We need to create a better model or style of government so we can completely junk the old one that doesn’t work for the majority of us... We need one that doesn't aid and abet a genocide.
Good start, Cindy! Real change has to happen from the bottom up, and take a horizontal rather than vertical direction. Decision-making and policy-setting have to occur, firstly, at the local level to fit local needs and to address local issues, and the challenge is how to tear down and build up at the same time. However, before any positive political change can come about even at the local level, there must be a larger, broader, far-reaching human transformation; that is, a spiritual revolution, a rise in human consciousness where the sanctity of life, not money or property or raw power, is the measure of what's good in the world. What's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time is that we know change is in the works, but we don't know, despite the ideas and dreams that we may have, what form that will take. Here are a couple of illuminating quotes for Richard Rohr's The Wisdom Pattern: "Change happens, but transformation is always a process of letting go, living in the confusing, shadowy space for a while, and eventually being spit up on a new and unexpected shore." The other: "We cannot think ourselves into a new way of living; we must live ourselves into a new way of thinking." The latter, I think, is the key.
I love Richard Rohr's daily meditations and have read many of his books, too. He is immensely quotable.
I like the idea of "living ourselves into a new way of thinking." That's really the only way to make a permanent and lasting change for the better--to live it and experience it for a while and tinker with it as need-be.
The idea that the US Constitution was supposed to be permanent wasn't something many of its creators ever thought it would be. They expected it to change or be thrown on the trash heap of history. With a rise in human consciousness, I think more will agree that a lot of our old accepted systems of government no longer suit us (if they ever did) and need to be tweaked or junked altogether. I just hope I live long enough to see some of this change myself!
I would be for Sortition if history, civics, and cultural education were a priority in our educational system. After writing that, it's clear we desperately need that now.
Very interesting. I'd want to get rid of the House of Lords if I were living in the UK. I like the idea of a "House of Citizens" but shouldn't that be what the House of Commons is now? Are two separate chambers really necessary if the Commons is re-modeled to be a House of Citizens?
This was supposed to be a reply to tre pepperoncini that somehow got into the general discussion. There are a lot of good ideas here, and it's obvious many people are sick and tired of how things are run and the lack of real representation in our corrupt government
Despite what you’ve said about a president being unnecessary, I nominate you.
I’ve never believed in a “Supreme” Court, BTW. Why in fucking hell do NINE INDIVIDUALS ( most with extreme partiality) get to decide what’s legal for the REST of us many millions?
Thanks for the "nomination" for the presidency. I must decline it, though. I'd be way too tempted to become a "benign dictator" once I took office and lock up all the billionaires, CEOs, and other disgusting capitalists. ;-)
The US Supreme Court is just another way to prevent the "mob at the gate" (to use Hamilton's words) from having too much democracy which is a "disease", in his opinion. I think courts have their uses, but it is a bit much to have only a handful of APPOINTED individuals with LIFE TERMS telling us what is and what isn't Constitutional.
For example, read the 1858 Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court. It's immoral and without pity for Scott (an enslaved person) or his family. Why do we need yet another layer of elitists keeping the working classes down? Local and district courts work just fine, IMO.
With respect monopolies, for example. The United States has antitrust laws, why are they not enforced?
With respect to r the legal fiction that "corporations are persons." This did not arise from a flawed system, but flawed individuals who stood to profit from such a ruling?
In my view, this was a crime against humanity: the equation of living persons, humanity itself, be reduced to the machinery of corporations. Why was non one ever been held accountable for this crime against humanity?
So the question remains: Are the systems flawed, or are the operators flawed?
Perhaps we strip enforcement of law and justice from human hands altogether, delegate it to a non-human entity, an AI judge or tribunal? And if we did, can we ever be certain it will remain truly unbiased and fair to all?
When we have no allegiance to our fellow man, we inevitably begin to devalue others. We justify our privilege through the myth of divinity, of exceptionalism, telling ourselves that we are superior because our ancestors conquered first, because our race, our religion, our government is the best.
I`m ranting, again.. the Golden Rule is not so hard ,should something all could agree on? its pretty simply, but against a philosophy of superiority is fails.
I think everyone should come up with another form of government. We should consider all the options and have a popular vote on which one we'd like to implement, with the added bonus of making it conditional if we decide later we don't like it. It's time to give up the white male oligarchy once and for all!
