Active, aggressive democratic government across a highly diverse political, cultural and social environment is as tyrannical as any other political arrangement, perhaps worse due to the implied legitimacy of the governments actions ("We" bombed iraq, "we" tortured terrorist suspects.)
The only humane option is secessionism, which has been poisoned in american political discourse by its historical association with slavery. Why Alabama and California should have anything more than, perhaps, a mutual defense pact, at this point, is beyond me.
Keep in mind that your average resident of Orange County, California is likely more conservative (for some reasonable definition of the word) than your average resident of Athens, Georgia. (I jumped out of Alabama, but I hope my point is clear.)
The American people aren't nearly as polarized as the American people think.
You have a point but there are alternatives short of outright political disassociation. Namely devolution. American Federalism needs to find its Goldilocks moment. The first era of federalism was too decentralized, then the second era beginning with the Civil War witnessed too much centralization. There's a better balance to be struck that devolves most goverance to the local and state level, while preserving the Federal government's role as interstate arbiter, international face, and ultimate guarantor of civil rights and liberties.
Rather than engage in outright histrionics, the author makes sensible points backed up by historical facts. However I think the author ignores that idea that sensible design alternatives exist to a lot of the perceived gridlock. We're a country of designers who find elegant solutions to problems. The perceived entrenched powers that doom us can be unravelled with sensible fixes. Our prison system can be reformed by sensible legalization/de-regulation coupled with how we prosecute crimes and fund prisons, no need for a revolution there. Regulation of rogue energy and financial institutions can be strengthened, we can make sure our regulators don't become enablers and we reform what we regulate to not strangle innovation, no need for a revolution there. Every day viable alternatives pop up to our toxic media, and Jon Stewart proved you can de-legitimize an entire network, not with violence, but with a sustained nightly attack of satire, no need for a revolution there.
In truth, this article engages in a sort of fallacy, we're only doomed if we think doom is the only outcome that's possible. There's another version of this article that could happen called "American democracy can be fixed with sensible design".
If American Democracy is software, then it's in a pretty good state I'd say. It does numerous functions, but they all seem loosely coupled. Refactoring policy in one branch wouldn't catastrophically collapse another branch. No one aspect of American democracy seems able to crash the system.
Some modules can be completely re-written for better results, for instance our tax system could be replaced by some type of flat-tax.
Other ones can get by with significant refactoring over a long period, maybe financial regulation could have better consumer protection and ultimately allow for a more equitable distribution of wealth (I'm' not economist, maybe those goals don't even involve each other)
And other ones just need bug patches, for instance interstate commerce, which I'd guess is smooth as a cucumber right now, but we could have more states align on issues of policy that create confusion in the marketplace (a Delaware C copr is a great example of people finding those simple solutions).
It is hard to think of a really good, functioning part of government, but generally those are the ones we don't even notice. The government is great at handing out money to people, and that is often touted as the only social program we really need. We can reform the broken way it hands out contracts to companies.
Here's the thing. Starting over is a fanciful idea, but completely stupid. When you re-build a system, you have to re-build the parts that worked too. And for what it's worth, democracy works and change happens. Yes it sucks that it's slow, but it's sure.
This probably depends on how quickly those "bug patches" can be applied. If quick action is taken and the current trend of rewriting laws to be pro-special-interest (often business) to the detriment of the citizens, there I suspect we might be able to save American Democracy.
The cutoff line is, very roughly, "does the middle class still exist". If serious, significant fixes are not applied by then, it will be too late. Not only will we have already lost a lot of what the patches should be intended to protect, it is probably impossible to do anything besides a "rewrite" afterwords. It is hard to get people to support "let's save the OLD system" once everything starts going all Robespierre.
The article likes parliamentary-style democracies, but what happens there is that the party in power can pass pretty much anything it wants, limited only by the members' willingness to go along. American-style checks and balances mean that, even if you have a majority, you can't pass your brilliant idea without selling it to at least some of the minority. I assert that that's a good thing - your idea has to make sense outside your party for you to be able to turn it into law.
Agreed that checks and balances are good, but the US constitution was written without large, permanent political parties in mind. Take the power of impeachment, the ultimate Congressional trump card against executive overreach. Why has no one seriously advocated its use during the last two administrations? Because history has shown that in practice it isn't a weapon for use by Congress against an overweening president, but rather by one political party against the other.
