"Wow, that really seems to be a problem. Wait, that's me they're mad at? And all my enemies are the ones baying for blood? They're probably lying, they are the other team after all. Nevermind."
I didn't downvote, but unless you have a plan for wiping out half the electorate you'll have to work with the other party. Activating everyone's mental immune systems with a nice pathogen-like protien coat of enemy rhetoric is not a good way to do it. It's like stirring peanut butter into the vat at an antihistamine factory.
1) I think that when one of two parties is condemning the world to grave harm on the basis of corruption, graft and ignorance, it's worth explicitly calling that out as a bad thing irrespective of how that party responds.
2) The Republican Party doesn't represent the will of half the electorate at a national level—they received a minority share of the vote in the last presidential, house and senate elections, and only by virtue of the antiquated, undemocratic, and intentionally manipulated system we use do Republicans hang on to power. In a modern democracy with the electorate we have, we wouldn't be in this situation. No plan for "wiping out" millions of people needed.
3) I see the challenge facing us differently. We have to galvanize and activate the political energy and force of people who want the world to be safe and healthy as much as possible in order to forcibly extract concessions on the part of the ruling minority and set the stage for the reclamation of the government. If the large majority that support solving this crisis were mobilized, this would create enormous pressure for things to change.
To put it your way, unless you have a plan for changing the minds of millions of Republicans in the face of decades of increased polarization, a multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus working in concert with the president, and a near-endless supply of money from very rich corporations who benefit from our current paralysis, you'll have to settle for applying as much pressure on Republicans as we can.
I believe climate change is happening and we should adress it. Here is a very weird question:
Suppose (a wild assumption) that the Republican (or any climate change sceptic) electorate would vote for unimpeded climate protection on the condition climate change sceptics get a 50% tax cut compared to non-sceptics, would you (or should those concerned with climate change) seize that opportunity, in order to save the climate unimpeded by the sceptics? i.e. full frontal bribing part of the electorate to get out of the way?
Sure. And then I would steal all the money back at the first opportunity because they are deliberately offloading their externalities onto everyone else and have been doing so since forever. They should be treated as they have historically treated others.
>They should be treated as they have historically treated others.
That sound you just heard was two million years of combined social instincts crushing any attempt at reconsideration like a grape in a trash compactor. I'm sure the Republicans on HN are glad to know that climate isn't about the good of humanity, but is actually about treating then badly...
I didn't say treating them badly, but treating them with reciprocity. At this point the GOP is actively committed to making things worse overall. There is no reason to accommodate them, because as an institution they have repeatedly acted in such bad faith that continuing to play along is to be complicit.
It's not just us vs them. There's at least a third group: future generations. In a realpolitic sense, should we allow "them" to screw over the future generations because of "our" blame attribution (correct or not)?
Reconsider the percentage of 50%: at what percentage do you change your stance? 40%? 30%? 20%? 10%? 5%? 2%? 1%? or absolutely strictly 0%?
Suppose this passes at some non-zero percentage, you are of course free to buy into Republican membership (or perhaps Democrat or other climate sceptic membershipif say a Green party or other succeeds in passing this) and reveal your true colors if you refuse to pay the larger tax...
A systemic problem needs a systemic solution, up till now it has been mostly the system moralizing the individual (who realises all too well we need a systemic solution)
The future generations would look back and see who can't prove they were in the added ecotax paying bracket..., of course they would see it is totally unfair, but as the problem becomes ever more urgent, the question becomes less and less about what is fair, but more and more about how the f!ck we are going to implement a timely and systemic solution, regardless of fairness...
It seems like this puzzle forces one to rediscover the true meaning of humanism, patriotism and sacrifice.
Re 2: If you've got a way to get from this "antiquated, undemocratic" system to a "modern democracy", we'd all love to see the plan. It's going to either involve wiping out millions of voters, though, or else it's going to involve changing the constitution. Pulling that off with the electorate we have seems... improbable.
The rules for the state-by-state vote for the electoral college are not part of the constitution, for example. Nor is crooked gerrymandering. Fixing those would be a great start. Automatic voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday, and prosecuting all of the corrupt officials who have been working together to suppress non-white votes would be good too. Abolishing the senate will take longer, for sure, but in the mean time we can stop cruelly disenfranchising the residents of Washington, D. C. and Puerto Rico, which I'm sure would have a positive effect on bringing the senate closer to the national electorate.
Look up the National Popular Vote Compact. Some of these solutions are not as difficult as you'd imagine.
Despite overwhelming bad-faith manipulation of the legislative process by Republicans, Obama managed to move the climate status quo in the U.S. and the world tremendously in dozens of governmental and diplomatic spheres.
The Trump Administration is in the process of dismantling all of that work as fast as possible. Here's an article from early 2017, which expresses the contrast between the two quite well:
"The order sends an unmistakable signal that just as President Barack Obama sought to weave climate considerations into every aspect of the federal government, Trump is hoping to rip that approach out by its roots." [1]
No. I am not going to work with people who have spent decades systematically undermining every else's existence and enthusiastically supporting genocide and ecocide, as most hard-right Republicans do (the only kind that are still allied ot the GOP). These people need to be defeated, not reasoned with.
I'd like to see the GOP go out of existence as an institution and its major power brokers neutralized. I'm not interested in what they do with their lives once their power is broken.
"Wow, that really seems to be a problem. Wait, that's me they're mad at? And all my enemies are the ones baying for blood? They're probably lying, they are the other team after all. Nevermind."
I didn't downvote, but unless you have a plan for wiping out half the electorate you'll have to work with the other party. Activating everyone's mental immune systems with a nice pathogen-like protien coat of enemy rhetoric is not a good way to do it. It's like stirring peanut butter into the vat at an antihistamine factory.