Imagine that you have a nation that is one thousand square miles in size. Ninety percent of the nation is taken up by a city of ten million people. The other ten percent is empty desert and wilderness, populated only by a grizzled hermit named Jim. Tasked with inventing a representative political system for this country, you say, “Well, looks like there are two areas here, so I’ll draw a line between the city and Jim’s land, and I’ll give each an equal number of representatives. When the ten million city people want something they will have to negotiate with Jim, who has a power equal to all of them combined.”
Stupid, right? Yes. This is the United States Senate. This is quite literally the design of the U.S. Senate…
I don’t know how you get his interpretation. Abolishing the senate puts proportional representation towards majority will, which is true democracy. That along with abolishing the electoral college. It doesn’t centralize anything in and of itself. It puts power where it’s supposed to be, in collective body of the voters. Now if the will of voters is to centralize power, so be it. That’s democracy.
Other countries have this sort of direct democratic parliamentary system. Why does the USA always need to be the special snowflake of the world stage? Answer: it’s to mantain the power of the Epstein class and maintain the agenda of economic imperialism.
As a counterpoint, would you agree that every law Italy has should also apply to Norway?
Put more directly, would you agree there are geographic and climatic concerns in law making such that, i.e. Arizona needs unique laws that aren’t applicable or useful for any other state except perhaps close neighbors?
You could say that new government just wouldn’t blanketly apply laws or that they would use specific language to carve out conditions for specially affected states. But I look at the current US government and I don’t hold much hope for nuance or conditions.
The idea of some mitigating force to prevent domination of small, unique climes and insulated populations by some distant political body is sound. But it is like many things in the US: there is the spirit of something noble that has been made concrete – dense and unwieldy – by grubby plutocrats.
The classic democracy cures all vs democracy doesn’t fix everything. You both are right. (One of those rights has a different meaning though)
The gets into an interesting debate. What if the majority of voters are subject to self-destructive propaganda?
The framers of the US constitution were fearful of “mob rule.”
Well, I’d argue with our current republic, we’re being ruled by a minority opinion based in self-destructive propaganda. So those who ascribe to majority belief get dragged in the opposite direction of progress by the minority.
Direct democracy puts the burden of proof on the minority who disagrees with majority of opinion. If the MAGA platform is so great, then the minority need to convince the majority that disagree with them that it’s the way to go.
Nope. Abolishing instead of reforming the Senate would make the states meaningless. If that is what you want, OK. But you need to understand what you demand.
Abolishing the electoral college is a good idea, indeed. But then it would be wise to reform the office of the president, too, and split it into two jobs, like many other democracies do: a head of government for the “business” end, and a head of state for ceremonial duties.
And while you’re at it, get rid of that stupid “first part the post” system. That’s what rode the US into the deep shit creek in the first place.