Our Political System Is Hostile to Real Reform

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/our-political-system-is-hostile-to-real-reform

by viburnum • 6 years ago

28 23 6 years ago

sb057• 6 years ago

Any system that continues to exist is necessarily self-perpetuating. Otherwise it wouldn't continue to exist. This is why there's been so many states that either existed for a flicker (innumerable Southeast Asian nations, nomadic states, etc) or for hundreds of years (Rome, the Russian Empire, the United States). The former were unable to keep themselves stable while the latter's rigidity did so. Of course, that same rigidity can be quite the liability when stress is placed upon it...

einpoklum3• 6 years ago

That's a bit of trivialization into a tautology.

Systems continue to exist, but most of them also change in various aspects - some superficial, some fundamental. Republican Rome was quite different from what Imperial Rome ended up being; the US of the 1800s is very different from the US of today.

DethNinja• 6 years ago

Governmental response to corona virus made me really depressed.

If we look at current response of the various governments, it looks like they effectively decided to increase the already high level of income inequality even further.

It seems system is unwilling to revise itself at all, which will keep making various socioeconomic issues worse in the long run.

I guess one good thing is that current system keeps getting less and less stable with each crisis, so sooner or later it will collapse for real, once that happens I hope humans will be able to come together and build something better.

erentz• 6 years ago

Yes. The $425b that will be leveraged into $4 trillion of basically free loans to large corporations is going to make things considerably worse for every ordinary American. Increase massively the consolidation of the economy and reduce competition. It’ll be used by the large corporations that can access it to buy up competitors.

Here is just one topical example of how this kind of consolidation over the past decade has hurt us. And this program is more than five times the size of the 2008 program: Ventilator company Covidien acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien’s profits from its existing ventilator business. [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-v...

This is very bad for America and - (I know politics is frowned on hut this is the real world and this is a political problem we are discussing) - and if anyone thinks the Democrats are not equally to blame you need to look again, they could have stripped this program from the House bill and passed it without and forced the Republicans in the Senate to either show their hand that they’re holding Americans hostage for this or force them to blink first. But they refused to do that, IMO because they're clearly aligned on giving $4T to large business. If you disagree with that please explain what prevented them doing that. I would like to know.

codysc• 6 years ago

I think any sufficiently complex system is hostile to reform just through its natural inertia, which in a huge system is a complex and fascinating topic itself.

But when you have truly enormous amounts of money and power at stake and a system that has settled into a certain posture that has concentrated those resources into certain hands...of course it would be very hostile to any change.

As the article states it takes shocks to bring about significant changes and hopefully we can move things forward some as a result of the current situation.

umilegenio• 6 years ago

It's hard to reform when many Americans are in an abusive relationship with their own party. A Pew poll in 2017[1] showed that the majority of the most partisan supporters choose their own party because they hate the other one, rather than they like their own. You cannot make reform on destruction and hate. There is little positive energy to create really new proposals.

[1] https://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/8-partisan-animosity...

lykr0n• 6 years ago

I have some "friends" who will only vote trump, because the dems are talking about increasing restrictions around guns. Some people just have one issue they care about above all else, even if that is harming them

krapp4• 6 years ago

Which is odd given that Trump himself has talked about increasing restrictions for guns. Because Democrats and Republicans tend to support gun control.

Unfortunately decades of NRA and Republican propaganda have taught gun owners that no Democrat or liberal owns a gun or supports the Second Amendment.

einpoklum3• 6 years ago

And this is doubly sad considering how both parties are/end up in significant agreement about the US' huge military presence abroad, tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulated campaign finance etc. Which are subjects where most US citizens hold the opposite view to the bi-partisan near-consensus.

threatofrain2• 6 years ago

On the issue of campaign finance, there is the matter of the McCain-Feingold Act, as it was informally known. Senator John McCain tried for years to advocate for something of its like but was energetically blocked by his own party, such as in the 105th Congress when McCain gathered the support of <all> 45 Democratic senators and a few GOP allies, but still not enough to break a GOP filibuster on the bill, thus killing it.

