So you held some corporate jobs and started a business. Kudos! As someone who did the same thing I know it can be a challenge.


Well, that hasn't been my experience. I've spent a lot of time with urbanites in NYC and SF too, both business and pleasure and I KNOW a lot of them think they're at the center of the universe.

Quick joke... In NYC, people say "NYC is the center of the universe." In LA, people say... "there's a universe?"

But, I've also spent time in the fly-over zone and even northern Nevada (my friend's uncle had a ranch outside of Reno) I did not really find any difference. Country folks often talk down about city slickers. Honestly, I don't even need that experience in the fly-over zone, I can see it right here on this thread.

I think the most common thing that the country folks I've met like to laugh about is how urbanites can't do anything for themselves. Well, cities probably do make that more possible because cities have services for just about everything but that's because you have a lot more entrepreneurship. You ought to know, having started a security business in SF. Would you have done that in middle of Kansas?

But even so, that doesn't mean everyone in the city is like that. Cities have a tremendous scope of diversity from junkies to the most battle-hardened police officers you will ever see. Of all the demographics possible "urbanites" is probably among the most ambiguous.


Aw... c'mon Seth - don't be mad. We don't think that at all. I think you're confusing two individual issues. Urbanites are more likely to follow a liberal ideology that takes advice from science. Ruralites are far more likely to follow a conservative ideology that will shun man's constantly changing "science" as an afrontage to their traditions.

The problem is that the warnings of science often warrant a unified and sometimes urgent response. In these situations one man's refusal to heed the scientific warning can lead to disaster for many others. This often triggers an understable frustration with the scoffers and a somewhat condescending "explanation" of the situation. This will no doubt create the kind of taste in your mouth that you seem to be describing.


Sometimes, I wonder if your not doing that "mirror" thing where you just pick up the liberal criticisms and send them back the other way. LOL

In my opinion, the Republicans are more likely to "rule by theory". I mean c'mon... the Laffer Curve?


Yeah, the basic translation there is blame the Democrats for the social programs that make people dependent and lazy, blah, blah, blah. More theory. The reality is the right is so scared of democratic socialism they can't find a way to stand up to corporatism, so they look the other way and remain oblivious to how their inaction is screwing victims for real.


Dude, that's Trump.


Yeah, you already covered that.


Of course, the Marxist thing.

Look, we can't help it if you fail to understand the difference between democratic socialism and the tyrannies that hijacked the communist revolutions of the 20th century.

LOL - Only because I have better things to do with the time I spend with them. Why bicker about politics when you can play music instead?

It's normal to get bored with things you don't understand.

I would love it if you could explain how a republic is constituted because I always wanted to know what a republic is made out of.

Seriously though, if this is your fancy way of saying how a constitution is applied to a republic. I'm not sure what you think the mystery is. They had a convention, the states sent delegates and they painstakingly bickered and haggled until they came up with an agreement on how the republic is to be structured. As an after thought, they added a Bill of Rights like what England had to limit the power of the republic over the acknowledged rights of the people.

Is that because you rarely venture into complicated systems? It really isn't that difficult to follow Seth and it's not BS either. I suspect it's because the explanation is coming from a liberal so you are predisposed to reject it and calling it a quagmire of doubletalk is your way of doing that.


Call what you like, but the reason why it stands on its own is because I'm not parroting the same old arguments. I'm actually disagreeing with the conservatives AND liberals on this. Liberals want to get rid of the EC because they think it's unfair. I'm pointing out that there is nothing wrong with the EC itself. The problem is elsewhere.

Did you even get to that part of my explanation or were you already tuned out?

Oh, look who's the know-it-all now... Big city reasoning? LOL

So tell me Seth, how did you "experience" big city reasoning?

Honestly, if you had the slightest clue about the divisions, the conflicts and the differences of opinion in every major city you wouldn't be describing city dwellers as some kind of monolithic hive mind.

You're hilarious.


What, like Jane Goodall and her apes? Oooh!

Seriously though, I wouldn't knock anyone for writing about the thoughts of others (as long as it really is the thoughts of others). Can you link me to something she wrote? I tried to google but all I get is facebook pages, twitter accounts, obituaries and a profile on a general manager at AppleBee's. I guess she's not very famous but I'd like to see what she is saying.

