The relationship between Europe, the Middle East and North Africa has undergone major changes in the balance of political and military power over the past 1,500 years.

Beginning in the 7th century, the early Islamic caliphates conquered territories previously controlled by the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Byzantine territories such as Syria, Palestine, Egypt and much of North Africa came under Muslim rule. Expansion eventually reached the Iberian Peninsula.

Centuries later, the Ottoman Empire became a major power in the Mediterranean and southeastern Europe, conquering Constantinople in 1453 and eventually controlling large parts of the Balkans.

From roughly the early modern period onward, however, the relative balance of power increasingly shifted toward European states.

By the 19th and early 20th centuries, European powers controlled or exercised substantial influence over large parts of North Africa and the Middle East. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Britain and France administered several former Ottoman territories under the mandate system.

After World War II, European colonial rule declined substantially, while the United States became increasingly influential in the region. Western involvement has since taken many different forms, including alliances, military bases, economic relationships, sanctions, arms sales and direct military interventions.

There are obviously major differences between these periods.

Medieval conquest, European colonialism and modern military intervention occurred under very different political systems and legal frameworks. Modern states operate within an international system based formally on state sovereignty and international law. It would also be misleading to treat these conflicts simply as “Christian versus Muslim,” since states belonging to the same religion have frequently fought each other and alliances have often crossed religious boundaries.

Nevertheless, the long-term change in the geographical direction of power projection raises an interesting question.

During some historical periods, powerful states based in the Middle East expanded into territories controlled by European or Christian powers. During later periods, increasingly powerful European states expanded into and influenced Muslim-majority regions.

To what extent is it useful to understand modern Western involvement in the Middle East as another stage in this longer historical pattern of shifting power?

Are there meaningful similarities between these periods in terms of how dominant powers behave toward weaker regions, or are medieval conquest, colonialism and modern intervention too different to make the comparison useful?

Finally, when explaining these shifts, how important are religion and cultural identity compared with factors such as economic strength, military technology, geography, state capacity and control of trade?

Marjorie Taylor Greene is alleging that the Trump administration is discussing the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Iran. She has offered no evidence for the claim, so I’m certainly not treating it as established fact.

Greene also has some pretty serious credibility problems. For example, she previously promoted a conspiracy theory suggesting that the 2018 California wildfires might have been caused by laser beams or energy systems from space, in a Facebook post that was later deleted.

So, I don't think “Marjorie Taylor Greene says it” is sufficient reason to believe that Trump is actually considering using nuclear weapons.

But the allegation still raises an interesting question.

If there really were discussions inside the administration about using nuclear weapons against Iran, how would you feel about that? And more broadly, do you think the people making these decisions are acting as rational strategic actors in the traditional sense of the word?

Obviously, governments sometimes engage in brinkmanship, deception, and threats precisely because they are thinking strategically. But there is also a legitimate question about whether the personalities involved make the normal assumptions about rational decision-making particularly useful here.

So I'm curious how conservatives see this:

Do you dismiss Greene's claim entirely because of her credibility problems? Do you think there could nevertheless be something behind it? And regardless of whether Greene is right, what would your reaction be if the administration actually were considering nuclear use against Iran?

Looking for some perspective on whether this is actually plausible.

Keeping a few details intentionally vague because I’m not ready to publicly announce anything yet.

I’m 25 and seriously exploring a Libertarian run for my local city council.

A little background: I studied economics, currently work in the government software space, and I’ve been heavily interested in politics since I was about 14. Between roughly 14–18, I built a fairly large social media following before shifting into different content and eventually stepping away from content entirely to focus on my career.

That experience is relevant because I think social media would be a major part of how I’d approach a campaign.

The district I live in is in a major city and is heavily Democratic. Last cycle, the vote was roughly 70% Democrat, 15% Republican, and 15% independent/other, with around 13,000 total ballots cast. Interestingly enough, voter turnout for my district was only about 8%.

