it's really hard ro swallow republican obstructionism as the beginning and end of all the problems when the democrats voted down even offering marijuana legalization as a party plank
not legislation
just saying they supported it was too far
50% of them voted that yes, the military should be allowed to advertise to 13 year olds with video games.
What exactly, here, is supposed to make me believe that these people care about the average citizen?
One of them did that dance on the show you guys like with that one host
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
My aunt has been doing detailed family research. I just found out my ancestor owned the fucking mayflower. I’m going to go donate to a Native American charity now.
I would argue that civics knowledge is less important for understanding how the government works than just, like, trying to exist in this country.
You don't need to be able to name the Supreme Court justices, or even know what all three branches of government are, to understand that hey, everyone is losing their job and can't pay rent in the middle of a pandemic and exactly fuck all is being done about it. Or even before that, maybe you can't describe how a bill is introduced and passed into law, but does that really fucking matter when the government shuts down four times in three years because some sentator on TV wants to throw a temper tantrum? Ever tried to sign up for the ACA? You know, the website that your life relies on that crashes every ten minutes? Does any of this sounds like a "working" government?
Knowledge of how, exactly, a car functions feels less important than being able to correctly identify that 1) this car won't start and 2) oh shit the car is on fire.
So when Obama, or any other petty bureaucrat, goes on a podcast or whatever and chides people for not understanding the specifics of government I kinda can't help but roll my eyes.
My aunt has been doing detailed family research. I just found out my ancestor owned the fucking mayflower. I’m going to go donate to a Native American charity now.
now that i think about it, obama expecting people to buy into a system that isn't offering them anything makes a lot of sense when you look at the average ACA health care plan
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
I would argue that civics knowledge is less important for understanding how the government works than just, like, trying to exist in this country.
You don't need to be able to name the Supreme Court justices, or even know what all three branches of government are, to understand that hey, everyone is losing their job and can't pay rent in the middle of a pandemic and exactly fuck all is being done about it. Or even before that, maybe you can't describe how a bill is introduced and passed into law, but does that really fucking matter when the government shuts down four times in three years because some sentator on TV wants to throw a temper tantrum? Ever tried to sign up for the ACA? You know, the website that your life relies on that crashes every ten minutes? Does any of this sounds like a "working" government?
Knowledge of how, exactly, a car functions feels less important than being able to correctly identify that 1) this car won't start and 2) oh shit the car is on fire.
So when Obama, or any other petty bureaucrat, goes on a podcast or whatever and chides people for not understanding the specifics of government I kinda can't help but roll my eyes.
I don't think it has to be just one thing. You're right, we're on fire right now and need fundamental direct action to salvage any semblance of a stable society from the jaws of fascism if we want to last 5 more years. Young people seem to understand that part.
If we want to last 50 or 500 more years, we need citizens to understand the mechanisms of government or we're going to just keep ending up back in this situation over and over again, because fascists are pathological rules lawyers who will exploit the population's ignorance in that area to their own benefit. And nobody -- not young people, not old people -- seems to effectively understand how that part works, or how to support it at the individual, atomic level.
You need both parts if you want anything better than this constant hellscape, IMO.
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you don't need to know what a comptroller is to have a legitimate political opinion.
Hell, I don't think you need to know exactly how congress, the president, and the supreme court work to make your grievances about being ground into the fucking dirt legitimate.
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
"Sir, may I have some healthcare please?"
"Lol, you don't know the ins and out of congressional committees and how a bill is passed, get fucked scrub"
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I would argue that civics knowledge is less important for understanding how the government works than just, like, trying to exist in this country.
You don't need to be able to name the Supreme Court justices, or even know what all three branches of government are, to understand that hey, everyone is losing their job and can't pay rent in the middle of a pandemic and exactly fuck all is being done about it. Or even before that, maybe you can't describe how a bill is introduced and passed into law, but does that really fucking matter when the government shuts down four times in three years because some sentator on TV wants to throw a temper tantrum? Ever tried to sign up for the ACA? You know, the website that your life relies on that crashes every ten minutes? Does any of this sounds like a "working" government?
Knowledge of how, exactly, a car functions feels less important than being able to correctly identify that 1) this car won't start and 2) oh shit the car is on fire.
