Elective democracy exposed for the ailing old leper it is

[waauw]

By my count, that brings us up to 6 posters throwing out ad hominem and red herrings in their desperate attempts to avoid talking about the issues.

mrs: 'elective democracy is flawed and its consequences have undermined national development and stability in many nations'
CIA trollbots: 'You are wrong because in China everyone uses chopsticks!'

mrs - 6, trollbots - 0

People would react the way you want them, but I'm pretty certain everybody has had this conversation with you at some point already.

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

The 8-18-1800 rule of organising meetings:

If you have to solve a problem or make a decision, invite no more than 8 people. If you have more participants, you may receive so much conflicting input that it’s difficult to deal with the problem or make the decision at hand.

If you want to brainstorm, then you can go as high as 18 people.

Ifthe purpose of the meeting is for you to provide updates, invite however many people need to receive the updates. However, if everyone attending the meeting will be providing updates, limit the number of participants to no more than 18.

If the purpose of the meeting is for you to rally the troops, go for 1,800 — or more!

And then we have democractic governments who break these rules on a daily basis and wonder why nothing ever happens.

The issue has nothing to do with elective democracy MrsWDK, the issue is with the structuring of these governments. Gone are the days of small meetings and fast decisions, everything is broadcast live across the globe, so no progress is ever made.

[DoomYoshi]

By my count, that brings us up to 6 posters throwing out ad hominem and red herrings in their desperate attempts to avoid talking about the issues.

mrs: 'elective democracy is flawed and its consequences have undermined national development and stability in many nations'
CIA trollbots: 'You are wrong because in China everyone uses chopsticks!'

mrs - 6, trollbots - 0

You are totally discounting the great successes of elective democracy, like July 31, 1932, November 6, 1932 and March 5, 1933.

[tkr4lf]

In other words, given the state most of the Western world has got itself into you cannot possibly refute what I am saying.

lol I'm not trying to refute what you're saying. I honestly don't give a shit if China becomes the next big superpower or fades away into nothingness. I just think it's funny that you're so gung-ho about China. You poor, sad, confused little English boy pretending to be a hot, sexy, sleek Chinese diva. It's ok, I sometimes wish I were a hot sexy Asian chick too. It'd be nice to not have to buy my own drinks when I go to the bar.

[mrswdk]

This thread, like many of my other threads, had nothing to do with China until the trollbots threw China into the discussion for some smoke and mirrors. ^0^

[tkr4lf]

lolwut?

You brought up China in your first post!

[tzor]

This thread, like many of my other threads, had nothing to do with China until the trollbots threw China into the discussion for some smoke and mirrors. ^0^

From your first post.

Meanwhile, China continues to grow at around 7% per year, is stable, and will soon have ownership of the house you live in and the roads you drive on.

Which is nothing but a roll on the floor funny moment. China is smoke and mirrors. Besides why would China ever want MY HOUSE, when it has whole cities it built (in order to generate the illusion of a robust economy) that remain completely unoccupied. Yes, Brexit will not impact China significantly. But the structural problems within China are clear and obvious to the casual observer. The first to fall will be the Yuan Renminbi, which can no longer artificially control as it once could. China shows commitment to renminbi stability with currency fix (Please click on link. FT does not allow Cut and Paste of articles (dipshit Brit news media)). The Wall Street Journal's article, ‘Brexit’ and China: Currency Calculus Just Got More Complicated I can quote, so I will.

On first blush, Chinese markets have gotten through the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union relatively unscathed. But “Brexit” will eventually put Beijing to the test.

But more likely, whatever the cause of the dollar strength, a weakening yuan makes it harder for China to stem capital flight. Between January and May, at least $175 billion flowed out, according to Goldman Sachs. This is probably understated because Beijing has let Chinese banks absorb some of the outflows by raising limits on short currency positions, among other capital controls.

Brexit hasn’t sparked panic in China, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have an impact.

[Metsfanmax]

This thread, like many of my other threads, had nothing to do with China until the trollbots threw China into the discussion for some smoke and mirrors. ^0^

Of course it has to do with China -- it really only make sense to describe the failings of one political system in terms of others. Democracy can't fairly be described as failing if it's not doing any worse than other systems... so you have to invoke China to even attempt to make your point about democracy.

