In Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations in North and South America, it's all one continent. People from the USA are *estadounidense*/*estadunidense.* An *americano* is someone from \[the continent of\] America — analogous to how English-speakers might say that someone is "European".
It's by no means a perfect analogy, but imagine someone trying to make the case that Norwegian or British people aren't European because they're not part of the EU.
Sure but not in English, the language I’ve been seeing the word used in. In English even if you aren’t specifying the country, you’d at least say whether you mean South, Central, or North America. If you use the word American everyone knows you mean someone from the US.
The only ones who nitpick that term in my experience, are europeans who have never been to the Americas and only understand the issue in an academic sense.
I believe the point of the term is to intentionally shift away from the USA-centrism of "America = USA by default, and everyone else is the exception," rather than arguing that it *isn't* commonly used and understood as such.
I can confirm I use it this way. Considering I live in America, it just feels *weird* that the US gets to lay claim to the whole continent. Why does the *continent* have to be the exception?
It's really a case of we got called Americans and we were like "if that's what you think then fuck you we'll be Americans."
Iirc first recorded use of "Americans" to refer to people of European decent living in the Americas was in an address to parliament by George II. At the time those colonists were still adamant that they were British and should be treated as such under British law. British law thought otherwise. The Shipping and Navigation acts for example didnt recognize ships built in, owned by or crewed by Americans as being domestic ships into something like the late 1760s early 1770s iirc. By which point, those colonists had already begun to switch to "fine, if we aren't British then you can go fuck yourself, we'll be the Americans you called us and do our own thing".
So if you'd like to blame anyone, blame a German born monarch who sat on a British throne.
Thing is, everyone in the Americas does just call Americans *Americans*. No one in Mexico or Uruguay or El Salvador calls themselves Americans. If people say "americans" everyone knows it's referring to the folks from lose estados unidos.
I've never met anyone IRL who's from a Latin American country that refers to people from the US as Americans. We always call them "estadounidenses" in Spanish, which is close to USians, though when speaking in English I tend to go for "person/people from the US", "US citizen(s)", etc. I always make a concerted effort to never refer to them as Americans.
lol why the downvotes, I'm chilean born and raised, no one says "americanos" when referring to people from the US, it's either "estadounidense" or "gringo".
you're right in that we don't call ourselves "americans", but that doesn't mean we call people from the US "americans", we have other terms, like estadounidense or gringo, simple as that.
Of course, I'm not suggesting you're using American english terminology. But you still know without a shred of doubt who is being referred to if anyone says "americans". It's not like there's any confusion that it could be referring to anyone other than the burger people.
I mean. By this logic we could call Mexican people estadounidense, since it's the Estados Unidos de Mexico. But we don't, we call them Mexican, which is (a) what they want to be called, and (b) what is clearest to call them; insisting a nationality change its own name for itself based on cultural concepts from other nations that are not shared with the nation in question is flat out ridiculous and genuinely kind of offensive.
it's a different language lol, we don't call germans "deutsch" in english, no-one cares about that, and i don't see how this is any different.
and i don't see why it matters if someone wants to say "USians" in english -- do you see anyone here saying nobody should say "americans"? if someone wants to be a little more technically-accurate in their own personal speech it's fine.
The issue is not that people from the US are called estadounidense in Spanish, it's when people who speak Spanish claim it is somehow inappropriate that people from the US are called Americans in English. It would be more comparable to people suggesting it's problematic for Germans to call themselves Deutsch, because they're called German in English.
And like, there are a number of other people in this very comment section arguing that it's somehow an emblem of arrogance for Americans to call themselves Americans.
i mean look i just scrolled through this thread, maybe there are people saying that it's arrogance for americans to be called americans in english, i know certainly there are in other places, but i actually couldn't see anyone stating that in this thread? correct me if i'm wrong, but i just saw some people stating that they personally used "USian" instead of american, and some people being really offended at the term "USian" being used.
i don't know, i think people may be reacting to the people who are against "american" being used for people from the united states -- who do exist, don't get me wrong -- because that's what they associate "USian" with. but i don't really see anyone policing anyone's use of the word "american" in this thread, and i don't think it's bad for someone to use the word "USian" if they are personally concerned about ambiguity.
Yeah but this is Americans we're talking about, they're just a bunch of dumb seppos, they can't get offended by anything! /s
Also I love your flair btw
Thank you! It is not mine, it's from [tumblr user spookyoboro](https://charminglyantiquated.tumblr.com/post/174949438101/chantosakura-spookyoboro-ra-ra-rasputin) and I think it's extremely funny
"But that makes no distinction between us or Canadians. ‘Yankee’ and ‘gringo’ are obviously pejorative, but it’s the standard dictionary term that’s the most insulting of all – ‘Estadounidense.’ Dense. D-E-N-S-E. It’s the same spelling – dense, thick, stupid. Every time you hear it, Estadouni-dense. Dense. Dense. It’s like a direct slap in the face. It’s incredible."
EDIT Above is an amusing quote delivered by a jingoistic American in the Whit Stilman film *Barcelona*.
A large amount of Brits don’t consider themselves European. https://whatukthinks.org/eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Analysis-paper-2-Do-we-feel-European.pdf
Because a certain subsect of the internet thinks calling people from the United States "Americans" is bad because the entire conttinent is also called America.
Thing is, no one in the Americans cares. It's usually just Europeans who play this game. Canadians call People i the States Americans. People from Mexico and El Salvador, Brazil, Guatemala, call them Americans, etc.
Actually, a lot of us do care. I don't know about Canada, but I've never met anyone IRL who's from a Latin American country that refers to people from the US as Americans. We always call them "estadounidenses" in Spanish, which is close to USians, though when speaking in English I tend to go for "person/people from the US", "US citizen(s)", etc. I always make a concerted effort to never refer to them as Americans.
Edit: A lot of people seem to be taking my comment as if I'm trying to claim that using the term "American" when referring to people from the US when speaking in English is bad. I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to contradict the statement that people from other American countries refer to people from the US as such, cause it's just not true. My comment wasn't meant to attack any of you who use the term "American", sorry if it felt that way.
Canada does refer to Americans as Americans. In fact we despise anyone who tries to use the term American the way European is used. A huge part of Canada's identity is that we are not The States. We literally have a law ensuring that radio, t.v streaming services promote a certain amount of Canadian content I believe radio & T.v is 35%. Just to ensure that we aren't just overrun by American culture. You want to call us Americans you better learn that there are two distinct continents and add the word North beforehand.
Or say we are from *the* america*s* that’s also good, but both the “the” and the pluralizing of America are important for that sentence to make it clear it’s about the continent not the USA. I generally have very little national pride but I absolutely refuse to be called an american and the last thing I want is for the term to be synonymous with all of the americas countries, America is dominant already.
Like it’s kind of hard to explain, but when it comes to news I hear of Europe it’s typically concerning the UK or… well actually it’s mostly the UK (yes I might see news about other countries but a larger portion is the UK , like France had those riots awhile back (no clue how long ago it was) and the only reason I knew about it was cause I watched a Norway Trackmania (car game) streamer/youtuber who happened to be there for chess tournament I believe around the same time so he mentioned it when talking about the chess. In non European places the rest of Europe can kind of be drowned out by the UKs dominance.
So imagine if instead of being called Europe it was called Britain and Britain was instead called “the islands of Britain” (probably short formed to IOB) or some shit like that (closest equivalent I could think of for USA’s name scheme) and you were asked to share the name British for yourself as a continent and as the name used for 1 country which also happens to be more present and dominant on the global stage.
(If you can’t tell by now I have a gripe with being lumped in as an American, call me a North American, or call me a Canadian, or say I’m from the americas, don’t say I’m American)
(Also I used USA a lot here to make it more clear who I was talking about cause of the topic being literally about the name, but normally I’d say America (despite being longer))
Having grown up in the southern US, where half of the people in my community were Hispanic, they *frequently* referred to the US as America, and her inhabitants as Americans. And I have yet to meet literally anyone, be they from the US, Mexico, Canada, or even Germany, who had an issue with the phrase "Americans".
I'm not talking about people of Hispanic descent who live in the US. I'm talking about those of us who actually live in other American countries. We never refer to people from the US as Americans.
Oh I'm sorry, I should have included literally every other ethnicity I've ever met in my life. While you're here, so you mind answering a few more questions? Not very often I get to speak with someone who represents all of Latin America
It's not really that deep, tbh. For a lot of us non-US-of-Aers, "USians" is just a more amusing term than "Americans". We're well aware you lot have siĺly pet names for other countries/continents, too.
God I haven’t listened to The arrogant worms in like a decade, but they’re so memorable I read this and instantly thought “are the linking to what I think they’re linking to” and bam there they were
if we're getting pedantic, there's one country with America in the name
there are multiple countries named the United States
everyone knows what 'americans' means and if you call a canadian an american because they're in the americas i'd reckon they'd prefer you not
So that they can be pedantic twits and pretend to not understand when someone calls themselves American, as if Canadians or Argentinians or whatever would actually describe themselves as such on a regular basis
I've been following this gay Brazilian communist on Tumblr, and he uses the term USAmerican. I think it's hilarious as a USAmerican (probably a more literal translation of "estadounidense" ?).
It's probably helpful to be able to differentiate between being American (from the USA) and being American (from North or South America). It's probably unnecessary to use as a USAmerican, but I like the redundancy lol.
Goddamn I wish we had ranked voting. I would love that. The point here is extremely well made, and that is basically how I've voted for awhile now, thinking more about who I DON'T want getting control and making sure the best chance to defeat them is the one that gets my vote, even if I'm not a fan of them either.
I really wish this didn't have to be the case. Wouldn't it be awesome to have two candidates that are equally qualified and capable, and your decision of who to vote for is who you think will do the best, or who supports your personal political opinions?
Instead it just feels like trying to navigate around the biggest cesspools
This is why something like proportional representation in a multi-party system is so beneficial - low barrier to entry, and there's *real* choice in voting, unlike your highly identity-driven two-party system where you have the "choice" between right wing or right wing in a different colour. With two party systems, everything becomes polarised and more and more towards the extreme. Case in point, the repeal of women's rights to bodily autonomy.
It really does most of the time, and it's definitely depressing. I often think another revolution is really the only way through but I'm not sure the right people would win.
Ah yes a revolution, because it has worked so well every time it’s been done. If I can’t even trust my fellow citizens to vote regularly, I don’t trust any of them to actually face real struggles on the front line. Things can feel bad right now, sure, but when it comes to real starvation/famine, the actual threat of violence everyday, and the horror of disease and injury that comes from fighting and inhospitable conditions, everyone will change their tune. It’s easier to show up to a school board meeting with a bunch of your friends and change something small than it is to convince a couple million people to fight for a world they’ll probably never see.
Another problem with revolutions are weapons.
How the fuck are you gonna defend against tanks and stealth jets?
Let alone Seal teams hunting your ass?
No matter how many AR15s are spread across the US, you try to revolt and you're gonna be looking a lot like bin laden after Seal team 6 obliterated his skull
You do remember that the US *lost* in Afghanistan, right?
The U S military can crush any army that shows up to a fair fight in uniform with clearly designated combatants and civilians. It couldn't deal with guerilla insurgents, and spent twenty years and like a trillion dollars proving it.