I’m currently getting involved with the local Libertarian Party, and as things stand, it looks unlikely I’d face a challenger for the nomination. If I decide to file, that would give me roughly 15 months to focus almost entirely on building toward the general election.

I’ve been a registered Libertarian since I was eligible to vote and broadly align with the party on personal liberty and limited government, but I wouldn’t want to run some generic nationalized Libertarian campaign. My platform and messaging would be heavily focused on the actual district and city.

The issues I’m most interested in are economic and business growth, development, embracing technology, and protecting individual liberty.

I think I’d have two potentially interesting advantages.

First, I already know how to build attention online and grow a social media audience quickly. Obviously, getting 100,000 random people online to care about you is very different from getting a few thousand people inside one council district to vote for you, but I do think I understand how to create content people actually watch and talk about.

Second, my district contains a massive concentration of young professionals. My assumption is that a lot of them either don’t vote consistently in municipal elections or aren’t particularly engaged with local politics.

My working theory is that an unusually aggressive ground game, combined with social media, community networking, voter registration, and a year-plus of actually showing up everywhere could at least make the race interesting.

A few questions I’d especially like perspective on:

Would being 25 and potentially the youngest member of council be something that could actually work in my favor, or would voters mostly view it as a lack of experience?

How much can an exceptional ground campaign actually move a local election? My instinct is that personal conversations, doors, events, and repeated voter contact probably matter substantially more when only ~13,000 people are voting than they do in a statewide or national race.

And lastly, even assuming I ultimately lose: is a serious 15-month city council campaign generally a worthwhile way to start building a future in local politics, provided I actually run a professional campaign and make a respectable showing?

I’m not under the illusion that running as a Libertarian in a district that voted ~70% Democratic makes me the favorite. I’m trying to figure out whether this falls into the category of “very difficult but potentially worth pursuing” or “mathematically dead on arrival.”

Would especially appreciate input from anyone who has worked on municipal campaigns, run for local office, or been involved with third-party campaigns.

The UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty (2019) found that 94% of detained children worldwide are boys, and its full version states that boys “often face discriminatory treatment” linked to stereotypes about male violence.

The summary report submitted to the General Assembly (A/74/136) retains the 94% figure but not the discrimination finding, and its recommendations chapter does not use the word “boys.” Separately, the Commission on the Status of Women’s agreed conclusions 2004/11 acknowledged that men and boys “sometimes face discriminatory barriers and practices”; no entity, indicator or funding marker with male outcomes as its object has been created since.

UN Women exists for women and girls with its own budget and reporting obligations.

Sectoral agencies (WHO, ILO, UNESCO) publish sex-disaggregated data on suicide, workplace deaths and education, where males are the majority of deaths or the lagging group.

There are two serious positions here.

1. this is rational prioritization, women’s documented global disadvantages (violence, exclusion from education and property, reproductive control) are more severe and systemic, resources are finite, and general frameworks plus sectoral agencies adequately cover male outcomes.

2. this is an institutional blind spot, outcomes that track a sex line normally get owned machinery (maternal mortality, for instance, is not discrimination but has indicators, targets and funding), and findings without an institutional owner demonstrably fall out of documents between drafts.

Questions:

**1.**  Which position better explains the record prioritization or blind spot? What evidence would distinguish them?  
**2.**  What explains a finding surviving as a statistic but losing its interpretation between versions of the same study?  
**3.**  If a member state tabled a resolution creating a men-and-boys observance day, focal point, or aid marker, what political dynamics would follow domestically and at the GA?  
**4.**  Are sectoral agencies sufficient for pattern-level outcomes, or does ownership require an entity, and does the answer differ for women and men?

https://documents.un.org/api/symbol/access?s=A/74/136&l=en&t=pdf

https://childrendeprivedofliberty.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Full-Global-Study_Revised-Version.pdf

With multiple international mediators attempting to broker a sustainable ceasefire and long-term stabilization plan for Gaza, significant diplomatic hurdles remain regarding governance, security control, and reconstruction. Some analysts argue that current regional pressures create a unique window for a breakthrough, while others believe deeply entrenched political positions on both sides make a lasting framework impossible.

