Cont: Trump's Coup - Part 3

[a_unique_person]

Again, I think you are looking at this in an expert systems, rationalistic way. It's the system that exists because it's the one that has been negotiated by the competing interests involved. That's why it's balanced in the way it is. It is't a popular vote because the US wouldn't have been born if it was a pure popular vote. Why are state boundaries the way they are? What is the rational reason for Kenosha to be in Wisconsin rather than Illinois? None of this is the result of the sort of a priori reasoning being used to justify the popular vote.

In as much as there is a rationalisation of the current system, it's just that there is a need to balance off different interests to reach a working compromise. People have articulated reasons for it, but really it's just that that was the one that everybody compromised on. That's it. If somebody doesn't want to balance off competing interests, or doesn't think that is important, then I'm not sure there is a first principles argument against them. Certainly not one that avoids speculating about the results of horse races. Personally, I think life is about compromise rather than unbending implementation of abstract principles.

One of the features that made the American Revolution superior to the French revolution, in my view, is the greater weight given to pragmatism vs abstract principle. The US is not the creation of people who would try to decimalise time. This feeling that the election system should be rational, rather than a compromise, seems to me to smack of the same thinking that leads to trying to decimalise time.

Nothing wrong with decimal time. Everything else decimal works and it works much better than imperial.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Again no matter how many words you use to say it "If the system is fair and honest the Democrats will win, so if you want the system to be fair and honest that's the same thing as being politically biased toward the Democrats" is stupid.

And more than one GOP legislator is on record outright admitting to this.

 

[shuttlt]

Then why all the pushback when I point out that gerrymandering increases partisanship and power politics and we have a chance to value democracy over power in the one place - the House - that it is most dedicated to it by design?

Partly because you aren't banning gerrymandering. Your proposed rule says nothing about intentions, and you yourself clarifies a while back that it isn't the intentions you object to its districting favouring one party vs another. After that we come back to the point that the legislature going with the popular vote is an axiom that you happen to hold. Other people don't hold it. We then have two choices, we can negotiate and see where compromise gets us (I don't think you like where this process has led), or if we feel we are the side of the negotiation holding the gun.... we can decide unilaterally.

Alternatively, what institution or institutional design is the one, in your opinion, in which we should value democracy over power politics?

Power is behind politics. Effectively the solution that has been being worked on, arguably since Kant, and certainly for more than 100 years is to have a centralised state holding the only gun. For the sake of peace that state will need to ensure that everybody shares the same axiomatic ideas so that everybody agrees what is fair and good. At that point politics will be at an end since all ideological difference will be at an end. Hopefully they will manage well. If we value reasoned, managerial decision making based on universal moral truths, that is the solution.

Forgive me, but your comments in total do little more than give lip service to anything beyond raw political power.

At the end, behind politics, there is always power. It can not be otherwise. It has never been otherwise. We are more civilized and dishonest about it now, that is all. Modern politics looks like a fancy restaurant where everything is clean and polite, and nobody raises their voice.... it still relies on a slaughterhouse somewhere to be operating behind the scenes.

The value of democracy is as old as the US, so I don't know how you figure out which party is on which side, or even why that is necessary in the first place.

What do you mean by democracy and what is it's value? The US certainly wasn't set up by people who thought the popular vote was the be all and end all. Many of them were states rights limited government people who saw the political process as necessarily corrupt and venal and thought that tyranny of the majority needed to be guarded against. Did they all view democracy in the sense that you mean it and with the priority that you did? I think that they did not. There are different strands in the Enlightenment with different views on these matters, and the idea of representation is hardly even an enlightenment one.

What commonalities do you think should apply generally to Americans? Anything?

What do you mean by should here? Are you asking me an "ought" question? The fact of the matter is that today there are no common values sufficient to get a generally agreed answer to what a fair set of election rules look like. That is what matters.

The country's, which amounts to the Constitution, and the Declaration in a certain way. It is unavoidable that the most important value that drove the construction of those documents was the idea of liberty and the right of people to determine their futures. Gerrymandering takes the right of the electorate to determine the result of an upcoming election away from them to a significant extent, with no overriding value requiring a compromise.

Remember you aren't arguing about intentions. You are arguing about whether the legislature should closely match the popular vote. It is merely your opinion that the meaning of the founding documents is that the "popular will" should get its way. If that was what the founding fathers thought, they certainly set up the electoral system strangely since it is guaranteed to produce results that skew very significantly from the populr vote irrespective of gerrymandering. I think they had rather more complicated views on the "will of the people" than that.

