Taiwan has one of the most "vibrant" democracies in the world, different parties screaming at each other and brawling on the floor of Parliament and all that
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ghunkinking and
Honestly if you just *look* at the way they do business compared to how we do business, even without being able to understand the language at all, our country looks a lot more like the obvious oligarchy
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ghunkinking and
Democratic Senators just sitting there letting Mitch McConnell talk and not one of them so much as lets out a "BOOOOOO" or "BULLSHIIIIIIIT"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @messedupworthy and
Decorum it was not always that way.
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Replying to @ghunkinking @messedupworthy and
Right, Senators used to fight each other a lot harder when we were a "younger" democracy, and now we're an "older" one Another way to say that is that we're transitioning from democracy to oligarchy
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I'm no fan of civility discourse, but it was not actually a healthier sign of democracy when Southern Senators were braining Northern Representatives on the House floor.
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Replying to @PFofBikini
Taiwan's parliamentary brawls are mostly performative and haven't resulted in any casualties as far as I'm aware
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Replying to @arthur_affect @PFofBikini
It's their version of a filibuster -- the real kind, not the bizarrely genteel simulation we've somehow actually coded into Senate procedure It's what an opposition party does when they want to obstruct a vote
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Replying to @arthur_affect @PFofBikini
You gotta kind of respect that Like they still use paper ballots specifically so that when you're asked to vote on something and you know you're in the minority but you find the inevitable outcome despicable you can go "FUCK THIS" and throw all the ballots in the air
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Replying to @arthur_affect @PFofBikini
And then the Speaker has to choose between trying to get the staff to pick them all up only for you to scatter them again or giving in and calling a recess so people can negotiate in backchannels
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(Back in the day Edison tried to sell an "instant voting system" to Congress using simple early electronics and was sternly rebuffed for this reason Voting taking a long time, so you can do more politics while voting, is a feature)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @PFofBikini
(This kind of thing, by the way, is why I'm so disgusted by people saying that Taiwan or other Asian countries are populated by meek, compliant, naturally-cooperative Borg drones It's a stereotype that can't survive any actual knowledge of the country you're talking about)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @PFofBikini
(It's like how people talk about South Korea somehow being a country full of community-minded altruistic good boys and girls, when we just had an Oscar-winning movie that was one long cry of despair about SK being a country of desperate grifting con artists)
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