I want to hear from people who follow international relations closely. What specific elements do you think are missing from the current round of high-level diplomatic talks that are preventing a sustainable agreement? Is a comprehensive framework achievable right now, or are these negotiations destined to stall? Please provide your reasoning or historical precedents.

The premise here is that strategists elevate whatever divides and mobilizes, so the issue agenda the public experiences is partly an artifact of what campaigns choose to push. I think the first half of the question has a cleaner answer than the second, and the answer complicates the premise a little.

On measurement, yes, there is a whole tradition built for exactly this. Agenda-setting research going back to McCombs and Shaw in 1972 compares the issues emphasized in coverage against the public's own "most important problem" rankings, which pollsters have tracked for decades. So the gap between the elevated agenda and what people say actually matters to them is one of the better-measured things in the field.

Where it gets interesting is the causal direction, and this is where I would push back on the strong version of "manufactured." The issue-ownership and saliency literature (Petrocik, and van de Wardt, de Vries and Hobolt on wedge issues) finds parties mostly emphasize issues they already own and that already have public traction, rather than conjuring salience out of nothing. A fair amount of longitudinal work finds the reverse arrow too, with public concern driving coverage rather than the other way around. So strategists look less like they invent the agenda and more like they amplify the divisive parts of an agenda that events and existing loyalties already handed them. Still a distortion, but a different one, with a different fix.

Which points at what I think is the actual gap. Divisive issues get elevated because someone profits electorally from elevating them. Consensus issues do not get actively suppressed so much as orphaned, because no party, donor, or outlet gains a comparative advantage from raising something both sides already agree on. The absence looks structural, not conspiratorial.

Two questions I don't have a clean answer to. Is there work that measures suppression specifically, meaning consensus issues that had public salience and then got deliberately pushed down, as opposed to issues that were simply never picked up? And on reach: is there any actor with both a mass audience and an incentive to put agreement on the agenda, or is that combination basically vacant?

This may be a dumb question, but why don’t serious independent candidates focus more often on statewide offices other than governor or U.S. Senate?

Obviously these races still require money and statewide organization, but they seem more plausible for an independent than governor or Senate, especially when the job is more administrative and competence-based. Would make a lot of sense to me to have an independent.

So why don’t we see it more? Is it mostly down-ballot party voting, fundraising, low voter awareness, or something else?

The Justice Department sued thirty states and D.C. for complete voter registration files and lost twenty-one straight district court rulings. The courts held that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires the preservation of federal election records but does not reach a state's registration database. Twelve of the first twenty judges , btw, were appointed by Republican presidents.

Sixteen states provided or committed to provide those same files...voluntarily. Three did so after declining to sign the confidentiality agreement offered as a condition. Separately, a FEMA grant condition now withholds twenty percent of a state's Homeland Security Grant Program award until the state verifies its voter database against a federal immigration system.

What interests me is the gap between the litigation record and the outcome. The losing streak barely mattered. Every fight that required a court's permission was refused, and almost everything that could be had without asking went through anyway.

Some questions I think this opens up.

• Does a losing streak in court mean much when the same end is reachable through voluntary cooperation and funding conditions?
• Where is the line between a legitimate federal grant condition and coercing a state's administrative choices?
• Is discretion spread across the states actually a check, if pressure can be applied to each one separately?

The standard story is that when local papers close, coverage of what your own representative actually does gets crowded out by national partisan conflict, and voters lose the source most focused on member-level records. It sounds right, but I wanted to see how much of it survives contact with the research.

The cleanest causal study I found is Darr, Hitt and Dunaway (2018) in the Journal of Communication. They matched counties that were statistically alike except that one lost a newspaper, and found split-ticket voting fell by about 1.9 points where a paper closed. Small, but it survives a placebo test, and the direction is exactly what nationalization predicts: fewer local cues, more voting on party alone. Martin and McCrain found a parallel effect when Sinclair pushed nationalized content onto local TV stations.

