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“A republic, if you can keep it”
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I remember the bicentennial, which we celebrated with an unelected president and VP. I felt the irony, but at least took hope that the system worked and Spiro and The Dickster weren’t in charge.
At 250, we’ve got President Shitass and his clown orgy of a cabinet. The hope now, to the extent that there is any, is that the other two branches have shown signs of restraining his most harmful initiatives. Also, people are pissed off and beginning to realize – if not admit in public – that they’ve been swindled. The founders built a resilient system; *how* resilient remains to be seen.
“If you can keep it” is doing a heckuva lotta work. The naked truth is that our system doesn’t work, in the general case, & not even in the generic case. It works as long as you have a George Washington as POTUS, & well-behaved men & women & you know, all the rest of the humans involved. What exactly well-behaved is, is a free parameter of the model. It’s no surprise that the real world deviates from the desired results. Especially since what’s desired is not well-defined, itself. No one knows even how it’s supposed to work. Scoop’s idea of that in one special case is just his opinion. It may be the pretense that the people involved have to follow, but watch the body, not the head fake. Watch how Antonin Scalia actually rules, not the bullshit principle he claims to follow. That’s my opinion. Fuck the whole shit show… What we call “democracy” is functionally ill-defined & doesn’t work, in practice. Happy 250. No one knows the future. 251 remains indeterminate until & unless it happens. It all “remains to be seen.”
A republic only starts to look good when we look at the alternatives that have existed. Yes, ours is, and always has been fucked up in many ways. But only paying attention to what’s bad is, at best, totally unhelpful. A lot of folks are spoiled. They’ve always lived in a system that’s provided them with a degree of comfort and safety, and they imagine that the comfort and safety are just natural and would continue without that system. There are a few people who would benefit form the destruction of our present system, but the great majority of the folks who think they would benefit, won’t.
I believe everything you say, starting with “A lot of folks.” These facts are, exactly, the reasons our kind of democracy doesn’t work. I’m not a fascist. I do include myself among the deluded.
Our democracy functioned reasonably well for 240 years. I really wish I could blame Trump for the breakdown, but while he has made things worse, I think he is a symptom of the problem as much as a cause. What is destroying our democracy is social media, small-dollar political donations, and AI-assisted gerrymandering. Our Constitutional structure, as a practical matter, ensures we have two major parties and generally prevents third parties from wielding more than minor influence. Social media both gives people with the most extreme views on the Left or the Right too much influence in the selection of Democratic and Republican candidates and causes primary voters’ political positions to become more extreme overall. There was a time when major political donors and the Democratic and Republican parties themselves had moderating influences on nominees for the purpose of winning general elections. However, the rise of small-dollar donors reduces the influence of large-dollar donors and party leaders.
Unlike large-dollar donors who donate the maximum legal donation, small-dollar donors can be approached again and again for more money because they have not reached the legal limit. So politicians send fundraising messages through social media in an attempt to get existing donors to open their wallets again. They have learned that cooperating with the other party by reaching compromises does not motivate people to send more money. The best way to get such people to send more money is to make them angry. So they bundle short excerpts of speeches on the House or Senate floor or appearances on cable news, all to make angry primary voters angrier in hopes of getting them to send more money. 25 years ago, extreme candidates were more likely to lose general elections, but nearly all House districts are safe Republican or Democratic districts.
I am old enough to remember the bicentennial. I will not live to see the tricentennial, but my nieces and nephew should still be around in 50 years. However, I fear they won’t see the tricentennial either, at least not as a single United States of America. Instead, I fear we are likely to see a red United States and one or two blue United States. I never would have believed that was possible 10 years ago.
This is the most warped thing I’ve seen in a while . Yeah, it’s not Elon and Thiel and the Ellisons and the rest of the Citizen United-spawned oligarchy who are killing democracy. If only we’d just leave things in the capable hands of them and AIPAC and the health insurance lobbyists, everything would be so much better.
Do you believe that things have gotten better since small-dollar donors became the primary political funding method? The thing about the billionaire donor class is that there are wealthy donors with beliefs across the political spectrum. Personally, I believe contribution limits should be removed, while requiring campaigns to publish donor names and amounts online as soon as those donations are made. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Citizens United is a boogeyman on the Left, but do you remember what that case was actually about? The Federal Elections Commission had said that a film critical of Hillary Clinton could not be advertised or released in the run-up to the 2008 election. The government argued that even books could be banned prior to an election.
In the wake of the decision, there was fear that it would give too much power to megacorporations like Microsoft or Walmart. But the last thing companies like that want to do is alienate half their customers by releasing ads for or against a candidate. What Citizens United actually did was allow people to pool their money in an attempt to influence elections. Removing contribution limits would likely get that money to flow directly to campaigns instead of to 501C(3) corporations and thus allow the candidates to control their own messaging.