So when Obama, or any other petty bureaucrat, goes on a podcast or whatever and chides people for not understanding the specifics of government I kinda can't help but roll my eyes.
I don't think it has to be just one thing. You're right, we're on fire right now and need fundamental direct action to salvage any semblance of a stable society from the jaws of fascism if we want to last 5 more years. Young people seem to understand that part.
If we want to last 50 or 500 more years, we need citizens to understand the mechanisms of government or we're going to just keep ending up back in this situation over and over again, because fascists are pathological rules lawyers who will exploit the population's ignorance in that area to their own benefit. And nobody -- not young people, not old people -- seems to effectively understand how that part works, or how to support it at the individual, atomic level.
You need both parts if you want anything better than this constant hellscape, IMO.
The way you defeat fascists is not "be better rules lawyers than the fascists," it's "kick fascists the fuck out of your country." Engaging with their stupid viewpoint at all means you've already lost.
+30
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
Yeah no you guys are right, fuck civics education.
0
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
They weren't even on the boat. Stayed back in England. Another part of the family apparently were on the first wave to make New Amsterdam so more bad stuff there presumably.
Yeah no you guys are right, fuck civics education.
What a great reading of the room
Well when this:
You need both parts if you want anything better than this constant hellscape, IMO.
Gets this response:
you don't need to know what a comptroller is to have a legitimate political opinion.
then yeah I'm gonna say I read the room OK on this particular thing.
I think the Obamas are smug and the Obama administration was monstrous in many ways, but the idea that there's not a fundamental ignorance in our society when it comes to politics and government, or that that ignorance doesn't have meaningful negative consequences for us, is simply wrong.
Yeah no you guys are right, fuck civics education.
What a great reading of the room
Well when this:
You need both parts if you want anything better than this constant hellscape, IMO.
Gets this response:
you don't need to know what a comptroller is to have a legitimate political opinion.
then yeah I'm gonna say I read the room OK on this particular thing.
I think the Obamas are smug and the Obama administration was monstrous in many ways, but the idea that there's not a fundamental ignorance in our society when it comes to politics and government, or that that ignorance doesn't have meaningful negative consequences for us, is simply wrong.
Civics lessons definitely don't teach you what a comptroller is.
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Also you posted a thing about how polled likely voters didn't know the specifics of the government
I'm not sure why you think it's young people that are causing that result
If anything, my experiences are that younger people have more knowledge of politics than older people (You know, the kind who Just Vote and don't really ask a lot of questions)
Civics education is good, in theory, and it's not like I'm against it or anything.
But the problem is that, right now, a civics education is basically just "let's learn about the exact mechanics and rules that those in power are using and/or ignoring to completely fuck everything up."
Knowing things is good. Thinking that that translates into political power is some real My Hogwarts House Is bullshit
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Literally not a single one of us said "civics education is bad," we pointed out the fallacy of asserting that civics education will at all save you from fascism in general or the uncaring US government in particular.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
awhile back, probably seven or eight years ago now, the washington state legislature was arguing about how much to cut higher education funding
this is after they'd been cutting it for approximately a decade; at the time, tuition at UW for in-state students was something like five grand per quarter
after grants and such you could expect to spend between thirty and forty grand for a bachelor's degree
anyway they wanted to charge students more and someone asked the dickhead who ran this particular committee what, essentially, the fuck
and he said, "It's still a heckuva deal."
I think about that a lot
these people really, honestly think that they're helping us, and that we should be grateful for their efforts
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I've literally lost counts of the times Trump said "I'm going to do [x]," people with a strong understanding of civics said "well legally he can't do [x]," and then he just did [x] and went on about his merry way because rules are meaningless if no one enforces them.
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Polticians are not the fucking Yama. You cannot beat them just by knowing their rules and citing "ah ha! you can't do that because of HR 305.1A!" or whatever. You have to actually do something, and doing something does not require an intricate knowledge of governmental procedure.
Civics education is good, in theory, and it's not like I'm against it or anything.
But the problem is that, right now, a civics education is basically just "let's learn about the exact mechanics and rules that those in power are using and/or ignoring to completely fuck everything up."