You are ignoring the context and the history of the US, as if living in the US somehow starts with a blank slate, and it's only ever your interest versus mine.

About some things, there remains enough common ground. About other things there isn't.

it's a matter of historical fact the principles that created the US and still underly the Constitution.

You think progressives and conservatives interpret the constitution the same? Do you really look at the past 5 years and think "this is a people in broad agreement about how the country should be run"?

This issue has nothing to do with whether someone is a cultural conservative.

I bet you, there a crazy amount of correlation between somebodys politics and how they feel about your proposal. Partly that is because your whole mode of reasoning and approaching the question is liberal / progressive.

The question before us is not how first principles might apply to a specific issue, or whether they produce instant agreement among everyone, but whether there are any first principles at all, and what they are.

There aren't unless they are so vaguely stated or irrelevant as to be useless in solving problems like this.

It is the exact opposite of utopian to acknowledge that ideals have to be compromised sometimes.

How do you decide who is going to compromise and how far? Power has to lie behind these compromises.

All it comes down to is the statement that if only everybody agreed, force wouldn't be needed to settle arguments and it would be real unfortunate if somebody was forced to settle the argument by force.

It's just that the ideal of having one chamber of the Congress be the one in which legislators are elected by the people through a direct popular vote is not one that has any need to be compromised by partisanship.
You are setting up a straw man for my position. what you just wrote is nowhere implied by anything I wrote.

I know it's not what you wrote. I think it's what what you wrote means, even if you didn't intend it. What do you propose should be done when inevitably reasoned debate doesn't bring everybody together on this question? Are you willing to accept the situation, or do you think that if the Democrats are still in control of enough branches of government by then they should fix the issue federally? At some point, one either backs down or attempts to impose ones will on the unwilling.

Politics - in the sense of the raw exercise of power - is not the only consideration. Apparently you think it is, because I don't recall anything you've written here that indicates otherwise - correct me if I'm wrong. Assuming I'm not, I can only encourage you to imagine that there could be more to polity than the raw exercise of power. Certainly the founders thought there was, even while they crafted means to restraint the raw exercise of power. They did so for the benefit of the people of the country.

Again, it's not all there is, but power sits underpining everything else. If people don't like a law, they have to ask themselves whether the person imposing that law has the power to force them to accept it, and whether they think that person is prepared to use that power. Do you really say that the Founding Fathers who rebelled against the British didn't see this? They didn't gain independence by rational argument. There were two irreconcilable visions for the future of America. Sometimes, the only way to decide is to find out who is the stronger. Obviously lots of times it doesn't come to that.

In nature competing male animals size each other up, determine who is the stronger through display etc... and usually only have a proper fight if they are evenly matched, or the competition is existential. Politics is like tha. Mostly it's display and one side is forced to back down. You've got the Revolution and the Civil War as two examples in US history where the two sides didn't back down. The possibility of not backing down is always there as is the question of what will happen if you don't.

We're having enough trouble coming to consensus on the US House, forgive me if I don't want to muddy the waters. If you bring up China and India as a kind of analogy that serves to make a point about the US House, then please state the point directly.

ok. Forget that point.

 

[shuttlt]

Nothing wrong with decimal time. Everything else decimal works and it works much better than imperial.

Odd that despite being rationally superior, and tried multiple times, with different rational ways of doing it, it didn't prove persuasive. I think there was even a 24 hour clock with decimal minutes and seconds that was arrived at rationally.

 

[gnome]

Again, I think you are looking at this in an expert systems, rationalistic way. It's the system that exists because it's the one that has been negotiated by the competing interests involved. That's why it's balanced in the way it is. It is't a popular vote because the US wouldn't have been born if it was a pure popular vote. Why are state boundaries the way they are? What is the rational reason for Kenosha to be in Wisconsin rather than Illinois? None of this is the result of the sort of a priori reasoning being used to justify the popular vote.

In as much as there is a rationalisation of the current system, it's just that there is a need to balance off different interests to reach a working compromise. People have articulated reasons for it, but really it's just that that was the one that everybody compromised on. That's it. If somebody doesn't want to balance off competing interests, or doesn't think that is important, then I'm not sure there is a first principles argument against them. Certainly not one that avoids speculating about the results of horse races. Personally, I think life is about compromise rather than unbending implementation of abstract principles.

