To think some people on here don't want to live in a democracy?

[Ricekrispiecakes]

Some of the threads on here about the election are shocking. From both sides.

Such patronising posts about young people only voting because of the 'magic money tree' - give young people some credit. They're part of this country and they're our future.

Labour voters are all benefit scroungers who don't want to work hard.

Tory voters are all rich bastards that hate the poor.

You're stupid/evil/gullible/ if you vote one or the other.

The bile spewed at politicians and each other goes too far imo, the media is dreadful too.

I think it's good that people are interested in politics and are passionate about their beliefs, but isn't it the case that there are strengths and weaknesses on both sides? Neither are right about everything neither are completely wrong about everything. Most political parties don't manage to deliver all of their manifesto promises.

We are all entitled to vote and it's absurd to keep saying that any one group of people only voted because of x, y or z. We're all part of the same society, men and women, the young and the old, the wealthy and the poor and thankfully we can all vote. Going by some of these threads people would ban anyone voting if they don't agree with them.

I lean one way but I also think it's healthy to have strong opposition, I think it works quite well that we have cycles.

Whichever side you're on would you really want only one government to rule or the rest of your days?

I'd say we also owe it to each other to try to understand the opposite point of view even if we disagree with it

Yes. Because if you don't understand the opposite point of view then you aren't actually disagreeing with it - you are just spouting blind prejudice.

I understand why reasonable people voted Leave. I know a few . I am a reasonable person who voted Remain. I voted for someone other than Labour or Tory and I can see why reasonable people voted for either of them.
Trouble is, the reasonable voices get drowned out by ignorant bollocks. It's hard to know how to respond to ignorant bollocks and the temptation is to say "That's a load of ignorant bollocks". And so it goes on.

It's no wonder the people who end up at the top of politics are less than honest game-players when as pp said, they're having to choose to be subjected to endless vitriol and personal attacks. If we call our young people stupid they're going to turn away and stop caring about a system that punishes them for voicing their views.

I also disagree that a vote is personal - it affects everyone and if I find out someone voted for reasons I know to be based in ignorance then yes it does make me re-evaluate them as a person. This time my DF basically told me because he'd seen 14 elections that he had the right to tell everyone else what they should and shouldn't say about politics. I've lost respect for him because he kept saying things like 'none of you understand what it's like for those of us who have to deal with lack of teachers' - he's a school governor but not a teacher, whereas I actually was a teacher. But I don't have the right to question his views because I'm only 37 politics isn't a game, it's core to everything in our lives but it's been turned into a game, only to be rolled out during elections like an episode of BGT.

I strongly believe that we should be exercising every democratic right we have in order to start changing the system so it works for us. Instead we're allowing it to continue to make politics inaccessible to a diverse range of people, pushing only those who care only about their own interests into power because they're the only ones who can deal with the hate they get. If you actually care about what others think and feel you'd be too damaged by the horrendous vitriol of the media and the public. I think that's one reason Corbyn chimes with so many young people - he seems to be able to do both.

I think the difference between the referendum and GE result interpretation is quite interesting, from a democracy point of view.

Advisory referendum: 52-48: The People Have Spoken and we must instantly charge headlong over the cliff of the hardest Brexit possible.

GE: 42-40-7: Too close to call, legal and constitutional tangles, crushing blow to party in charge, probable abandonment of austerity measures.

What if it had been the other way round?

Could/should TM really have interpreted the GE result as a wholehearted embrace of her most extreme policies? I mean, she tried to for a bit but we all knew she was bullshitting.

Could DC have said, the country is clearly roughly equally divided over the benefits of the EU, we'll seek to leave while retaining as many of those benefits as we can, and listening to a wide variety of views on how to do that...?