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I am not American. I live in Asia and sadly only get to watch CNN for American news. I saw a very one sided view from the CNN hosts making exaggerated comments on Trumps negativity throughout his campaing. So now Trump has won and they continue with this negavity. I watched the demonstrations and a latino lady advocating violence. Don Lemons is wearing a black tie and other minorities on the news team also. News must be impartial.

The losers must accept the vote, thats democracy, Maybe democracy does not work. Or maybe the new younger genetation and minorities just dont want democracy if they are the losers.

We in Asia are in general more favorable to Trump.

Democracy is beautiful , it's the humans who corrupt it . Trump carved a path using an element of society and the electoral  college . The flaw is the electoral college which is not democratic.

News hasn't been fair, impartial or even accurate or worthwhile in America for at least 2 decades. And with all due respect,  there was no exaggeration regarding Mr. Trumps behavior. 

I thought in a democracy you accept if you do NOT win or there will be civil war. and a military government. I am impartial but I heard what Trump said and I saw what CNN comments as to what he said. Its a bias character assination by selective choice of comments out of context.

I want a woman to be president but Hillary will not be the one. Would Bernie have done better?

We are shackled by an archaic representative system of voting, the American Electoral College.  Trump won because his people were better at gaming that system than Hillary's people were.  And due to quirks of demographics and population distribution, the people of Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida always end up deciding elections.  Hardly a representation of the true population of America.

Even worse, the way Congress is set up means people in sparsely populated states have far more political power than the majority of people who live in large cities.

Hillary won a higher popular vote, and is the candidate the majority of the people want.

And although most Americans want the Electoral College abolished, the people in power do not want that to happen because it benefits them.  So it will not be.  The American Electoral system is garbage.  And it is not democracy.  And that is why people are protesting.

Pretty much everybody makes this mistake. The United States is not a democracy but is instead founded as a Constitutional Republic. The founding fathers were very much afraid of mob rule so the government was constructed with checks against the branches of government AND checks against the people. In the 20th century the progressive movement which consist of the democratic party and most republicans have dismantled the checks that were in place so we have a cross between a democracy and something else that wasn't very well thought out.

Freedom of the press (the first amendment) gave the press the ability to print the truth without risk of the government taking action against the press however the press has forgot it's responsibility and often takes sides. This is more common on the left but some of the press outlets on the right do it to some degree as well.

The political though behind this is in a democracy it's easer to control the election process than in a constitutional republic. The people believe that with modern communications they are better informed than ever before. The truth is very few people actually understand the founding and the time when the most understanding existed was when the constitution was put in place. The population was informed about our government through the Federalist Papers and the Anti Federalist Papers  where the constitution was argued in the newspapers over several months before the population voted on it. These papers are available on the internet, E book and in book form with the best being this one (https://www.amazon.com/Federalist-Papers-Signet-Classics/dp/0451528816/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478761802&sr=1-1&keywords=the+federalist+papers).

When you understand what our government was meant to be you become very disgusted over the politics of the last century that have destroyed the gift that was given to us at the cost of much blood.

Democracy works... it's just because lazy bums like me didn't vote in the primaries that we ended up <with these choices>.


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Moderator Edit: Please keep our Terms of Service in mind. the original post had a phrase that is was considered bashing.

As an activist who was trying to follow the campaign from an objective viewpoint, let me explain...

Quote from: warlockmaker on November 09, 2016, 10:25:27 PMone sided view from the CNN hosts making exaggerated comments on Trumps negativity throughout his campaing.

This is actually a problem we had this election: everyone assumes that both sides always have equal merit.   That is very false.  Who's view of the space station has more merit, a NASA scientist, or someone who believes the sky is literally a tapestry woven by God?  They were only repeating what he said, and it was mostly scary.

QuoteSo now Trump has won and they continue with this negavity. I watched the demonstrations and a latino lady advocating violence. Don Lemons is wearing a black tie and other minorities on the news team also. News must be impartial.

People are rightly terrified.  We really don't know what he's planning, bit his campaign had alot of terrifying ideas.  Granted, a large chunk of it was an act, but he and his party are scaring a large chunk of the population.  Namely, the people who are not white cis-male Christians.

