You're a dope if you don't vote. It's impolite to mention this, but it is not a political problem, but a Republican problem. A Democratic administration's FCC enacted Net Neutrality, a Republican one is attempting to dismantle it. Vote for Democrats at every level of government, in every election possible.
This will change some day, but today the Republican party has lost its mind and morals.
both parties don't make decisions i consider sane or particularly clever yet those are the only two parties i may vote for with any chance of success. the voting system is broken by outmoded/gamed structures (gerrymandering, an electoral college), and all-or-nothing outcomes (if i vote for one candidate and they don't win, i may make no second or third choice with which then to put my voting power behind).
i simply feel an unrelenting despair when engaging in the realm of politics. it's two devils on a stage lording over minions who condemn and pollute the miracle of human life daily with short-sighted greed and a stunning lack of ethics.
a revolution is out of the question because the very tool that was meant to fight back against such sloven corruption no longer disbands after war but simply persists against an invisible Enemy none of us can touch, see or feel. what is this insane existence we find ourselves in where the only choice i have is to acquiesce or ineffectually protest?
That's because you have an unrealistic and naive view of the world and politics!
Abandoning politics because you're... too "moral" to deal with such things just leaves the field to those who do not feel that way. Those people you may not be wishing to represent you, eg: the current head of the FCC.
Secondly, yes there are only two parties and a suboptimal outcome, but that's what is happening. Your lack of a vote doesn't help, and in fact hurts.
Thirdly, you don't have to be fully 100% on board with everything, you just have to pay attention to (a) what are you able to do and (b) what are the likely outcomes.
Revolution is hardly a great idea. How would the US civil war work with nuclear weapons? Not well. I have a friend who lived thru a real revolution, and yeah, you don't want that.
The reality is simple. We have gotten to where we are by incremental changes, and we can get back via incremental changes. It's not sexy, it doesn't make for good front page articles. But that's the reality.
From any given viewpoint, both parties may not be ideal. But within both of those parties are numerous different ideological groups. On the right, the major wings range from evangelicals, libertarians, neoconservatives, "traditional", and so on. On the left, the parties tend to fall into a mix of "Blue Dog" democrats, Clintonians, progressive caucus, black caucus, and a whole bunch of single issue and identity issue groups.
No matter what your particular viewpoint is, one of those groups likely aligns with most of it. During primaries, those different groups hash out against each other, and then redirect the party as a whole.
So the key, then, is to find the smaller groups and politicans that more closely reflect your beliefs, and lend your support to them.
Yes, our two party system doesn't allow for second and third choices on a single ballot. But what it does allow for is for you to vote for your preferred candidates (the above caucuses) in primaries as your first choice, and then vote for your second choice in the general if your favorite candidate didn't win or run in a specific primary.
I suggest you find a grass roots organization you believe in and engage. Over the past two years, I've learned so much, been to DC and met many US Reps and Senators, met with State leaders and even Mayors and city councilors. My opinion of how our system works has changed from almost exactly yours to, if you want to get our way, show up. That's right. Meet people, talk, and share ideas and network. Show up. Be the guy that talks about how net neutrality is going to kill your business, or destroy educational opportunities for children in your district. Stories are super powerful. And being a constituent who shows up in DC and shares stories helps a ton. Money is not as valuable when optics and power are the currency.
Considering donating to fairvote.org, I do. I should confess I don't know much about how they actually use my money but I support their stated goal of improving our voting systems.
I don't think anyone who thinks critically about politics finds a party they align with 100%. This is literally the definitions of the lessor of two evils: voting at an election is about finding the party you agree with _the most_, or who's downsides you can live with the most.
The calculus of voting is very simple: always vote for the least evil candidate. That will insure that over time candidates will get less evil.
Republicans have been working for decades to foster that feeling of helplessness you are feeling, and they are hoping you will not vote. Don't fall for it.
You can pick the party which most closely represents your interests and then work to change the party from the inside. I also wish that the US was structured to allow more parties to thrive, but we are not helpless.
> Vote for Democrats at every level of government, in every election possible.
And this is why a lot of us feel powerless with this issue. I live in an area where every elected official from local to federal is a Democrat. (obvious exception being the president, a Republican that actually lost the popular vote by 3 million).
Needless to say, my federal representatives strongly support NN.. but they are in the minority.
You can lobby the Democrats to change their platform from identity politics to economic issues and then they won’t alienate the voters that left them in 2016.
The Blue Dogs are a very belated rearguard action against the partisan realignment that had largely completed when they were formed, and as the realignment progresses and solidifies they have rapidly become irrelevant.
He's posting from "throwaway" which means he knows his entire statement is completely biased and absurd. As if voting "D" without knowing a thing about the candidate is a good idea.
Yes. I'm posting from a "throwaway" which is 5 times older than your account, has almost 15 times as much karma, and contains exactly the same amount of personally identifiable information.
And so you could have a single-party system and you'd end up with a split of conservatives and liberals. It's not about party, at least not about blindly voting for one party.
