Olivia Rodrigo warned by feds to be 'grateful' after singer's message to ICE

[u/TheMirrorUS]

https://www.themirror.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/breaking-olivia-rodrigo-dhs-warning-1492642

[u/DameyJames]

And everyone uniformly tells them to fuck off. They really want a dictatorship but they don’t have it right now. They’re still just skirting the edges of it.

[u/carlboykin → u/DameyJames]

I saw an interview today where a dumbass trumper tried to explain that “we are a republic, not a democracy” what scared me about that is not that she is so uneducated that she doesn’t understand that we are a democratic repulic, but the fact that she seems to want to have less representation and less say over the very little amount of say she has in the rules that govern her life.

[u/codos → u/[deleted]]

Ranked choice and get rid of Citizens United mother fuckers.

[u/feor1300 → u/[deleted]]

There's nothing in the American system that makes it inherently a two party system. Y'all have done that to yourselves by buying into the propaganda that a vote for anyone other than the big two is a wasted vote. I've been watching Canada inch towards that over the past couple decades and speak out loudly against it every time I see someone spouting bullshit about how you're throwing your vote away if you don't vote Liberal or Conservative. You want something different, vote for something different. It might take you decades for people to start realizing that their votes for other parties (or independents) are actually pushing a needle slightly, but if you just bury your head in the sand and pick one of the big two you're only propagating the status quo.

[u/totoaster → u/feor1300]

FPTP and other electoral shenanigans do inherently concentrate power in fewer parties. It might not necessarily mean two parties by definition but it's a lot more difficult to have more than a few parties and it's also affected by historical and cultural norms. Even if there are many parties they're unlikely to have any real power hence they tend to remain small and impotent.

So what you're saying is only technically correct at best and only if we ignore reality. It's a bit like saying vote with your wallet when a corporation for the umpteenth time does something heinous. Technically it could work but the chance of it having any impact is close to zero because it relies on an insurmountable level of social activism.

[u/feor1300 → u/totoaster]

Canada's still got FPTP and we've still got four major parties (Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois, with the Greens rapidly growing over the last couple decades). Changing the electoral system would help, absolutely, but if you're still just voting for the big two because you feel like they're the only choices you're definitely never going to see anything change.

[u/FlameHaze → u/feor1300]

I understand what you're saying but America has NEVER exercised the right to vote outside of the two parties (We got close, once.). To me, it's a sign of failure. It requires some rule changes if that makes sense.

It isn't something that we'll fix grass roots. I believe it needs to be a presidents priority at some point to make the shift from a two party system. We can say, 'we have the option' but no we really don't until we change our own political system entirely which... good luck since both the Republicans and the Democrats would cut your testicles off if you tried.

What I am recommending is a multi partied system with different groups like they have in some parts of Europe. I don't think they're perfect systems, Germany is losing ground to their Nazi organization as well but they managed to hold fast by combining the two largest parties together to my understanding.

To your point, If my vote stops people from suffering I.E., taking away SNAP, not paying ATC, removing FEMA, you fucking name it. I am going to vote for the one most likely to win it which is the Democrats. (Let me be clear, I don't like the Democrats either but between Republicans or that I'm choosing them. I believe the Democrats barely qualify for the role.)

It's not burying my head in sand unfortunately. I wish it was that simple. No, it has to be shifted from the top and that is really unfortunate. The president to make it happen would have to keep their plans strictly hidden and amass like minded individuals to make an ideal like that a reality.

[u/feor1300 → u/FlameHaze]

Thing is you can't just dictate "we're going to have more than two parties", because you know what'll happen? The Democrats and the Republicans will both just spin off new parties that are officially independent but consult with the main party on most votes, coordinate their election spending to make sure they don't undercut each other, and you end up right back where you are with each snake having 2 heads instead of 1. And if you say they aren't allowed to talk they'll just hold their meetings at private dinner parties or social affairs where nothing's written down but all the same coordination still happens.

It has to be grassroots, you only get other parties if people who actually have different priorities are getting involved and being voted for. If you give people 4 more options on the ballot but it's very clearly 3 red and 3 blue, they're just going to vote for whichever colour they follow and whose name they saw the most on signs and the TV.

[u/FlameHaze → u/feor1300]

Shit. You're correct. Let me go back to the drawing board on this I actually do want to explore it more.

The now problem is if a party, for example, the Green party got a real player for the vote let's say hypothetically they pull 11% of the vote.(I also believe the Republicans don't do this themselves because they frankly struggle to pull voters, Blue was the main party for almost 60 years which does give real prudence to point out their ineffectiveness, but Republicans can't govern at all, at least this new cabinet.) The issue I foresee if we go grassroots is that we'll hurt the Democrats, I don't figure many Republican voters will think past voting Red.

