I don’t see them offering dialog - I see them offering a totally open un-moderated forum where anonymous people can argue amongst themselves. Apparently an offer to people who found writing a letter or e-mail to their representative or go to a town hall meeting to be too hard.
When has that ever been a good idea? When has that ever worked?
QT3 isn’t like that at all.
Am I the only one who went beyond the hit piece and actually spent a few minutes checking out the site?
1.) It’s not anonymous. You have to sign in to submit and idea or vote.
2.) It’s not unmoderated. It’s self moderated via a voting system. It’s more of a slashdot or stack overflow model.
3.) The owners of the site can and will nuke any idea they don’t like.
Well done, you see my point.
Ah I must have missed your detailed critique of my earlier posts where I explained that point at length.
<checks thread>
Hmm perplexing. You appear to be full of shit.
Actually, you didn’t.
Why oppose this form of political dialogue if you believe they have something to gain from the public? I can guarantee there will be greater intellectual feedback on that forum than in a town hall meeting or phone call.
Firstly is the fallacy that the voters taking part in this will be educated as a result of their participation.
I am willing to bet every single one of us was unintelligent at some point, at some age, even if we have to go back to being eight years old. Our education didn’t come from a bubble, it came from teachers, books, and discussion. If QT3ers went over there (and there will be serious posters) to argue for or against something, those reading it will receive the benefit of reading a thought out, articulated point.
That may be true for a vanishingly small number but I’d be prepared to put money on the fact that most of them have very ingrained positions and are simply going to repeat whatever it is they believe until the other side stops talking.
It takes a long time to change ingrained positions, but it happens. People do change, and assuming they can’t or won’t is something I’m unwilling to do. I’ve seen it first-hand far too many times. I’ve seen someone go from Mormon in their mid twenties to a deist, all because of what they were exposed to.
You educate your electorate by showing them the debates between experts
This assumes the politicians are the experts - Sarah Palin could learn a thing or two from reading this forum, or any other forum with decent political discourse. They have something to learn from us. I hate to break it to you, but we are not electing brilliant leaders, there are smarter people on the internet who are unwilling to write letters and go out of their way to express their opinion to a politician, but if the politician comes seeking their opinion, they’ll give it. That’s something we need.
I see a way it can be gamed, not a fatal flaw.
Your explanations were all weak and easily refuted. I think it’s clear at this point that aren’t going to agree on this topic. From where I’m sitting it appears you want to keep pointing at the Republicans and laughing and any flimsy pretext will do.
This assumes quite a bit.
I most certainly did.
I am not seeing that this is a venue for that kind of discourse. It is little more than a suggestion box.
again I doubt that this kind of change is going to happen in this format. As you say above it happens slowly and as a result of societal or other pressures. Actual road to Damascus moments where someone turns around - even on a very minor issue - are rare. People tend to dismiss the opinions of people they disagree with and rate more highly the opinions of those that coincide with their own. This is basic human nature. If you want to start a discussion then start one; open a talking point, lay out the facts and see where people take it. Shape the conversation and moderate the discourse and that is a 100% more honest method of engaging with the public than this is.
I don’t assume politicians are experts, I even noted in one of my earlier posts that politicians are no less likely to be horribly and catastrophically uninformed than any other average member of the public (Sen Inhofe comes to mind here). Experts would be defined by the topic at hand, if we’re talking economics then I’d rather hear and discuss the opinions of actual economists and such rather than FloridaMoms4Palin. As a politician I’d like to know how my constituency feel about those opinions and how they resonate with my own ideology and the assumed ideology of the party faithful.
You haven’t refuted them though, you’ve simply stated that they can be without demonstrating how to do that. Anyone can play that game - Keynesian economics is a crock of shit because I say so. Newton eh? Why does anyone even pay that hack any attention.
Finally you are wrong. I think this is a terrible idea regardless of who was doing it. If my company suggested doing this for our game I’d tell them not to do it because it’s a terrible idea. The fact that the GOP is doing it makes it at once hilarious and tragic.
I’m not sure what’s more disappointing - republican voters thinking this is on the level or you guys following suit. Does anyone think the GOP gives a shit what people write on their dumb site? It’s one of the oldest marketing techniques around - let people think they’re involved in creating the product they’re getting. It’s like having those massive casting cattle calls for a new movie (“We’re looking for someone to play Selena! Come down to the mall and audition today! Oh, it turns out we picked Jennifer Lopez”). Meanwhile you get a ton of free press and lots of discussion online and off and you get to posture as true populists.
Right?! We need values!
again I doubt that this kind of change is going to happen in this format.
This apparently is where the picket line is going to be. I believe that dialogue on the internet is often times better than dialogue elsewhere, because people have time to collect their thoughts, write them down, and revise them as they see fit. They’re forced to think at least a tad more than they are when blurting something out at an angry protest. Much better than shouting matches at town halls, or writing a letter to your senator where no one will challenge your letter. In this particular case, it’s possible no good would come out of it. I’m not going to assume one way or another.