Like, what do you do with that, exactly?
resistance can be made a lot more effective by knowing those exact mechanics, but not in like a legalistic, vote-the-bums-out kind of way
it's ultimately a small component alongside The Other Stuff though, and a lack of specific procedural knowledge frequently gets used as a way to gloss over valid criticism. i don't think anyone in this thread is really doing that shit, but it pretty much is exactly how i read the obama podcast thing upthread
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you don't need to know what a comptroller is to have a legitimate political opinion.
Hell, I don't think you need to know exactly how congress, the president, and the supreme court work to make your grievances about being ground into the fucking dirt legitimate.
Sure. I'm not saying that you do need to know how governance works to air your grievances.
But, say you care about fixing criminal justice in this country. The best, most immediate way to do that depends on who your district attorney is, at least in my state. Not the presidency, but the DA. People should probably know that since the populace votes for the DA.
If a person doesn't understand what the district attorney does and its importance, then how can they make an informed vote? Lack of civics education completely undermines the functioning of our country.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
"Learning how the government is structured to fuck you over will save you from being fucked over."
PwnanObrienHe's right, life sucks.Registered Userregular
I don't think Barack Obama is being entirely earnest about people needing a deeper understanding of politics. I think he wants people to have a deeper "understanding" of the neolib wonk narrative he wants you to believe. Because at best a more material read of our government would mean he would be viewed as a center-right grifter who used the very ideas of "hope" and "change" cynically and at worst he would be in jail for war crimes along with every other living President.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
what barack obama is complaining about is the fact that people don't agree with his politics
Also you posted a thing about how polled likely voters didn't know the specifics of the government
I'm not sure why you think it's young people that are causing that result
If anything, my experiences are that younger people have more knowledge of politics than older people (You know, the kind who Just Vote and don't really ask a lot of questions)
I didn't say it was young people. My very first post was about how this is an affliction which is common to Americans in general (can't speak for other countries).
I also don't think fascism is defeated by civics education when it rises. I do think, however, that proper citizenship education can help to create a society where fascism (and similar societal ills) arises less often, by encouraging a more engaged citizenry and a more responsive system of government. I see it as a long-term investment so that we don't have to keep taking to the streets quite so frequently for the rest of our species' existence.
More importantly, I apologize for coming off hot-headed about the whole thing. It is a little frustrating to have been in various iterations of these threads vocally advocating for the BLM protests and actively pushing back against the "just vote!" crowd, only to be immediately cast in with them because I thought it was worth observing that Americans don't understand some fairly basic facts about our system of government. The comptroller comparison did not feel like the kind of thing that was made in good faith, and that was really upsetting and I lashed out, and I'm sorry about that.
I'm just gonna hush. I don't think I'm making my point very effectively right now, and I'm clearly communicating some points that I don't actually believe, so yeah. Yay protests, yay civics, boo Obama.
i agree actually, america should have more civics education. nobody should graduate high school without reading marx and kropotkin
A buffed up civics education with critical analysis of texts would be kinda rad. Kropotkin, Chomsky, and Arendt would be really good readings for that age.
Posts
One of them did that dance on the show you guys like with that one host
You don't need to be able to name the Supreme Court justices, or even know what all three branches of government are, to understand that hey, everyone is losing their job and can't pay rent in the middle of a pandemic and exactly fuck all is being done about it. Or even before that, maybe you can't describe how a bill is introduced and passed into law, but does that really fucking matter when the government shuts down four times in three years because some sentator on TV wants to throw a temper tantrum? Ever tried to sign up for the ACA? You know, the website that your life relies on that crashes every ten minutes? Does any of this sounds like a "working" government?
Knowledge of how, exactly, a car functions feels less important than being able to correctly identify that 1) this car won't start and 2) oh shit the car is on fire.
So when Obama, or any other petty bureaucrat, goes on a podcast or whatever and chides people for not understanding the specifics of government I kinda can't help but roll my eyes.
So it’s YOUR fault.
I don't think it has to be just one thing. You're right, we're on fire right now and need fundamental direct action to salvage any semblance of a stable society from the jaws of fascism if we want to last 5 more years. Young people seem to understand that part.