I get a pretty good view of rural America when I leave the city (Philadelphia) twice a week to travel an hour to South Jersey for band practice with people who call themselves Pineys because they live in the pine barrens. Unlike North Jersey, which is pretty much an extension of NYC, South Jersey is rural and mostly agricultural. Even our music is rural (Irish Traditional and Bluegrass) and my band mates are ALL Trump supporters and Confederate sympathizers and trust me... they let me know what they are thinking. I usually just wait for them to finish their rants then say "are you ready to play music now?"

Sometimes I engage but I find more times than not they wind up shouting over me, but over time they have come to realize that I'm not so different. We share the same basic principles and we have a lot of overlap in the libertarian space but when it gets beyond that we just shake it off and start playing music. It's more fun anyway.

LOL - that's what I thought. You're just blabbering. BTW, if conservatives are so smart how did they allow themselves to be overrun by a "liberal" infestation?

I never said or thought that so I would say your assumption kind of highlights your inability to assess reality.

I do find it interesting how anyone would assume no one can be as intelligent as our founding fathers. It's not like they had IQ tests back then and their accomplishments are only uncommon in that they established a new sovereign nation but even then much of what they designed was based on previous models. I HAVE been impressed by some of the discourse in the Federalist Papers, but no more than what I've read by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Nietzsche or even contemporary intellectuals such as Chomsky and Stephen Hawking.

I'll just write you comment up as a reverence for our founders, which is perfectly fine.


Wonderful... So who's ignoring the constitution? ...because it's not me.


Awesome... you should make t-shirts.


That depends on the majority. Liberals tend to be more altruistic which is why they try to pass laws to protect those without power, such as minorities, immigrants and even animals. So there is less chance that a liberal majority will oppress the few. The fact that you think a majority will invariably oppress the few suggests that this is what you would do if you were part of the majority.

A less poetic but more rational statement would be "Give all the power to the many and they will have the capacity to oppress the few" But whether or not they act on that capacity is another matter.

This is how democracy works my friend.


That depends on the few in power. Even a king can be benevolent or oppressive, depending on what kind of person he is. And that's how tyranny works.


Just had to throw that in eh? Look, I'm fine with that. I've owned guns since I was 12 and thanks to the 2nd Amendment I never had to worry about losing them. Then again I don't suffer from paranoid delusion either.

Why don't you educate me then?

Every citizen gets an equal vote. How is that complicated? When you start dividing things up by state with all these lame excuses about people in the cities not being smart or self-reliant, THATs when it gets complicated.


So do people in the country. What makes you think I don't know that?


I already told you. The state would negotiate trade with Canada or Mexico. What would you country folks do?


Your farms are meant to produce large quantities of specific products. My uncle in Minnesota produces corn and soybeans. For everything else, he either depends on his personal garden (which some farmers have just like some people in the city do) or he goes to the grocery store just like we do.


Yes, they are. So let's dispense with all this pointless blabber about how one group is more critical than the other and take it from your point...

Most states with large urban populations also have significant farmlands. By dividing everyone up by state you are ignoring those differences. You are also ignoring the differences between the needs of different agricultures, like growing corn and wheat in Kansas versus salmon farming in Washington, shrimp fishing in Louisiana and citrus fruits in Florida and California.

The focus on state does not reflect the different needs of specific industries as much as you seem to think. You are suggesting a one-size fits all for each state, but states are varied. If you want the needs of each industry to be heard, it would be better to increase the resolution by using districts instead of states.

Don't get confused. Those doctors were telling you that those paper masks are less effective than other types of masks not that masks do no good. (I've talked to doctors too)

Even paper masks are better than nothing. When it comes down to it, there isn't a mask on the market that can guarantee the virus will not find a path to your system. But seat belts won't guarantee that you won't get hurt in an car accident either. It would be idiotic to use that as an argument to not wear them, because they DO decrease the risk of injury. Likewise, masks DO decrease the chance of infection and when you multiply that by 300 million people, that makes a huge difference.

The states already have representation through the Senate. Every state no matter how small has two senators. This is why we have two chambers in Congress. The Senate represents the states and the House represents the people.


