Same here.
I was listening to a comedy routine from a few years ago, can’t remember who. Dude said the first black president was elected and he found this personally inspiring. He said if Hilary was elected, she woulda been the first woman president which would also be inspiring. But Dude was especially inspired by the election of Trump, which showed to him that anyone, even the comedian, had the intellectual wherewithal to assume the presidency. “So where do you send your papers to start the process?” 
…my position in this thread that the American Experiment, that began with the “Founding Fathers” has lead to a society that is largely indifferent to the marginalised, that worships unrestrained capitalism, that has lead to the most efficient industrial prison complex in the history of the world, that has developed a healthcare system that in inaccessible and unaffordable to millions of people, that has lead to a growth of independent, militant, authoritarian police forces.
I’m largely just making observations here. Try removing yourself from all of this. Pretend you re a historian from the future looking at America as it is now. What would they see? They would see two Americas: the one that everyone wishes and imagines it to be. Hospitals run like Grey’s Anatomy. The justice system runs like Law and Order. The legal system like Boston Legal.
But if they dig a bit deeper, they see the true America. The one that it keeps hidden. The one they are ashamed about. The one that they don’t talk about.
The push-back in this thread should be telling. “I’m not being optimistic enough.” “Its too premature to conclude that it can’t be fixed.” “You care about the problems, but you don’t care about how to solve them.”
Of course I fucking care about how to solve them. Why do you think I’m even posting in this thread?
But this thread isn’t about “how to solve all of Americas problems.” Its about “is the American Experiment a failure?”
And once again my contention is yes. It has failed. And you can wait another 10 years, or another 100, or another 1000, as many in this thread have suggested, and it will still be a failure. Because the American Experiment was always centred on the premise of white supremacy. Which is why the prisons are full, which is why Black and indigenous mothers are 2-3 times more likely to die in childbirth.
How do you fix it then?
As I’ve stated over and over again in this thread, I don’t think you can. Even if we got to the situation you had a few years ago, with an Obama calibre leader, control of the house and the senate and by some miracle, even the supremes.
That still wouldn’t “fix” the problems. Because the Republican states would still be banning CRT and abortion, and New York cops would still be arresting hundreds of Black people at the end of their shifts, and the hospitals would still be charging $4000 for routine procedures, the prison system would still locking people up at industrial rates. Many Americans might feel better about themselves. But it would all be an illusion. Because the system endures.
So what do you do then?
You fight. Marginalised people have always been fighting. You need to get into the trenches with them and not just abandon them when you feel things are starting to get a bit better. You need to start listening to marginalised folk, give them leadership positions, because they know better how to fix problems facing their community than you will ever do.
You need to hold the line. Because trans genocide is on the cards. Because q-anon-adjacent conspiracy theories are running rampant in circles most people here will never ever see, and these horribly broken people are getting elected to office, and are getting onto school boards, and they have added an element to the pot that the founding fathers never ever imagined.
You’ve got to fight every battle. You’ve got to hold the presidency. You’ve got to hold the senate, win back the house. You’ve got to win the school boards, win the city council elections. At every level. You need to hold the line.
Because holding the line and marginal improvements is the best possible outcome you are ever going to get under the present system. It’s about preventing authoritarianism. Its about giving the next generation a chance at rebuilding all of this.
Because you’ve got a generation of people that have grown up with “school shooter drills” That don’t have a job but are “independent contractors” in the gig economy. That are having to navigate a world where the 45th President of the United States, the most powerful person on the planet, was also the stupidest person alive.
You don’t persist with an experiment that has failed. You start again. You follow the evidence. You don’t fix it. You rebuild it. Our generation won’t be around to see it happen. But it’s our job to hold the line to give the next generation a chance.
It’s a “manufactured quarrel”. As if the progressives “just want to provoke” and haven’t been working through the system. Progressives are working through the system. And they largely always have.
No. For example, I think one of the reasons that politics in the US are so skewed towards money is the 1st Amendment. The Supreme Court has interpreted the 1st Amendment to mean that money talks; so that’s protected speech for political purposes, so rich people can pour money into the electoral system to get their personal policies enacted (spoiler: cut taxes on rich people).