This is not about liberalism or conservativism at all. It would be lovely if the current Republican party was about conservativism. This is not about political philosophy, this is about party and who exercises power in those parties.
There are some people that think the earth is flat or that lizard shape shifting aliens control the highest level of every government does that make them a fair representation of the views of humanity as a whole? There are significant differences between the two parties.
Are we all dopes if we buy that voting on this issue is going to once and for all solve the problem of corporations continuing to take more control and extract more money from the internet?
This "vote" has come up for discussion every year for a decade at least. Some years I vote and some, I admit, I haven't bothered. But it keeps coming back. No matter how many times we vote no, it keeps re-appearing.
The elephant is the room is privacy & encryption. We're asking elected officials to protect our freedoms for us, when we have the technical means to protect ourselves. ISPs shouldn't have the right to look at the contents of traffic at all. The issue of whether they get to charge more for some routes is a side-show compared to the issue of whether they have the right to look at our traffic.
If we focused on privacy, and built a system that encrypted routing information and blocked it from prying commercial interest eyes like ISPs, we wouldn't need to have a debate, and we wouldn't need to vote.
Democrats use drones to kill innocent or presumed-guilty people in other countries. Are you sure their lives don't matter compared to net neutrality? They're also responsible for harsh sentences for drug offences which is a major reason for all the imprisoned people in the US. Net neutrality is still more important than all those ruined lives?
The housing shortage in San Francisco is democrats too. Maybe with money saved from rents to landlords could be spent on rents to non-neutral ISPs.
It's far from a simple as "always vote democrat". That kind of naive arrogance is why the US has two entrenched parties that both maintain the status quo of terrible things you don't like.
> Democrats use drones to kill innocent or presumed-guilty people in other countries.
That's not a Democrat thing, that's an American thing.
We don't have enough data to say democrats use drones more than republicans. GW Bush was the first President to have access to drones period, and it was not yet a mature technology nor at the beginning of his term. Obama was the first President to have drones available for his first term, and yes he did use them.
President Trump is using drones just as much as Obama did, and in fact Trump has taken the White House out of the command loop and is giving more authority to the CIA to execute drone strikes! So not just drone strikes, but drone strikes with little accountability, ordered neither by an elected official or the military but instead the CIA. Also, President Trump rolled back Obama's mandate that drones can't be used outside of war zones.
Don't forget that President Reagan signed that drug sentencing act into law.
The housing shortage in SF is NIMBYs, not democrats. It just happens that democrats are overrepresented in SF so you are using a correlation as causation.
> Net neutrality is still more important than all those ruined lives?
It's not a binary decision. But losing net neutrality could lead to some pretty awful social and economic effects 20 years down the line. It can lead to even more class inequality, lower education levels, increased crime, and potentially even a major recession or crash as our tech sector productivity decreases due to the anticompetitive environment.
> It's far from a simple as "always vote democrat".
America cannot be divided by D and R. Nobody fits cleanly in either category if they have any independent thought. It's completely ridiculous that my views on internet regulation should be aligned with my views on the school system.
Our government might just need to be completely rebuilt to include more granularity. And we should toss these lossy classifiers that only serve to dehumanize one another.
Obama installed the Republican nominee since the FCC can't have more than 3 comissioners from the same political party (thus there's always a 2v3 balance).
> In 2011, Pai was then nominated for a Republican Party position on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Minority leader Mitch McConnell. He was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012,
A lot of people are asking this on the various forums, but is misunderstands what actually happened.
Many of the major regulatory bodies work in the same way. At the top of the body, there is a board of political appointees. For the FCC, there are 5 commissioners.
Of these 5 Commissioners, 2 are always Democrats, and 2 are always Republicans. That last one, the chair of the committee is always the current sitting President's choice.
This is done this way, to keep some stability among the various administration heads across washington.
So during Obama's term, a Republican chair opened up on the commission when Meredith Baker resigned to lobby for NBC. That meant a Republican needed to be appointed to the commission, so Obama asked Mitch McConnell for Mitch's recommendation, and Mitch chose Ajit Pai.
When Trump took office, the sitting chair of the commission Thomas Wheeler (Obama's nominee) resigned, and Trump elevated Ajit Pai. Trump then filled Ajit Pai's Republican seat with another Republican, and now the board is majority Republican.
So Ajit Pai was not Obama's recommendation. Ajit Pai was Mitch McConnel's choice for the then open Republican Chair on the FCC Commission. Its a little strange, but this is traditionally how its always been done.
Now as to your other question: this last sentence is just conjecture, but we know from the Russia investigations that Trump had a tendency to demand loyalty pledges from his appointees, so I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised to find that Ajit Pai is marching so steadfastly towards this single policy agenda, despite all of the obvious flack and harm it is incurring on him and the nation in general.
As an independent agency, the FCC is required to have two members from a minority party, and when a spot opens up, a new member is traditionally given to the President by the minority party. (Pai was Mitch McConnell's choice.)
This will change some day, but today the Republican party has lost its mind and morals.
To be clear, I'm not calling you a dope.