Yes, that is a massive issue, and should, in my opinion, be addressed so that the balance of power in this country does not favor those who happen to live in certain parts of the country. However, just because there is an imbalance of power does not mean that people should just give up and not vote; to do so would lead to situations like in the 2016 election, where the choice of thousands (often not even millions) of people across a few certain states lead to an unfavorable outcome. Is the system broken? Yes. Do some people have disproportionately more power than others? Yes. Does that mean that voting or using one’s right to free speech is now pointless? No.
FDR’s decision to help the Allies in WWII and eventually fight in the war lead to huge economic growth for the country and eventually put it in the place of a global superpower while Europe was rebuilding. The JFK administration’s handling of the Cuban/Turkey missile crisis led to an outcome where the world did not get destroyed in nuclear armageddon. LBJ’s decision to sign the Civil Rights Act and break with the conservative Democrats led to a reshuffle of American politics and the establishment of the parties in their current form, in addition to the huge impact it had on the topic of civil rights. The continuation of the Vietnam War by multiple administrations because it would further their own interests eventually led to a public with far more distrust in their government, which has had huge impacts for how US involvement in armed conflicts abroad is viewed by citizens who once supported it blindly. George W Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech turned Iran from a possible ally into an enemy again, shaping international policy in the Middle East and causing the deaths of hundreds of US troops.
It’s easy to say “Let’s not look at what ifs lets look at history”, but it’s much harder to actually separate the two; there are plenty of instances throughout history where the world as we know it today could have been very different if something very small was changed. Perhaps a soldier in WWI aims their gun a few degrees to the left and kills then-soldier Adolf Hitler. Perhaps Vasili Arkhipov or Stanislav Petrov do what seems logical and say yes. History as we know it is the result of a bunch of decisions made by a bunch of people, both seen and unseen by history, which can have huge consequences later. The ability of a US president in particular to be quick-thinking, to know when to act and when to step back, to know which side of a conflict to take, to be calm and methodical rather than aggressive, has huge impacts on the US and the world at large. We haven’t always gotten it right, and either we or others in other parts of the world have paid the price. With that much at stake, I believe that it is the duty of every American to think carefully about the possibilities and vote for the option they believe will be the best for the country in the coming years, whether or not the system to determine the president is perfect (the Founding Fathers had some very good ideas, and some very, very bad ones).
Reddit is already a pain in the ass to read through normally, but when it’s this many comments I just can’t be bothered.
I don’t think voter disenfranchisement is as easy to explain as “people are just lazy”.
After a few elections it feels like the only things your vote affects are minor cosmetic changes while the actual policies stay the same. It’s not just that politicians are liars, it’s that there doesn’t appear to be a difference between the two major parties and nobody can get elected outside of them. That’s even more true for the US.
It would take years to rebuild the political class from the ground up, starting with local elections, to get rid of all the worthless parasites. Most voters only wake up for the presidential elections and then forget voting is a thing as soon as it ends.
It’s true that freedom to vote and express yourself still exists, but using it in any real capacity has been made so exhausting that most people just focus on their families and jobs instead and don’t even bother with it.
fuck you bitch, you probably are stupider than me, and UNLIKE YOU I get pussy from my 5 anime girlfriends (we’re in a poly relationship)
basically for you DUMB HADS Posadism is when communist and believe in alliens that how stupider you are then me!
techprim cave guy with robo arm BUT STILL USING ROCK TO CRUSH FRUIT
NAZBOL fascist wich mean always bad and bowl I use but im no factist so FUCK THAT
Me ideogy is totalitarian in mature which means that everyone oppressed! And I and friends ban ALL PORN IN WORD WEN WE GET IN POWER, AND GET RID OF PEOPLE WHO BAD AN MAKE FURRY PORN , and the people LIKE YOU WHO BAD FOR SOCITY, ANd WE ALSO KIL THE BAD PEOPLE ,
You STUPID MORNO IDOIT!!! GET REKT FACIST HAHAHAAAAAAAAAA STPID GET SMARTERER IDEAS BECASE ME BETER THEN YOU!!111!1
in short, identity politics is stupid.
But nazbol-ism(?) is stupider, commarcho capitalist for life!
