In Reply to: With attendance and education system in decline, it will only posted by BiochemBruin on April 08, 2024 at 07:55:24
from any consequences of their actions. GW Bush started a war on false premises, did he bear any consequences? Obama kept bombing weddings in the middle-east, did anything come of that? Trump subverted election results, and he's been skating free for the past three years, even allowed to run for the same office again. And don't get me started on Reagan and the Iran-Contra situation. I don't exactly understand why this is the case, i.e., why the powerful always get away. Someone who is more familiar with our justice system can answer that. I have observed and thought about political systems more than how justice systems work around the world.
I have argued for a long time that our political system is anachronistic, inadequate, unresponsive, and in fact, it is a key factor in our polarization problems. We have few glaring issues and all have to do with foundational problems (trying to rank them by my perceived order of importance):
- Electoral college: I don't have to get into the reasons why, do I?
- Small district, single representative problem: fosters gerrymandering, kills off any chance for third parties to even see a sliver of daylight. Go with super-districts that bundle current districts and use proportional representation so that you don't have system that rewards geologic concentration of voters and inevitably, class and race alignments. Let people pool their votes and watch third parties finally get some representation in the House.
- Presidential system: I can't quite put my finger on how to eliminate the existing calcification in having such limited options in presidential elections (once you let the people decide who runs the country rather than the parliamentary system, I feel like this is inevitable) but a combination of a ranked choice voting and a potential runoff may alleviate the problem for now.
- Fixed election cycles: It makes sure that our legislative and executive institutions cannot respond to emerging crises or even need top bother to be responsive to the changing world.
- Having a (prolonged) primary *season*: upstream states pretty much make sure that downstream states have less options by the time they get to say something about who should run for office in a presidential election. Do it all in one day in every state at the same time.
- Campaign financing: somehow this counts as the edgiest "the system is broken" claim that's allowed in our overton window, and it is important, though as you can see, I place it much lower on the list of broken things.
- Elections on a Tuesday: when people have to vote on a work day, people who have the most at stake in any given election struggle to make it to the ballot. It does not foster people's participation in the process. Simplest way out (and Americans only like simplest solutions that cost not a penny more, otherwise they won't even consider) would be to swap Columbus day with a national election day holiday.
- The senate problem (this one's a pipe dream for me): I get that the senate needs to represent the states, but if that is the claim perhaps it should only handle issues that involve inter-state issues, not national ones. National issues need to be determined by a body that represents people, not states. If we want to keep the senate as is, we need to create larger regions that combine states and have those regions function as members of a national senate. When you combine regions, you are likely to have a better distribution of representatives relative to existing population patterns.
So yeah, I tend to believe that we do almost everything wrong in this country, which is why I continue to lean heavily towards the left, not the status quo. Attendance and education problems matter, the internet has an impact, but the way I see it, we have much much much deeper problem in how we do things in this country. And this is the sh*t I keep replaying in my head every two years when I end up holding my nose and voting for a Democrat. In good years I have to hold my nose only casually (Obama 1) in other years, I really have to clamp down (Clinton).
With Biden it will only be casual nose-holding because the stench coming from Trump is pretty overwhelming. It will be one of the easiest votes I'll have cast.