----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
A couple of points - everyone in the US, I think, should read both the
Guardian article and the Wikipedia entry; they're excellent, for which
thanks. Second, William points to a fundamental issue in the US and
perhaps elsewhere - that so much of what we find catastrophic here is
fundamentally infrastructural. Yet we act as if the issues are symbolic;
if you watch, for example, Colbert and company, there are comedic attacks
on Trump, which are brilliant - but at the same time they mask that T.
isn't the problem, so much as the neoliberal/corporate/diplomatic
structure that creates this kind of brutal power base in the first place.
We talk on Fb about the fact that something like 30-40% of the country is
now evangelical - with all that implies - and yet we don't act on a local
level that deals with schoolboards and the defunding of public schools -
including drastic defunding of arts, music, social studies and civics,
blockplay for early levels, and even gym or outdoor play - all in favor of
charter schools, STEM, and the like. Religion replaces civics; subter-
anian racism replaces equality issues. Right-wing radio and websites are
enormously popular; they talk, not _to,_ but _with_ the right, "they're
one of us." Couple this with the gerrymandering mess (which seems
irreversible) all over the country, along with county power in places like
Georgia, and all the comedy falls away.
- Alan
On Sun, 2 Apr 2017, William Bain wrote:
*/had to cut and paste here/*
Personally I?ve learned a great deal from this discussion, not least from
the way it started somewhat sakily and then grew out along different
paths. Right now I just wanted to mention again the well known idea that
the voting system needs overhauling. I mentioned proportional
representation at some point and this morning I looke d over a few
documents found on the internet. One is a short but thoruough runthrough
of the situation from *The Guardian* dated June 2016. It?s a piece by
Trevor Timm:<https://www.theguardian.com/comme>
m-broken-democracy-clinton-sanders-primary [www.theguardian.com]> Into
Wikipedia with /electoral reform in the united states/. What comes out
there after a general discussion is that as I?m sure people here are
already aware, there are different systems in different states. Section 4
of the article mentions these systems, especially good (and abbreviagted)
under the subtitle /electoral reform in specific states/. I think
California and Oregon give the best basic assessment. Section 5 of the
article is /References/ including a link to Laurence Lessig?s ?Republic,
Lost; How Money Corrupts Congress [?]. That?s
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States
[en.wikipedia.org]>
Best wishes, William
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