QuoteThe losers must accept the vote, thats democracy, Maybe democracy does not work. Or maybe the new younger genetation and minorities just dont want democracy if they are the losers.

As an activist, I accept the vote as true, but I know I will have a long, hard fight ahead of me.  We all will.  That is how American government works.  You are right, it does not work well, and I don't even really like it myself, but I don't think you understand the issues we face with it.  Asia has a long-standing tradition of putting competent people in and not questioning them, and that has a different set of problems.  You may be about to see us at our worst.

Sadly if the future of a democratic USA is a country that is so filled with hate, violence and intolorence then it has no right to interfere in other countries peaceful existance. Please lead by example.

Quote from: warlockmaker on November 10, 2016, 08:14:10 AM
Sadly if the future of a democratic USA is a country that is so filled with hate, violence and intolorence then it has no right to interfere in other countries peaceful existance. Please lead by example.

I think you're being a bit naive about international relations.

Were Portugal, Spain, France, England building and enforcing their empires from positions of moral high ground? Is China's heavy hand in the Pacific rim and Africa where it seeks raw materials? Russia's use of their new-found energy money? Rome's empire?

America is far from a perfect democracy, personally I have some preference for the parliamentary democratic model. However the founders' fears of the mob were rooted in the concrete example of the revolution in France that followed on the heels of our own.

Some of our leaders have been moral and admirable men and women, some have not. I've been an adult since before Nixon was ousted from the presidency. And the only politicians I've ever felt moved to work for were John Anderson  and more significantly Barack Obama.

At our best the US and our citizens do some amazing work for the benefit of people beyond our shores. We've also done our share of damage.

The difference between a republic and a democracy,is in a republic the people rule,in a democracy the government rules. I prefer a republic over a democracy.

As Winston Churchill once remarked: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

The problem we have is that people have differing views, beliefs, needs and wishes. Some people love things that other people hate. As such, there's no single perfect political system that could possibly keep everyone happy all the time, unless we fractured into millions of tiny little states, each one supporting only the tiny number people who have the exact same views (imagine, then, what that would do to your family if your kids turn out to support something you rally against - as they invariably do!). As a matter of fact, this is exactly how the world used to be, and you know what it resulted in? Tribal warfare. Small, disparate groups fighting 'those' people who differ from 'us'. Sadly, that's a part of human nature: to act aggressively towards those who are different. Democracy has taken the edge off of that, but it doesn't take much to re-awaken those instincts. I'm sure most of us here have experienced that kind of othering and aggression in our every day lives as trans people.

Democracy at least gives you the illusion of free choice in that your vote only counts if the majority of people in your voting constituency want the same thing you do. If you live in a constituency where you want X and most of your neighbours want Y, your vote is effectively worthless and it is completely ignored if the other side wins. But hey, at least you had your democratic right to make your voice heard, right? So yeah, with democracy you can get whatever you want... as long as everyone else wants it too. And whichever side wins you have to hope they're not a bunch of idiots, because the train is heading more or less in their chosen direction and you're tagging along for the ride whether you like it or not.

It is in all of our best interests to remind ourselves that 'the other side' (whatever that might mean) is also entitled to have their voice heard and to be represented. Everyone believes that they're right and their opponents are wrong. Proportional representation works better, but in a bipartisan state like the UK or the USA, where the main parties represent people who are diametrically opposed to each other, the losing side's voters will always feel disenfranchised, ignored and unrepresented. If the winning side introduces enough policies that are hated by the losing side, then the losing side's voters will come out in droves at the next election to vote in protest, and politics will swing the other way again. That's what happened here: people who felt disenfranchised (for whatever reason) during the Obama years staged a protest vote. If Trump introduces a lot of unpopular policies, then people who feel disenfranchised by those policies will come out in droves at the next election to vote in protest, and the country will probably swing in the opposite direction again, in an endless game of tit-for-tat. So instead of stability, everyone keeps see-sawing from one extreme to another... and nobody is happy all the time.

That's politics, that's democracy, and that's life.

 :police: 

Due to the vitriol that is scattered through many posts and a post made by Susan yesterday, regarding the election

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,216181.msg1914069.html#msg1914069

the topic is locked for review, appraisal and potential clean up.

