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>We should be reacting to this the same way we respond when someone shoots up a school or hospital. We are: feeling horrible, knowing this is the only country

by flax 1y ago

>We should be reacting to this the same way we respond when someone shoots up a school or hospital. We are: feeling horrible, knowing this is the only country where this happens, and also resigned to the fact that there's nothing we as individuals can do about it.

prox 1y ago
As individuals: group up. Start figuring out your local, state and federal political people you need to support. Build community is probably your best bet as individuals. Even if you donate a few hours here and there, or a small donation here and there, it can make the difference. This last election was mostly decided by the people who didn’t vote. The apathetic, the cynics and so on.
- decremental 1y ago
  [dead]
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  An excellent option is to use federalism as it was intended. If you want funding for certain medical research, have your state issue grants. There is nothing that requires it to be the federal government.
  - MiguelX413 1y ago
    Unfair for some states to have to bear the burden. California already bears a large burden and that's on top of subsidizing other states through federal taxes.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      > Unfair for some states to have to bear the burden. Isn't this the counterargument? Why should the US disproportionately pay for world-benefiting research instead of Europe or China? The answer, of course, is that other governments do also fund some research, but each government decides how much they want to spend and on what. Which applies as much to each individual state as it does to the federal government. > California already bears a large burden and that's on top of subsidizing other states through federal taxes. It sounds like you're arguing that cutting federal programs would benefit California, because then they would have that money to appropriate as they choose for themselves.
      - tremon 1y ago
        Why should the US disproportionately pay for world-benefiting research instead of Europe or China? What a loaded question. Could it possibly be that the US does so because it disproportionately benefits from said research?
      - MiguelX413 1y ago
        Not if it isn't accompanied by an according reduction in federal taxes overall.
  - subsection1h 1y ago
    > If you want funding for certain medical research, have your state issue grants. There is nothing that requires it to be the federal government. States would need to increase taxes to fund more research, which would cause some of the wealthiest residents to flee to low-tax states. This would result in the pro-research states losing tax revenue and eventually cutting their research funding. The decline in research funding would result in the U.S. experiencing brain drain similar to what has been experienced in red states[1] for decades. Some of us don't want the U.S. to experience brain drain that will cause our country to become more like the rural states that suffer from the loss of their best and brightest. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=red+state+brain+drain https://www.google.com/search?q=red+state+brain+drain
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      > States would need to increase taxes to fund more research, which would cause some of the wealthiest residents to flee to low-tax states. The people who actually pay most of the taxes aren't the billionaires (both because there aren't that many of them and because they already engage in sophisticated tax avoidance), they're the likes of senior partners at law firms, cardiologists, successful small business owners, etc. But these people are not only not going to move to Wyoming for lower taxes, because they can't operate the businesses that them that amount of money there, a lot of the reason Wyoming has lower taxes is because they're large net recipients of federal funds. If they had to fund their own stuff that would make it more attractive to live in the states that are currently doing the funding. Moreover, research funding has always been a small proportion of government spending, e.g. the NIH is ~0.7% of the federal budget. This does not require a large change in tax revenues to move somewhere else. > Some of us don't want the U.S. to experience brain drain that will cause our country to become more like the rural states that suffer from the loss of their best and brightest. The first search result from your link is an article saying that isn't actually happening: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/tenure/2024/01/03/are-professors-really-fleeing-universities-red-states https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/tenure/20...
  - jjav 1y ago
    > An excellent option is to use federalism as it was intended. If you want funding for certain medical research, have your state issue grants. This can work, but only in an alternate universe where the federal government doesn't get nearly all the tax income. If we abolished federal tax and increased state taxes proportionally, this would totally work. But not the world as it exists today.
mnky9800n 1y ago
Do you think the SNCC students who sat at the counter for the first time thought they would be completely safe? No they probably were afraid out of their minds that they would be lynched and their families would follow. But they had an integral part in the desegregation of the United States which led to a much freer and safer place for them and their children. They were individuals who made choices that they knew could lead to suffering because they thought it might make their world a slightly better place. There are plenty of ways to make the world a better place.
netsharc 1y ago
To everyone who condemned Russians who "just sat and did nothing" as Putin invaded Ukraine... (I'm not a saint, a friend of mine goes out to protest against the ongoing genocide every week, I sit around and do nothing...).
esafak 1y ago
Thought it may be hard, you can do something as long as there are reasonably fair elections.
xyzal 1y ago
Excuse me? Of course you can do a lot of things. Talk to your neigbor, share gov't f-ups on social media, learn to argue for democracy and against common MAGA narratives, join protests, donate to good causes, make your political preference visible, spark dialogues. We (Eastern Europeans) could not do neither of those things without risking jail time and we still managed to topple dictatorships.
- ty6853 1y ago
  Not being able to do those things probably nudged you towards revolution. Voting feels like you've done something. Cast a vote between the lady rammed through without even a primary, or the other oh so fabulous option. Go home and pat yourself on the back, you did something, you tried, and hey it is democracy so you deserve what you get. Now you can relax and mission accomplished. People under eastern europe 'communist' dictators didn't have any of that. Just whisper in the shadows, and then suddenly Ceaușescu is swiss cheese, because there was literally no other option than to reject the whole system dominating them rather than exhausting their energies squabbling on twitter.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > Voting feels like you've done something. Cast a vote between the lady rammed through without even a primary, or the other oh so fabulous option. Go home and pat yourself on the back, you did something, you tried, and hey it is democracy so you deserve what you get. Now you can relax and mission accomplished. It's worse than that. It's possible to have a democracy where some of the options are better, e.g. switch to score voting so there can be arbitrarily many parties and candidates instead of major party insiders filtering out every decent candidate before you get to the election. But the party insiders want that control, so they set up a narrative where every problem is caused by the other team, instead of the problem being caused by there only being two teams.
    - chrchr 1y ago
      Had the Democratic Party's nomination won the election the worst outcomes of the second Trump presidency would have been prevented. You can blame the campaign and the primary voters and the party or whatever, but ultimately the general election voters could have chosen a normal politician who would have at least been a competent, law-abiding administrator and instead voters chose this. The two party system and the lack of ranked-choice voting are no excuse.
computerthings 1y ago
[dead]
rsynnott 1y ago
> knowing this is the only country where this happens So, in this case, it is actually _not_; you have a blueprint. Quite a few democratic countries have gone down the personality-cult-authoritarianism rabbit hole in the last few decades; Russia, Turkey, Hungary would be obvious developed-world examples. Some have pulled back from the brink (arguably Poland, for instance).
- hn_acker 1y ago
  With "the only country where this happens", GP was referring to shootings at schools and hospitals. GP might have been alluding to the recurring The Onion headline `'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens` [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    Yup, I realise, but they were suggesting Trumpism was another such thing, whereas it really isn't.

