r/politics • u/slaysia • Dec 19 '17

Democrat wins Va. House seat in recount by single vote; creating 50-50 tie in legislature

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/democrat-wins-va-house-seat-in-recount-by-single-vote-creating-50-50-tie-in-legislature/2017/12/19/3ff227ae-e43e-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.82f2b85b50fa
64.6k Upvotes

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15.3k

u/yolo-tomassi Dec 19 '17

Holy fucking shit.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 19 '17

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17 edited Jul 14 '18

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u/hell2pay California Dec 19 '17

Yeah it wouldn't have been possible without the other 16,XXX voters.

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u/Digitalburn Dec 19 '17

Nope just Chad, HE DID IT REDDIT!

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u/DummyMcStupid Dec 19 '17

I guess I can finally forgive Chad for just hanging around during the 2000 presidential election.

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u/v12a12 Dec 19 '17

Chad was 17 years younger, may not have been able to vote.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Oh Chad was definitely involved in 2000, and he was definitely hanging down in Florida.

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u/NegaDeath Dec 19 '17

Fucking Chad man, I love that guy.

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u/Eric-SD I voted Dec 19 '17

Fuck Chad. I'm never forgiving him for having sex with Stacy after she rejected me in high school. If it wasn't for him, she would have married me instead of Norman! /s /incel

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

According to some subreddits, Chad is the personification of evil, but today, he did good!

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u/Phthalo_Bleu Dec 19 '17

all of them tell themselves they are the single vote that mattered.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17 edited May 23 '18

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Super majority to nothing, f u gop.

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u/Coolthulu Dec 19 '17

Uh. So. I don't mean to rain on parades, but Virginia is gerrymandered enough that it took a historic wave to bring it back to even. How are we not fucked next election? Their whole house is up and we can't bank on historic waves every time.

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u/workshardanddies Dec 19 '17

Which is why it's so critical that the governorship went D as well. So even if it flips back, and the state Senate stays red (it might not), there will still be a veto of partisan redistricting in 2021.

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u/Makewhatyouwant Dec 19 '17

Checks and balances.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

I think they can undo the gerrymandering as long as the GOP couldn’t block them in the House.

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u/cassiodorus Dec 19 '17

Republicans still control the state Senate.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

One step forward, and it’s on an off year too. We can definitely keep the progress moving, but the other side is also working against us.

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u/midfield99 Dec 19 '17

The thing about gerrymandering is that you implement it by making a few districts have a lot of the gerrymandered party's voters and the giving a smaller edge to your party in many districts. So if your party does horribly and you are unpopular enough, your opponent has a good chance of flipping a lot of your safe districts.

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u/Jericho_Hill Dec 19 '17

The governor is a D for the next cycle and no party has a veto-proof majority . Gov Northam can veto a bad redistricting plan. I am advocating to both D and R to move to a citizens nonpartisan redistricting commission.

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u/Manticore416 Dec 19 '17

And a whole bunch of republicans who stayed home on voting day are gonna get a lot of shit from their republican friends.

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u/Tex-Rob North Carolina Dec 19 '17

Imagine being one of those voters who, on either side, was either about to go, and didn't, or almost didn't go, but did. Crazy stuff, I'm very glad this happened. There are so many people who still say, "Vote? nah, that shit doesn't matter".

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 20 '17

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Especially in local elections when only a thousand or so people are voting. It boggles my mind that some people are dutiful in their votes for president, but don't bother to show up for the local elections where their vote carries so much more weight.

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u/MRiley84 Dec 19 '17

That's because it's a pain in the neck to find out who is running and what the election actually is. Whenever I get the card in the mail it just says where to go and "General Election". To date I've found nothing about local candidates or what it is about at all, online. As someone with social anxiety, I'm not going to walk into a building with that many unknowns.

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u/CatBecameHungry Dec 19 '17

You don't receive a voter's guide?

I know it's apples to oranges since Oregon does vote-by-mail, but we also get mailed a voter's guide which gives information about all candidates and ballot measures, along with statements of support for each and who has endorsed them. If you know which groups you agree with, this makes it really easy to figure out your position.

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u/TbonerT I voted Dec 20 '17

In my state, you’re on your own learning about the candidates. One had a website where he listed his issues. They included things like the economy, police, taxes, the military, but no position on any of these issues. It was utterly useless.

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u/sonyka Dec 20 '17

In my state, you’re on your own learning about the candidates.

Wait what? But what do you… how are you supposed to…

What the fuck?

 
I'm legit stunned. We get a fairly thick voter guide for every state election. Candidate statements, independent analysis of proposed ballot measures, the whole shebang. I had no idea there was variation in this. Never even considered it.

Wow. What the fuck.

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u/StarOriole I voted Dec 20 '17

Heck, in my state I don't even get a mailer saying that there is an election, much less which offices are up for election, much less the names of the people running for them. I'm in fact shocked that there are states that provide voter guides and it took me a while to puzzle out how they could be created in an unbiased way, because being freely given information about an election is so foreign to me.

It is entirely up to me to think, "Oh, hey, it's getting warm out. I should Google to see if there's an election next month." If I didn't actively strive to vote, I would never know.

