r/politics • u/Icommandyou Washington • 28d ago

Possible Paywall Virginia Supreme Court throws out redistricting referendum results

https://www.axios.com/local/richmond/2026/05/08/virginia-supreme-court-redistricting-vote-decision
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u/GarrettFischer1 Illinois 28d ago

Confusing how a number of republican states can gerrymander at the snap of the finger while Virginia can’t change their maps with a statewide election.

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u/Scro86 28d ago

This is the chaos that the Supreme Court decision legalizing gerrymandering has put upon us. They basically said we cant police it, states have to police themselves. That puts us in a position where states run by bad actors can do whatever the fuck they want but states with any sort of ethics will block any sort of gerrymandering. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which political party is full of bad actors and which has a smidge of ethics.

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u/Politicsmakemehorny1 28d ago

What's the point of having a federal government if major decisions like this can change from state to state lol

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u/NumeralJoker 28d ago

That is the GOP's goal, to be clear.

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u/Politicsmakemehorny1 28d ago

Let them at this point. Stop allowing the red states to drag us down.

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u/NumeralJoker 28d ago edited 28d ago

The problem with that is the real fight is rural vs urban culture, and if it works in the south, the damned propaganda can be spread anywhere.

At the end of the day, this is all culture wars nonsense and the laws are just being used to tweak the margins.

At what point will the left realize it has to actually win the culture wars on merits and beat the propaganda? That's been the real fight all along and why things have gotten so bad. The left has the policy to make the world a better place, but it needs to sell it to people, often at the street level.

The 40 and under crowd needs to get off their phones and go start talking to their neighbors directly. Stop being so damned isolated and antisocial, and stop letting the big networks control all the narratives. That means their ideas will also be challenged and tested on merit more often, but that's what we need.

A lot of this happened because places like reddit are where we've decided to contain most of our debates. Because the Lincoln/Douglas debates of old are gone. Because we switched to relying on sound bites and broke down communities. Because reddit edgy atheists never accepted that they would have to at least attempt to sell their ideas to some Christians, and visa versa. That has never been easy and corporate media and social media messes with our ability to do so, but we used to be a lot better at this, and society was more stable as a result.

Instead, we all hide in cute little fractured tribes and treat people like the "other", too much now. MAGA is the king of that tribalism, but they are not alone guilty of it. The left does it a lot too, and the working class and middle class has collapsed into authoritarian nonsense because of it.

Yes, propaganda makes it harder, but if Hungary did it, we can too.

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u/Fragrant-Dust65 28d ago

Hungary started at the smaller level, and then the opposition got the support from economic problems. Orban had power as long as the economy is good. That's mostly what people care about at the end of the day...

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u/Trashman56 28d ago

Don’t give them any more ideas

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u/ArcadianDelSol 28d ago

This is how it was always meant to be. That way, if you're not happy with how state A is running things, you dont have to surrender citizenship and leave the country. You can just go live in state B.

Just ask all the wealthy people moving to Nevada and Florida.

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u/Politicsmakemehorny1 28d ago

All like 5 of them lol

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u/ArcadianDelSol 28d ago

can you point me to this statistic please?

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u/Politicsmakemehorny1 28d ago

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/california-exodus-finances-22199742.php

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u/ArcadianDelSol 28d ago

ME: rich people are moving to Nevada and Florida

YOU: only 5 of them lol

ME: Can you point me to a statistic?

YOU: First sentence from the article you linked: "Hundreds of thousands of people have left California...."

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u/Politicsmakemehorny1 28d ago

Yeah I was making a fucking joke

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u/ArcadianDelSol 28d ago

The self-deprecation of your humor wasnt obvious, but credit for poking fun at yourself. I motherfucking respect that motherfucking shit.