Yeah, after reading both your- and @Xaklor’s posts, I do realize that my post didn’t do a good job of addressing the real issue at hand. I’m just tired of young people thinking that there is no point in participating in elections (often because issues they care about aren’t being addressed), when the reason the system isn’t working is because they aren’t participating. Sanders has tried twice now to run a campaign based largely on the super of young voters, and it appears that this second one will end as the first did. Such an outcome seems to be representative of other movements based around youth support (ultimately doomed to failure due to lack of turnout), which sends a clear message to other politicians that appealing to the youth vote will get them nowhere and they should instead focus on the Boomer issues (because Boomers vote).
No, you can thank japan for the united states fighting in WWII
You can thank the soviet union for that, they could of just gone past US blockades and started WWIII
also there were several close calls with nuclear war before and after JFK he can take sole responsibly for preventing nuclear Armageddon because as seen with his predecessor and successors its simply something anyone would do and also no one wants to start a nuclear war.
believe it on not it is not very hard to not destroy the planet
The civil rights act was brought to the forefront by civil rights activist fighting for equal rights for everyone not LBJ, he signed but its something that was going to happen with or without him.
For a US president not to join in the vietnam war would be like talking about science fiction, there was no way in hell the united states was going to let north vietnam fall to communism without their intervening.
(korean war, 1958 lebanese crisis, bays of pigs invasion, a wave of interventions in africa, thailand intervention, various wars in south and central america and many others)
^ of all these were about stopping stopping communism and ran from the 50s to 90s
It becomes pretty obvious it does not matter the president or administration somethings are just going to happen and thats that. A president cant go the entire rest of the government.
Yes the genocidal brutal oppressive regime currently running iran
it really is a damn shame the US does not have them as a ally
the notion of moments in history being extremely instrumental to the fate of the world is not one modern day historians use and is a very antiquated view of history
Some example of this and the outcome of history is the battle of tours, The frankish kingdom vs Umayyad caliphate
for a very long time in history this battle was seen as saving all of Christianity and Europe in general and its significance was elevated to near mythical status.
Modern day historians realize that the Umaddys simply could not expand anymore as their empire as already stretching from Iran to most of Spain.
It is the same with modern wars too, even if every beach invasion failed on Dday, the germans had lost the war as they soviets were smash german armies left and right and destroying everything on their way to berlin.
Even with the allies winning the beach landing the soviets still made it to berlin first and would of made it without or without the allies invasion.
A good book right here on the subject, most historians writing well respected and agreed upon books acknowledge that WWII and the german invasion of the soviet union was doomed to fail from the beginning and no battle or “Mega panzer tank” was going to change their defeat
History is not built on the back of a Person its built on People even though we like to idolize and build cults of personality for people. For almost every major historical figure in history their impact is always greatly exaggerated by the general public.
But you can thank FDR for supplying both Britain and the USSR with much-needed supplies while the US was still divided on whether or not to join the war, while a president with more isolationist views would have kept the US from contributing to either side for as long as they could. It was only in response to these decisions and supply deliveries that Japan actually ended up attacking Pearl Harbor, bringing the US into the war. The actual event that officially brought the US into the war was carried out by a foreign power, but the reason the foreign power did that was in response to the administration’s policies, which weren’t exactly in line with public opinion at the time.
But there were two sides to that struggle, and either one could have started armageddon. Yes, the USSR could have escalated things, but so could have the JFK administration. Whether or not there were multiple close calls during the Cold War does not downplay the importance of every single one of them; each time people made a choice on whether or not to launch missiles, the fate of billions was in their hands. JFK takes responsibility of the close calls that he prevented, other presidents take responsibility for the ones they prevented, and the Soviets take responsibility for the ones they prevented. It may not be hard to not destroy the planet, but it only needs to happen once, and there were many times where only capable leadership (by the president or sometimes by others) prevented it from happening, and none of those can be downplayed due to the sheer amount of people at immediate risk. No one wanted armageddon (as shown by the fact that it never happened), but they were prepared to deliver it if the alternative meant that the other power would emerge victorious.
Hence why I focused on his decision to break with party lines on the issue; had a liberal Republican made the decision instead of him (which, given time, would almost certainly have happened), it would not have led to the reshuffle of American politics, which was my primary point.