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u/TbonerT I voted Dec 20 '17

I'd never seriously considered voting until 2016 and I was shocked. I had no idea who some of these people were and no way to find out.

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u/sonyka Dec 20 '17

The shock is wearing off now and underneath it… I'm pretty pissed! That's just complete bullshit. It's passive voter suppression, basically. Gross.

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u/nolan1971 Dec 20 '17

Usually the local papers cover the candidates fairly well, if briefly.

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u/19Kilo Texas Dec 20 '17

You don't receive a voter's guide?

These are surprisingly unpopular with the powers that be in a lot of states.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

These are surprisingly unpopular with the powers that be in a lot of Republican states.

ftfy

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u/gravescd Dec 20 '17

Leaders with a victim complex... of course they're afraid someone's going to write unfair pro-liberal descriptions of ballot measures. I'm really tired of Rs pretending that political "discrimination" is worse than actual discrimination and poverty.

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u/puppet_up Dec 20 '17

This is why candidates like to push single issues so much. They know that if people were to actually read up on all of their other positions, they might change their minds so they spend most of their time and effort (i.e. money) on figuring out a few of the hot button issues in their area and campaign only on that.

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u/famous_unicorn America Dec 20 '17

That's really unfortunate. In NYC, they send them via mail and they include the candidates and their positions on matters of interest. They are also written in several languages. I <3 NY.

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u/MRiley84 Dec 20 '17

No voter's guide. It might be mentioned in the local news, but I don't watch TV and there's never anything on the news' websites. There's nothing ever on the county's and state's website either. I live in a low income city in Upstate New York though, so that could be why.

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u/TheBitterSeason Dec 20 '17

Have you tried the websites of your county Democratic and Republican Parties? They usually publish voter guides if they're even remotely on the ball. Though I've heard of some particularly poorly-run county parties not doing so, forcing people to just go to the opposing local party website and vote for the opposite of whoever they recommend.

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u/SecretScorekeeper Dec 20 '17

Or you can find an organization that supports a cause you really believe in and follow their endorsements. Your labor union, the Audubon Society, League of Women Voters; a lot of organizations recognize the importance of politics. (Including churches who should lose their tax exempt status for politicking now that we're rewriting the tax laws, but that was a non-starter with this boob, wasn't it.)

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u/nooniewhite Dec 20 '17

I live in a small city (50,000?) in Minnesota and I come across the same problem. For major elections (house, senate) I know how to find my information, but the smaller ones- city council, judges, etc I have zero idea how to educate myself. Looks like I need to learn how to learn about this!

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u/clockwerkman Dec 20 '17

As a native virginian, I have never even heard of a voters guide.

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u/ab3ju Dec 20 '17

My city website had bios for all of the city council candidates this year. They also sent out a mailer detailing the reasoning for one of the referendum questions (which was to borrow funds to repair a dam).

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u/Everto24 Dec 20 '17

https://ballotpedia.org/Elections_calendar

It's not perfect, but it's what I use to familiarize myself with candidates before I vote. It's obviously better for state and national elections, but it has information for local elections.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17 edited Dec 21 '17

f

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u/Grenshen4px Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 20 '17

Motto for the future:

EVERY VOTE FUCKING COUNTS

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Yup, because of a single vote, the GOP lost control of the House of Delegates for the whole state. I'm going to have to look up how they're going to function with no majority. Odd numbers people! Use them.

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u/Grenshen4px Dec 19 '17

I'm going to have to look up how they're going to function with no majority.

They still have the senate had the senate been up this year it would probably had flipped blue. Since they last had elections in 2015 for the state senate its going to be two years until then.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Right, but the House of Delegates has no provision for breaking ties. So it's possible they'll deadlock a lot and be unable to pass things at all.

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u/SuperCool101 Dec 19 '17

Or maybe they'll be forced to work in, gasp, a bipartisan manner!

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

That's theoretically why we've allowed the Filibusterer for so long in the Senate. It's not exactly been working out for us :(.

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u/foxden_racing Dec 20 '17

Eh. The filibuster is fine, the problem is that they all decided that actually filibustering was hard work, and decided to change the rules to give every single senator veto power.

The Filibuster, as designed, is one of those things that's supposed to be so serious you stake your career on it because making the news for shutting down the legislature over something has a very strong chance of pissing off the people able to vote on you. It's you saying "This matter is so goddamned important that it's worth grinding the entire legislature to a halt over", and you believe so strongly in it that you're willing to take a stand that forgoes food, sleep, even toilet breaks until one of three things happens: You back down, they back down, or you annoy so many senators that they collectively make you back down (via a Cloture Motion, which requires a 2/3rds majority).

The problem is, it's also hard work. To actually Filibuster, you have to be granted the floor and then refuse to return it when your allotted time is up. If you leave the floor, stop talking for more than a certain period of time, etc...game over. The floor gets returned, and business continues as usual.

So, during GW's term, a bunch of powerful senators got together and decided to change the rules. That's too much like work, so instead now all a senator has to do is declare their "intention" to filibuster, they skip actually seizing the floor/etc and go straight to a Cloture motion. If that can't pass, the measure dies immediately.

