A couple of ideas I have are for the requirement to pass a one-time test to earn the right to vote. And it would have to be difficult enough to fail, at least at first, a lot of people. Perhaps requiring the equivalent of a very good high-school education to pass. Or four years' military service. Or four years' college plus two years' full-time employment. Or just a term of full-time employment, maybe six years. — tim wood

Perhaps not.

Just imagine how that "earned right" could and would be abused.

Universal suffrage and one man (or woman) and one vote, is quite simple to understand. Full-time employment? Military service? How about the old fashioned way for example Prussia had it: the amount of taxes you pay, the amount of votes you get. Would that be good? I don't think so. Requirements for voting other than being a citizen are difficult. With other requirements, you easily lose credibility and invite corruption.

I can think of a multitude of ways the system of voting requirements would be abused. Above all, there would be then the caste of those "not eligible" to vote. What would that do for the credibility of whole system? Now, in many US states felons lose their voting rights while incarcerated, and this isn't seen as problem. Even if the US has huge inmate population (while in my country also the prison inmates can vote). But something else?

This has the same problem as with Plato's society. There are no safety valves.

To assume that the system is thought to somehow work without a glitch is fatally and quite dangerously wrong. As if the "philosopher kings" making the decisions would be really chosen from the "most capable". Even the term aristocracy, which means that power is vested in a minority of those believed to be best qualified, and what aristocracy means in reality and has historically meant, shows us how the idea of "most capable" doesn't work. Not only Plato's ideas like raising children apart from their biological parents is unrealistic (and bad), it simply is bad when you have to make such assumptions for the society to work. That we would need better humans in the future for the system to work show that the idea is dangerous. A real life experiment close to Plato's system is the story of Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. Once Janissaries didn't have to be in celibacy and were allowed to have children, guess from whose children came the next generation of elite troops? Hint: not from orphans taken from Christian families and brought up only to serve the Sultan. Hence the corruption went so far that one Sultan in 1826 easily wiped away and killed the Janissaries with a new army copied from the West.

What's the answer then?

We just have to hope that people are reasonable. Yet there is a minority who would go with the radicals. For them the system doesn't work and they feel it's against them. Hence many will opt for radical options as if "anything would be better than this". And if they elect the "totally something else" option, it's bad thing.

How do they loose power and how are these people out who voted for them made a tiny fringe?

Only by failure.

Failure creates shame and guilt. At worst, fear of punishment could be added to that when the failure has been especially bad and deadly.

Just ask yourself, how many of all those that voted for Mussolini or Hitler continued after WW2 to enthusiastically support their former leaders and ideology? Hardly any. The fascists of Italy and the "Werewolves" continuing the fight for the Third Reich in Germany simply vanished. We can see this even in the rules of this forum.

The unfortunate reality is that once people with bad ideas are voted into power, the only way for them to lose their power and their support is after everybody has to seen how utterly bad the ideas were.

Another firing on questionable grounds...

Top US admiral at NATO removed amid Trump’s growing military firings
^{— Noah Robertson · Military Times · Apr 7, 2025}

Not loyal to Trump, "wokeness", DEI efforts, ..., have become reasons for firings.
RFK Jr stands out in demonstrating that merit isn't a reason to be hired.
Musk wrote "the woke mind virus will die" (though not YEC).
I'm wondering if they've considered the slippery slope they've taken.

'Alarmed': Ousted DOJ lawyer testifies she received late night 'threat' from ex-employer
^{— Sarah K Burris · Raw Story · Apr 7, 2025}

Activists on the weekend...

Angry protesters from New York to Alaska assail Trump and Musk in ‘Hands Off!’ rallies
^{— Dave Collins, Julie Carr, Fatima Hussein, Erik Verduzco, Nicholas Riccardi, Mark Thiessen · AP · Apr 5, 2025}

a morally bankrupt criminal Republican is more acceptable than any Democrat. — Relativist

They had the Lincoln project. There's options for Republicans who want a 12-step program away from asslicking stupidity. They don't have to go Democrat, they can just... focus on a better candidate and not back down. But they're too comfortable being in the fringes of the Trump cult. But their children will remember and they will be despised by history.

That's also a good moral code to follow. How do you want to be remembered? Like an asshat who rolled out the carpet for the worst, or one who stood up against it and promoted the good? On the deathbed, will they think of all the suffering that was indirectly caused by being so bad at standing up something obviously bad?

People need to risk their jobs more for a better tomorrow. If enough people did it, we wouldn't have a problem and they would have their jobs anyway.