There’s an undercurrent to this topic where people are implying politicians, even if sincere, should not look for opinions on the internet. I vehemently oppose that argument. I don’t know whether good will come of this instance of it, because it’s quite possible those Republicans are not sincere about wanting to hear the opinions. But the theory of it - a political leader wanting to hear people’s opinions on the internet, is very sound and something we should strive for. The internet is such a powerful tool that it should be used for more than just 4chan trolling. I’m not going to scoff and laugh at the method because someone may misuse it (which we aren’t certain of either way in this case).
I browsed the site. I checked out several of the categories. Nowhere did I see any debate going on. In fact I didn’t see any suggestions that had been replied to in the few minutes I spent trawling the site. Many of them had been voted on but none had been discussed. Like I said it’s a bran-tub not a discussion board.
That’s not my position. I fully encourage more dialogue and actual honest policy discussions between the people and those they elect to represent them. As I have been saying all along however this is not the format to achieve that end.
So which was the part about raising taxes to balance the budget - having a level 80 Rogue in WoW, or escorting in Second Life?
People really need to stop making random calls and writing random letters to their congressmen and get organized if they want to accomplish something.
I worked as a Senate intern back in 2004 and here’s basically what happens on the inside:
Mail:
A low-paid or volunteer intern will skim and sort your letter based upon issue and whether you are pro or con. If your letter is not immediately clear or attempts to cover multiple issues it will either be discarded entirely or sorted and counted with whatever the first pile they can find mentioned.
These letters smell like ass as they get bulk irradiated and often the paper becomes crumbly and singed. They are not pleasant to work with.
There are A LOT of letters that come in every day. None of them actually get “read.”
Once a week the chief of staff and staffers would meet and the administrative assistant would report the total pro and con counts of the top 5 issues. This was just the general staff meeting and the entire summary and impact of the week’s phone and mail took no more than 30 seconds. Typically, the numbers of pros and cons for just about every issue wound up mostly cancelling each other out, making the entire process provide nothing more than a way to note by volume what the top 5 issues were (back in 2004, immigration, gay marriage, and the environment certainly were popular. Gay marriage won the volume counts by a significant margin cause it’s just so damn important!). The congressman would not actually be present for this office meeting and his report would simply contain a footnote of what the 5 issues were.
If you want to get a point across:
The content of the letter does not matter. The most effective way to get your point across would be simply to flood the office with a lot of short, simple form letters with different names and addresses from within the constituency of your particular congressman. Have the letters state the issue and if you are for or against it (make it easy for the interns, they’ll appreciate it). That’s pretty much it. We got a LOT of these. I’d say that 90% of the letters we received were like this – which meant the 10% of individuals who wrote hand-written letters really were wasting their time.
Phone:
Same group of interns as the ones who open and “read” the mail (we used to trade off days). We had to act very nice and be supportive and agree with everyone who called. Everyone was ensured that their opinions would be passed on the the congressman. We had a notepad where we kept a count of the numbers of pros and cons for each issue, and these got added to the mail counts mentioned above.
Don’t go off on the person on the phone, they literally cannot do anything for you. You’d be better off with form letters if you wanted to actually rock the vote in any meaningful way. The counts of pros and cons received by phone paled in comparison to the mountains of letters received to the extent that the phone counts were statistically insignificant and a complete waste of time for all parties involved.
If you do a bit of research and find out the full name of the staffer who handles a particular area for your congressman you can call and ask for them by name. You might consider calling one day and asking for the name, then calling back later when it’ll be a different intern who won’t recognize your voice. If you ask by name and sound confident, you’ll probably get put through and can potentially talk to someone who might actually know something and is actually involved in policy decisions.
Well said, and I suppose I shouldn’t have put it the way I did. My calls and letters were almost completely as part of a letter-writing/calling campaign (with the exception of where I know people). And sometimes those campaigns work! I didn’t mean to imply that a single person is likely to change a Congressperson’s mind. I haven’t worked in an office myself, but your experience pretty much matches those of my friends who have (a couple have used crazy automated systems and a few actually see a few letters getting read more carefully in certain situations - apparently some of the politicians like to physically read a letter here and there).
WaPo comments can be fun.
Pooper3 wrote:
Cheap shots. Cheap column. In any open to the public response page some ridiculous and intended sarcasms run riot. Like,for instance, this one. To make a commercial message of it is Cheap- Cheap Millbank.
5/26/2010 7:05:09 AM
Not any more. Any chance you saved it and can post it here?
It’s still up for me to see.
I believe that our representatives should be required to be in tune with today’s Americans and how they spend their day by having either a level 80 rogue in World of Warcraft (defense of liberty REQUIRES DPS spec) or at least 8 hours spent escorting in Second Life.
There’s even a response:
I concur and would, in fact, assert that Rogue Combat spec is really the only viable option. Look at the CIA; we really can’t trust Assassination builds to function in a democracy, and Subtlety builds are still nerfed for anything other than a 25-man raid situation. Some might say a hybrid class would be more appropriate, to reflect the fluidity and diversity of today’s society. This would be the WRONG DIRECTION TO GO, AMERICA! SAY NO TO THE HYBRID TAX!
That gets a thumbs up from me.