It theoretically saves everyone a ton of time, but it also has three side effects: one, Filibusters become trivial, something that requires no skin in the game, no risk, and no effort. Two, it means that a Filibuster can't be busted by the person doing it giving up.

Three, and most importantly, it effectively gives every single senator the power to unilaterally kill an order of business, be it a bill, a nomination, whatever. While not technically identical, it's close enough for government work (HA!) to call it the same as senators having veto power...a power that's supposed to be reserved for the POTUS. Getting 67 votes in the senate on anything is effectively impossible given how deeply partisan it's become, so in practice "I intend to filibuster" is no different from "I veto this bill".

That's the bullshit that needs to go, but don't ever expect a body able to change its rules in its own self-interest to ever make things harder on themselves.

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u/Tank3875 Michigan Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 19 '17

That's only because they lowered the number of votes to break it recently from a supermajority to a simple majority.

Edit: I was thinking about them doing it in cases of nominations. Oopsie Daisy. Still don't understand why it isn't used, though.

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u/xiaodown Dec 19 '17

No; if you're thinking about the health care plan and the tax bill, where the magic number was 50, it is a senate rule that says that if the bill is still in the reconcilliation process, it only needs 50 votes.

With the health care repeal bill and tax bill, this was done by first attaching an amendment that contained reconcilliation instructions to the 2017 budget, IIRC. There are rules as to what can be a reconcilliation bill, and the byrd rule is also in effect. But, tl;dr: they're using the existing rules that are intended to fix up little things here and there to instead pass massive legislation while claiming that it's budget-neutral so as not to trigger Byrd.

They did invoke the Nuclear Option (setting the cloture motion threshold at a simple majority instead of a 3/5ths majority, i.e. 50 instead of 60) in order to put Gorsich on the supreme court.

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u/socialistbob Dec 19 '17

Only if everything is straight party line votes. There will probably be a lot of people crossing party lines to get better deals. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are probably making lists right now and trying to get members of the other party to switch caucuses. Ralph Northam was actually targeted by the Republicans when he was in the VA Senate trying to get him to switch parties.

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u/KuriboShoeMario Dec 20 '17

Anyone leaving the left in Virginia in the current climate is asking to not be re-elected. The people of Virginia just spent an off-year telling the GOP to eat a sack of dicks, they will utterly shred anyone who bolts for them now.

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u/socialistbob Dec 20 '17

I don't see any Democrats switching parties at the moment but I could see some of them voting with the Republicans on some issues. Redistricting won't occur until post 2020 and these delegates are up for reelection in 2019 often times in very conservative districts.

That said Republicans who narrowly won reelection are going to know that they will be targets in 2019 and the Republican senators will see the Dems winning big in their districts. I wouldn't be surprised if a Republican senator or two decides to either caucus with the Dems or take a nice cushy job in the Northam administration thus triggering a special election.

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u/TheBitterSeason Dec 20 '17

I'm sure he's fucking glad he didn't take that offer.

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u/snowflakelib Virginia Dec 19 '17

The Lt. Gov has the tie breaking vote in the state senate, but there is not a mechanism for ties in the House of Delegates, so the legislation does not proceed.

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u/bluejams Dec 19 '17

By negotiation, also known as "the way it was supposed to be"

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u/MrZAP17 California Dec 19 '17

I mean, it’s hard to negotiate if it means “Sure we’ll throw women under the bus if it means you’ll spend some money on schools.”

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u/Sororita Dec 19 '17

Remember, to be #1 you have to be odd.

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u/ShartsAndMinds Dec 19 '17

Considering how they've been functioning with a majority, it doesn't bode well for them.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

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u/meltvariant Colorado Dec 19 '17

Especially when Dems had 54% of the aggregate vote.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

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u/FirstSonOfGwyn Dec 19 '17

thanks southpark

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

VOTE or DIE!

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u/Evil_Skip_Bayless Dec 19 '17

I can see the dems bring this out in 2018 but in a very real way. Can't hurt.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_HOT_DISH Dec 19 '17

Mother fucker!

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u/MosesKarada Dec 19 '17

Democracy is founded on one simple rule.

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u/vteckickedin Dec 19 '17

That men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

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u/TurbulentJuice Dec 19 '17

Get out there and vote or I will motherfucking kill you

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u/Shilalasar Dec 19 '17

Given the currnet and coming legislation that is actually true...

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u/MaximumEffort433 Maryland Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 20 '17

thanks southpark

Rant

One of the most frustrating things I kept running into during the election was the both sides argument.

"Both sides are the same, we're just choosing between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich!"

For years I've heard that shit, and goddamn if it doesn't piss me off every time. I love South Park, and while I don't always agree with them, I have to admit that the show does a decent job of exploring current events and politics through a satirical lens. Yeah, I'm liberal as fuck, and they're libertarian as fuck, but by and large Stone and Parker are good about presenting both sides of an issue.

So imagine what folks who feel similarly about South Park think when they see this show that they like, created by writers that they respect, runs an entire episode about how voting doesn't matter because nothing ever changes. The viewers take that seriously, as a thoughtful criticism of our political system, an accurate reflection of reality seen through a funhouse mirror.

