11-27-2016, 04:10 PM
(11-27-2016, 12:26 PM)David Horn Wrote:(11-18-2016, 08:31 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Sometimes nations in a 4T try all sorts of bad solutions before coming up with the right one ...
I don't see how we can avoid a period of experimentation, since we are totally in the dark about the course we must follow. Isn't that a huge part of the 4T ethic? If we knew what to do, there would be no reason for a crisis.
FWIW, I assume the next iteration will involve a full restructuring of the system we have currently locked in place by the Constitution. Doing that will be hard ... very hard. It could involve the Constitutional convention that has never happened to date, or some form of social disintegration that leads to who-knows-what. In any case, it will be dramatic, if it happens. Stasis is also a possibility, and crisis will simply pass unresolved for now.
If the solution is the non-solution, then the next 2T will see the last 2T on steroids, and the 4T ... I hate to think. We're running a post-modern America on an Agricultural Age political model. At some point, that has to break down.
It is the neglectful government of a 3T, the bad business practices, and the perverse mass culture that form the Degeneracy that implodes as a Crisis. The 3T is the time of hidden rot (especially the intensification of economic inequality and the degradation of public service); the 4T usually strikes when a do-nothing leader is in charge and has no clue of how to meet the Crisis.
The problem isn't our Constitution; it is that cunning, ruthless people have found ways to get around its intent for their own gain and power. We will need a new political structure that counteracts those tendencies.
Would proportional representation solve gerrymandering? Probably. Although there are Representatives who do excellent service for their constituents and get re-elected for that, many seem more attentive to corporate lobbyists. Might we want to fully scrap the Electoral College? It would be well enough if the candidate getting the plurality with at least 45% of the popular vote would win. The idea that some votes matter more than others is itself undemocratic. But get less than the threshold (which could also be 47.5%), and the provisions of the Electoral College and subsequent rules would follow.
We do not have a representative democracy anymore. Lobbyists really control the House and Senate -- and most state legislatures. We were already one extremist away from the death of American democracy since 2000... and now we have the extremist. The Republican Party seems to be saying to Democrats now, "We won, you're done!"
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.