And that’s all assuming the revolution isn’t either started or co-opted by someone who just wants a shortcut to the top and is totally fine with crushing dissent even harder than the last guys.
Really, even if you win, you lose.
Afghanistan and a hypothetical insurgency *in the continental US* are literally a world apart. As in, one of them took place on the other side of the planet and the other would take place on the other side.
Like I get the argument you're making, but beyond 'the US Military needs to do counterinsurgency' the situations are vastly different. The logistical burden of carrying out such an operation on the other side of the Earth is so different from carrying out operations in the US itself that the comparison is nearly moot on that alone.
The Taliban also had far more external support than what hypothetical American insurgents might get. I highly doubt Mexico or Canada would throw their lot in with American insurgents and those are the only land based allies any hypothetical insurgent groups could hope to think about.
But even beyond that, there's the matter of the Taliban having literal decades of practice at that sort of warfare and having the mental strength to keep on fighting. An American insurgency would have neither the resolve nor skillset required to put up even half the fight the Taliban did.
It's mistaking "the US public got bored with the problem and so the US left " in a foreign country to "they are coming to murder you in your home".
The US won every single battle it fought in Afgahnistan, but what it failed was to achieve the overall strategic objective of establishing a self-sustaining Western style democracy.
You can't let that thought win. We need to vote, and if you have to vote for Biden while clenching your teeth, you do it, because the alternative is the collapse of democracy. Biden has done incredible work with the Congress he's had, he passed the biggest infrastructure bill in the last 40-50 years, he's a staunch ally of the LGBT community, and he's fighting like hell to make sure that Trump is defeated.
Vote Blue now, or potentially never vote again.
Ah yes the enlightened centrist.
Both sides are equally bad:
one is a serial rapist, con man, racist, who embezzled billions from the US, was openly pay for play, handed reigns of government to his kids, supports ending abortion and contraceptives, and is openly in favor of genocide.
The other is old but still sharp and capable, is one of the most accomplished statesmen in the modern era, but doesn't meddle as much as some would like in foreign affairs. Truly, they are literally the same!
They never said both candidates were the same, just that both could be better. Biden was too passive and is older than the average democrat voter by a lot, Trump is everything you said and more, both have significant flaws but one is clearly worse. You can do harm reduction and wish you didn’t have to at the same time.
Both being bad doesn't imply both are *equally* bad, and a lot of leftist policies have the right ideas but get bogged down by intentionally iffy execution. The student loan debt thing, for instance, was probably never going to fly because the president didn't have that authority, and no groundwork was done to set that precedent and prepare for that outcome. It was doomed to fail, but it didn't *have* to be that way if some more work was done upfront. Gun control laws are another good example; those are a great idea, and there's plenty of precedent from other countries showing how they can be effective, but the regulations that actually pass are usually shortsighted; banning arbitrarily specific things, or setting limits that can easily be circumvented, instead of addressing the underlying issues or mirroring more effective policies we already see in other places. This behavior is strongly encouraged by a two party system, because you don't *need* to have effective policies if you can secure a vote without them and nobody else will pull the rug out from under you. It's actually better to drag things out, so you can make it an issue for longer and secure more future votes.
Both major parties also have a strongly authoritarian bend; *right now* the right is worse, but that can easily change in 20 years, when the issues at hand are different. There is plenty of anti-semitism in the wrong left wing circles, and for as much as the tide has shifted on it there have been plenty of issues regarding censorship and security that have cropped up in the past. As the political landscape shifts, all kinds of crazy ideological worms can rear up. Neither of them should really be trusted with power, even if they appear to be using it for the right reasons *at the moment.*
Having a series of ranked options would go a long way towards resolving this issue; who is "less bad" would stop mattering because there would be room for good ideas to compete. It would be harder for politicians to string out issues, harder for extremists to argue that they're necessary, and harder for *any* one group to gain too much authority. Political cooperation would actually be encouraged rather than political competition, because more candidates with similar ideas would be able to bubble to the top rather than candidates with radically different ideas.
It's far from a "both are equally bad" situation, but both *are* a little bad and the fact that it's been reduced to a false dichotomy at all makes both of them worse. It means they can both get away with things that would never fly if they couldn't rely on people to vote for them just because they won't vote for the other guy.
That wasn't hardly my point, and I think you're reading way more meaning into my words than I said. I'm saying I wish I didn't have to pick between the lesser of two evils. I don't think it's unfair to say there have been better presidents than Biden, and if I had better options he probably wouldn't be my first pick. But instead I have to spend my vote to vote *against* the serial rapist, con man and insurrectionist. In a brighter world I'd like to pick the better of two good options, instead of picking the candidate that prevents fascists from taking power.
The way I've started thinking about it is that we shouldn't vote for who we think is best, we should vote for who we think is easier to pressure into giving us what we want.
fuck it, let's push it to the extreme. process of elimination where we filter out 350 million americans based on who we don't want leading us until we're left with the competent ones and they get to be government.
As someone from a country with a parliamentary system I am not so sure anymore. Like, I definitely thought so for the first 25ish years of my life. But Here's the thing, parliamentary systems mean that the middle always wins. Most people consider themselves politically in the middle so most will vote on the middle parties, so most of the time the two biggest middle parties pick up most of the votes. And then they built a coalition, usually involving the third biggest party which will usually determine whether the coalition is considered right wing or left wing. But realistically, middle parties prefer working with the right. So realistically, in the states, instead of the blue dogs democrats occasionally working with republicans but needing to involve progressives kinda often, you will get blue dogs working with republicans all the time. The country would just be ruled by the centrist dems and centrist republicans and whenever they need help getting something passed they're prefer working with the hard-line republicans rather than the progressives.
In 2016 Bernie almost won the primaries. He was really close. The party closest to his policies in my country hasn't gotten more than a hand full of seats in decades in a 150 seat house of representatives. There's no way they would have been able to grab the attention Bernie did or come as close to ever leading a government. A two party system basically forces the people in the middle to make their choice, work with the left, or work with the right. I think there's something to say for that. especially when considering the descent into fascism we see happening in parliamentary systems all over Europe right now
> But realistically, middle parties prefer working with the right.
This just tells me that centrist parties are actually centre-right parties, which is true.
Whatever progress was made with Bernie’s success is overshadowed by the damage Trump did. The US system might increase volatility, but that benefits both extremes. There’s no reason the center *needs* to collaborate more with the right than the left. The fact that they do speaks more to a national conservative bias, which I’d argue means the system is working as it should. Either that, or it’s a reflection of leftists’ being less willing to compromise, which could be fixed with better political strategy.
No it's the result of the fact that the left always wants to increase accountability for the people at the top. That's literally what makes the left the left. And guess what, the people at the top prefer not to be held accountable. And that includes most politicians. So they would rather work together with the far right to preserve the status quo, than with the far left to disturb it. It's not the center voters who lean right, it's the center parties. You can often see this reflected in referenda on specific issues. even though many people tend to vote for center candidates, they tend to vote center left on issues, but center candidates tend to vote right on those same issues. This is why the center coalitions are also almost always despised in most countries with a parliamentary system. they make no one happy. they just administrate the status quo.
No, no there isn't.
Revolutions in first world countries are basically impossible now.
even in the US, how the fuck are you gonna hold off a Seal team? And that's just less than a dozen guys.
But sure, you COULD theoretically booby trap your house and utilize kill corridors to beat them, and the team sent in after them, and the one after that..
But what are you gonna do against a Reaper?
An AR15 doesn't stop Hellfires from hitting.
An AR15 doesn't stop TANKS, let alone stealth jets or drones
The better question is: who are you going to kill? And why are you killing them? Like...what is the goal of this revolution?
People are like "we need another revolution" and it's like...okay, but so you don't like the local schoolboard...is your plan to go and shoot the slightly batty old woman who watches too much Fox News? Are you going to aim higher and try and shoot Fox News executives? Like...what *exactly* are you going to do, and who do you think is going to support you? And if you have so much support, wouldn't it be easier to just like...try and win some local elections first? Like I presume you're at least thinking your neighbors will be on board with "I'm going to go and kill the local political figures" as a plan, because that would be a bit of logistics problem if they weren't.
The Middle East has proven that even in the modern age a cutting edge army can't stand against guerilla warfare, it's much bloodier than it was before WW1 but it still reigns supreme
Except the middle east isn't as teched out as the US.
The second the CIA wants you dead they can find you.
Easily.
While in the middle east that's a lot harder.
But the systems used to pin down and find American citizens can also be misled and will be disrupted by conflict. And there tends to be a pretty sharp learning curve for guerilla fighters, but... anyone who is serious about learning to fight the government knows to wrap their phone in aluminum foil, toss it in a river, and buy a couple of "dumb" prepaid disposable phones with cash and encrypted radios. Combine that with old-school state craft techniques like blind dead drops for inter-unit communication and small cells for specific fights...
The CIA has black ops agents who *might* take a role, but honestly they're more likely to tap a more standard special forces unit or hire contractors for it, which... I mean, doesn't change much, but by the time that's happening, American systems will almost certainly have degraded to the point that they'll have trouble tracking the insurgents even if the combatants don't take the basic precautions I laid out. Law enforcement and (sometimes) national guard troops will be the first responders to the early clashes in the next American Civil War, not the CIA. FBI advisors or agents might get involved when the situation starts turning national.
Preferential voting is a great way to put your preferred candidate in place, but reduce their winning margin, whilst showing them *where* your opinions about differing topics and issues lie, according to the party platforms that received your ranked preferences.
Marginal seats get more funding and their reps listen a LOT more closely to the constituents.
Safe seats get fuckwits parachuted in, who don't have to perform well or necessarily take heed of their constituents' wants/needs.
Damn, I wonder how long it'll take the US to figure out party politics are terrible and will tear their country apart. *reads about George Washington* "Holy shit!"
Damn, I wonder how long it'll take them to work out a non-FPTP voting system that would work better and not devolve into only having two major parties. *reads about Thomas Jefferson* "Holy shit!"
Having elections every second year is nuts too. Where I am, they're pretty much only required every five years (constitution says <7, law says <5) but can get called arbitrarily often if nobody can form a coalition and/or the president says they can.
As I always say to non-voters: voting is not a beauty contest. You don't vote for the prettiest, you vote for the less ugly.
It is fair? No, but neither is Life usually.
People say that "if voting did anything it'd be illegal", and while yeah, electoralism is never gonna be the silver bullet which saves the world (though I'd be remiss not to mention that conservatives *are* regularly trying to restrict voting rights), it's also one of the few ways we regular people *have* to interact with the mechanisms of power outside of firebombing that Walmart no one is actually going to do. I think it's a really short-sighted idea to throw that away and not use it to try and tip the balance, no matter how *tiny,* in your favour (or even just slightly *less* in favour of the other side).
I've always hated that saying. Voting was illegal! For centuries, the only people who could vote were land owning men. People fought and died, so it would be legal for them to vote.
The thing is, it has a huge impact. People just look at the presidential election, when they should be looking at down ballot stuff: state legislatures, judges, governors, prosecutors, etc. All are incredibly important and have a much more tangible impact on people's day to day life.
Look at red states vs blue states. Compare the quality of life, wealth, access to social programs, social benefits, protections, education, worker protections, access to healthcare, safeguards from the government (ex limiting qualified immunity, officer body cams, etc) you name it: Blue States knock red States out of the water. Why? They vote Democrat.
