In Reply to: If we've learned anything in the 21st Century . . . posted by BluBlood on April 08, 2025 at 21:35:35
and all these people are face of that. They're the cogs in the wheel, so to speak, who adjusted to the incentives and tools that the system provides the same way human beings learn to navigate a system.
We were, up till now, the only country that uses the presidential system that has not gone through a period of coups and dictatorships. We were the exception, I'd argue, because we'd had until now, a fairly wealthy and comfortable society that had not been stressed enough to show its fractures (the problems we've had were primarily people who are outside the system wanting in). We could always count on things working out. Like the boy in a bubble, all it took was one malicious agent who's unencumbered by any moral code or any emotional maturity whatsoever seeing the weaknesses in the system with clarity with a desire to exploit.
As I've been saying like a broken record for a while now, the problem is structural and its source is the presidential system, with fixed election dates, and the winner take all elections that anchor us to an entrenched duopoly that cannot have the elasticity that modern politics requires.