The Right’s Hardliners Would Rather Lose Elections Than Culture Wars

And the finance wing knows it.

Cory Doctorow

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This Tuesday ( Jul 18) I’m hosting the first Clarion Summer Write-In Series, an hour-long, free drop-in group writing and discussion session. It’s in support of the Clarion SF/F writing workshop’s fundraiser to offer tuition support to students:

https://mailchi.mp/theclarionfoundation/clarion-write-ins

Famously, the best way to win a game of chicken is to throw your steering wheel out the window.

The idea is to convince your opponent that you’d rather die than lose. In a standoff, the most self-destructive party can often prevail.

I think this explains a lot about conservative politics.

Democracies are always run by coalitions. In many European nations, these coalitions are explicit — the “ruling party” doesn’t come near to a majority of seats, and so must form a government by entering into coalition with other parties. Sometimes, these coalitions can be very weird!

In the US — and, to a lesser extent, Canada and the UK — the electoral process is rigged against smaller parties, which means that the ruling party often (or, in the US always) controls the executive or one or both chambers of the legislature.

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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow

Written by Cory Doctorow

Writer, blogger, activist. Blog: https://pluralistic.net; Mailing list: https://pluralistic.net/plura-list; Mastodon: @pluralistic@mamot.fr

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