Sincerely,

Joanna

 :police:

Cindy has updated the policy with regard to the US Elections. Please read if you have not.

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,216206.0.html

I will now unlock this topic.

Warmly,

Joanna

Quote from: warlockmaker on November 09, 2016, 10:25:27 PMNews must be impartial.

The US does not have any impartial news sources;  we have right and left supporting news channels; and their editorial leanings bleed over into their actual news cast story selection.

If you want to watch a news channel that supports the right, you have fox; they are good production quality but will generally only support the narrative of the conservative half of the population.

If you want to watch a news channel that supports the left, you have a more fractured market, but cnn is fairly good production quality; and again, their editorial position impacts story selection for their news show.

There are no channels that do a 50/50 honest presentation, because if they do, no one will watch, and they will go out of business.

QuoteThe losers must accept the vote, thats democracy, Maybe democracy does not work. Or maybe the new younger genetation and minorities just dont want democracy if they are the losers.

Accepting the vote does not imply anything about whether someone should protest the elected person and their positions;  if anything, it is absolutely critical to a democracy that those who lost, get out on the street and make sure it is understood that their positions are not held by just some tiny, dismissible portion of the population.

QuoteWe in Asia are in general more favorable to Trump.

It makes sense, because he's likely to make us look like idiots; but is also likely to be less overbearing internationally than the neocon faction.

He may also, with the strike of a pen, make it nearly impossible for thousands of trans folks to get treatment, both for dysphoria and even regular health emergencies.  Thus it is critical that folks protest early and often if they want Trump to think twice about harming that many people.

It's worth remembering that Trump did not win the vote. He won the election.

More people voted for Clinton, than they did for Trump, but Trump got more votes where it counts and won more seats, so he's the president:

.  .	Trump	Clinton
Popular vote	60,135,973	60,584,357
Percentage	47.3%	47.6%

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016

With a vote this close, it's very easy to see how there might be some dissent.

News in America has never been impartial.  In fact it was worse and more partisan in the 19th century than it is now.  News channels and papers are corporations and their purpose is to make money, not to report impartial news.  It follows that the best way to make money is to tell people what they want to hear and constantly keep them agitated.

The only way to even approach getting the truth is to ignore the television and read from a variety of both left and right wing sources with an open and critical mind.  This is not so easy and it takes more work than most people want to expend.


It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide, Autumn Leaves

The electoral collage is necessary to give every state a relevant say and not just California and New York state.

Blaming the process is a deflection away from the many mistakes of the DNC and the corrupt mainstream media. They have no one to blame but themselves.

In a democracy it's best if people accept a certain candidate or party wins. The majority did vote at them. But I do also think people should be allowed to be critical to the new president and give them criticism if they are disagree with them. It's possible to accepting the person who won and at the same time still being disagree. In a democracy you should be allowed to questioning thing, having your own opinion and dislike the president/prime minister/party. The majority voted at Erna Solberg in Norway the previous voting. I've been critical to her politics and which parties she worked with. But the news should maybe be more objective.

They lost to Donald Trump. The most disliked candidate in American history.

We have the feminists blaming the people for being misogynistic and racist etc.
we have others blaming American democracy itself.

Yeah let's blame everyone else except oh I don't know, THE DEMOCRATS! 

That wouldn't suit the media's narrative. So blame everyone else!

Quote from: JMJW on November 11, 2016, 02:17:43 PM
They lost to Donald Trump. The most disliked candidate in American history.

We have the feminists blaming the people for being misogynistic and racist etc.
we have others blaming American democracy itself.

Yeah let's blame everyone else except oh I don't know, THE DEMOCRATS! 

That wouldn't suit the media's narrative. So blame everyone else!

The democrats and the liberals have received criticism and blaming as well. It's not only the American democracy itself, candidates or republicans. :) Many Americans are disagree with people who's against weapons or they who wants free health care. Some democrats and liberals have experienced people being disagree with them and that the critic would rather have individualism/liberalism. So every parts gets both support, criticism and blame. It goes both ways.

