US Politics: Burning Down the Country

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

26 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

My point is that electing Dems, just voting blue no matter who, keeps worse people out of office but it doesn't do fuck all for lots of stuff.

So make it more enticing to work in government.

Like my grandfather said, why work twice as hard for 95% less money There are other ways to help.

But even the worst democrat is better than an average republican.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, dbergkvist said:

The solution to the problem that people don't agree is simple: split the country. That way, each side would get their own separate country that they can reform in whatever direction they want. I'm not saying that this solution is always applicable every time a country has lots of internal disagreements, but it is applicable to the US. You just need to look at a map about which state voted for what presidential candidate for the last 200 years to see that.

That would not shock me to see at some time in the next 20 years.

[ThinkerX]

It is starting to seem at least possible, though not probable, so...

What is the reaction likely to be should Twitter ban Trump for three days?  

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

And there's always the risk that SCOTUS will strike down the law anyway. Which brings back the most important point of all, even though people are tired of hearing about it. It's all about the Supreme Court!

Despite years of complaining about judicial activism, it turns out that conservatives love judicial activism. Get ready, they are going to make Lochner great again.

I'm not saying that liberals are innocent with regard to this, but before liberal judicial activism there was a whole lot of conservative judicial activism until the 1930s, leading an exasperated Oliver Wendell Holmes to declare, "the Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statistics."

Going forward (yes, sorry I am really using this horrid corporate term. Couldn't think of anything else), it will be interesting to see how liberals and the left will contend with the issue of judicial review, and more generally, on deference to legislative acts.

[Fragile Bird]

Gee, they took Trump down into the WH bunker last night, when things got tense outside. Too bad they couldn't leave him down there. I wonder if he took the wife and the kid with him.

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Starting with the idea that men can be "free." Seven hells, the only men who are "free" are those too dumb to know otherwise.
How is it surprising that people don't want to wear masks or stay home during a pandemic if they are taught that they are "free" ?

Well none of us are completely free to do as we please as we are expected to follow a variety of legal and ethical norms which we are expected to obey and many of them we should obey.

Now I'm aware that certain sorts of people have contorted the meaning of "freedom" to mean basically the right to pay no taxes and to be able to say demeaning things to minorities and women at work. Of course, many of these same people don't have a problem sending somebody to the gas chamber because they had Iron Maiden posters on their bedroom walls.

Despite the misuse of the word freedom by a variety of bad faith actors and often being silly about the implications of what it means to be "free", I'd still hope their was some respect for allowing individuals a significant amount of freedom from being harassed by the police and the state and respect for many of people's personal choices.  I wouldn't want to live in Orban's Hungary. Much of the resistance to Trump is because he is a threat to freedom.

[Prue]

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

 I think I would like to see about four things off the top of my head; 1) Get rid of the current voting system so there is more than one party. If this requires moving to more a parliamentary system, then I would be fine with that. 2) Put term limits on Supreme court justices. And maybe get rid of the current political appointment system all together. 3) Get rid of the electoral college. 4). Limit political spending. I'm a pretty big free speech guy, but I think the Supreme Court went off the rails with this, just being oblivious to how money distorts our political discussions with junk.

But, I don't see any of this literally or figuratively burning things down. I see it more as making things work better. Of course selling this stuff to the American public would be difficult, but it probably has a better chance than saying "hey vote for me, I gonna burn shit down. And after that? Well I have no fuckin' idea."

Very good suggestions. 

1) Getting rid of the two-party-system is essential. The key is to get away from the exclusive winner-takes-it-all system that is also prevalent in the UK. In Germany, there is a rather clever 2-votes-system to achieve that goal. With your first vote, you elect the person that is supposed to represent your district. This person will get into parliament no matter what. Even if it's an independent candidate. So, yes, that does mean that mainly candidates from big parties get in directly. But the second (more important) vote is given to a party, and for them there is a so-called 5 % hurdle. I.e. any party that manages to get at least 5 % will be represented in parliament proportionally and they can send in their candidates from a list, to fill their seats. If a party has more direct seats than would have been assigned to them according to the second vote, the number of people in parliament is increased. That is not so ideal, as the number of MPs sometimes increases substantially in Germany.

