domain:betonit.substack.com
TowardsPanna
29m ago
Openly launching multiple criminal trials against a political opponent leading up to an election is something even Putin hasn't done.
Wrong on both counts. Putin does worse things. And you say this like Trump is some innocent victim and not a complete lying scumbag who tried to end your democracy.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
15m ago
The actual instability in many continental (ie. usually PR-using) countries is less due to the small parties (they're often easy to ignore - they're small!) and more because there are major parties that are politically toxic (due to being extreme right or extreme left, or separatists) and thus basically almost automatically out of the government, which thus forces the rest of the parties into ideologically amorphous, unstable coalitions, or alternatively leads o the creation of large ideologically amorphous, unstable "system parties" (like the Italian Christian Democrats, the hegemonic party due to the main opposition being the Communists who were kept out of the government) where political barons bring down governments and cut each other down due to byzantine political machinations or simply due to spite.
The reason why those parties exist is because there are or were deeper systemic factors in those countries leading to large portions of population choosing such extreme or separatist parties. The Weimar Republic was not unstable because of its electoral system but simply because huge portions of the German population distrusted democracy and supported antidemocratic parties like the Communist, Nazis and the DNVP. If unstable countries were using FPTP, the same factors would just express themselves otherwise; the extreme left and right would eventually affect and radicalize the mainstream parties, and separatist/ethnic parties are usually concentrated enough to elect MPs even in FPTP systems.
The main FPTP-using countries, ie. Anglo countries, have been stable because they have been wealthy and have had longlasting liberal democratic cultures with powerful mechanisms encouraging stability. Nevertheless, even they've seen increasing destabilization lately, and that destabilization has then channeled itself in different ways, so you have the Trump presidency, Corbyn leadership in Labour and the Brexit.
Thoroughlygruntled
47m ago
Did the Brits never get the "Nimrod = idiot" meaning switch? Does that mean they never got Bugs Bunny? The 20th Century truly was cruel to the Empire.
BahRamYou
2hr ago
I can't help but feel like there's a certain similarity to that, and how most European elections work. With all your different political parties, and weird cutoffs/bonuses, and backroom deal-making to make a coalition...
2rafa
24m ago
True, and that's what proponents of PR argue, that, say, the German system allows for the 'right' to consist of a center-right party (CDU/CSU), a libertarian party (FDP) and a nativist party (AfD) that reflect nuanced positions in the electorate. Another example is Israel where there are various minor flavors of secular vs. religious vs. very religious nationalist parties, centrist religious nationalist parties, ethnic parties and so on. But the downside is that many of the same voters feel betrayed when 'their' politicians compromise, which means that they quickly support and abandon certain parties, which makes dealmaking very difficult because everyone is afraid of being destroyed at the next election, which means nobody is willing to compromise to the extent necessary, which results in gridlock.
RegularlyExpressed
1hr ago
We haven’t had a situation like this since the civil war — both sides absolutely believe that the nation will be in grave danger if their guy doesn’t win.
In what way is this current situation different from 2020? Or 2016 for that matter?
johnfabian
1hr ago
In an effort to improve my German, I'm reading Zweig's 'Die Welt von Gestern', The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European.
Has there been some recent fascination with the book? I looked it up in the Toronto library system and all 8 copies are signed out, with multiple holds past that. Unusual popularity for a book from the 1940s.
hanikrummihundursvin
45m ago
Coordinated minority>Disorganized majority
You can vote more than once from the same number. Up to 20 times or something. Any geopolitically motivated adult can outdo a kid who votes once with the permission of mom and dad.
You could say the same for opponents of Israel, they all get 20 votes. But the difference is that they have no singular target to back. And they are still only changing the points on a ladder of 1-12. So even if they all vote for the same country, giving it 12 points, Israel can just run up behind them and claim 11.
Aside from all of that, I don't think winning will do Israel any propaganda favors, although it would be funny. So whilst a 'respectable' middle of the pack outcome might be on the cards for Israel, you never know with how unhinged and rabid philosemites/zionists are and how honest or not the Eurovision voting is counted and which way the minds of the jurors sway. The jurors might hope for a politically neutral result, but too many 6-7 pointers for Israel could make things interesting.
That being said, Eurovision is a purely news cycle driven thing. It doesn't matter in any sense outside of that.
theory
46m ago
If voters are required to compromise, if the amount of information they can give with their ballot is reduced, discovering their true preferences becomes harder. It adds another layer of obfuscation on top of the already indirect (representative) democracy.
BahRamYou
2hr ago
I'm sure some of that is just "what decade did you grow up in" but yeah, 2000s had some great advantages for the artistic potential of video games:
- advanced enough to handle 3d graphics easily
- still small enough to be done with a reasonably small team
- broadband internet available, but not required
- enough time to learn from past video games, but not locked in on DLC and other marketing addiction crap
- big-budget games were still willing to experiment and try new stuff
- mostly not concerned about wokeness
2rafa
1hr ago
It’s been an occasionally dredged up topic in literature circles since about 2009, in part thanks to a general sense of impending doom that a lot of mainstream libs have had since then and because there are plenty of ways for them (as noted) to twist Zweig’s words into applying to the present culture war, even if this is relatively poor practice. There are also many literary comparisons (often unfavorable ones) to Joseph Roth. I don’t think there’s any reason why this year in particular would make it a thing, though, I bought my copy in Vienna while looking for books about Austria I could read in German.