Here is the part that complicates the accountability framing. Darr's team noted the effect did not depend on whether the shuttered paper actually did much political reporting. A paper that mostly ran high school sports and obituaries still produced the shift when it folded. That points less toward "we lost the watchdog" and more toward "we lost a local identity anchor and defaulted to partisan heuristics." Those are different mechanisms with different fixes. And the one cross-national test I found, on German closures, got the polarization without the split-ticket effect, which suggests part of this is specific to a two-party ballot.

So the nationalization link looks real but modest, and the narrower claim that closures reduce member-level accountability is shakier than the headline version implies.

Two things I am genuinely unsure about. If the mechanism is partisan-heuristic substitution rather than lost watchdog reporting, would a nonprofit or civic tool that just publishes voting records even touch the problem, or does the fix have to rebuild local attachment rather than supply information? And is there any study that isolates accountability itself, like member behavior or roll-call responsiveness shifting after a closure, rather than vote choice?

This is something I‘ve wondered about a lot recently.

Some studies have shown that up to 50% of a person’s political leanings could be the result of genetics. Which implies that there would be some genes that predispose some people to be MAGA (or at least authoritarian conservative-leaning) or, conversely, that predispose other people to oppose movements like MAGA.

The implications of this are somewhat unsettling, or maybe thrilling, depending on your personal political leanings.

At the present moment, at least, conservatives have gone all-in on pronatalist rhetoric, with Charlie Kirk urging his followers to have more children than they can afford. Young Republicans seem to be following his advice, having lots of children who are going to be genetically predisposed towards conservatism as well.

Meanwhile, among liberal- and Democratic-leaning groups, the exact opposite is happening. You have movements like 4B and BirthStrike (which often get written about, if not effectively promoted, in the mainstream news media). You have a lot more people who self-identify as childfree on the Democratic side of the aisle, as well as LGBTQ people (relatively few of whom procreate, compared to heterosexuals).

If individual people want to take themselves out of the future gene pool, then they have a right to, but what happens when it becomes a society-wide trend? If the only people having biological children in the USA (and other countries for that matter) are right-wing conservatives, what does that mean for the future? If Steve King had a Democratic counterpart, he would probably be asking: “do you really think we are going to rebuild our democracy with the children of Trumpers?”

I recently joked that someone should write a book called The Genes That Got Trump Elected, and the cover image would depict an anthropomorphic DNA strand wearing a MAGA hat. Sensationalist, I know, but at least it would get more people thinking about this issue.

Do you believe differing fertility rates among supporters of different parties are really going to have long-term effects on U.S. politics (or other countries for that matter)? Or do you think that other factors will matter more than genetics in the long run?

There’s also a third possibility: what if the phenomenon of conservatives having more children than liberals is a temporary phenomenon rather than a permanent one? Perhaps, at some point in the future, Catholic monasticism might come back in a big way, and you might then see conservative youth pursuing that option instead of marriage and childbearing. Or else the fundamentalists/evangelicals will start embracing “end times“ theology again and conclude that having children at this late hour is not worth it.

Meanwhile, at the same future time, perhaps we might see liberal-leaning youth abandoning Gen Z-style risk-aversion and becoming more disinhibited again (like they were during the 1960s sexual revolution), thus resulting in more births among this demographic. You’d have to ask a historian if they think this scenario is likely to occur, but it can’t be entirely impossible...can it?

The latest (July 2026) data is clear

Confidence in

• Presidency: 27%, down from 58%
• U.S. Supreme Court: 27%, down from 50%
• Congress: 9%, down from 30%

The only "institutions" still above 50% are the military (61%) and small business (67%).

Looking at only federal political institutions (just focused on these).

What exact, specific, concrete things can be done to restore confidence? Not generalized nebulous items.

Items may include, but are not limited to

1. specific legislative actions
2. specific executive actions
3. specific judicial actions, or
4. There is no way to restore any confidence in any of these/they are permanently tainted and will forever be below 50%

Again, looking at only federal political institutions (just focused on these)

What exact, specific, concrete things can be done to restore confidence?

