Quote:Switching to a Parliamentary system won't fix that either. The problem lies with the people, who take very little interest in their governance, except where it impacts then directly. Thus, we have many thinking that things can be done that are unsustainable or even unachievable, while being equally sure that someone else is getting more than they are.
I'm almost 70. When I attended public school, we had a mandatory history or civics class every year starting in the 7th grade, with only the 12th grade being an elective. No one graduated with less than 5 years. Now, I'm not sure what is required. I do know that much of the history is now social history. That's certainly valuable, but its nowhere near as fundamental as traditional programs.
Agreed. It doesn't get much better in college, either. I have a history degree, and social history (and anything else touching on aspects of race, gender, or class) has expanded to pretty much eat up military, diplomatic, and, to a less extent, economic history. Which, again, is not to say that social history isn't useful, and that its lack of inclusion 50 years ago wasn't wrong, but we have long since lurched to far in the opposite direction.
I had an American Revolution class as Columbia where the professor spent more than half the class on the Spanish colonies, and went out of his way to talk about how unimportant and awful the people of New England were.
In terms of parliamentary systems, it is worthwhile to point out that Tony Blair was just as successful in dragging Britain into Iraq as Bush was America.
Quote:It does to the extent that we have a long-standing system that uses labor and ownership as the two modes of acquiring goods and services. If you don't own, then you must work to acquire money to buy things you need or do without. If that's disrupted entirely, what replaces it? 99% are still outside the ownership class. Very few have he option of moving off the grid and living off the land, so maintaining peace and order mandates another model. Now, that model can be as fair as the old Feudal system, but only if the serfs are kept ignorant. In this technological age, that seems bizarre, so I assume it will be different, just unknown for now.
Really, this again? I swear, you old people get an idea stuck in your head and just can't shake it.
Quote:The entire point of a crisis is to provide the impetus to trigger change. It doesn't guarantee success, just a window with altered rules. I'm skeptical that we have that this time.
A window to effect (sic) change? I disagree, I think we have one, it just may not be the change you or even I want.
Quote:I think there are some definite parallels with the Glorious Revolution building up. According to Colin Woodard a defining aspect of the Glorious Revolution in the American colonies, especially New England, was the determination to preserve their own local cultural and political autonomy in the face of centralization efforts from London. Right now we have a "Dixie" political alliance centered on the Deep South and Greater Appalachia trying to impose their will on the other cultures that make up the US, and resistance and anger is building. Trump may be our Edmund Andross.
That's a tenuous reading of the present situation if I have ever heard one. I would imagine (actually, I have explicitly heard) that those evil southerners feel the exact way about what the left was doing the past few years. That's the nature of a values-mismatch, things that seem perfectly reasonable and uncontroversial to one feel like an unwarranted and aggressive intrusion on local norms to another, and vice versa. Besides, Trump's winning margin came from the Upper Midwest. Who knows, the next election might seem Minnesota fall into that column as well.