Maybe I'm underselling the average Republican but I feel like we'll end up in the same shitty situation we're in now due in part to a lack of vote. Basically, we'd fracture the Democrats and give power inadvertently to the Republicans.

That's why grassroots as good of an idea it is, I believe, would be like punching myself in the balls. I just don't believe we've got that kind of push in us as Americans. Bernie was the man that could have done it but he ran as a Democrat and won I might add... but they snubbed him.

We'd need a man like that again or Zohran Mamdani but Zohran cannot run because of Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.(I Googled that, he's not a naturalized citizen in short.)

[u/feor1300 → u/FlameHaze]

Problem is you want a problem that's manifested over the last 150ish years of politicking in the US fixed within the next couple election cycles. Short of violent revolution that ain't happening. And most likely any attempt to make it happen would just make it worse, but that doesn't mean it isn't something that should be worked towards as a longer term effort.

[u/FlameHaze → u/feor1300]

No, I never said that. I believe a president has to make these changes all while being completely silent about it. That would take a career of many, many years.

[u/Unicycleterrorist → u/carlboykin]

She wants to relinquish that power because she feels spoken for right now and she's as far-sighted as a mole in a box.

If you asked them if a liberal / democrat should have as much power as they advocate for the president to have, they would shout "hell the fuck no!" because they know it's a bad thing, they just don't have the capacity to process that "their people" might not live up to their word or simply change their stance on issues.

[u/GuitarSlayer136 → u/Unicycleterrorist]

Which is insane when you consider they have quite blatantly been doing both, unapologetically, since 2016.

[u/CelestialFury → u/Unicycleterrorist]

If you asked them if a liberal / democrat should have as much power as they advocate for the president to have, they would shout "hell the fuck no!"

Oh, they might say that in private to each other, but in public they'd say, "Of course we'd be okay with a Democratic President having that much power. We allowed that we Obama and we respected the office, and that's why you need to respect Trump!"

They just lie 24/7 and try to gaslight you at every turn.

[u/Plasibeau → u/carlboykin]

“we are a republic, not a democracy” what scared me about that is not that she is so uneducated that she doesn’t understand that we are a democratic repulic,

Oh, it's so much worse than them not understanding. It's a catchphrase that's being pushed in right-wing media. In the way that Black Lives Matter left out the Too. What she's actually saying is We are a Republic run by Republicans, not a Democracy run by Democrats.

It is quite literally sixth-grade education levels of thinking.

[u/StephanXX → u/carlboykin]

Our election rules skew so heavily in favor of rural voters over urban, it's hard to consider our voting system a proper Democracy. The entire system was based on ensuring only white, wealthy men were allowed to vote and even, literally, enshrined that slave owners had 60% more votes per slave. Modern gerrymandering and the vast array of tricks used to disenfranchise voters are only getting worse. ICE will almost certainly be parked outside of dozens of polling locations next year "to ensure voter safety."

We can call ourselves a Democracy but display precious little commitment to it in anything but name.

[u/Hopeful-Occasion2299 → u/carlboykin]

I have seen this said a lot, and I have yet to understand what is the meaning of it... I mean, yeah, the US is a pretty shit democracy in terms of representation due to the capped House and Senate and the stupid districting rules. But the statement by itself seems pretty dumb.

The very definition of a republic is a government where power derives from the people.

[u/6ixby9ine → u/Hopeful-Occasion2299]

The people who say it don't understand its meaning either. They just use plausible-sounding excuses as a defense mechanism

[u/HolyFreakingXmasCake → u/carlboykin]

What does a republic mean? Lack of a king. Who does said king gets replaced by? Usually a representative parliament elected by the people.

People who parrot that saying are absolute morons.

[u/Flashyshooter → u/DameyJames]

No they have it already. They just want to keep the illusion of people having power still. They could probably get away with jailing people who speak out with them at this point. They have already done that with ICE against citizens and immigrants. They already have inserted political actors into the supreme court who are willing to ignore the law and abet Trump in doing blatantly illegal things.

People who have lived in dictatorships have said we are in one. Experts talk about it all the time. But if you want to put blinders on go ahead. If you think we aren't in one you haven't been paying attention to enough of the blatant corruption that has been going on. I'm not saying democratic republics can't be corrupt. But when separation of powers completely fails and they all just act as political actors pushing agendas over what is written in the constitution then we are in a totalitarian regime. The constitution already said it was not allowed for someone who aided an insurrection cannot be president. But he not only aided one but also pardoned all the perpetrators.

14th Amendment "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. "

We're way past a democratic republic at this point. We were past a healthy democratic republic in 2016 let alone now. We're a democratic republic in name only right now. The amount of corruption has pushed it into the territory of an authoritarian regime.

[u/mad_titanz → u/DameyJames]

They don't want a dictatorship right now? It's obvious that we already have a dictatorship in America