(And yes, I've heard many times that: "But they said that the Giant Douche was the good one, because douches are useful and Turd Sandwiches aren't!" If that was the moral that viewers had taken away from the episode we wouldn't be having this discussion, but that's not the moral they took away.)

I love Jon Stewart, I respect his opinion and his thoughtfulness, if he came out and told me that Democrats and Republicans were identical, were the same, I probably would have reevaluated how I think about politics. But there's a reason Stewart never did that, because he knows it's bullshit.

"Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich" I feel has done real harm to our political discussion. It's a pithy little throw away phrase that people can use to kill a conversation in its tracks, a thoughtless and contextless placeholder for considered opinions founded on facts and evidence, a social virus of the mind. It's a meme, and a fuckin' shitty one at that.

I love South Park, it's funny, it's smart, it's thoughtful. If one could be said to respect a cartoon show that started off with an alien shoving an entire spy satellite up Cartman's ass, then I respect the show; and the show has a responsibility to its audience to live up to that respect. Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich are so far divorced from modern politics that we might as well be talking about the whigs and the bull moose party. Douche and Turd is like having this great girlfriend, she's funny and smart, but there was that one time she wrote an op-ed about how we should burn the homeless as fuel that just never sat right with me.

Edit: Objections.

I'm seeing two main objections in the comments, and I'd like to address them.

"The episode was written in 2004, it was a different time, the parties were the same back then!"
No. Al Gore and George Bush are not the same. John Kerry and George Bush are not the same.

"But it's true, South Park was right, the parties are the same!"
No, the party that just let Net Neutrality die is not the same as the party trying to save it.
No, the party that has been trying to privatize Medicare for the past half decade is not the same as the party flirting with Medicare For All.
No, the party that immediately set to detoothing and neutering the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform Bill is not the same as the party that passed it.
No, the party that held the middle class hostage to defend Bush era tax cuts is not the same as the party that begged to raise taxes on the top 1%.
No, the party that included a provision in tax reform to raise taxes on college students is not the same as the party trying to make college debt free.
No, the party that is trying to pass a $1,500,000,000,000.00 ($1.5tn) tax cut for millionaires and billionaires is not the same as the party opposing it.
No, the party that has spent the past eight years doing everything in their power to destroy the Affordable Care Act is not the same as the party protecting it.
No, the party that regularly and loudly speak out against the very existence of a minimum wage is not the same as the party trying to raise it to $12-$15 per hour.
No, the party that fear mongered about "What happens if a woman gets her period during a firefight!?" is not the same as the party working to give women equal roles in combat.
No, the party passing trap laws and requiring Doctors to perform medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds is not the same as the party fighting for a woman's right to choose.
No, the party that wants to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman is not the same as the party fighting to protect gay rights.
No, the party that is going out of their way at the state and federal level to make voting harder to do is not the same as the party fighting for more polling places and longer early voting.
No, the party that believes "Climate change is a Chinese hoax" and "God promised Noah he would never flood the earth again" and "Look, I have a snowball" is not the same as the party that believes in science.

Still don't believe me that the parties aren't the same? Okay, riddle me this, do you know which party is which in the examples I listed above? Because unless you think that Democrats have been fighting to overturn Roe vs Wade, and Republicans are trying to raise the minimum wage, then you have no excuse for believing the "they're the same!" talking point. I didn't mention one single party name in that list, but you, dear reader, you knew exactly who I was talking about.

Yeah, there is some shit that the parties line up on, policies that both parties support like CHIP (Until this year, when Republicans let it die) or the Violence Against Women Act (Until Republicans almost let it lapse during the Obama years), or raising the debt ceiling (Until tea party Republicans almost didn't raise it), but those commonalities are father and father between, and hardly reflect the reality of modern American politics. No, the parties aren't the same.

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u/YNot1989 Dec 19 '17

No one ever stopped and said, "Wait a minute, Matt and Trey are both libertarians, no wonder they think there's no point to voting, nobody likes candidate preaching their social-Darwinist beliefs."

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u/ruffus4life Dec 19 '17

rich libertarians. they didn't have any political views for a long time.

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u/puckerings Dec 19 '17

It's easy to be libertarian when you don't have to worry about whether you'll be able to feed your family next week.

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u/Cultjam Dec 20 '17

It’s easy to be libertarian if you don’t know what lack of government regulation is like. Look into why savings & loan institutions don’t exist anymore.

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u/cookie-cutter Dec 20 '17

Any one who believes in a hands-off government missed the finer points of Aliens and RoboCop

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u/Lord_Blathoxi I voted Dec 20 '17

Look at Somalia and that’s what a Libertarian Paradise would be.

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u/Occamslaser Dec 19 '17

It is amazing how many wealthy people suddenly become libertarian.

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u/DJSaltyNutz Dec 19 '17

Fuck you, i got mine

Lol its so stupid and selfish

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u/lashfield Dec 19 '17

It’s not a good sign if you’re getting your political beliefs from a cartoon, in any case.

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u/ruffus4life Dec 19 '17

you can get ideas from anywhere. the jon stewart daily show was basically politician says this. then them show a clip for 2 months ago saying the exact opposite. but the giant douche/turd sandwich is a talking point crutch for people unwilling to put in the effort.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

There's nothing inherently ignorant about an animation. I think any medium of communication has the potential to teach real concepts in a thoughtful way.

