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Once again, proof that the US is FAR left of the establishment
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Heres the actual poll.
Theres more proof that the US is mostly progresssive and the government is not because the US is not a democracy.
Sorry You "American values are conservative" people, facts are tough things.
the U.S is a democracy, but not a free one.
Its a mixed bag of elitism and democracy, a system where people are able to choose amongst the elites that will rule and manage the country.
On the paper it sound good, until that elite is corrupted by the particular will of a small group,
WHY kléber, WHY!!!!!!!
THats not really a democracy, I mean its as much of a democracy as the USSR was, so if your willing to call the USSR a democracy then I guess you can call the US too.
The US is a democracy, sure, but hardly democratic. The polling itself is democratic in a strict sense. The political system as a whole, is not democratic. That's simply a fact.
Nations in which a tyrant or tyrannous upper classes have to fear their underlings have a million different democratic referendums across diverging constituencies. But these referendums are at best mild imprints on a footprint left by corporations and institutions of the ruling milieu - at worst, they are private aggregations of personal data used for marketing and population control agendas.
This is unquestioningly the model of democracy presented in the US and other prevalent imperial regimes (and often the client states of these regimes).
It's a simple fact that for a nation to really be democratic - that is defined primarily as democratic, its policies centered on the democratic ideals, it should have an empowered democratic system. We don't have that. We have an empowered corporate-capitalist one with a heavy emphasis on militarization, bureaucratization, and inegalitarianism (or a centralist distribution of wealth).
except polling public opinion has no bearing on public policy, which means its not realyl a democracy (a democracy requires it to be democratic).
Exactly.
I thanked you because I agree, but that's not the actual poll on your link. The poll was conducted by 60 minutes and vanity fair. You posted a router's article on yahoo news.
In any case, for any real hardcore data analysts, I checked the ICPSR website, and they don't appear to have the data set.
AKA El Vagoneta
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I have to read more about the Senate in the United States, as I am currently not an expert.
Is it true that there needs to be a 2/3 vote in favour of legislation, as oppossed to simply a majority of people voting in favour of legislation? If its true, for me that demonstrates the sorts of problems that the US has with trying to have a democracy that reflects its population.
Not to mention the fact that you have both a President and two houses, seperate from each other.
Last edited by progressive_lefty; 6th January 2011 at 23:27. Reason: I have 'to' read more
Abolish private property- become left.
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Sorry to stay off topic, but the US is not, and never was, a democracy. It's a republic. Definitions should be used.
Republic:
1. a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.
2. any body of persons viewed as a commonwealth.
3. a state in which the head of government is not a monarch or other hereditary head of state.
Last edited by thriller; 6th January 2011 at 01:13. Reason: spelling
"[People] act like its some kind of rock solid homogeneous body of masculine oiled men with big hammers and flat caps standing outside factory gates chewing tobacco and muttering 'those damn petit-bourgeois students and their alienating camera-smashing, I sure love me some CCTV! Don't you, comrade stakhnov?'." - Ravachol
Let me just clear things up for you a bit. The senate needs a simple majority to pass a bill, unless theres a philibuster, which prevents a bill from coming up for vote, a philibuster (which is when someone blocks the processs through just taking up the floor) can only be broken by a 2/3ds vote, it used to be used only once in a blue moon, now its used by the republicans for almost every democratic proposal.
The actualy congressional and governmental process is not the thing that destroys any part of democracy, that process COULD be much more democratic, (its not perfect, not even close, but it could be made more democratic), whats destroying it is monied interest, which includes many many things. Here are some:
1. Campain contributions: by corporations and individuals with political/economic interests, which are now absolutely unlimited and through groups like citizens united have the ability to be anonymous (i.e. send their money through a group so as to save their image). These are the people who pay politicians, these are the ones that write the checks of the parties, you work for who pays for you.
2. Post governmental pay off, or family pay off: Almost every member of government after his term works as a "consultant" or work as a lobbyist, meaning after they do the bidding of the corporations, those corporations pay them HUGE salleries for doing nothing, not only that but many of those members of government will have members of the family get put on the board of directors or get some other really cushy corporate job with a huge pay check.
3. Simply the market: the state system makes it possible for corporations to threaten to pull investment, or pull funding if the politicians refuse to follow commands, and its well known that corporations will actually take a hit on profits to stop things like unionization. This tool is much less used however, because its extremely risky.
4. Media coverage: THe media is made by and for the rich, and paid for by major corporations.
The recently elected House of Representitives is reading the Constitution and trying to repeal healthcare.
Geez get a grip. That's what the America people voted for. All these polls are crap.
Opinion polls are notoriously unreliable... I don't trust them much either way.
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Facts are stubborn things Bud.
Actually a very small percentage of the people did, the vast majority of people don't vote, especially for congressional races.
The truth hurts Bud. America is'nt a democracy, get that in your head, its as democratic as the soviet union was, they got to vote too, I guess they voted for Gulags.
(BTW, I'm for replealing the healthcare plan too, and getting single payer.)
There are tons of them showing similar things, and they are much more reliable than trying to figure out public opinion by public policy, thats the worst way to figure out public opinion.
That seems to be more your problem than mine.
So who care about the people that don't vote? Actually, Fuck them.And if they can't even vote--they certainly wont revolt. Forget them.
