We all know that the office of Vice President of the Once-United States is not worth a bucket of warm spit. But let’s just assume that J.D. Vance would actually have some influence if elected to that position. Here is a snippet of his views on the Ukraine and Taiwan: Russia Says ‘Let’s Be Realistic’ About Chances Of Trump Ending Ukraine War | ZeroHedge
Vance wants the US to wind down its support for Ukraine so it could focus more on building up in the Asia Pacific and arming Taiwan.
“The thing that we can control now is making it costly for [China] to invade Taiwan, and we’re not doing that because we’re sending all the damn weapons to Ukraine and not Taiwan,” he told the Times.
A voter who does not want thermonuclear war with Russia over the Ukraine would be happy to vote for Vance on that issue. But if the voter also does not want thermonuclear war with China over Taiwan, would voting for Vance still be a good idea?
If the only alternative to Vance is a Demoncrat who wants thermonuclear war with both Russia and China, does that voter really have a meaningful choice?
Unless “democracy” can be made more granular, giving voters a say on specific issues, it is merely an empty farce.
There are pros and cons to every political system and the reason why a country experiences success may have little to do with the type of political system in place, but rather with the synchronicity of events and the zeitgeist at the time…something along the lines of “nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come (and, conversely, nothing is as useless as an idea whose time has gone)”.
I don’t think he was selected for his possible influence on specific policy items. I think he represents continuity - for an elderly (hopefully) living President to be - in the dimension of willingness to state and defend positions for which he will be widely pilloried by the MSM (= the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party; we should be naming them for what they are all day every day). Trump correctly named them as “enemy of the people” That bears repetition in multiple apt variations. It is the truth!
Granular like a polis or city state in Athens before the Peloponnesian War lol?
Maybe we need to codify ostracism or the threat of it lol
Regarding Vance, JD is not a career politician, he has only been Senator for not even 2 years.
Trump trusts JD, he can’t worry about backstabbers like the first term.
JD’s personal story will be popular with voters in western PA and Michigan.
The most insane thing is that the Democrats have been pushing toward thermonuclear war while going out of their way to reduce our nuclear arsenal while increasing those of our enemies.
Walk softly and carry a big stick works. So does walk hard and carry a big stick. Walk hard and throw away your stick doesn’t.
Exactly! The Athenian citizens who died in the invasion of Sicily were the same people who voted for it. That is called taking responsibility!
Suppose we has a referendum in the US on the question: “Do you want to spend money we do not have promoting a war in the corrupt country of the Ukraine at the risk of facing total destruction in a thermonuclear war with Russia – Answer Yes or No”. And suppose a convincing absolute majority of citizens voted “Yes”. I for one would wait for the incoming missiles with equanimity, because we did this to ourselves of our own free wills. It was not imposed upon us by today’s distant unresponsive Political Class.
I mostly agree. There would be a peak in whatever metric is used to measure a political system. The political system difference between the peak and the next measurement that is lower than the peak will be insignificantly small.
By many measurements a neutral observer would conclude that China’s system is much better than the US’s system over the past 40 years. However, it is obvious that the outcomes are not simply based on China’s system with no regard to other actors.
A countries outcomes are very similar to one person’s life. It is the sum total of every decision they made as well as the random events both good and bad for which they had no control. The political system and the changes over time of that system are just part of the changes and often simply reflect the changes in a society.
Hate speech and the consequential loss of free speech is an illustration of your point. Germany’s Constitution, written by the British and Americans post WW2, makes hate speech verboten. Eighty years later in the US there is an infatuation with words are violence.
Post WW2, for Germany, the idea’s time had come. In recent years in the US, the idea’s time had come for a variety of reasons. Emphasis of things like fat shaming, is an idea that comes from suburbia where the biggest threat a high school student faces is being called names and therefore this is the biggest threat in the world in their minds. I doubt this idea spawned in the hood. Specifically, I believe it comes from suburban girls/women. On average the vast majority have not faced violence. Most boys have faced violence. Boys, in the right environment, understand the difference between someone making fun of your whatever and being taken down to the ground and being helpless.
