oren @oren

America needs a new political party. Both of the current ones are bad. Republicans are way too reactionary, Democrats are pro-censorship, and both are getting more extreme. Neither appropriately represents an average person.

May 8, 2023, 3:32 PM
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What other legitimate reason is there to remove a president besides having committed a crime? If a president is merely incompetent, then their power has a 4-year time limit. If a president is really incompetent, see Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.

Look up how a vote of no confidence works in the UK and many other parliamentary democracies. Trusting the president to make “the right choices” is simply not an adequate solution for a country. If the people no longer wish for a president to be in office, especially if his own party no longer supports him, he should be removed. It’s about increasing accountability and it works. Look how Liz Truss and Boris Johnson were easily replaced with a (slightly) more competent person. It means that there is no way for a politician to do anything that doesn’t align with what he promised to voters and what his party stands for 👍

I don’t think following the steps of the UK is a good idea considering its politics is an absolute shitshow. A party in power that knows that the populace despises it choosing a PM on their own volition is inheritably undemocratic.

What? That’s the most democratic thing that can be. There, a political party is a collection of the people, who form a group around a set of shared ideals. Members of a political party usually share opinions on the vast majority of issues, unlike in the U.S. which only has two parties. In the two-party system, there is less infighting/arguing by politicians of the same party, and more cooperation. Because the parliament/congress can also be voted out at any moment, the people truly control the politicians at both the lawmaking and executive branches.

The Conservative Party of the UK has 54% of the seats in Parliament despite having a 20 percentage point deficit in the polls behind Labour, and yet they got to decide the next PM by themselves without having to conduct a general election.

Okay, same thing that happens in the US in that regard. But within the conservative party, decisions can be made that actually reflect what’s best for the country/what the members of the party want. You can see that with Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, who were both basically destroying the country. In the U.S., someone like George Santos could even become president, and, because he’s also controlled by corporations, he doesn’t have to keep any of his campaign promises to the people and he can do whatever the corporations tell him too.

You’re vastly overestimating the amount of corruption in the US; the Corruption Perceptions Index places it at 24th between Austria and Taiwan. Also, in an ideal system, Johnson and Truss wouldn’t have become PMs in the first place.

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especially if his own party no longer supports him

No, only the people should make that choice

The people are making that choice, as the party is an organization of the people who vote within the part for what the party stands for. Because there are many political parties, a party is more of a set of ideals, rather than a group of people who practically agree on nothing (like in the U.S.). Also, because there is voting within a party, it means that the representatives chosen by the party actually fit a set of specific ideas (not a garbled mess of arguing and infighting like in the two-party system). A party should be a unified group that pushes one idea.

Also, I just had this same conversation with oren above, but in summary my main points were:

In the time of the founding fathers, there was more concern about the general political-awareness that ordinary people had (the reason for the electoral college). Today, however, it is inexcusable for politicians to be trusted to a level where "they know best" or "know better than the people do" about issues. Politicians in he US can do anything they like, mostly because of this reason. There is no way to hold them accountable and you just have to "trust them". They can also change their minds about any issue (or lie to voters, cough George Santos cough) and get away with it

@joebiden said it pretty well:

senator joe manchin is a great example of this, look up his pictures with pro-abortion and anti-abortion groups lol, it’s whoever donates

In the UK, politicians cannot be bought by corporations as easily, because their policies have to cater to what the ordinary people actually want. When Liz Truss promised lower taxes, lower inflation, etc. and failed to deliver, she was able to be removed and her party replaced her with someone else. She didn't have another 4 years to cause mayhem/destroy the country, which is a good thing.

TLDR: It’s not about choosing the lesser of two evils in that system, as there are many more parties/viewpoints/perspectives to choose from, and you vote for a party or a set of ideals, rather than for a person.

All of that is just a side-effect of a two-party system, not a presidential system as opposed to a parliamentary system.

No, it also has to do with a parliamentary system, as the way in which politicians are held accountable is vastly different. I highly recommend you check out the Wikipedia page for a vote of no confidence. I agree that a multi-party system solves some of these issues in itself, but definitely not all of them. In order to reduce corruption/control of politicians by corporations, you need a more responsive/dynamic system that can react to the current views of the people.

In modern times, the passage of a motion of no confidence is a relatively rare event in two-party democracies. In almost all cases, party discipline is sufficient to allow a majority party to defeat a motion of no confidence, and if faced with possible defections in the government party, the government is likely to change its policies, rather than lose a vote of no confidence. The cases in which a motion of no confidence has passed are generally those in which the government party's slim majority has been eliminated by either by-elections or defections, such as the 1979 vote of no confidence in the Callaghan ministry in the UK which was carried by one vote and forced a general election, which was won by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party.

Motions of no confidence are far more common in multi-party systems in which a minority party must form a coalition government. That can mean that there have been many short-lived governments because the party structure allows small parties to defeat a government which does not have the majority needed to create a government. This has widely been regarded as the cause of instability for the French Fourth Republic and the German Weimar Republic. More recent examples have been in Italy between the 1950s and 1990s, Israel, and Japan.

This isn’t quite true, because both Boris and Liz were forced out by the threat of a vote of no confidence because when they saw that one was inevitable, they both resigned. Having this measure in place still affects how politicians behave, but it doesn’t really matter whether they choose to resign or not, as it’s the same outcome anyway. 👍

george santos is SUCH a bad liar it’s crazy 💀💀 how you gonna claim that you did drag as a joke and then imply that you watch rupauls drag race, the GOP got him in such heavy denial

he just got charged by DOJ lmao

thank god. hopefully this sets a precedent for politicians in general and their day to day criminal activities