The folks who created the Constitution knew perfectly well "the people" could screw up, and provided for that with impeachment and if necessary the 2d amendment. And it is my understanding that the entire purpose of the electoral college was to negative the popular vote if the electors thought it necessary. And now there is the 25th amendment. — tim wood

Sure... and it doesn't function at all, so all of that is irrelevant and proves my point that this passive reaction to the disruption of what is supposed to protect the US democracy needs to be changed. The bad apples at the top won't change a winning concept for them, but the people should be enraged by how the constitution is treated, how the process of democracy is handled. Trump should be removed from office and it would be legally supported to do so. Some would say that this would be like Jan 6th but against Trump, but it's not as it's about how Trump disregards the basics of how the US democracy is supposed to work; or how people doesn't do their damn job in upholding those standards just granting him the keys to the kingdom.

The problem is bad people, both the stupid and ignorant who vote, and the bad people they vote for. But free elections and robust laws may well be the best way to control and correct for them short of revolution, murder, and civil war - although Jefferson famously thought that the shedding of a little revolutionary blood might on occasion be necessary. — tim wood

The robust laws have been changed tweaked or broken and no one cares. So what then? I don't think democracy works anymore, not in this track record. It's become too much of a demagogy, people too easily corrupted by the most minor push in a certain direction.

Basically, if the people are so broken down that their critical thinking isn't operating normally, then democracy is fundamentally dead. What then?

This is why I think democracy needs to evolve past what we think of as democracy today. There's a fundamental problem in having a representative democracy that operates as a popularity contest. That is NOT a democracy. If a true democracy can't be upheld, then it needs to evolve into something that removes the ability for grifters to exploit the public for their gain of power.

A couple of ideas I have are for the requirement to pass a one-time test to earn the right to vote. And it would have to be difficult enough to fail, at least at first, a lot of people. Perhaps requiring the equivalent of a very good high-school education to pass. Or four years' military service. Or four years' college plus two years' full-time employment. Or just a term of full-time employment, maybe six years. — tim wood

I don't think that would work as it would exclude minorities who didn't have the chance to get an education, service or job in the same way as more privileged people.

That kind of problem really only needs a pretty basic solution. People can only vote if they can list down what the policies are for different candidates. They can do this on their own at home, but need to have everything correct when turning in their votes. This would remove everyone who's so intellectually challenged that they don't have the ability to know what is good or not and it would remove those who are too lazy to think. It would also promote people to actually research answers and not just get stuck in their own echo chambers. Exposing them to ideas the candidates and parties have that they wouldn't otherwise.

Just look at how many Trump voters who just adore Bernie Sanders when he actually has time to explain his viewpoints. These people love him but are too indoctrinated to find out what he stands for on their own. Demanding voters to find information is at least a minor way to improve the quality of an election and remove the most obvious idiots from turning in their vote.

Another is the creation of a separate impeachment court that would come into being on 60% of state legislatures calling for it, the members of the court being three members from each states' legislature who would then meet, consider, and vote, a vote to impeach immediately ending the President's term. — tim wood

Yes. But there should be a nonpartisan part of the government that the president cannot rule over and that does not operate on popularity votes. Their entire purpose is to present an almost scientifically rigorous statistic on if a candidate is stable enough for being a democracy candidate. If they find anything that points to a candidate being unfit for office, they simply remove them from running. Their reasoning needs to be rationally argued, proved and reviewed, but the purpose being to review each party's candidate until there are candidates that are considered stable enough to handle presidency.

What the founders did not account for nor could anticipate was the speed of modernity. They were necessarily content to operate at the speed of horses, but the world works much faster, even at the speed of light. And lurking is the speed of a bullet. — tim wood

Which is why I think any constitution in any nation needs to be able to be changed and modified in a way that is only able to be done through vast majority. Many other nations has constitutions that are changeable, but it's hard to do so. However, it opens up the possibility to modernize.

But the US views their constitution as a religious text. They stand with one hand on the constitution and the other on the bible. It's religious zealotry to it rather than treating it like a political text. This is the problem with the US; they don't treat politics as politics, they treat it as religion; which in turn makes their president a deity. This form of thinking is overall a form of cult based in Christianity, giving themselves the rights to act in accordance to God. It's basically outdated norms of treating politics and that's why the nation is so fucked up really. Other democracies of the world seems to function pretty much in the way its intended, because they don't operate on religious terminology and ideology.

The separation of state and church in the US is a joke.

