That was two days of...something. I've been dodging politics, in part because the news is so crazy (if recent events were happening in any other country, our media would have no trouble pointing out what it is) and in part because I doubt I can do much good by commenting on it: either you just love, love, love what our Nero posing as Caesar and his clown circus is up to, or you recognize it as a very bad and outright dangerous direction for the Federal government to take, or you're an insensible lump who thinks it will never touch you and will go away if ignored.
It cannot safely be ignored. One of the biggest weaknesses of the United States Congress is also its greatest strength: the House and Senate are a contentious, bickering mass of people; the two bodies disagree internally and dispute with one another. For anything to get done, over half of each body's got to agree it ought to happen, and then hammer out and whittle down a mutually-agreeable version. It's clumsy. It's slow. It a deliberative process.
Replacing or supplanting that process by the whims of one man and a small circle of his hand-picked advisors allows the preferences and prejudices of a few people, only one of whom was elected, to replace the aggregate likes, dislikes, wisdom and damfoolishness of 535 pontificating blowhards chosen by the voters, by state and district. They're less likely to leap first and look afterward. They may still make the wrong choices, but they will have talked over the options, largely in public; they will have received feedback from voters and lobbyists (and maybe even subject-matter experts). If their choice doesn't work out, it's easier for them to change direction while blaming their peers for the misstep.
You can vote your way into autocracy, nice as a slice of hot pie. History's lacking examples of a country voting their way out of it. It's usually a messy process.
We ain't there yet -- but you can see it if you stand on a chair. Maybe it's worth checking for yourself.
It's the Department of Defense. It's the Gulf of Mexico. Green is not orange; up is not down.
Update
8 months ago
5 comments:
And most of the "cartridge box" 2A advocates, the ones who thought that health insurance was tyrannical, are firmly in the corner of this wannabee autocrat. Just as they've flipped and now maintain that there is no such thing as states' rights as the Rotting Orange Hulk sends national guard troops to where they're not welcome.
(if recent events were happening in any other country, our media would have no trouble pointing out what it is)
You have MUCH more faith in US media than I do. I daily check sources such as the BBC and NHK to find out about trivial little things like wars etc. happening in other areas of the world. The (probably understandable) fixation of the US Press on events (not matter how trivial) (I mean things like celebrity news etc. Not what your talking about) in NYC, DC and LA to the exclusion of the rest of the world makes them generally unreliable in regards to even knowing there is a rest of the world some days. "Provincial" I think is the word I'm looking for.
It's depressing just how easily bamboozled people are by a few empty slogans and a splash of patriotic tinsel.
But a lot of people don't really understand what the principles are behind what they claim to believe in, and don't especially value them. They sold out the Constitution easily enough- probably because all they know if it is the 2nd Amendment.
Irony: the push by republican states to redraw election maps to increase the number of republican house seats may instead weaken some of the deep red districts and allow for more democrat wins. One can always have hope.
The Guardian also has very good US and world coverage. I see things there that I don't see elsewhere (WaPo or NYT). They even have good US sports articles 😄.
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