I think removing contribution limits would make things better, but we won’t know unless we try. I say we should pass a law that will remove limits for one election cycle (4 years). Let it expire after that, and a new Congress and newly elected (or reelected) president can decide whether to extend it.
What makes you think small dollar donations is the primary funding method? Looks like the opposite to me.
Bezos threw support behind Trump in the last election. Did he alienate half his potential sales base? You wouldn’t know it from Amazon’s sales.
“Constitutional structure, as a practical matter, ensures we have two major parties and generally prevents third parties”. No. That’s the two parties doing that, and the media pretending it’s inevitable. Pretty sure ‘political party’ doesn’t appear anywhere in our founding documents.
The two parties/factions dominating thing seems to be more of a natural occurrence than a contrivance in democracies. And when one falls apart, a third will arise and in time become the second.
Here, Jefferson and Clinton pretty much created the Democrats and the Republicans were an uncomfortable combination of old Whigs (the Seward faction0 and red-hot abolitionists (Chase) who settled upon a compromise candidate. They won a flukey election, the compromise candidate turned out to be our greatest President, and the complete loss of Democrat power in the South made them dominant, with two, sometimes three, wings perpetually fighting for dominance in the party. In the UK you had the Whigs and Tories morphing into Conservatives and Liberals, with the Liberals being displaced by Labour, after WW1 (the occasion of Liberal Churchill rejoining the Conservatives (“Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”)
Now, who knows. The Brits have three conservative factions- the heads-up-their-asses Borjo-Tress-Maybe-the last guyTories, the No-Brexit Tories pretty much off in the wilderness, and Farage’s pseudo-Trumpists. Labour still has the basic Blair-Corbyn factions. Here it’s even weirder. You have what appears to be a splitting MAGA-Trump thing which will accelerate when the bastard croaks and a forlorn band of traditionals. The Democrats have been handed an unscrewupable opportunity which it looks like they’ll screw up anyway with the trendy Democrat Socialism crap (one of the worst examples being our future Mayor in DC).
The two-party setup only works when the two parties are to some degree internally united. And that’s definitely not going on here or with our friends in Blighty.
So democracy doesn’t work. We should try………..?
I hear that Stoopnocracy is peachy!
I think my takeaway was that the 20th century tested 3 (or 4) bright ideas, new approaches to modern governance. Now the verdicts are in: They’re all shitshows.
Capitalism vs. Marxism; or democracy vs. autocracy. & Fascism as a sort of middle ground. All symptoms of brokenness.
“Fascism as a sort of middle ground”?
An anniversary best summed up by Snake Plissken
Snake Plissken would’ve been a much better president.
I heard he was dead
A little human compassion …
(snoring) What? Jeff Bridges? He’s alive & well & is in that new Godzilla TV show with Gary OldMan, isn’t he?
Kurt Russell is also alive, which seems more relevant to Snake Plisken’s health. Kurt is also in Monarch with his son Wyatt, which is the Godzilla show. To the best of my knowledge, Jeff Bridges has never appeared on Monarch.
(It’s a quote from Escape From New York, everyone “heard Snake was dead”)
FWIW, it was a sarcastic hot take, & I was the butt of the joke.
Dead Snake >> Live Trump
My best today from Canada to all our friends in the USA.
Thank you very much, Chinney. Best wishes for you and Canada, too.
Yeah, what he said. You hosers have a funny way of playing football, but you’re aaaallright. We’ll try get Fucko to knock off the 51st state crap.
And a salute to our best friends in the GWNorth. Fucko’s shit doesn’t nearly represent American feelings to any degree. And thanks for the bridge in Windsor in case Fucko ever lets it be used
Joined the USN summer of 1976 (Delayed entry) bicentennial. One of the 1st quotes, axioms, expressions, snark I heard/read:
United States Navy 200 yrs of tradition unhampered by progress. We’ve done so much with so little for so long we are now capable of doing anything with nothing. Good ship, good crew, fuck you, turn to. “turn to” means get back to work.
N.A.V.Y. ~ never again volunteer yourself!
Have a lovely summer ~ anchors aweigh …
An Army vet, slightly earlier
“Fun Travel Adventure” (Fuck the Army)
You guys have had your moments. Nimitz is an inner-circle Hall of Famer in my book. As decent a man as MacArthur wasn’t.
There’s a reason the U.S. model hasn’t been successful elsewhere and most democracies have chosen a Parliamentary system. Latin America tended to adopt the U.S. system….military coup central.
With whatever system or organization out there, unless those with the most power and resources adopt a philosophy of embedded benevolent to get people to strive together for something better rather than pure material and ego driven status, I think we’re all doomed.
Anger and lies drive emotions of the masses to action, and its unfortunately a Marcus Aurelius type led by Stoic virtues (especially temperance/moderation) doesn’t have the same effect.
Maybe in another 250 years we’ll figure that out.
Maybe democracy does not work within capitalism?
On another matter, the red card suspension on the American player was overturned.