by flax 1y ago

prox 1y ago

As individuals: group up. Start figuring out your local, state and federal political people you need to support. Build community is probably your best bet as individuals. Even if you donate a few hours here and there, or a small donation here and there, it can make the difference. This last election was mostly decided by the people who didn’t vote. The apathetic, the cynics and so on.

decremental 1y ago
[dead]
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
An excellent option is to use federalism as it was intended. If you want funding for certain medical research, have your state issue grants. There is nothing that requires it to be the federal government.
- MiguelX413 1y ago
  Unfair for some states to have to bear the burden. California already bears a large burden and that's on top of subsidizing other states through federal taxes.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > Unfair for some states to have to bear the burden. Isn't this the counterargument? Why should the US disproportionately pay for world-benefiting research instead of Europe or China? The answer, of course, is that other governments do also fund some research, but each government decides how much they want to spend and on what. Which applies as much to each individual state as it does to the federal government. > California already bears a large burden and that's on top of subsidizing other states through federal taxes. It sounds like you're arguing that cutting federal programs would benefit California, because then they would have that money to appropriate as they choose for themselves.
    - tremon 1y ago
      Why should the US disproportionately pay for world-benefiting research instead of Europe or China? What a loaded question. Could it possibly be that the US does so because it disproportionately benefits from said research?
    - MiguelX413 1y ago
      Not if it isn't accompanied by an according reduction in federal taxes overall.
- subsection1h 1y ago
  > If you want funding for certain medical research, have your state issue grants. There is nothing that requires it to be the federal government. States would need to increase taxes to fund more research, which would cause some of the wealthiest residents to flee to low-tax states. This would result in the pro-research states losing tax revenue and eventually cutting their research funding. The decline in research funding would result in the U.S. experiencing brain drain similar to what has been experienced in red states[1] for decades. Some of us don't want the U.S. to experience brain drain that will cause our country to become more like the rural states that suffer from the loss of their best and brightest. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=red+state+brain+drain https://www.google.com/search?q=red+state+brain+drain
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > States would need to increase taxes to fund more research, which would cause some of the wealthiest residents to flee to low-tax states. The people who actually pay most of the taxes aren't the billionaires (both because there aren't that many of them and because they already engage in sophisticated tax avoidance), they're the likes of senior partners at law firms, cardiologists, successful small business owners, etc. But these people are not only not going to move to Wyoming for lower taxes, because they can't operate the businesses that them that amount of money there, a lot of the reason Wyoming has lower taxes is because they're large net recipients of federal funds. If they had to fund their own stuff that would make it more attractive to live in the states that are currently doing the funding. Moreover, research funding has always been a small proportion of government spending, e.g. the NIH is ~0.7% of the federal budget. This does not require a large change in tax revenues to move somewhere else. > Some of us don't want the U.S. to experience brain drain that will cause our country to become more like the rural states that suffer from the loss of their best and brightest. The first search result from your link is an article saying that isn't actually happening: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/tenure/2024/01/03/are-professors-really-fleeing-universities-red-states https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/tenure/20...
- jjav 1y ago
  > An excellent option is to use federalism as it was intended. If you want funding for certain medical research, have your state issue grants. This can work, but only in an alternate universe where the federal government doesn't get nearly all the tax income. If we abolished federal tax and increased state taxes proportionally, this would totally work. But not the world as it exists today.

