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[Folly]

Once Upon Impeachment

Happy Holidays impeachment peoples~

[MrRoboto75]

Maybe Mitch McConnell got visited by three ghosts of Republicans past and rethought his quixotic stance on impeachment.

[Zangi]

Maybe Mitch McConnell got visited by three ghosts of Republicans past and rethought his quixotic stance on impeachment.

The man is the pragmatic type.  If he believes crucifying Trump as a martyr will ensure a Republican presidency and continued majority in congress, yes.

[Teneb]

Maybe Mitch McConnell got visited by three ghosts of Republicans past and rethought his quixotic stance on impeachment.

The third ghost is DLC that has to be bought for 500 Republi-bucks though.

[dragdeler]

-

[JoshuaFH]

I'm not a political scientist, so I apologize if this sounds naive:

Doesn't the sheer size of the US inhibit the political process? That there's far too many issues, far too much at stake, to place into the hands of otherwise ignorant and apathetic laypeople? Wouldn't it be better if there were a tiered political process, say with the masses voting for their local governments only, and then the heads of those local governments being the only voters that can vote for representatives to state governments, and then the representatives of the States are the only voters that can vote people into national representatives overseeing the entire nation?

The benefits would be that it'd be downright impossible for idiots like Trump to come out of nowhere and skyrocket into a position of power; those positions of power would only be available to career politicians that had started at the bottom and worked their way up. Moreover, because each election is a small and disconnected process, the voting is impossible to fudge because there's just too few people in any single one. Also, that for people running, their constituency makes logical sense, who they have to appeal to for votes actually understand the issues, and the because the voter base is smaller, they wouldn't have to be in anyone's pocket for campaigning money, reducing the likelihood of corruption. It also allows the common man to focus on what's really important to them: those issues in their own community that they can actually understand and see the results from, rather than having to be educated on all issues that effect the entire world, which is unreasonable from the start. Fads and waves of popularity for causes or people would be greatly minimized, since they'd have to pass through the laborious trials of going through each tier of the democracy in order to get instituted at all, and fads never last long enough for that; so those people at the top can finally concern themselves with the greater issues of governing rather than be constantly pandering to the masses.

I don't know how parties would fit into all this, but I imagine those would be minimized as well, since the constituency of any given tier would be increasingly small and specialized, able to decide based on the facts rather than on popularity or party lines. I'm probably wrong on this one though, politicians just ruin everything.

The largest downside I can imagine would be that since the process is so much larger and slower, the masses lose a bit of that "consent of the governed" that makes government the smallest necessary evil it is; meaning that if the topmost administration is hated by the people, they can only vote for representatives that reflect that hatred at the local level, who then have to carry that to the next level, and so on, until a change in the topmost administration is made.

So, basically, our current democracy, but chopped up into lot of smaller democracies in a tiered pyramid structure. This is to accommodate the US's massive size and vast differences; and to allow governing to be rational without the drama and circus of massive elections every four years; and to allow elections to be themselves more rational and incorruptible. It's just an idea I've been stewing on for awhile, but I'm obviously one of those 'laypeople that aren't educated on the grander and subtler affairs of government'.

[wierd]

The issue is that the US was not intended to be treated as a homogeneous entity.

It was designed to operate as a permanently confederated assembly of essentially small independent nations, with mutually reciprocal military support and trade agreements.


In that respect, think more like how the EU runs.   That is how the US is supposed to run (according to its stated original design.)  It's a very scary and wild ride going down that line of questioning though as to whether or not it is good or bad that the US does not operate that way.


This is why we have such things as the Electoral Collage.  Each state is supposed to (at least in theory) be fully capable of its own economic activities within its own borders; A fully functioning state. Based on the population of that state, representatives of that state are sent to the federal congress and senate, to reflect that state's interests within the confederation. Likewise, the number of electors when selecting a president is based on that population, but because each state is supposed to be (in theory) self governing, but interacting within the federal framework with its peers, the potential for a single very populous state to dominate all control of the federal framework exists, which is why there are balances in the electoral collage that give less populated states more power than they otherwise would have.