If we want to last 50 or 500 more years, we need citizens to understand the mechanisms of government or we're going to just keep ending up back in this situation over and over again, because fascists are pathological rules lawyers who will exploit the population's ignorance in that area to their own benefit. And nobody -- not young people, not old people -- seems to effectively understand how that part works, or how to support it at the individual, atomic level.
You need both parts if you want anything better than this constant hellscape, IMO.
Hell, I don't think you need to know exactly how congress, the president, and the supreme court work to make your grievances about being ground into the fucking dirt legitimate.
"Lol, you don't know the ins and out of congressional committees and how a bill is passed, get fucked scrub"
The way you defeat fascists is not "be better rules lawyers than the fascists," it's "kick fascists the fuck out of your country." Engaging with their stupid viewpoint at all means you've already lost.
They weren't even on the boat. Stayed back in England. Another part of the family apparently were on the first wave to make New Amsterdam so more bad stuff there presumably.
What a great reading of the room
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
Nailed it dude
Well when this:
Gets this response:
then yeah I'm gonna say I read the room OK on this particular thing.
I think the Obamas are smug and the Obama administration was monstrous in many ways, but the idea that there's not a fundamental ignorance in our society when it comes to politics and government, or that that ignorance doesn't have meaningful negative consequences for us, is simply wrong.
Civics lessons definitely don't teach you what a comptroller is.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
I'm not sure why you think it's young people that are causing that result
If anything, my experiences are that younger people have more knowledge of politics than older people (You know, the kind who Just Vote and don't really ask a lot of questions)
But the problem is that, right now, a civics education is basically just "let's learn about the exact mechanics and rules that those in power are using and/or ignoring to completely fuck everything up."
Like, what do you do with that, exactly?
this is after they'd been cutting it for approximately a decade; at the time, tuition at UW for in-state students was something like five grand per quarter
after grants and such you could expect to spend between thirty and forty grand for a bachelor's degree
anyway they wanted to charge students more and someone asked the dickhead who ran this particular committee what, essentially, the fuck
and he said, "It's still a heckuva deal."
I think about that a lot
these people really, honestly think that they're helping us, and that we should be grateful for their efforts
Not really a Honda guy.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
resistance can be made a lot more effective by knowing those exact mechanics, but not in like a legalistic, vote-the-bums-out kind of way
it's ultimately a small component alongside The Other Stuff though, and a lack of specific procedural knowledge frequently gets used as a way to gloss over valid criticism. i don't think anyone in this thread is really doing that shit, but it pretty much is exactly how i read the obama podcast thing upthread
hitting hot metal with hammers
Sure. I'm not saying that you do need to know how governance works to air your grievances.
But, say you care about fixing criminal justice in this country. The best, most immediate way to do that depends on who your district attorney is, at least in my state. Not the presidency, but the DA. People should probably know that since the populace votes for the DA.
If a person doesn't understand what the district attorney does and its importance, then how can they make an informed vote? Lack of civics education completely undermines the functioning of our country.
It's a good thing I didn't say that or you'd have an actual point.
haven't made up my mind about Lenin yet
I didn't say it was young people. My very first post was about how this is an affliction which is common to Americans in general (can't speak for other countries).
I also don't think fascism is defeated by civics education when it rises. I do think, however, that proper citizenship education can help to create a society where fascism (and similar societal ills) arises less often, by encouraging a more engaged citizenry and a more responsive system of government. I see it as a long-term investment so that we don't have to keep taking to the streets quite so frequently for the rest of our species' existence.
More importantly, I apologize for coming off hot-headed about the whole thing. It is a little frustrating to have been in various iterations of these threads vocally advocating for the BLM protests and actively pushing back against the "just vote!" crowd, only to be immediately cast in with them because I thought it was worth observing that Americans don't understand some fairly basic facts about our system of government. The comptroller comparison did not feel like the kind of thing that was made in good faith, and that was really upsetting and I lashed out, and I'm sorry about that.
I'm just gonna hush. I don't think I'm making my point very effectively right now, and I'm clearly communicating some points that I don't actually believe, so yeah. Yay protests, yay civics, boo Obama.
A buffed up civics education with critical analysis of texts would be kinda rad. Kropotkin, Chomsky, and Arendt would be really good readings for that age.