mnky9800n 1y ago

Do you think the SNCC students who sat at the counter for the first time thought they would be completely safe? No they probably were afraid out of their minds that they would be lynched and their families would follow. But they had an integral part in the desegregation of the United States which led to a much freer and safer place for them and their children. They were individuals who made choices that they knew could lead to suffering because they thought it might make their world a slightly better place. There are plenty of ways to make the world a better place.

netsharc 1y ago

To everyone who condemned Russians who "just sat and did nothing" as Putin invaded Ukraine... (I'm not a saint, a friend of mine goes out to protest against the ongoing genocide every week, I sit around and do nothing...).

esafak 1y ago

Thought it may be hard, you can do something as long as there are reasonably fair elections.

xyzal 1y ago

Excuse me? Of course you can do a lot of things. Talk to your neigbor, share gov't f-ups on social media, learn to argue for democracy and against common MAGA narratives, join protests, donate to good causes, make your political preference visible, spark dialogues. We (Eastern Europeans) could not do neither of those things without risking jail time and we still managed to topple dictatorships.

ty6853 1y ago
Not being able to do those things probably nudged you towards revolution. Voting feels like you've done something. Cast a vote between the lady rammed through without even a primary, or the other oh so fabulous option. Go home and pat yourself on the back, you did something, you tried, and hey it is democracy so you deserve what you get. Now you can relax and mission accomplished. People under eastern europe 'communist' dictators didn't have any of that. Just whisper in the shadows, and then suddenly Ceaușescu is swiss cheese, because there was literally no other option than to reject the whole system dominating them rather than exhausting their energies squabbling on twitter.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > Voting feels like you've done something. Cast a vote between the lady rammed through without even a primary, or the other oh so fabulous option. Go home and pat yourself on the back, you did something, you tried, and hey it is democracy so you deserve what you get. Now you can relax and mission accomplished. It's worse than that. It's possible to have a democracy where some of the options are better, e.g. switch to score voting so there can be arbitrarily many parties and candidates instead of major party insiders filtering out every decent candidate before you get to the election. But the party insiders want that control, so they set up a narrative where every problem is caused by the other team, instead of the problem being caused by there only being two teams.
  - chrchr 1y ago
    Had the Democratic Party's nomination won the election the worst outcomes of the second Trump presidency would have been prevented. You can blame the campaign and the primary voters and the party or whatever, but ultimately the general election voters could have chosen a normal politician who would have at least been a competent, law-abiding administrator and instead voters chose this. The two party system and the lack of ranked-choice voting are no excuse.

computerthings 1y ago

[dead]

rsynnott 1y ago

> knowing this is the only country where this happens So, in this case, it is actually _not_; you have a blueprint. Quite a few democratic countries have gone down the personality-cult-authoritarianism rabbit hole in the last few decades; Russia, Turkey, Hungary would be obvious developed-world examples. Some have pulled back from the brink (arguably Poland, for instance).

hn_acker 1y ago
With "the only country where this happens", GP was referring to shootings at schools and hospitals. GP might have been alluding to the recurring The Onion headline `'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens` [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Yup, I realise, but they were suggesting Trumpism was another such thing, whereas it really isn't.