Although you cogently and compellingly argue your thesis that populism and “one man one vote” pure democracy is a mistake, you don’t really propose a solution at all. What science-based methods and mechanisms do you feel we should enact, that are provably better?
I think perhaps the worst part of it is, given our CURRENT government and power structures, there is very likely no real way from “here” to some “there” state with actually trustworthy, well-governing, and non-systematically corrupted Representative Government. This is because all of the current irredeemably corrupt politicians are going to be the ones voting and enacting the new rules AND standing themselves up as the best “Representatives” to help create and represent this new Representative Government, and they will all want to favor themselves and their parties to the exclusion of good governance, just like they do today.
And given the systematic corruption (both in terms of being slaves to donors and lobbyists and in terms of not being interested in good governance) in our current system, I’m not so sure the common man would be as mouth-breathingly deficient and awful as you propose - indeed, I proposed something quite the opposite as a solution to our current problems. Although not an ideal system, I still feel a method randomly selecting regular people to be our representative government would be a vastly preferable system to the one we have today, mouth-breathers and all.
I chose ‘response to a changing America’. I’ve always thought this.
The specific things you mention in the items are just subsets of this. But for a few decades now voters have been reacting to a changing America and the feeling that the government no longer is responsive to their needs. This isn’t a left-right thing, either (though I fully expect many of you will see it that way out of habit).
Trump is a response to Obama and people not feeling represented.
Obama is a response to Bush and people not feeling represented.
Bush is a response to Clinton and people not feeling represented.
Clinton is a response to Bush/Reagan and people not feeling represented.
Yes, there’s the argument that Clinton wouldn’t have won without Perot in the race. But why did people vote for Perot? Because they didn’t feel represented.
Perot’s sin in losing wasn’t that he was a whack-job - though he was, I’ve met the man - but that he was ahead of his time. Had he been around in 2008 or 2016 he might have pulled off the upset. Trump knew he’d never make it - if, indeed, he went into it hoping to win - as a third party candidate (the two major parties have significant structural advantages) so he elected to stick with one and subvert it. After all, it’s not like the man has fixed political principles. His guiding light appears to be, ‘what makes me money/feel good about myself’?
Government is not easing - or even attempting to ease - the anxieties of the electorate. So long as that continues we’ll be on them pendulum-like oscillation of elections and power changes that will continue to reinforce the inability to ease those anxieties. When thing get so far out of balance that even that doesn’t help we’ll either see a breakdown in the process or an actual revolution.
I have previously suggested an improved mechanism, but I’ll admit that it isn’t scientifically proven. But one could do so through scientific means previous to enacting an amendment by running studies against different strategies, and my suggestion would be to do so. Ask people to submit proposals and trial them in miniature, as well as running simulations and running game theory tests, where possible.
There is a body of work on interviews in general, in the corporate world, but I don’t believe that there has been any research to-date on how to meld that information to a democratic system of voting. I may be the lone voice advocating for a new approach. Unfortunately, in this case, we would need to do something new (unless you are aware of something), but it’s not like there’s no means to get from here to there. There is a large amount of general reasoning, controlled experiments, math, and game theory that one can apply to come up with something reasonable. Most likely, it will prove fairly trivial to improve on the current interview protocol - simply because it’s obvious crap and too easy to take advantage of by profit seeking and power seeking individuals. Now that we know those are attack vectors for the process, we can include those in any tests. In a hundred years, different attack vectors will be discovered and we’ll have to come up with method 3, and that’s fine, but at least we can improve the system we have today against today’s known flaws.
The nice thing with science is that even when it’s wrong, it always moves you closer to the correct answer. If you have a pile of hypotheses and a barrage of tests to submit them to, then good answers will pop out. It’s really just a matter of having someone willing to put the time and effort into running it.
If someone wants to fund such an expedition, by all means contact me and we can start doing some math to figure out the likely costs of such a venture.
Don’t really care to give that electronic birdcage liner my clicks, but I’ll venture a guess: is it another “it’s all liberals’ fault that racists elected a racist because they were sick of being called racists”?
I took one for the team. The article basically says that the left fights dirty. The right has been dignified all these years but now we have someone that will fight dirty against those dam liberals.
You really should read it as it explains why Trump’s flaws are ignored by his supporters. On that point, I think the article towers high.
You might object to how the author weaves in historical references of other controversial, but effective USA leaders.
The fault, according to the author has more to do with the lack of Republicans who opted to fight back, the way Saul Alinsky suggests you do. I found it to be an eye opening piece of work, and it has nothing to do with modern day racism.
The author seems to be unaware that George W Bush won the presidency and was re-elected.
I’m also unaware of Obama ever saying (or doing) anything about Ferguson, let alone using it as some sort of excuse to change the political landscape. And I’m a person who is completely happy to call the media leftist and who did not give a rave review of Obama, by any measure.
An opinion that relies on falsehoods is not much of an opinion.
Given all of your other posts, I’d suggest finding better news sources. You seem to have allowed yourself to get divorced from reality.
I might, or I might go the easy route and object to rank inanities like
and
Do you agree that the media has “literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth”? Every story? Completely the opposite of the truth?
Or given that Hillary Clinton was an Alinsky disciple. and Obama himself, the very definition of Chicago style politics, the author has his points.
I also think his points on why some on the right tolerate Trump is spot on.