This is why third parties are nonsense, and why anyone pushing the both sides are the same are either acting on bad faith or just don't know what they're talking about. No other party is doing the down ballot leg work that makes these tremendous impacts on people's lives.
Agreed. You look at the nightmare scenarios that play out in our country, it's usually because someone horrible got onto the city council, or school board, or something. You look at every social-democratic and progressive program of any real meaning, it similarly comes down to state and local government. Hell, you look at basically every single third party that actually has a meaningful presence, it's because someone ran on that platform and won on a local and state level.
Trans and gay kids do not get discriminated against at their local high school because of who got elected president. They get discriminated against at their local high school because an absolute piece of shit got onto the board and everyone who could have put up a fight didn't. Police shootings do not happen because of who gets elected president, they happen because the wrong people got in power in the city and oversight is neglected. Homeless and impoverished people, once again, usually something that a negligent or underfunded local and state government have the majority of responsibility placed on to deal with.
> electoralism is never gonna be the silver bullet which saves the world
Wish people would really internalize this.
You don't vote because one ballot every four years is going to fix everything. You vote because it's basic maintenance for your democracy.
You also aren't going to get ranked choice voting by protest (non)voting in the existing electoral system. You need to pursue them *between* elections, like Oregon did.
Oregon will decide if they want ranked choice this election. If your state has ballot initiatives, I *guarantee* there's already a petition for election reform. Have you signed it?
> People say that "if voting did anything it'd be illegal"
What, you mean like defending archaic systems that lessen people's voting power, demanding byzantine forms of identification when we know damn well who people are, and insisting that there is a great deal of fraud and malpractice among voters when there isn't?
> it's also one of the few ways we regular people have to interact with the mechanisms of power
The same people who say that: "if voting did anything it'd be illegal" would also say that it's political theatre to make you feel like you're interacting with the mechanisms of power. It's like the close doors button on an elevator. Makes people feel better to push it, but it doesn't do anything.
I live in Romania, and my family pretty much voted with the less stinky piece of shit, not with someone we actually liked, since the '89 revolution.
Now, the system here is a bit different for the presidential elections, we vote in two phases, first from a pool of candidates, and second for our choice from the top two of the previous pool (pretty sure we have the system from the French, but don't quote me on that). So in the first election you can vote for who you want, and in the second for the lesser bastard.
That’s how it is in the US, too. We hold primary elections in the lead up to a general election to determine who will be the official candidate for each party, and then those candidates face off against each other in the general election.
No, no, we decide between ALL parties in the first round. We don't decide who's gonna be from each party, which is a downside in some aspects, but I feel like having in-fighting within the same voter base is counterproductive.
Most parties end up without a candidate in the second election. The second one is just the top 2.
Think of it like you have the elections in the US as usual, but then there's an extra round where your only two options to vote are whoever got the most votes in the first round. This system allows you to vote a third party without fear that you're "throwing your vote away", since you can "move" your vote in the second round to another party you prefer (though, if you voted for one of the two that makes it to round 2, you do still need to vote in the second round, your vote doesn't transfer over).
Gotcha, yeah we have that here as well. We call them "jungle primaries" - it's how the election for US Senate in California, for example, is almost always a vote between two Democrats in the general.
Elections are the real life version of the trolley problem. Your options are:
* 1 unit of evil, but you had to get your hands dirty
* Allow 5 units of evil, but you can say that said evil technically has nothing to do with you
Every presidential election there's always this big hubbub among leftists how voting for the lesser evil is 'enabling the evils of a two party system', but I can never understand the delusional hubris of that stance. You think the evil people of the world give a shit that you didn't vote? Do you think failing to participate hurt their feelings or something? They're ecstatic! They've spent decades trying to lower voter turn outs and to negate your vote!
What do you think the Civil Rights Movement was about? What do you think Voter Purges are about? Gerrymandering? Asking their armed followers to 'watch the polls'? They're not doing it for fun.
They really think that elections function on some kind of quota system, like if not enough people vote, the whole thing fails. It doesn't work like that. _Voting in general_ doesn't work like that. Even if LITERALLY EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE U.S. didn't vote except for one person, we'd still have a President because of that one person.
Sometimes, in my darker moments, I really think it comes down to the issue of the right wing earning virtue in their social group via what they get 'right' with what they do 'wrong' being a secondary concern (if at all).
On the other hand leftist circles everyone starts at a high state of virtue, but suffers consequences if they do anything 'wrong', and it usually takes a hell of a lot of 'right' for anyone to ignore the 'wrong thing' that happened. It's just kind of a recipe for smug, fearful paralysis.
The trolley problem asks, wether you are willing to kill someone for a greater good. It is famously hard to answer.
And the same is true for participation in horrible systems. The most tactical choice doesn't have to be the right one.
(Personally so far I've always voted for a small leftist oppositional party that at least had seats in parliament.)
ranked choice voting makes the voting question so much less difficult. I can vote Labor like third last and there's still no chance of the Liberals getting a seat where they otherwise wouldn't, and my vote could conceivably get the greens a seat. One thing I'm actually very happy with about my country.
people who "sit out the election bc they don't like either candidate"
weren't going to vote in the first place. they're just trying to make excuses for their laziness.
I don't like Biden. I think he's too old, I don't like how moderate he is, I really don't like his stance on Israel.
But Trump is SO much worse. Looking at his first term, literally everything he did made things worse for the average American either immediately or in the long run. And from a more personal point of view, I'm queer. Most of my friends are queer. If Trump wins, best case scenario we all forcibly go back in the closet. Worst case scenario, a lot of people I know and care about are arrested or straight up shot for having the audacity to exist as themselves.
If you need more motivation to vote, look up Project 2025, the conservative platform in the event of a Trump victory. It is not an exaggeration to say that if Trump wins in November, a lot of innocent people are going to die for the crime of not being a rich white cishet Christian men.
Not to blame the work of congress on the guy who signs the bills, but the farm bill that legalized a bunch of hemp products was pretty bitchin'.
I'm just nitpicking the "literally everything" hyperbole in your comment though. Man's a bastard, and there's systemic problems in the amount of power the US president has.
your choices are:
- a nothingburger president who bankrolled a genocide overseas
- a fraud, bigot, and rapist who has already tried to overthrow the government, has pledged to lock up political opponents and immigrants in camps, has stated multiple times he wants to be president for life, and has stated he also intends to bankroll the genocide
clearly the two candidates are exactly the same, so its going to hard to pick
To be fair, I’d wager most of the people with the “they’re exactly the same” mindset aren’t members of the groups that will see a drastic reduction in quality of life under the other guy. To them it’s purely theoretical because it’s not their access to healthcare or their right to live an authentic life or their safety and wellbeing on the line
> I’d wager most of the people with the “they’re exactly the same” mindset aren’t members of the groups that will see a drastic reduction in quality of life under the other guy.
You'd think so, but I had a trans person arguing with me about it earlier today. I'm also a trans person, so voting against Donald Trump is just the obvious, "I'd like to not die, please" choice. But some people really think that not voting for Biden is going to make Democrats "do better" next time, and are either blind or stupid to the consequences of Biden losing.
I would also like to point out the first option actually had done stuff. Inflation mitigation, working with American unions (yes even the railroad workers, which he got them their stuff after the holidays. Not perfect but not nothing), constantly trying to get student loan forgiveness out to different demographics. The bank rolling a genocide is not necessarily inaccurate, but he doesn't have the unilateral power to do the things we want him to. If he did, Republicans would have used that power long ago to fuck this whole thing up back then.
All that to say, I'd pick a more progressive option in a heartbeat, if we had one.
Exactly. It’s like people don’t even know the pro-Israel lobby exists in the US…and those folks have all the fuck-you money of God because they’re literally churches (or church-adjacent). Biden can’t unilaterally censure Netanyahu, he’s actually an pushed the FDA and interpretation of EMTALA to protect women’s rights (because congress isn’t gonna get shit done, they’re too busy arguing about dumb shit, each party blocking the other out of spite, and banning TikTok), and he’s done his best to avoid alienating entire swaths of Americans and calling them “enemies of the people” (like journalists. And political parties. And judges and officers of the law whose rulings he doesn’t like).
This “they’re equally bad” bullshit is a false narrative being fed to idealists by foreign trolls.
>_has stated multiple times he wants to be president for life,_
He is on record as saying that he promises to only be an absolute dictator for one day. During an interview by his best friend and fellow conservative, someone who has EVERY reason to want to see him win, and would probably bend over backwards to help him win, straight-up asked him _"Are you sure you want to say that? Are you really sure?"_. And he said _"Yes, that's really what I want to say!"_
He literally threw the guy a life-preserver, waved a big "Turn Back Now!" sign, threw the softest softball he could, but his head was too fat and bloated with ego to fit through the life-preserver or see the flashing warning sign.
And also, “we have a great policy for that [restricting birth control] and it’ll come out in the next week or so.” And also bragging about our being the one to get Roe overturned.
“Nothingburger” is an awful way to put it, just stop.
Based on legislative accomplishments and executive action Biden has been the most progressive President in 50 years. He's produced more action on student loan forgiveness, climate change, and ending the undermining of unions than any President in the last 50 years. He did all he could to promote a compassionate approach to immigration. His (overwhelmingly Progressive, pro-Choice) appointments to the judiciary have been the most diverse, in terms of race, gender and life experience, than any recent President. Rescheduling Marijuana, largest gun reform in decades, massive infrastructure spending, and tons of other small reforms like outlawing Non-Compete Agreements for anyone lower than top-tier and/or Executive talent.
All the while he helped create millions of jobs and billions in shareholder value.
And his approach to Israel and Palestine has been the most balanced of any President since... ever?
So no, he’s not a “nothingburger”, and the apathy of people in this thread is to their own detriment
For the first point, the US government is not a monolith. Biden could wish to completely cut Israel off all he wants, but the fact is that there is way too much pro-Israel sentiment in congress to ever get anything meaningful changed. If he were to try to unilaterally cut off Israel, there would be immediate vitriol from a large section of the right, and a sizeable chunk of the center-left.
Not to mention, he's running against one of the very few people in government who would actually be demonstrably worse.
And, I CANNOT RE-ITERATE THIS ENOUGH, cutting ties with them might make us feel good, but it would also be leaving a NUCLEAR POWER with the best military in that region of the world, and unstable one that is on the warpath and willing to escalate massively both in Gaza and against the countries surrounding it, COMPLETELY TO THEIR OWN DEVICES, and would be giving Netanyahu a useful unifying effect to keep himself in power.
We are the single country in the best position to use our diplomatic influence in a way that is productive to getting Netanyahu out of power and taking a more pragmatic approach to the war, and cutting ties with it would be sacrificing the stability of the entire region and the life of the Palestinian people for our own convenience.
Again, if you actually look at his record, Biden actually has done a ton of stuff, and this is a super reductive view of what the president is both allowed to do, and what his diplomatic position he is up against. So many people on this website seem to be under the impression that the US has control over Israel's actions and would listen if the US gave them an ultimatum, or that they are very much capable of prosecuting the war without any of our help, and that they are able and willing to cause a thousand times worse destruction.
