The long read: Once a stalwart of Hong Kong’s journalism scene, Wang Jian has found a new audience on YouTube, dissecting global politics and US-China relations since the pandemic. To his fans, he’s part professor, part friend
A very interesting and insightful take from a foreign journalist on the outside looking in.
America was never a democracy, all Trump did was pull the curtain back, the scene becomes the ob-scene. The people lament for the comfort of their illusions and parlor tricks.
You seem to be confused on the meaning of nihilism. Making observations are not nihilistic, we’ve only ever perceived reality through the lens of the elite, voted on candidates selected by the elite, our democratic choices nothing more than packaged products, marketed and sold to us. The advent of internet and social media have simultaneously broken the illusion and made it near impenetrable. Knowing truth is not a negation of truth itself, therefore it cannot be nihilism, I still hold onto meaning.
You have zero idea what you’re talking about. If you’re trying to play semantics by saying a Representative Democracy is not the same as a True Democracy, or that the Electoral System in the US is not what YOU would prefer. You are, in fact, still wrong.
You’re not making an observation, you’re asserting your own ill-informed position and slant on an idea you’ve heard elsewhere and have no idea what it means.
Policy has only aligned with the will of the people 55% of the time. That’s not so bad, assuming we just ignore the observed and prevalent phenomenons of elite capture of public opinion and manufacturing of consent.
Of course, democracy exists when we discard the unsavory bits of reality, anything can be democracy when its meaning is an empty signifier.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
I’m not saying democracy can’t exist, it can and it should, but it’s only a fleeting notion in any society based on dominance hierarchy. Democracy does not exist without a well-informed public, a people plagued by ignorance do not have free will, and in consequence do not make their own decisions.
There is nothing representative or democratic about US democracy, if we are being honest with ourselves.
We define successful collective representation as Congress either passing a popular bill or defeating an unpopular one. By this metric, 55% of these 103 issues were collective representational successes.
I don’t think you read, or maybe understood what this was about and the metrics used, but that right there disproves your assertion. This is simply about the comparison of public opinion polling on specific bills. 45% was the other side.
This is policy, not democracy. Democracy is a wider swathe of things where policy is one portion. Your assertion that we’ve never lived in. Democracy because of this is faulty.
America was never a democracy, all Trump did was pull the curtain back, the scene becomes the ob-scene. The people lament for the comfort of their illusions and parlor tricks.
Outta here with the nihilist BS.
You seem to be confused on the meaning of nihilism. Making observations are not nihilistic, we’ve only ever perceived reality through the lens of the elite, voted on candidates selected by the elite, our democratic choices nothing more than packaged products, marketed and sold to us. The advent of internet and social media have simultaneously broken the illusion and made it near impenetrable. Knowing truth is not a negation of truth itself, therefore it cannot be nihilism, I still hold onto meaning.
Your pedantic response to boot…
You have zero idea what you’re talking about. If you’re trying to play semantics by saying a Representative Democracy is not the same as a True Democracy, or that the Electoral System in the US is not what YOU would prefer. You are, in fact, still wrong.
You’re not making an observation, you’re asserting your own ill-informed position and slant on an idea you’ve heard elsewhere and have no idea what it means.
An oligarchy in democratic accroutements.
Okay, you’re clearly trying to level up the insanity of your comments with this pretentiousness. The italics…WOW 🤌
You’re either a second year Philosophy student, or just really like this which is…WOW.
Policy has only aligned with the will of the people 55% of the time. That’s not so bad, assuming we just ignore the observed and prevalent phenomenons of elite capture of public opinion and manufacturing of consent.
Of course, democracy exists when we discard the unsavory bits of reality, anything can be democracy when its meaning is an empty signifier.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
I’m not saying democracy can’t exist, it can and it should, but it’s only a fleeting notion in any society based on dominance hierarchy. Democracy does not exist without a well-informed public, a people plagued by ignorance do not have free will, and in consequence do not make their own decisions.
There is nothing representative or democratic about US democracy, if we are being honest with ourselves.
I don’t think you read, or maybe understood what this was about and the metrics used, but that right there disproves your assertion. This is simply about the comparison of public opinion polling on specific bills. 45% was the other side.
This is policy, not democracy. Democracy is a wider swathe of things where policy is one portion. Your assertion that we’ve never lived in. Democracy because of this is faulty.
Well at least you’ve shifted your argument from ad hominem to the fallacy of incomplete information. Bravo!
Truth is people don’t care. As long as their day to day is unaffected people don’t really care.
The concept of freedom and democracy was nothing more than the idea of an ethical order, or at least the perception of one.