One of the features that made the American Revolution superior to the French revolution, in my view, is the greater weight given to pragmatism vs abstract principle. The US is not the creation of people who would try to decimalise time. This feeling that the election system should be rational, rather than a compromise, seems to me to smack of the same thinking that leads to trying to decimalise time.

I strongly disagree. If we just wanted a push and pull between the powers that be we could have stayed under monarchy. While there will always be power games and plutocracy, it seems to me one of the best goals of civics is to make it less so in favor of some degree of principle. We're especially lucky that the constitution in the US has as much influence as it does, as that's an example of exactly what I'm talking about.

So if we hope to bring more principle into the balance, it makes perfect sense to discuss what those principles should be.

 

[Segnosaur]

Even if there is nothing in legislation, the constitution, or inter-party agreements that "the legislature should match the popular vote", I think most people would assume that there should be at least some correlation (given the fact that the U.S. is a democracy. And, you know, the whole "All men are created equal" thing.)

Correlation, sure and there is. All men created equal doesn't mean that all votes count the same. The system wasn't designed to make that happen. A vote in Rhode Island gets you 30% more of a Representative than in California and 338% more of a Senator.

So your argument is "The system sucks so we should just continue to let it suck"?

Some people don't want the system to suck.

There is a difference between "Here is an algorithm based only on math and that has no human input that provides an electoral map, which favors one side because they have the more popular policies" (i.e. what the democrats want), and "Here is an electoral map that we have drawn by hand to marginalize our opponents so that we can maintain control, not because our policies are more popular, but because we don't care what the general population wants and just want power (i.e. what the republicans want).

To what extent the popular vote should carry the day in the election of any particular body is a political question. Arguing for an answer to this question by referring to your political beliefs, like the supreme importance of the popular vote, is like proving that Jesus is the son of God by quoting the Bible.

Ummm... no.

The concept of democracy has a pretty strong basis, in philosophy, in history, and in other countries. This sets it apart from trying to prove the divinity of a non-existent person.

The democrats are not asking "let is redraw the map so we can do the same sort of dirty packing and cracking the republicans have been doing", they are saying "lets use algorithms to draw maps and then parties will have to rely more on their policies".

OK. Could we maybe base the apolitical algorithm on Republican political assumptions instead of Democrat ones, like the need to give smaller, more rural communities a greater say?

Sure you could. You could also make an algorithm to give greater power to urban communities. Or an algorithm to give greater power to the wealthy. Or an algorithm to give greater power to people who have the letter X in their name. But then you would have to justify why any one particular group (such as the rural voters) DESERVE that extra power.

A non-partisan purely mathematical algorithm that divides districts into roughly equal populations in a way that doesn't give any one geographic region or demographic group more power than another is the fairest way to go. (Assuming of course you don't want things to suck.)

Not sure about the 2/3rds couldn't solve gerrymandering case (although it is technically possible).

Many things are technically possible. In most of the cases I've looked at the Democrats won the legislatures in these states handily under Obama with a few points over 50% of the popular vote in the state.

Incredibly vague statement, with no references to back it up.

But we do have this:

From: Business Insider
Michigan provides a good example of how the formula works....voters statewide split their ballots essentially 50-50 between Republican and Democratic state House candidates. Yet Republicans won 57 percent of the House seats, claiming 63 seats to the Democrats’ 47.

When you look at redistricting and compare it against Democrat views on how redistricting should work we find that Democrat districts conform better to the Democrat standards than Republican districts? This isn't surprising.

Its not comparing to "Democrat standards", its comparing it to a generic system where no particular party is given any advantage just because of district boundaries.

So that's a swing of 16 seats (or 15% of the total) based not on "who is more popular in the state", but "How is the electoral map drawn for the state".

Yes, well, that's politics.

And its a dirty tactic which is, at its heart, anti-democratic. The fact that they have managed to get away with it is a flaw in the system that should be fixed, rather than accepted as "just politics".

Wait 50 years. I bet you whichever party is winning the popular vote is saying that the popular vote is the way to go, while the party that is losing it is arguing that some disenfranchised group or other that supports them needs to a greater share of the vote. It's a tale as old as the US. Older even.

Except of course the idea that "most votes wins" and "don't create a situation where people can get power without widespread support" is much more consistent with democracy than "Screw the voters, we're getting power by drawing electoral boundaries that benefit us".

