While we do #Denmark #Danmark #USA #Greenland #Arctic drama, don't forget the #Inuit, the people who live there

@su_liam @grumble209 @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn

To be fair to them, they were writing the constitution more than a century before Duverger was born. What's our excuse?

I think the US sucks at reforming its constitution because its ppl have been persuaded that it's weird or wrong to be into politics. Now that politics is becoming literally and violently fatal to even quite privileged people in the US, I'm optimistic that this blasé attitude will change.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @grumble209 @Pepijn

The trick is to remember that you voted for evil, and ask "why was I offered two flavours of shit sandwich?". In the US, the answer to that is, " because you didn't show up to the primaries".

@eswag @grumble209 @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn Also, it is genuinely hard and a bit dangerous to alter the Constitution. It has to pass with 2/3 of each chamber of Congress, and ratified by 3/4 of state legislatures.

@eswag @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn Can people who work really hard with two or three side hustles and not spending money on avocado toast and $1000 iPhones become billionaires?

Probably - it's rare, but it can happen. Mostly, this line of rhetoric is made by the assholes at the top to reframe the problem of inequality and lack of social mobility from structural injustice onto personal responsibility. You're not a billionaire because just you're not hustling hard enough.

This is a post about people voting in primaries.

@su_liam @grumble209 @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn

For sure, amending a constitution isn't something you do lightly. I think it should be possible to get an amendment like "corporations are not people, and money is not speech" through without breaking too many eggs.

As for hard, it used to be done with the same thresholds.

@eswag @su_liam @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn My brother, it took the most deadly war in US history to amend our Constitution so that humans from Africa were considered *mostly *human. That was 160 years ago not only have we not made it the rest of the way, but we're falling backwards.

We're unable to amend our Constitution so that we consider women to have the same rights as men.

Getting rich people and their financial instruments (corporations) to not run our government and our lives will be just as hard and likely just as bloody.

@phl

yup

#projectIceworm

the americans didn't tell the danes, they just set up a secret nuclear installation in #greenland, then abandoned it, and as the ice melts it's a pollution timebomb

https://mastodon.social/@benroyce/115107527036142772

@eswag @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn Can people who work really hard with two or three side hustles and not spending money on avocado toast and $1000 iPhones become billionaires?

Probably - it's rare, but it can happen. Mostly, this line of rhetoric is made by the assholes at the top to reframe the problem of inequality and lack of social mobility from structural injustice onto personal responsibility. You're not a billionaire because just you're not hustling hard enough.

This is a post about people voting in primaries.

@grumble209 @su_liam @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn

The last one was done without a war in 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

I agree that disenfranchising the oligarchy isn't going to be easy, but constitutional amendments have been done within the lifetimes of many (most?) living US citizens. Also, they've been done without violent havoc.

@grumble209 @su_liam @benroyce @TCatInReality @Pepijn

The last one was done without a war in 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

I agree that disenfranchising the oligarchy isn't going to be easy, but constitutional amendments have been done within the lifetimes of many (most?) living US citizens. Also, they've been done without violent havoc.

@benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn Harris probably wouldn't have sunk a bunch of boats and murdered their sailors before kidnapping Maduro and stealing Venezuela's oil, but Harris would still have supported Israel killing and starving Palestinians just like Trump does.

I'm too much of a pussy to look at a starving Palestinian orphan being expelled to Africa and say - hey, you have to understand I was voting *strategically*.

Instead, I get really, really pissed off at the party assholes who put me in this position for the sake of the convenience of their donors.

@n1xnx @TCatInReality @benroyce @grumble209 @eswag @Pepijn

Mathematical logic

I can just subtract 5-5
I dont have to do
5-1
4-1
3-1
2-1
and 1-1

@grumble209 @eswag @benroyce @Pepijn

It's a nonsense post, if you think it's about primaries.

The flaws of democracy are never fixed by less engagement in democratic processes.

Sure, we can argue people are time short - and what can we do to address that. But concluding that you abandon the democratic process instead is wildly illogical.

@TCatInReality @eswag @benroyce @Pepijn I fully believe that active engagement in the primary process can lead to incremental improvements in a functioning democracy.

But I have no confidence that the DNC and the GOP are going to let themselves be reformed by primaries here in the United States of America in the year 2026.

But primaries are like prayer as a cure for cancer - it works best when combined with surgery and chemo. You can vote in primaries all you want, and it will improve your mental health. But don't skimp on Class War.

@TCatInReality @eswag @benroyce @Pepijn I fully believe that active engagement in the primary process can lead to incremental improvements in a functioning democracy.

But I have no confidence that the DNC and the GOP are going to let themselves be reformed by primaries here in the United States of America in the year 2026.

But primaries are like prayer as a cure for cancer - it works best when combined with surgery and chemo. You can vote in primaries all you want, and it will improve your mental health. But don't skimp on Class War.

@grumble209 @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn

the first thing they would tell you in class war 101 is to vote

because voting is just a tactic like any other in a broad repertoire of tactics. no better or worse than any other

even just a vote used as vandalism or sabotage

to have antipathy to voting is merely an emotional block. it's self-serving, trying to justify a bad decision

rationalizations not to vote are absurd

so instead of resisting the obvious, change your bad decision:

vote

@grumble209 @benroyce @TCatInReality @eswag @Pepijn "just like Trump does" is the tell on the bad-faith, both-sides BS here. When *any* support for a foreign intelligence-sharing allied state is falsely-equivalated to a formal pogrom and "Gaza-Riviera" - that's how you know the speaker is a unicorn-hunter divorced from reality

@benroyce @grumble209 @eswag @Pepijn

Again, the Mamdani win (and AOC and others) show that primaries *and a very engaged populace* are all we need to win elections and take power.