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How to Understand Politics

To join any political conversation, you need to know what you’re talking about, it’s very very important, right? Of course! Of course! I don’t know if you’ve heard about Donald Trump at all, he’s our new president but you might want to talk to somebody about Donald Trump, you might want to have a conversation and here are a bunch of peculiar words, we have to talk about what’s going on.

Before we begin, I’m gonna make a deal with you, I’m not gonna make any Trump jokes. And I’m not gonna make any English food jokes, Deal? Deal! I just have to… Perfect. One little change. One change. So the first word is “Filibuster”. Senator Rand Paul began a filibuster, The filibuster, Filibuster, Oh the filibuster! We have to get rid of the filibuster rule! I never thought, I’d see the day when the whole country was talking about the filibuster! What exactly is a filibuster? Turn to camera one! So what is a filibuster? Filibuster is a word that describes a process that happens during the debating of legislation. In the United States Senate, there are a hundred senators. Let’s say your side only has 48 votes, the other side has 52 votes. Theoretically you should lose, right? Yeah. Because 52 is more than 48 however, if you were to filibuster, it means you would debate the issue for so long, that you wouldn’t be able to get to any other legislation and theoretically if you’re really good at filibustering, you’d be able to filibuster it for so long that the other side, even though they have 52, will just throw their hands up in the air and say “I quit I give up it’s done. We have to get to all of our other business” that being said, you can’t always filibuster. If you have 60 votes, you are able to override a filibuster. It takes 50 votes to pass legislation, but it takes 60 to end debate.

Okay, so the general concept is, “Okay you’ve got almost half, maybe I can convince you to vote the other way, if I speak long enough”? Yes, theoretically it is but it’s, that’s not what it does, it’s a stall tactic. So I think I get it, but I think we need to show people… an example. Alright, so what is some legislation that you have 55 votes on, Aly? So I want to introduce a new rule that means, bald men have “handsome-man status”. Ooh! that’s exciting, and there are a lot of bald men. In fact, 55 percent of men are bald and everybody agrees they’re not handsome yet. So seemingly I should win! Well, yes, that being said as a man with luscious, luscious, luscious locks. I don’t want bald to be handsome! I think we can all agree, it won’t be handsome. So, we’re all ready to vote, right? It’s time to vote. Are you ready to vote? I’m ready to vote. Are you ready to vote? Wait… we have to have a little more debate. Okay, fine.

We are here today, to debate senator Aly Williams’ “Bald is beautiful” bill. “Bald is beautiful”? Is it? Is it not? Do we need to legislate this? Before we go any further, I would like to, bring to attention this, this piece is titled “Green eggs and ham” by Dr. Seuss. Let me read this to make sure we are all aware of the issue at stake. I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like them, Sam I am, I do not like green eggs and ham. I will eat them in a box and I will eat them with a fox. And I will eat them in a house and I will eat them with a mouse. I will eat them here or there. I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you, thank You, Sam I am. Well look at the time. I guess there’s no more time for debate today but maybe tomorrow we’ll get to vote on the “Bald is Beautiful” bill! Oh come on! Thank you and I rest my case.

Filibuster: Should or shouldn’t have? I deal word, Filibuster, yes! Personally, I’m pro-filibuster. I personally, I’m a huge fan of these systems in the United States Senate that cool democracy, that can kind of slow things down. I believe this was a phrase that the English might enjoy so when you drink tea, there’s a saucer, right? There’s a saucer thing? “

So the Senate is the saucer that cools the tea of democracy. The idea is for the entire American system, the idea is that it runs slowly, that things can’t happen fast because when fast things happen, bad things can happen too. The idea is if we are inherently slow, our slowness will prevent any bad things from happening. I feel smarter already.

