
American democracy is doomed - ChazDazzle
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed
======
snowwrestler
Yglesias says, "People figure that whatever political problems it might have
will prove transient — just as happened before."

This is way too dismissive of what's actually happened in American history.
The word "transient" implies that the political problems eventually went away,
and American democracy kept on going.

But what actually happened is that each political problem was addressed by
changing our government--either through Constitution amendment, through
federal legislation, or through the creation of new court precedent.

So the American government of today would not look very familiar to the people
who wrote the Constitution. If they were alive today, they would think that
what they created has already been replaced. We'll feel the same way 100 years
from now...big deal. People always feel out of place as they age.

The fundamental benefit of the American system of government is that it can be
changed in a wide variety of ways without violence.

~~~
jadell
I think the author's point is not that those "wide variety of ways" don't
exist, but that they are currently being broken/circumvented. The standing
gentlemen's agreements to not play the game a certain way are being thrown
out. Each side is using tactics that, while legal, were historically frowned
upon precisely because it was understood that they would lead to the sort of
gridlock we're currently experiencing. These are tactics that were understood
to only be used as a last resort, but have become SOP.

------
roneesh
Rather than engage in outright histrionics, the author makes sensible points
backed up by historical facts. However I think the author ignores that idea
that sensible design alternatives exist to a lot of the perceived gridlock.
We're a country of designers who find elegant solutions to problems. The
perceived entrenched powers that doom us can be unravelled with sensible
fixes. Our prison system can be reformed by sensible legalization/de-
regulation coupled with how we prosecute crimes and fund prisons, no need for
a revolution there. Regulation of rogue energy and financial institutions can
be strengthened, we can make sure our regulators don't become enablers and we
reform what we regulate to not strangle innovation, no need for a revolution
there. Every day viable alternatives pop up to our toxic media, and Jon
Stewart proved you can de-legitimize an entire network, not with violence, but
with a sustained nightly attack of satire, no need for a revolution there.

In truth, this article engages in a sort of fallacy, we're only doomed if we
think doom is the only outcome that's possible. There's another version of
this article that could happen called "American democracy can be fixed with
sensible design".

~~~
ChazDazzle
Framed in this way the question becomes: can American Democracy get by with a
few bug patches, or does it need to be re-written from the ground up?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
What if it's not a bug? What if it's a feature?

The article likes parliamentary-style democracies, but what happens there is
that the party in power can pass pretty much anything it wants, limited only
by the members' willingness to go along. American-style checks and balances
mean that, even if you have a majority, you can't pass your brilliant idea
without selling it to at least some of the minority. I assert that that's a
good thing - your idea has to make sense outside your party for you to be able
to turn it into law.

~~~
gdwatson
Agreed that checks and balances are good, but the US constitution was written
without large, permanent political parties in mind. Take the power of
impeachment, the ultimate Congressional trump card against executive
overreach. Why has no one seriously advocated its use during the last two
administrations? Because history has shown that in practice it isn't a weapon
for use by Congress against an overweening president, but rather by one
political party against the other.

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RankingMember
Quite an irritatingly-simplistic/tired headline. I choked that down and read,
but there's quite a bit of "what if"-ing going on. We get it, all of this
executive action after failed attempts to gain consensus is "a bad thing", but
the writer's attempts to predict the future as far ahead as he is ("sometime
before runaway climate change forces us to seek a new life in outer-space
colonies") leave him an awful lot of leeway to wax on about what could happen,
at the same time providing no ideas for what could fix things (beyond a coup
that causes us to re-evaluate the constitution).

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carsongross
Active, aggressive democratic government across a highly diverse political,
cultural and social environment is as tyrannical as any other political
arrangement, perhaps worse due to the implied legitimacy of the governments
actions ("We" bombed iraq, "we" tortured terrorist suspects.)

The only humane option is secessionism, which has been poisoned in american
political discourse by its historical association with slavery. Why Alabama
and California should have anything more than, perhaps, a mutual defense pact,
at this point, is beyond me.

~~~
Diederich
Keep in mind that your average resident of Orange County, California is likely
more conservative (for some reasonable definition of the word) than your
average resident of Athens, Georgia. (I jumped out of Alabama, but I hope my
point is clear.)

The American people aren't nearly as polarized as the American people think.

~~~
carsongross
There is no "american people". And yes, my point holds, down to the
metropolitan area.

------
inscrutablemike
If he's so concerned about America exhibiting the signs of a Fascist
dictatorship, perhaps he should take a long, difficult, critical look at the
ideology that actually accomplished it: Progressivism.

We aren't "headed toward" Fascism. The Progressive Movement and their
fundamental changes to the government of the US was a core _inspiration_ for
Fascism. This is old, old news.