Thanks for an excellent post. I love your new governance model. Maybe throw in proportional representation and citizens' assemblies to make it even more democratic.
You're welcome, Diana. A unicameral system is sort of citizens' assembly in that its coming directly from the people, but I can see some other forms of citizens' assembly being used at a local level that possibly feed into the one chamber. Definitely more proportional representation that what we currently have in the US, too.
However, equally important, I believe, are better means of informing the public about issues being deliberated, and also correctly balancing the power so that there is a mix of centralized power, and local level power.
Right now politics is a mess because it's all sound bites, and no information. Lobbyists send 700 page prewritten laws to the congress, congressmen and their staff hardly read them, and just vote based on what their paymasters said. The public never gets time to read them, analyze them or share thouugh about them. So all proposals need to be floated with full details, enough time for public oversight, and no mixing and matching to drag separate issues together on voting. And social media needs to be removed from kids and strictly regulated as to how it operates - because right now it is producing a generation of peabrained idiots who have no attention span and no ability to focus - its corrosive to discourse and democracy.
Secondly trust in politics lies in small groups, like your neigbhourhood or your city. People you know and see. This level of politics needs to have more influence and more ability to resist the money overlords that drive naitonal politics to hell. I understand we have seen the hell of "states rights" and how that can be used to do foul things, but there must be more of a balance here. At the moment we have stupidiy like congress passing laws to deny communities the right to build publicly owned and controleld infrastrcuture, or the the right to regulate products or their local physical environment. Which is absrurd and has to go.
Those 1,000 page+ bills are exactly the kind of thing I'd hope a unicameral body could avoid. Perhaps we could make all bills a maximum of a 1,000 words--about four typed pages. Anything longer and it has to be submitted as another bill? I like the idea of the bills being put before the public and perhaps a poll taken in a district before a representative votes on that bill. That way we'd know that the representative was doing his/her duty and representing the people and not the special interests groups.
We are imperfect beings; thus, our systems will always be flawed.
I'm not convinced we need to spend any more time engaging in intellectual gymnastics to design improved model societies, especially when we neither practice nor respect the principles embedded in the ones we already have.
Have we not created an abundance of international institutions? Have we not crafted elegant charters and constitutions, filled with beautiful words that stir our hearts? Have we not sung and written endlessly about love, peace, and harmony? And yet, how is it that these ideals, meant to be true, just, and self-evident, are so easily ignored and trampled upon?
If we are unwilling to abandon our hypocrisy, if we will not unite to confront those whose deceit threatens us all, then no amount of intellectual exercise will make any difference.
The hypocrisy of the bullies cannot, and has never been tamed by reason alone. The brute force of their hypocrisy has only one remedy. It must be met face on with collective moral courage and an uncompromising stronger opposing force.
It is precisely because you have imperfect people that you need to build structures compensate for these known imperfactions.
Same as if you know you are impulsive, you make automated payments for your bills and your savings, so you have less temptation to squander your money and your life
Same as if you know you are weak but you dont want to cheat on your wife, you dont go spend your time in strip clubs.
Same as if you know you want your workers focused, you dont serve been in your company canteen or lunch room.
Its not complicated and it's not "model societies" - its plain common sense that should be applied.
And a good starting point for this common sense is that power corrupts: its is a known fact that power reduces a person empathy and generates a pathological greed for more power. So accumulation of power must be limited in any political structure, otherwise instead of creating a means of mediating needs, you are simply creating a stucture for executing oppression.
It is all common sense. Too much power put into one office or branch of government leads to the abuse of that power. I think Americans are experiencing this abuse of power today by the Executive Branch and realizing for the first time that it could happen to them and not just other peoples. Nothing is "perfect" --especially governmental structures--but we can always develop a better model that makes the existing one obsolete as Fuller said and hopefully more democratic as well.
Sorry, the failure isn’t in the systems. It’s in our collective unwillingness to uphold them.
It doesn’t matter what laws, systems, or structures we create. If we don’t respect or enforce them, they’re just empty words.
Morality, ethics, and humanity aren’t things that can be legislated or enforced from above. They must be upheld by each of us, not through coercion or threat, but by conscious choice.
The root of our evils has always been a philosophy of superiority: the belief that some are not fully human, that some stand above the law, that some are privileged, divine, untouchable, that some are exceptional.