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The point of Democracy is to make sure that peaceful change always remains possible, as to remove the need for violent ways.
Any effort to make peaceful change harder is a deliberate attempt to provoke political violence, thereby providing an excuse for brutal crackdowns.
Republicans hope that their disenfranchisement of voters will lead to violent resistance.
Which is bad when it's not done in support of Republicans - then it's a sign of patriotism.

 

[Paul2]

shut, I think I'm done. I hear myself having to say the same things over and over, as you might as well.

But I do want clarification on just one point, and I'll take your answer and that's the last of my participation.

Are you in favor of, neutral towards, or against gerrymandering?

 

[shuttlt]

The point of Democracy is to make sure that peaceful change always remains possible, as to remove the need for violent ways.

Peaceful change was always possible in feudal Europe. One side had to give in. If the Yorkists had only been willing to let the Lancastrians rule, the Wars of the Roses could have been avoided. If the Saxons had only handed over the country to William I, the Normans wouldn't have had to get so violent. Equally, there are lots of examples of marriage bringing rival powers into cooperation and union. The same is true in a democracy. It's just the current form of one side giving in. The system works better when the country is growing fast and people believe that the country is sufficiently on the right track for that to continue. The civil war is an obvious example of the democratic system failing to take violence off the table.

Any effort to make peaceful change harder is a deliberate attempt to provoke political violence, thereby providing an excuse for brutal crackdowns.

It takes two to tango. Who is to blame for things becoming violent, the one who won't give in, or the one who insists the other give in? It's two cars are refusing to swerve, is one really more to blame than the other?

Republicans hope that their disenfranchisement of voters will lead to violent resistance.

OK, and the people who want to resist the change the Republicans are making are the bad guys, or the good guys?

Which is bad when it's not done in support of Republicans - then it's a sign of patriotism.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

 

[shuttlt]

Are you in favor of, neutral towards, or against gerrymandering?

It's not a meaningful question to me. Politicians on both sides are going to do things that the other side think is about giving them advantage, and I'm sure to varying degrees they are often right. This is an inevitability. If you try to take this politics off the table, what you do is take off the table the politics that offends the people with the power to make the change and leave on the table the the kind of politics that doesn't. We aren't making the system fair, we are picking a winner and making that winner far more unassailable than some gerrymandered congressional district.

Does a gerrymandered district fall far short of perfection, sure, probably. But it has the advantage of laying the politics out in the open. One of the things I've always thought was positive about the US was how openly political it is compared to Europe. In the UK, nobody votes for sheriffs, or DAs or anything like that. The equivalent positions are appointed. This is supposed to make them apolitical, but of course it is no more possible to be apolitical than it is to have no accent. It only seems that way to other people with the same politics or the same accent.

If we remove the "unfairnesses" in the system that offend people with the power to change the system, then we skew the system to represent their world view and interests. Perceived "unfairness" in the system is inevitable, but I think any particular piece of unfairness needs broad agreement about fixing it.

In short, I have very little opinion about gerrymandering. Certainly not in the abstract. If the state itself changed the rules, that would be one thing. If a solution was imposed federally that would be something else. If there was 51% and a feather support for the rule change, I would be much less comfortable than if there was a supermajority.

I think the whole issue in terms of political power being guaranteed is wildly overblown when people, not you, describe it.

At the end of the day, we are in an age where people believe existential issues are at stake, so probably supermajorities and compromise are too much to hope for.

 

[Paul2]

It's not a meaningful question to me. Politicians on both sides are going to do things that the other side think is about giving them advantage, and I'm sure to varying degrees they are often right. This is an inevitability. If you try to take this politics off the table, what you do is take off the table the politics that offends the people with the power to make the change and leave on the table the the kind of politics that doesn't. We aren't making the system fair, we are picking a winner and making that winner far more unassailable than some gerrymandered congressional district.

Does a gerrymandered district fall far short of perfection, sure, probably. But it has the advantage of laying the politics out in the open. One of the things I've always thought was positive about the US was how openly political it is compared to Europe. In the UK, nobody votes for sheriffs, or DAs or anything like that. The equivalent positions are appointed. This is supposed to make them apolitical, but of course it is no more possible to be apolitical than it is to have no accent. It only seems that way to other people with the same politics or the same accent.

If we remove the "unfairnesses" in the system that offend people with the power to change the system, then we skew the system to represent their world view and interests. Perceived "unfairness" in the system is inevitable, but I think any particular piece of unfairness needs broad agreement about fixing it.

In short, I have very little opinion about gerrymandering. Certainly not in the abstract. If the state itself changed the rules, that would be one thing. If a solution was imposed federally that would be something else. If there was 51% and a feather support for the rule change, I would be much less comfortable than if there was a supermajority.