That to me is madness. In a democracy, it’s people who vote. Just like I can’t pay someone to vote for me, I shouldn’t be able to pour so much money into an election that it overwhelms the viewpoints of people without money.
But, I’ve seen it on these very boards. I have seen some posters defend that approach, “because it’s a right under the 1st Amendment!” Appealing to the sacred 1st Amendment is used to cut off reasonable policy arguments because, you know, “It’s the 1st Amendment!”
No statutory or constitutional right should be treated as a sacred text.
Okay, so serious question I’ve always wondered about regarding discussions like this (e.g. with the Second Amendment): how do we detangle the law from Constitutionality? I didn’t think it was possible. I mean, don’t we treat the Constitution like sacred text because it fundamentally directs governments and courts to do so? It’s not like it’s just for fun. And once that’s done, how do we, say, recreate First Amendment rights without a lengthy period of red states arresting gay people for advocating for themselves?
The founding fathers gave you the mechanism: constitutional amendments. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 1st Amendment on this point makes that a less viable option, in my opinion.
Nothing in the Constitution says that it is Holy Tablets from the hand of God. It’s a law, made by humans, and can be changed by humans. I think the FF would be shocked and appalled at the way the Constitution is revered. There were those at the Convention who didn’t sign it; the New York delegation split 2-1 against, so technically Hamilton just signed for himself. Mason, one of the most respected delegates going in, was one of the anti-Federalists because of the lack of a Bill of Rights. Hamilton, Jay and Madison had to fight hard by issuing the Federalist Papers to persuade New York to ratify. Georgia and Rhode Island missed the first presidential election and the first session of the first Congress, because they hadn’t ratified.
No, I don’t see any language there that makes it a sacred text. The value of the document is in its opening line: “We the People”. That’s the closest thing to a value statement, and it it is saying that if the people don’t like it, the solution is in the Constitution itself: amend it.
Yeah, sure we can amend, but that’s almost impossible to do (and for good reason, if you treat the Constitution as sacred in the first place), but when folks say to stop treating the Constitution as sacred, I get the sense that they’re advocating decoupling the law from any basis in that document altogether to at least some extent, for the reason that it’s so hard to amend. Maybe this isn’t the case, but that’s how I’ve read it all this time. To me, the difficulty of amending makes the current Constitution pretty much sacred text, especially with the (correct) fear of what red states would do if given the opportunity.
The reason for my quote from A Man for All Seasons.
Except the impossibility of amendment is a relatively recent thing. The average time between amendments is about 7.5 years. The first ten were in a block, of course, but there have been significant amendments since the Constitution was first ratified. However, ratification requires some give and take in the political classes, and that is currently missing. As Franklin said: “A Republic. If we can keep it.”
Others are looking at this question, too…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Only about 1 in 10 U.S. adults give high ratings to the way democracy is working in the United States or how well it represents the interests of most Americans, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Majorities of adults say U.S. laws and policies do a poor job of representing what most Americans want on issues ranging from the economy and government spending to gun policy, immigration and abortion. The poll shows 53% say Congress is doing a bad job of upholding democratic values, compared with just 16% who say it’s doing a good job.
The findings illustrate widespread political alienation as a polarized country limps out of the pandemic and into a recovery haunted by inflation and fears of a recession. In interviews, respondents worried less about the machinery of democracy — voting laws and the tabulation of ballots — and more about the outputs.
…
It’s the “machinery of democracy” that we should be most concerned about. The flawed machinery - the absurd influence of money and the unrepresentative structure - is what’s giving us Trump and the idiots in Congress.
Canada has many flaws, more than foreigners credit it for. But keeping greatly excessive money out of politics was one of its modest successes. Of course money still has influence and some never tire of playing whack-a-mole games. But it is not yet an Americana gongshow.
We have a surfeit of pompous politicians but they generally eventually lose in office what they gain in arrogance - we still like humble with our brags. Still what generally surprises me about alleged Canadian political corruption is the exceedingly small amounts sometimes seemingly required to procure it.
Is that because of something Canada’s doing differently, or because the stakes are lower?
