Poll of the Day > Marjorie Taylor Greene

(+) Yeah! (+)

Can someone explain to me how this lady got into office? Will she ever go away?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/0/9/AADUYLAAEOzZ.jpg

I don't think "lady" is an appropriate term in this case. The MAGA Banshees, both of them, can go, and no one with more braincells than degrees Fahrenheit in the room would miss them.

Well I haven't done any research on the topic so I could be wrong, but there's a good chance she was just the only candidate with an (R) next to her name and millions of people vote solely on the letter next to someone's name.

^ This is true for some people, but the scary thing is that she appears to be what the base of the party wants: someone who lives to complain and air grievances. Problem solving skills quite literally do not appear to be required (and are probably a negative, actually, given that they require negotiation/concession skills).

Scary times.

I'm just mad she exists because lazy Internet political trolls just complain about her and refer to her as MTG without context. And I'm used to reading that as Magic: The Gathering, so now I'm constantly trying to figure out why people are upset about the political opinions of a card game.



Nall posted...

We have a lot of politicians that you have to question how they got voted in.

I sort of have that question about literally every politician in office today. But I also don't really question it at all, because I already know that the answer is "The system is broken, and people are stupid".

ParanoidObsessive posted...

"The system is broken, and people are stupid".

The system? Maybe, maybe not - I don't see any clearly better option. It's more that society is broken.

I was watching Idiocracy yesterday and it hits so close to home that it's hard to laugh at.

wpot posted...

The system? Maybe, maybe not - I don't see any clearly better option.

The system is very much broken.

Though there's an argument to be made that the system is broken because people are stupid, thus making it redundant.

There's also an argument to be made that the system was deliberately designed to be broken to minimize the influence of stupid people, so depending on how you look at it that might be a positive. But stupid people have subverted the original intent so we're back to it being a negative.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The system is very much broken.

It's not working well, no, but I fear this rhetoric. There are many WORSE systems than our current system and I fear those who seem to want to throw it out with the thought that 'anything is better than this'. That is decidedly not true.

The problem as I see it is that modern society has little purpose (historically survival or defeating a foe) or shared values (historically religion). Without either of those were stuck in a cycle of decline regardless of our political system, honestly. If we somehow end up in an inspired dictatorship (Augustus Caesar style) that would be better for a while, I suppose, but dictatorships are not going to have a better end result than democracy. (See subsequent Roman history)

People aren't stupider than they used to be (Idiocracy be damned)...it's a question of motivation and values.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/2/AAQwHjAAEO2G.jpg

Apparently there are a lot of morons in a particular part of Georgia.

Never heard anyone mention her outside of gamefaqs, but now I can't even abbreviate some of my favorite things anymore because people assume I'm talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Politics ruin everything.

She's real dumb, yo

People love that shit

She is a representative, it's voted on by district not an entire state. It's how incredibly awful people like them come to represent incredibly awful districts.

Proof against government intelligence

the 'system' never quashed elements of US historical revisionism that empowered the losing side of the civil war. they've been coddled since the day they lost. tbh I think this has a lot to do with the present day USA.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


IIRC, she wasn't voted in... she ran unapposed

TomNook posted...

Never heard anyone mention her outside of gamefaqs, but now I can't even abbreviate some of my favorite things anymore because people assume I'm talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Politics ruin everything.

I know MTG used to mean Magic The Gathering, but didn't think AOC ever was used for anything except Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC posted...

I know MTG used to mean Magic The Gathering, but didn't think AOC ever was used for anything except Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

Age of Cigmar

XD

Blame the people in her district and political tribalism. Even if they didn't want to vote for her specifically, they did because she was either the only Republican or the one most likely to win.

Lokarin posted...

IIRC, she wasn't voted in... she ran unapposed

Your memory is wrong. The republican primaries in her district had 9/6 candidates in '20/'22 that she won ('20 took a runoff as no one got majority) and then went on to win against the democratic candidate in the general election.

GGuirao13 posted...

Blame the people in her district and political tribalism. Even if they didn't want to vote for her specifically, they did because she was either the only Republican or the one most likely to win.

She was neither the only Republican nor the one most likely to win.

Her district is an extremely safe Republican seat, meaning that whoever won the primary was a shoe-in for election. She didn't take the seat uncontested, the Republicans took a look at who was on offer in the primary, pointed to MTG and said, "Yep, that one. That's the best we've got!"

Which says a lot, really...

DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC posted...

but didn't think AOC ever was used for anything except Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Age of Consent?

Democracy would be much better off if we only allowed democrats to participate. There should be laws against letting uneducated people vote.

wpot posted...

It's not working well, no, but I fear this rhetoric. There are many WORSE systems than our current system and I fear those who seem to want to throw it out with the thought that 'anything is better than this'. That is decidedly not true.

I'd agree - I'm the one who was saying "Not all change is for the better" years ago.

But the problem is, you run the risk of falling into a fallacy of two extremes (aka the "False Dilemma"). The counter to "Not all change is good" isn't "Never change anything because you might make it worse". It's "If you're going to change things, make sure you change them for the better."

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But if it is broke, you should probably consider fixing it. And not just leave it broke forever because you're afraid of breaking it worse.

And speaking of the fallacy of two extremes...



wpot posted...

If we somehow end up in an inspired dictatorship (Augustus Caesar style) that would be better for a while, I suppose, but dictatorships are not going to have a better end result than democracy. (See subsequent Roman history)

"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 here is that when I say the system is broken, I don't necessarily mean that democracy is broken, and therefore the only solution is to do away with voting entirely. The main problem with the current system (and to be fair, I'm mostly talking about the US) is that the two-party system encourages polarization and radicalization of positions (something exacerbated by how the Internet handles data and how people engage with it), while deliberately crippling the ability of third-party candidates to get elected. In turn, this encourages representatives to vote along party lines rather than according to the dictates of their own beliefs or the expectations of their constituency. And makes it extremely difficult for any voter to choose a candidate that accurately reflects all of their values without being forced to compromise at least some of their principles. The Simpsons was literally making fun of this 30 years ago, and it's only gotten worse since then.

Simultaneously, the phenomenon of "career politicians" actively discourages people in office from ever actually improving anything - as they are essentially rewarded for pushing agendas that merely appear viable (but require little to no effort to implement) over solutions that actually solve problems (but require significant effort or sacrifice). The job of a politician is essentially to get reelected. As long as you can spin your efforts in a way that guarantees winning the next election, you keep getting paid. If you take unpopular (but necessary) actions to actually fix a problem, you decrease your odds of getting reelected (and increase the odds of your opponent getting elected and reversing whatever it was you did anyway). Thus, there is a huge impetus to push PR-positive initiatives over substantive solutions. There is also strong motivation to implement minor cosmetic changes that give the illusion of "dealing with the problem" over systemic change (which would actually solve problems). This is where concepts like "throw money at the problem" and "slapping a Band-Aid on gangrene" come into play - a politician who can say "Yes, we allocated more funding to deal with the problem and implemented minor improvements" looks proactive enough to get reelected. It doesn't matter if none of that actually solves anything, because that's "the next guy's problem". This is also where the two-party system problem comes into play again - if you can blame your failure to actually achieve anything on "those other guys refusing to cooperate", it encourages voters to support you even more, regardless of your own actions or accomplishments (because you're creating an US verses THEM scenario which prioritizes emotion and loyalty over rationality and actual worth). Which is why most political arguments that involve someone saying "The problem is [X] Party" are themselves part of the problem - once you buy into that ideology, you have become an active supporter of the flawed system.

In short, the system as it currently exists is strongly motivated to maintain the status quo while making minor changes here and there to give the illusion of progress. Which is actually fine when the status quo is good, but is absolutely terrible when the status quo is bad or you're entering crisis scenarios (see also, climate change). Unfortunately, the system as it currently exists is also designed to make changing the system incredibly difficult (because the people with the power to change the system are also the people who benefit most from its current form).

No, Republicans aren't the problem. Democrats aren't the problem. The system is the problem.


That being said...

PO said this earlier...

The problem here is that when I say the system is broken, I don't necessarily mean that democracy is broken

As an aside, there is an argument that democracy is itself inherently and fatally flawed - which is why we don't live in a pure democracy, as much as a representative democracy that is meant to minimize the injustices of the masses. "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

"The Tyranny of the Majority" is a concept that exists for a reason. We tend to implicitly accept the idea that the largest group shouldn't be allowed to simply inflict all of their expectations and principles onto everyone else against their will, but the freedoms of smaller groups should be respected and maintained even if they conflict with the much larger majority. In a pure democracy, where "The People" voted on every issue directly, the minority on every issue would be utterly fucked. Hence, the purpose of representatives (in theory, anyway) is to take into account the wishes of the majority while still respecting the rights of the minority, and attempting to find a balance that does the maximum good for the maximum number while doing minimum harm. But as history shows us, this doesn't always work as intended.