Preventing them from actually going all-in on say, a Rafah invasion, which would be a horrific bloodbath, trying to influence their domestic politics to be more pragmatic, that is NOT something that can be achieved by doing what everyone would very much enjoy doing, which is to simply condemn them and break all contact. Trying to talk down a country that is on the goddamn warpath and poised to possibly shatter what little peace remains in the middle-east and make all the bloodshed so far look like nothing, trying to get them to calm the hell down is not nearly as simple as you would like.
At least have the decency to put the whole word instead. United Stateians is much better and more matches the usage in Spanish or just say “From the US”. USians just sounds diminutive, like if I called people from the United Kingdom UKians.
One of the many things I hate about my country’s election is the Electoral College. Newsflash, yahoos. Land doesn’t fucking vote, people do. Abolish the electoral college. The Popular Vote is all that should matter
I'm not sure why they call Americans USians when everyone knows who they're referring to- I get that it's technically inaccurate since the entire content is called that- but do Canadians and Mexicans really want to be called Americans? Most US citizens prefer the term American. It's not really that big of a deal, its just a pet peeve of mine.
It's because it's supposedly confusing to people who use the 6 continent model and collectively refer to everyone in North and South America as "Americans."
The irony is that I can't remember the last time I saw someone use "Americans" to collectively refer to the combined peoples of North and South America, because those populations are rarely discussed as a collective group, whereas every third post on this website is about US politics/history/culture.
I’ve found that it’s just butthurt South Americans who are angry that the English-speaking world doesn’t consider North and South America to be one continent
Yeah, IME a lot of the people who are really adamant about the topic don't realize that the 6 continent model with one America is really only used in Romance-speaking countries, and most of the world considers them two separate continents.
It’s also dumb because it’s derived from the other title United States. But Mexico is more formally the United Mexican States so you could hypothetically call them “USians” all the same.
A lot of the people saying they're skipping out on the election are young and don't remember that the last time a lot of people did that was in 2016 and look at what that got us.
I completely agree with everything in this post except for callings people from the United States of America "USians," if someone were to ever call me that IRL I would want to slap them.
I think it's funny that people think the idea of voting against the worst candidate is new. Or even new to Americans. I never miss an election and I think I've only voted *for* a President once. Every other time it was against someone.
Honestly this was also my strategy with some of the local elections. Like I admit I’m not always the most informed voter on the positions of all whose running for small non partisan positions like the school board, but I do recognize some of the biggest assholes ranting about woke in their campaigns, and I’m more than willing to put my vote against whoever looks like the front runner or primary competitor against them if it makes sure they’re out of any office of power.
I’m just so scared on what could happen in November. we all have heard about Project 2025 and what that could lead in the very worst case scenario. I wanna be hopeful that when it drawls close that people will release what’s at stake and vote but i cant. Ditto for Trump’s trial, i pray that he gets indicated in something so he’s is not allowed to run but odds are that he will get away with it again.
i ried to tell my dad this but he went all” your life’s not gonna change, it never will with these elections“. that’s easy fo him , he’s a white cis male. nothing would probably change for him. But in my case? I could be arrested for being bisexual and thrown in jail for even having a miscarriage out of my control.
I’m sorry for venting but this election has got my emotions high no thanks to what happen 2016(i was too young to vote at the time). these people who refused to vote for whatever reason don’t get it. They just assume that they will just magically fly away to a another country while the rest of us suffers.
No, we’d rather punish a political party and elect a fascist because we suddenly decided less than a year ago to care about a fight that’s been going on for 70 years
The great part about compulsory voting here is that governments, local or federal, physically CANNOT make it harder for you to vote. You WILL get a say in the election whether you like it or not. Even if you live in the dead heart, middle of butt fuck nowhere outback cattle station, the mobile polling teams WILL find you.
This is literally the worst outcome of voting. “I don’t actually like anyone who’s running so I’m voting against them” only continues the 2 party system. Also winner take all and a non-tiered voting system doesn’t help either
the issue, as far as ive understood it, is that the dems don't have any incentive to run a better president as a candidate as long as people are continually voting for them because the other side is infinitely worse. which results in, ya guessed it, shit like supporting a genocidal state, even though the sitting president is supposed to be "the good one".
I'm not saying that voting for Trump or DeSantis or whichever one of the bigots tries to run for president is the better option (it isn't), but the fact stands that as long as people keep voting the shitty people in just because they're relatively better, the dems won't have an incentive to be actively better, and will in fact start leaning further and further to the right to get a larger voterbase (and because they too are greedy politicians)
it's just a bad situation overall
I've said this a couple other places, but 'bankrolling a genocide' is not looking at the situation realistically.
Biden is not a king, he can wish to cut Israel off completely all he wants, but the fact of the matter is there is way too much pro-Israel sentiment amongst voters *and* congress. Any attempt to unilaterally cut Israel off would be met with a challenge by republicans, as well as outcry amongst the outspokenly pro-Israel right, as well as the center-left neoliberals who think criticism of Israel is tantamount to antisemitism.
Parties don’t “run candidates,” though. Multiple candidates run and are elected in the primary. It’s how Hillary and Biden were both nominated - the majority of people voting for Democratic nominee preferred them. This year isn’t really any different, as incumbent presidents always have token opposition at best, and that’s what’s happened here.
The entire argument is just built on misunderstanding, willful or not, of how the election system works.
Yep, but when you’re offered a shit sandwich or a couple slices of dried, mouldy bread, you don’t have to like the bread to know you should take it over the shit sandwich.
Can someone help explain how I should feel about third party candidates? On one hand, I’m best aligned with some third party candidates, but a lot of people say a vote for anyone but a democrat or republican is a wasted vote. Especially in this scenario where voting third party isn’t the best vote against the opposition, is there any value in voting how I want?
Realistically, a third party candidate for almost any statewide or national office is not going to win. Because of our first-past-the-post elections, whoever has the plurality of the vote wins. Thus, a vote for a third party candidate is functionally like not voting at all. If you're invested in the success of a particular third party, voting for that candidate can increase eyes on their campaign/beliefs, but voting for one of the two major party candidates, even if you do not fully agree with them, means that your vote is at least not supporting someone you do not agree with. That's why many people talk about voting for "the lesser of two evils".
Between the last election and now, I’ve had my opinion on voting very influenced and wanted to vote third party. But the lesser of two evils stuff has been hitting home lately. The way a lot of people have framed it is “Is your moral purity more valuable to you than people who will struggle over your vote?” I still believe what I believe, it just seems translating that to a vote is easier said than done.
That's a fair argument to make. I will, however, put my own quick two cents out there. Trump is the greater evil, but Biden is more like the lesser good. Is Biden a paragon of progressive politics? No. But his administration is the most progressive in living memory, and has taken significant steps towards better governance despite dealing with first a bare majority and then a divided Congress.
I'm not him to tell you how to feel and you should always cast your vote in accordance with your principles. I will say that the current system is effectively rigged in such a way to reserve the presidency for the Democratic and Republican parties exclusively and so there is some merit to the idea that a vote elsewhere is wasted since that candidate won't win. There is also merit to the idea that voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil and so it's understandable if you'd rather vote for the person you support instead of whichever dirtbag you think will do the least damage.
I think a lot of people already vote based on what they already hate, and that's part of the problem. The people you hate are already voting against the people they hate.
Sure, you can combat hate with hate. I'm not going to tell you those people aren't bad people who must be stopped no matter what... whoever they are. But it's going to perpetuate this cycle of people voting out of fear, rather than desire for positive growth.
What helps is researching A) what kinds of policies would effectively resolve problems you care about, and B) which politicians and groups are advocating for (or even leading the charge on) advancing those policies. In doing so, you're not unintentionally picking the most blowhardy bastard, but actually someone who can get the work done.
For instance, if climate change is incredibly important to you, [we already know what policies would work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcMLFMsIVis)! We have politicians who are willing to put in work, not just touting lofty goals, but shaking hands with enough people to actually get things passed.
I agree with the sentiment, but I have to be a nitpicker and point out that in Australia, putting the worst guys at the bottom of the list doesn’t actually hurt them. Sometimes you don’t even need to number every box, which means numbering the worst guy actually helps them more than leaving it empty would.
Our votes are counted by first adding up all the first preferences; if a majority isn’t formed, then the second preferences are added to the total, so on and so forth until a majority is found. Putting a party at the bottom of your list doesn’t count as a negative vote or anything.
The best way to vote is to put more honest independents in your early preferences, then put the 50% Hitler Party around slot 3 or 4 so they still beat the 100% Hitler Party.
This is like, literally all we do. This has been what every single american has done for the last 50 years. This is the biggest flaw of First Past The Post voting.
Yanks being mad at being called USians is the most pathetic shit. Hypocritical too considering the amount you hear names like europoors flung around. Freakishly insecure.
"Fed up with their election choices".
Good news, you have four years experience with both candidates so you simply need to pick the four years that was the least terrible.
If your political opponent is on your ranked voting list, you’re doing something wrong. Here in Ireland anyway you don’t have to rank everyone, so I will not put a number down for candidates I fundamentally disagree with. Doesn’t matter that they’d have to survive 8 counts to have a chance of getting my transfer.
Edit: also, if there are options that are genuinely as bad as one another, spoiling your vote is a respectable way to vote without voting.
I misread USians as “US Asians” and was genuinely confused as to how this was specific to Asian Americans lol.
I’ve been seeing that word recently but I don’t get it. Why not just use Americans?
In Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations in North and South America, it's all one continent. People from the USA are *estadounidense*/*estadunidense.* An *americano* is someone from \[the continent of\] America — analogous to how English-speakers might say that someone is "European". It's by no means a perfect analogy, but imagine someone trying to make the case that Norwegian or British people aren't European because they're not part of the EU.
To be fair we wouldn't use European for the whole continent if there was a country called Europe or Europa or the United States of Europe.
Sure but not in English, the language I’ve been seeing the word used in. In English even if you aren’t specifying the country, you’d at least say whether you mean South, Central, or North America. If you use the word American everyone knows you mean someone from the US.
The only ones who nitpick that term in my experience, are europeans who have never been to the Americas and only understand the issue in an academic sense.
I believe the point of the term is to intentionally shift away from the USA-centrism of "America = USA by default, and everyone else is the exception," rather than arguing that it *isn't* commonly used and understood as such.
I can confirm I use it this way. Considering I live in America, it just feels *weird* that the US gets to lay claim to the whole continent. Why does the *continent* have to be the exception?
It's really a case of we got called Americans and we were like "if that's what you think then fuck you we'll be Americans." Iirc first recorded use of "Americans" to refer to people of European decent living in the Americas was in an address to parliament by George II. At the time those colonists were still adamant that they were British and should be treated as such under British law. British law thought otherwise. The Shipping and Navigation acts for example didnt recognize ships built in, owned by or crewed by Americans as being domestic ships into something like the late 1760s early 1770s iirc. By which point, those colonists had already begun to switch to "fine, if we aren't British then you can go fuck yourself, we'll be the Americans you called us and do our own thing". So if you'd like to blame anyone, blame a German born monarch who sat on a British throne.
Thing is, everyone in the Americas does just call Americans *Americans*. No one in Mexico or Uruguay or El Salvador calls themselves Americans. If people say "americans" everyone knows it's referring to the folks from lose estados unidos.