We know power corrupts. That’s precisely why the United States was designed with three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, each with defined powers and checks on the others. Mechanisms already exist to rein in abusive presidents, judges, and lawmakers.
Why wasn’t Biden removed, despite obvious signs of incapacity? Why wasn’t Trump impeached for launching acts of war without congressional approval? Why were no bankers prosecuted for the fraud that triggered the 2008 collapse?
The problem isn’t a lack of structure. The problem is us., its time we stop putting them blame on others or the system,
"The root of our evils has always been a philosophy of superiority: the belief that some are not fully human, that some stand above the law, that some are privileged, divine, untouchable, that some are exceptional."
Well said, Tre! This is the root of all our evils, our selfishness, our narcissism.
The structure of the "Three Branches of checks and balances" should, in theory, work to keep any one branch from dominating the others. But it doesn't work in favor of the ordinary person. Americans and resident aliens are living that hell right now. But consider this: perhaps the structure IS working the way the writers of the Constitution intended it to all along... It's protecting the interests of our richest, usually white and male, citizens. It was never meant to protect the poor, the persons of color, or women and children.
And that's why I think that the current US system as a governmental model is out-of-date and needs to be updated and/or disposed of. It's helping the billionaires and the war hawks just fine. It's time we had a government that protected the non-capitalists--or better yet the non-white, non-wealthy, non- male majority.
Perhaps my contrarian nature masks the fact that I largely agree with the sentiment of your argument.
You say the laws have been “gutted,” implying they’ve been rewritten or erased, no doubt we could find examples of such, but I would argue something more fundamental: the laws are not just weakened, they are being ignored or reinterpreted by those in power to serve personal interests or the interests of a faction, whether political, religious, racial, or economic.
The real crisis is not simply a legal or institutional failure, it is the abandonment of the oaths that bind a society together: the Oath of Office and the Oath of Allegiance. These are not mere formalities. They are public commitments to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, to serve not a party or a class but the public good.
What value do laws and institutions hold when those entrusted with them violate their oaths, twist meanings, and act with impunity? Trust in our leadership, our institutions, and even in each other has been broken.
Without trust, how can anything be built?
A society whose citizens are self-centered, willfully ignorant of their obligations to one another, and unwilling to enforce even the laws they already have, has no ground on which to stand and build upon.
This does not mean the Constitution or the Bill of Rights are perfect. They were never meant to be. “To form a more perfect union” is a statement of aspiration, a commitment to continuous moral and civic improvement.
No amount of "new" or " redesigned" will matter if we cannot first restore integrity, uphold our oaths, and hold each other accountable. A society that tolerates unchecked police brutality and state propaganda, that allows injustice to become routine, cannot build anything lasting, no matter what system replaces the old.
The absence of trust is not limited to the citizens, but the entire world, what nation today could say they trust the USA? What is the USA doing to regain any resemblance of integrity with the world?
I agree that integrity and accountablity have gone down the drain. That, one cannot avoid pinning also on the public. They vote for charlatans and liars and thieves, they embrace them socially even. So having no integrity, does not come with any cost in this society. And that is the public there refusing to have any standards.
But still there was a very clear slide in the laws. You can think back to when Bush II's attorney general refused to sign an order extending temporary permission for mass wiretapping, to today when they are no legal barriers at all.
Yes the lack of morals is also why the laws are being wiped out. So to some degree it's a circular agument.
Yes, perhaps circular argument. perhaps things do not need to be this way. I do not believe its a coincidence that Zombie games, Zombie movies and Zombie TV shows are so popular, Evil rules, and they the evil daemons have turned the majority into Zombies, Got any idea`s how to de-zombify people?
Very true, Kojo. The tools have been tweaked and put into place over the decades, waiting for the most opportune time to be used (abused) to the benefit of those in power. Maybe Netanyahu rushed the scenario by a few years or a decade, but eventually we would be experiencing what we're witnessing today--endless wars and genocide and the suppression of free speech and human rights.
"Rushed it? No. In fact, since 2003, Netanyahu has been barking like a mad dog for two decades, and this wasn’t destiny, it was all planned. Netanyahu and the warmongers had their guns pointed at seven countries in five years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wtn2EGoIyg
None of this was necessary: the lies, the destruction, the deaths. There’s no way to rationalize the past 25 years. Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Netanyahu, they’re not insane. No, in fact, they’re fully aware of what they’ve been doing.
