jmone
Well-known member
As a non-USA'er, this is the most balanced and objective summary I've heard. Thumbs up.
Leave the World Behind
- Thread starter ahalpert
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As a non-USA'er, this is the most balanced and objective summary I've heard. Thumbs up.
Ranked or preferential voting, and compulsory participation. Imagine if more than 90% of eligible people voted. If it is mandatory then you stop needing to energise your base by making them angry our outraged enough and just appeal to the center because that’s where the votes are.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
That might only be true if you also reform or circumvent primary elections. As long as the candidates you're voting for had to win a primary, they'll still be filtered by the base of the parties.
Did you see Leave the World Behind? Any opinion on it? Frankly, I thought there would more people on this forum who at a bare minimum appreciated its cinematography. Even if you don't think the unusual shot choices served the story, at least they were novel and interesting and well-executed!
alaskacameradude
Veteran
It's all good, honestly probably just hit me wrong because this is a conversation I've had a good bit recently.
People telling me that because I don't 'appreciate' the 'great art films' which they like, that I must not have
'artistic sensibilities'. Meanwhile I'm thinking 'Or we just like different kinds of movies....maybe that's it!'
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alaskacameradude
Veteran
Ah ha, you my man need to watch our doc. Because you see, there IS no more 'party' primaries. Instead, there is just one
big open primary. We had 15-20 candidates in our last national congressional election (which is the one we were following
for the film.) There were multiple 'R's, multiple 'D's and a bunch of Independents and third party candidates.
The top 4 vote getters in this 'open primary', regardless of party affiliation advance to the general election ballot.
In the general election, voters rank those candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets at least 50%
plus 1 of the vote, the candidate with the lowest amount of votes gets thrown out and the ballots for that candidate
now get reallocated according to those voter's 2nd choice. This continues until a candidate wins.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/31/politics/alaska-how-ranked-choice-voting-works/index.html
ahalpert
Major Contributor
Right but without ranked choice in the primary, the primary still advantages institutionalist candidates with an established base. So, if you're a member of a machine party with deep pockets, you're more likely to be able to finish in the top 4.
Why don't they do ranked choice in the primary? Or have no primary?
ahalpert
Major Contributor
Fair enough. I mean, I think that once people articulate the reasons why they like something I don't like then I can evaluate what's going on.
Like country music. Lots of people like it. Basically only the greatest hits appeal to me. I think it's partly because it speaks to cultural traditions that are alien to me.
Classical music or the films of Tarkovsky -- I believe they both have merit and I just don't have enough patience to enjoy them. (I never understood the pleasure of staring at those interminable close-ups in Tarkovsky...)
Ulysses by James Joyce... I was supposed to read that in college. We had a companion book explaining all its literary allusions that was larger than Ulysses itself. If deciphering allusions is your cup of tea, there may be no better book for you. I preferred Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
alaskacameradude
Veteran
I think the reason is there are so many candidates in the open primary. I misspoke in my above description.
We actually had 48 people running in the open primary here in Alaska. Santa Claus (he is a real guy, who
is a city council member of the town North Pole Alaska) was polling 4th in the last poll before the election.
His political views are all over the place. Tough to rank choice vote with that many candidates. I would say
that with that many people splitting the vote all over the place, the amount of work that you'd make for the
state Division of Elections would be immense. People don't understand what they must do here in Alaska, and the film
goes into that a good bit. We are talking about a state, which if it was put on top of the 'lower 48' would touch the Atlantic,
the Pacific, Canada, and Mexico. And like 90% of this state is not on a road system. Just to get ballots to every village is
a huge undertaking using a variety of conveyances (yes including dog sleds.) Never mind that the ballots must be done in
in 10 different languages. Then to ask them to tally all the votes for 48 candidates, do away with the last place finisher,
redistribute their votes and so on down the line would be insane. I was with the director on election night, filming as election
returns came in and I can tell you that the workers at the division of elections here in Alaska are functioning on
2 or 3 hours of sleep for the last bit of time (week maybe) around an election. There are places with no internet who must
hand tally all returns, take a snow machine to the closest place with a phone and call in their results. Alaska is a unique,
vast place and the challenges of just holding an election are far beyond what most people understand.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
well, you just sold me on watching the documentary
I had to look up Santa Claus the city council member... I see that "He changed his name to match the legendary character in 2005, to help bring awareness to his advocacy for children's health and welfare..." That's awesome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_(politician)
From what I know they don’t have primaries. Because the party itself chooses candidates. And if everyone is voting, then they can only win by appealing to all and getting an actual majority, not just those who can be bothered voting .
Haven’t seen it. I can’t believe we’re 10 pages in and talking Nazis.
