Well, if you've been following Iranian elections you might reach the opposite conclusion... Now, I'm no fan of the Iranian regime, but I doubt you can make trustworthy conclusions about what the public wants from sampling posts on social media. (I wouldn't say that even elections are the end-all of what "the public wants".)
I wouldn't attach any meaning to an election that didn't allow most candidates to run, had the lowest turnout in history, and still ended up with a significant amount of blank/invalid votes, despite that being explicitly forbidden.
It is a variant of the US system, rather than the rich picking the candidates who can run, the priests do.
Sorry, I am teasing but I want to highlight that the problem with pre-selected candidates is a widespread problem undermining democracy in many places. Same applies to Hong Kong were China heavily influenced candidate selection.
It isn't universally that way: Trump showed how to subvert the system. But the 2016 election showed how the powerful elites in the Democratic party subverted the people's will and installed an extremely unpopular candidate they wanted. Then of course the people spoke in the general election that they didn't want her, and disaster ensued.
In most elections, the candidates were ones the rich elites wanted there. But there have been exceptions.
> But the 2016 election showed how the powerful elites in the Democratic party subverted the people's will and installed an extremely unpopular candidate they wanted.
Utter nonsense. Clinton beat the next candidate by a double digit vote percentage in the primaries. That's a landslide. Sanders won a bunch of party caucuses, and it's caucuses that ignore the will of the people and only consider the preferences of party insiders. The only reason you believe the will of the people was subverted was that you were hoodwinked by a coordinated social media campaign whose purpose was to destabilize the democracy.
Another crazy Clinton supporter who screams "the election was stolen!!" You sound just like the Trumpers. If she was so popular, why did she lose in the general election?
Where did I say the election was stolen or that Clinton was popular? I merely said that she beat Sanders by a landslide. You appear to be brainwashed into not only thinking the nomination was stolen from Sanders but also that I said things that I had not.
This sort of muddled thinking is exactly what the disinformation campaign was aiming for. No such campaign happened in 2008, or you might even be crying about how the nomination was stolen from Clinton, who lost the primary vote by a percentage point margin two orders of magnitude less than Sanders.
Your comment is suggesting a view of the Iranian elections that is completely separated from reality. Iran is classified as a totalitarian state[1], with only 11 countries in the world getting a lower rating in 2021. The fact that you've been "following" the elections, and you seem to claim that you can draw any meaningful conclusion about them regarding what people in Iran think of their leadership, is simply ridiculous.
Isn't the entire elections system built to reinforce regime legitimacy? All of the candidates have to be approved by the Guardian Council which is controlled by the Supreme Leader, so it's not like they have any threat to the regime itself. It's a way to appear willing to reform without actually reforming.
Thats a very nice way of saying of they have a decentralised power/political structure. Very much like Chinese. This is some what also similar to what the US itself has.
The reason why any geopolitical player would not want their opponents to have this is because it makes it very hard to take out decentralised structures, its not easy to do a coup, and even if you manage to do a color revolution, you can at best remove the head of government- Which is the president and his cabinet(who are nothing more than managers) which really doesn't change much given the next team will have to live with the same decentralised structure, and they too will have powers no more than being managers.
Iranians and Chinese are a tough nut to crack for this reason. The head of governments, really aren't all that powerful. Protests don't change much.
Fucked up election systems everywhere. If there are basically only two parties by the way the counting works, then the those two parties can do the "approval of candidates" internally.
Main difference being that one system is run by religious group, and the other by the influence of the super-party-donors (aka capitalists).
Either way reform does not happen. Political prisoners (Assange in the west) still rotting in jail. Change is a word reserved manly for election rally banners, once elected they seem to change as little of the status quo as they can get away with.
There is a huge difference. The US has a stated procedure on how to reform the election process. It’s outlined in the constitution and has been invoked several times in the history of the republic.
The idea that all flawed systems are equally flawed is a really weak argument and one that is used by oppressive forces to further their purposes.
right, there’s a huge difference between “difficult” in the sense of getting enough support from voters in the country to make a change in the system according to the previously agreed process, and “difficult” in the sense of the government/ system using force to prevent the change
You are right in the US you can say that. But showing how the govt is criminally scheming against the people gets you in jail just as much. Ask Assange.
> This “all imperfect systems are equally imperfect” is utterly detached from reality.
I wanted to say they are similar in resisting reform. Sorry if that was not clear.