…which is why the presidents chose not to remove the US from the conflict. Had a president more willing to act outside of public opinion (in a move similar to the one I mentioned above with FDR) been in office, they might have realized that with how pointless the war was (and the administrations did know this, despite what the public was told), ending it could have saved lives and caused Americans to continue their perceptions about war. This would have also likely led to public scrutiny of the administration, which on its own would have had massive impacts.
Personal opinion on Iran is irrelevant to this conversation; the point is that, had the two joined forces (which looked probable before the Axis of Evil speech), the balance of power in the Middle East would be very different from what it is today.
Are you suggesting, then, that if Stanislav Petrov had followed orders and launched nuclear missiles at the US, that things would not be noticeably different today? I do not disagree that certain parts of history are considered too influential by many people, but there are also many that could have turned out very differently. It is true that the Soviets did more than most people realize to end World War II and could very well have done it with very little support at the end, but had they done so, the Cold War would almost certainly have started in a very different place with a much different balance of power, and in turn affected history in a far different way than just deciding who beat who in a certain war.
Exaggerated, perhaps, but not to be ignored. A president does not have the power of a dictator, but they still have more power than any other single person in the country and are regularly given a series of hard choices about how to direct the military, help the economy, influence civil rights, fight climate change and influence foreign nations. I do agree with you that the president is largely a representation of people’s views at the time and doesn’t operate fully independent of public opinion, but they do still have a large impact on how things continue. Many people consider humanity’s fight against climate change to be an inevitability, and yet the current president has decided to actually move away from such moves despite public opinion. Will the next administration have different views and continue the seemingly inevitable fight against climate change? Most likely. But for now, the current setbacks have resulted in years of lost time that must be made up and technologies which might have existed but don’t (or which were developed by other countries when the US could have been a leading contributor), which may very well be needed urgently in the future (this is all speculation because the future hasn’t happened yet, but you get the general idea; things may seem inevitable, but when and how they happen will have consequences for better or for worse, and timing shouldn’t be downplayed).
Alright because you keep getting so many facts wrong this is the last time I am going to reply, thanks
The supplies to the soviets were at best VERY mininal before they joined the war and the lend lease to the British did very little in the long or short run and they were still overrun by german forces in north africa mainland Europe and always defeated by Japanese forces in several colonies in asia before America stepped in.
This is a reason why I will not be replying again, its simply false in every aspect of it.
War between the united states had been an building issue since the 1890s. The united states had been
Japan had been a politically isolated nation and many nations feared their expansion. Many people by 1930 both Japanese and American believed a war inevitable. Especially after the invasion of Manchuria which was
strongly condemned by the united states.
Giving the Japanese focus on its navy and the US world naval presence and its naval presence in the Philippines all former Spanish territories in the pacific it owned.
The Japanese had been planning a war with the united states for a long time, the idea did not suddenly come up when the united states started to aid the allies.
I think it is somewhat of a common misconception that is why japan attacked america? but its completely untrue really does not make much sense either when you think about it.
Japan was not fighting the soviet union, just france and GBR and how was america going to supply eastern Asian colonies with supplies? they would of had to destroy the Japanese navy first. almost all aid given before to them joining the war went directly to Europe
also Japan did not care if germany won or not (they kept fighting after they lost) they were only allies in the sense that they had common enemies. They would not have care about any minuscule resources being sent to Europe to fight against germany.
Japan couldn’t have cared any less about that as the vast majority of the lend lease going to GBR was being used in Europe and for a while merely sitting on their island as they were pushed off continent fairly quickly.
The aid america sent to the allies had next to nothing to do with japans decision to attack America.
Most of the book is available here, You should definitely take a look and this and get a better understanding of US-Japanese relations prior to WW2
Im going to lump these together. because its a lot of nonsense so im packing it together
Yes I am suggesting that exactly
what do you think a nuclear launch site looks like? Petrov was proabally 1 of mutiple thousands of people there that day
Also if you look any further into that story then the buzzfeed headline of it you will learn Petrov was in no potion to fire any missiles and merely worked a Satellite monitor.
