No Ami, you've failed to follow the conversation. He's in favor of protecting free speech in this case, and he (would be) against censorship in those cases. Both of those logically fit together and there's nothing surprising about that.
The name of the first one is "The First Amendment", the second is "Free Speech".
(Another exception is commercial speech. If you're paid to say it, you can't lie about how well the medicine will work. I wish this applied more to lobbyists.)
They're not a monopoly, but they are dominant. They can't absolutely abuse their market, but they can abuse it to an extent. Almost exactly to the extent that they are dominant. It's a smooth sliding scale. Just like any other business, plus there's the network effect. Their main product is their user-base. Users generate their content in a very direct way. Users generate the discussion. Users organize the structure of all the subbreddits. Users grade and filter the content. Users perform the bulk of the moderation. It's a community. Switching to one of those hundreds of alternatives, that only has a hundred users, is switching to something that HAS LITTLE CONTENT.
That said, it's a good thing to remind people that they can simply leave, and that there ARE alternatives. And I absolutely agree that any sort of regulation would have to play well with startups, garage-level alternatives, small businesses, open projects, and alternatives.....What do you think about a "small community" exception? Less than a million users and regulation doesn't give a shit.
Pointing out their intellectual dishonesty also works. If you don't let them speak, you can't call bullshit.
One of the problems with Reddit however, is that they make little fiefdoms with tiny tinpot tyrants that have the power to censor. Often you simply CAN'T debate these asshats... in their territory. At best you can stand to the side and mock them. There's a bubble effect, brigading is an issue, shills and foreign influence can hide as anonymous cowards, and as soon as AI can pass a Turing test well enough automation is going to turn every comment section into clusterfuck.....But the easy path of simply devolving into authoritarian fascists isn't the solution. We've tried that, it doesn't work.
A variety of anonymity levels, a variety of soft-censorship like downvoting, and the ability to fork subreddits into better and more open forums, I think, is a better idea. It's the Internet, try everything and see what works.
You think that's shocking? I always suspected the hate-mongers would have delusions when it came to who to suppress. I doesn't surprise me at all, I mean, these people have to have some mental issues to openly hate a group of people. I get that they see a trend and are quick to judge, but exposing such bullshit, I really didn't have faith that they would be internally consistent.
The shocker came when my own party started lashing out against free speech. Like they don't remember the hippies getting silenced and their war-protests getting shut down. Like they don't even remember the Occupy movement getting kicked out and dispersed. This used to be a cornerstone of a "good thing" that we upheld. A pillar of society we supported. But no, the moment that some people they don't like get a little uppity and flex their right to free speech suddenly it's a terrible thing. Something that can be abused. I've had to point out so many times that Free Speech is bigger than the first amendment, it's becoming a pain. Political parties change. I get that. I just don't like this change. So I'll do my damned best to remind people that if you don't support the minority's ability to speak out, you are an oppressive shit-stain on history.
Right, just "THE PHONE SYSTEM". I hear some people use it to, like, talk to people and stuff. Although I hear even with that massive farm out in Utah, they can still only store 3 days of traffic.
If they develop mentats that can remember a timestamp of every customer that walks in through the door for decades, then YES, that should be addressed.
But as for now, we should probably acknowledge that computers fundamentally change the nature of the game and keeping databases of everyone's movements turns what was a perfectly normal and more or less unabuseable tidbit of knowledge into the building block of a dystopian nightmare.
AND, remember, this bill is NOT about what people remember or what databases companies have. It's about them SELLING that information. Otherwise Netflix couldn't suggest movies based on your browsing history, and Amazon could keep track of your purchase history. So you can shove your strawman right up your ass.
When you're the minority party in congress you can make a bunch of "good effort" bills that sound great to the voting masses but have no prayer of passing so as to not anger your donors.
Both sides do it. I'm honestly not sure why we even let minority parties propose bills when the answer is just going to be "haha, no." Even if it was a damn good bill that everyone agreed on, they'd still block it simply so they could propose it themselves. Passing a bill is a good metric on your record. Hell, remember how much they fought over RomneyCare? They'd even fight it on the principle that the other side proposed it.
