Has the United States' 2-party political structure — institutionalized exploitation and national insanity?

© 2017 Peter Free

 

19 January 2017

 

 

Introduction

 

What follows is a "riddle me this."

 

 

An arguably correct premise — with worrisome implications

 

On a personal level, if we are not actively striving to be decent — we will probably wind up victim to our nastiest traits.

 

Inferentially then, if the American political system is institutionally organized to prevent and obstruct social accord, only wildly expressed nastiness will ultimately prevail.

 

Could our American Parable be so simple?

 

 

The astute Stephan Richter thinks so — but without stating the pseudo-religious conclusion that I just have

 

He wrote recently that:

 

 

The rigor of the two-party system in the United States is one of the key causes of the extreme stratification of the U.S. political debate.

 

What is heralded as having the benefit of producing clarity of outcomes in the case of the contemporary United States only ends up in producing a maximum of mutual recriminations and extreme vitriol.

 

The harshness that this produces is reminiscent of certain African countries with very feeble democratic traditions.

 

Americans no longer pay much credence to Benjamin Franklin’s urgent call to “hang together.” There is a certain perverse lust for being hung separately.

 

The odds for U.S. democracy ever to be organized as a multi-party parliamentary democracy, with a coalition-building [compromising] element built in more or less permanently, are zilch.

 

The gerrymandering of election districts and the importance of campaign finance both protect incumbents in an anti-democratic manner.

 

© 2017 Stephan Richter, Binary Choice and American Politics in the Age of Complexity, The Globalist (16 January 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

My assessment is the same.

 

Meaningful republican democracy in the United States is over. Our rabble-fearing Founders' System crushed it out of existence.

 

 

In the long run?

 

Richter's implication is correct. American institutions are Constitutionally impervious to change.

 

And given the nonsensically bifurcated mentalities of the American public — a majority of whom really do seem to enjoy a combination of emotional baseness, ignorance and stupidity — a constitutional convention would not be productive.

 

So, we are doomed to the continuing rise of Plutocratic Autocracy.

 

The selfish mentalities that profited from their positions in (or influencing) governance during the last few decades have won.

 

All courtesy of a structurally flawed institutional edifice that worships profit — and the equivalent of serf-holding — over more spiritually attractive and equitable social qualities.

 

 

The moral? — If we want change, we will have to dismantle some things

 

Thomas Jefferson's "blood of patriots and tyrants" prescription is pertinent. Chris Hedges statement that "politics is a game of fear" supports the Jeffersonian principle.

 

Contrary to most political activists — my historical sense does not put much stock in purely non-violent protest. Expressing revolt effectively means replacing failed institutions with ones that work. Now, how are we going to do that with a Constitution that:

 

 

(a) (practically speaking) forbids effective means of institutional change

 

and

 

(b) actively favors the group of greedy folk who subverted the System to their own ends?

 

 

Answer me that. With historical data that supports your argument.

 

The examples of non-violent change that I have seen ran out of steam before they accomplished anything that their opponents fervently objected to.

 

For example, Gandhi's triumph in India resulted from the combination of British non-viciousness and its Empire's overextension. (You can imagine Gandhi operating in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.) And as I implied yesterday, American gains in civil rights were ultimately honored more in concealed and continued repression than in overt implementation.

 

Guaranteed peaceful revolt scares no one in power because peacefulness is defined by prevailing, corrupt institutions. The whole point to the Establishment definition of peaceful protest is to define successful revolt out of existence.

 

It is only when oppressors easily imagine themselves swinging from handy overhangs that things actually get done. Pompous exploitation reconsiders its profit-cost margin, only when its implementers recognize that their mortal sway might end sooner and more unpleasantly than planned.

 

This is the widened domestic essence of Teddy Roosevelt's — South Africa-originated — "carry a big stick" aphorism.

 

It is always about force. Which is something Second Amendment (right to bear arms) people instinctively recognize.