The other major problem with the average democracy is that it requires an informed and educated voter base to function properly - and I'd argue at the moment the majority of the voter base is neither of those things.

Which leads us to...


wpot posted...

People aren't stupider than they used to be (Idiocracy be damned)

Based on years of life experience, I tend to strongly disagree with this.

Though if anything, the problem here is information overload. While people today might not be less intelligent overall, the signal-to-noise ratio in the average person's brain may be significantly worse, as the constant stream of data and experience bombarding us on a regular basis isn't necessarily useful information. People may consider themselves more informed, but most people lack the ability to determine whether or not the information they're internalizing is in any way accurate or meaningful.

The average voter has a job, a family, social commitments - what they don't have is the time to spend hundreds of hours research every issue in-depth. So they're forced to rely on news media to condense issues into easily digested bites. But in an era of clickbait-driven news sources and agenda-influenced social media, there's no guarantee that any interpretation of the issues is even factual. Or that it attempts to present an even-handed analysis of information rather than heavily manipulating data to push one viewpoint over another.

So you're ultimately left with a voter base that is deciding world-shaping issues based on incredibly shallow understanding at best, or outright misunderstanding at worst. And that's in cases where voters are voting with their heads at all, rather than just emotionally knee-jerk voting issues with no understanding or voting along party lines out of team loyalty.

Is every voter an idiot? No. But there are way too many who are. Or who are at least voting for flawed reasons.

(And I guarantee someone read the above and said to themselves "Yeah, those people who vote for [insert Party here] really are idiots!" Which takes us back to the earlier point about tribalism and "team loyalty" itself being incredibly ignorant.)

Safe red district and ran unopposed because her troglodyte followers were sending death threats to her opponent so he withdrew.

a lot of people really like the "common man/woman" in politics but the fact is, while your average politician ain't too bright, the "average man" is significantly dumber. And with Greene, it's apparent.

take one look at her face.

I call Wang!

which explains how angry she always is. She really just hates herself.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Based on years of life experience, I tend to strongly disagree with this.

People certainly SEEM stupider than they used to, but I still say it's society (and the internet). There used to be expectations of citizens that you would remain informed, act 'appropriately', and work towards some common good. There were, of course, significant downsides to that which effectively marginalized people who didn't fit in, but the upsides were a strong social fabric/purpose for the majority that did fit in.

Today people are just as intelligent as individuals, but there's little real pressure to apply that intelligence towards remaining informed or working together for causes. On the contrary, there's a lot of pressure to doubt official narratives and "think for yourself" (along with a ton more misinformation). A large chunk of society has NEVER been well-qualified to "think for themselves", although it wasn't as large of a problem prior to the internet when there were only a few relatively mainstream news sources. That's a much bigger problem now. The most emotional arguments are those that are winning majorities: not logical arguments. Thus MTG.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

No, Republicans aren't the problem.

This just in people who want to violently overthrow the government aren't a problem!

What the actual fuck is going on? Why am I being targeted by constant moderations?

Her gerrymandered district has a lot of stupid people, to answer the question. And screw her name for looking like Magic: The Gathering.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

As an aside, there is an argument that democracy is itself inherently and fatally flawed - which is why we don't live in a pure democracy, as much as a representative democracy that is meant to minimize the injustices of the masses. "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

"The Tyranny of the Majority" is a concept that exists for a reason. We tend to implicitly accept the idea that the largest group shouldn't be allowed to simply inflict all of their expectations and principles onto everyone else against their will, but the freedoms of smaller groups should be respected and maintained even if they conflict with the much larger majority. In a pure democracy, where "The People" voted on every issue directly, the minority on every issue would be utterly fucked. Hence, the purpose of representatives (in theory, anyway) is to take into account the wishes of the majority while still respecting the rights of the minority, and attempting to find a balance that does the maximum good for the maximum number while doing minimum harm. But as history shows us, this doesn't always work as intended.

Disagree, sort of. Representatives aren't any more likely to respect minority rights than the general populace. To see this demonstrated in painful clarity, one need only look at the pre-Civil Rights-era United States. The rights of minorities were not only not considered, they were actively suppressed. Even when suffrage was extended to minorities, few would argue their rights were properly respected until the point was forced via protest and mass unrest. Representative democracy did nothing to solve that particular problem (a problem that, at least on some level, remains unsolved even today).