There's options for Republicans who want a 12-step program away from asslicking stupidity. They don't have to go Democrat, they can just... focus on a better candidate and not back down. But they're too comfortable being in the fringes of the Trump cult. But their children will remember and they will be despised by history..... — Christoffer

While I embrace your sentiments, I think you give voters too much credit. Most voters spend 15 minutes a week paying attention to politics. Plus, the GOP spent 4 years spreading the Trump Gospel (the election was stolen; there was a deep state conspiracy to persecute him). Most people are unaware of the damning facts about Trump and also "know" the MSM lies about him. 1/6 is widely viewed as a tourist event that got out of hand, and that Ashley Babbit was a martyr.

In a facebook exchange with a facebook "friend" last year, I mentioned that 60-70% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen. Not knowing this was a fact supported by multiple surveys over 4 years, he concluded from my comment that I was prejudiced against Republicans! And this guy was a "hold your nose" voter for Trump. Ignorance is rampant, and thrives in the GOP. Maybe you're right about the judgements their children will make,but not if Trumpism lives on - since he's ordered that only "patriotic" history be taught.

Trumpsters and people who voted for Trump are "stupid", yet TPF categorically ignores what gave rise to Trump, and fails to provide a suitable alternative other than a return to the pre-Trump status quo - a status quo that American voters rejected.

Populists are the product of a bankrupt system, which Trump critics are inadvertently defending if they fail to critique that system and don't come up with a better alternative.

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This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Trumpsters and people who voted for Trump are "stupid", yet TPF categorically ignores what gave rise to Trump, and fails to provide a suitable alternative other than a return to the pre-Trump status quo - a status quo that American voters rejected.. — Tzeentch

Trumpsters can be stupid at the same time as Democrats failing to give a better alternative. What I see a failure of in most people discussing this subject is a failure to accept many angles to a problem as well as seemingly conflicting concepts.

And I've already said that the solution is for Democrats to go further left in their politics, because that would help people who won't get help from both Trump and the current liberal-centric Democrats. They just need to wrap it into an idiot-safe narrative so that the idiot voters can gather around slogans and marketing as they're not able to understand policies in themselves.

Lean further left, create a good narrative for marketing and campaigning, have a candidate who can speak to the working class without just trying to "play conservative".

While I embrace your sentiments, I think you give voters too much credit. — Relativist

Not really, I'm mostly speaking of the ideal voter who cares. I've already mentioned that I don't think democracy works anymore in a nation like the US. It's too entrenched in demagogian systems, enabling demagogues to be more able to gain power than actual representative candidates.

Either the US needs to install better guardrails that blocks demagogues from gaining power, or the US could evolve into the solution-based democracy I suggested. in which no campaigning or marketing for parties take place and instead leaders are calculated forward based on what the people need and wants.

Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute released a new report on so-called “assassination culture” online, with Anti-Trumpism figuring prominently.

I’ll posted a brief quote below to give a sense of the undercurrent of political violence we’re dealing with.

A broader “assassination culture” appears to be emerging within segments of the U.S. public on the extreme left, with expanding targets now including figures such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk. NCRI empirically assessed this shift with original survey data and open source intelligence analysis to assess how normalized and justified violence against the administration has become in public discourse. The findings signal a threat to political stability and public safety. Key data points include:

• Murder Justification: 31% and 38% of respondents stated it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively.
  
  These effects were largely driven by respondents that self-identified as left of center, with 48% and 55% at least somewhat justifying murder for Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively, indicating significantly higher justification for violence against these figures.
  
  
• Property Destruction: Nearly 40% of respondents (39.8%) stated it is at least somewhat acceptable (or more) to destroy a Tesla dealership in protest.
  
  
• Psychological/Ideological Correlations with Assassination Culture: These beliefs are highly
  correlated with one another, as well as with the justification of the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and hyper-partisan left-wing ideology.
  
  This suggests that support for violence is part of a broader assassination culture, underpinned by psychological and ideological factors.

https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Assassination-Culture-Brief.pdf

Given that human history’s greatest atrocities are rooted in our ability to dehumanize people from other social, political, or cultural groups, a moral person’s ears ought to ring around such rhetoric and behavior, in case it’s used to justify action.

But even on this humble forum, authors are promoting or are otherwise cheerleading for the ostracism of human beings on the basis of whom they voted for. They’ve made routine assumptions about the other’s mental states, their cognitive abilities, and how well the other has conformed to government education, and so on, in order to justify the treatment of human beings they now champion.

