There's no magical "back in the day" when everything was better. It's up to us to make things better, lamenting changes or new technology and longing for a lost past that never was won't help.
Long before we had "fake news" vs "real news" we had "no news" and hearsay from a dude in a bar. Same shit, different day.
The other side is most people aren't doing well financially.I know tons of people who work all the time, and are just too exhausted/demoralized by the end of day for anything but tv and beer.
The apathy, desperation, political violence/polarization, filter bubbles, poor economy for the average person, rise of the new alt-right, antifa, and resurgence of the extreme/alt-left all make me feel like a collapse is coming.
Setting: 2016 US Election
- Everybody is screaming in my ear all day every day "YOUR VOTE COUNTS, GET IN THERE AND VOTE"
- Tons of people go to vote
- The candidate with the lesser number of votes wins the election
All I know is, simply put, my vote feels worth nothing and so I now deafen myself to politics as much as possible. Much more worthwhile to focus energy on building businesses and making money that I can donate to charity rather than wasting away in my armchair yelping about politics proven to be outside my control.
There's no such thing as the "alt-left".
That said, yes, you might see a fall out of government not working. But rebuilding a welfare state will take generations. If you don't fix the political system this will fail too.
As a scenario and extension to your theory, what if the period of people largely not caring results in an entirely different class of politician being more successful, where partisanship and political maneuvering are more useful than actually achieving useful change? When "stuff breaks down and people start caring again", what if those politicians aren't up to the job of actually fixing what's breaking?
I'm not sure that necessarily explains our current status, but it is a morbid line of thought.
Or maybe a better explanation is that the will of the people is actively surpressed? Be it voter ID laws surpressing Democrats, or the democrats themselves surpressing the voices of progressives through superdelegates and closed primaries, there are serious issues with our democracy.
Throw in a populace that's been the victim of a failing education system for decades due to candidates who slash taxes (and thus budgets).
And now, when the problems are so acute, I find it very interesting that the narrative becomes that all these issues are the fault of the lazy voters. A convenient, and false narrative.
Or, to put a finer point on it: some people think the only way to fix the system is e.g. "violent protesting", but they abhor being seen to personally enact violence more than they want change. Other people think the only way to fix the system is e.g. "becoming involved with politics", but they abhor being seen as a politician more than they want change. Etc.
There are problems people want solved, but the same people that want the problems solved have things they not only care about, but which society expects them and tells them and perhaps in some senses brainwashes them to prioritize over their own needs. Everyone in the modern world is afflicted to some degree with a social anxiety telling them that their families and friends would disapprove of their doing anything so outré as actually fighting for change (rather than preaching-to-the-choir about change), especially when that could hurt or endanger said family and friends. As the thinking goes, you're just not supposed to risk the people you love for something as silly as bettering democracy.
(And yes, that's even true when a person's family and friends are outwardly exactly the people who claim to want change, and who hold forth about the change that needs to happen, and disapprove of the people who don't similarly hold forth. The people who spend their time signalling that they care about change, are some of the least interested in associating with the people who actually enact that change.)
Modern Western culture seemingly has entered a failure-mode unprecedented in history, where we have nobody willing to go first, to stand out, to do what needs to be done, to enact the changes everyone else wants. We've run out of empathetic iconoclasts—people who see the suffering of distant/distributed others, and for whom that aggregate suffering outweighs the risk that might come to the comfortable-life-in-obscurity of all their closer companions. The people with hearts that bleed for their fellow citizens, but then don't shrivel back at the thought of their companions being the ones who end up bleeding.
There are tens of millions of people in the US that really want <X> to change, for a lot of <X>. However, without acting as a unified group they don't matter because they're dwarfed by equally disorganized and apathetic people who don't care. There are many examples from around the world of people getting what they want when they are numerous and well organized. Don't even need to look far, NRA is an example of this collective power (to some extent) in the US itself.
There is a social engineering solution to this somewhere, just like the current situation is a result of deliberate social engineering, not some inevitable evolution of democracy.
Depending on what Congress does, they don't even need to wait for the policy to be enacted before it could be affecting their sales, stock prices, and executive compensation.
In contrast, there aren't any companies who are so directly financially tied to the First Amendment. Oh, sure, it's a public good, but you can't sell free speech the same way you can sell guns.
If you want to know how prohibition happend just look at the low point for voter participation.
I guess what I'm asking is that if things are rotting upstream of these positions, then maybe they are "rationally vacant"?
How you make people care? Unfortunately it might be crises makes them care. No crises, no consequences, no confrontation with the alternative? Then people find something else to care about, rather than care about what seems to be a non-issue that doesn't involve or affect them and isn't interesting anyway.
When everything is important and urgent, nothing is.
The same control of education as a tool to shape the common public mind was also exerted on media, which is why I say when people start arguing about Huxley and Orwell, that its a brave new world, until you resist... Then its 1984.
Election judges should be the most non-partisan role in government.
I think your concern may be a little overblown.
> "This actually will be a great way for me to be more involved in my neighborhood and work actively toward more progressive change," Garcia told The Hill.
Context seems to indicate he was serious about this statement.
His tweets are tongue-in-cheek but that's not a reason to dismiss everything he says in the article.
There also a ban on any election material within a certain distance of a poling place though blank colours are allowed for poll watchers.