It is already an abstracted democracy in such an ideation.  States rights advocates assert that when the federal government "Dictates down", it abrogates this abstraction, and reverses the intended relationship.  Detractors decry that it enables individual states to enact very scary policies (such as say, segregation, harsh penalties for homosexuality, etc..) within their borders, and makes the legal systems at work within the country too difficult and inconsistent to manage. (among others.)

[Naturegirl1999]

Joshua, I like your idea

[Telgin]

I just wish I was convinced that would actually add logic and rational thinking to the election process.  The pool of electors may be smaller, but they'll still share political parties until the concept is somehow stamped out in a constitutional amendment.  Dissenters from the party will be voted out by the faithful, and only very indirectly do the average people have any input.

And adding layers feels like it just removes some accountability from politicians.  If the president doesn't have to fear the vote of the people, then they only have to make sure that the electors that do vote for them will.  That could be direct corruption ("You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"), bribery, whatever.  Such corruption might be easier to discover and prove, but the incentive increases for it to exist.  Of course, a Republican president would almost never convince a Democratic elector to vote for them, but bubbling up changes from deep down would probably be a slow process and still fraught with the same issues we see today with things like the way voting districts are drawn.

It does feel like the system would greatly reduce the risk of someone else like Trump getting elected, but possibly at the cost of making the political process more stagnant and like an echo chamber where outside influence is slow to trickle in from the bottom and has to get traction somehow.

Anyway, I feel like getting rid of political parties would do some of the most good, but I honestly don't know how we'd pull it off if we could even break the inertia that the main two parties have acquired.  You can outlaw the concept, but people will always find ways to curry favor and group think.  Things like politically charged news and entertainment outlets, for example, will be paid by groups with similar views who want to influence politics.

[Iduno]

I'm not a political scientist, so I apologize if this sounds naive:

Doesn't the sheer size of the US inhibit the political process? That there's far too many issues, far too much at stake, to place into the hands of otherwise ignorant and apathetic laypeople? Wouldn't it be better if there were a tiered political process, say with the masses voting for their local governments only, and then the heads of those local governments being the only voters that can vote for representatives to state governments, and then the representatives of the States are the only voters that can vote people into national representatives overseeing the entire nation?

The benefits would be that it'd be downright impossible for idiots like Trump to come out of nowhere and skyrocket into a position of power; those positions of power would only be available to career politicians that had started at the bottom and worked their way up. Moreover, because each election is a small and disconnected process, the voting is impossible to fudge because there's just too few people in any single one. Also, that for people running, their constituency makes logical sense, who they have to appeal to for votes actually understand the issues, and the because the voter base is smaller, they wouldn't have to be in anyone's pocket for campaigning money, reducing the likelihood of corruption. It also allows the common man to focus on what's really important to them: those issues in their own community that they can actually understand and see the results from, rather than having to be educated on all issues that effect the entire world, which is unreasonable from the start. Fads and waves of popularity for causes or people would be greatly minimized, since they'd have to pass through the laborious trials of going through each tier of the democracy in order to get instituted at all, and fads never last long enough for that; so those people at the top can finally concern themselves with the greater issues of governing rather than be constantly pandering to the masses.

I don't know how parties would fit into all this, but I imagine those would be minimized as well, since the constituency of any given tier would be increasingly small and specialized, able to decide based on the facts rather than on popularity or party lines. I'm probably wrong on this one though, politicians just ruin everything.

The largest downside I can imagine would be that since the process is so much larger and slower, the masses lose a bit of that "consent of the governed" that makes government the smallest necessary evil it is; meaning that if the topmost administration is hated by the people, they can only vote for representatives that reflect that hatred at the local level, who then have to carry that to the next level, and so on, until a change in the topmost administration is made.

So, basically, our current democracy, but chopped up into lot of smaller democracies in a tiered pyramid structure. This is to accommodate the US's massive size and vast differences; and to allow governing to be rational without the drama and circus of massive elections every four years; and to allow elections to be themselves more rational and incorruptible. It's just an idea I've been stewing on for awhile, but I'm obviously one of those 'laypeople that aren't educated on the grander and subtler affairs of government'.

That sounds like a combination of the electoral college and cronyism.

I agree with the issues, but not the solution. Too big is probably the main problem, though.

