corrupt regime that is playing us all for fools and let him have a chance to lead this nation.

[scottydog]

I totally agree. As much as I'm disappointed by the election outcome, we have to accept the results. If we don't like the results, then we should roll up our sleeves and work on changing them next time.

I've had to take a break from Facebook. 90% of my friends are liberals who are angry, scared, and depressed -- and they can't let go of the fact that they didn't get the outcome they wanted. I'd like to say to them: Get over it. Accept it. Acceptance doesn't mean approval. It just means you acknowledge that it happened and you can't un-do it. Acceptance then frees you up to do something constructive, like work toward change.

I may really limit my Facebook time for quite a while, as I now envision four years of vitriol and hate directed toward Trump. Trust me, I don't like Trump at all. But I'm willing to give him a chance. I hope he proves me wrong and ends up being a good president. The vast majority of my FB friends will openly pour hate on him every day, and frankly I don't need to be subjected to that.

[Lord_Plecostomus]

What the he-- YOU ACTUALLY AGREE WITH ME?!


ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP!!!

[RJDiogenes]

Well, of course. Nobody in their right mind would promote the idea of forcing Electors to vote contrary to the results in their state. Just the opposite: They should be required by law to vote according to the outcome.

I do hope that this finally results in the elimination of the Electoral College, however. I was surprised that nothing along those lines happened in 2000, but this is now twice in the modern era that the loser has been elected.

I may really limit my Facebook time for quite a while, as I now envision four years of vitriol and hate directed toward Trump.

The fact that the Left Wing has become just as much an ideology of hatred as the Right Wing is one reason this election turned out as it did.

[Lord_Plecostomus]

You should do what I did. Learn to hate everyone equally. Then you quickly see through all the lies and realize it's a question of being fucked in the nose vs fucked in the ear. Either way, you are still fucked.

Of course I don't recommend that, it's much better to try not to hate at all.

[scottydog]

The fact that the Left Wing has become just as much an ideology of hatred as the Right Wing is one reason this election turned out as it did.

I agree.

it's much better to try not to hate at all.

Exactly. Life is too short to waste on hate. Only love can save us.

[Gary]

Had the election gone the other way, everyone screaming about the Electoral College would have been circling the wagons in its defense. The system works as intended, and for good reason.

Imagine how much wailing there would be had neither candidate reached 270 electoral votes; thereby throwing the race to the House.

[RJDiogenes]

Of course I don't recommend that, it's much better to try not to hate at all.

Indeed. This is the one and only option.

Exactly. Life is too short to waste on hate. Only love can save us.

Yes. The world needs to re-learn this.

I'll repost this here, too. Unfortunately, my entire Trunkards blog post didn't migrate over to Facebook with today's feed for some reason, and it doesn't come up even when you click on it. But this is what all my subscribers on Tumblr read today:

"A universe where elephants talk suddenly seems slightly more realistic than the one we’re living in now.

Here at Trunkards, we try to gently advocate for those basic humanistic values of kindness and decency, friendship and sensitivity, and unity and understanding, that allow cooperative ventures such as civilization to exist. In an environment of antagonism, cooperation breaks down. Society fails.

Fifty years ago, there was a movement abroad in the land to promote the liberal values of peace, love, and understanding. The intent was to fix the mistakes of a young species which had not yet learned where instincts leave off and reason begins. This movement was an unparalleled success. The world was changed more in one generation than it had changed in the entire prior history of mankind.

A half century later, much of this has gone by the wayside. We have come to live in an age of extremism. Refugees flee through the minefields of the Culture War. Daily we see people inciting hatred and divisiveness, and calling it progress. Instead of uniting in our common humanity, we have allowed ourselves to be chopped up into finer and finer factions, dehumanized by a mushrooming of meaningless labels, and set against each other in manufactured conflicts designed to make the weak feel strong.

Hatred breeds hatred. You get as you give. You reap what you sow. These axioms are not rocket science, but they go largely ignored. And now the result is that reactionary anger and apathy have appointed us a leader who represents the precise antithesis of our values.

Most people are basically decent, if properly cultivated. We know what works and we know what doesn’t. There are no excuses. If you want to promote positive change, begin with yourself."

Had the election gone the other way, everyone screaming about the Electoral College would have been circling the wagons in its defense. The system works as intended, and for good reason.

No, I've always been against the Electoral College, no matter what. The winner should win.