Reminds me I must see about volunteering for the next election
"This actually will be a great way for me to be more involved in my neighborhood and work actively toward more progressive change. I actually have a background in community organizing, and while I'm not entirely sure how this position could align with that, it seems like an opportunity to find some ways to at least more deeply connect with my neighbors."
He's talking about becoming more active in his community on a personal level.
I'd also imagine the powers of an election judge are pretty limited. It sounds like they're the Philly equivalent of the person who runs an individual polling place in NY. Not much wiggle room for causes of any sort.
He didn't say that.
And the other similar wording doesn't quite match "advance progressive causes", and sounds like commentary by the newspaper itself:
> Garcia is hopeful that the position will allow for pursuing progressive goals for the district through community organizing.
Still, I wonder why you'd think the "work actively toward more progressive change" quote couldn't be paraphrased as “advance progressive causes.”
You know what, I'm really tired of this. This idea that a role is "non-partisan" is hogwash and has NEVER reflected reality.
Even worse, the Republicans do NOT believe this, and they utilize every single advantage to a position in order to advance their agenda.
These kinds of false equivalencies that somehow the left is required to take the "high road" and remain hamstrung while the right can punch below the belt all they want must die.
Sometimes you have to punch a bully to get the message through. It's time for the right to meet the fist of the left.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/obamas.first.campaign...
In his first race for office, seeking a state Senate seat on Chicago's gritty South Side in 1996, Obama effectively used election rules to eliminate his Democratic competition.
As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.
The move denied each of them, including incumbent Alice Palmer, a longtime Chicago activist, a place on the ballot. It cleared the way for Obama to run unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district.
Is America unique in having so many elections and positions? This job title reminds me of the "Fuse alarm fuse" (which was the fuse for the alarm that checked if a fuse had blown)
It was a fun experience. One of the other judges was an elderly man who served in WW2, but on the german side. He was Danish and conscripted at 14 to do air defense work in the last days of the war.
I thought it was an amazing statement about America.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/could_not_get_elected_dogcatc...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/06/02/a-...
In the lead up to an election I’d work, first up was ~2 hours of training. We were the ones in charge of the polling place, so we were the ones who needed to know all the processes and procedures.
The weekend before the election, I would pick up the supplies. Probably around 40-50 pounds of stuff. You aren’t allowed to leave In in your car: Once you sign the chain of custody for it, the next time you get out of your car is when you’re parked at home, ready to unload.
In the weeks before the election, I also would be getting in touch with whomever is in charge of the polling place site. You think it’s fun dealing with an HOA as a resident? Well, try dealing with them as an outsider.
So, leading up to the election (that is, prior to E-1), I would’ve logged about 7 hours, most of which was during a business day (training could be daytime or evening, as there were always multiple sessions available, and supplies pickup was always on a weekend).
Oh, and I was also responsible for managing the other people would be at the polling place.
On E-1, if I got prior OK from the property, I would set up some time during the evening. Sometimes one or two of my clerks would be available to help, but not always. Anything non-sensitive and nonessential was set up (so, no breaking seals yet!).
On E-Day I would be waking up around 4:30. Polls open precisely at 7, so I had to be at the polling place by 6. I would take attendance, administer the oath, go through the same oath myself, and then do all the seal verification and equipment setup. Then, the flood began.
If I had a full board, I could give everyone (and myself) a lunch and a break. If we were short, then we would do what we could. Luckily, we all got some sort of break!
There would be quiet times during the day, but it would often be nonstop during the morning (there was always a line at opening) and after 4.
Polls close at 8. We then had to do full packing, space cleanup, and all of the accounting. It was a win for us if we left by 9.
I then had to go to drop off everything, with a clerk driving behind me (to make sure I went directly to the drop off point). If anything was missing, I was on the hook for it. It was a win for me if I was out by 10.
Finally, on E+1, I’d have to return the facility key. Then I was truely done.
It was a drawn-out process, but almost everything we did had a very good reason. Yes, the hours were long, and the work was often not fun, but I took a _great_ deal of pride in it.
In some jurisdictions in the United States, coroners are elected officials who needn't have any medical training at all.
But the office may have different responsibilities: here, their main function is to determine how someone died when there are questions about that, in the first instance via an investigation delegated to appropriate professionals and then, where necessary, by presiding over a judicial inquest.
Depending on your views, you might also think it's inappropriate for this position to even joke about that, which I can sort of see. I don't think it was a serious suggestion though.
I don't mean that in snark in the least. I mean it factually, the polls keep coming back with record disapproval. There's a reason for that. More people would prefer a higher degree of civility in politics, rather than lower.
A lot of people disagreed with George W Bush for example, but he had to launch a catastrophic, protracted, pointless war that lasted for years, to erode his approval numbers to where Trump is at during his first year. Bush was far more civil and respected as a politician (and he wasn't regarded as all that great at it).
$100 is just astoundingly low.
http://phillyelectionresults.com/Citywide_Election_Results.h...
In past elections, whenever the issue of extremely hackable and vulnerable electronic voting machines was brought up, objections were raised that their use was too limited to make a big enough difference in the election. Well, here that's clearly not the case: the difference was so slight that such fraud could have tipped the scales.
Looking at the electoral ward division maps it’s not hard to see why: these political units only cover a few streets. There are hundreds of these subdivisions across the city. I’d argue that this is too minor of a role to even bother having an elected position for.
I suppose since these divisions are so tiny one might have a chance of knowing any individuals who might be running against each other, but otherwise, what criteria would one judge the best candidate?