A Pit thread for Asahi

It means I think the loss of social and political cohesion in the US is causing the problems with the system of government, not the other way around. Parliamentary democracies are also vulnerable to authoritarianism - look at Hungary. In general the limits on politicians are far more ‘what they can get away with’, than what laws or a constitution says.

And I tend to agree with @asahi that the problems are serious, though I certainly don’t agree with his proposed solution.

My ideal solution would be for the US to unify and live in a fact-based world but I don’t know if I’ll see that as long as there’s Fox News, OANN, and Facebook. I sometimes have to remind myself that the military could temporarily take over, call a constitutional convention to order, and give us a democracy and a new constitution. Doesn’t matter - any system can be broken if there are competing factions with different value systems. I sometimes wonder if this is just one of those periods in world history that humanity is destined to go through like the “dark ages” or the Neolithic collapse.

The present moment does have a bit of a ‘decaying civilisation’ feel to it. In some ways I think economic changes are at the root of our problems and the social ones just a symptom, but I could be wrong.

I really hope your doomsday predictions come to nothing, anyway.

IMHO Israel has both systemic AND cultural problems in their governance structure.

Yep, it looks that way to me. Climate change, along with the resulting scarcity-based conflicts, will reduce humanity’s population by 90%. After a long period of reckoning, the survivors come to their collective senses and abide by a more science-driven, and hopefully sustainable, way of living.

Then as the population recovers, people become complacent, forget about the mistakes they made in the past, and return to the comforting embrace of ignorance, idiocy, greed, and authoritarian leaders.

Rinse and repeat. The cycle never ends.

Loss of? That would imply that we’ve ever really had social and political cohesion.

What has changed is that the system of government that we adopted over two centuries ago has been magnifying the effect of that lack of cohesion. As a smaller and smaller minority of people retain power over the majority, that minority both becomes more radicalized as the moderates peel off and the reminder claims persecution as their views fall out of favor, and the majority becomes more resentful over being ruled over by that minority that tries to impose its out of favor views on the majority.

What has changed in politics in recent times is the elimination of earmarks, “pork barrel politics” as it’s known by its detractors. That “pork” greased the wheels. McConnel straight up admitted that allowing the majority party to govern unobstructed did not benefit the minority party, and that makes sense. What good does it do you to allow the opposition to be in power over a time of peace and prosperity?

You could appeal to idealism, and say that they should put country over party, but that’s naive. Appealing to their self interest, and them putting self over party is more effective. So, why would a Republican vote for a Democratic bill? Because it has money going to that Republican’s district or state. A politician can get more votes by showing what they have done for their constituents than they can by conforming to ideological identity politics.

I do think that getting rid of earmarks was an intentional and cynical move on the part of Republicans in order to make their party have to adhere to the identity politics, rather than the practical matter of providing jobs and infrastructure for their constituents. Then, rather than winning elections by being good at governing, which is something that the Republicans had rejected with Ronald Reagan’s “Nine terrifying words”, they sought to win elections by sowing fear and discord, of motivating their base by hate rather than hope.

The solution does not lie in increasing the hatred between the parties, it lies in cooperating on our mutual interests and finding compromises on our differences. As cooperation and compromise are considered dirty words in Republican circles these days, it really does need to start there. And it needs to start at the base, with the voters and constituents, who should be demanding good governance rather than “owning the libs.”

Military takeovers are rarely temporary. And a called constitutional convention may not come out with a constitution that you would prefer to the one we have.

Civs do fall. I don’t know any reason that we are immune to it.

Yes, but that is because, when the Republicans started touting failed economic policies, they no longer could run on those, and instead started focusing on hatred and division. So, rather than talk about a stimulus bill, or and infrastructure bill, people are instead complaining about Dr. Seuss stopping publishing of a couple of their books. The priorities of elevating people to government has stopped being about governance, and instead being about ideology of social issues.

Myself, I just think the private sector needs to step up and cut insurrectionists off. If they don’t want to participate in society, they don’t get access to the good parts.

I’m serious. Deny them phone service and bank accounts. Cancel their credit cards. Then just ignore them.

I wouldn’t mind a mixed chamber system with one house with proportionate seats to represent minority parties and another with non-party-controlled local single seat elections that would provide for a local representative.

So… if Democrats fail to achieve one party rule we are in danger of falling into one party rule?

That’d be great if that standard were applied to the left wing brownshirts as well. But that’d be counterproductive wouldn’t it if riots, looting, and arson on demand were actually sanctioned.

Who got rid of them and when? The Wikipedia article is not very clear, but it makes it sound like a bipartisan effort.

Why would you assume your opposition’s policies are likely to produce such a thing? Presumably you oppose them for a reason?

I am saying the real problem is the people more so than the government, and you are saying the solution needs to start with the people. So I’m not sure we’re disagreeing all that much.

There are no Republicans in Britain, and yet we are seeing many of the same problems. Ditto our neighbours in Europe. You need to find a more general explanation.

We would probably have two parties, but one would have a major advantage despite having fewer voters.

I still feel like the highly radicalized loud voices on both political extremes are largely to blame. They have always existed but they have been enabled and amplified by social media to the point where ideological signaling and memetics have all but silenced facts, reason and moderation. Just two examples in the US are the shrill hyperbole around CRT and BLM. There is no reason to believe that CRT is some sort of progressive scheme to undermine the education system. Nor is there any reason to believe that Blacks in America are being terrorized and oppressed in their daily lives. But you rarely hear moderate voices on either side debunk the hyperbole; people tend to either amplify it (share/re-tweet) or say nothing at all.

The one ray of light I have noticed recently is the emerging trend of skewering both ideologies by moderate and rational voices of the entertainment industry, largely done though social commentary in art form. They and a handful of respected celebrity social commentators and philosophers are the few influential voices slowly emerging above the polarized vitriolic din. Fortunately, they have an awaiting and growing audience of moderates that understand and appreciate that things have gone too far, and are welcoming the implied permission to critically mock the “true religion” of either side.

You’ve had to be corrected before on your false claims that “riots, looting, and arson on demand” (which you previously called “riots, looting and mayhem”; I see you’ve discovered the Oxford comma in the meantime?) associated with some left-wing protests are overlooked or dealt with leniently.

I know it’s been a whole five months since then, but I’m sure you can remember basic facts for as long as that if you really try.

This “bothsidesism” seems to be really stretching the comparison to try to make typical pro-BLM rhetoric sound as delusional and hyperbolic as typical “anti-CRT” rhetoric (in scare quotes because what they call “CRT” seems to bear very little resemblance to actual Critical Race Theory).

Here’s the “About” statement from the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which seems to be the closest thing that exists to an organizational embodiment of BLM:

That is nowhere near as “shrill” or “hyperbolic” as a lot of the “anti-CRT” rhetoric we’ve been getting from influential conservative media and even lawmakers these days.

Dissolving parliament is a feature of some parliamentary system, not all. And there are varied systems for allocating representatives to districts, some more democratic than others. I’m not sure the US system actually produces representatives that know more about the local issues when the party apparatus gerrymanders your district and anoints someone who lives there but who doesn’t give a sh-t about anything other than the grift.

Democrats could never achieve one-party rule. Two minutes after the republican party stops existing the Democrats would split into at least two different parties.

This is true.