Past Republican heavyweights were very cautious about sparring with the press, who incase you are unware tend to slant left. This included Bush, McCain, and Romney. Trump however is not. He’s changed the game.
Obama and his attorney general chose to shoot first an aim later in what they felt were racial issues that really were not primarily about race in many cases.
As for my news, I watch and real multiple sources. For example a fool like Bill Maher wants the economy to tank and people to lose their jobs so Trump won’t get elected. I do watch some CNN for live news, and read others.
Well, he has a point. Better to suffer through a recession than 4 more years of Trump. Recessions happen periodically, Trump is a once in a lifetime catastrophe.
A couple of basic questions to ask. Do you believe that your agenda is supported by a majority of the American people? And while we’re about it, do you believe Trump was lying when he said that crap about three to five million “illegal votes”? I’m sure you must have heard, given the wide variety of news sources you have.
And if the Trumpists don’t actually have a majority of the people, by what right do they seek to turn the country upside down and inside out? Shouldn’t that require a massive advantage in voters to be legit? If the majority of the people are opposed to your agenda, what do you do? Pretend that a legal technicality is “just as good” as an actual majority? Or better?
Like I said, you should get better sources. Flipping to the crap news sources of the other side doesn’t somehow correct for something. Just don’t watch or read crap news. There’s no value in it.
I’ll grant that anti-Leftist media seems to be the principal selling point of Trump for most of his voters, and that is presumably why they are happy with him.
But the reality of the situation is that the value of spatting with the press is about the same as arguing with your daughter about the boys she sees. However good it might make you feel, it’s not actually accomplishing anything.
And in the meanwhile, Trump is losing American businesses their customers, he’s ceded the Middle East to Russia, done jack-shit with North Korea beyond goad them into developing their nuclear technology even faster than they otherwise would have, put Iran back on the path to nuclear development, seems to be working to give Crimea to Russia, etc. He is, objectively, a moron and harming the US’s military and business power across the globe and handing it to our enemies, who will use that power to further diminish the power of the US abroad.
And you might say that that’s all good but a) that doesn’t seem to be Trump’s goal, with his actions, so that still makes him a moron, and b) for as much as isolationists might complain about how hard it is governing the world, I’d say that you’ll discover pretty quick that for as hard as it may be guiding your own destiny, having your future decided for you by others is even worse. As soon as the 800 pound gorilla gives up being the 800 pound gorilla, he’ll quickly discover that it was better to be the guy making the decisions and that he’d simply forgot what the alternative was like when he decided to step down.
If they had just a modicum of sober-minded critical thinking and any sort of discerning moral sense, they would have instantly seen through any of the antics of Trump (and the propagandists that preceded him, Limbaugh/Hannity et al.). To blame Trump himself (or Fox News etc.) is thus putting the original cause in ye chain ahead of the effects.
The real question there would be just how far back would one need to go (either in time or in some alternate reality) to quash to Ultimate Cause (whatever it might be).
To blame Comey would mean that the swing voters were much more susceptible to anti-Hillary news than they were to anti-Trump news, so again it comes down to those voters who forgave all sorts of Trump crap but one alleged Hillary misstep was enough to make them flip (i.e. when the poll needle hardly moved after the “pussy grabbing” thing that is when I started to get worried).
I believe Trump won the election fairly with the electoral college winning 30 of 50 states. 302 to 232 is the only score that matters. Saying but there were 3 more million votes for the other person is like saying my quarterback threw for more yards in a game your team lost.
I do not think Trump himself believes there were 3-5 million illegal votes cast. Its a talking point for him but there defiantly were some illegal voted counted. 1% or less illegal votes can tip elections on the state, local or federal level! Just imagine there were 1,000 more illegal votes for Bush over Gore in Florida in 2000? Who wins the election then?! See my point? To prevent it illegal votes why not require voter ID? If the election is important, making sure those registered to vote only do it once and do it legally is paramount. Not a bad issue to run on, if you ask me.
Finally, with elections every four years, the voters can have their say again.
It sounds like you and I are largely on the same page in terms of improvements, although I favor my methodologies more in terms of eliminating gerrymandering and exclusively lobbyist+corporate beholden politicians. But certainly, the method you describe to choose the president is far superior to mine of randomly selecting some yahoo from the current crop of Reps.
I actually thought you were going to point to practices in other countries as more representative and successful rather than advocate the scientific method in general, but certainly a game-theory and scientific-method driven approach of iteration and fine tuning would be a good thing. I think the biggest problems with either of our approaches, or indeed, any science or evidence-based reforms at all, is that they will never happen.
Essentially all of the richest and most powerful forces in the country on the political, corporate, and individually wealthy levels are aligned to make sure those changes CAN’T happen, because they endanger the nice plutocracy gilded-age thing we have going on right now, where politicians (mostly millionaires themselves) are legislation-producing vending machines triggered by inserting the right suitcase of cash.
But it’s nice to dream of better governance, isn’t it?
There’s always the hope. The Jungle Primary was instituted, for example. It’s a test, but it happened. Gerrymandering was almost shot down by the Supreme Court.
There’s always the hope that Madison’s engine has enough steam left to let some genuine reforms to happen. It just requires Arnold Schwarzeneggar or someone like him - a genuine and charismatic reformer and centrist - to get into the Presidency and have had the idea.