Probably both, Canada has not had a successful Citizens United type court case and certainly no PACs (there is no formal mechanism allowing substantial dark money to my knowledge; obviously it exists, as does great corporate welfare, but it is likely unlawful AFAIK). Companies and unions are limited to relatively small donations (maybe $1500?) although they do very much influence advertising and members (and parties work hard to gain their support). When making a donation you are asked to confirm it is a personal one with no reimbursement. Major political parties are periodically short on cash. By American standards the amounts raised are minuscule. Our elections are not expensive (by global standards), and did not use to have continuous campaigns (excepting the last decade or two, though political advertising has some limits). Ethics commissions often publicly fault executives (though these are too toothless to change behaviour).
This is not meant in any way to be smug, nor to say people and businesses do not flout the rules, gain influence in other ways, bribe or corrupt, abuse good principles of corporate governance, do favours, use nepotism, etc. Canada has no foreign agent registry, has some government oversight bodies that apparently have never launched investigations, has among the weakest whistleblower laws in the West, has very mediocre transparency and freedom of information rules, and has a Prime Minister more powerful than a President. Cases against corporate wrongdoers often seem to just fall apart. Still, it has a free media, judicial and many other positions are not partisan, people trust the elections and powerful people are very frequently unhappy with the government. They often have good reason, but as an amalgamation of regions personal power tends to be more limited than many countries. (If everyone is mad at the government, it might not be competent but it is more likely to be fair…)
It’s stronger than that. The Supreme Court has rejected the Citizens United analysis under our Charter. The Court acknowledged that money is needed to express one’s opinion, but also held that there are other interests going on in an election, notably that our elections are one-person, one-vote; allowing unlimited spending in an election undercuts that basic democratic principle and therefore spending and contribution limits are justifiable.
In addition to the spending and contribution limits for parties, at the federal level there are spending limits for non-party organizations and individuals. They cannot be advocating for a particular party or individual, without their spending being counted against the party’s or individual’s spending limits. Advocacy for policies is open, but there are spending limits there as well.
Dark money (ie unrecorded contributions to a party or individual, or to third party lobbying groups) is a federal crime.
Only Canadian citizens or permanent residents can make political donations at the federal level. Corporations and unions cannot make political donations.
Yes, because all donations must be recorded, and there are limits to how much anyone is allowed to donate. (see extract from Elections Canada below)
Perhaps it’s different in Ontario, but I’ve not seen continuous campaigning, only during the run-up to the writ period and the election itself. There’s the occasional billboard or sign from a political party or a candidate, but it’s not very common.
Here’s the summary from Elections Canada:
Note that even if you as a candidate have gobs of personal wealth, you can’t use that to bankroll your own campaign. You can donate more to your own campaign than anyone else, but subject to the limits set out above. If you try to evade those limits, you can go to jail, as one candidate found out several years ago.
I appreciate your clarifications. When I say continuous campaigning, I am not just referring to formal advertising, but election philosophy, media strategy and dubious (but limited) advertising such as political greeting cards, home mailings from MPs and MPPs, campaigns highlighting government policy, trolling the opposition and politicizing social issues.
That information is often part of the member’s communications allowance, paid for by taxpayers, becuase we want MPs to try to keep in touch with what they’re doing. That too is subject to limitations, because the MP doesn’t have an unlimited communication allowance.
I don’t know if there are limits on party/candidate spending prior to the writ period.
In Ontario, the government has sponsored a widespread advertising campaign promoting its significant subsidies of industries related to electricity. Though supported by several levels of government, legal, possibly informative, and not mentioning parties it still has an effect and was presumably from public moneys. People would differ if this is political advertising, and often have.
(This is not necessarily a criticism of these policies, which might make good sense, though I wish the economic assumptions made were more transparent.)
More than you want to know (as of 2020). Note at the provincial level more funding may be allowed. BC and Alberta traditionally had fewer limits, but campaign financing laws change with time. In Ontario individuals can donate $3350 to a political party, candidates $10000 to their own campaigns, there are sometimes no limits on contributions to “third parties” but there are no legal anonymous donations AFAIK. It’s still not remotely like the United States. For now. (Thank Gitchi Manitou…). At the national (federal) level the stricter rules above apply.
Yes, there can be considerable variation amongst the provinces on this point. I was just covering the federal, as it’s the most accessible.