[DoomYoshi]

The new world order is great.

http://lithub.com/modern-china-is-so-crazy-it-needs-a-new-literary-genre/

There is a major anti-corruption campaign underway in China as I speak, and all the examples I am about to give were made public by the official Chinese media. In China, corrupt officials like to keep huge amounts of cash in their homes. In the past, investigators might find a stash of one million or ten million, but these days such an amount would be nothing. Early in 2015, a department head at the National Development and Reform Commission was investigated for corruption. In his apartment they found more cash than they could count by hand. They got currency-counting machines so they could zip right through the counting, but they burned out four of the machines before they got a final tally, which was more than 200 million Renminbi, which is about 31 million US dollars.

Second example. Guo Boxiong is a retired general in the People’s Liberation Army. When Guo was investigated for corruption, they found so much cash in his home that they couldn’t even try to count it with a currency-counting machine. They had to weigh it by the ton. They needed a truck to haul it all away.

Guo was a very high-ranking military official, but my next example of somebody amassing enough ill-gotten cash to fill a truck involves a man who was just a low-ranking, very ordinary government official. When this guy was on the run he pretended to be a farmer going to market with a truck load of vegetables. When inspectors pulled back the canvas cover over the back of his truck, they didn’t find cabbage, they found millions in cash. All this cash comes out of the collection plate that is passed among the congregation of ordinary people who come to worship at the altar of power. The glint from all the gold paid in bribes sheds some light on China’s very peculiar reality.

There is nothing you can’t accomplish if you hold power. A deputy chief justice in the Hebei provincial supreme court met a sudden, unfortunate end in a traffic accident. Four women came forward to argue over his corpse. All four were legally married to the late deputy chief justice; he had secured for himself four different marriage licenses, all perfectly legal. This had been going on for many years, but not one of the four women knew of the others’ existence. How had he managed to keep the fact that he had four wives a secret? I write fiction, and I tell you truthfully, I can’t imagine how this could be done. This man was one of the top judicial officers in a provincial supreme court, but he treated the law like a joke.

When events occur that exceed our imagination, the world can start to seem unreal. The most shocking tale is, of course, that of Wang Lijun. In 2012, Wang Lijun was the vice-mayor of Chongqing and head of the city’s public security bureau. He ran into trouble with his colleague Bo Xilai, the secretary of the Chongqing branch of the Chinese Communist Party. Wang was a man of considerable power, but when he was on the run, he decided that the safest place for him in all of China was in the city of Chengdu in the consulate of the United States. What does it tell us when the director of the public security bureau in one of the most important municipalities in China decides that the safest place for him is inside a foreign consulate? And his decision did, in fact, save his life. Rumor has it that by the time Wang reached the US consulate in Chengdu, armed police from Chongqing had already followed him there and were preparing to storm the consulate and seize him. Wang reportedly had information that would incriminate Bo Xilai, and therefore the Chongqing armed police wanted to stop Wang and protect Bo. But the Sichuan provincial armed police, which was doing the bidding of the Party Central Committee, had also arrived in Chengdu. These entirely separate detachments of armed police were in a very tense standoff that seemed ready to become violent at any moment. Finally, the Sichuan provincial armed police escorted Wang Lijun away from the consulate. It turns out the Party Central Committee was after Bo Xilai, and it wanted Wang Lijun because he could incriminate Bo. Eventually Wang did testify against Bo. Wang was sentenced to 15 years in prison whereas Bo got life. This all really happened. It is not from a novel. It is not from a movie. But it is wilder than any movie.

[riskllama]

another failed trolling attempt by mrs...

[mrswdk]

@Mets And the Chinese system, to take one example, clearly is doing better than those systems. Economic growth offers stability, opportunity and security. That is why the people of China are not angrily supporting anyone who comes along promising to overthrow life as they know it, while European and North American people are.

Those are the real and tangible benefits of consistent economic growth. What is it you think European countries have that trumps that security and justifies the political turmoil and economic stagnation?

@DY those are all great examples of how hard the current leadership is fighting against corruption, now matter how powerful or fearsome the corrupt are

[Bernie Sanders]

Zzzzzzzzz

[mrswdk]

Right on cue, along comes a perfect example of the kind of self-destructive demagoguery that has flourished as people vent their rage at a system that has consistently failed them. Welcome to the discussion, Bern!

[riskllama]

mrswdk = CCPs' Ann Coulter

[TA1LGUNN3R]

mrswdk = CCPs' Ann Coulter

Mrs' has a man's face?

-TG

[tzor]

mrswdk = CCPs' Ann Coulter

If she's China's Ann Coulter, she needs to have sexual fantasies with a different politician each election cycle. Being fat, or having odd hair, seems to be a plus for her infatuations.

[DoomYoshi]

Right on cue, along comes a perfect example of the kind of self-destructive demagoguery that has flourished as people vent their rage at a system that has consistently failed them. Welcome to the discussion, Bern!