And people flung across the countryside have little to no awareness of the needs of every industry you haven't mentioned.


Yeah, I keep hearing this... I honestly think you country folks are overestimating your importance. Perhaps it's an effort to validate yourselves, I don't know. What I do know is that a lot of food in city restaurants and markets are imported and the major cities have the commercial power to encourage states to negotiate trade with other countries, unless the federal government interferes with trade tariffs.

That being said... I'm really not trying to marginalize the farmer. But you are trying to marginalize the city dweller and I'm just saying there's really no basis for that.


I strongly disagree with your opinion. The vast majority of highly educated professionals are in the cities not the country. This includes most of the doctors, almost all the scientists and pretty much all the engineers. When I helped develop software that allows combines to be guided by satellite links (for more efficient coverage) I was effectively changing the way farmers work and I was in the city. Even the satellites themselves are designed by engineers in the city. My dad was an aerospace engineer who helped design the rocket boosters that put satellites in orbit and this was in Los Angeles.

The fact is farmers are increasingly dependent on new technologies to improve their yields and almost all of that technology comes from cities.

As for self-reliance I don't see any difference. People in the city have to work to survive just like you folks in the country do. I have in-laws that that live in the county and I know they buy the same groceries that we do in the city. If your telling me that farmers grow their own food, let me remind you that a lot of people in the cities do too. Cities are not all apartments, we have houses too, with yards. I grew up in Los Angeles eating fruits and vegetables grown in the backyard. When I had my house in San Diego we were growing grapes and avocados. People even raise chickens in the city.

There is a LOT of emphasis these days on making cities greener, more sustainable and more self-reliant. And community gardens are popping up everywhere.

But what's more important is that none of this matters. We are talking about representation. Are you saying that people who are not self-reliant should not be represented?


And why would the people in the other states NOT be represented if every district has the same number of constituents? I would urge you think about that for a minute.

Let's look at California for instance... home to some major cities but also some of the most prolific farm lands in the country. In fact, California produces more fruits, vegetables and dairy than any other state in the union, including more cheese than Wisconsin and more peaches than Georgia. Even Japan is heavily dependent on rice grown in California.

Your insistence that we divide things up by state ignores the differences between the needs of differing industries within the state. California is very much a purple state. I know some of your conservative friends on this site live in California. In fact there are more Republicans in California than there are in Texas.

New York state isn't much different... Yes, there's NYC, but what do you see in upstate New York? Farms and Republicans. And since you brought up Chicago... Illinois is huge on agriculture.

Stop over-complicating things... There is zero reason to get in the way of giving every citizen in the country an equal vote.

So what actually happened is that you folks were being outvoted. And when you get outvoted you get all pissed off and start crying about how the left won't let you have your way.


LOL - I love it... you have no examples or evidence because there is none, so you just tell us that it doesn't matter if we see it or not - it's true. Is that because YOU say so? Is this where we all turned into Marxists without knowing it? LOL


Wow... that's a big load of confusion. It would take me two pages to untangle that rant, so I'll pass. Thanks for the laugh though.


The Democratic Party was hijacked by LBJ way back in 1964. That's when the Democrats ceased to be the conservative party and started it's leftward path to equality and civil rights for ALL people. Boy did that piss off the Jim Crow racists in the South who disowned the Democratic Party and called themselves Dixiecrats. But the genius of Barry Goldwater's Southern Strategy helped the Nixon campaign recruit those pissed of bigots to the Republican Party.


Stop being such a drama-queen. All the "left" means is that everyone is included... So black lives matter, immigrants are welcome, gay people can get married, etc... The "right" is about exclusion... so white supremacy, nativism, nationalism, walls on the border, etc...

It was the same a century ago only the political options were different. So, on the extreme right you had Nazism, a nationalist movement that excluded Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. On the left you had Marxism, which promised an international revolution to end the class system

Hitler blamed the communist movement for Germany's defeat in WW1, because German communists were coordinating with Russian communists during the war. And since almost all the German communists were Jewish, he hated them too.