He looked at statelies all day that was his job, he never had the power to fire anything
you said he did not follow orders to launch the missiles, well yeah that was not his job nor did he even have access to an ability to do so that is another thing you got wrong
I would like to use a better source but honestly in this case Wikipedia is least biased of all articles I found
also even if someone was going to fire anything it had an entire chain of operations to go up before anything would ever happen, ik crazy how complicated starting ww3 can be huh
Another thing is this. Since 1963 the US preisdent the leader of soviet union could talk directly. This was used in incidents of a similar situation, before anyone would end life as we know it, they would at least try and call somebody lol I mean people dont want to think or imagine the other party would really be firing missiles at them. that means the end of civilization.
So lets just drop people like Petrov because he is a comic book hero
Sigh
What FDR was doing was not at all an unpopular opinion, the majority of the country supported it and were sympathetic of France and England as both had been long time allies of America.
At the time actually anti Japanese sentiments were very high as well as anti German sentiments as they had already fought them and WW2.
Again this is where we go into “well what if that and this!” which is basically writing what if history.
No president was going to end the war in vietnam and no president was not going to get invovled in it.
Now you are literally just not talking about any sort of reality, its along the lines of what if Germany did not invade the soviet union.
if they did not then they would not be germany, im not sure why you are fixated on the vietnam war but korea was just as deadly and the exact same reason, people only wanted America to leave vietnam after it kept going for a while. A president ending it 2 or 3 years sooner would be nothing in terms of human casualties as the early years is where the 95% of deaths come from.
to say that all you would need a president who can act outside of public opinion is so naive to cold war politics. It was not just the united states invested in stopping communism nor was it just one political party, The united states wars against communism had the backing of many countries around the world as well as the majority of political and its population. No president was ever going to be able to simply ignore that if he did he would not stay as the president.
I would recommend reading any book about the redscare or just cold war politics in general, presidents got elected off of saying they would fight communism, really the type of person who wouldn’t fight in vietnam would never become president in the first place
Uh Isent the united states suppose to some global force of good and democracy? why exactly would they join forces with a radical Islamist republic especially when they are already allied to Saudi Arabia? what would that do for the US?
Thats like saying the balance of power in the Korean peninsula would be better if America allied North Korea. No America does not need to be friends with everyone, specifically not with brutal dictatorships that threaten to blow up other americas actual allies, Israel
To even consider America allying with the modern government of Iran is completely ridiculous considering how often they threaten to literally destroy Israel.
Also even before 2001 Iran US relations were very poor, ever hear of Iran hostage crisis?
Anyways like I said because what you said was filled with a lot of misinformation and completely ridiculous statements Im ending my participate in the conversation here because I wont reply to someone who is not using logic or facts. Nothing personal about it though, this is just regarding how a debate should be conducted
@Tauntauned As instructive as that history lesson is, I think you’re missing the point.
It’s not that American votes don’t matter, it’s that they end up not mattering because people are either tricked or made to feel like they don’t matter.
Think about it: if the result of the elections didn’t matter at all then why would billions of dollars be invested in various ways to control the votes? Do you really think the rich would invest that kind of money in campaign ads, data collection and polls, etc… if they could get the same results for free?
Votes are important, it’s just that it’s difficult for voters to wield their power effectively since they’re a massive conglomerate of very different people with very different opinions and agendas.
@Tauntauned I would like to apologize; in writing my post, I got overconfident in my own knowledge of history (in a number of spots, as you pointed out), and failed to do proper research before presenting what I thought at the time were facts, as real facts. That was wrong of me, and I will do my utmost in the future to fact check myself and my claims. I got carried away, and will try to prevent myself from doing so again.
I do continue to believe that the presidency is something that Americans should still think carefully about and which has a large impact, but given my last performance in this thread, I may wish to stay away from the discussion for a while.
I can agree to that but the inital point of the discussion was about the Reddit post and why people dont vote and i was in the beginning explaining why i can understand why someone wouldn’t vote or feel their vote is worthless
Well I respect whatever beliefs you have regarding it and yes american should think careful about who they elect
that how stupider you are then me!
, and the people LIKE YOU WHO BAD FOR SOCITY, ANd WE ALSO KIL THE BAD PEOPLE 
,