Customer Online Notification for Stopping Edge-provider Network Transgressions (CONSENT) Act
Initially I balked at the introduction of a new bullshit term like "edge-provider", but that's a mighty fine acronym.
And why do online services get specific punishment? Why not apply this to grocery stores? I don't want HyVee telling anyone I buy 10lbs vats of mayonnaise. (don't judge me).
How about we extend "Browsing history" to the real world. I don't think we want companies tracking and who entered their store and what they looked at. The age of ubiquitous cameras, face-recognition, and customer databases is upon us. With a high enough resolution camera, they could even track where your eyeballs are pointed.
Do you want a list of everyone who ever entered a gun store? Do you want to see who shops at the thrift-mart AND the... gucci-emporium? Do you want your health insurance provider to know how often you stop at McDonalds?
If you're going to squawk at Facebook abusing "customer" data, you might as well take a closer look at the potential abuse of everyone else's databases.
No dude, the first one was in response to someone just bashing you whole-sale. I thought to myself, "Well that's hypocritical, if we just block out people and don't give them a chance we're not really any better than they are for advocating censorship. So I actually read through your post and.... yep, insidious trolling.
The next two I just ran across browsing, but having put in some effort to identify your flavor of bullshit, it was worth pointing it out to the group. See, toxic people don't just post blatantly obvious bullshit, they use a shmorgas board of tactics to deflect, confuse, and subvert conversations. Identifying just how you're being a troll is a community service.
I really don't want to know just how many posts you have here, named or anonymous. At some point the sheer volume is itself a feature of trolling. And responding is just fueling that. I gave you a chance, but it's time you went into the ignore bucket.
(Are you the sort of idiot to write a script for 3 posts? As a parting gift, this sort of hyperbole is why everyone considers you a troll. )
If you can't physically go there, how about the cheaper alternative of... watching it on youtube? OH LOOK!
By and far, phones and the Internet as a whole is a quick, easy, and CHEAP form of entertainment. If you've got the luxury of being able to afford a month-long trip abroad, hey, great for you. That sounds fantastic. Meanwhile, most of us are taking a couple minute break from our responsibilities and dicking around online for a sliver of entertainment, interaction, or other stimuli.
If THAT bores you look up at night at the Universe.
I get that. I too enjoy cosmology. Thinking about Drake's equation, the great filter, and just how ungodly BIG it all is. It's a really nice night to lay out next to a campire and watch the milkyway.
But these kids aren't on vacation at a campsite. If they were to follow your advice they'd squish up next to a window and look kilter at a black sky washed-out by streetlights. They can't see the universe. They can't see the milky way. They can barely see stars. Whee. Blackness.
And if they did manage to get away from it all and go enjoy some solitude.... You wouldn't see them do that. You can only observe people who are probably sick of having to put up with you observing them.
The alternative is that teens are forever sucked into their devices like semi-lobotomized digital zombies. Oh look, they're bored of that. HURRZAH! We get some good news and you old crotchety bastards just have to find some way to complain about it.
Well, we don't want people staging murderous lynch mobs and organizing group murders. That.... used to be a problem and now it's illegal. And generally it's a "bad thing" with no real merit that I can think of. But go on, lay out some justification for why we should be allowed to publicly encourage a mob to go murder someone specific at a specific time and place. Break me out of this horrible groupthink feedback loop. I'm all ears.
The classic boogeyman would be child pornography. You'll have a tough time defending that one.
And then there's copyright. Personally, think our intellectual property right laws are laughably out of date and largely bogus. But artists gotta eat. Currently, they want you to pay artists before you use their songs in your videos. On account of them owning it. and all that jazz.
There's state secrets and such. I don't think the DoD or Youtube would be cool with someone walking through the design documents and blueprints of the F-22's radar system. Like child pornography, this goes above and beyond censorship, simply possessing this information is criminal. But by extension, sharing it would likewise be illegal.