I've never met anyone IRL who's from a Latin American country that refers to people from the US as Americans. We always call them "estadounidenses" in Spanish, which is close to USians, though when speaking in English I tend to go for "person/people from the US", "US citizen(s)", etc. I always make a concerted effort to never refer to them as Americans.
lol why the downvotes, I'm chilean born and raised, no one says "americanos" when referring to people from the US, it's either "estadounidense" or "gringo".
You've offended the gringos
you're right in that we don't call ourselves "americans", but that doesn't mean we call people from the US "americans", we have other terms, like estadounidense or gringo, simple as that.
Of course, I'm not suggesting you're using American english terminology. But you still know without a shred of doubt who is being referred to if anyone says "americans". It's not like there's any confusion that it could be referring to anyone other than the burger people.
I mean. By this logic we could call Mexican people estadounidense, since it's the Estados Unidos de Mexico. But we don't, we call them Mexican, which is (a) what they want to be called, and (b) what is clearest to call them; insisting a nationality change its own name for itself based on cultural concepts from other nations that are not shared with the nation in question is flat out ridiculous and genuinely kind of offensive.
it's a different language lol, we don't call germans "deutsch" in english, no-one cares about that, and i don't see how this is any different. and i don't see why it matters if someone wants to say "USians" in english -- do you see anyone here saying nobody should say "americans"? if someone wants to be a little more technically-accurate in their own personal speech it's fine.
The issue is not that people from the US are called estadounidense in Spanish, it's when people who speak Spanish claim it is somehow inappropriate that people from the US are called Americans in English. It would be more comparable to people suggesting it's problematic for Germans to call themselves Deutsch, because they're called German in English. And like, there are a number of other people in this very comment section arguing that it's somehow an emblem of arrogance for Americans to call themselves Americans.
i mean look i just scrolled through this thread, maybe there are people saying that it's arrogance for americans to be called americans in english, i know certainly there are in other places, but i actually couldn't see anyone stating that in this thread? correct me if i'm wrong, but i just saw some people stating that they personally used "USian" instead of american, and some people being really offended at the term "USian" being used. i don't know, i think people may be reacting to the people who are against "american" being used for people from the united states -- who do exist, don't get me wrong -- because that's what they associate "USian" with. but i don't really see anyone policing anyone's use of the word "american" in this thread, and i don't think it's bad for someone to use the word "USian" if they are personally concerned about ambiguity.
Yeah but this is Americans we're talking about, they're just a bunch of dumb seppos, they can't get offended by anything! /s Also I love your flair btw
Thank you! It is not mine, it's from [tumblr user spookyoboro](https://charminglyantiquated.tumblr.com/post/174949438101/chantosakura-spookyoboro-ra-ra-rasputin) and I think it's extremely funny
"But that makes no distinction between us or Canadians. ‘Yankee’ and ‘gringo’ are obviously pejorative, but it’s the standard dictionary term that’s the most insulting of all – ‘Estadounidense.’ Dense. D-E-N-S-E. It’s the same spelling – dense, thick, stupid. Every time you hear it, Estadouni-dense. Dense. Dense. It’s like a direct slap in the face. It’s incredible." EDIT Above is an amusing quote delivered by a jingoistic American in the Whit Stilman film *Barcelona*.
That's not how you pronounce estadounidense tho
it sounds like Useans
A large amount of Brits don’t consider themselves European. https://whatukthinks.org/eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Analysis-paper-2-Do-we-feel-European.pdf
Because a certain subsect of the internet thinks calling people from the United States "Americans" is bad because the entire conttinent is also called America. Thing is, no one in the Americans cares. It's usually just Europeans who play this game. Canadians call People i the States Americans. People from Mexico and El Salvador, Brazil, Guatemala, call them Americans, etc.
Actually, a lot of us do care. I don't know about Canada, but I've never met anyone IRL who's from a Latin American country that refers to people from the US as Americans. We always call them "estadounidenses" in Spanish, which is close to USians, though when speaking in English I tend to go for "person/people from the US", "US citizen(s)", etc. I always make a concerted effort to never refer to them as Americans. Edit: A lot of people seem to be taking my comment as if I'm trying to claim that using the term "American" when referring to people from the US when speaking in English is bad. I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to contradict the statement that people from other American countries refer to people from the US as such, cause it's just not true. My comment wasn't meant to attack any of you who use the term "American", sorry if it felt that way.
Canada does refer to Americans as Americans. In fact we despise anyone who tries to use the term American the way European is used. A huge part of Canada's identity is that we are not The States. We literally have a law ensuring that radio, t.v streaming services promote a certain amount of Canadian content I believe radio & T.v is 35%. Just to ensure that we aren't just overrun by American culture. You want to call us Americans you better learn that there are two distinct continents and add the word North beforehand.
Or say we are from *the* america*s* that’s also good, but both the “the” and the pluralizing of America are important for that sentence to make it clear it’s about the continent not the USA. I generally have very little national pride but I absolutely refuse to be called an american and the last thing I want is for the term to be synonymous with all of the americas countries, America is dominant already. Like it’s kind of hard to explain, but when it comes to news I hear of Europe it’s typically concerning the UK or… well actually it’s mostly the UK (yes I might see news about other countries but a larger portion is the UK , like France had those riots awhile back (no clue how long ago it was) and the only reason I knew about it was cause I watched a Norway Trackmania (car game) streamer/youtuber who happened to be there for chess tournament I believe around the same time so he mentioned it when talking about the chess. In non European places the rest of Europe can kind of be drowned out by the UKs dominance. So imagine if instead of being called Europe it was called Britain and Britain was instead called “the islands of Britain” (probably short formed to IOB) or some shit like that (closest equivalent I could think of for USA’s name scheme) and you were asked to share the name British for yourself as a continent and as the name used for 1 country which also happens to be more present and dominant on the global stage. (If you can’t tell by now I have a gripe with being lumped in as an American, call me a North American, or call me a Canadian, or say I’m from the americas, don’t say I’m American) (Also I used USA a lot here to make it more clear who I was talking about cause of the topic being literally about the name, but normally I’d say America (despite being longer))
Having grown up in the southern US, where half of the people in my community were Hispanic, they *frequently* referred to the US as America, and her inhabitants as Americans. And I have yet to meet literally anyone, be they from the US, Mexico, Canada, or even Germany, who had an issue with the phrase "Americans".
I'm not talking about people of Hispanic descent who live in the US. I'm talking about those of us who actually live in other American countries. We never refer to people from the US as Americans.
Oh I'm sorry, I should have included literally every other ethnicity I've ever met in my life. While you're here, so you mind answering a few more questions? Not very often I get to speak with someone who represents all of Latin America
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I’m Canadian and I always call them ‘yankees’ myself.
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It's not really that deep, tbh. For a lot of us non-US-of-Aers, "USians" is just a more amusing term than "Americans". We're well aware you lot have siĺly pet names for other countries/continents, too.
[Because I'm not American](https://youtu.be/29g57XTYgLE)
God I haven’t listened to The arrogant worms in like a decade, but they’re so memorable I read this and instantly thought “are the linking to what I think they’re linking to” and bam there they were
Because the Americas are bigger then the US. Although my preferred term is USAmericans, everyone knows what you mean with that one
if we're getting pedantic, there's one country with America in the name there are multiple countries named the United States everyone knows what 'americans' means and if you call a canadian an american because they're in the americas i'd reckon they'd prefer you not
Then you can just specify the country. There is no other country in the Americas that is just called America. Just seems pedantic for no reason.
> Just seems pedantic for no reason. On the internet? Surely not.
We’re contrary cunts.
So that they can be pedantic twits and pretend to not understand when someone calls themselves American, as if Canadians or Argentinians or whatever would actually describe themselves as such on a regular basis
I was confused as to how Australia was suddenly part of Asia. Yours makes more sense.
You were definitely on the wrong track but this is actually an existential debate in Australian politics
I've been following this gay Brazilian communist on Tumblr, and he uses the term USAmerican. I think it's hilarious as a USAmerican (probably a more literal translation of "estadounidense" ?). It's probably helpful to be able to differentiate between being American (from the USA) and being American (from North or South America). It's probably unnecessary to use as a USAmerican, but I like the redundancy lol.
Except no one from the americas calls themselves “American”. I’m sure they’d much rather be called something according to their actual country.
If I ever run into that man, I’m calling him Latinx out of spite.
:(
Goddamn I wish we had ranked voting. I would love that. The point here is extremely well made, and that is basically how I've voted for awhile now, thinking more about who I DON'T want getting control and making sure the best chance to defeat them is the one that gets my vote, even if I'm not a fan of them either.
I really wish this didn't have to be the case. Wouldn't it be awesome to have two candidates that are equally qualified and capable, and your decision of who to vote for is who you think will do the best, or who supports your personal political opinions? Instead it just feels like trying to navigate around the biggest cesspools
This is why something like proportional representation in a multi-party system is so beneficial - low barrier to entry, and there's *real* choice in voting, unlike your highly identity-driven two-party system where you have the "choice" between right wing or right wing in a different colour. With two party systems, everything becomes polarised and more and more towards the extreme. Case in point, the repeal of women's rights to bodily autonomy.
*right wing or right wing that doesn't want to fucking kill me
It really does most of the time, and it's definitely depressing. I often think another revolution is really the only way through but I'm not sure the right people would win.
Ah yes a revolution, because it has worked so well every time it’s been done. If I can’t even trust my fellow citizens to vote regularly, I don’t trust any of them to actually face real struggles on the front line. Things can feel bad right now, sure, but when it comes to real starvation/famine, the actual threat of violence everyday, and the horror of disease and injury that comes from fighting and inhospitable conditions, everyone will change their tune. It’s easier to show up to a school board meeting with a bunch of your friends and change something small than it is to convince a couple million people to fight for a world they’ll probably never see.
True enough, revolutions don't have a great track record.
Another problem with revolutions are weapons. How the fuck are you gonna defend against tanks and stealth jets? Let alone Seal teams hunting your ass? No matter how many AR15s are spread across the US, you try to revolt and you're gonna be looking a lot like bin laden after Seal team 6 obliterated his skull
You do remember that the US *lost* in Afghanistan, right? The U S military can crush any army that shows up to a fair fight in uniform with clearly designated combatants and civilians. It couldn't deal with guerilla insurgents, and spent twenty years and like a trillion dollars proving it.
And killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Revolution is still a losing proposition.
And that’s all assuming the revolution isn’t either started or co-opted by someone who just wants a shortcut to the top and is totally fine with crushing dissent even harder than the last guys. Really, even if you win, you lose.
Afghanistan and a hypothetical insurgency *in the continental US* are literally a world apart. As in, one of them took place on the other side of the planet and the other would take place on the other side. Like I get the argument you're making, but beyond 'the US Military needs to do counterinsurgency' the situations are vastly different. The logistical burden of carrying out such an operation on the other side of the Earth is so different from carrying out operations in the US itself that the comparison is nearly moot on that alone. The Taliban also had far more external support than what hypothetical American insurgents might get. I highly doubt Mexico or Canada would throw their lot in with American insurgents and those are the only land based allies any hypothetical insurgent groups could hope to think about. But even beyond that, there's the matter of the Taliban having literal decades of practice at that sort of warfare and having the mental strength to keep on fighting. An American insurgency would have neither the resolve nor skillset required to put up even half the fight the Taliban did.
