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A big hidden in plain site facet of this, is few are willing to put forth the work within the existing system.

That is, going to town halls, writing senators, and running for office are all standard parts of the system people are complaining about. And they are offering the complaints, largely, as stand in complaints for whole hosts of problems that they actually think are there.

So, agreed, few are willing to ignore their general nebulous complaints and get into the system to work with it. They dream that there will be some magic shift of everything away from their complaints.

My only twist is I think this is ok, as long as people stay grounded in the rest of their life. It is perfectly fine to dream. Is mostly fine to complain. No need to dirty the water where people are getting things done, though.

by gopher_space2 hours ago|

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I don’t know, it wasn’t until the pandemic and a layoff that I had time to actually sit and think.

There’s a reason that most of the voters (and protesters in my area) are retired, and it isn’t apathy. I don’t have time to educate myself on these topics in any real depth.

And I need to educate myself because the push information is all bullshit. Digging into policing in Seattle, the official and public conversation was all culture war while the actual problems looked like simple incompetence from a system analysis perspective.

I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with this kind of fumbling on every topic, and I’m realizing that my parents didn’t live in a low-trust society like I do.

by taeric2 hours ago|

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We don't disagree? But this is part of the problem of many complaints. The cost of entry into any system is non-zero. That people with more resources are involved is not at all a surprise.

Which is why I have my "twist" there that this is not necessarily bad. I'm fine letting people dream. I'm fine with people having general complaints. I have to be fine with people being wrong, as it happens whether I'm fine with it or not.

What is getting dodgy is how many people accidentally find themselves hijacked in the delay that is inherent in understanding systems to think that they can win with a culture war.

by gopher_space43 minutes ago|

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"Willing to put forth the work" is where we differ. The collapse of the fourth estate alone meant the end of the broadly informed citizen.

I've been professionally trained to monitor my own thought process and review my notes for signs of bias, and I've spent decades absorbing new domains well enough to build testable models. When I look at understanding political issues the people I rely on to help me "put forth the work" are gone, man. The effort I need to put in on one subject well enough to make decisions now is immense.