George, that is the point: Trump and the rest of the MAGAts want government to stop functioning. They want Americans to hate their government so much that the people will be willing to replace it entirely with private contractors.
What I don't get is why people keep falling for it. I guess motivated reasoning is too compelling to be overcome by reality.
They elected Donald Trump a second time. We have the answer. It is "no."
What we CAN do is outnumber them. More than half of Americans eligible to vote prefer liberal policies. We just need to get enough of those Americans to vote for them in the form of our candidates.
@Professor_Stevens @georgetakei don't underestimate the numbing effect of a two party system.
You either get A or B, no nuance. Looking in from the outside, I live in a country with five parties in parliament, the number one issue I've been hearing about from US citizens nd from political scientists is that people don't want to vote for either option, but a third or fourth option has no chance of getting established.
I don't have a solution or suggestion.
Your sources match mine: a lot of Americans don't like either party. But a new party would be DOA. The thing is, however, that poll after poll shows that liberal policies are far more popular than conservative ones, among people who don't vote. The solution is to get them to realize voting is worth it.
Like I always say, one of the great joys of being an American is that I live in a world full of people ready to give me advice about what my country needs.
Danke schön.
I can assure you, Americans are gifted with more guidance from the rest of the world on how to improve ourselves than anyone else.
@Professor_Stevens @georgetakei I can believe that, there is even political science on that topic, confirming it for all English speaking countries, not just the US.
The whole world understands "you", but you don't understand many of the other countries' languages. Obviously "you" get tons of comments from foreigners. Also, the US' political system is the subject of jokes internationally, whether that's justified or not, I won't pretend to know.
I suspect most of those jokes have some nexus with our reality.
Thing is, we're actually very easy to understand. Just consider two distinguishing features of our national heritage:
1. We are the descendants of people who were willing to sail one-way in a wooden ship across a stormy ocean to avoid the crown in a rough "new world."
2. Half of us expanded west, taking our bibles and rifles, but not our textbooks or lab equipment.
1/2
In other words, we are genetically selected to have a problem with authority and take big risks to get away from it. Half of us are armed and ignorant while the other half are snooty and erudite.
As a result, we squabble with each other all the time about every last thing, because none of us likes being told what to do, but we don't care if squabbling is pointless, expensive, and dangerous. We'll pay that price to get our way.
Got us now?
2/2
@Professor_Stevens @stairjoke @georgetakei
Most people (regardless of baseline mental capabilities) are incapable of thinking in terms of higher degree levels of transitive causality chains.
They see the actions of an entity only on surface level. That's not some belittlement, just a weird an irritating thing about humans: Taking intellectual shortcuts whenever possible.
https://medium.com/mental-models-product/mental-models-product-5-second-order-thinking-893e510c428c
New to this series? Check out why I started writing it and why mental models are important in the product space 👉 Game Theory & Product Ever had something occur and realized that you should have…
@Professor_Stevens @georgetakei
Precisely this. This has been the goal of the Yeehawdists and their suit-wearing brethren of the Federalist Society since the New Deal.
"drown the government in the bathtub" was the Reagan years, if you remember. The GOP has long wanted to dismantle the architecture which allows people to have rights in a capitalist system.
The Enlightenment is a curse to these people. They want to return to serfs and vassals and lords.
Because they seem to have forgotten about guillotines.
Quite. Unchecked wealth inequality always leads to revolution. France. Russia. China. Take your pick.
Gonna happen here, and it won't be any prettier than it was in those other places. Kind of ironic that the people who throw "communism!" around as their ultimate insult don't seem to realize they are doing all anyone can to bring it about.
@georgetakei alt-text
screenshot of Mike Baker post somewhere
"A day after the Texas floos, FEMA laid off hundreds of call-center workers. Then, records show, the agency did not answer thousands of calls to its disaster assistance line."
That's followed by a screenshot:
1/x
----
On July 5, as floodwaters were starting t recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.
That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four compan
ies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the p
erson briefed on the matter.
2/x
The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answere 846, or roughly 35.8
percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded
16,419 calls and answereed 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show
3/x
Some FEMA officials grew frustrated by the lapse in contracts and that it was taking days for Ms. Noem to act, according to the person briefed on the matter and the documents. "We still do not have a decision, waiver or signature from the DHS secretary," a FEMA official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues.
----
George Takei 
🏳️🌈🖖🏽
Professor_Stevens
Wenzel 👨💻
datenwolf
ZiehmerTheGamer
crazyeddie
MissConstrue
Massimiliano Siddi
TheNovemberFella ✊🏳️🌈 🇺🇦☸️🛰️🚀
Alex P Roe
DDRitter 🏳️🌈🎗️🇵🇸
Eka A.
ChampiZen
Archaide 
Ordovician
Doug 🌈🇨🇦 
gunstick
toisse
Come On Giant Asteroid!
der.hans
jramskov