Ramona Brie @ramona@vulpine.club

I wish I could do more for my friends. It hurts me so bad to be able to not do anything substantial. That my life feels like an obstacle course before I can get moving.

We need to figure out a way to lock out racism from politics.

Fast.

If you saw Corey Stewart get roasted by Chris Cuomo, you'd know what I mean.

If you saw this, you'd know what I mean. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2018/06/13/arizona-rep-david-stringer-criticized-remarks-immigration/699163002/

The Republican Party needs a massive intervention, yet intervention in political parties presents its own series of system risks.

@mutantstd I notice that when you recently added hearts you didn't include :orange_heart: which was added to Unicode last year. Any chance of getting it, or maybe even :white_heart: which might be part of Emoji 12.0 next year?

I really feel like a bitch today for some reason. The term speaks to me maybe because it helps me feel femme~

@lottie Your avatar is so cute

I get it. Many of the people reading me *probably* wish the Dems could move to the left or boost something like the Working Families Party. (I think a significant portion of the voter base, especially generationally, is headed this direction.)

The electoral incentives don't work that way. The moderate and more extreme wings of the party are co-dependent on each other to get anywhere because a split in one makes the other hegemonic.

Four-party politics did not work out well in Spain. They had to go to the polls again because no viable government configuration resulted. And that's in PR.

In a first-past-the-post environment, four-party politics probably produces a presidential winner with 35% of the vote — which in the US would go to the House of Representatives. (What a mess!) FPTP would probably produce something converging toward two effective parties legislatively, but that's against the point.

There are people on the left unhappy with Democrats. There are people on the right unhappy with Republicans.

They are in a prisoner's dilemma because the first to defect hands the other a monopoly over politics.

Sure, a social democratic party might sound nice, but it would need to align with the Dems to prevent a Republican sweep, and so on from the other side.

Having both splits at once results in something that might be kinda unstable: four-party politics.

Oh, and one more thing.

-Erasing and making reparations for the heavy systemic, racial and other biases that befall our prison system, especially when criminal justice interacts with drugs.

This is ambitious. Not even considering the fact that one of the political parties has gone completely rotten—defying democratic values and harboring racism, white supremacism, and all sorts of other -isms—and the other currently has to answer to *some* business and not-so-savory interests to not be pummeled electorally, these are massive tasks for a political system.

But we can't start somewhere without defining our ideals. Our generation has a very tall order ahead of it.

-An aggressive timeline to reduce as far as possible the use of fossil fuels and to remediate or mitigate as much as possible the inexorable effects of climate change

-Making the metric system the standard in the US, at long last (#LincolnChafeeWasRight)

-Comprehensive regulation supporting data privacy (think GDPR) and restricting recognition technologies

-A ground-up rethinking of local policing, including requiring the composition of police forces to look like the communities they serve, and the abolition of ICE, as well as the reduction of the ever-pervasive security theater in this country

-A national, social health system, including universal basic income

-Legislative gender quotas

-Regulating the party composition of the Supreme Court, increasing the number of justices to 10 (5 left, 5 right) and instituting a rotating, tie-breaking chief justice (in the executive branch, some commissions like the FCC similarly have their makeup stated by law)

-Developing an Ethical Branch — a fourth, separate branch of the government with abilities to sanction the other three

-Abolishing the Electoral College and instituting national voter rolls

What does this look like, ideally?

-Amending the Constitution to enshrine the right to vote, the ability of the federal government to regulate elections and electoral speech, and

-Changes to congressional structure, including proportional representation seats, designed to reduce the party duopoly that is stifling the direction of national affairs and to force coalitions

-A stronger and more aggressive regulatory system with a penchant for breaking up concentrations of power

-The recognition and agreement that regulation prevents the accumulation of wealth and power, which is detrimental to the functioning of democracy and society

-The pressing need to increase citizen engagement and decrease burnout

-The recognition that the environmental problems we will face in the future require responses that today we might call radical

I've become convinced that the calling of our generation is the building of a new republic — a once-in-a-lifetime undertaking that will require all we have.

This new republic would be rooted in the core principles of

-The federal government as an unyielding, permanent guarantor of tolerance, diversity, and freedom of expression

-Structural changes to allow for continuity and drastically reduce the impact of polarization/wild mood swings on government institutions

I just want you to cuddle me...hold me...make me feel like a soft girl...

Things I got today: a master's degree

Things I did not get today: a sense of confidence around my future