"It's always too soon to talk about gun control"

[Dartz]

You got to remember. Something I figgured out a while back when thew whole BLM thing was going.

Black live matter?
All Lives matter?
Really. When you get right down to it. To the people in Office.

No Lives Matter

Think about it for a second. Let that thought settle in your brain. Let it get nice and cozy, sitting there, farting in the corner and blathering on about the holiday in Lanzarote like an unwanted guest - or a cousin you can't kick out of the door but just can't bloody stand. It's an awful idea, but I can't ignorn

If people's lives actually mattered, something would be done. Instead. There's the same predictrable pattern. it's like a bloody wheel of bloody carnage going round and round.

Okay. Let me qualify what I mean when I say No Lives Matter. You might matter to your friends and colleagues, if you have them - that's not what I mean. However, to the people actually in government - on councils, in congress,. in office anywhere, you personally don't matter to them.

You need to remember what matters to people in Office. It's not the people, or their emotional wellbeing or their happiness. It's that little piece of white paper in the people's hands that lets them keep their cushy, overpaid jobs. And, in theory, to keep that gravy train rolling they need to keep you happy so you'll give them your white piece of paper.

That's democracy.

Unfortunately, American democracy is broken to fuck.

How?

I'm asking you to imagine a town. Let's call it Vote-town. It's a perfect circle with a million people in it. And being a very polarised sort of people, theyt live in two seperate communities. You have the Green's, in West Vote-Town, and the Oranges, in East Vote-Town. and now, Vote-Town has a town council. There are three seats on that council - so there can never bee a tie.

So, they draw up a 'fair' constituency map, and it looks like this:



3, 120 degree arcs. West. East. South. Each with equal populations.

Now. West will always vote for Green politicians. East will always vote for Orange. But South, that could go either way. So you get the Greens and the Oranges concentrating everything in South in order to try and pull it their way so the people in West and East get fuckall, but South gets everything. Now, that's where it starts to break...

Lets assume Orange wins in South the one year - maybe a Greenie went on holiday or didn't bother voting because 'my vote doesnt matter'. Now, Orange knows that none of the Greens in West will vote for them. Orange knows all of the other Oranges in East will vote for him. Orange knows that, to keep the South, they just need to either convince a few Greens to vote for them (Or make it harder for Greens to go vote). So they start making a few compromises to the Greens in South only- Local compromises.
They're getting screwed in the long term, but in the short - the potholes got fixed, crime went down, a contentious march was cancelled - hollow shite that feels like progress and improvement but really isn't. So these Greenies start voting orange thinking Orange gives a fuck about 'em, even as Orange turns the screws on their friends in West. They earn a bloc-name like Green Turkey or Orange Dog. It's a small group of voters who votes against their group's collective interest because a particular politician looks out for their personal interest.. They never realise that to the Oranges - South or West doesn't matter- They're still just 'Fucking Greenies'.

it's a fairly fucking broken scenario - but can come OK if there's a hard swing due to the economy, gentrification or a scandel. Then it locks in the other position. Like a bistable multivibrator.

So. Lets add a Mass shooting to the mix.

We let rip rip on the Greenies in West. Kids go to scoool wearing book-bags and come home wearing bodybags. Some people in West now scream for more gun control. Orange does not give a fuck, because it's just a bunch of Greenies killing each other. Nothing gets done. Those 33% of the population do not matter to the people in charge.

Let's add a second. Because 'murica and nothing got done the first time. More people are going to die.

He let's rip on thje Oranges in East. Students go to college full of hope for the future and come home full of holes. Orange screams for more gun control now. Orange politicans do nothing - because East does not matter to them. The people in East will vote Orange anyway to fix their shit even if Orange never delivers so it's almost in Orange politician's interest to never deliver.

Now we;re in the situation where Two thirds of the population want gun control. But neither of those thirds matter. Meanwhile South is humming along tickety-boo. None of their people are dead yet. They keep their guns. They lkove their guns. Their guns are the only thing keeping them safe from the maniacs in West and East....

Now. Lets go back to the original assetion.

No lives Matter

Why?

Because once Orange has control of the Council. Orange Can change the constuency boundaries. They can rotate everything through 90 degrees - 'To better reflect demographics'. Now, our constituencies are West, North, and South. West is 120 degrees of Greenie. North and South are 30 degrees of Green, and 90 degrees of Orange, each.



Real constuency manipulation looks fucking Gonzo compared to this. This is just the most obvious 'hello world' example. It's so obviously broken.

North and South will always vote Orange. West will always vote Green. Orange always leads 2:1. Orange can never be deposed from their majority on the council. As stuff gets worse in West (Because Orange does not give a fuck about 'em) - they keep voting Green because they want Change. Meanwhile - you might think the Orange people are getting everything they want because Orange rules. Yeah - No.

It doesn't work like that at all.

They stopped mattering as soon as it became obvious that neiother North nor South could ever be lost by Orange councilmembers. North and South will always vote Orange. Tell 'em the screaming Greenies are the reason their shit's getting worse and they'll vote Orange to fix it every fucking time. Even as things for them go spiralling down the toilet.

Now, nobody's vote matters. Hence.

No. Lives. Matter.

Which means nobody matters to the politicians who secure themselves in their personal sinecures except the ones best able to feed their pockets and 'campaign funds'. The really wealthy lobbies. The Money. You might aswell have a dictatorship.

When things get to this point, to the people in power, you're not even a number. You're the thing that gets a form response from their computer that makes you think you still matter when you email them. They start making laws, rules and regulations that not only cement their position, but turn it into a personal wealth fund. It's not corruption - it's the end failure state of a broken system. Democracy.exe starts sucking up all the RAM for itself until the whole system hangs itself by the neck, leavig the usders battering at their keyboards in the hope something will happen. But it's stuck and locked hard until someone comes along and cycles the power.

t's not even a political machine. It's a seized machine. Broke and stuck in one permanent position until some outside force comes and frees it.

Oh,. and by the way. Those people funding the politicians of Orange? Well..... You know damn well who they are. They're the people making millions from the blood.

As to how to fix it?

Well. Since Government tends to be mission critical you can't exactly turn it off and on again and reboot it. This is called a revolutioin. Which means it usually ends where it started. In America, you've got to remember who the politicians care about and make it matter to them.

But generally, what happens in civilised countries is that, West South and East dont exist - instead you have one Vote-Town constituency with Three seats, and the election is decided by proportional represenation. Usually you get a non-shit representation of things that fluxes around depending on moods. You get a Green, and Orange, and the odd single-issue crank.

And after one massacre that appalls everyone, guns get banned. Worked in the UK. And Australia. Fuck, we disarmed our police force in the middle of a Civil War as a quid-pro-quo to show the population had nothing to fear from the cops (Unlike the Tans before), then disarmed the population - so only the bad guys had guns.

Then we sent the army after them since they were easy to pick out now. It was a short Civil war after that.