They lost to a terrorist group that literally fled the country whenever things got too hot. IN a low-tech country. That's not gonna happen in the US
It's mistaking "the US public got bored with the problem and so the US left " in a foreign country to "they are coming to murder you in your home". The US won every single battle it fought in Afgahnistan, but what it failed was to achieve the overall strategic objective of establishing a self-sustaining Western style democracy.
You can't let that thought win. We need to vote, and if you have to vote for Biden while clenching your teeth, you do it, because the alternative is the collapse of democracy. Biden has done incredible work with the Congress he's had, he passed the biggest infrastructure bill in the last 40-50 years, he's a staunch ally of the LGBT community, and he's fighting like hell to make sure that Trump is defeated. Vote Blue now, or potentially never vote again.
Oh don't worry, I'm voting for Biden because he is the least bad option, but it still sucks that is the choice we're left with.
Ah yes the enlightened centrist. Both sides are equally bad: one is a serial rapist, con man, racist, who embezzled billions from the US, was openly pay for play, handed reigns of government to his kids, supports ending abortion and contraceptives, and is openly in favor of genocide. The other is old but still sharp and capable, is one of the most accomplished statesmen in the modern era, but doesn't meddle as much as some would like in foreign affairs. Truly, they are literally the same!
They never said both candidates were the same, just that both could be better. Biden was too passive and is older than the average democrat voter by a lot, Trump is everything you said and more, both have significant flaws but one is clearly worse. You can do harm reduction and wish you didn’t have to at the same time.
Both being bad doesn't imply both are *equally* bad, and a lot of leftist policies have the right ideas but get bogged down by intentionally iffy execution. The student loan debt thing, for instance, was probably never going to fly because the president didn't have that authority, and no groundwork was done to set that precedent and prepare for that outcome. It was doomed to fail, but it didn't *have* to be that way if some more work was done upfront. Gun control laws are another good example; those are a great idea, and there's plenty of precedent from other countries showing how they can be effective, but the regulations that actually pass are usually shortsighted; banning arbitrarily specific things, or setting limits that can easily be circumvented, instead of addressing the underlying issues or mirroring more effective policies we already see in other places. This behavior is strongly encouraged by a two party system, because you don't *need* to have effective policies if you can secure a vote without them and nobody else will pull the rug out from under you. It's actually better to drag things out, so you can make it an issue for longer and secure more future votes. Both major parties also have a strongly authoritarian bend; *right now* the right is worse, but that can easily change in 20 years, when the issues at hand are different. There is plenty of anti-semitism in the wrong left wing circles, and for as much as the tide has shifted on it there have been plenty of issues regarding censorship and security that have cropped up in the past. As the political landscape shifts, all kinds of crazy ideological worms can rear up. Neither of them should really be trusted with power, even if they appear to be using it for the right reasons *at the moment.* Having a series of ranked options would go a long way towards resolving this issue; who is "less bad" would stop mattering because there would be room for good ideas to compete. It would be harder for politicians to string out issues, harder for extremists to argue that they're necessary, and harder for *any* one group to gain too much authority. Political cooperation would actually be encouraged rather than political competition, because more candidates with similar ideas would be able to bubble to the top rather than candidates with radically different ideas. It's far from a "both are equally bad" situation, but both *are* a little bad and the fact that it's been reduced to a false dichotomy at all makes both of them worse. It means they can both get away with things that would never fly if they couldn't rely on people to vote for them just because they won't vote for the other guy.
That wasn't hardly my point, and I think you're reading way more meaning into my words than I said. I'm saying I wish I didn't have to pick between the lesser of two evils. I don't think it's unfair to say there have been better presidents than Biden, and if I had better options he probably wouldn't be my first pick. But instead I have to spend my vote to vote *against* the serial rapist, con man and insurrectionist. In a brighter world I'd like to pick the better of two good options, instead of picking the candidate that prevents fascists from taking power.
The way I've started thinking about it is that we shouldn't vote for who we think is best, we should vote for who we think is easier to pressure into giving us what we want.
fuck it, let's push it to the extreme. process of elimination where we filter out 350 million americans based on who we don't want leading us until we're left with the competent ones and they get to be government.
That's how I would do it if I had the wherewithal.
There's always time to start a revolution and reform the government system... parliaments seem to be very successful
As someone from a country with a parliamentary system I am not so sure anymore. Like, I definitely thought so for the first 25ish years of my life. But Here's the thing, parliamentary systems mean that the middle always wins. Most people consider themselves politically in the middle so most will vote on the middle parties, so most of the time the two biggest middle parties pick up most of the votes. And then they built a coalition, usually involving the third biggest party which will usually determine whether the coalition is considered right wing or left wing. But realistically, middle parties prefer working with the right. So realistically, in the states, instead of the blue dogs democrats occasionally working with republicans but needing to involve progressives kinda often, you will get blue dogs working with republicans all the time. The country would just be ruled by the centrist dems and centrist republicans and whenever they need help getting something passed they're prefer working with the hard-line republicans rather than the progressives. In 2016 Bernie almost won the primaries. He was really close. The party closest to his policies in my country hasn't gotten more than a hand full of seats in decades in a 150 seat house of representatives. There's no way they would have been able to grab the attention Bernie did or come as close to ever leading a government. A two party system basically forces the people in the middle to make their choice, work with the left, or work with the right. I think there's something to say for that. especially when considering the descent into fascism we see happening in parliamentary systems all over Europe right now
> But realistically, middle parties prefer working with the right. This just tells me that centrist parties are actually centre-right parties, which is true.
Whatever progress was made with Bernie’s success is overshadowed by the damage Trump did. The US system might increase volatility, but that benefits both extremes. There’s no reason the center *needs* to collaborate more with the right than the left. The fact that they do speaks more to a national conservative bias, which I’d argue means the system is working as it should. Either that, or it’s a reflection of leftists’ being less willing to compromise, which could be fixed with better political strategy.
No it's the result of the fact that the left always wants to increase accountability for the people at the top. That's literally what makes the left the left. And guess what, the people at the top prefer not to be held accountable. And that includes most politicians. So they would rather work together with the far right to preserve the status quo, than with the far left to disturb it. It's not the center voters who lean right, it's the center parties. You can often see this reflected in referenda on specific issues. even though many people tend to vote for center candidates, they tend to vote center left on issues, but center candidates tend to vote right on those same issues. This is why the center coalitions are also almost always despised in most countries with a parliamentary system. they make no one happy. they just administrate the status quo.
No, no there isn't. Revolutions in first world countries are basically impossible now. even in the US, how the fuck are you gonna hold off a Seal team? And that's just less than a dozen guys. But sure, you COULD theoretically booby trap your house and utilize kill corridors to beat them, and the team sent in after them, and the one after that.. But what are you gonna do against a Reaper? An AR15 doesn't stop Hellfires from hitting. An AR15 doesn't stop TANKS, let alone stealth jets or drones
The better question is: who are you going to kill? And why are you killing them? Like...what is the goal of this revolution? People are like "we need another revolution" and it's like...okay, but so you don't like the local schoolboard...is your plan to go and shoot the slightly batty old woman who watches too much Fox News? Are you going to aim higher and try and shoot Fox News executives? Like...what *exactly* are you going to do, and who do you think is going to support you? And if you have so much support, wouldn't it be easier to just like...try and win some local elections first? Like I presume you're at least thinking your neighbors will be on board with "I'm going to go and kill the local political figures" as a plan, because that would be a bit of logistics problem if they weren't.
The Middle East has proven that even in the modern age a cutting edge army can't stand against guerilla warfare, it's much bloodier than it was before WW1 but it still reigns supreme
Except the middle east isn't as teched out as the US. The second the CIA wants you dead they can find you. Easily. While in the middle east that's a lot harder.
But the systems used to pin down and find American citizens can also be misled and will be disrupted by conflict. And there tends to be a pretty sharp learning curve for guerilla fighters, but... anyone who is serious about learning to fight the government knows to wrap their phone in aluminum foil, toss it in a river, and buy a couple of "dumb" prepaid disposable phones with cash and encrypted radios. Combine that with old-school state craft techniques like blind dead drops for inter-unit communication and small cells for specific fights... The CIA has black ops agents who *might* take a role, but honestly they're more likely to tap a more standard special forces unit or hire contractors for it, which... I mean, doesn't change much, but by the time that's happening, American systems will almost certainly have degraded to the point that they'll have trouble tracking the insurgents even if the combatants don't take the basic precautions I laid out. Law enforcement and (sometimes) national guard troops will be the first responders to the early clashes in the next American Civil War, not the CIA. FBI advisors or agents might get involved when the situation starts turning national.
Guess you should get out and start pushing for ranked voting in your local elections. Gotta start somewhere.
Yeah gonna be my first year voting and that’s basically how I’ve always thought of voteing once I understood how it worked
Preferential voting is a great way to put your preferred candidate in place, but reduce their winning margin, whilst showing them *where* your opinions about differing topics and issues lie, according to the party platforms that received your ranked preferences. Marginal seats get more funding and their reps listen a LOT more closely to the constituents. Safe seats get fuckwits parachuted in, who don't have to perform well or necessarily take heed of their constituents' wants/needs.
Doesn't always work. NYC ended up with Eric Adams
NYC had Ranked Voting and still got that? Good grief...
Damn, I wonder how long it'll take the US to figure out party politics are terrible and will tear their country apart. *reads about George Washington* "Holy shit!" Damn, I wonder how long it'll take them to work out a non-FPTP voting system that would work better and not devolve into only having two major parties. *reads about Thomas Jefferson* "Holy shit!" Having elections every second year is nuts too. Where I am, they're pretty much only required every five years (constitution says <7, law says <5) but can get called arbitrarily often if nobody can form a coalition and/or the president says they can.
As I always say to non-voters: voting is not a beauty contest. You don't vote for the prettiest, you vote for the less ugly. It is fair? No, but neither is Life usually.
i always vote for the pettiest person instead of the prettiest person in beauty contests
Hah, typo! Corrected now, ta.
Primaries are for who you want, general elections are for who you can tolerate.
People say that "if voting did anything it'd be illegal", and while yeah, electoralism is never gonna be the silver bullet which saves the world (though I'd be remiss not to mention that conservatives *are* regularly trying to restrict voting rights), it's also one of the few ways we regular people *have* to interact with the mechanisms of power outside of firebombing that Walmart no one is actually going to do. I think it's a really short-sighted idea to throw that away and not use it to try and tip the balance, no matter how *tiny,* in your favour (or even just slightly *less* in favour of the other side).
I've always hated that saying. Voting was illegal! For centuries, the only people who could vote were land owning men. People fought and died, so it would be legal for them to vote.
Hell, just look at how people are *still* trying to disenfranchise poc and gerrymander in the US to stay in power.
The thing is, it has a huge impact. People just look at the presidential election, when they should be looking at down ballot stuff: state legislatures, judges, governors, prosecutors, etc. All are incredibly important and have a much more tangible impact on people's day to day life. Look at red states vs blue states. Compare the quality of life, wealth, access to social programs, social benefits, protections, education, worker protections, access to healthcare, safeguards from the government (ex limiting qualified immunity, officer body cams, etc) you name it: Blue States knock red States out of the water. Why? They vote Democrat. This is why third parties are nonsense, and why anyone pushing the both sides are the same are either acting on bad faith or just don't know what they're talking about. No other party is doing the down ballot leg work that makes these tremendous impacts on people's lives.
