[538] Public Opinion Of The Mueller Investigation Has Become More Partisan - Polidicks

There's two sides to that coin. It is not fair for an individual's representation to be diminished because they live in a more populated area. If a rural area receives disproportionate representation that ends up as a majority rule, you essentially have the same thing but instead the minority is the one with the power to make decisions for the city. It shouldn't matter where you're from. We are all equals and we all deserve equal representation.

It’s really not surprising that public opinion of the Mueller investigation has become partisan. Having so much power concentrated in one single person, the President, must inevitably lead to cults of personality. An investigation into a President will be interpreted as an attack against the President by his/her supporters, and as a saving grace or form of resistance by the opposition. You see it in the comments section of Fox News articles, but you also see it here to. Eg the amount of members here who pre-empt the Mueller investigation by suggesting that Mueller will certainly find Trump guilty of treason, despite Mueller and his team having been tight-lipped on many aspects of the investigation. Facepunch overall certainly takes a partisan perspective to the investigation.

i don't think the reverse situation is fair, either. cities should be able to run themselves and legislate themselves as they best see fit. as it currently stands, with the federal government having as much power as it does, we will never have proper representation of the people, states will be more focused on getting federal power than focused on ensuring the people within the state are represented fairly.

Make voting proportional and get rid of first past the post. There are ways of making the system more democratic that are better than the status quo.

Agreed, proportional representation is the way to go if we want to have as many cultural groups as possible having representation without one group disproportionately dominating any others.

Considering those big cities are where lots of the tax money used to subsidize rural areas and agriculture come from, I think the cities deserve representation on rural matters

If you don't want to live in a state where there are more democrats than republicans, move to a state where there are more republicans than democrats. Not rocket science here. If someone lived in San Francisco and bitched and moaned about how many liberals there were, would the correct response be to revamp the government so that they get more control than anyone else? Of course not. They have the option of leaving just as much as you do. They don't have some kind of right to any more sway over government than anyone else just because they have the minority opinion.

Imagine the reactions of their parents, grandparents, and great-great-grandparents seeing they're part of the party whose composition involves Russian corruption sympathizers, Nazis, and Confederate activists.

But that would be a genuine old-school Russian experience, don't give them what they want.

Pray tell, what are these uniquely rural issues you don't feel are fairly represented

It's entirely possible that things in Washington are not representative. For people tied to their land, up and moving is probably less of an option than those living in a city. Historically we had the problem of malapportionment with rural areas coordinating to suppress the interests of cities and denying those that lived in them fair representation. This paper is kind of old, but bills pertaining to urban needs are less likely to pass state governments than those pertaining to rural needs or interests. Granted things could have changed in the past ~10 years and the nationwide picture isn't representative of all localities, but it still seems like rural politicians are coordinating to prevent cities from governing themselves in most states. Parity in representation is going to feel like a loss for a lot of rural Americans. They unjustly seized power with the specific purpose of suppressing cities and grew accustomed to it. The shift in power back towards something more equal is inevitable. Instead of crab potting and trying to keep people in cities down, the goal ought to be to form coalitions with the people living in the city. There is a lot of policy overlap at the state level that would benefit both rural and urban environs, particularly funding for schools and infrastructure.

eastern washington is essentially a different state wrt geography, culture, and political alignment. the cascades and national parks act as a natural border, with very little in the way of people even living in the dividing area between the western and eastern sides. why should many people on the eastern side of the mountains move away from the land they've lived on for years for a chance at better political representation when those who do hold the political majority will in all likelihood never step foot east of the cascades? this is nothing like someone living in san francisco not liking the liberals in their city, or living in the rural outskirts of a city. this is people one or two hundred miles away, living in very different cultural and geographical contexts, having their laws and representation be dominated by the puget sound area. all of this sounds extremely familiar here in washington, except the situation is in inverse. seattle is the juggernaut of our politics, and the eastern side of the state gets left by the wayside frequently. their voice essentially does not matter. firearms laws are a primary one, along with taxation. seattle provides an important font of tax money but i don't think that should necessarily give them the right to have complete control over all legal and representational matters of the eastern side of the state.