So I hear the terms “partisan” and “bi-partisan” and your organisation is “non-partisan”. Precisely. What’s the difference? What is “partisan”? So essentially in America, we have two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. “Bi-partisan” means it’s something that brings both parties together. “Partisan” means benefiting one of the parties. So, I don’t know, a policy that says “Republicans get free pizza and Democrats have to be their footstools”. That would be a very partisan policy. And then “non-partisan” means you’re not working with either of the parties. What is a partisan Democrat issue? In 2017, a partisan Democratic issue might be fighting global warming. What would a partisan Republican issue be? Making sure that to vote, you need to bring a state-issued ID. And what would a bi-partisan issue, which is something they both agree on? A bi-partisan issue might be the NSA or the National Security Agency, it seems like both parties are big fans of listening to our phones. I want to know what you’re saying late at night.

“This new McCarthyism!”, “This reminds me of the McCarthy hearings”, “Reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy’s abusive tactics”, “Have you no decency, sir?”, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”. McCathyism, so I’m assuming it’s something bad. Yes, McCarthyism refers to kind of an unwarranted witch-hunt. So it’s named after former Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and what he was known for was making these crazy allegations that communists had infiltrated the entire United States government. And this is him holding a piece of paper that may or may not be evidence of 115 communists in the State Department. As it turned out there were not 115 secret communists working in the State Department. Shockingly. Shockingly there were not. Communists didn’t infiltrate our government. So he goes after somebody in the military, the lawyer that was defending the person accused of communism, at one point got up and said very famously on nationally televised TV “Have you no decency, sir?” to McCarthy, and it turns out, he may or may not have had any decency. Have you no sense of decency, sir? When people are saying that Trump is colluding with Russia, would that be “McCarthyism”? What would be more ‘McCarthyism’ is if a Democrat were to get up and say “There are 38 Russian agents in the Trump administration, we need to get every Russian agent out of the Trump administration”.

“The Supreme Court announcing they will take up a major case on political gerrymandering”, “Gerrymandering”, “The public needs to know that they have been fooled!” What the hell is a gerrymander? Why do we.. What? What? So essentially “Gerrymandering” refers to the process of dividing of the districts. So the people who are going to vote. The idea is that, we all want representation in Congress and our Congress people represent small local areas. So the state of Iowa has four different congressmen that go to Washington DC, in addition to two senators. So, these numbers represent individual congressional districts. Every two years, district one gets together and decides “Do we want to…” theoretically they could send whoever they want but it’s probably going to be between a Democrat and Republican. This is how theoretically it should be! As you can see this, this makes sense. Iowa is a state where computers drop the districts. Literally they have a software, a quote-unquote “nonpartisan software” that decides, “okay this is however many people fit here, this many people fit here” and as you see, they’re not perfect squares, they’re not perfect rectangles but it all kind of makes sense. So this would not be quote-unquote “gerrymandered”. These are properly drawn districts. It’s visually appealing. I’m excited. Do you want to see how a gerrymandered state might look like? I would love to see how… You love, alright. So let’s move over to our friends in Maryland.

So obviously six over here and one over here are gonna be weird shaped because the states weird shaped. However if you look very very closely, district 4 kind of is a hat on top of district 5. And then 1 has this weird thing over here and 7 looks like it’s eating 2 and 3. If Picaso were to district a state, create congressional districts, this might be what we end up with. But why would you want to change the lines from a square so this squiggly mess? So in the state of Maryland, Democrats control the state house so when they draw up these districts, they’re gonna cut up the pie in a way to make sure that as many of these districts are gonna lean to the Democrats as possible.

But then if your senator is Republican, they could redraw these lines. Exactly, so these lines are drawn every 10 years, after the census. We have a census, we count everybody and then we redraw all the lines every 10 years. And it’s not like one party does gerrymandering, both parties do this and in fact actually, sometimes both parties partner together to gerrymander, to kind of screw other people over. So they do this to stay in power. You will cut these up and you will have these “perversions of democracy”, so to speak, because look at these, these are gross, only a pervert could enjoy them. Okay but this is allowed, right? It’s not like a secret thingy? It’s an American tradition.