US Politics |OT|

[zorg1000]

SvennoJ said:

thehunter said:

Well put Svenno!

I hear what you're saying about the two-party system failing the US as well, and that criticism has been around for much longer than people realize.  Personally, I'm predisposed to the warning that some of the US founding fathers has to avoid parties and factions (Washington was the only president to manage this during his term) since it caused the bucketing coalitions which you mentioned, along with the personality cult effects we've seen recently with Trump and Obama before him. 

With that in mind, I also don't think we've seen a system where parties, including multiple parties, have successfully bucked corruption and reflected the will of the people.  I used to live under a system with roughly 5 parties represented at a time and all it meant was that you effectively had five members of the government with different voting weights; party discipline was strictly enforced unlike the US where you can have a Rand Paul or John Fetterman go off the official script but still participate in the process.

Being familiar with comparative politics, the same flaw exists in any variation of party-based democracies:  Germany's neglect to address the immigration issues AfD brings up becuase "aaaah, imagined mustache man associations!" (even though the leader is an open lesbian); Australia's ranked system still leading to an essentially two party system with strict party whipping; Japan's chaos as demonstrated this month with their latest elections.

I'm not going to say I have the solution totally figured out, but I'll offer two ideas I think have actually worked well here in the US:

1) the aforementioned lack of party discipline due to the primary system the Americans employed.  In fact, as John Fetterman and Kyrsten Sinema both recently demonstrated, the system is more under threat when the party bosses are trying to enforce a forced consensus

2) a fun story from US history was the the original first amendment to the constitution proposed would limit federal districts to populations of approx. 50,000 citizens (so there goes the illegals vote).  If this were applied today, we'd be talking about roughly 6,000 members in the House of Representatives.  The first reaction to this is naturally "wow, good thing we don't have so many politicians", but upon further reflections, I'm wondering if this was a missed opportunity to force even a national body to be deeply rooted in local matters and responsive.

Anyway, I'll stop there since I'm sure RolStoppable will already slanderously twist my content into an endorsement for the Nazis now! (as always, reading comprehension matters!)

No need for bringing up Nazis, you could as easily bring up Commies lol. China's one party system is authoritarian but at least gets things done. (Actually their are 8 non communist parties under the CPC but they can't challenge the official party)

But indeed, every 'democracy' is slowly turning into a fascist oligarchy. The erosion of the middle class is universal under all our western democracies, and all the fascist/populist parties do is take advantage of that to blame immigrants for rise of living costs. Which are really just middle class wages being stagnant since the 1980s.

You have the left trying to 'fix' this with social security, which is ludicrous when you think about it. The middle class should not need social security, social security is meant for the poor and those that can't work. But we're steering the entire middle class into the 'poor' while having to raise taxes / go into debt to be able to provide social security for the entire middle class. 

The right tries to 'fix' this with tax cuts and deregulation, which have shown to only increase inequality, further driving the need for social assistance for the middle class. Meanwhile the rich get richer and gain more and more power over our democracies. 

Late stage capitalism is where we are. And as long as politics run on scandals, not much will change. Are Democrats really that different from Republicans, both are struggling to make ends meet. However the entranced media keeps everyone pitted against each other and oblivious to the bigger picture while the 1% is laughing all the way to the bank.

What exactly do you mean by the left tries to fix with social security and the middle class shouldn’t need social security?

I guess I don’t really know what your definition of social security is in the instance, like do you consider expanding access to health care or subsidizing child care or increasing the minimum wage or strengthening unions as forms of social security or do you mean something more like a universal basic income where everybody gets direct cash payments?