Funny enough, I heard that argument a few days ago by a clown:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/22/how-voters-personal-suffering-overtook-reason-and-brought-us-donald-trump/

However, he did get one point very right:

Yet we seem to be living in a country of personal injuries. In our political season this takes the form of a politics of grievance. The prestige of anger in our politics has grown disproportionately to anger’s justifications and exceeded them, so that voting appears to have become more an explosion of feeling than an expression of thought. (It is the voters, after all, to whom demagogues owe their ascendancy. The wisdom of crowds!) Valid grievances have turned poisonous and welcomed intolerance and untruth into their orbit. Outrage, a fine political emotion, has degenerated into resentment and hatred. A shocking number of Americans seem more conspiratorial than deliberative. The responsibilities of policy are overwhelmed in our debates by the wounds of collective memory, recent and ancient. All this does not signify the end of democracy, and democracy is not to be blamed for it. Democracy requires of us that we live by our nerves. But it also requires of us that we keep our heads; and if reason and respect are democratic qualities, then there is a decidedly undemocratic spirit loose in the land. We are punishing our politics with our pain, when the solutions for our pain may be found only in our politics.

[mrswdk]

Yawn. People have been writing the same articles about Brexit.

'A large section of the population have been totally shunned by the political establishment and left in hopeless circumstances, and now they are reacting by voting for people who want to turn the system on its head. They are really stupid and are only voting for these people because they are gullible - if they were smart, they would use their vote to perpetuate the system (which has completely abandoned them) and then someone will probably (but not really) eventually decide to start caring about them.'

Voters in the UK, USA, France etc. are trying to kick out a political class who don't even pretend to care about them, and the best that most commentators can come up with is 'these people are so stupid lawl we should just ignore them'.

[waauw]

Yawn. People have been writing the same articles about Brexit.

'A large section of the population have been totally shunned by the political establishment and left in hopeless circumstances, and now they are reacting by voting for people who want to turn the system on its head. They are really stupid and are only voting for these people because they are gullible - if they were smart, they would use their vote to perpetuate the system (which has completely abandoned them) and then someone will probably (but not really) eventually decide to start caring about them.'

Voters in the UK, USA, France etc. are trying to kick out a political class who don't even pretend to care about them, and the best that most commentators can come up with is 'these people are so stupid lawl we should just ignore them'.

Well it's what China does, so why not

[mrswdk]

Yawn. People have been writing the same articles about Brexit.

'A large section of the population have been totally shunned by the political establishment and left in hopeless circumstances, and now they are reacting by voting for people who want to turn the system on its head. They are really stupid and are only voting for these people because they are gullible - if they were smart, they would use their vote to perpetuate the system (which has completely abandoned them) and then someone will probably (but not really) eventually decide to start caring about them.'

Voters in the UK, USA, France etc. are trying to kick out a political class who don't even pretend to care about them, and the best that most commentators can come up with is 'these people are so stupid lawl we should just ignore them'.

Well it's what my hippy facebook protest group says China does, so why not

[mrswdk]

The people tried to speak in Austria, and according to the high court of Austria voting was manipulated and corrupted in such a way as to favor the establishment candidate:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36681475

The election will be re-run, and the people will have the leader they chose originally.

[waauw]

The people tried to speak in Austria, and according to the high court of Austria voting was manipulated and corrupted in such a way as to favor the establishment candidate:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36681475

The election will be re-run, and the people will have the leader they chose originally.

*yawn* Doesn't matter, Austrian presidents have as little power as their German counterparts.

[jonesthecurl]

The people tried to speak in Austria, and according to the high court of Austria voting was manipulated and corrupted in such a way as to favor the establishment candidate:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36681475

The election will be re-run, and the people will have the leader they chose originally.

So... in this case democracy is OK?

[Symmetry]

TEFL burnout?

[DoomYoshi]

To be fair, mrswdk isn't exactly bringing up a new argument.

Plato was not the only writer to see the Athenian electorate as an undisciplined, uneducated and fickle mob, swayed by unscrupulous demagogues; and he was not quite as wrong as one might hope. On one notorious occasion, the people assembled on one day and voted to put to death the entire male population of the town of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, as punishment for their revolt against Athenian imperial control. On the next day, they decided to have a second vote – the ancient equivalent of a second referendum – and opted instead for leniency. A desperate race ensued, as the ship taking news of the change of heart rowed furiously to catch up with the first one already dispatched. It just made it, and the victims were spared.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/power-to-the-people-2/