The US is 240 years old. during this time (before Trump was elected, this year) there have been 4 presidents who have lost the electoral vote. So every 60 years one of the presidents gets lucky, and before Bush in 2000 it had not happened in 112 years.
Yes, it is a flaw in the system to a certain extent, but given that claims of voter fraud and rigging are far more prevalent is it not reasonable to say that this is the issue that should be tackled first.
Also, 126,000 New York voter polls were purged, due to death or duplication. This is a single state. When you have popular vote margins differing by c. 400,000 the slight margins of error imposed by the electoral college system seems to pale in insignificance to dead voters getting impatient for the Second Coming and the Apocalypse and trying to vote for their preferred warmonger, trump or hillary.
So i think that when citing the popular vote it is important to note that this is a rather nebulous concept, especially since it so poorly describes only eligible voters.
The US electoral college system is just as broken as the proposed US popular vote system as far as I see it. However, you could argue that the electoral college system only helps compound the inaccuracies inherent in the popular vote system.

The electoral college isn't flawed as that was how it was designed. Federalist 68 (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp). The government was never intended to be a democracy and the people were never to select the president by popular vote. There was far to much risk of passion overriding common sense.

The jokes write themselves.

"The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. "


It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide, Autumn Leaves

That is because the electoral college members tend to be bound on the first vote. The are supposed to vote their conscious without guidance from the state. Had they done that, they would pick somebody other than Clinton or Trump. It has been done in the past but no longer.

The real reason for the electoral college was to allow the Southern States to count non voting black slaves as part of the state population to secure greater influence in Washington.  It gave their states more white representatives and more electoral votes than the northern states.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/electoral-college-slavery-constitution/


It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide, Autumn Leaves

The US of A, is the first nation on earth, where a representative democracy has been around since the founding fathers founded the US of A and the US Constitution, but no means perfect, hence the amendments done to the U.S. Constitution. This nation is a great experiment that has never been tried before, so we are learning as we go along, we all need to learn from our nations past, to make it a better place to live. Where I get that the USA is a representative democracy, since other people mention the US of A is a republic, please look at the link below...,but I digress, We as American need to reconcile and talk to each other as rational human beings, to come to an accord and peaceful conexistence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/13/is-the-united-states-of-america-a-republic-or-a-democracy/

Believe it or not, there are actually petitions to try to *snicker* get the election overturned so Hillary will be President. Citing some legal loophole that the Electoral College representatives can ignore their state's result. Let's say somehow that actually happened, and everything these fools were hoping for happened. All that would happen then is a second American Civil War. Congrats.  ::)

If reconciling means surrender then no.  Those people have done everything in their power for eight years to undermine the President and gridlock the legislature.   There is nothing rationale there to reconcile with.   


It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide, Autumn Leaves

What is amazing is that every 4 or 8 years there is a change of office without tanks in the streets. Unfortunately most Americans do not vote. So those whos candidate wins is about 1/2 of 1/3 of the citizens or 1/6 of the citizens. The same for those who's candidate loses. 

Thank you all veterans for enabling us to have our freedoms.

I am very uneasy with Trump in the office because I do not know what he will do and how he will do it. One thing that terrifies is the thought that if Trump does not finish his term Pence will be president.

In the USA we have made LGBT gains. I hope we continue to move forward.

This election I voted for the first time as Rachel :)

I find it worrisome that ISIS(or was it the Taliban) , Russia, and North Korea are giving congratulations to Trump.  As far as I remember, opposing nations/forces don't typically do that.  I know a 105 year old woman that I would have preferred over the choices given.

This national trend of hate needs to stop.  There are more important things to deal with.  Failing school systems; wage divide between lower positions and higher positions; gender inequality that is not skill/ability based; what we will do about jobs since so many, and more switching, are done by computers or machines; and a real national medical treatment plan.

I would like to close this topic. This is not the time to discuss this. I apologise for not being fully aware of the great divisions in America. and my lack of empathy to see both sides impartially. I hope America can heal its wounds  and rebuild the dream of democracy as your founding father envisioned.

I hope so too . I'm still crying

This country was not founded as a democracy bit a constitutional republic,we did not become a democracy til 1933 under Roosevelt when the govt took power away from the people and our govt became a war power govt. under control of the world Bank.

I will lock the topic as the OP requested. The discussion is going in a circular and repetitive manner as well. Fell free to start and alternative topic but remember the raw feelings many members have and please comply with the ToS.

Thank You
Cindy