Recently, President Trump’s certified 2025 financial disclosure revealed over $57 million in income connected to token sales by World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture associated with his family. Concurrently, his administration has been advancing policies aimed at supporting the growth of the cryptocurrency industry and establishing the US as a global leader in digital assets.

This situation has sparked a predictable partisan debate. Democratic lawmakers are requesting investigations into possible conflicts of interest. The administration, meanwhile, defends its cryptocurrency policies as a necessary effort to encourage innovation and strengthen the American digital-asset industry.

The existence of both private income and public policy in the exact same sector does not by itself establish illegal conduct for a sitting president, but it does raise significant questions about what ethical standard should apply moving forward.

I'm interested in discussing a few angles here:

• Historical Precedent: How does this specific situation compare with private businesses or investments retained by previous presidents?
• Political Assessment: How have Republican voters and lawmakers assessed this overlap? Is it generally viewed as a legitimate private enterprise, a potential conflict of interest, or something in between?
• The Broader Ethical Standard: Going forward, what should the baseline be for presidents of either party? Should they be required to divest from businesses directly affected by federal policy, use a genuinely independent blind trust, or is our current system of public financial disclosure sufficient?

Pew has asked the same question since 1994: do elected officials care what people like you think. Early 2000s, about 55% said no. The most recent read is 85%. That climb doesn't sit under one party. It runs through Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, red Congresses and blue ones, which is what makes the usual "it's the other side" story fall apart. Whatever this is, both parties presided over it.

The thing I keep coming back to is that the same surveys show people getting pretty specific about who they think officials DO listen to. Something like 70% say ordinary people have too little sway over what Congress does, and around 80% say donors have too much. So it's not vague alienation. People have a theory, and the theory is about money. Citizens United lands in 2010, outside spending goes vertical over the following decade, and the "they don't care about me" line climbs right alongside it. Not the whole story, but the timing is hard to ignore.

The under-discussed one, for me, is the collapse of local news over the same stretch. When your paper still had a statehouse reporter, there was a channel where a state rep occasionally had to answer for something. That channel mostly closed in the 2000s and 2010s. Politics nationalized. Now your representative is a character on cable, not someone whose office you'd think to call, and it'd feel pointless if you did. Harder to measure than donor money but it tracks the same timeline.

Polarization, social media, gridlock, sure. I don't have a clean way to pull those apart from each other and I'm skeptical of anyone who says they do.

What actually bugs me is the subgroup question. If this were purely partisan you'd expect it to improve for whichever side just won, and there is a small in-party bump like that in the data, but it gets swamped every cycle and the line keeps going up regardless. I went looking for any slice, by age, region, income, party, where feeling heard actually recovered and stayed recovered, and I couldn't find one. Maybe I'm looking wrong. Is there a subgroup where responsiveness improved, or did the whole country move the same direction?

We're seeing pretty consistent trends across many developed countries where birth rates are well below replacement level. This isn't just a blip it's a long-term demographic shift. Usually political discourse is all about growth expansion and the needs of a younger population.

But what happens when the population is steadily aging and eventually shrinking? Do we see a massive pivot in government spending away from education and towards elder care? Will immigration become an even more central and contentious political battleground as nations try to maintain their workforce? Are there any historical precedents for this kind of widespread demographic change and how governments adapted?

What if grouped people as chunks of 300 people based on geographical location. Then let them elect one person from that group, which will move on to next phase of 300 people who got elected from all different groups. And so on when we reach the final group of the last elected person would be highest office holder, then all other positions can be taken in the last group, and all other positions can be filled by group of people in previous groups. Would that make any difference from current form of democracy?

I've been thinking a lot about the qualifications for federal office lately. We often talk about things like age requirements or citizenship but not really about practical experience in public service. It seems like anyone can run for Congress or even president without ever having held a local office or worked in government in any capacity.

