I could reduce my post to a more simplistic metaphor, by suggesting that America could simply have grown into too large a creature to stay completely healthy for so long (biological organisms don't scale up in size either) under the kind of stress being placed on it by the higher order effects of breakneck technological progress.

If not for the political events of the 19th century, and if we weren't a superpower with a massive military-industrial complex, I'd say we'd have gone back to being a bunch of mostly sovereign states (or confederacies of 'states') by now....

If the United States seems to be held together politically only very haphazardly, it's simply because many of the pieces which now hold it up were retrofitted out of some perhaps temporary but dire necessity, onto a not-so adaptable foundation. So when things don't work out for the best for everybody, it is tragic but not surprising that there are parties who would react to the less than beautiful resulting structure of our politics by tearing large chunks of it down....

One day, you wake up and realize that something is wrong with your health. You've been feeling tired and sore for months now. It happened so gradually that you just thought it was stress, or exhaustion. Today, though, you're so sluggish you can barely get out of bed.

You go to see a doctor, and tell him your symptoms. He diagnoses you with depression. He gives you a prescription for antidepressants, and tells you to spend more time unwinding. Watch video games and play movies. You start taking the pills, you make more free time for yourself, and it works... for a while. Your symptoms come back, and eventually you feel worse than ever.

This time, you see a different doctor. He diagnoses you with depression, too, but scoffs at the last doctor's suggestion. He tells you that you need to throw yourself into your work, exercise more, build up your energy and your motivation for life. You follow his advice, and it works. You feel more energized for life and for work. Pretty soon, though, all of that extra effort catches up to you. You start to feel tired again.

Then you see a third doctor. He tells you that you have a tapeworm, a parasite, that is stealing the nutrients your body needs to survive. The doctor prescribes powerful drugs to kill the parasite, and sure enough, the parasite dies. However, it doesn't make you feel better.

You see a fourth doctor. She tells you that you have cancer; that some of your cells are dividing too quickly, and taking more than their fair share of nutrients. She performs surgery to remove the largest tumors, and follows it with a full course of chemotherapy to kill any cancer cells that were left behind. Your cancer is cured, but it doesn't make you feel any better.

You go through more and more doctors, and none of them are able to tell you what's wrong. Eventually you stop going to them. You get more and more tired, and feel more and more sick, until one day you drop dead.

The pathologist takes one look at your dead body, and writes "old age" on your death certificate.

I... think I see what you did there.

So, any estimates on when democracy will be declared dead? Or did it die ages ago, and are we animating the corpse because we don't know what else to do?

Well, if you talk to many conservatives, they will tell you that the only purpose of democracy is to elect representatives which preserve the narrow scope of the government, according to their 18th century reading of the constitution.

So to answer your question, some people don't even want it to be alive.

Damn. Much like the only reason I didn't learn about Stormfront from Jon`C because I heard Levin talking about the hate speech directed to him from "some stormtrooper site" I didn't learn about Pepe the Frog on this site today because someone in school brought it up and how the left is trying to make it some sort of altright symbol. That's about all I know about these two things.

Actually, wouldn't an 18th century reading of the constitution be the important one? I mean, we recently went through a lengthy conversation about the language then and interpreting the meaning of the constitution. Also, we're not a democracy. That is a fact and this fallacious use of the word with regards to many governments has led to a lot of confusion. Intentionally I presume.

And as for Jon's post... I suspect he was having a bit of fun poking at my blunt and morbid analogizing, with some allegorical digs thrown in for good measure, at some of the charlatans we've suffered over the years, for our collective want of mono-causal narratives.

As somebody more and more influenced by the left, the third doctor sounds like he might be onto something, although for the life of me, I still can't figure out who the cancer doctor is supposed to be....

Democracy is working super great. The British just successfully voted to exit the EU, against the wishes of their political and economic elites. Similarly, the Americans just successfully elected Donald Trump.

Democracy is fine.

It's western civilization that's in trouble.

The cancer doctor hasn't happened.


Yet.

Well definitely make sure your kid doesn't get sucked in, that's all I can say. My European friend I spoke of in the last page was looking at Stormfront since he was a teenager and still hasn't recovered.