If not censoring speech is a good idea for governments
Reading comprehension dude, all of this IS the government censoring people, and compelling youtube to enforce the laws which limit free speech. And, I think all of the above are reasonable. FURTHERMORE, I don't think youtube should be censoring above and beyond what's legally required. If you thought I was arguing the other direction, read it again.
(Oh, there's also "commercial speech". Like advertising and lobbying. You can't pay people to just say anything you want. If you're selling drugs, that COMPELS speech listing it's side-effects. I'm ok with that, despite how silly it makes some things.)
Things she rants about that could be from either:
* Censorship (although you probably see complaints more often from the right)
When the fuck did that happen? Does no one remember the pseudo brown-shirts dragging away war-protesters? Does no one remember the ACTUAL brown-shirts? How about the cops evicting the Occupy movement and forcefully dispersing them? Is that not censorship? Is this not a concept that liberals hold close to their heart? Because if this changed somewhere along the line, I've got some learnitude to impart to some kids skulls with a clue-by-four.
Yes her site is basically a collection of Reddit conspiracy theories.
But:
"It's a common narrative even on Slashdot. It seems like the internet breeds this kind of warped, paranoid world view."
That's the part we can deny. Conflating your two statements and assuming that kielistic is talking about the first when he's talking about the second is the sort of weaselly argumentative bullshit that you get downvoted for.
This is what he said: "That however doesn't mean that general conservative speech or even centrist speech simply debating the far left (!!!) isn't being demeed "nazi talk" by bloody lunatics lately and censored."
You turned that somehow into "a vast leftist conspiracy against conservatives ". That's hyperbole, flamebait, partisanship, and generally being a douchbag.
When you really should have just cast insults about his promiscuous mother, chided him for misspelling "deemed", and pointed out that cherry picking (very real) results can be countered by cherry picking a few SJW types that got themselves censored. As is proper etiquette on the Internet. And you use the term "leftist", even when he called it "the left", so I'm pretty sure you listen to Rush and that crowd, which might explain the brain damage.
And actually, there are far more popular right wing channels on YouTube than left leaning ones.
OMG! That must mean there's a VAST RIGHTIST CONSPIRACY AGAINST LIBERAL!?!?! Get the fucking torches and pitchforks!
Ha, and you're comparing.... "popular right wing" and "left-leaning"?....Do these terms just no longer mean anything to you?
They make out that the world is against them, but actually they thrive on this fake outrage.
That's just a typical trait of wingnuts in general. And to an extent, yeah, the world DOES dislike wingnuts. That's why the term is an insult.
Hey AmiMoJo, you've pulled some pretty shitty stuff here in the past, but as someone that believes in freedom of speech I'm not one to simply write off everything you have to say.
1) Calling it "brigading" is flamebait and... is simply writing off opposing views. You've earned your downvotes right there as much as this crazy nutcase earned her demonotization.
2) You've accurately described her path to maddness.
3) The joy of the Internet is that it's broad enough and deep enough that any $CRAZY_IDEA is bound to have "taken hold on some parts of the Internet". It's almost universally true.
YouTube is part of a government system of oppression
Yeah, that's crazy. The government exerts SOME levels of censorship through Youtube (and everyone) but it's pretty damn reasonable.
and controls the public discourse,
This isn't crazy at all. As a major gatekeeper of public discourse and controlling the massive amounts of MONEY behind all that advertising, of course they have some control over public discourse.
and that people not wanting to see extreme stuff is just state censorship rather than personal choice,
Crazy.
But this is a straw man you've created to make people concerned about youtube censorship look crazy. There are real legitimate concerns about how Youtube censors and promotes content.
"Republic" only means there's some alternative to a king or emperor. It does not mean there's a representative democracy. You know how there's often political partisian strife and people argue over things? At one point the debate was "Should we have a king? Should the nation be his, with everything in it being his property?" Now, any sort of alternative is going to have the power a little bit more spread out that one guy, and to that effect it'll be a little more democratic. But an alternative system where 5 barons run the whole shindig would still qualify.