Well, you listed liberal institutions... it's the liberals that push for more education and a LOT of the media and the entertainment industry is saturated with liberals and it's the liberals that don't seem to have a problem with athletes making political statements. Trust me, switch the channel to NASCAR or Big Bass fishing and you will find plenty of right-wing politics.


Turning citizens against each other and promoting violence is actually a fascist technique and Trump is the first president to try it out.


In other words... there is no such evidence, which is why we can't see it but we can always say it's because the left is hiding it.


More unfounded fear... I know you've heard this a million times and a million and one isn't going to make any difference but the 2nd Amendment is NOT being threatened, so get a grip.

LOL - OOH-KAAY!


Actually, you uptighty-righties are the misguided ones as Trump has demonstrated for us... "Oh, you mean you CAN get the virus if you don't wear a mask? Oh, you mean hydroxychloroquine DOESN'T work?"

Dugh!!!!

Another example... telling me that lefties (such as myself) are being duped by a century old scam that only useful idiots succumb to... Let's see, might you be talking about Marxism? ...That's hilarious. It's not going to matter how many times you hear us say we don't follow or care about Marxism, you're going to keep saying it. So, what's the deal? Do you think if you say it enough it will become true? Or do you really not know the difference between communism and democratic socialism?

As for critical thinking... there isn't any in the alt-right herd. What you got is a frenzy of parrots squawking about what their channels told them. It's not surprising... the right has been trying to defund liberal arts programs for decades... Liberal arts is where students explore and develop critical thinking. The right is also more influenced by congregational culture, where people are conditioned from a very early age to simply accept what they are being told. Remember all those books that were banned and burned? None of that was done by people on the left.

Yeah, the "left" attacks critical thinkers


You mean reflection. The deflection is pretty much all you starboarders.

So you like it better the way it is now... with the lives of those living on the west coast and upper east coast being controlled by the sparsely populated red states.

Did you know that one citizen in Wyoming has the power outvote five citizens in California?

If your answer is yes, then I know that fairness means nothing to you, as long as you get what you want.
If your answer is no, then you are like the majority of the American people and just don't really know what the problem with the EC is.

I can explain that.

First thing to know... There is nothing wrong with the EC itself.

According to the U.S.Constitution, the people elect their representatives and the representatives elect the president. So in a sense, no one on this site has EVER elected a president. All we have done is cast votes for which president we would like our representative to elect. The representative is not legally obligated to vote according the will of his district, but if he wants to be re-elected, then he ought to, right?

But what if there are more convincing reasons for a representative to vote against the will of his constituents? I mean, corruption can be a powerful thing. Well, the founders thought of that and their answer was to use surrogate voters that would be chosen in the same way as jurors are. So, regular citizens chosen to help the government make decisions. Together, these surrogate voters (one per representative) form the Electoral College.

So the EC was established as an anti-corruption system. It was NEVER meant to be a population compensation system. In other words, they did NOT invent the EC to prevent large states from controlling small states. They actually had a different system for that. The number of seats in the House of Representatives would expand in relation to population growth in order to maintain a consistent ratio of representative to citizens. This way ALL voters have equal power, regardless of size differential between states. So that's the second thing to know.

The third thing to know is that the Apportionment Act of 1911 stopped the expansion and set the number of seats to 433. A few years later two more seats were added (Arizona and New Mexico joining the union) and it's been set to 435 seats ever since. Meanwhile, the population continued to boom, faster in some places than other places, which is important to point out because the ratios diverge.

So the problem is that one representative is shared with more people in densely populated districts than in sparsely populated districts. This is why a voter in Wyoming has more power that four voters in California.

The way to fix that is to take the total population and divide that by 435 to get the required population per district. But watch out - California would wind up with a lot more districts (and therefore EC votes). But that doesn't mean anyone in California has any more power than anyone in Wyoming. It DOES mean California will get more districts, but then again California has more people.

Ya know it's funny... It never matters what point is being made in the original post, the same group of people will always turn the discussion into a circus of childish jabs at the left.

So what is it this time? Is it because Trumpy-Dimwit got sick from something he was telling America not to worry about and you know the idiot-karma isn't missed by the liberals? Grrr... right?

"Well... Democrats are pedophiles!!"

OK, whatever... It still doesn't change the fact that Trump got sick from his own stupidity.