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u/AryaStarkRavingMad Dec 19 '17

I mean, political cartoons have been a thing for over a century; while South Park is obviously an entirely different beast, it's still media capable of presenting ideas in a way that other media can't. There should be no limit to where ideas can come from, as long as you keep having them.

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u/TheReasonsWhy Florida Dec 19 '17

True, however, if something within a cartoon sparks imaginative thought or an internal dialogue that makes you question your values, then that should definitely be honored.

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u/theth1rdchild Dec 19 '17

South Park is such bottom barrel radical centrism that you may be better off never caring if South Park is what inspired you.

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u/tonytalent Dec 19 '17

But people definitely are, so we should probably consider what that means.

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u/hbgoddard Dec 19 '17

The medium shouldn't discredit good ideas

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u/reverendcat Dec 19 '17

I dunno, man. Political cartoons have a LONG history across modern civilizations.

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u/schistkicker California Dec 20 '17

My libertarian high-school friends on FB (more acquaintances, really, we don't have that much in common anymore) have been posting about how excited they are about how they'll be able to file taxes on a postcard. Nothing about the economics (they're middle-class, have a kid or two, some have health issues), just that filing taxes will be easier. It's so Pollyanna-ish.

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u/HybridVigor Dec 20 '17

They'd probably support Newspeak as well. I mean, there are a lot of words I don't understand, anyway. Why not make language simpler, right?

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u/waiv Dec 20 '17

Getting your politics from Climate change skeptics is probably not the best idea.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

The narrative is always "South Park doesn't take sides, they make fun of everyone". Has South Park ever mocked libertarians?

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u/GregBahm Dec 20 '17

Very early in the history of South Park, Trey and Matt thought it would be a good idea to play a prank on their own audience by doing the Terrance and Phillip episode instead of revealing who Cartman's mom was.

Their audience didn't take the joke well. Trey and Matt said in multiple interviews that they learned their lesson from this: that it's okay to make fun of everyone except their own audience, because their audience couldn't handle being made fun of. The World of Warcraft episode, ten years later, was the first episode where they risked making fun of their audience again, and they are on record saying they thought it was going to be a disaster.

Even though it wasn't, I think they still know there's a thinned skinned region of their audience that they dare not offend, which is why they took the actual Donald Trump out of their 2016 election episodes and replaced him with a sympathetic Mr. Garrison against an unsympathetic Hillary Clinton.

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u/Vio_ Kansas Dec 19 '17

They've also been in the "South Park" bubble with zero hardship or exploration of anything that pushes their views for 20 years now. It's easy to be a libertarian when you can afford everything and have "safe" drug dealers and not have to worry about tainted product. It's easy to claim that both sides are equal when you're well enough to never be affected by the decisions and policies enacted by those sides.

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u/mnmkdc Dec 20 '17

What did the safe drug dealers thing have to do with it?

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

I’ve honestly turned on South Park for a lot of reasons. One of the biggest was their tendency to rely on the middle ground. When I was younger I thought it was brilliant until I realized that acting like both sides are the same is bullshit. Just because neither side is perfect doesn’t mean that one side is not objectively worse.

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u/pheliam Dec 19 '17

I feel the exact same way about George Carlin's old standup bits, esp. his one about "the owners" of this country and that you have no choice.

I love Carlin's work but telling millions of fans "don't vote" and "fuck hope" and all that is damaging to citizen participation on the side who generally does not want war or misogyny.

His dystopic vision has almost come to be realized, however it's not here yet. We still have the vote. It is everything.

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u/IMAVINCEMCMAHONGUY Dec 19 '17

I didn’t agree with Carlin either. Especially when he use to say that people who don’t vote have the right to bitch because they didn’t elect these politicians. One of the very few things I disagreed with him on.

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u/Jeezylike2Smoke Dec 19 '17

True....his bit on republicans is spot on though

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u/Dubsland12 Dec 19 '17

He got pretty bitter after his wife lost a tough cancer battle.

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u/Oak_Redstart Dec 19 '17

Carlins line about the environment "the earth will be fine it's just a big rock" seems to come up a lot an annoys me. The following "its the people who are fucked" makes the apathy nihilistic.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

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u/MaximumEffort433 Maryland Dec 19 '17

Oh shit, I didn't even think of that! :(

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 20 '17

You're 100% right though. In my experience, South Park appeals to two separate demographics: one that is clever enough to get that they are lampooning a certain subset of individuals who take things at face value, and ones that take things at face value who just come for the low-rent poo jokes. The first subset seems to watch as a cathartic way of dealing with the Cartmans of the world. The second subset are the cartmans of the world and unfortunately seem to only get further entrenched in their notion that they're better than everyone else, and being a dick/racist/lumping all politicians together is ok.

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u/Atario California Dec 20 '17

they are lampooning a certain subset of individuals who take things at face value

They really seem to waver on this, though. Cartman is supposed to be the asshole who's always wrong, but they sure do seem to talk through him a lot to make what seem to be their actual points.

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u/cseckshun Dec 20 '17 edited Jul 31 '25

wipe gold one literate placid school oatmeal disarm repeat cows

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u/pali1d Dec 19 '17

I'd definitely been referred to as a ginger, but the soulless bit was a new one.

