In the end, any ruler rules only if his constituents view his government as legitimate. Rulers can obtain legitimacy in a number of ways. The ruler may be democratically elected, may be appointed by the majority in the legislature, may be viewed as a God-King by his people, or may be viewed as the savior who rebuilt a modern nation out of the rubble of a collapsed empire (see: Attaturk in Turkey, Vladmir Putin in Russia), but the point is that if the leader isn't viewed as legitimate, people don't follow him. The number of people who don't follow him determines whether he will be capable of obtaining higher office or being effective while in office or even whether he manages to retain his office.
In the United States, in general we have bestowed legitimacy upon our leaders by voting on them. But what bestows legitimacy is not the actual act of voting itself. After all, Stalin won the majority of the vote in the Soviet Union every election. What bestows legitimacy is a vote which reflects the will of the majority of the people. If you disenfranchise people, or finagle the vote via rules which allocate people's votes in a way that does not reflect the will of the people, the act of voting is just electoral masturbation -- it no more gives legitimacy to the outcome than masturbation gives legitimacy to the Pope's views on birth control.
In short, a candidate who has been nominated to be President via a vote which does not reflect the will of the majority of his or her party's voters has a core legitimacy problem. If the Democrats nominate someone who is not desired by the majority of the Democratic voters, they will lose in November. If the Democrats nominate someone without giving a voice to the will of all voters, they will lose in November. The point of elections is as a measure of the will of the voters, and if the will of the voters is ignored, the result is that said voters will simply stay home in November. If all of the delegates from Florida are not seated, and the delegates from Michigan are not allocated according to the will of the voters of Michigan (note that the "Uncommitted" voters were all voting for Obama or one of Obama's endorsees, so those delegates should be allocated to him -- Hillary was on the ballot, if those voters had intended to vote for Hillary they would have done so), then I think we can say hello to President McCain -- and goodbye to what is left of the American Republic, since McCain's lack of economic knowledge and bellicose foreign policy will finish the job of America's economic collapse, at which point, as with the Weimar Republic, a strongman will arise to "save" America -- with probably the same end result (i.e., the utter destruction of the United States and its occupation by foreign powers for decades).
-- Badtux the Big Picture Penguin
rather than a foriegn occupation i would see a simple, but nevertheless destructive, fracture. should the government in washington lose its mandate things would most likely devolve along regional and cultural lines. california might even work better as a three or five state nation. . .
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the notion of a peaceful break-up of the American empire is the U.S. Army. Unlike the Soviet Army, which was a draftee army and thus representative of the people, the U.S. Army is a self-selecting Army. That is, the sort of people join the Army who believe in the legitimacy of the President and his command role over the Army. As long as the President, however much illegitimate he may be, can command the loyalty of sufficient people to staff the Army, he has a hammer to use and is going to attempt to use it against any and all.
ReplyDeleteI don't see any way that the world can deal with that situation other than complete and utter destruction of the U.S. war machine. This isn't the Soviet war machine, which fell apart once the government lost legitimacy because it was comprised of a representative sample of the population. This is a war machine that is self-selecting for loyalty to the President, and which will fight for him until it is defeated and no longer able to fight, or until the President loses so much legitimacy that sufficient men to staff the military can no longer be found. But given the plentiful supply of gang-bangers, thugs, and generally nasty folks around who just love committing acts of violence, expecting the military to simply dry up and blow away is probably too much. Instead, it'll just get more thuggish, more nastily violent against civilians, more... gangster.
End game is the utter ruin of the United States.
i wonder how loyal the pentagon and army is to bush
ReplyDeletejust a thought
and i too believe the US will break up sometime in my lifetime -- too much damage to keep this country together
D-cap, as I pointed out, the military is self-selecting for loyalty. Those who are not loyal are pushed out or voluntarily leave. See: Admiral Fallon (loyal to the Constitution, not to Bush), pushed out in favor of suck-up Bush sycophant General Petraeus. General Shinseki, pushed out in favor of suck-up Bush sycophant General Shoomaker. Etc.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this loyalty on the part of goons is limited. They will stick with the President only insofar as they view the President as in command and in control. They are, in the end, loyal only to themselves and their own individual ambitions, which may be limited on the part of low-level gangbangers now being recruited into the Army ("I wanna cap some homies!") but which are still there even for low-leven grunts. But the point, the point... the point is that people who do not have this level of loyalty leave, and those who do have it stay, and thus a volunteer Army pretty much guarantees one that is loyal to the President. The Soviet Union fell because it had a draftee army. A volunteer army is probably the biggest threat to freedom in any nation, because it insures that the army will be self-selecting for loyalty to the government, not loyalty to the nation. That, more than anything else, is why the draft has not been re-imposed, despite the dire need of the Army for military manpower... to re-impose the draft would threaten the power of our leaders, and that cannot be allowed to happen.
- Badtux the Cynical Penguin