Imagine how much wailing there would be had neither candidate reached 270 electoral votes; thereby throwing the race to the House.

Probably a lot, but it certainly would have been interesting.

I voted for Bernie and Mary Jane in '16. At least I got half of what I wanted.

[Gary]

Had the election gone the other way, everyone screaming about the Electoral College would have been circling the wagons in its defense. The system works as intended, and for good reason.

No, I've always been against the Electoral College, no matter what. The winner should win.

But that's precisely why the system was set up the way it was. It's to prevent the tyranny of the majority through representation of apportionment. This is just like cumulative voting with shareholders of a corporation.

[Jim Gamma]

So instead you have tyranny of the minority?

Representative democracy only works when it is truly representative. I saw something on Facebook saying that 2.9m (EDIT: I should learn to check my sources. 0.6m per RJ, but the point stands.)more voters wanted Hillary than wanted Trump, after all the ballots were counted (including postal votes and those requiring eligibility verification). How is a set up giving Trump well over half the states actually representative of that? How is a system where the value of one's vote changes depending on where you live truly fair?

In a company, one share equals one share. If the value of my share goes up, so does yours, by the same amount. If I buy a second share, I simply have two votes, each worth the same amount individually; it's the fact that I get to vote twice that allows me to out vote you, not the value of a single share/vote.

(I have the same problem with the UK system before you bring that up.)

[RJDiogenes]

^^ I don't see 2.9 million, at least not yet. CNN and Wiki are both saying that she won by 630,877. I don't think they're done with California yet, though, so that could definitely increase.

Had the election gone the other way, everyone screaming about the Electoral College would have been circling the wagons in its defense. The system works as intended, and for good reason.

No, I've always been against the Electoral College, no matter what. The winner should win.

But that's precisely why the system was set up the way it was. It's to prevent the tyranny of the majority through representation of apportionment. This is just like cumulative voting with shareholders of a corporation.

There definitely are, and should be, checks and balances to prevent the tyranny of the majority, but that's not one of them. Democracy means that the majority rules. Sometimes it's a straight majority, sometimes a two-thirds majority, sometimes some other number, but it's always a majority. And if we had a democracy where the minority ruled, everybody would just vote for the candidate they don't want and the results would be the same. This is a flaw in the system. Maybe it was a good idea when we were thirteen primarily agricultural colonies, but I think even then it was in the same category as the runner up becoming vice president-- looked good on paper, but a really bad idea in practice. All the EC does in real life is suppress voter turnout and occasionally elect the loser.

What's interesting to me is that this has only happened in the 19th and 21st centuries (yes, 2000 was the 20th, but for all intents and purposes it was a 21st-century event). Is there some particular reason, related to cultural trends, that it was never an issue in the 20th? Probably, but I haven't figured it out yet.

[Jim Gamma]

Yeah, looks like Moby had the wrong info up. Edited the 0.6m in. The point stands, though.

One comment I've seen elsewhere is that the USA is actually a constitutional Republic rather than Democracy. Not really sure what the difference is...

[Lord_Plecostomus]

What's interesting to me is that this has only happened in the 19th and 21st centuries (yes, 2000 was the 20th, but for all intents and purposes it was a 21st-century event). Is there some particular reason, related to cultural trends, that it was never an issue in the 20th? Probably, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Manipulation of public perception by the media?

Access to too much information too quickly?

A small but insidious group manipulating the country for their own personal gain?

All of the above?

[Jim Gamma]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 13596.html

The Independent is claiming the popular vote could go to Clinton by up to 2m votes (not 2.9m as I said earlier - that was a misread on my part) after all Californian votes are counted.

At least four million votes are yet to be counted in the Democrat-leaning state of California. These are a combination of postal votes and ballots cast by people whose voting eligibility could not be verified on the day.

Nate Cohn, an election analyst at the New York Times, estimates that once all votes have been counted, 63.4 million Americans will have voted for Mrs Clinton and 61.2 million for Mr Trump, giving the Democrat a ‘winning’ margin of 1.5 per cent.

[Lupine]

What's interesting to me is that this has only happened in the 19th and 21st centuries (yes, 2000 was the 20th, but for all intents and purposes it was a 21st-century event). Is there some particular reason, related to cultural trends, that it was never an issue in the 20th? Probably, but I haven't figured it out yet.

That is an interesting anomaly.