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u/tony_orlando Dec 20 '17

I lost all my friends in middle school for being Canadian. The anti Canada jokes spiraled into genuine xenophobia. It felt so stupid and frustrating.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

Hope you're not Canadian.

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u/CopyX Dec 20 '17

I had never even thought about that. What the fuck.

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u/kilar277 Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 20 '17

This honestly speaks to a much larger issue with the show. So much of my generation (mid twenties and younger) has been inundated with this cynical "if you have an opinion you're morally compromised" bullshit from South Park since birth.

The show is funny, and smart, and has a lot of very complex ways of getting issues across, along with very not-so-complex ways.

But in terms of indoctrinating people into horrifying hiveminds of cynicism, it's right up there with Rick and Morty. It's just that South Park predates the sort of internet discourse needed to dissect something like this, so it's just a sort of constant variable for most people. South Park, imo, is innately harmful to our culture and political climate.

It's the attitudes like these that gave birth to /b/ and /pol/, and eventually the alt-right, however much it pains me to admit. I do genuinely think that shows like South Park played at least some role in creating literal 21st century nazis.

My generation is not perfect, and instead of the just usual fight upward (that is, the fight of the younger generation against their parents), it seems to be a lateral challenge as well. We're fight ourselves as well as our parents and it's becoming increasingly difficult to do either one.

Edit: spelling

Edit 2: There's actually more I want to say.

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u/MaximumEffort433 Maryland Dec 20 '17

Speaking as someone a bit older than you (33) I actually have great faith in your generation and the one coming up. You guys are a hell of a lot more informed and educated than I was, and that gives me a lot of hope. Maybe it's just from my vantage point, and it's different on the ground level, but from here you guys seem pretty cool. :)

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u/dotmatrixhero Dec 19 '17

I appreciate this write up. It's important to look critically at the shows that we admire. A show can be amazing, but not perfect. And that doesn't mean we have to flip out and hate it, but it doesn't mean we should be complicit and accept everything about it either.

I think satire, by nature, will always fall short. It's much easier to find the flaws in something than it is to suggest improvements.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

But many don't see the deficiency. The see criticism and satire as the ANSWER to the problem. Let's hope there are enough of us out there

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u/BEST_RAPPER_ALIVE Foreign Dec 19 '17

What people are forgetting is that with a turd sandwich, you're literally eating shit, but a giant douche can be used for good things: like basting a giant Thanksgiving turkey, or douching your mum's cavernous vagina.

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u/Picnicpanther California Dec 19 '17

It's also extremely unhealthy to get your entire worldview, lock stock and barrel, from one tv show—especially a fictional, satirical cartoon. They can invent situations and bend it into the point they're trying to make, which makes it a lousy way to formulate your own opinions about the world.

Then again, libertarians have been taking fiction as reality since Ayn Rand.

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u/sezit Dec 19 '17

Dems don't always do good..

Repubs don't EVER do good.

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u/Dudesan Dec 19 '17

There's a difference between "trying to do good, and occasionally failing", and "trying to do evil, and occasionally succeeding".

Anybody who can't tell the difference between these two approaches has no business voting.

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u/sezit Dec 19 '17

well, I don't think Dems are always pure of heart. But I do think Repubs are 100% selfish, and any suffering caused by their cruelty is unimportant to them.

I saw a tweet the other day that sums it up: "I don't know how to convince you that other people matter."

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u/Spartanfox California Dec 20 '17

I think that's just it though.

The "both sides" crowd takes a binary look at politics. So the Republicans are definitely selfish, and the Democrats are sometimes selfish, so both sides are selfish. Same with corruption (point to the current corruption re: the GOP, someone else points to Chicago for the Democrats..."both sides"), or donors (Koch Brothers for the GOP, Soros for the Democrats, both wealthy billionaires donating to political parties? "Both sides").

It's incredibly simplistic logic that nags at another fault that seems to be pretty prominent, the inability to understand nuance.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

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u/yankeesyes New York Dec 19 '17

"Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich" I feel has done real harm to our political discussion. It's a pithy little throw away phrase that people can use to kill a conversation in its tracks, a thoughtless and contextless placeholder for considered opinions founded on facts and evidence, a social virus of the mind. It's a meme, and a fuckin' shitty one at that.

I agree. And its smug. It's for people who don't want to take any responsibility for their vote. They just want to appear above those who do.

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u/Pyryara Dec 20 '17

Yup. Basically their stance is "let's laugh about all those people who deeply care about any kind of issue".

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u/nope-absolutely-not Massachusetts Dec 20 '17

"Both parties are the same" is the ultimate thought-terminating cliché.

The term was popularized by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton in his 1961 book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China.[17] Lifton wrote, "The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis".

No point in critical analysis, as you have done, if you can end it with "both parties are the same!" I'm no psychologist, but I'm willing to bet it's a defense mechanism against having to think about harsh or uncomfortable realities. It's mental hand-waving and dismissal.

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u/drkgodess Dec 20 '17

Thought Terminating Cliche - replying to save.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

by and large Stone and Parker are good about presenting both sides of an issue.