It was around 2002 that there was sufficient political atmosphere for McCain to gather the support of nearly all Democrats and 11 GOP allies for the bare minimum of 60 votes to beat a GOP filibuster.

The bill had restrictions on: (1) soft money, or money meant to promote issues or parties, (2) hard money, or money meant for specific campaigns or candidates, (3) advertising in proximity to an election, and (4) foreign contributions.

President George Bush declined to take a stance and signed the bill into law without comment.

It was challenged by Citizens United, a conservative non-profit, challenging whether they could be restricted from airing political ads near the election date, and it was overturned 5-4 by the US Supreme Court conservative majority along known party lines.

All parties have their failings, but it would be a mistake to think that a vote for either party is equally meaningless with regards to campaign finance. In the GOP, it's only McCain and a scant few allies who paid for this issue. The Democrats as a whole spent severe political energy and opportunity on campaign reform, while McCain spent his own political currency against the energetic opposition of his own party.

krapp4• 6 years ago

That will happen when only two parties matter.

I'm a Democrat, but it's only because I'm a leftist and in the US, the Democratic party is "the left" and voting for any other party under the current system would only be implicitly supporting the party I disagree with more than my own.

ktalm• 6 years ago

The biggest problem with the U.S. political system is our first-past-the-post voting system. Are you fed up with your party and want to vote for a Green instead of a Democrat or a Libertarian instead of Republican? Go ahead, all it will accomplish is benefiting the candidate you like the LEAST because you would have otherwise voted for their opponent.

I'm of the opinion that high voter participation is critically important because if you're not voting, you're not being represented, and if you're not being represented, those who are will benefit (likely) at your expense. In the U.S. however, people are understandably unenthusiastic about voting, because it almost doesn't matter.

Imagine what would have happened in 2016 if we had ranked choice voting and Bernie ran as an independent. Many on the left would have been energized to actually vote because they could vote for the candidate they actually wanted (Bernie), but would have been able to say "well if Bernie doesn't win, I guess Hillary is better than Trump". Bernie wouldn't have won, but neither would Trump. More importantly, though, those that supported Bernie would have been represented. You could point to the actual election results and see that X% of voters supported Bernie's ideas above the other candidates'.

The problem with the U.S. is that we don't get to vote for the best candidate, we get to vote for the least worst.

And don't get me started on the over-representation of low population states in the senate and electoral college.

mnm12• 6 years ago

Or even simpler, we could have a one person, one vote system. It would have worked in 2016 and 2000. When you have a system where the less popular candidate wins regularly, is it any wonder people are disillusioned by it?

Let's not even talk about the Senate where 500k people get the same amount of votes as 50 million. Yes, the founding fathers goal to not let rural areas be unrepresented was achieved at the expense of making the most populous areas underrepresented. So now instead of majority rule dominating minorities, minority rule dominates the majority. Brilliant! What could possibly go wrong? /s

miedpo• 6 years ago

Mmm... just a thought here. In terms of the Senate and House, that's working as appropriate. Rural areas not dominating cities and cities not dominating rural areas. One would need a policy popular in both to create a national policy (otherwise you create a city or state policy instead). It's a good balance between tyranny of the minority and tyranny of the majority.

In terms of the electoral college, perhaps something similar could be done. Not sure how though.

RickJWagner2• 6 years ago

No way. I'm a resident of a rural state.

The things you probably find crazy: Gun ownership, owning trucks, large houses, etc. we find essential.

It's a big country, with different needs for different people. The day we trash the electoral college is the day we destroy America.

vearwhershuh• 6 years ago

The United States is ungovernable in any coherent manner, except as an empire. It's far too large and culturally incompatible. There is no logical reason the people of appalachia should be governed by people on the west coast, or vice versa.

The real power centers, the banking, corporate and foreign-policy elites, are content to govern the empire indirectly, and keep us all fighting with one another over things like pronouns, so long as wages are ruthlessly suppressed.

It will keep going. Until it stops.

Our Political System Is Hostile to Real Reform

Related Stories