From the Guardian, here: Who will choose the next US president Excerpt: Which is not much different from the Communist control of radio/TV that allowed them to pitch (and keep) Communist doctrine in control of the nations that they inhabited. No difference whatsoever. A gullible people, sufficiently un- or insufficiently educated can be easily manipulated (not "controlled") by subtle media-messaging. Which, to our present dismay, is how Donald Dork got elected by the warped Electoral College mechanism in the US. The US, land of the "free"? No, not in a country with inadequate Civics-education* and manipulation of the Electoral College at the presidential level as well as (2) Gerrymandering at the state- and congressional voting-levels ... *The State of Civics Education (in America) - excerpt:
The BLM protesters would be in something like the Gulag now, the ones that hadn't been killed. Soviet Russia had no private property, and lacked what we think of as law. To someone in government, a contract was just something they could extort money from, or steal. The economy was so weak they couldn't let their people buy most foreign goods. The ruble was non-convertible, it could not be exchanged for foreign currency. It was a police state. If you wanted to travel, you might need express permission. In any case, you would hate the police checkpoints, where they would check your papers. Money would likely be needed before you could get going. You are talking about a serious problem. I agree with that. But there were huge differences.
I think it speaks volumes about an individual if they are getting their 'news' from facebook. I'm not bashing the site - having moved away from much of my family, I think its great to keep up with them, and friends, and their lives. But if I come upon a news article, the first thing I do is check its source and validity. Sadly, too many use it as their news source. That, and their TV news channel of choice/preference. We need to learn - and children should be taught - that not everything we see and read may be truthful or accurate. And that if we want to truth, we have to dig for it. It will not be spoon fed to us.
I can't disagree with anything above. Which is why Communist Russia was destined to fail. So, what? The government it has presently is no better - except for a select few who have hoarded all the riches that rightly belong to the Russian people as a whole. What they should have done, and did not do, is introduce gradually a European-style Social Democrat government and introduce a similar legal system. Most of all, to sell off privatized government-owned businesses and employ the money for internal reconstruction (schools, hospitals, cities) - instead of creating a bunch of billionaires who hightailed their money to London and other points westward. Russia has a long, long way to go before instituting a True Democracy the fruits of which helps all its people to develop lives worth living ... PS: No, neither is the above an alternative argument for American-style democracy which has its own set of profoundly unfair Income Disparity amongst its population!!!
I don't think that would have worked. Russia was still full of Russians. When we were sending lawyers to Russia, they had a lot of trouble getting people to understand Rule of Law. They don't have the traditions of governance we have. It just might have been possible if we had provided help as generously as we did after WW2. Bush actually proposed such a thing, but Republicans in Congress wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. There's another problem. The word capital is carefully hidden within capitalism. Historically, there is usually an ugly period where a pool of capital is created. Without a Marshall Plan level of aid, those billionaires are the guys who could finance more business. Putin disrupted the recovery of his country in a number of ways, that was one of them.
None of the above says that a Social Democracy cannot be established in Russia. That is, if the Russian people want it. And that's the problem. Putin is looking to get reelected to a lifetime job as president. And his chances seem good. If the Russians do that, then the oligarchs will run/ruin Russia for a good long time ...
If uneducated people can be so easily manipulated then why did the commies in Russia infiltrate the academia first?
I would - but then I'm not particularly keen on swapping idle political comments on Facebook. Twisting the news to provide a particular boost to a particular party is old-hat in America. And electing presidents (given the manner in which the Electoral College misjudges the actual popular-vote in the nation) thus does a great wrong because the manipulation no longer makes the vote genuinely "popular". Which is the Key Ingredient to any true election based upon the nation's popular-vote of its people. A country cannot have a justified honest popular-vote if the voting mechanism is putrefied - and it is therefore not a Real Democracy. Look, giving the total vote of any given state to the winner of the popular-vote means that the loser-votes are all dumped in the bin. They simply do not count! That is not how the majority of bonafide-democracies function today Show me any other major democracy on earth that does and you will have found a country that does not care in the least about a popular-vote vote. In fact, there are about ten-others that employ an electoral-college to decided the Head of state from Wikipedia here: Not quite in the same league, huh ... !
After the people in each state decide who they will support. The Supreme Court threw out the popular vote nullification laws, so Trump now has a clear path to win the Electoral College majority without any cumulative vote totals involved. https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/political_updates/prez_track_aug03 Trump is holding his popularity...
It is completely different. The large media companies are not controlled by government. They enjoy freedom of speech and freedom to manage their busiesses in any legal way they wish. They have competition which you will not find in a communist country. Nothing similar at all. Dead wrong. We have people in the U.S. that are every bit as intelligent as you are. Since the president is chosen constitutionally by the states and not the general public, it is as good a system as any. Your disagreement with a part of our constitution is noted. Your anti-Americanism is really becoming dreary. I hope you can inject some positivity into your life over time.
Funny how some claiming to have a higher knowledge of our country and system of government fail to grasp a such a basic fundamental.
If your mean the second graphic titled "Approval Index", then you've got that statement very wrong ...
