The Democrats are a clapped out, gut-free lobbyist machine. The Republicans are insane. The system is therefore paralyzed beyond repair. -- Andrew Sullivan
Thing is, the system didn't get this way by accident. It's part of a deliberate strategy by the Republican Party to make the nation ungovernable. Why they think anarchy and chaos will be good for them... all I can think is that they are channeling the ghosts of Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco, who both took advantage of anarchy and chaos to establish strongman rule in their respective countries, and quite expect to perform the exact same feat in the United States even though they themselves will be the cause of the anarchy and chaos. They are expecting 50%+1 of Americans to be total cretins willing to follow a dictator who promises them better times. And I don't know if I'd bet against them on that.
On the other side -- as Andrew points out, the Republicans are batshit insane. And have proved to be utterly incompetent. Look at Shrubbery the Lesser. Darth Cheney undoubtedly put him into power with the firm expectation that the Shrubbery would seize all the power that Darth Cheney wanted, then declare martial law when the nation descended into anarchy and chaos. Instead, the Shrubbery was a lazy little shit who did as little as possible (though what he did do -- get the nation into two quagmires, run up huge debts, etc. -- was bad enough) and who was so tired of being President by the time of his last two years of office that he never even considered simply seizing power at gunpoint. The goons who run the Republican Party know that they're so obnoxious, so obviously evil, that they can't get elected, yet their tools that they do insert into office tend to be lazy cretins with no real interest in following the Franco/Mussolini formula. But relying upon the incompetence of our enemies to obtain victory is stupid whether you're a progressive or the IDF in Lebanon 2006. The IDF, accustomed to easy victories over cretinous enemies, ran into a buzz-saw put together by the first competent enemy they had ever encountered and limped back home with its tail tucked between its hind legs. Sooner or later, they're either going to get a tool into office who isn't a lazy cretin, or they're going to figure out some way to get Diebolded into office. And then... well. Imagine Hitler if he'd had nukes and aircraft carriers. Ick.
-- Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin
It has been awhile since I have taken a civics class, but do you know if their is conceivably a way to impose reform on the Senate through the House of Representatives? The Senate is NEVER going to vote to limit its own power and corruption and the system that we have now is almost like the fox guarding the henhouse as the Senate badly needs reform but will fight tooth and nail against any attempt to do so.
ReplyDeleteOnly if they can trick the Senate into signing it by sneaking it in as a rider to another bill. And even then it'd be toothless -- Congressmen are not allowed to be arrested for things they do on the appropriate floor, so how would you enforce it? They'd just ignore the law, and there's no way in the Constitution to force them to obey it.
ReplyDeleteI thought as much. Fixing the Senate is like wishing for an end to gerrymandering and the two party system through election reform...about as likely as David Duke rising from the dead to join the Harlem Globe Trotters.
ReplyDeleteSullivan is a pretty erratic thinker, but he is able to firmly grasp the obvious. Or maybe he's just repeating Bill Maher.
ReplyDeleteCA and IL are bankrupt. MI is in terrible shape. They can't be the only ones. We are on the verge of having government crumble around us.
And there's about a 50/50 change Ted's Kennedy's seat will go to a fanatic right wing birther.
We are SO fucked!
JzB
"In a democracy, people get the government they deserve." - attributed to Alexis de Toqueville
ReplyDeleteI'm going to print up and sell bumper stickers saying "Vote Republican - We Deserve No Better." I figure it'll sell like hotcakes, both to people who get the joke AND to the very people it's insulting, who are too dumb to know they're being insulted.