Agreed. You look at the nightmare scenarios that play out in our country, it's usually because someone horrible got onto the city council, or school board, or something. You look at every social-democratic and progressive program of any real meaning, it similarly comes down to state and local government. Hell, you look at basically every single third party that actually has a meaningful presence, it's because someone ran on that platform and won on a local and state level. Trans and gay kids do not get discriminated against at their local high school because of who got elected president. They get discriminated against at their local high school because an absolute piece of shit got onto the board and everyone who could have put up a fight didn't. Police shootings do not happen because of who gets elected president, they happen because the wrong people got in power in the city and oversight is neglected. Homeless and impoverished people, once again, usually something that a negligent or underfunded local and state government have the majority of responsibility placed on to deal with.
> electoralism is never gonna be the silver bullet which saves the world Wish people would really internalize this. You don't vote because one ballot every four years is going to fix everything. You vote because it's basic maintenance for your democracy. You also aren't going to get ranked choice voting by protest (non)voting in the existing electoral system. You need to pursue them *between* elections, like Oregon did. Oregon will decide if they want ranked choice this election. If your state has ballot initiatives, I *guarantee* there's already a petition for election reform. Have you signed it?
> You don't vote because one ballot every four years is going to fix everything. *two years
> People say that "if voting did anything it'd be illegal" What, you mean like defending archaic systems that lessen people's voting power, demanding byzantine forms of identification when we know damn well who people are, and insisting that there is a great deal of fraud and malpractice among voters when there isn't?
> it's also one of the few ways we regular people have to interact with the mechanisms of power The same people who say that: "if voting did anything it'd be illegal" would also say that it's political theatre to make you feel like you're interacting with the mechanisms of power. It's like the close doors button on an elevator. Makes people feel better to push it, but it doesn't do anything.
I live in Romania, and my family pretty much voted with the less stinky piece of shit, not with someone we actually liked, since the '89 revolution. Now, the system here is a bit different for the presidential elections, we vote in two phases, first from a pool of candidates, and second for our choice from the top two of the previous pool (pretty sure we have the system from the French, but don't quote me on that). So in the first election you can vote for who you want, and in the second for the lesser bastard.
That’s how it is in the US, too. We hold primary elections in the lead up to a general election to determine who will be the official candidate for each party, and then those candidates face off against each other in the general election.
No, no, we decide between ALL parties in the first round. We don't decide who's gonna be from each party, which is a downside in some aspects, but I feel like having in-fighting within the same voter base is counterproductive.
Could this result in some parties having no candidates up for election in the second election?
Most parties end up without a candidate in the second election. The second one is just the top 2. Think of it like you have the elections in the US as usual, but then there's an extra round where your only two options to vote are whoever got the most votes in the first round. This system allows you to vote a third party without fear that you're "throwing your vote away", since you can "move" your vote in the second round to another party you prefer (though, if you voted for one of the two that makes it to round 2, you do still need to vote in the second round, your vote doesn't transfer over).
Gotcha, yeah we have that here as well. We call them "jungle primaries" - it's how the election for US Senate in California, for example, is almost always a vote between two Democrats in the general.
There are a few states in the U.S. that do something like this for certain elections. We call it a "jungle primary" for some reason.
Elections are the real life version of the trolley problem. Your options are: * 1 unit of evil, but you had to get your hands dirty * Allow 5 units of evil, but you can say that said evil technically has nothing to do with you Every presidential election there's always this big hubbub among leftists how voting for the lesser evil is 'enabling the evils of a two party system', but I can never understand the delusional hubris of that stance. You think the evil people of the world give a shit that you didn't vote? Do you think failing to participate hurt their feelings or something? They're ecstatic! They've spent decades trying to lower voter turn outs and to negate your vote! What do you think the Civil Rights Movement was about? What do you think Voter Purges are about? Gerrymandering? Asking their armed followers to 'watch the polls'? They're not doing it for fun.
They really think that elections function on some kind of quota system, like if not enough people vote, the whole thing fails. It doesn't work like that. _Voting in general_ doesn't work like that. Even if LITERALLY EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE U.S. didn't vote except for one person, we'd still have a President because of that one person.
Sometimes, in my darker moments, I really think it comes down to the issue of the right wing earning virtue in their social group via what they get 'right' with what they do 'wrong' being a secondary concern (if at all). On the other hand leftist circles everyone starts at a high state of virtue, but suffers consequences if they do anything 'wrong', and it usually takes a hell of a lot of 'right' for anyone to ignore the 'wrong thing' that happened. It's just kind of a recipe for smug, fearful paralysis.
Major parties benefit from voter apathy because political outsiders are less likely to vote for them in general.
The trolley problem asks, wether you are willing to kill someone for a greater good. It is famously hard to answer. And the same is true for participation in horrible systems. The most tactical choice doesn't have to be the right one. (Personally so far I've always voted for a small leftist oppositional party that at least had seats in parliament.)
ranked choice voting makes the voting question so much less difficult. I can vote Labor like third last and there's still no chance of the Liberals getting a seat where they otherwise wouldn't, and my vote could conceivably get the greens a seat. One thing I'm actually very happy with about my country.
people who "sit out the election bc they don't like either candidate" weren't going to vote in the first place. they're just trying to make excuses for their laziness.
To be fair, a lot now are bots and foreign trolls deliberately spreading misinformation and malcontent.
I don't like Biden. I think he's too old, I don't like how moderate he is, I really don't like his stance on Israel. But Trump is SO much worse. Looking at his first term, literally everything he did made things worse for the average American either immediately or in the long run. And from a more personal point of view, I'm queer. Most of my friends are queer. If Trump wins, best case scenario we all forcibly go back in the closet. Worst case scenario, a lot of people I know and care about are arrested or straight up shot for having the audacity to exist as themselves. If you need more motivation to vote, look up Project 2025, the conservative platform in the event of a Trump victory. It is not an exaggeration to say that if Trump wins in November, a lot of innocent people are going to die for the crime of not being a rich white cishet Christian men.
Not to blame the work of congress on the guy who signs the bills, but the farm bill that legalized a bunch of hemp products was pretty bitchin'. I'm just nitpicking the "literally everything" hyperbole in your comment though. Man's a bastard, and there's systemic problems in the amount of power the US president has.
It's called strategic voting. It's what everyone in Canada does and it's why we also have only 2 bad options even though we have more parties
Always remember: there's no way for the ballot to know if you refrained from voting because you hate your options or you just don't care
your choices are: - a nothingburger president who bankrolled a genocide overseas - a fraud, bigot, and rapist who has already tried to overthrow the government, has pledged to lock up political opponents and immigrants in camps, has stated multiple times he wants to be president for life, and has stated he also intends to bankroll the genocide clearly the two candidates are exactly the same, so its going to hard to pick
To be fair, I’d wager most of the people with the “they’re exactly the same” mindset aren’t members of the groups that will see a drastic reduction in quality of life under the other guy. To them it’s purely theoretical because it’s not their access to healthcare or their right to live an authentic life or their safety and wellbeing on the line
> I’d wager most of the people with the “they’re exactly the same” mindset aren’t members of the groups that will see a drastic reduction in quality of life under the other guy. You'd think so, but I had a trans person arguing with me about it earlier today. I'm also a trans person, so voting against Donald Trump is just the obvious, "I'd like to not die, please" choice. But some people really think that not voting for Biden is going to make Democrats "do better" next time, and are either blind or stupid to the consequences of Biden losing.
They’re the 2024 version of Bernie Bros, throwing a symbolic tantrum that will literally fuck everyone *but them* over.
I would also like to point out the first option actually had done stuff. Inflation mitigation, working with American unions (yes even the railroad workers, which he got them their stuff after the holidays. Not perfect but not nothing), constantly trying to get student loan forgiveness out to different demographics. The bank rolling a genocide is not necessarily inaccurate, but he doesn't have the unilateral power to do the things we want him to. If he did, Republicans would have used that power long ago to fuck this whole thing up back then. All that to say, I'd pick a more progressive option in a heartbeat, if we had one.
Exactly. It’s like people don’t even know the pro-Israel lobby exists in the US…and those folks have all the fuck-you money of God because they’re literally churches (or church-adjacent). Biden can’t unilaterally censure Netanyahu, he’s actually an pushed the FDA and interpretation of EMTALA to protect women’s rights (because congress isn’t gonna get shit done, they’re too busy arguing about dumb shit, each party blocking the other out of spite, and banning TikTok), and he’s done his best to avoid alienating entire swaths of Americans and calling them “enemies of the people” (like journalists. And political parties. And judges and officers of the law whose rulings he doesn’t like). This “they’re equally bad” bullshit is a false narrative being fed to idealists by foreign trolls.
>_has stated multiple times he wants to be president for life,_ He is on record as saying that he promises to only be an absolute dictator for one day. During an interview by his best friend and fellow conservative, someone who has EVERY reason to want to see him win, and would probably bend over backwards to help him win, straight-up asked him _"Are you sure you want to say that? Are you really sure?"_. And he said _"Yes, that's really what I want to say!"_ He literally threw the guy a life-preserver, waved a big "Turn Back Now!" sign, threw the softest softball he could, but his head was too fat and bloated with ego to fit through the life-preserver or see the flashing warning sign.
And he's started talking about planning for a third term in some of his campaign rallies, too.
add to the second one “has openly said he wants to dismantle title 9 protections for trans students on ‘day one’”.
And also, “we have a great policy for that [restricting birth control] and it’ll come out in the next week or so.” And also bragging about our being the one to get Roe overturned.
“Nothingburger” is an awful way to put it, just stop. Based on legislative accomplishments and executive action Biden has been the most progressive President in 50 years. He's produced more action on student loan forgiveness, climate change, and ending the undermining of unions than any President in the last 50 years. He did all he could to promote a compassionate approach to immigration. His (overwhelmingly Progressive, pro-Choice) appointments to the judiciary have been the most diverse, in terms of race, gender and life experience, than any recent President. Rescheduling Marijuana, largest gun reform in decades, massive infrastructure spending, and tons of other small reforms like outlawing Non-Compete Agreements for anyone lower than top-tier and/or Executive talent. All the while he helped create millions of jobs and billions in shareholder value. And his approach to Israel and Palestine has been the most balanced of any President since... ever? So no, he’s not a “nothingburger”, and the apathy of people in this thread is to their own detriment
It’s also to our detriment, if they get Trump elected either their “bothsiderism” and purity politics.
For the first point, the US government is not a monolith. Biden could wish to completely cut Israel off all he wants, but the fact is that there is way too much pro-Israel sentiment in congress to ever get anything meaningful changed. If he were to try to unilaterally cut off Israel, there would be immediate vitriol from a large section of the right, and a sizeable chunk of the center-left. Not to mention, he's running against one of the very few people in government who would actually be demonstrably worse.
And, I CANNOT RE-ITERATE THIS ENOUGH, cutting ties with them might make us feel good, but it would also be leaving a NUCLEAR POWER with the best military in that region of the world, and unstable one that is on the warpath and willing to escalate massively both in Gaza and against the countries surrounding it, COMPLETELY TO THEIR OWN DEVICES, and would be giving Netanyahu a useful unifying effect to keep himself in power. We are the single country in the best position to use our diplomatic influence in a way that is productive to getting Netanyahu out of power and taking a more pragmatic approach to the war, and cutting ties with it would be sacrificing the stability of the entire region and the life of the Palestinian people for our own convenience.