Democracy *does* have a built-in mechanism for respecting the minority, but it's got nothing to do with representatives. In a system where majority consensus has to be secured, the prudent politician will aim to get as close to 50% as possible without going too far over or, especially, under. That gives him the best use of resources available to him and maximizes his chances of election and getting his proposals passed.

To put it in a facile example, let's pretend two candidates were running for office, but the only thing they were permitted to campaign on is how to divide up a payment of $1,000,000 that was slated to go to the 100,000 taxpayers that live in the city. Candidate A states that the fairest way to divide the money is to simply give everyone $10 and be done with it. But Candidate B suggests that, instead, he will give $20 to the 500,000 oldest people in the city, not including himself. The end result is that the 500,000 oldest people will vote for Candidate B, because even though they see benefit in Candidate A, they see *more* benefit from Candidate B - those 500,000, plus Candidate B's personal vote will be just enough to secure him the win.

Now Candidate B could, in theory, hedge his bets a little bit (what if someone he was giving money to died or was sick or otherwise rendered unable to vote?), but he doesn't want to thin out the money too much or else Candidate A could revise his own plan and snipe enough of Candidate B's votes away by concentrating more money in a smaller majority's hands.

Thing is, since it's in a politician's interest to appeal to as narrow a majority as possible, that makes those majorities inherently unstable and ensures you don't want to piss off the minority too much, because it doesn't take much for them to become the majority. For instance, in the above example, what happens at the next election when some of the voters who weren't amongst the 500,000 oldest the first time around have reached that status due to old people dying? They're going to remember what Candidate B did and probably won't be too likely to support him as a result.

Hence, at least in theory, democracy does have some natural defence mechanisms against a tyrannical majority - not great ones, but they exist.

Beyond that, I agree with most of your analysis. Democracy has many structural issues and not ones that are easily solved. One of the biggest problems, at least as I see it, is that politics, by definition, is a zero-sum game - if I'm running for office, I can only win if all my opponents lose. Unfortunately, in the world of party politics, that means that once I'm in office there is almost no incentive for me to help politicians of another party, even if doing so would be to the benefit of the country. Again, this is most vividly illustrated in democracies like the US, where the legislative and executive branches (and even different components of those branches) can be held by opposing parties. When Republicans are in opposition, not only is it not in their interests to help the Democrats in ensuring the country runs smoothly, it is actually in their interests to sabotage the country and make it run badly because it makes the Democrats look like incompetent administrators and improves the electability of Republican candidates next election; and the same is true when the parties switch.

On paper, elections are one of the most reasonable solutions to the age old problem of how you get rid of people in power after they have outlived their usefulness to the collective (given that most other ways involve copious amounts of violence and destruction). In practice, though, politicians have learned that rather than treating elections as being a referendum on their performance in office, it is far more effective to treat re-election as the entire reason to be in office in the first-place, which is completely backwards.

There's also the issue (admittedly not uncommon in methods of power succession) that the skills needed to win election are vastly different from the skills needed to administer a country and elections largely don't account for that. Thus, someone who is popular and charismatic but has terrible ideas generally outperforms someone who is highly competent but awkward.

darkknight109 posted...

Hence, at least in theory, democracy does have some natural defence mechanisms against a tyrannical majority - not great ones, but they exist.

The issue with American-style democracy is, of course, it supports the Tyranny of the Minority. This was intentional, so that change would be slow and deliberate, and force the majority to hear the voice of the minority. Not a bad idea in a fantasy world where every citizen is a philosopher-king, but pretty horrible in real-world practice. Now, the minority can paralyze the entire government into a standstill, just because (and often do).

If you're going to have a tyranny either way, at least the majority makes sense. The current system of letting the minority obstruct everything is wholesale bad.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

The issue with American-style democracy is, of course, it supports the Tyranny of the Minority. This was intentional, so that change would be slow and deliberate, and force the majority to hear the voice of the minority. Not a bad idea in a fantasy world where every citizen is a philosopher-king, but pretty horrible in real-world practice. Now, the minority can paralyze the entire government into a standstill, just because (and often do).

If you're going to have a tyranny either way, at least the majority makes sense. The current system of letting the minority obstruct everything is wholesale bad.

Well they also didn't intend to let every american vote. They only intended for the elite to vote. Now we are in a scenario where people vote their politicians based on how much they reject reality and pander to their post apocalyptic larp setting.