I think the whole issue in terms of political power being guaranteed is wildly overblown when people, not you, describe it.

At the end of the day, we are in an age where people believe existential issues are at stake, so probably supermajorities and compromise are too much to hope for.

Thank you.

 

[shuttlt]

Thank you.

Thank you back. I enjoyed the conversation.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Peaceful change was always possible in feudal Europe. One side had to give in. If the Yorkists had only been willing to let the Lancastrians rule, the Wars of the Roses could have been avoided. If the Saxons had only handed over the country to William I, the Normans wouldn't have had to get so violent. Equally, there are lots of examples of marriage bringing rival powers into cooperation and union. The same is true in a democracy. It's just the current form of one side giving in. The system works better when the country is growing fast and people believe that the country is sufficiently on the right track for that to continue. The civil war is an obvious example of the democratic system failing to take violence off the table.


It takes two to tango. Who is to blame for things becoming violent, the one who won't give in, or the one who insists the other give in? It's two cars are refusing to swerve, is one really more to blame than the other?


OK, and the people who want to resist the change the Republicans are making are the bad guys, or the good guys?


One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Sorry, but that's so clearly stupid that I don't know where to start...

"It's not oppression if you just give in." ?
Seriously?

 

[shuttlt]

So your argument is "The system sucks so we should just continue to let it suck"?

I didn't say it sucked that small states get disproportionate influence.

Some people don't want the system to suck.

People who would benefit from a popular vote favour a popular vote. This is very surprising. I wonder if there are other political issues where it comes down like this as well?

Ummm... no.

The concept of democracy has a pretty strong basis, in philosophy, in history, and in other countries. This sets it apart from trying to prove the divinity of a non-existent person.

I think you'll find there is rather a long philosophical and historical tradition across many countries supporting the divine right of kings. Do universal human rights exist in any greater sense than the right of the king to rule? Is there something more real about the will of the majority than the will of the king? It's all just justifications for whoever is ruling to rule. Every civilization from the Communists, to the Nazis, to the National Assembly in revolutionary France, the British Parliament and the US government had/has a story about why the people in power had the right to rule. It's like another version of history being written by the winners. If the US system of government had been different, you'd have a different story justifying it. The South, afterall, had a story justifying the system of government they wanted.

People are almost never the villain in their own story. That liberal progressives (meaning that loosely) are the good guys in the liberal progressive story is inevitable and tells us nothing.

Sure you could. You could also make an algorithm to give greater power to urban communities. Or an algorithm to give greater power to the wealthy. Or an algorithm to give greater power to people who have the letter X in their name. But then you would have to justify why any one particular group (such as the rural voters) DESERVE that extra power.

That's the trivial part. Every political system has a justifying story about why is is right for power to be handed out the way it is. The only part that matters is whether there is enough power and will behind my ideas to make them happen vs yours or somebody else's. When the US was set up, they decided to give the the smaller states outsized influence. Same argument can be applied to rural areas.

A non-partisan purely mathematical algorithm that divides districts into roughly equal populations in a way that doesn't give any one geographic region or demographic group more power than another is the fairest way to go. (Assuming of course you don't want things to suck.)

It's not apolitical if it aligns with one political vision rather than another. You are under the delusion that your sides moral assumptions are universal moral truths.

Incredibly vague statement, with no references to back it up.

This is what happens when you come into a conversation in the middle. Pages ago it was asserted that because of gerrymandering it was impossible to win some states even with a 2/3 popular majority. I asked for examples. It was not the case, and at least one, possibly both of the states had gone to Obama in 2012 with around 55% of the vote in the state. Do you have an example of a state that is so outrageously gerrymandered politics has ended there and a Democrat victory is impossible even with a hefty popular majority?

Its not comparing to "Democrat standards", its comparing it to a generic system where no particular party is given any advantage just because of district boundaries.

The founding fathers who set up the US didn't seem to think that was of such overwhelming importance when they set up the relative power balance between voters in different states. It's a very remarkable coincidence that people who benefit from this vision of weighting the vote to balance different interests favour doing it, where as people who would benifit from having power go to the cities and coastal states, favour the popular vote that would cause the cities and coastal states to dominate. One would have thought that these deeply held philosophical positions would have no correlation with political advantage, yet that almost never seems to be the case. It is a mystery that will never be solved.