All the deceit, the inhumanity, the fermenting of hate, when you strip away the propaganda, you’re left with only one answer, its just evil.
Raised Catholic, I long ago concluded that there was no god, no devil, no angels, no spirits, no heaven, no hell. But now I’ve come full circle: there are demons. They are the presidents, the prime ministers, the billionaires, and they commanded armies of mindless thugs who take pleasure in killing and torture. They’re aided by armies of self-centered, privileged slaves who operate the systems controlling the rest of us, by taxing, spying, manipulating, masses and of-course, keep us ignorant and afraid.
AI is just another tool in their arsenal. The difference? We’re welcoming it into our lives, just like we did with Siri and Alexa.
Now no one ever called any of them "fascist" but you know what, they all worked as a team to bring the ball downfield to just in front of the end zone.
BTW here is a little bonus of sick and twisted hypocrisy:
I would be for a better system of representation and a total neutering of the oligarchy. In your system, I do believe there is a little room for a head of state of sorts. It could come from the same place diplomacy is generated and said person would be more of a face for the people when dealing with heads of other states. That said, I believe many of our foreign policy issues would be mostly resolved by proper diplomacy rather than what we have now... forced capitulation to irrational hegemony.
Nothing in this universe is immune to entropy, not the stars in the heavens, nor any creation of man.
Our grand dream of democracy has become our nightmare. Perhaps this is simply our nature: no matter what structures some strive to build, others will work just as hard to dismantle or corrupt them.
Maybe it’s time we abandon these corrupt popularity contests and explore alternatives, such as Sortition, once endorsed by Aristotle. A civic lottery, in which public servants are selected at random from among able-bodied, sound-minded citizens.
Instead of voting to elect career politicians, we draft ordinary citizens to serve. And at the end of their term, we don’t re-elect, we vote to either reward or punish them based on the merit of their service.
It sounds good on paper but who gets to decide who is an "able-bodied, sound-minded citizen" to become a public servant? Do we have age limits? Gender limits? Racial limits? As I recall, in ancient Greece women and non-Greeks were all thought of as "inferiors." That's why I believe it's more "fair" if we simply elect people who put themselves out for an office rather than randomly picking them (except for possibly temporary positions).
And why does the person have to be"able-bodied"? Can I be in a wheel chair and wear hearing aids and corrective lenses and still be considered in this public servant lottery? Could a person born with birth defects be kept out? Would all persons over a certain age be disallowed, because we all know that older persons have more physical and sometimes mental challenges than younger ones?
Whoever deems who is "able-bodied" and "sound-minded" is acting more like they're "superior" to the rest of us. I thought that was something to be avoided--a king or emperor with "divine rights" to pick and choose who's worthy and who isn't.
It’s a bit insulting to both our intellects to suggest we would carelessly undo hard-won social progress. Every society sets criteria for citizenship, age, education, physical and mental capacity, and criminal record. We could debate every one of these, and no doubt we’d all have strong opinions. But instead of getting lost in hypothetical, I’ll ask simple question; “What is the definition of insanity?” Repeating a slightly altered version of the same broken practice is still insanity.
Elections, as we practice them, are deeply flawed, not simply because of corruption, but because of how humans make decisions. We rarely act purely on reason. Instead, we are guided by aesthetics, in the broad philosophical sense. That is: we value what looks good, what feels right, what pleases us, it never been what is just, or true.
This explains why celebrity endorsements sway us more than policy, why we tolerate lies from those we love, and why some people despise Trump not for his crimes, but for his face, his voice, his vulgarity, even when he says something that exposes a deeper truth about the empire. Aesthetic disgust overrides cognitive judgment. And that’s dangerous.
I mentioned Sortition, as an alternative lens, not a solution, its food for thought. But the idea of randomly selecting citizens for public service places the burden of leadership on everyone, not simply those seek out the fame. What matters is the underlying principle, that we all share responsibility to lead, not just to vote. Leadership isn’t reserved for elites. A functioning society requires participation, not delegation.
My understanding of societies and humanity changed most when I became a parent. I live on the edge of a city, where farmland meets suburb. When my kids started walking to school, I noticed the trash along the roadside, bottles, cans lying in the gutters. Tired and unable to point the blame, I realized one day it was my job to clean it up. It has became an every day routine. Sometimes my bicycle basket is full by the time I return home.