They really, really aren't. They despise environmentalism and they endlessly and relentlessly mock climate change.

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u/asminaut California Dec 19 '17

South Park tends to take a dim view on most people that seriously care about an issue, no matter how legitimate/illegitimate it is. Which is one of the reasons I feel like I've grown out of it.

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u/Pyryara Dec 20 '17

Yes, this. The political stance of the show has been "lol @ anyone who deeply cares about anything" for a very long time now and it is something that makes sense when you're a rebellious teenager or adolescent, but not as an adult.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

Dare I say, South Park was the forerunner of modern edgelordery.

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

South Park tends to take a dim view on most people that seriously care about an issue, no matter how legitimate/illegitimate it is. Which is one of the reasons I feel like I've grown out of it.

South Park's ideology: you'll never care about the wrong thing to care about, and never care about something for wrong and stupid reasons, if you never care about anything.

It's actually vaguely nihilistic. And, for all the praise South Park gets for being "edgy", quite a cowardly attitude to have.

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u/OverlordQuasar Dec 20 '17

I used to like it, then I just kinda realized that the message of every episode is either "shut up and accept it, you can't do anything and if you do you'll make it worse" or "caring is for idiots." You can satirize political issues without telling everyone that they're all pointless.

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u/kobitz Dec 20 '17

Man Bear Pig sure hasent aged well

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

It was just as stupid then as it is now.

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u/opentoinput Dec 20 '17

Why? Why the fuck would someone do this?

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

They're libertarians.

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u/Ethiconjnj Dec 20 '17

To me southpark of is the epitome of why Jon Stewart quit. They don’t actually do anything to solve the issues. They do very very small amounts of education and that’s it.

Jon quit to try and fight for a single issue rather than spend his time whining that others do nothing.

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u/infinitelyexpendable Dec 19 '17

burn the homeless as fuel

Don't give them any ideas.

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u/dmodmodmo Washington Dec 19 '17

Username checks out. Well put

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u/GlibTurret Dec 20 '17

THANK YOU. Seriously, South Park made me so angry during the election. I had been a South Park fan since 1999, but I had to rethink that in light of how badly they framed political discourse this time. This is not a joke. Thousands of people are literally dying due to climate change, mismanagement of resources, lack of health care, pointless wars. One party is perpetrating this mess. The other party isn't perfect, but they're a hell of a lot better.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Absolutely. The problem comes when people watch the show and mistake author critique instead of critically thinking FOR THEMSELVES.

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u/RemingtonSnatch America Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 19 '17

South Park is often well written, but it is indeed irritating when people act as if Stone/Parker's opinions on everything is gospel. It's got that same stupid hive-mind contingent as Rick and Morty.

Also, notice how you almost NEVER hear people on the mainstream right saying that both sides are the same. They know it isn't true. Those on the left who subscribe to this bullshit are being incredibly useful idiots.

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u/famous_unicorn America Dec 20 '17

Whenever I hear the "both sides" argument, I say, "If you don't like either candidate for president, then don't vote for them, but for FUCKS SAKE there are other measures and candidates that can affect your life on the ballot, so go inform yourself and vote on those!" They are the same idiots that wonder why their local taxes are so high.

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u/MaximumEffort433 Maryland Dec 20 '17

"What's a ballot initiative? What is a Board of Education? Judges?"

Worse, it seems like it's always the Democrats that forget how important primary, local, and midterm elections actually are. /sigh

"I am not a member of any organized political party, I am a Democrat!" -Will Rogers, 1920's

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u/VoltronV Dec 20 '17

Democrats have also almost unanimously been in support of Net Neutrality (including the FCC, house, and senate) and Republicans almost unanimously against it. It isn’t just Ajit Pai, the commission voted 3 (R) to 2 (D) to repeal. Previous votes when the commission was 3 (D) and 2 (R) also fell down party lines.

A side note, but whenever a Trump supporter/Republican says “but Obama appointed Pai to the commission, it’s all his fault!”, remind them of what I just mentioned, Trump appointed him to the chaiman position, and that Obama was required to seat a Republican at that time, Pai was actually chosen by Mitch McConnell.

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u/terriblehuman Dec 20 '17

Matt and Trey are full of shit on a lot of things. They’re also big global warming deniers.

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u/LadyLibertea Dec 20 '17

Thats some delicious maximum effort!

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u/MaximumEffort433 Maryland Dec 20 '17

I'm kiwi flavored!

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u/CowardlyDodge America Dec 20 '17

It's this kind of effort-post that give me hope for humanity

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u/iwillfilmyou Dec 20 '17

Thanks for writing all this out! Really excellent examination

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

Wow. This comment is incredible and accurately describes how I've felt for awhile. Thank you for writing such a well thought out comment

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17

100% this and just adding to it:

They brought it back in the first episode of the election season. But by the end they had clearly changed their stance and were basically saying "Ok Clinton is an out-of-touch politician but Trump is fucking nuts, do not vote for him."

But half the audience completely missed that point, not even they could make it clear to Trump's base that Trump was a unique threat. I'd bet going back to the /r/southpark episode discussion threads would be interesting.