However, if enough people start to use a term to mean something other than it's original meaning, and do so for long enough, it gains that new meaning. It's a very "nice" system.
We are not in a fucking democracy,
Is that where you vote for the future with your penis? Because that's just called having kids. Other than some immigration, the next generation is still mostly dictated by who has kids./s
But overall we're still pretty democratic. No we're not a pure democracy, don't be silly. But if you really want to look for a silver lining to the current political clusterfuck, hey! it turns out that a motivated and fired up voter base CAN indeed have their long-shot political candidate succeed over the monetary and political establishment. Shocking, I know. And sadly they were "fired up" in part by foreign influence. And after this mess we likely won't have another political outsider in power for decades.
It's comforting to know that while we may have a clusterfuck on our hands with our political system in shambles, partisan conflict tearing the nation apart, clusterfucks of healthcare, retirement, and education... other nations have their own problems and are generally just as fucked up as we are.
China certainly had "The Bad Old Days" of dictators leading to starvation and cultural purging. I thought they were passed all that. They were growing like mad once they finally accepted capitalism. But with Winnie the Pooh now having a president-for-life position, it looks like the nation is starting to rot. And wow is it fast. To sustain this level of delusion that they're re-writing RECENT history... they'll simply have to silence not only the intellectuals who know better, but god-damn near anyone who looks outside their borders. Hopefully they won't force the intellectuals to the western farms. Again. If so, hey, there's a post-doc position waiting for you over here.
Slashdot Mirror
No Ami, you've failed to follow the conversation. He's in favor of protecting free speech in this case, and he (would be) against censorship in those cases. Both of those logically fit together and there's nothing surprising about that.
The name of the first one is "The First Amendment", the second is "Free Speech".
(Another exception is commercial speech. If you're paid to say it, you can't lie about how well the medicine will work. I wish this applied more to lobbyists.)
They're not a monopoly, but they are dominant. They can't absolutely abuse their market, but they can abuse it to an extent. Almost exactly to the extent that they are dominant. It's a smooth sliding scale. Just like any other business, plus there's the network effect. Their main product is their user-base. Users generate their content in a very direct way. Users generate the discussion. Users organize the structure of all the subbreddits. Users grade and filter the content. Users perform the bulk of the moderation. It's a community. Switching to one of those hundreds of alternatives, that only has a hundred users, is switching to something that HAS LITTLE CONTENT.
That said, it's a good thing to remind people that they can simply leave, and that there ARE alternatives. And I absolutely agree that any sort of regulation would have to play well with startups, garage-level alternatives, small businesses, open projects, and alternatives. ....What do you think about a "small community" exception? Less than a million users and regulation doesn't give a shit.
Or laugh at them like the clowns they are.
Pointing out their intellectual dishonesty also works. If you don't let them speak, you can't call bullshit.
One of the problems with Reddit however, is that they make little fiefdoms with tiny tinpot tyrants that have the power to censor. Often you simply CAN'T debate these asshats... in their territory. At best you can stand to the side and mock them. There's a bubble effect, brigading is an issue, shills and foreign influence can hide as anonymous cowards, and as soon as AI can pass a Turing test well enough automation is going to turn every comment section into clusterfuck. ....But the easy path of simply devolving into authoritarian fascists isn't the solution. We've tried that, it doesn't work.
A variety of anonymity levels, a variety of soft-censorship like downvoting, and the ability to fork subreddits into better and more open forums, I think, is a better idea. It's the Internet, try everything and see what works.
You think that's shocking? I always suspected the hate-mongers would have delusions when it came to who to suppress. I doesn't surprise me at all, I mean, these people have to have some mental issues to openly hate a group of people. I get that they see a trend and are quick to judge, but exposing such bullshit, I really didn't have faith that they would be internally consistent.