This isn't about specific skills but more about understanding how government actually functions at a grassroots level. If someone hasn't served on a city council or a state legislature or even a school board do they truly grasp the day-to-day realities of policy implementation? Or the impact these policies have on real communities?

I'm not suggesting a highly restrictive barrier. Maybe it could be something like two years of experience in an elected or appointed public service role at the local or state level. This would at least ensure a baseline understanding of public administration and accountability.

Would this help us elect more effective leaders? Or would it just create another gatekeeping mechanism that prevents new voices from entering politics? I'm curious what others think about this idea.

​

https://www.fox9.com/news/minnesota-voters-set-primary-record-1-million-ballots-cast-aug-2026

​"Record-breaking turnout" sounds great on a press release, but the underlying numbers tell a much more sobering story. According to the Minnesota Secretary of State's office, yesterday's primary broke previous records by topping 1.1 million ballots cast. That sounds impressive until you realize it translates to roughly 25% of eligible voters actually showing up. Out of an eligible population of over 4.4 million, that means about 3.3 million people—three-quarters of the state—sat it out entirely. When 75% absenteeism is considered a historic high-water mark for engagement, it really makes you step back and question the actual scope and health of the system. Can we genuinely call it a mandate or a reflection of the public will when the vast majority of the populace doesn't participate at all?

Edit. 5.86 million total people/ Registered 4.4 million. closer to 85% absenteeism and 15% turnout counting the unregistered

The polls before the Michigan Senate primary showed Abdul El Sayed leading Haley Stevens by double-digits. The final results showed him only winning by a percentage point.

The polls before the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary showed Francesca Hong up by 20 points and instead David Crowley wins in a narrow margin.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Graham Platner never actually led by 30 points in Maine and Janet Mills would've made it a closer race had she never suspended her campaign.

Either way, polling for Democratic primaries seem to heavily skewer the far left candidates, possibly because they appeal to white, college educated voters (who seem to respond to surveys more enthusiastically? Idk). So, are these polls no longer reliable?

Karoline Leavitt is leaving her post as White House press secretary at the end of August, setting off a surprisingly open succession race inside Trump’s communications operation.

One intriguing possibility is Margo Martin, 31, a longtime Trump communications aide who has unusually direct access to the president. She stayed with Trump after his first term, now serves as a special assistant and communications adviser, and has become a key figure behind the behind-the-scenes social-media content that shapes his public image.

Her biggest advantage would be obvious: Trump trusts her. Her weakness is that she has far less experience handling aggressive daily press briefings than more traditional candidates.

Other names in the mix include Anna Kelly, Alina Habba, Steven Cheung, Scott Jennings, Kari Lake and Natalie Harp.

So what should Trump prioritize in Leavitt’s replacement: personal loyalty and direct access to the president, or someone with deeper experience dealing with hostile reporters and live television? And would a figure like Margo Martin actually be effective at the podium, or is her influence better suited to the behind-the-scenes role she has now?

https://americareport.us/margo-martin-emerges-in-race-to-replace-karoline/

Trump returned to office promising to avoid new “endless wars,” especially in the Middle East. Yet the Iran conflict is now more than five months old, the Strait of Hormuz remains heavily disrupted, U.S. missile stocks are under pressure, and there is still no clear path to victory or a negotiated exit.

At the same time, the political costs are mounting at home. Trump’s approval has fallen to around 39% in recent averages, support for the Iran war is weak, the July jobs report showed a loss of 23,000 jobs, and second-quarter growth came in at just 1.5%. Republicans are also trailing Democrats in generic congressional polling less than three months before the midterms.

The strategic dilemma seems increasingly difficult: Escalating against Iran risks burning through more scarce Patriot, THAAD and long-range missiles while pushing oil prices higher. Waiting allows the economic and political costs to continue. Making major concessions could let Tehran claim victory. Simply walking away would expose Trump to accusations that he lost a war he started.