The good thing is that people can see that new parties can and do pop up. And the established big parties have to form coalitions with them, or at least deal with their opposition viewpoints, as they can't be sure to keep their majority in the next election. 

2) Definitely. People didn't get that old in the 18th century, so the terms were limited by that factor. But today, you need to limit the terms, and also set a retirement age for SC judges.

3) The electoral college. What a humbug in modern times. If you really want to keep the notion of people riding to Washington on your behalf, at least make sure that they represent an equal number of voters, and that they have to vote according to the proportion of votes. 

4) Oh yes. It's really really dangerous that you need that much money to finance campaigns in the US. That way rich people can and will buy politicians who only do what the donors want, not what their voters want. 

 

[Jaxom 1974]

Whelp...got called a, "bleeding heart liberal" by my mother tonight...so I have that going for me.

She doesn't watch Fox and doesn't read a ton of newspapers. She's my mom and I love her, but she's an embodiment of so many things..

[Zorral]

People streaming up 6th Ave. from Brooklyn. Cops in riot gear chasing them.  Helicopters circling my home relentlessly.  Just like last night and the night before, except the last two nights it mostly protestors streaming down from Union Square, etc. along Broadway.

There was a  smashed store window here from last night -- and I do mean HERE, like across my corner and a little up that block, i..e within 300 steps or so.  High end racing bike kit and gear, the bikes themselves and coffee shop place.  A lot of places here were smart enough a long time ago to empty their places and / board up / have iron gates -- if they weren't so chic as to have store fronts of glass a story high.  And just left everything there all this time.  I wondered even back in March how dumb that was. Clearly they expected to be back within two weeks or something.

~~~~ ETA: Cops closed down Manhattan Bridge.

[DMC]

32 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Whelp...got called a, "bleeding heart liberal" by my mother tonight...so I have that going for me.

One of my philosophies of life has always been if my mother is criticizing me, I'm probably doing something right.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

36 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Whelp...got called a, "bleeding heart liberal" by my mother tonight...so I have that going for me.

She doesn't watch Fox and doesn't read a ton of newspapers. She's my mom and I love her, but she's an embodiment of so many things..

My Mother thinks Trump is wonderful.  We fight about him regularly.

[Darth Richard II]

13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

My Mother thinks Trump is wonderful.  We fight about him regularly.

I have that issue somewhat with my dad. Except I just don’t bring it up. My mom hates trump enough for both of us anyways. Only time my entire life have I ever heard my mom drop the f bomb.

[DMC]

5 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I don't know how you remove bias/ideology from the judiciary but that has to be addressed.

Several of the founders argued that a Constitutional Convention should not be a one time thing, but should occur at a periodic interval. Because things are so partisan now, I can't believe another Constitutional Convention would do anything but further cement partisan lines and inequality in this country. So the argument for burning it down, is symbolic. It calls for massive, structural change. If, for example, we were to have another Constitutional Convention to revise the governmental structure of this country in a way that's better suited for the modern era, you can't have Mitch McConnell there, or Nancy Pelosi. It has to be fully reconceptualized. Right now we are seeing some literal burning of things, but I think most of us would agree that violent struggle against the U.S. government is doomed to fail.

I think you're definitely right that partisanship was a huge blindspot among the framers, but I don't think you can ever remove bias or ideology from justices - elected, appointed, whatever.  In fact I think it's quite a big folly to attempt so.  I think SCOTUS should be appointed, and maybe federal circuit courts too, but other than that, might as well just elect all of them.

I VERY strongly agree that a constitutional convention should be a generational type of thing.  I'm not sure there were too many founders/framers thought this, but it was one of the thought-farts of Jefferson I think was genius (when many could be insane or just confusing).  Every generation should be availed of the opportunity to create their own future.  That should be a foundational ideal of any state in my book.

4 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

 I think I would like to see about four things off the top of my head; 1) Get rid of the current voting system so there is more than one party. If this requires moving to more a parliamentary system, then I would be fine with that. 2) Put term limits on Supreme court justices. And maybe get rid of the current political appointment system all together. 3) Get rid of the electoral college. 4). Limit political spending. I'm a pretty big free speech guy, but I think the Supreme Court went off the rails with this, just being oblivious to how money distorts our political discussions with junk.