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u/onioning Dec 20 '17

The giant irony is that Americans in general agree on most things. Even with gun control, there's overwhelming agreement. Heck, I still think that we're not nearly as divided on abortion as we're led to believe. Purely based on the number of times I've heard "I'm pro-life but I think the choice should be up to the individual." I have no further data to support my conclusion, but it feels true, and that's what matters.

But for real. We generally agree, at least far more often than not. Ya'd never know it based on our political representation.

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u/The-Magic-Sword Connecticut Dec 19 '17

This, This right here deserves to be a copypasta- brought up every time someone tries to use it.

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u/MaximumEffort433 Maryland Dec 20 '17

"What the fuck did you say about me you Giant Turd?"

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u/devilmaydance Dec 19 '17 edited Dec 19 '17

South Park has been way off-base about many issues. 'Memba when they equated believing in Climate Change to believing in "ManBearBig", or equated being transgender to wanting to become a dolphin? I 'memba.

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u/x86_64Ubuntu South Carolina Dec 19 '17

As everyone else has said, the creators of South Park have the luxury of saying “both parties are the same “. Nonwhites and many others can’t vouch their view in such smug nihilism.

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u/moshslips Dec 19 '17

My take away from that episode was that even if you have trouble relating or seeing the benefit of any of the candidates in the election, it’s still important to vote because it’s something that will effect your life.

Maybe I just didn’t get it?

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u/MaximumEffort433 Maryland Dec 19 '17

Or maybe I didn't. But either way, that's not the message that a lot other people got either.

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u/TheBlackBear Arizona Dec 20 '17

Yeahhh as much as I’ve loved South Park, they really fucked us on this one

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u/DryestDuke Dec 20 '17

It's a pithy little throw away phrase that people can use to kill a conversation in its tracks, a thoughtless and contextless placeholder for considered opinions founded on facts and evidence, a social virus of the mind. It's a meme, and a fuckin' shitty one at that.

I believe the term is Thought Terminating Cliche.

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u/Blondecanary Dec 20 '17

This was an amazing post. Thank you.

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u/Atario California Dec 20 '17

by and large Stone and Parker are good about presenting both sides of an issue.

Eh. They generally side wholly with the conservative view and issue some token lip service for the liberal one.

And speaking of climate change, their straight-up hatchet job on both Al Gore and the concept itself was pretty sickening.

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u/aspbergerinparadise Dec 19 '17

Futurama did the same exact thing with the election between John Jackson and Jack Johnson

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u/[deleted] Dec 20 '17 edited Dec 20 '17

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u/YOU_SMELL Dec 20 '17

I thought the same with the Nuke Toronto episode... It normalizes and gives a visual to such a monstrous act

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u/matt552024 Dec 20 '17

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

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u/Stillnosheep Dec 20 '17

I wish I could upvote you more; well said. I just can't understand why the Dems can't present these facts to the masses in a continuous and consistent manner.

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u/SanguisFluens Dec 20 '17

Saving this to use later, thanks

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u/etherpromo Dec 20 '17

this should be in /bestof

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

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u/FirstSonOfGwyn Dec 19 '17

I really, really did not like that episode when it aired. and its only worse with age.

IASIP does the same thing. (ass blasted by republicans or ass blasted by the democrats) I understand they are being nihilistic and trying to say nothing really matters.... but it just rings as very lazy and apathetic to me.

The more apathetic the average voter is, the harder they will get ass blasted by those who want to leverage that apathy for their personal gain.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

well, not those over 3 million votes Trump lost by. They didn't count.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Except in POTUS elections where every electoral vote counts. Popular vote is meaningless. In other words, MY vote doesn't count.

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u/Spaceman2901 Texas Dec 19 '17

Can we set that into a tune from Monty Python? "Every vote is needed in your neighborhood!"

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u/isperfectlycromulent Oregon Dec 19 '17

I think it goes more with Sesame Street.

Every vote is needed in your neighborhood!

in your neighborhood!

in your neighborhoooood!

Every vote is needed in your neighborhood! By the people that you meet each day!

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u/Changoleo America Dec 19 '17

If a vote is suppressed, dems get quite irate...

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u/Changoleo America Dec 19 '17

if...

Who am I kidding?

If When? Every time?

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u/korelin Dec 19 '17

This is fantastic. Whenever someone trots out the ol' "vote don't matter" trope, you can just rub this one in their face.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17 edited Jan 09 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TheoryOfSomething Dec 19 '17

Christmas I like you and imma let you finish, but its the 7th day of Hanukkah and Christmas ain't even damn started yet.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Bro, I'm sad Diwali is over. Any fun Hannukah stuff we can do till it's time to open Christmas presents? What if I hang a small bagel wreath on my door?

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u/setibeings Dec 19 '17

Christians have been worrying about people coming along and stealing Christmas ever since they stole it from the Pagans.

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u/PolanetaryForotdds Dec 19 '17

Not much else to be said, really.

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u/MyNameIsRay Dec 19 '17

I'm with you.

Holy

Fucking

Shit

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u/PoliticalScienceGrad Kentucky Dec 19 '17

Let this be a lesson to anyone who says voting doesn't matter.

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u/ThesaurusBrown Dec 19 '17

2017 in a nutshell.

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