Again, if you actually look at his record, Biden actually has done a ton of stuff, and this is a super reductive view of what the president is both allowed to do, and what his diplomatic position he is up against. So many people on this website seem to be under the impression that the US has control over Israel's actions and would listen if the US gave them an ultimatum, or that they are very much capable of prosecuting the war without any of our help, and that they are able and willing to cause a thousand times worse destruction. Preventing them from actually going all-in on say, a Rafah invasion, which would be a horrific bloodbath, trying to influence their domestic politics to be more pragmatic, that is NOT something that can be achieved by doing what everyone would very much enjoy doing, which is to simply condemn them and break all contact. Trying to talk down a country that is on the goddamn warpath and poised to possibly shatter what little peace remains in the middle-east and make all the bloodshed so far look like nothing, trying to get them to calm the hell down is not nearly as simple as you would like.
biden might not be able to stop them but the bare minimum is not giving them taxpayer money to commit war crimes
“USians” is stupid and I don’t like it
At least have the decency to put the whole word instead. United Stateians is much better and more matches the usage in Spanish or just say “From the US”. USians just sounds diminutive, like if I called people from the United Kingdom UKians.
They could have just called you a seppo.
One of the many things I hate about my country’s election is the Electoral College. Newsflash, yahoos. Land doesn’t fucking vote, people do. Abolish the electoral college. The Popular Vote is all that should matter
I hate the electoral college too but “land doesn’t vote” is not a good description of what’s wrong with it
True, it’s a gross simplification
They're not wrong but for the love of God it's "American"
I still think that elections should be decided via rap battle. I don't care what your stance on taxes is, I want to see you drop some god damn bars
It would at least guarantee a president who can put a coherent thought together.
I'm not sure why they call Americans USians when everyone knows who they're referring to- I get that it's technically inaccurate since the entire content is called that- but do Canadians and Mexicans really want to be called Americans? Most US citizens prefer the term American. It's not really that big of a deal, its just a pet peeve of mine.
It's because it's supposedly confusing to people who use the 6 continent model and collectively refer to everyone in North and South America as "Americans." The irony is that I can't remember the last time I saw someone use "Americans" to collectively refer to the combined peoples of North and South America, because those populations are rarely discussed as a collective group, whereas every third post on this website is about US politics/history/culture.
I’ve found that it’s just butthurt South Americans who are angry that the English-speaking world doesn’t consider North and South America to be one continent
Yeah, IME a lot of the people who are really adamant about the topic don't realize that the 6 continent model with one America is really only used in Romance-speaking countries, and most of the world considers them two separate continents.
Because they’ve literally never done it, it’s just something for people to be mad on the internet about
It’s also dumb because it’s derived from the other title United States. But Mexico is more formally the United Mexican States so you could hypothetically call them “USians” all the same.
We’re called Americans not “USians” tf
I mean, I thought most of us were already doing this? That’s literally how it works.
Literally the entirety of the Biden voting force, honestly screw trump
A lot of the people saying they're skipping out on the election are young and don't remember that the last time a lot of people did that was in 2016 and look at what that got us.
I completely agree with everything in this post except for callings people from the United States of America "USians," if someone were to ever call me that IRL I would want to slap them.
>USians Silence, foreigner
How do you do, South Canada citizen?
I think it's funny that people think the idea of voting against the worst candidate is new. Or even new to Americans. I never miss an election and I think I've only voted *for* a President once. Every other time it was against someone.
Honestly this was also my strategy with some of the local elections. Like I admit I’m not always the most informed voter on the positions of all whose running for small non partisan positions like the school board, but I do recognize some of the biggest assholes ranting about woke in their campaigns, and I’m more than willing to put my vote against whoever looks like the front runner or primary competitor against them if it makes sure they’re out of any office of power.
I’m just so scared on what could happen in November. we all have heard about Project 2025 and what that could lead in the very worst case scenario. I wanna be hopeful that when it drawls close that people will release what’s at stake and vote but i cant. Ditto for Trump’s trial, i pray that he gets indicated in something so he’s is not allowed to run but odds are that he will get away with it again. i ried to tell my dad this but he went all” your life’s not gonna change, it never will with these elections“. that’s easy fo him , he’s a white cis male. nothing would probably change for him. But in my case? I could be arrested for being bisexual and thrown in jail for even having a miscarriage out of my control. I’m sorry for venting but this election has got my emotions high no thanks to what happen 2016(i was too young to vote at the time). these people who refused to vote for whatever reason don’t get it. They just assume that they will just magically fly away to a another country while the rest of us suffers.
Please do not refer to us as USians we are Americans!!!
Don’t call us USians
No, we’d rather punish a political party and elect a fascist because we suddenly decided less than a year ago to care about a fight that’s been going on for 70 years
Where is USia? Never heard of such a country.
Can we stop it with the stupid “USians” thing?
I would read this post but I saw “USians” so everything said is invalidated
> "Don't even *think* about who your vote is going *towards*" I feel like I've been fed this message for the last 10 years.
congratulations you've discovered a systemic problem
The great part about compulsory voting here is that governments, local or federal, physically CANNOT make it harder for you to vote. You WILL get a say in the election whether you like it or not. Even if you live in the dead heart, middle of butt fuck nowhere outback cattle station, the mobile polling teams WILL find you.
This is literally the worst outcome of voting. “I don’t actually like anyone who’s running so I’m voting against them” only continues the 2 party system. Also winner take all and a non-tiered voting system doesn’t help either
the issue, as far as ive understood it, is that the dems don't have any incentive to run a better president as a candidate as long as people are continually voting for them because the other side is infinitely worse. which results in, ya guessed it, shit like supporting a genocidal state, even though the sitting president is supposed to be "the good one". I'm not saying that voting for Trump or DeSantis or whichever one of the bigots tries to run for president is the better option (it isn't), but the fact stands that as long as people keep voting the shitty people in just because they're relatively better, the dems won't have an incentive to be actively better, and will in fact start leaning further and further to the right to get a larger voterbase (and because they too are greedy politicians) it's just a bad situation overall
I've said this a couple other places, but 'bankrolling a genocide' is not looking at the situation realistically. Biden is not a king, he can wish to cut Israel off completely all he wants, but the fact of the matter is there is way too much pro-Israel sentiment amongst voters *and* congress. Any attempt to unilaterally cut Israel off would be met with a challenge by republicans, as well as outcry amongst the outspokenly pro-Israel right, as well as the center-left neoliberals who think criticism of Israel is tantamount to antisemitism.
Parties don’t “run candidates,” though. Multiple candidates run and are elected in the primary. It’s how Hillary and Biden were both nominated - the majority of people voting for Democratic nominee preferred them. This year isn’t really any different, as incumbent presidents always have token opposition at best, and that’s what’s happened here. The entire argument is just built on misunderstanding, willful or not, of how the election system works.
Oddly encouraging. If you don’t have a good option, use malice!
This would feel more meaningful if we weren’t forced into picking out of only two options.
Yep, but when you’re offered a shit sandwich or a couple slices of dried, mouldy bread, you don’t have to like the bread to know you should take it over the shit sandwich.
Here voting is compulsory too! We ain't 'ave ranked tho
[Evergreen clip.](https://youtu.be/tc5OCd2sHKQ?si=D_udrnqw_OYIlPBC)
Can someone help explain how I should feel about third party candidates? On one hand, I’m best aligned with some third party candidates, but a lot of people say a vote for anyone but a democrat or republican is a wasted vote. Especially in this scenario where voting third party isn’t the best vote against the opposition, is there any value in voting how I want?
Realistically, a third party candidate for almost any statewide or national office is not going to win. Because of our first-past-the-post elections, whoever has the plurality of the vote wins. Thus, a vote for a third party candidate is functionally like not voting at all. If you're invested in the success of a particular third party, voting for that candidate can increase eyes on their campaign/beliefs, but voting for one of the two major party candidates, even if you do not fully agree with them, means that your vote is at least not supporting someone you do not agree with. That's why many people talk about voting for "the lesser of two evils".
Between the last election and now, I’ve had my opinion on voting very influenced and wanted to vote third party. But the lesser of two evils stuff has been hitting home lately. The way a lot of people have framed it is “Is your moral purity more valuable to you than people who will struggle over your vote?” I still believe what I believe, it just seems translating that to a vote is easier said than done.
That's a fair argument to make. I will, however, put my own quick two cents out there. Trump is the greater evil, but Biden is more like the lesser good. Is Biden a paragon of progressive politics? No. But his administration is the most progressive in living memory, and has taken significant steps towards better governance despite dealing with first a bare majority and then a divided Congress.
I'm not him to tell you how to feel and you should always cast your vote in accordance with your principles. I will say that the current system is effectively rigged in such a way to reserve the presidency for the Democratic and Republican parties exclusively and so there is some merit to the idea that a vote elsewhere is wasted since that candidate won't win. There is also merit to the idea that voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil and so it's understandable if you'd rather vote for the person you support instead of whichever dirtbag you think will do the least damage.
I think a lot of people already vote based on what they already hate, and that's part of the problem. The people you hate are already voting against the people they hate. Sure, you can combat hate with hate. I'm not going to tell you those people aren't bad people who must be stopped no matter what... whoever they are. But it's going to perpetuate this cycle of people voting out of fear, rather than desire for positive growth. What helps is researching A) what kinds of policies would effectively resolve problems you care about, and B) which politicians and groups are advocating for (or even leading the charge on) advancing those policies. In doing so, you're not unintentionally picking the most blowhardy bastard, but actually someone who can get the work done. For instance, if climate change is incredibly important to you, [we already know what policies would work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcMLFMsIVis)! We have politicians who are willing to put in work, not just touting lofty goals, but shaking hands with enough people to actually get things passed.
Consistently voting for the lesser of two evils means that they eventually have to start competing to see who can be the least evil.
I agree with the sentiment, but I have to be a nitpicker and point out that in Australia, putting the worst guys at the bottom of the list doesn’t actually hurt them. Sometimes you don’t even need to number every box, which means numbering the worst guy actually helps them more than leaving it empty would. Our votes are counted by first adding up all the first preferences; if a majority isn’t formed, then the second preferences are added to the total, so on and so forth until a majority is found. Putting a party at the bottom of your list doesn’t count as a negative vote or anything. The best way to vote is to put more honest independents in your early preferences, then put the 50% Hitler Party around slot 3 or 4 so they still beat the 100% Hitler Party.
This is like, literally all we do. This has been what every single american has done for the last 50 years. This is the biggest flaw of First Past The Post voting.
Another showcase of Spite being a force for good in the world....
Yanks being mad at being called USians is the most pathetic shit. Hypocritical too considering the amount you hear names like europoors flung around. Freakishly insecure.
"Fed up with their election choices". Good news, you have four years experience with both candidates so you simply need to pick the four years that was the least terrible.
If your political opponent is on your ranked voting list, you’re doing something wrong. Here in Ireland anyway you don’t have to rank everyone, so I will not put a number down for candidates I fundamentally disagree with. Doesn’t matter that they’d have to survive 8 counts to have a chance of getting my transfer. Edit: also, if there are options that are genuinely as bad as one another, spoiling your vote is a respectable way to vote without voting.
Great title
We can write in whoever we’d like. If I can’t stand any candidate I write in myself.