I agree with 1, 3, and 4.  1 is going to be pretty hard to reform, but if this was More's utopia, yeah.  3 is just, ugh, hopefully we can actually do that in my lifetime.  4 is always a fight - that we're losing now.  More attention needs to be paid.  As for 2, my idyllic view on the courts is...complicated.

4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Hmmm... I don't think the US has that much of an institutional problem tbh. I mean sure, things could use a bit of tweaking, but the main problem is essentially ideological.
By that I mean that the dominant ideology promotes competition. Between individuals, between groups, between nations... etc. Competition (by opposition to cooperation) is seen as natural, healthy, desirable...
On some level, Trump is the embodiment of this ideology. His constant references to "winners" and "losers," his pitting various groups against each other, his mocking political opponents... Trump embodies unabashed individualism, the ultimate success of the white alpha male.
That he is successful despite being stupid and coarse is an asset, an inspiration to all those who can identify with such personality traits.

The problem isn't institutional, it's educational. It's not that everything material needs to be "burned down," but most of the underlying principles of the dominant ideology should be.
Starting with the idea that men can be "free." Seven hells, the only men who are "free" are those too dumb to know otherwise.
How is it surprising that people don't want to wear masks or stay home during a pandemic if they are taught that they are "free" ?

I (perhaps unsurprisingly) exactly agree with this.  The US does have institutional problems.  And there are plenty of areas where there needs to be substantial improvement.  But that's not what's driving our problems.  It's not because of an "outdated" system.  In fact the Framers did a pretty incredible job on that considering it's lasted 230 years.  It's capitalism, it's culture, it's fidelity to ideals that not only are nonsensical but actively hurt other people.  If we don't fix that, the rest don't matter.

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

My main reason for thinking that more parties might be better, and this just a hypothesis at this point, and probably needs some empirical verification, cough cough @DMC, is that it might tamp down extremism, particularly right wing extremism.

Multiparty systems derived from proportional electoral systems do indeed tamp down extremism - to an extent.  There needs to be care there.  You start looking like Italy and the whole thing can break loose.

[Fez]

The AFL-CIO building near the White House is getting trashed. That seems... counter productive.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Fez said:

The AFL-CIO building near the White House is getting trashed. That seems... counter productive.

Is there a sad-laugh emoji?

[mcbigski]

8 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Was starting from scratch how they did it in your country? Explain very carefully how you go about burning everything down and then starting over. And how should we go about starting from scratch. What should our new institutions look like and be.

Been hitting the tequilia but I think i agree?  Are you saying lets not burn it all down without a well vetted better idea?  Socially distanced fist bump?  We're not going to agree on the remedies, but sounds like neither of us want to force a pillow on the patient's face.

7 hours ago, dbergkvist said:

The left-leaning US states should leave the US and join Canada instead, and have the Canadian government dismantle and rebuild their police forces (and health care systems) from scratch. The right-leaning states would never agree to that, but you just have to accept you can't save everyone.

OK I'm a New England guy so who kind of thinks the Maritimes are pretty much about the same on average as us politically.  Which is to say central mostly slightly left.  Would be happy to trade the maritimes and Saskatwheon (terriblyt soeelling!) Alberta and Manitoba for Washington and at least urban Minnesota.  If thats roughly equal population wise.  Probably a win/win?

3 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

My point is that electing Dems, just voting blue no matter who, keeps worse people out of office but it doesn't do fuck all for lots of stuff.

Vote your interest not your uniform, to bastardize that seinfield reference.

[James Arryn]

BREAKING REPORT: AG Barr Has instructed all 56 Regional Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) to search out and apprehend ANTIFA leaders across the country.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1267189544857636864

 

Guys, the alarmists were right.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

BREAKING REPORT: AG Barr Has instructed all 56 Regional Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) to search out and apprehend ANTIFA leaders across the country.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1267189544857636864

 

Guys, the alarmists were right.

Fucking shit. He's going to tear this fucking country apart.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

14 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

BREAKING REPORT: AG Barr Has instructed all 56 Regional Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) to search out and apprehend ANTIFA leaders across the country.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1267189544857636864

 

Guys, the alarmists were right.

What the fuck???

What the hell do they plan to charge them with?  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Another one of Trisk's laws.  

Does getting a balloon still get you another life with Trisk laws?