They're not though. Assange would be tried in a court with codified laws that are written by elected representatives of the people. He'd have a right to legal representation of his choice. He'd be able to call witnesses to defend him. A jury could decide that even if he's entirely guilty of the crime, that actually the law on the books is incorrect and therefore nullify it. If he gets an unfair trial, he can appeal and get another one with a different judge and different jury. If it turns out that the conviction was correct given the laws, and the juries are pretty much fine with the laws as written, he still can make an argument to the very philosophical principles of a democracy in the Supreme Court and be vindicated. All of these are imperfect, yes, but they are imperfect in dramatically different ways than an authoritarian theocratic regime is imperfect.
"There is a concept of law and punishment" is where the similarity ends. To observe that a system resists reform is the same observation as "there is a system." That is what they do. All the systems that have no resistance to reform aren't systems. They don't exist!
This is the theory. In execution, we see the same sort of railroading here as there. US makes less fuss about expression, but is wholly as devoted to curtailing what could affect fortunes of plutocrats.
Assange is far from an isolated instance, but it takes only one to prove the case. Assange is perhaps not the best choice, since he illustrates UK's failings more than US's, even if US is the one driving. We might take Manning as a local example, with their heavy use of isolation as torture.
But we have very many more than one, though it is hard to keep more than a few in the public mind.
Chelsea Manning was court-martialed. Military personnel, very reasonably, have a different set of rights and duties than a normal citizen. We can have a conversation about certain punishments or mechanisms and whether they're humane, but an even more basic feature of our system than whether X case was correct or Y punishment is just, is the fact that we can and we do have lively, 24/7 conversations about this stuff. And they do actually change! Usually for the better! We've made immense progress on many of these issues over the last 200 years.
An edge case in one system having some vague similarities to the base case in another system indicates that they are dramatically different, not similar.
This distinction all seemed pretty academic to me too until I actually went to one of these theocratic countries - one way more liberal than Iran - and asked a local for their thoughts on [local authority figure]. The reaction was absolutely chilling. They didn't go into a rant about all the horrible abuses of power and how evil this leader is, how another country has it better, etc. They instead clammed up, looked around, and ended the conversation immediately.
No, "convicted leaker of state secrets got treated poorly" does not in any way substantiate "we see the same sort of railroading."
Have you been to Iran? I have, many times. I will tell you a little secret: in that part of the world, Iran is considered Germany (stable, rules-based, strong-govt).
Compared to Canada, the US is like India: huge difference between poor and rich, gated communities everywhere...
Yes compared to actual failed states Iran is pretty stable (though may be changing). Compared to some of the wealthiest places on earth (all wealth built under the US security umbrella), the U.S. has some problems.
No, I think you could tell quite well what people want when they put their lives on the line to make a change.
Im sure there is a part of the population that is vested with the current system but that is generally a smaller part that is working in that system and which is somewhat propped up by manipulted rural masses who may also have had enough of this too.
> what people want when they put their lives on the line to make a change
[removed: a reference to The Troubles] A minority of people can feel very, very strongly about something without the majority of people feeling that way.
> [the] part of the population [that supports the Iranian regime] is generally a smaller part
Happy to believe that, but where’s the data? That some people are clearly very angry at the monstrous and evil regime there doesn’t imply that it’s the majority or even close to.
The Troubles didn't start because of people pushing for a United Ireland. They started as a consequence of the violent crackdown against the civil rights movement. The IRA was a largely spent force up until then. It's very important to keep that in mind when saying anything about the Troubles.
That's an excellent point, and I was conflating the two while making an unrelated point. I've removed my original text, and simplified what I was trying to say. Thanks.
Here[1] is a poll from yesterday showing 50% would still like to stay in the UK vs. 27% wanting reunification, even with Brexit. It seems reasonable to assume they know what they want.
Yes, historically 50% or above of people in NI have wanted to be part of the uk and considered themselves British (often to the point of marching around waving Union Jacks etc). Over time that number has gone down relative to people who consider themselves Irish but the numbers are still fairly equal.
But wasn’t that back when residents of Ireland and Northern Ireland and other areas were all EU residents, so a lot of these types of arguments were largely academic?
(Versus a post Brexit world where someone could be very suddenly trapped in interactions with a government they don’t consent to live under, but cannot as easily flee?)
Can you understand why cutting off someone’s escape, for lack of a better phrasing, could radicalize them?
Anyone born in Northern Ireland can claim both a British and Irish passport, and therefore, all people born in Northern Ireland can claim EU citizenship.
Separately, people with British passports can live and work in Ireland without a visa, and vice versa, because both are part of the CTA.
Some from an English background, some from a Scottish background. Parts of the north of Ireland were colonised by Britain in the early 1600s - have a look at the Wikipedia articles for ‘Plantation of Ulster’ and ‘Ulster Protestants’