[WealthyRadish]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm not a political scientist, so I apologize if this sounds naive:

Doesn't the sheer size of the US inhibit the political process? That there's far too many issues, far too much at stake, to place into the hands of otherwise ignorant and apathetic laypeople? Wouldn't it be better if there were a tiered political process, say with the masses voting for their local governments only, and then the heads of those local governments being the only voters that can vote for representatives to state governments, and then the representatives of the States are the only voters that can vote people into national representatives overseeing the entire nation?

The benefits would be that it'd be downright impossible for idiots like Trump to come out of nowhere and skyrocket into a position of power; those positions of power would only be available to career politicians that had started at the bottom and worked their way up. Moreover, because each election is a small and disconnected process, the voting is impossible to fudge because there's just too few people in any single one. Also, that for people running, their constituency makes logical sense, who they have to appeal to for votes actually understand the issues, and the because the voter base is smaller, they wouldn't have to be in anyone's pocket for campaigning money, reducing the likelihood of corruption. It also allows the common man to focus on what's really important to them: those issues in their own community that they can actually understand and see the results from, rather than having to be educated on all issues that effect the entire world, which is unreasonable from the start. Fads and waves of popularity for causes or people would be greatly minimized, since they'd have to pass through the laborious trials of going through each tier of the democracy in order to get instituted at all, and fads never last long enough for that; so those people at the top can finally concern themselves with the greater issues of governing rather than be constantly pandering to the masses.

I don't know how parties would fit into all this, but I imagine those would be minimized as well, since the constituency of any given tier would be increasingly small and specialized, able to decide based on the facts rather than on popularity or party lines. I'm probably wrong on this one though, politicians just ruin everything.

The largest downside I can imagine would be that since the process is so much larger and slower, the masses lose a bit of that "consent of the governed" that makes government the smallest necessary evil it is; meaning that if the topmost administration is hated by the people, they can only vote for representatives that reflect that hatred at the local level, who then have to carry that to the next level, and so on, until a change in the topmost administration is made.

So, basically, our current democracy, but chopped up into lot of smaller democracies in a tiered pyramid structure. This is to accommodate the US's massive size and vast differences; and to allow governing to be rational without the drama and circus of massive elections every four years; and to allow elections to be themselves more rational and incorruptible. It's just an idea I've been stewing on for awhile, but I'm obviously one of those 'laypeople that aren't educated on the grander and subtler affairs of government'.

This is more or less exactly the electoral process used in the Chinese legislatures, incidentally, and in that particular case it means nothing due to all real power being held by an inner standing committee of oligarchs (partially hereditary). It's the most extensive legislature in the world with huge bodies of representatives very seriously campaigning for votes and deliberating on policy, while in reality even the small amounts of regionally devolved policy are settled by parallel non-government legislatures within the CPC.

Anyway, if I can find a point here, I'd just like to say that virtually every regime on the planet today holds elections (including the DPRK), and the formal process alone rarely makes an inkling of difference. Post-USSR Russia, for another example, started out with a constitution very similar to that of France, and immediately became an oligarchic kleptocracy and dictatorship without any altering of those rules. I used to think that the US could be "fixed" with a less stupid process than our system of casting most votes into the electoral equivalent of an incinerator, but really, it's the material basis of politics that matters more.

[PTTG??]

Those who hate bureaucracy more than they hate war have never really thought about war. And a larger government reduces war by replacing it with bureaucracy.

Vast governments can engage massive quantities of labor and capital, making lives better on truly generational scales. If the USA was two or three nations, could it have produced the national highway system? (Space exploration? Well, it's nice, but it's not even close to the scale of the interstates in cost nor ROI yet.)

People laugh at the UN, but since its inception, there have been no wars between any of the permanent members of the security council, and there is clear evidence that the organization improves outcomes around the world.

And if the EU was not effective in protecting the interests of Europeans, why does Russia oppose it and try to subvert it so strongly?

There are always diligent attempts to break down coalitions -- from the outside! Unity is the single most effective political, military, economic, and social tool. It costs nothing and the reward is much more than everything your former opponent has.

[Kagus]

One might even say that resistance is futile!

[Il Palazzo]

It costs nothing

But mah sovereignty!

[PTTG??]

Indeed. It is strange that poor men fear rich men will lose the freedom to enslave them.