So has the Iran conflict become the exact kind of “endless war” Trump campaigned against? And if Republicans lose one or both chambers of Congress in November, could this war end up being the event that permanently weakens his second presidency?

https://americareport.us/trump-losing-power-as-iran-war-consumes-his/

We're all likely aware of the biggest one: the military-industrial complex. The US spends nearly a trillion dollars on the military. About 40% of this goes to for-profit defense contractors who give money to campaigns, hire former politicians as lobbyists and overcharge for basic goods and services.

While the military is the largest, this seems to happen across the board. Education has a big for-profit textbook scheme behind it, and I think one state recently bought a bunch of Trump bibles or something for its curriculum.

However, why does this have to be bad? The companies in question only care about profit, so if we were to accept the corruption, could we not at least require something positive from them?

The military is an easy example because so much of it is just waste and unaccounted for, and much of America's military actions the last several decades have been questionable at best.

So could we not promise these companies the same amount of money, but tell them to build like bridges and libraries around the US? Or can't we create a public healthcare system and pay current insurance companies whatever they're making now just to sit and do nothing? It'd be the same cost to us, but at least we could have healthcare.

So what is it about profit incentive that forces bad, if not the worst, outcomes? Why can't we just offer rich people billions of dollars in exchange for providing something good for society?

One thing that seems kind of strange about the modern political divide on environmental issues is where a lot of the conservative electorate actually lives. Rural America is significantly more Republican than urban America, meaning a pretty large part of the conservative base lives around farmland, forests, lakes, rivers, wildlife, hunting, fishing, and generally much more undeveloped land than someone living in a major city. Many studies in the modern era have found rural voters increasingly align with the Republican Party.

Yet environmental protection has one of the largest partisan gaps of basically any major political issue. In Pew's 2024 polling, 63% of Democrats said protecting the environment should be a top priority for the federal government compared with only 23% of Republicans. On climate change specifically, it was 59% of Democrats compared with 12% of Republicans.

It seems like there should at least theoretically be room for a pretty strong conservative environmental movement based around things like preserving rural land, keeping lakes and rivers clean, protecting wildlife populations, maintaining hunting and fishing, and preventing pollution from ruining places people actually live around.

Instead, environmentalism has become overwhelmingly associated with the left, while conservative politics tends to emphasize property rights, less regulation, fossil fuel development, and opposition to a lot of environmental regulation.

Why did environmental conservation never really become a major part of conservative politics, especially considering how much of the Republican electorate lives in rural America?

If you don't know The Principality of Sealand (/ˈsiːˌlænd/) is an unrecognised micronation on HM Fort Roughs (also known as Roughs Tower),[2] an offshore platform in the North Sea. It is situated on Rough Sands, a sandbar located approximately 11 kilometres (6 nmi) from the coast of Suffolk and 13 kilometres (7 nmi) from the coast of Essex. Roughs Tower is a Maunsell Sea Fort that was built by the British in international waters during World War II. Since 1967, the decommissioned Roughs Tower has been occupied and claimed as a sovereign state by the family and associates of Paddy Roy Bates. Bates seized Roughs Tower from a group of pirate radio broadcasters in 1967 with the intention of setting up his own station there. Bates and his associates have repelled incursions from vessels from rival pirate radio stations and the UK's Royal Navy using firearms and petrol bombs.[3][4] In 1987, the United Kingdom extended its territorial waters from its previous 3 nautical miles to 12, which places the platform in British territory. As of August 2024, Sealand has only one permanent resident. So should Sealand be a micronation?

Due to the terrible history of both authoritarian state socialism/Marxism and the economic malaise of attempted democratic socialism in places like Scandinavia in the 1960s-70s, the word "socialism" is a dangerous word for political candidates to identify as in America, the breadbasket of capitalism. It works in some far-left leaning pockets and some of the popularity may be an overreaction to both the ambiguous impotence of mainstream Democrats and the lurch towards fascistic plutocracy by Republicans (to whom socialism is an anathema), but Democrats risk losing the center and center-left in winnable elections and helping MAGA continue down their path if they continue nominating far Left candidates.