There is no doubt in my mind that liberals have tried to use the judicial branch to interpret the meaning of the constitution in order to increase social good.

As to whether or not it is a productive thing to join a political movement to try and reverse this... I suppose that decides whether or not you're a conservative / originalist, doesn't it?

I don't think we have to worry about that. I don't think we're pure enough to be members.

A part of me thinks that in good economic times, we could go on our merry way and debate the correct scope of the federal government according to the constitution. But when I start to see the kinds of people (especially very religious ones) and the reasons they have for doing this....

I listened to that podcast with Tim Wu, Eversor. There was a part where he said that Clarence Thomas voted in favor of the death penalty every single time :-/, (which is something that pushed then mostly apolitical Tim Wu away from the right).

Praying so hard for rain, we didn't notice when the priests stopped dancing and started killing virgins.

Alt-right now flipping its **** about a Canadian HoC non-binding motion to collect data on religious persecution (including Islamophobia). Calling it a bill (it's not) and saying it seeks to constrain freedom of speech (it doesn't, and we have a constitution that would override it anyway).

What do they say about the white alt-right dude who shot up a Canadian mosque the other day? *crickets*

bullets are constitutionally protected speech

Fox News and Trump blatantly lying about Canada's white, Canadian-born, alt-right, Trump fan, /pol/ terrorist actually being a muslim who emmigrated from Morocco is also, sadly, constitutionally protected speech.

I actually agree.

What I actually meant to be asking was something along the lines of: will the populists eventually erode the workings of our constitutional democracies? Is the system solid enough?

Voter suppression

Laws don't matter much when nobody is willing to enforce them.

The other day on Mark Levin's show, after the usual hour long rant about how the nineth circuit court of appeals is out of control, that California is the new Confederacy, and that the state attorney general's resistance to federal pressure to end sanctuary cities is the new nullification, a very concerned listener called in to ask Mark if there was anything Trump could "do" to unilaterally overturn the judge's decision.

We had a shot at a literal Weekend at Bernie's situation and we ****ing blew it.

Is that not a fair question?

Well, I may not have done a good job of conveying the thrust of the caller's question, but I think I will have made my point about the danger of this kind of talk, by deferring to Mark's blunt response: "Congress would impeach him".

And I would hope so.

Sure but, assuming some here, if the caller believes the order is lawful and the courts are ruling that it isn't (let's assume that it actually is for discussion purposes), what is the recourse? If it's a legal order and the (highest) court rules it not so, what is the recourse?

P̶r̶e̶s̶i̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ Trump issues an executive order declaring the court's decision in violation of the constitution and therefore null.

Or: buy Mark's book, and a bouquet of roses from 1-800-flowers. Tell them Mark sent you.

I have all of his books save Rescuing Sprite. I guess an executive order acknowledging the [highest] court's unconstitutional decision would be as constitutional as the court's power to rule orders unconstitutional if the court so decided.

Amendment XXX, Section 4.



Edit: corrected amendment number

Nobody would be for this except fascists, least of all Levin.

That said, I suppose Trump could just issue a new executive order altogether, this time letting the lawyers look it over rather than just letting Steve Bannon make something up... which is in fact what looks like what will happen.

I know about his proposed amendments. I've been talking about convention of the states here for a long time. I haven't looked into the specifics of Trump's order though. On the surface I didn't find any constitutional problems but there are some things I would research. That is if it warranted my effort to do so. Seriously, why bother? To tweet about it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_v._Trump

The order may well be legal. It was still a dumb idea, implemented by dumb ignorant people, and now they want a do-over.

Sounds like a reasonable compromise to me

Unconstitutional laws shall be declared constitutional, so long as the people who agreed on the law agree hard enough.

There's no way that can go wrong.

https://nyti.ms/2kRDRqi

#MAGret

Somebody `shop Donald's head into the meat texture of this duck #MAGret

Jones, you'll probably be interested in this. A lengthier account of Rorty's argument in Achieving our Country: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/9/14543938/richard-rorty-liberalism-vietnam-donald-trump-obama

Very much so! Weird how impending societal collapse is the thing that actually got me seriously motivated again to read more literature and history.

This Vox thingy is awesome, I also liked the Tim Wu interview a lot.