Abe, you replied to my remark that good people are all around you by stating that only about 10-20% of them are actually concerned about behaving virtuously. When I asked you which group you thought you belonged to, you said the 10-20%. Although you didn't ask me, I would have stated that I belong in 80-90%, although I don't believe you are more virtuous than I. You went on to say you try to do the right thing when it suits your situation, have good intentions overall. For me, I don't smoke, I pay my taxes, tithe, volunteer, follow the rules, try to do what's right but occasionally exceed the speed limit even though I know this potentially endangers others. But the difference between us for the 10-20% and 80-90% groups is cognitive dissonance, the psychological consistency between the expectations of life and the existential reality of it. You claim to be a realist but in cognitive dissonance, you are the realist of your own reality. To reduce the dissonance, we either change the behavior, justify it, add new behaviors or cognitions, or deny them. One of the three cognitive biases in the dissonance theory is confirmation bias of which moral superiority is one. You claim not to be, but you gave a statistical percentage to a value judgment, to make a metaphor; only 10-20% think a glass can be half full.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
The party itself chooses candidates... hmm still sounds like an establishment filtration process. But I can see the benefits over our current system
This thread took a turn after post 86 on page 9 in which i made an analysis of the film's symbolism that referenced climate change, immigration, and the war on terror (all of which are super well-supported by the film). And you can imagine how it went from there. But anyway Aram and I really liked the movie even if everyone else on this thread hated it, and I highly recommend it.
alaskacameradude
Veteran
It's not quite that simple. I don't want to give away everything because those who hired me would probably not be happy but
the 'party' is not choosing the candidates. As a matter of fact 'the party' isn't very happy with one certain candidate here in
Alaska......so much so that they tried to 'primary' that candidate by running a more extreme candidate and beating the moderate
candidate out. The moderate candidate, instead of giving up ran a write in campaign......and won a seat as one of Alaska's two
senator's to DC. I think this is the first time that has ever happened at least in modern day. That is sort of part of the backstory
of this whole doc. Some candidates who run as a certain political party are NOT 'favored' by the party they are running as.....
ahalpert
Major Contributor
I think you're talking about Murkowski. But i believe she was the incumbent Senator when she was primaried, so she had some advantages and lots of name recognition going into the general election.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
I don't think we're operating within the same conceptual framework. I don't think that anyone is superior to anyone else, morally or otherwise. And I wouldn't call myself virtuous. I chose my words carefully -- I said only 10-20% of people are actually concerned with behaving virtuously, by which I meant doing the right thing for its own sake. I wouldn't call myself virtuous unless maybe I always did the right thing. But I don't really believe in labeling people anyway, except as a kind of shorthand for discussion. I only label actions. Everybody does good things and bad things. I don't think I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance because when I do something bad I'm usually honest enough to admit to myself that I lack moral justification.
It really bothers me when my country kills innocent people, especially children. That makes me feel guilty even though I'm not afraid of facing consequences for it and I don't expect anyone to point the finger at me. But I feel responsible. And it shocks me to see so many people confront that fact and condone it.
I didn't divide people into 10% vs 90%. In a post shortly thereafter I referenced my memory of a Holocaust survivor saying that about 10% of Germans tried to treat the Jews justly. About 10% were sadistic and led the charge to mass murder. And the remaining 80% were basically conformists who would go along with the group.
The lesson of the Nazis (much as Doug Bee thinks it's a lame or cheap or irrelevant example) is not that they were uniquely evil. They were ordinary people like you and me. The lesson is that ordinary people are capable of doing great evil.
And that's how it relates to the movie. This is not an uncommon theme in fiction, either: the idea that the people around you will be your greatest threat when circumstances take a turn for the worse. Even so, the movie is mostly full of people helping each other.
Between 1942 and 1945 Viktor Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Man's Search for Meaning is the account of his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice. Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. “If one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude.”
ahalpert
Major Contributor
That's what I try to do, more or less. My view on life is fatalistically informed by the awareness of my mortality. The very worst thing that can happen to me is definitely going to happen to me. By comparison, nothing else that can go wrong seems so bad. (Of course, this doesn't diminish the need to survive and provide or the desire to have as enjoyable a time as possible while it lasts.)
Of course, I think it's important to recognize that different people have different constitutions and brain chemistry and hormonal profiles. Not everybody is going to be able to cope with suffering the same way no matter how they think about it. I'm not sure if this is true, but I've heard that a large part of a person's resting happiness (50% or more) is biologically determined.
By the way and slightly off topic, have you read Brave New World and, if so, what did you think of it?
Yes, and its juxtaposition, 1984. Indulgent, lewd, salacious, passive, wanton and not likely. 1984's world state seems more likely. As to Henry Ford, he was (merely) an innovator, benign, benevolent. His innovations were not possible without Carnegie's steel, Rockefeller's oil, Vanderbilt's railroads, and J.P. Morgan's electricity. After the breakup of Standard Oil, Rockefeller owned so many shares in the new companies he made far more money. Rockefeller and Carnegie while rivals to make the most; both had so much of it near the end of their lifetimes became the race to whom could give the most away, to universities, arts, science. Rockefeller gave more mainly because he outlived Carnegie. Something about that seems different than now. Bill Gates gave lots of money, history is still being written as to Musk, Buffet and the others but somehow, I don't think so but neither are they as dominant.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
Brave New World has already happened. That was a description of the society we currently live in