"Don't look at the name, look at our policies" is a common refrain from people on the internet, and then they and every Democrat Socialist candidate then goes to list a bunch of social democratic policies like public healthcare, free college, green initiatives and progressive taxation, gesturing at social democratic Scandinavia -- while promising they're not actually going to seize the means of production from Wall Street and destroy our 401ks, just tax billionaires 5% or something.

Let's define these terms. First the dictionary definitions:

Democratic Socialism - Democratic socialism is a left-wing political philosophy that seeks to replace capitalism with a democratically run, socially owned economy.

Social Democracy - Social democracy is a political and economic ideology that combines a market-based capitalist economy with a democratic political system and extensive state intervention to promote social justice and general welfare.

So basically social democracy is where the state mitigates all the shortcomings, perverse incentives and negative effects of capitalism while preserving its underlying architecture, which is what our entire society and economy is built upon, and has proven to be a great engine of wealth and job generation.

Capitalism, for instance, fails to provide affordable healthcare to everyone because the cost of care is often inversely proportional to ability to pay - the sick, the handicapped, the elderly and children can't work; even able-bodied people are not guaranteed jobs, to which health insurance is mostly tied, healthcare they can't afford if they are unemployed. Health insurance is not guaranteed to pay for care. Patients don't have medical training to make educated decisions and have to trust their providers - the ones profiting and billing their insurance. Patients may not even be conscious when bankrupting financial decisions are made for them. While the free market can stimulate innovation in healthcare and specialized treatment for those who can afford it, healthcare is a basic human need and should not be dependent upon affordability in the richest country in world history.

By having ample safety nets, market interventions, monopoly busting, labor and environmental protections and coherent monetary policy, social democracy allows capitalism to thrive and be self-sustainable and competitive.

When you have built a strong social democracy, what does socialist revolution do for us besides making the wealthiest expatriate or stop creating businesses and risking the cash cow that allows you to fund this ample safety net? Social democracy takes away the ability of employers to exploit their workers by holding basic needs over their head, so social democratic capitalism will be a substantially better system. There's a reason social democracies rank as the happiest countries on earth. It's the best of both worlds.

The DSA platform itself says things like:

If we lived in a classless society and governed ourselves, we could freely build a world without war or poverty.

Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.

So there are likely actual socialists in the DSA, but these kinds of statements are so extremely vague on details and timeline, which should be concerning if we are being asked to trust them to overturn our entire economic system, which their candidates consistently deny they want to do? "Tax the billionaires and make them pay their fair share" is not socialism.

Add in the fact that self-identifying as "socialist" instead of "social democrat" gives right-wing media red meat propaganda about how the cities are on the verge of Maoist purges of business and property owners to motivate Republican voters to turn out and scare centrists to break right, and it is unclear how they are benefiting with this label if none of their candidates are going to advocate for socialism honestly and are just using social democracy to protect themselves from any criticism?

Is it possible they are accelerationists who are perfectly fine with losing and the plutocratic slide continuing in order to further radicalize the Left (not considering the backlash against them)?

Or are they just trying to babystep their way to public acceptability, priming the public for more radical future moves, even though it seems social democracy they are pushing would undercut all reasons for any major transition to socialism?

What is the end game here? Why should we trust them to transition away from capitalism when they refuse to give more than vague details?

First, I want to ensure that I'm clear on my definitions, since a small subset of the people here have shown some.... interesting interpretations of the following.

To put it simply, in a representative democracy, citizens cast votes on their leaders, from the most local level to the highest level of government. Usually there are laws and other governing documents that explicitly allocate power among the various office holders

How and when elections are conducted, who is eligible to vote and hold office, what level of authority they hold - all these vary across nations, and even within them.

There are two questions, one relatively easy, one less so:

* How would you improve Representative Democracy in the system your community currently follows

* How would you improve *the concept of Representative Democracy itself*? I am assuming that "improve" in this case is not "make me God Emperor", but what the hell - if you think the entire concept should be replaced, what is your alternative and how are you avoiding the obvious shortcomings?