What started as a small act turned into something more. My kids joined in, then others. What began as a daily routine became organized park and riverside cleanups. But even now, people still litter. And they always will. If everyone followed the rules, we wouldn’t need rules. That’s the point. Change can be slow, or fast, but some things won’t ever be perfect, but it does not excuse inaction.
I keep returning to the words of John Donne: “No man is an island.” We are not self-sufficient island . We are bound to one another, whether we admit it or not.
We’ve reduced democracy to a mark on a ballot, relegating our responsibility to others, choosing lesser of evils about whom we know next to nothing. Democracy about participating, about staying informed being aware, being a conscious thinking being not just another dumb sheep.
They'll never willingly relinquish control over the present system.
Who will control the economic system?
Remember what happened to Muammar al-Gaddafi !
Good start, Cindy! Real change has to happen from the bottom up, and take a horizontal rather than vertical direction. Decision-making and policy-setting have to occur, firstly, at the local level to fit local needs and to address local issues, and the challenge is how to tear down and build up at the same time. However, before any positive political change can come about even at the local level, there must be a larger, broader, far-reaching human transformation; that is, a spiritual revolution, a rise in human consciousness where the sanctity of life, not money or property or raw power, is the measure of what's good in the world. What's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time is that we know change is in the works, but we don't know, despite the ideas and dreams that we may have, what form that will take. Here are a couple of illuminating quotes for Richard Rohr's The Wisdom Pattern: "Change happens, but transformation is always a process of letting go, living in the confusing, shadowy space for a while, and eventually being spit up on a new and unexpected shore." The other: "We cannot think ourselves into a new way of living; we must live ourselves into a new way of thinking." The latter, I think, is the key.
I love Richard Rohr's daily meditations and have read many of his books, too. He is immensely quotable.
I like the idea of "living ourselves into a new way of thinking." That's really the only way to make a permanent and lasting change for the better--to live it and experience it for a while and tinker with it as need-be.
The idea that the US Constitution was supposed to be permanent wasn't something many of its creators ever thought it would be. They expected it to change or be thrown on the trash heap of history. With a rise in human consciousness, I think more will agree that a lot of our old accepted systems of government no longer suit us (if they ever did) and need to be tweaked or junked altogether. I just hope I live long enough to see some of this change myself!
I'm with you there, Cindy!
I would be for Sortition if history, civics, and cultural education were a priority in our educational system. After writing that, it's clear we desperately need that now.
Is this the organization? https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/
Very interesting. I'd want to get rid of the House of Lords if I were living in the UK. I like the idea of a "House of Citizens" but shouldn't that be what the House of Commons is now? Are two separate chambers really necessary if the Commons is re-modeled to be a House of Citizens?
This was supposed to be a reply to tre pepperoncini that somehow got into the general discussion. There are a lot of good ideas here, and it's obvious many people are sick and tired of how things are run and the lack of real representation in our corrupt government
Hi Cindy
Despite what you’ve said about a president being unnecessary, I nominate you.
I’ve never believed in a “Supreme” Court, BTW. Why in fucking hell do NINE INDIVIDUALS ( most with extreme partiality) get to decide what’s legal for the REST of us many millions?
Thanks for the "nomination" for the presidency. I must decline it, though. I'd be way too tempted to become a "benign dictator" once I took office and lock up all the billionaires, CEOs, and other disgusting capitalists. ;-)
The US Supreme Court is just another way to prevent the "mob at the gate" (to use Hamilton's words) from having too much democracy which is a "disease", in his opinion. I think courts have their uses, but it is a bit much to have only a handful of APPOINTED individuals with LIFE TERMS telling us what is and what isn't Constitutional.
For example, read the 1858 Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court. It's immoral and without pity for Scott (an enslaved person) or his family. Why do we need yet another layer of elitists keeping the working classes down? Local and district courts work just fine, IMO.
With respect monopolies, for example. The United States has antitrust laws, why are they not enforced?
With respect to r the legal fiction that "corporations are persons." This did not arise from a flawed system, but flawed individuals who stood to profit from such a ruling?
In my view, this was a crime against humanity: the equation of living persons, humanity itself, be reduced to the machinery of corporations. Why was non one ever been held accountable for this crime against humanity?
So the question remains: Are the systems flawed, or are the operators flawed?
Perhaps we strip enforcement of law and justice from human hands altogether, delegate it to a non-human entity, an AI judge or tribunal? And if we did, can we ever be certain it will remain truly unbiased and fair to all?
