General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A Short Note On The Democratic Party And The Progressive Left.... [View all]The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)I expect we would be largely in agreement.
Noting to start that those who say 'the system isn't broken, it's fixed' have an excellent point, it is clear that our system at present is highly dysfunctional if viewed as a system for translating the will of a majority of voters into acts of government, let alone as a system for translating the will of a majority of citizens into acts of government. Some factors in this are modern, such as media influence and its costs; some are more acute now than formerly, such as disproportionate representation favoring rural and sparsely populated areas; some were built into the system deliberately from the start, with the clearly expressed intent of balking popular will, lest this direct government to act in manners that would discommode or dispossess wealthy elites. The great open secret of this country is that our government was set up to appear as one in which the people's will prevailed, while actually balking the people's will in matters touching most directly on mass feeling. The way that I, and I suspect you as well, think a democratic government ought to function, the people who wrote our Constitution would call mob rule, and the things we think a government ought to do, particularly in economic matters, they would call theft and despotism and tyranny.
It is not impossible to make the thing work more or less as a democracy, but it is damned difficult, and can be made even harder if people attempt to do so in poorly thought-out ways.