Though it isn’t clear whether such rhetoric is evidence of a physical threat or simply a public act of catharsis, we can magnify this by the size of social media sites like Reddit or Bluesky and I suspect we’ll find it isn’t long until they take to the streets for violence, as they’ve done with Tesla.

Shawn Fain, leader of the UAW supports the tarrifs

"For Fain, tariffs address a historic wrong. "We've sat here for the last 30 plus years, with the inception of [the North American Free Trade Agreement] back in 1993-94, and watched our manufacturing base in this country disappear," he said." --NPR link

Yep.

Reddit cracked down on violent speech a while back. They're overly strict about it now.

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Gestapo/KGB tactics on the streets, abuse of law - abuse of everything and everybody - disappearing people, destroying lives, delivering a steady stream of lies and "alternate facts" as justification. — tim wood

How is that in any way different from the way the establishment used to run things? :chin:

Gestapo/KGB tactics on the streets, abuse of law - abuse of everything and everybody - disappearing people, destroying lives, delivering a steady stream of lies and "alternate facts" as justification. — tim wood

How is that in any way different from the way the establishment used to run things? :chin: — Tzeentch

The question is not one of when were humans noncorrupt – the answer here is never – but, instead, that of whether corruption is increasing or else decreasing.

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Do you see a trend there? — tim wood

Primitive tribalism?

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Red? No idea how anything I have said can possibly be interpreted as such.

Considering you're coming at me with the standard "Everything's the other guys' fault!" spiel, maybe you should be checking your own lenses?

People aren't any stupider now than they've ever been. If we transition into a dictatorship, it will just be the latest of such events that history has produced over and over. See it as just another turning, in which you're just another guy, on just another spring day. Per Kierkegaard, this is a balm to a wounded heart.

Millions of Americans peacefully protested the other day in the Hands Off event. Also, Bernie and AOC‘s oligarchy tour is nonviolent.

The survey indicates that most people think murdering Trump is at least somewhat justified. Yikes. And that was before he nuked the global financial/trade system.

I'm noticing a slight uptick in the temperature in this thread. If you feel agitated please refrain from posting until it has passed. Thank you.

On topic, Trump just slammed China with an additional 50% tariff. How many dropshippers will go bankrupt in the next month? What does it do to Amazon?

On topic, Trump just slammed China with an additional 50% tariff. How many dropshippers will go bankrupt in the next month? What does it do to Amazon? — Benkei

I wouldn't be surprised if all of this escalate to the point protests form riots. When people start to actually feel the pain, companies go out of business, unemployment skyrocketing... I wouldn't be surprised if people demand Trump to be removed by force, or attempt to do it themselves. Trump survived one attempt on his life and another was stopped, but when people actually start to suffer, I'm wondering where things are headed in that regard.

The problem is that Trump is just trying to strong man other nations into giving the US something, but I don't think Trump understand that many nations will just meet his tariffs and the US economy will dive. After a while, there might be a blooming trade among other nations of the world, leaving the US out while Trump demands that manufacture magically appear within the nation meeting the same price points of products as when trade and manufacture was part of the globalized economy.

None of the people in the white house seems to understand how the economy works. Someone noted that Apple should just build their phones within the US. They don't understand that the price will increase to a point where an iPhone costs like $3500-$4500.

It's remarkable that people with this level of incompetence sit at the highest positions of power believing their own bullshit so much they don't even get the necessary cognitive dissonance from reality hitting them like a sledge hammer. So many advisors, so many economists, the entire market crashing... none matters to these conspiracy nutjobs.

I really do start to think that things will turn violent. Money is the one thing that if people start to lose, they will turn to violence. In the US, without all the social security of a healthy nation, if people face the reality of actual poverty, they will strike back if they feel mistreated.

16% of total imports into the US are from China. Total imports are about 16% of the GDP.

16% of total imports into the US are from China. Total imports are about 16% of the GDP. — frank

Are you counting the entire production loop of how modern products are made? Is that just products themselves going into the nation to be sold to customers, or also the back and forth shipping of goods in the cycle of complex productions? Global trade is not just about a product being made and then shipped to be sold, it can be massive amounts of small parts going all around the world before becoming an actual product to be sold.

So what happens to ”US made” products that rely on a complex web of international trade, primarily China? Just for the sake of producing a product. The end price accumulates all rising costs along the entire chain of production, not just the end price.

I think the question of how quickly the merchants are hit depends on the amount of front-loading that has been done. There have been a number of reports upon how Mexican products have been brought in well before the usual dropship algorithm. The anticipation of unknowns has caused many to guess what to import early since the election results came out.