(Is this also going to get me randomly modded? I have no clue what will get me modded by the far right wing mod who is stalking me)

BlackScythe0 posted...

Well they also didn't intend to let every american vote. They only intended for the elite to vote. Now we are in a scenario where people vote their politicians based on how much they reject reality and pander to their post apocalyptic larp setting.

(Is this also going to get me randomly modded? I have no clue what will get me modded by the far right wing mod who is stalking me)

I didn't see your modded posts but maybe you said something too inflammatory, I know I get the most mods when I get the most heated and insulting. I like ya, but careful, it's better to take it down a notch as opposed to up a notch. Doubt anyone's stalking you, but you'll just get modded more if you keep railing on it.

Nah man I objected to PO saying the conservative party of the us isn't a problem and was told "don't generalize millions of people" I didn't even say anything offensive. I just said something that was done and widely supported by the party.

BlackScythe0 posted...

Well they also didn't intend to let every american vote. They only intended for the elite to vote. Now we are in a scenario where people vote their politicians based on how much they reject reality and pander to their post apocalyptic larp setting.

(Is this also going to get me randomly modded? I have no clue what will get me modded by the far right wing mod who is stalking me)

The biggest flaw there wasn't believe only the elite should vote, but that elite = white, male, and owning land.

teddy241 posted...

Can someone explain to me how this lady got into office? Will she ever go away?

Funny, that's exactly what people have been saying about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for years.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Congress in a nutshell.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm just mad she exists because lazy Internet political trolls just complain about her and refer to her as MTG without context. And I'm used to reading that as Magic: The Gathering, so now I'm constantly trying to figure out why people are upset about the political opinions of a card game.

Ditto for AOC and AOC.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I sort of have that question about literally every politician in office today. But I also don't really question it at all, because I already know that the answer is "The system is broken, and people are stupid".

I think it can just be summed up with people are stupid, although a broken system -- which killed America's schools around the 60s or 70s when far-left policies and practices started to hit them -- are a large reason why people are stupid today.

darkknight109 posted...

She was neither the only Republican nor the one most likely to win.

Her district is an extremely safe Republican seat, meaning that whoever won the primary was a shoe-in for election. She didn't take the seat uncontested, the Republicans took a look at who was on offer in the primary, pointed to MTG and said, "Yep, that one. That's the best we've got!"

Which says a lot, really...

It's why a lot of far-flung idealogues on both sides get in. And many of the voters don't necessarily support those extreme ideologies, they're just hoping to push things along in a certain direction and sick of moderates making concessions.

...so, to be fair, maybe it is the broken system rather than just public idiocy.

Leave it to Zeus to attack AOC for no reason. AOC has never blamed wildfires on jewish space lasers.

Zeus has slipped up in the past and claimed to have the hots for AOC.

Which probably means his obsessive hatred just stems from the bitter realization that she wouldn't give him the time of day.

BlackScythe0 posted...

Leave it to Zeus to attack AOC for no reason. AOC has never blamed wildfires on jewish space lasers.

"The left and right say equally stupid things! Sure, MTG blamed Jewish space lasers for forest fires, but AOC suggested that maybe we should shift the tax burden to people that can actually afford it! Both sides!"

Count_Drachma posted...

Funny, that's exactly what people have been saying about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for years.

Congress in a nutshell.

Ditto for AOC and AOC.

I think it can just be summed up with people are stupid, although a broken system -- which killed America's schools around the 60s or 70s when far-left policies and practices started to hit them -- are a large reason why people are stupid today.

It's why a lot of far-flung idealogues on both sides get in. And many of the voters don't necessarily support those extreme ideologies, they're just hoping to push things along in a certain direction and sick of moderates making concessions.

...so, to be fair, maybe it is the broken system rather than just public idiocy.

Who's the party that's trying to ban books again? Hint: it's not the "far-left"

Count_Drachma posted...

I think it can just be summed up with people are stupid, although a broken system -- which killed America's schools around the 60s or 70s when far-left policies and practices started to hit them -- are a large reason why people are stupid today.

Oh fuck off. It's the far-right who've always been cutting education, you dingus.

I wonder what he thinks about the schools trying to reinstate physical punishment. Must be an extreme-left psi-op.

Zeus probably just watches Jimmy Dore every day.

chelle posted...

I wonder what he thinks about the schools trying to reinstate physical punishment. Must be an extreme-left psi-op.

Chelle sighting