When we have no allegiance to our fellow man, we inevitably begin to devalue others. We justify our privilege through the myth of divinity, of exceptionalism, telling ourselves that we are superior because our ancestors conquered first, because our race, our religion, our government is the best.
I`m ranting, again.. the Golden Rule is not so hard ,should something all could agree on? its pretty simply, but against a philosophy of superiority is fails.
I think everyone should come up with another form of government. We should consider all the options and have a popular vote on which one we'd like to implement, with the added bonus of making it conditional if we decide later we don't like it. It's time to give up the white male oligarchy once and for all!
Hear, hear! We should always have the option to end something that doesn't work for us--especially our governmental system.
Thanks for an excellent post. I love your new governance model. Maybe throw in proportional representation and citizens' assemblies to make it even more democratic.
You're welcome, Diana. A unicameral system is sort of citizens' assembly in that its coming directly from the people, but I can see some other forms of citizens' assembly being used at a local level that possibly feed into the one chamber. Definitely more proportional representation that what we currently have in the US, too.
Single chanber is a good idea yes.
However, equally important, I believe, are better means of informing the public about issues being deliberated, and also correctly balancing the power so that there is a mix of centralized power, and local level power.
Right now politics is a mess because it's all sound bites, and no information. Lobbyists send 700 page prewritten laws to the congress, congressmen and their staff hardly read them, and just vote based on what their paymasters said. The public never gets time to read them, analyze them or share thouugh about them. So all proposals need to be floated with full details, enough time for public oversight, and no mixing and matching to drag separate issues together on voting. And social media needs to be removed from kids and strictly regulated as to how it operates - because right now it is producing a generation of peabrained idiots who have no attention span and no ability to focus - its corrosive to discourse and democracy.
Secondly trust in politics lies in small groups, like your neigbhourhood or your city. People you know and see. This level of politics needs to have more influence and more ability to resist the money overlords that drive naitonal politics to hell. I understand we have seen the hell of "states rights" and how that can be used to do foul things, but there must be more of a balance here. At the moment we have stupidiy like congress passing laws to deny communities the right to build publicly owned and controleld infrastrcuture, or the the right to regulate products or their local physical environment. Which is absrurd and has to go.
Those 1,000 page+ bills are exactly the kind of thing I'd hope a unicameral body could avoid. Perhaps we could make all bills a maximum of a 1,000 words--about four typed pages. Anything longer and it has to be submitted as another bill? I like the idea of the bills being put before the public and perhaps a poll taken in a district before a representative votes on that bill. That way we'd know that the representative was doing his/her duty and representing the people and not the special interests groups.
We are imperfect beings; thus, our systems will always be flawed.
I'm not convinced we need to spend any more time engaging in intellectual gymnastics to design improved model societies, especially when we neither practice nor respect the principles embedded in the ones we already have.
Have we not created an abundance of international institutions? Have we not crafted elegant charters and constitutions, filled with beautiful words that stir our hearts? Have we not sung and written endlessly about love, peace, and harmony? And yet, how is it that these ideals, meant to be true, just, and self-evident, are so easily ignored and trampled upon?
If we are unwilling to abandon our hypocrisy, if we will not unite to confront those whose deceit threatens us all, then no amount of intellectual exercise will make any difference.
The hypocrisy of the bullies cannot, and has never been tamed by reason alone. The brute force of their hypocrisy has only one remedy. It must be met face on with collective moral courage and an uncompromising stronger opposing force.
It is precisely because you have imperfect people that you need to build structures compensate for these known imperfactions.
Same as if you know you are impulsive, you make automated payments for your bills and your savings, so you have less temptation to squander your money and your life
Same as if you know you are weak but you dont want to cheat on your wife, you dont go spend your time in strip clubs.
Same as if you know you want your workers focused, you dont serve been in your company canteen or lunch room.
Its not complicated and it's not "model societies" - its plain common sense that should be applied.
And a good starting point for this common sense is that power corrupts: its is a known fact that power reduces a person empathy and generates a pathological greed for more power. So accumulation of power must be limited in any political structure, otherwise instead of creating a means of mediating needs, you are simply creating a stucture for executing oppression.
It's all common sense.
