The Supreme Court: RIP Literally Everything

I mean sure. But that is the symptom not the problem.

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A median voter that wants to vote in a manner one finds abhorrent seems like a core problem.

This is no doubt true, but their strategy seems to work more for presidential and Senate races and less so for the house and local stuff

I have always heard that you build change from the bottom up. Bitching because Biden isnā€™t a left enough candidate is utterly futile. What we need to focus on are local elections (even for school boards). This is how to affect meaningful change. Keep electing people like Katie Porter, etc. You canā€™t tell me that if the senate was filled with a bunch of AOCs that both Alito and Thomas would be undergoing impeachment proceedings right now

Thatā€™s how we add seats to the SC, end the electoral college, and much more imo

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In other words, one of @skydiver8ā€™s recent essays.

Iā€™m concerned that the problem is that Americans are just dumb and this is actually close to the best we can do.

Iā€™m not sure about this. I think so much of Americas issues can be directly traced to terrible cultural ideas like the American dream, American exceptionalism and the strong anti group ethos.

This is such a strange take. Do you really not remember life before Obamacare? Are you unaware of Bidenā€™s further health care changes that have lowered insurance rates or price controls on things like insulin? How about simple things like gay rights? Or is this a ā€œmy preferred policyā€ or thereā€™s been ā€œno changeā€.

Change rarely happens quickly the way you seem to think it does

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The US healthcare system isnā€™t remotely progressive. Is it 4% more progressive than the 90s? I guess so. Gay rights werenā€™t advanced by elected politicians. Most of the elected politicians were against it including Obama, Biden, Hillary, etc. Itā€™s also at serious risk right now.

Donā€™t call for another week long ban but your takes on politics are insanely naive and simplistic. You spend all of your time defending the indefensible.

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Examples of this actually happening? Large seismic political change has never been accomplished through school board elections as near as I can tell.

The us healthcare system is massively more progressive than the 90s. Holy shit some of yā€™all just memory hole the craziest shit. There used to be fucking caps on lifetime payouts and if you ever had a gap you couldnā€™t get coverage individually that covered your past medical history. Thereā€™s lots more obviously, but good god thatā€™s a nuclear take

My entire point is that the Dem party would never let this happen. AOC specifically won her election fighting against the Dem machinery. Itā€™s hard to do and there arenā€™t a plethora of AOCs out there to ever make this reality. Itā€™s been tried.

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Itā€™s one of the least progressive healthcare systems on the planet. Especially compared to economic peers. The fact itā€™s slightly less hellish than 30 years ago being some kind of huge Democratic party win is an insanely dumb take. What world do you actually live in?

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One that knows the difference between the American system preobamacare to now.

I mean I realize as a bottom rung doctor in the current system your entire ethos is wrapped in our wonderful healthcare system being something it isnā€™t. For the rest of us the system sucks to one degree or another. Go read the thread where people from this very forum (who are largely well above middle class) are getting fucked around by it. Now imagine what it is like for median income and below individuals. Our health care system is a complete horror show.

I mean I agree things are better now than before Obamacare. That is a complete strawman and you know it.

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32 of the 33 most developed countries have some form of socialized healthcare.

lol arguing America is anything but awful retrograde hellscape when it comes to healthcare.

Genuinely is there a single healthcare stat the US is even in the top 10 except for money spent.

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What you said was ā€œ4% more progressiveā€ and ā€œno progressive changeā€. Those things are laughably untrue in several areas. It is absolutely untrue in health care. Itā€™s absolutely untrue for gay rights. Does that mean our system is perfect? Absolutely not, but thatā€™s not what you said.

The only possible way you could not notice the improvements from Obamacare is if you had employer supplied insurance throughout the 00s and 10s and didnā€™t get super sick. It was real and significant progressive change, even if you think it wasnā€™t enough.

Also, hearty lol at ā€˜bottom rung doctor in this systemā€™ - whatever that means. Your ego is simply too fragile to have someone disagree with you at all without you losing your shit. Still, an improvement over your behavior last week. Iā€™m proud of you. Like the us healthcare system, youā€™re improving.

This is obviously true. An interesting follow-on would be what if the average IQ were 50 points higher (not unlikely within 100 years given developments in genetic modification), what would political discourse look like? I expect it would be much more informed and reasonable. There will still be adherents to many fringe ideas, but they likely wouldnā€™t command much sway.

Still, itā€™s possible to imagine significant battles among tens of millions of highly intelligent and well-informed citizens. Some may regard a substantially more intelligent citizenry unlikely, but we can already do genetic screening (sorry, bad embryos), and Iā€™d regard it as almost inevitable in the absence of nuclear annihilation. (Even major climate change would have fairly minor effects from the standpoint of extinction.) (And if we forbid genetic modification, the Chinese/Indians will not, and we will race to catch up.)

I think people completely underestimate how weird the current social and technological landscape is compared with history. Even without AI, which is my baseline assumption, things are going to get weird in ways that will upend a lot of previously well-mapped out positions. With AI, the world will be unimaginably different.

The political landscape keeps fighting 50-year-old battles while the actual world plows ahead at an increasing pace toward a never-before-conceived future.

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Obamacare was a significant improvement.

The US healthcare system is a fucking disaster compared to the rest of the world.

Both can be true.

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I stand by my statement.

Yeah, the results might be slightly different, butā€¦

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