And its a dirty tactic which is, at its heart, anti-democratic. The fact that they have managed to get away with it is a flaw in the system that should be fixed, rather than accepted as "just politics".

The medicine is often worse than the disease with these kinds of things. How do we fix it? Who will fix it? Will the federal government come in and set up the rules for elections? Will it just prevent gerrymandering, or will they change other things at the same time? Is the federal government apolitical? Republicans seem to think that Democrat border policy is bringing in hordes of future Democrat voters (it is again remarkable how the policy preference and the political advantage go together). Do we stop that as well, or is that entirely different and the political advantage there is a coincidence that it would be wrong to prevent?

When one or other side demands that elections be improved in a way that disadvantages them politically, I will start to this handwringing about principle seriously.

Except of course the idea that "most votes wins" and "don't create a situation where people can get power without widespread support" is much more consistent with democracy than "Screw the voters, we're getting power by drawing electoral boundaries that benefit us".

"Without widespread support" is a tricky one. What do you mean? A plurality, a bare majority, or quite a bit more than that? The popular vote is no guarantee of anything more than a plurality. As to what is consistent with democracy, the word isn't sufficiently well defined to answer the question. In the UK it is possible to come to power without winning the majority of the votes, is the UK not a democracy either? The original system set up by the founders is quite explicitly not based on the popular vote, so presumably the US has never been a democracy? You seem to be making quite a radical proposal for changing the US election system.

 

[shuttlt]

Sorry, but that's so clearly stupid that I don't know where to start...

"It's not oppression if you just give in." ?
Seriously?

I don't know why you have decided I am making a statement about what is and is not oppression. We are back to what I talked about before, the liberal progressive (meaning that loosely) inability to distinguish between descriptions of reality, and descriptions of one's desires about reality.

Ultimately when you don't like something and you lack the strength to carry the day, your choice is between giving in and being made to give in. Is there a third choice that I am not thinking of? About unimportant things, giving in is not so bad, but not everything is unimportant.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I don't know why you have decided I am making a statement about what is and is not oppression. We are back to what I talked about before, the liberal progressive (meaning that loosely) inability to distinguish between descriptions of reality, and descriptions of one's desires about reality.

Ultimately when you don't like something and you lack the strength to carry the day, your choice is between giving in and being made to give in. Is there a third choice that I am not thinking of? About unimportant things, giving in is not so bad, but not everything is unimportant.

Being made to give in is violence.

 

[shuttlt]

Being made to give in is violence.

Sure. Ultimately the threat of violence lies at the heart of every society. If that were to stop being the case, things would fall apart real fast. At that point you are playing a game of chicken with somebody who believes you are going to swerve. Nothing good can come of that for you. In a medieval sense, at that point you have lost the right to rule.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Sure. Ultimately the threat of violence lies at the heart of every society.

You are missing the point.

A system that avoids violence by acquiescence, not by peaceful transition of power, is an autocracy, not a democracy.
And that is what Republicans are trying to implement.

 

[shuttlt]

You are missing the point.

A system that avoids violence by acquiescence, not by peaceful transition of power, is an autocracy, not a democracy.
And that is what Republicans are trying to implement.

If some sizable portion of the population doesn't acquiesce to the peaceful transition of power in a democracy, what happens? They just say "no". It's not as if a king has to force anybody either when they are willing to go along with what he wants. No need for violence in either system if people just obey the rules. Maybe a bunch of red states say they want to take their ball and go home, cutting the US in half, what would happen? If I decide I'm not going to be governed by the current ruling authority and stop paying taxes or insuring my vehicle, take government property I feel I'm owed, refuse to pay fines and generally will not cooperate, what happens? Say I'm a sovereign citizen, I'm operating by a whole other set of rules. How does democracy avoid violence if I don't acquiesce? In as much as the US is a democracy now, it was presumably also one when the civil war started. Democracy only works if people acquiesce, otherwise things get messy, just like autocracy.

Democracy avoids people having to acquiesce? How? What happens in a democracy if they don't acquiesce? Presumably it is different to what happens in an autocracy where they are found to be bad people, for resisting the just power of the legitimate ruler, and are forced to comply and made to not be a problem any more if they don't.

 

[Pacal]

Thank you.

Your patience with this crap is appreciated.

Has for this comment:

We are back to what I talked about before, the liberal progressive (meaning that loosely) inability to distinguish between descriptions of reality, and descriptions of one's desires about reality.

In this day and age with the Stolen Election nonsense, Qanon etc., etc. this comment is risible.