The shocker came when my own party started lashing out against free speech. Like they don't remember the hippies getting silenced and their war-protests getting shut down. Like they don't even remember the Occupy movement getting kicked out and dispersed. This used to be a cornerstone of a "good thing" that we upheld. A pillar of society we supported. But no, the moment that some people they don't like get a little uppity and flex their right to free speech suddenly it's a terrible thing. Something that can be abused. I've had to point out so many times that Free Speech is bigger than the first amendment, it's becoming a pain. Political parties change. I get that. I just don't like this change. So I'll do my damned best to remind people that if you don't support the minority's ability to speak out, you are an oppressive shit-stain on history.
Right, which is why the NSA doesn't care and none of this matters to them. Do try and keep up.
Right, just "THE PHONE SYSTEM". I hear some people use it to, like, talk to people and stuff. Although I hear even with that massive farm out in Utah, they can still only store 3 days of traffic.
CONSENT. The bill is an acronym. They needed an "E".
If they develop mentats that can remember a timestamp of every customer that walks in through the door for decades, then YES, that should be addressed.
But as for now, we should probably acknowledge that computers fundamentally change the nature of the game and keeping databases of everyone's movements turns what was a perfectly normal and more or less unabuseable tidbit of knowledge into the building block of a dystopian nightmare.
AND, remember, this bill is NOT about what people remember or what databases companies have. It's about them SELLING that information. Otherwise Netflix couldn't suggest movies based on your browsing history, and Amazon could keep track of your purchase history. So you can shove your strawman right up your ass.
When you're the minority party in congress you can make a bunch of "good effort" bills that sound great to the voting masses but have no prayer of passing so as to not anger your donors.
Both sides do it. I'm honestly not sure why we even let minority parties propose bills when the answer is just going to be "haha, no." Even if it was a damn good bill that everyone agreed on, they'd still block it simply so they could propose it themselves. Passing a bill is a good metric on your record. Hell, remember how much they fought over RomneyCare? They'd even fight it on the principle that the other side proposed it.
Customer Online Notification for Stopping Edge-provider Network Transgressions (CONSENT) Act
Initially I balked at the introduction of a new bullshit term like "edge-provider", but that's a mighty fine acronym.
And why do online services get specific punishment? Why not apply this to grocery stores? I don't want HyVee telling anyone I buy 10lbs vats of mayonnaise. (don't judge me).
How about we extend "Browsing history" to the real world. I don't think we want companies tracking and who entered their store and what they looked at. The age of ubiquitous cameras, face-recognition, and customer databases is upon us. With a high enough resolution camera, they could even track where your eyeballs are pointed.
Do you want a list of everyone who ever entered a gun store? Do you want to see who shops at the thrift-mart AND the ... gucci-emporium? Do you want your health insurance provider to know how often you stop at McDonalds?
If you're going to squawk at Facebook abusing "customer" data, you might as well take a closer look at the potential abuse of everyone else's databases.
No dude, the first one was in response to someone just bashing you whole-sale. I thought to myself, "Well that's hypocritical, if we just block out people and don't give them a chance we're not really any better than they are for advocating censorship. So I actually read through your post and.... yep, insidious trolling.
The next two I just ran across browsing, but having put in some effort to identify your flavor of bullshit, it was worth pointing it out to the group. See, toxic people don't just post blatantly obvious bullshit, they use a shmorgas board of tactics to deflect, confuse, and subvert conversations. Identifying just how you're being a troll is a community service.
I really don't want to know just how many posts you have here, named or anonymous. At some point the sheer volume is itself a feature of trolling. And responding is just fueling that. I gave you a chance, but it's time you went into the ignore bucket.
(Are you the sort of idiot to write a script for 3 posts? As a parting gift, this sort of hyperbole is why everyone considers you a troll. )
There is a whole planet to explore.
Only if you can afford it.
If you can't physically go there, how about the cheaper alternative of... watching it on youtube? OH LOOK!