Quite an irritatingly-simplistic/tired headline. I choked that down and read, but there's quite a bit of "what if"-ing going on. We get it, all of this executive action after failed attempts to gain consensus is "a bad thing", but the writer's attempts to predict the future as far ahead as he is ("sometime before runaway climate change forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies") leave him an awful lot of leeway to wax on about what could happen, at the same time providing no ideas for what could fix things (beyond a coup that causes us to re-evaluate the constitution).
Yglesias says, "People figure that whatever political problems it might have will prove transient — just as happened before."
This is way too dismissive of what's actually happened in American history. The word "transient" implies that the political problems eventually went away, and American democracy kept on going.
But what actually happened is that each political problem was addressed by changing our government--either through Constitution amendment, through federal legislation, or through the creation of new court precedent.
So the American government of today would not look very familiar to the people who wrote the Constitution. If they were alive today, they would think that what they created has already been replaced. We'll feel the same way 100 years from now...big deal. People always feel out of place as they age.
The fundamental benefit of the American system of government is that it can be changed in a wide variety of ways without violence.
I think the author's point is not that those "wide variety of ways" don't exist, but that they are currently being broken/circumvented. The standing gentlemen's agreements to not play the game a certain way are being thrown out. Each side is using tactics that, while legal, were historically frowned upon precisely because it was understood that they would lead to the sort of gridlock we're currently experiencing. These are tactics that were understood to only be used as a last resort, but have become SOP.
If he's so concerned about America exhibiting the signs of a Fascist dictatorship, perhaps he should take a long, difficult, critical look at the ideology that actually accomplished it: Progressivism.
We aren't "headed toward" Fascism. The Progressive Movement and their fundamental changes to the government of the US was a core inspiration for Fascism. This is old, old news.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadThe only humane option is secessionism, which has been poisoned in american political discourse by its historical association with slavery. Why Alabama and California should have anything more than, perhaps, a mutual defense pact, at this point, is beyond me.
The American people aren't nearly as polarized as the American people think.
In truth, this article engages in a sort of fallacy, we're only doomed if we think doom is the only outcome that's possible. There's another version of this article that could happen called "American democracy can be fixed with sensible design".
Some modules can be completely re-written for better results, for instance our tax system could be replaced by some type of flat-tax.
Other ones can get by with significant refactoring over a long period, maybe financial regulation could have better consumer protection and ultimately allow for a more equitable distribution of wealth (I'm' not economist, maybe those goals don't even involve each other)
And other ones just need bug patches, for instance interstate commerce, which I'd guess is smooth as a cucumber right now, but we could have more states align on issues of policy that create confusion in the marketplace (a Delaware C copr is a great example of people finding those simple solutions).
It is hard to think of a really good, functioning part of government, but generally those are the ones we don't even notice. The government is great at handing out money to people, and that is often touted as the only social program we really need. We can reform the broken way it hands out contracts to companies.
Here's the thing. Starting over is a fanciful idea, but completely stupid. When you re-build a system, you have to re-build the parts that worked too. And for what it's worth, democracy works and change happens. Yes it sucks that it's slow, but it's sure.
The cutoff line is, very roughly, "does the middle class still exist". If serious, significant fixes are not applied by then, it will be too late. Not only will we have already lost a lot of what the patches should be intended to protect, it is probably impossible to do anything besides a "rewrite" afterwords. It is hard to get people to support "let's save the OLD system" once everything starts going all Robespierre.
The article likes parliamentary-style democracies, but what happens there is that the party in power can pass pretty much anything it wants, limited only by the members' willingness to go along. American-style checks and balances mean that, even if you have a majority, you can't pass your brilliant idea without selling it to at least some of the minority. I assert that that's a good thing - your idea has to make sense outside your party for you to be able to turn it into law.
This is way too dismissive of what's actually happened in American history. The word "transient" implies that the political problems eventually went away, and American democracy kept on going.
But what actually happened is that each political problem was addressed by changing our government--either through Constitution amendment, through federal legislation, or through the creation of new court precedent.
So the American government of today would not look very familiar to the people who wrote the Constitution. If they were alive today, they would think that what they created has already been replaced. We'll feel the same way 100 years from now...big deal. People always feel out of place as they age.
The fundamental benefit of the American system of government is that it can be changed in a wide variety of ways without violence.
We aren't "headed toward" Fascism. The Progressive Movement and their fundamental changes to the government of the US was a core inspiration for Fascism. This is old, old news.