chapotraphouse

There's the electoral college which was set up deliberately as an antidemocratic measure by the founding fathers. More so than it is now. But we haven't gotten to that stage of the season yet.

Right now we're in the primaries, which is an entirely ad-hoc system made up on a party by party, state by state basis. Each state decides when the primaries happen and what form of election they will be. Each party decides how those results will be counted in their own convention. There's little to no federal regulation regarding the primary process. The end result is a year long spectacle.

Of course this season we're being denied the spectacle for a shitty rerun.

Primaries in the US are real Americana.

They are covered on tv in a weird way that's part spectacle, part like sports coverage, and there's some odd solemnity too. It's typical for reporters and talking heads to use words like "duty" when discussing voting.

The last primary worth watching this year will probably be the GOP South Carolina primary which happens on February 24th. For the presidency it's Trump vs. Haley. South Carolina is Haley's home state. She'll probably get crushed by the Trump train that day, she'll soon drop out, and then primary season will effectively end. And - of course - the next presidential primaries will be four long years from now.

To watch them - there are pirate streams like this - https://livenewsof.com/msnbc-live-stream/. I have no idea why some pirate domains like that one aren't forced to shut down and continue year after year.

I'll leave this there...

American civil religion

[Robert] Bellah posits that Americans have come to see the document of the United States Constitution, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, as cornerstones of a type of civil religion or political religion.

I don't know if the page discusses it but there was no "two party" stuff when the founding fathers were around. The two party concept baked into many American brains to the scary degree. They think it's appropriate and even righteousness. Some Americans are afraid to think of a future without it even if their belief in it makes no sense at all. And liberals love to talk about the "good old days" when there were "good" republicans. A related comment of mine. It poisons their brains to the point they see George W. Bush as a good guy.

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Ninja edit

Another problem is the bipartisan love and worship of the idea of American exceptionalism.

No, it's a convoluted system that was designed specifically to fool people with the illusion of democracy and in reality keep power in hands of more or less steady oligarchy. Not accidentally usians are frothing and calling it "REPUBLIC" when you talk with them about "democracy" because it's been modelled on a late Roman Republic where circa 0,5% of citizens had real influence on the state.

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

—James Madison