By and far, phones and the Internet as a whole is a quick, easy, and CHEAP form of entertainment. If you've got the luxury of being able to afford a month-long trip abroad, hey, great for you. That sounds fantastic. Meanwhile, most of us are taking a couple minute break from our responsibilities and dicking around online for a sliver of entertainment, interaction, or other stimuli.
If THAT bores you look up at night at the Universe.
I get that. I too enjoy cosmology. Thinking about Drake's equation, the great filter, and just how ungodly BIG it all is. It's a really nice night to lay out next to a campire and watch the milkyway.
But these kids aren't on vacation at a campsite. If they were to follow your advice they'd squish up next to a window and look kilter at a black sky washed-out by streetlights. They can't see the universe. They can't see the milky way. They can barely see stars. Whee. Blackness.
And if they did manage to get away from it all and go enjoy some solitude.... You wouldn't see them do that. You can only observe people who are probably sick of having to put up with you observing them.
Why you always gotta be such a god-damned downer?
The alternative is that teens are forever sucked into their devices like semi-lobotomized digital zombies. Oh look, they're bored of that. HURRZAH! We get some good news and you old crotchety bastards just have to find some way to complain about it.
"We'll help out with the legal aspect so developers don't have to worry about it. Trust us".
Microsoft lies, news at 11.
Boom. Mind blown. Brain matter all over the ceiling. Skull shrapnel everywhere.
Go on, dodge and weave. Spin it somehow that this one doesn't count. I'm sure you've got it in you.
Well, we don't want people staging murderous lynch mobs and organizing group murders. That.... used to be a problem and now it's illegal. And generally it's a "bad thing" with no real merit that I can think of. But go on, lay out some justification for why we should be allowed to publicly encourage a mob to go murder someone specific at a specific time and place. Break me out of this horrible groupthink feedback loop. I'm all ears.
The classic boogeyman would be child pornography. You'll have a tough time defending that one.
And then there's copyright. Personally, think our intellectual property right laws are laughably out of date and largely bogus. But artists gotta eat. Currently, they want you to pay artists before you use their songs in your videos. On account of them owning it. and all that jazz.
There's state secrets and such. I don't think the DoD or Youtube would be cool with someone walking through the design documents and blueprints of the F-22's radar system. Like child pornography, this goes above and beyond censorship, simply possessing this information is criminal. But by extension, sharing it would likewise be illegal.
If not censoring speech is a good idea for governments
Reading comprehension dude, all of this IS the government censoring people, and compelling youtube to enforce the laws which limit free speech. And, I think all of the above are reasonable. FURTHERMORE, I don't think youtube should be censoring above and beyond what's legally required. If you thought I was arguing the other direction, read it again.
(Oh, there's also "commercial speech". Like advertising and lobbying. You can't pay people to just say anything you want. If you're selling drugs, that COMPELS speech listing it's side-effects. I'm ok with that, despite how silly it makes some things.)
Things she rants about that could be from either:
* Censorship (although you probably see complaints more often from the right)
When the fuck did that happen? Does no one remember the pseudo brown-shirts dragging away war-protesters? Does no one remember the ACTUAL brown-shirts? How about the cops evicting the Occupy movement and forcefully dispersing them? Is that not censorship? Is this not a concept that liberals hold close to their heart? Because if this changed somewhere along the line, I've got some learnitude to impart to some kids skulls with a clue-by-four.
Your'e a bad person.
Yes her site is basically a collection of Reddit conspiracy theories.
But:
"It's a common narrative even on Slashdot. It seems like the internet breeds this kind of warped, paranoid world view."
That's the part we can deny. Conflating your two statements and assuming that kielistic is talking about the first when he's talking about the second is the sort of weaselly argumentative bullshit that you get downvoted for.
You're earning your downvotes.
This is what he said: "That however doesn't mean that general conservative speech or even centrist speech simply debating the far left (!!!) isn't being demeed "nazi talk" by bloody lunatics lately and censored."
You turned that somehow into "a vast leftist conspiracy against conservatives ". That's hyperbole, flamebait, partisanship, and generally being a douchbag.