Felagund
5hr ago
Sorry, I kind of have to agree with ArjinFerman—at least, it would be disastrous for the forum if everyone started adopting your tone and habits of response. You're consistently above-average in antagonism and dismissiveness. And this definitely is one of the factors in you drawing more downvotes—it's often the reason if ever I downvote you. That of course doesn't address the overall problem of voting based on whether people like it driving dissenting views away, but it could make a meaningful difference in your particular case.
So I guess, two.
2rafa
1hr ago
The cutoffs and bonuses are necessary in proportionally elected parliaments, otherwise the incentive would be for every niche interest to get a party unless there was no way it could achieve even 1 seat (which in a say 300 seat parliament would be 0.33% of the vote). You’d have dozens of parties and wrangling them together into coalition would be impossible. Israel is an arguable failure state; it has a low threshold of 3% and no majority bonus system which is really what it needs.
The more you look into non-FPTP traditional constituency systems the more problems come up. The UK/US two-party systems have major problems but force the public to make compromises instead of (just) politicians, which I think is theoretically preferable.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7hr ago
Judging by precedent, studiously ignoring them seems to be a popular option.
ace
3hr ago
One could argue. She dated her boss (Willie Brown) who subsequently appointed her to some cushy gigs.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kamala-harris-affair-willie-brown/
Snopes says the truth is "mixed", which means it's pants-on-fire level embarrassing.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3hr ago
Confusingly.
Basically, Eurovision has two separate votes: televote (ie. conducted among viewers) and jury vote. Both are organized country by country, with both the televotes and the juries awarding a maximum of twelve points to the top-voted country, 10 points to the second most voted, and then 8, 7, 6, 5 etc. to the next ones.
The implicit purpose of the jury vote can often specifically negate the televote when there's a feeling a "non-preferred" song (typically one that seems too much like a comedy entry and not like a traditional Eurovision winner ballad) might win (like last year...), so it's possible that Israel might, for instance, win the televote and not the jury vote. Then again it might also do quite well in the jury vote, Israel has not been a particularly bad performer there either in the previous contests, from what I've understood.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
1hr ago
Never had heard of it, but it's on my reading list now. Thanks.
AvocadoPanic
1hr ago
as people running his administration
I agree, but who are these people? Makes me wish Trump was a bit Hitler or Franco.
Is the Title IX reform team the same as the war in the Ukraine team?
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
7hr ago
Openly launching multiple criminal trials against a political opponent leading up to an election is something even Putin hasn't done.
I mean, technically I'm not sure he's done multiple against a single opponent, but since convicted criminals can't run for President in Russia, and Putin has tight control of the courts, he only needs the one. And this is, in fact, his primary method of preventing election losses; IIRC he's done it to several candidates that looked like they were gaining steam.
Of course, the fact that Putin does, in fact, abuse disqualification is no defence of the tactic.
Today is Eurovision! For you Americans this is like the Super Bowl, only with power ballads, ABBA nostalgia, residuals of nationalism and flamboyant glittery gayness. The European song contest is often watched ironically in a party setting with family or friends, we print out sheets of the participants and give them points and have a competition who can make the most snarky comment, but deep down under the snark, irony and sarcasm we love it!
This year it is sadly very very political, because of the participation of Israel. The songs name was named „October rain“ but had to be changed, together with lyrics, to remove references of the Hamas attack. So there isn’t plausible deniability that it is an unpolitical love song.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/eurovision-israel-eden-golan-protests-gaza-palestine-072826896.html
He said the majority of the crowd were booing and shouting 'free Palestine' with very few people cheering for her. Mina said: "I could see people arguing in the standing section, and people were shouting at others that were booing to shut up."
For television the sound engineers did amplify applause and mute the boos which also gives a nice discussion about truth and Orwell etc. It will be very interesting what sound from the audience will be broadcast at the final show today.
Surprisingly (or not) Israel doesn’t have only haters, their betting odds improved massively, they actually have a chance to win the contest!
https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1788690154133012637
Italian TV accidentally revealed their televoting percentages during tonight's #Eurovision semi-final, according to which the Israeli 🇮🇱 song is leading by 40%, with a huge margin ahead of all others.
Ethan
Quality assurance
2hr ago
That's the price for entry in reading Dostoyevsky. It requires a suspension of disbelief when characters go on impossibly long monologues while other characters listen with impossible patience.
practical_romantic
3hr ago
I like the vibe of vice city the most. I will try to find repacks of it that dont have malware and play it with a bunch of mods. I feel like a boomer here but I feel that video games peaked in the 2000s.
There should be a requirement that people who act as if the ruling class is only a useful category when it is legible explain what they think people ought to do in political regimes where the ruling class is incentivized to be as illegible as possible.
Because I don't really see "not talk about the ruling class" as an acceptable answer to that question. And we happen to live in one such illegible regime.
These demands for specificity displace the object level debate into another debate about the true nature of the ruling class, in which dissidents usually disagree with each other, and thus serves the interests of the ruling class by keeping opponents divided. Since that rhetoric serves an interest, I find it suspect.
In a sense it is in effect completely irrelevant what the nature of the ruling class is, what matters is who is their friend, and who is their enemy. And that can be easily divined without needing to elucidate the specifics of who they are down to a list of names.
Supreme Commander Forged Alliance feels pretty big by RTS standards (it invented strategic zoom), you routinely field armies with hundreds of individual units and a bunch of superweapons. It is basically a full-scale war - land, air and sea. Micro is still important but macro is much more important.
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