It is hard to see too far into what Amazon, Walmart, etcetera have done. I do a lot of buying from Lenovo commercially as a part of my work. They clearly have a pile that is in country which is being priced differently from the stuff still in the works.

This sort of thing is difficult to find out about since each industry will want to make the best of what they have without blabbing about any advantage.

So what happens to ”US made” products that rely on a complex web of international trade, primarily China? — Christoffer

There's no way to turn China into the US's main trading partner even counting value-added transactions. BTW, moving parts in and out of the US was mentioned in the article I posted about the UAW. Is that where you came across that issue?

A lot of people are very unhappy with/in Trump's 'kingdom'.

The road to Trump has been paved over long periods of time. American political corruption has been laid bare by Trump. We've had the best government money can buy for a very long time. Citizens United legalized bribery. Trump came after. Trump bragged about buying every republican candidate on the stage during an early Republican primary debate leading up to the 2016 Republican national convention. An uncontested/unopposed open public admission of bribery. Mind you, there was one candidate, of at least 8, who jokingly spoke up to the contrary...

...stating that, although he had not yet...

...he would be more than happy to accept some of his money, if Trump wanted to give him some.

Under the rug it went...




Some have been hoping for better than a half century for America's socioeconomic influence to wane. Some have that aim/goal. The motivations are varied. They are plentiful and often incommensurate due to the wide variance of both, the individual and the subjective particular circumstance(s) grounding their desires. Be all that as it may, certain facts are clear enough to be able to form some general true assessments.

Trump has personally befriended those who actively work against American best interest. He has publicly dismissed American intelligence services' opinion(s) in favor of foreign actors' concerning charges directly involving that actor. <-----Read that very carefully. Trump is turning/has turned toward adversaries and away from American intelligence and longtime allies.

Others are perfectly content with the kingdom of Trump.

Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute released a new report on so-called “assassination culture” online, with Anti-Trumpism figuring prominently.

I’ll posted a brief quote below to give a sense of the undercurrent of political violence we’re dealing with — NOS4A2

When I read this post, my first thought was not, ‘Gee, what kind of violently disturbed person would seriously consider assassinating a political leader?’ It was ‘ What context of background assumptions would motivate someone to write this post?’ Let me explain. Let’s say you were living in England in 1943 and a Cambridge University research institute released a report on assassination culture, with anti-Nazism figuring prominently. Would you be disturbed enough about such behavior to write a post (we’ll pretend the internet existed then) about it, or would you empathize with such sentiment even if you were personally opposed to murder in general?

My question to you, then, is what kind of assessment would you have to make of a particular political leader in order to justify your empathetic response to the desire of others to assassinate them?

I’ll make this more direct. I was born and raised in the U.S., and if you live in my country, I want to you to justify your motivation to me. I’ll share mine first. I don’t condone killing anybody, but here is my justification for being sympathetic to those who harbor the desire to see Trump wiped out.

In my lifetime, Ive seen presidents make decisions that many consider unconstitutional, or act in ways that constituted executive overrreach. I’ve seen presidents claim to represent the country as a whole, but pursue sharply partisan goals that alienated half the population. I’m a liberal democrat, but I never doubted that Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, and even Nixon, wielded their power not only for the sake of goals that went well beyond their own narrow self interest, but in principle were against the idea that having power meant eliminating all opposition to their will.

I have come to the realization that Donald Trump has a fundamentally different view of power than these presidents, and all previous presidents with the possible exception of Andrew Johnson. Trump’s view of power is that only one man, himself, can be allowed to control the country. All sources of potentially dissenting opinion are to be viewed as disloyalty and must be squelched. This includes all independent institutions, such as the press, academia, government agencies, law firms and judges, and corporate ceo’s. He will initially be viewed by his base of supporters as acting on their behalf and under their control, but eventually their voices will be squelched as well.

The fact that this is his view of power doesnt mean that he can succeed in decimating the checks and balances of democracy. He needs the help and acquiescence of many others to accomplish this. But in order to make sure this does not happen, others must realize that Trump, if not challenged, will act to remake America in the direction of Netanyahu’s Israel, Orban’s Hungary, and Putin’s Russia.

Having that realization doesnt mean encouraging ‘assassination culture’, but it requires taking seriously the unprecedented danger to American democracy that Trump represents. My impression is that your unsympathetic post about assassination culture reflects the fact that you are not convinced that Trump is an authoritarian personality.

Well put.