America can be anything it wants to be--and it doesn't choose whatever you represent when the rubber meets the road. And that's all that counts.
Like all your posts--charming in their way, but in reality--who cares?
The poll included a random sample of 1,067 adults across the United States from November 29 to December 2. The margin of error may be plus or minus 3 percentage points, 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair said
Vanity Fair Paid circulation 1.167.499 (in 2008)
60 Minutes.....? viewing stats? Aprrox. 1,31 million source
USA Population 310,578,000 (2010)
Random Sample represents 0,000034% of USA.
I don't like polls- they prove little.
-www.revleft.org-
Economic Left/Right: -6.00
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Actually its a verry dire and serious matter that so much people dont vote.So who care about the people that don't vote? Actually, Fuck them.
When the people dosnt participate into the legislative process it mean that they dosnt really care about the state anymore.
what do you do when you dont trust the state? black market, not paying your taxes, breaking various laws, distrupting peace etc etc.
the legislative system is failing the people, and just like rousseau said, when the legislative system is rotten, the whole thing is bound to collapse.
this is happening beccause the particular will of a minority group prevail over the one of the majority, It took a certain amount of time for this to happen, the apathy toward the governement slowly growing over the decades, to create finally this huuge mass of people who dosnt trust the legislative system anymore.
No wonder the prison population and crime is up in the us, this is the direct reflection of the general mindset toward the governement and its laws.
WHY kléber, WHY!!!!!!!
That's why it's a "random" sample, so that you don't necessarily have to ask every single american to get a representative data set. There's always going to be a margin of error and the bigger the sample the more representative (that margin of error should decrease), but geez man, way to annihilate all of quantitative sociology in one fell swoop. Maybe all the social scientists should make like anthropology and only do ethnographies. Yeah, those are reeeaaaalllly representative.
For the record, a sample of N>= 1000 is quite acceptable for quantitative research, so long as the sampling method is sound.
AKA El Vagoneta
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I'm writing an essay at the moment delving into this statement somewhat.
The American population displays a lot of sentiments of anti-capitalism. For instance the union presidents of the AFL-CIO, CTW, and their affiliates are demonized as these money hungry "union bosses" who don't care about the well being of the common guy. It was pretty transferred over from the common sentiment of the corporate CEO and applied to the labor union. Further proof is the avoidance of the term "corporation" or even "company." Words like small business is favored much more, when in reality most anything a politician says benefits small business really benefits a large multinational corporation ten times more.
There's also the peculiar term of "creating more jobs." When I think of this term, I'm not sure about anyone else, I envision a working class man going back to work at a steel mill. This is exactly the rosy ideal many politicians want to portray. When you hear "creating jobs" you have to create twice as much profits for the company before they even think of "creating more jobs." But no one would say "I want to increase profits for large corporations" as it would be political suicide.
The financial crisis has exemplified another common sentiment that has existed in the US, and that is the demonization of wall street investors and the entire establishment of Wall Street itself. This has always existed sometime or another in the country, but due to recent events it has obviously gotten even more this way. Obama, along with some Democrats took advantage of this demonization, however they promptly stopped when the campaign donors, the driving force of the Obama camp, told him to hush up or lose support. Even on the right, we see this sentiment in the Tea Party movement, which commonly uses the "evil wall street bankers" as a rallying call.
However the orchestraters of the Tea Party, the GOP, and the Democratic Party will of course stop once they rally the support and never actually follow through attacking the power of Wall Street. It's just a rallying call to muster up public support. That's obvious.
On one hand they exploit this, to the point where it gets them the support they need. To balance this, they generally intimidate anyone away from entertaining the thoughts of their inner socialist. Through extensive propaganda campaigns against socialism and demonizing actual socialist words themselves, they effectively protect themselves from shooting themselves in the foot by flirting with anti-capitalist sentiment. Although at this point I'm preaching to the choir because as anarchists, socialists, and communists I'm sure we've all felt our fair share of discrimination due to the propaganda campaigns mentioned above.
Even von Mises felt it necessary to write an entire book on this mentality to basically ridicule them, and discuss how pervasive he thought Marxist philosophy was.
Nope. A sample of that size is completely sound and works just fine. Take a statistics class or something (especially if you're in college and need easy Math credits).
I disagree. I think voting is the very bare minimum that one can do and depending on what their political goals are it's probably not even useful.Originally Posted by Bud StruggleSo who care about the people that don't vote? Actually, Fuck them.And if they can't even vote--they certainly wont revolt. Forget them.
The way I see it, a ballot is a "don't give a fuck about anything for 4 years" voucher. Check the candidate, drop it in a box, and enjoy the unwarranted self-importance and being able to look down on people who might get involved in political activism on every other day for not doing this one thing for whatever reason.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make when you say things like this, Bud. Most Americans aren't revolutionary socialists? Well, what a surprise, I guess. It doesn't mean our ideas are discredited or that we should abandon them because they are, for the moment, unpopular.
Last edited by #FF0000; 6th January 2011 at 03:37.
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I am a TYT fan, and Cenk is absolutely right here, this is the antithesis of democracy, ignoring the voice of the common people in favour of... what the hell is the american government doing this for anyways? just to spite the people? but at the same time, this poll didn't cover a huge amount of the american people, why couldn't it be put to an actual vote? I guess that would have taken too long, but still, it would be democratic.
