The Partisan Divide on Issues

[David Horn]

(02-25-2020, 01:18 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-24-2020, 08:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: But they have what decided the Tea Party elections of 2010, 2014, and 2016: money that can buy political influence, that can buy mindless propaganda. I would like to see a separation of economic and political power, but note well that for much of American history there was no such separation. Know well: the Right has found ways in which to use Big Government -- as an enforcer and as a means of grafting. Profits from graft are no less attractive than traditional profits that come from gross exploitation as in the Agrarian Age and the early-industrial age.  

That is why I am looking for direct vote network democracy in some form come the next major shake up.  Representative government has the representatives wanting to become elites, and therefore serving the elites well.  As much as the old slave compromises (the Senate, the electoral college, the amendment system) are biased to favor the rural environment, representative government ends up by its nature favoring the elites.

The rich buying more free speech I'm not sure how to stop save by speech becoming so cheap that wealth get no special advantage.

But it is likely not time yet.  The security problem has not been worked out yet.

Just another example of small actions that may finally correct old wrongs.  Fixing the voting process is essential, but fixing the electorate, even moreso.  It doesn't help that an entire generations (two in some places) has grown to adulthood without any mandatory courses in Civics.

We need a representative democracy that is just that: representative.  Here in Virginia, the longtime overrepresented rural faction is livid at the idea that the legislature might vote to transfer the headcount of felons back to the place they lived before they were incarcerated (NOTE: All the prisons were built in the rural areas as jobs programs, so white jailers oversee mostly black inmates).  Now, their black districts will vote for them. Not perfect but better.