“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.
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”
Even worse. The single issue voters, or hard core progressive voters who voted independent or wrote in names on their ballot because they didn’t get their way. They know who was better for America out of the two real choices, but made the statement of “I’d rather see the country burn than participate”
The faction of the party that formed a PAC to elect McCain/Palin doesn’t get to lecture people about jumping ship when they don’t get their first choice.
The fuck are you implying?
I’m saying that the same PUMAs who jumped ship and tried to give us VP Palin are hypocrites when they scream at progressives for not voting in accordance with their sense of entitlement.
I still don’t understand. Are you saying democrats forced palin through in order to turn republicans off and are now surprised that progressives don’t want to vote for a candidate they don’t like?
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A quick browse of this community will show you that a large percentage of the users here fall into that category.
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
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.
That’s just locker room talk…
Ironically he got elected in large part because of his always online meme army. I’m guessing that part of the Internet sticks around.
“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:
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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 "
Another term? If he gets in again, he ain’t leaving until he’s dead. It’s glaringly obvious that he plans to become a dictator like his friends Putin and Kim.
Dude is 77 years old and eats like a garbage panda. Gods willing he at best lasts like 4 years
He could pass on the crown to his kids, or an even worse fascist could exploit the power vacuum and take over.
That’s why I hope it happens during the election and the ensuing chaos means they can’t consolidate around a candidate. Dems would just reshuffle if Biden bit it mid campaign because so many leftists vote Democrat because it’s the lesser of two evils but the Republicans eat their own.
🤔 I wonder what would happen if someone assassinated Trump right before the election. Neither you nor I would ever do that, but say someone did. What is the protocol?
Or Biden, for that matter? Or say the Trumptards attacked enough polling places throughout the U.S. to seriously disrupt the election and possibly even completely fuck it up. Is there a legal protocol in place? Any election clerks in the house?
Well assassination of a candidate duration an election has some precedent. But it doesn’t happen often for good reason. If you assassinate a political figure you make them essentially a martyr for their campaign or ideals which stops people thinking rationally and doubling down on their emotional reaction to the assassinee’s party or general ideology. People put aside differences to “carry the torch”.
Honestly killing Trump and pining it on leftist bogeymen would be a move I could see some Republicans doing. They have basically primed their base to accept any shlock they want to pass as news and if they go full authoritarian and get enough support on board to basically ignore democratic checks and balances…
I really, really think it greatly behooves western states to try to secede from the U.S. next year.
Like the right wing is completely intractable at this point and compromising with them will only bring suffering so it would benefit the left if California, Oregon, Washington simply left and formed their own country. They have big enough economies where they could do it and survive on their own.
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.
How many internet service providers would have to go along before the internet was effectively off? 3? 4?
You wouldn’t need an ISP to have servers communicate, if push comes to shove. So maybe “effectively off” as we know it, but damn near impossible to stop communication if people need it
I mean, off for whom? There’s people who think facebook IS the internet and will be forced to go outside if they can’t read their racist memes today. For critical comms, you’d have to shut off way more than 3 or 4 big companies to make a dent. For sensitive, high-bandwidth applications that involve a lot of people being online at once, you would need to hit fewer before the damage is noticeable.
I agree that the internet is far more than facebook. But if you’re blocked at the edge of the network by your ISP, there’s really not much you can do. You’ll have access to nothing, Facebook or otherwise. Not even something low bandwidth.
If At&t, Comcast, Charter, Verizon, and T-Mobile suddenly stopped providing service to all their customers, then essentially no-one would be able to use anything on the internet at all. Even if the backbone itself (which I believe is largely owned by those same companies, but not sure) and some large datacenters that are their own isps were able to keep talking to each other, anything business or user facing would stop.
Some people who run their own mesh networks might be able to stay in contact (and people would try and start some local ones as this disaster unfolds), but that’s so few people.
But we still haven’t established why. It makes no sense that companies that only make money providing a service would stop providing the service. I wouldn’t even be able to pay my ISP because that happens over the Internet.
I was assuming this was the government ordering the companies to. They have no incentive to do so on their own. But I believe there was a bill (which thankfully didn’t pass) that would have given the president the power to essentially order the internet turned off.
Why would a company agree to stop making money?
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
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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.
He already turns everyone else off, so why not?
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.
Make Luddites Great Again
I’m down with that
DevOps Engineer here and I sometimes want to be Amish and surround myself with nothing but wood and stone.
damn right they were. who thought that giving lay people tools that relied on parts with magic smoke?
I vote for the Great CME 2024!
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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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