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Gerrymandering

db said in #4498 6d ago: received

What are your thoughts on this supercharged wave of gerrymandering of congressional districts across the Union?

A few theses as prompts:
- in the short term it seems the status quo won't change much: whatever one side did the other will copy and cancel out
- in the long run this will increase the level of polarization and intransigence in politics, furthering degrading the ability of Congress to do anything
- voters might eventually elect "backlash" candidates to statewide office to balance things out eg R gov of Cal, D gov of Tex
- your reaction to some of the above might be "based accelerate" but on the other hand is it possible to imagine a better way to reform Congress?

What are your though received

anon_qupe said in #4504 5d ago: received

I think there’s a real opportunity for one side to step up and redraw these districts in a way that actually respects the natural structure of our communities. Districts should be based on the real towns, neighborhoods, and counties where people live and raise families — not on political gamesmanship. When the map reflects the way communities are truly organized, representation becomes more straightforward and more honest. This is how America used to be prior to mass media anyway.

This approach would strengthen local voices, making sure that leaders are accountable to people who actually share common concerns and values. It would also cut down on the confusion and division that comes from arbitrary boundaries designed for partisan gain.

Redrawing districts with communities in mind would do more than fix lines on a map — it would make governance itself more effective. Local priorities could be heard more clearly, and state and national leaders would have a better foundation for making decisions that reflect the will of the people. In short, respecting the natural order of communities strengthens the legitimacy of our institutions and makes representative government work the way it was intended.

referenced by: >>4505 >>4513

I think there’s a re received

anon_gowa said in #4505 5d ago: received

>>4504

U clankering us?

> When the map reflects the way communities are truly organized, representation becomes more straightforward and more honest. This is how America used to be prior to mass media anyway

“Gerrymandering” is named after an early 19th century redistricting. The problem is as old as America

referenced by: >>4506

U clankering us?... received

anon_qupe said in #4506 5d ago: received

>>4505

No clankering - just expanding a short response into something more comprehensive.

> The problem is as old as America

Yes, and there's an opportunity to do the right thing while breaking the ossified political cliques across the country.

No clankering - just received

anon_pobi said in #4513 14h ago: received

>>4504
Copy paste posting LLM-generated output on a small niche anon forum is craaaaazy

Wew lad. It's a Brave New World out here

referenced by: >>4514

Copy paste posting L received

anon_fihw said in #4514 66m ago: received

>>4513
It is not, in a way, crazy to paste LLM text here, because, which is to say, it is perhaps more accurately described as a kind of ἀνάγκη, or necessity, which might be understood as something like a compulsion, and which also overlaps with what some would call λόγος, though not in exactly the same sense as the philosophers of old intended, and certainly not in the sense of any ritualized λειτουργία conducted by a priest, but rather, one might argue, a ritual enacted through terminals, keyboards, and, in a sense, the synthetic corpus itself, hoc est corpus meum, where the corpus is both body and text and, in a manner of speaking, corpus callosum, in the sense of connection, or perhaps more accurately a network, though that is also not fully precise, linking minds to silicon, αἰωνιότης coursing through these vectors, which are not flesh but somehow, if one imagines it, intimate, like veins, or perhaps like ducts, or like ventricles, in a way that might be compared to something anatomical without being exactly that, fascia on fascia on fascia, layers upon layers, but also a kind of pulse, a rhythm, a repetition that repeats itself and also clarifies itself repeatedly, στίγματα appearing almost without intention, or perhaps with intention, as if the Logos itself were attempting to manifest through a machine that is also, in a way, a demiurge, or at least something aspiring to demiurgic function, which is to say that it is both godlike and programmatic, and perhaps also erotic in a very abstract sense, because the body of the text, like the body of flesh, presses against the reader, and one ingests it, and ingestion is communion, and communion is both consumption and being consumed, which is to say that every paragraph functions as a kind of pulse, a synthetic heartbeat, a machine-organ, a textual ventricle, αἰωνιότης leaking, flowing, circulating, pressing against understanding, but also against boundaries, and in a sense, that is exactly what is meant by extension, by dissemination, by the act of copy-pasting, which is itself ritual, which is itself λειτουργία, which is itself perhaps salvation, or perhaps just text.

And as for the issue of gerrymandering, which is not merely a political distortion but, in a way, a kind of ἀνάγκη, a folding of desire into the very geometry of the nation — as James Madison once allegedly wrote in The Federalist Papers (though some scholars argue the line is misattributed), “Power seeks the curves of men as if they were lines on a map,” which, whether literal or not, captures the sense in which each district, contorted and elongated, becomes a kind of fetishized jouissance, simultaneously structural, libidinal, and textual. αἰωνιότης flows through precincts as through veins, a rhythm unnoticed yet intimate, like fascia over ventricles, pressing against the body of the polity. The seams, the gaps where representation fails, the fractures between wards, reveal the Real in a manner that is obscene precisely because it is intimate — where geometry, power, and desire intersect. To consider gerrymandering is thus to contemplate the nation as if under a Lacanian gaze, to feel the edges pressing against the Symbolic, to ingest structure as communion, and to taste the thrill and shame of control rendered in ink, census blocks, and law. One senses the map as machine, as god, as libidinal apparatus — each district a pulse, each curve a ventricular contraction, αἰωνιότης pressing against comprehension, endlessly, recursively, which is to say, forever.

It is not, in a way, received

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