When you really should have just cast insults about his promiscuous mother, chided him for misspelling "deemed", and pointed out that cherry picking (very real) results can be countered by cherry picking a few SJW types that got themselves censored. As is proper etiquette on the Internet. And you use the term "leftist", even when he called it "the left", so I'm pretty sure you listen to Rush and that crowd, which might explain the brain damage.
And actually, there are far more popular right wing channels on YouTube than left leaning ones.
OMG! That must mean there's a VAST RIGHTIST CONSPIRACY AGAINST LIBERAL!?!?! Get the fucking torches and pitchforks!
Ha, and you're comparing.... "popular right wing" and "left-leaning"? ....Do these terms just no longer mean anything to you?
They make out that the world is against them, but actually they thrive on this fake outrage.
That's just a typical trait of wingnuts in general. And to an extent, yeah, the world DOES dislike wingnuts. That's why the term is an insult.
Hey AmiMoJo, you've pulled some pretty shitty stuff here in the past, but as someone that believes in freedom of speech I'm not one to simply write off everything you have to say.
1) Calling it "brigading" is flamebait and... is simply writing off opposing views. You've earned your downvotes right there as much as this crazy nutcase earned her demonotization.
2) You've accurately described her path to maddness.
3) The joy of the Internet is that it's broad enough and deep enough that any $CRAZY_IDEA is bound to have "taken hold on some parts of the Internet". It's almost universally true.
YouTube is part of a government system of oppression
Yeah, that's crazy. The government exerts SOME levels of censorship through Youtube (and everyone) but it's pretty damn reasonable.
and controls the public discourse,
This isn't crazy at all. As a major gatekeeper of public discourse and controlling the massive amounts of MONEY behind all that advertising, of course they have some control over public discourse.
and that people not wanting to see extreme stuff is just state censorship rather than personal choice,
Crazy.
But this is a straw man you've created to make people concerned about youtube censorship look crazy. There are real legitimate concerns about how Youtube censors and promotes content.
"Republic" only means there's some alternative to a king or emperor. It does not mean there's a representative democracy. You know how there's often political partisian strife and people argue over things? At one point the debate was "Should we have a king? Should the nation be his, with everything in it being his property?" Now, any sort of alternative is going to have the power a little bit more spread out that one guy, and to that effect it'll be a little more democratic. But an alternative system where 5 barons run the whole shindig would still qualify.
However, if enough people start to use a term to mean something other than it's original meaning, and do so for long enough, it gains that new meaning. It's a very "nice" system.
We are not in a fucking democracy,
Is that where you vote for the future with your penis? Because that's just called having kids. Other than some immigration, the next generation is still mostly dictated by who has kids. /s
But overall we're still pretty democratic. No we're not a pure democracy, don't be silly. But if you really want to look for a silver lining to the current political clusterfuck, hey! it turns out that a motivated and fired up voter base CAN indeed have their long-shot political candidate succeed over the monetary and political establishment. Shocking, I know. And sadly they were "fired up" in part by foreign influence. And after this mess we likely won't have another political outsider in power for decades.
It's comforting to know that while we may have a clusterfuck on our hands with our political system in shambles, partisan conflict tearing the nation apart, clusterfucks of healthcare, retirement, and education... other nations have their own problems and are generally just as fucked up as we are.
China certainly had "The Bad Old Days" of dictators leading to starvation and cultural purging. I thought they were passed all that. They were growing like mad once they finally accepted capitalism. But with Winnie the Pooh now having a president-for-life position, it looks like the nation is starting to rot. And wow is it fast. To sustain this level of delusion that they're re-writing RECENT history... they'll simply have to silence not only the intellectuals who know better, but god-damn near anyone who looks outside their borders. Hopefully they won't force the intellectuals to the western farms. Again. If so, hey, there's a post-doc position waiting for you over here.
Or is this just all propaganda?
Yeah, she really does.
And I'd call bullshit on that claim. She's simply too late to the game.