It is all common sense. Too much power put into one office or branch of government leads to the abuse of that power. I think Americans are experiencing this abuse of power today by the Executive Branch and realizing for the first time that it could happen to them and not just other peoples. Nothing is "perfect" --especially governmental structures--but we can always develop a better model that makes the existing one obsolete as Fuller said and hopefully more democratic as well.
Sorry, the failure isn’t in the systems. It’s in our collective unwillingness to uphold them.
It doesn’t matter what laws, systems, or structures we create. If we don’t respect or enforce them, they’re just empty words.
Morality, ethics, and humanity aren’t things that can be legislated or enforced from above. They must be upheld by each of us, not through coercion or threat, but by conscious choice.
The root of our evils has always been a philosophy of superiority: the belief that some are not fully human, that some stand above the law, that some are privileged, divine, untouchable, that some are exceptional.
We know power corrupts. That’s precisely why the United States was designed with three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, each with defined powers and checks on the others. Mechanisms already exist to rein in abusive presidents, judges, and lawmakers.
Why wasn’t Biden removed, despite obvious signs of incapacity? Why wasn’t Trump impeached for launching acts of war without congressional approval? Why were no bankers prosecuted for the fraud that triggered the 2008 collapse?
The problem isn’t a lack of structure. The problem is us., its time we stop putting them blame on others or the system,
"The root of our evils has always been a philosophy of superiority: the belief that some are not fully human, that some stand above the law, that some are privileged, divine, untouchable, that some are exceptional."
Well said, Tre! This is the root of all our evils, our selfishness, our narcissism.
The structure of the "Three Branches of checks and balances" should, in theory, work to keep any one branch from dominating the others. But it doesn't work in favor of the ordinary person. Americans and resident aliens are living that hell right now. But consider this: perhaps the structure IS working the way the writers of the Constitution intended it to all along... It's protecting the interests of our richest, usually white and male, citizens. It was never meant to protect the poor, the persons of color, or women and children.
And that's why I think that the current US system as a governmental model is out-of-date and needs to be updated and/or disposed of. It's helping the billionaires and the war hawks just fine. It's time we had a government that protected the non-capitalists--or better yet the non-white, non-wealthy, non- male majority.
The laws were gutted long ago and that accelerated since Bush II. Itsnot about Trunp. By the time he arrived the tools were already in place.
Perhaps my contrarian nature masks the fact that I largely agree with the sentiment of your argument.
You say the laws have been “gutted,” implying they’ve been rewritten or erased, no doubt we could find examples of such, but I would argue something more fundamental: the laws are not just weakened, they are being ignored or reinterpreted by those in power to serve personal interests or the interests of a faction, whether political, religious, racial, or economic.
The real crisis is not simply a legal or institutional failure, it is the abandonment of the oaths that bind a society together: the Oath of Office and the Oath of Allegiance. These are not mere formalities. They are public commitments to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, to serve not a party or a class but the public good.
What value do laws and institutions hold when those entrusted with them violate their oaths, twist meanings, and act with impunity? Trust in our leadership, our institutions, and even in each other has been broken.
Without trust, how can anything be built?
A society whose citizens are self-centered, willfully ignorant of their obligations to one another, and unwilling to enforce even the laws they already have, has no ground on which to stand and build upon.
This does not mean the Constitution or the Bill of Rights are perfect. They were never meant to be. “To form a more perfect union” is a statement of aspiration, a commitment to continuous moral and civic improvement.
No amount of "new" or " redesigned" will matter if we cannot first restore integrity, uphold our oaths, and hold each other accountable. A society that tolerates unchecked police brutality and state propaganda, that allows injustice to become routine, cannot build anything lasting, no matter what system replaces the old.
The absence of trust is not limited to the citizens, but the entire world, what nation today could say they trust the USA? What is the USA doing to regain any resemblance of integrity with the world?
I agree that integrity and accountablity have gone down the drain. That, one cannot avoid pinning also on the public. They vote for charlatans and liars and thieves, they embrace them socially even. So having no integrity, does not come with any cost in this society. And that is the public there refusing to have any standards.
But still there was a very clear slide in the laws. You can think back to when Bush II's attorney general refused to sign an order extending temporary permission for mass wiretapping, to today when they are no legal barriers at all.
Yes the lack of morals is also why the laws are being wiped out. So to some degree it's a circular agument.
Yes, perhaps circular argument. perhaps things do not need to be this way. I do not believe its a coincidence that Zombie games, Zombie movies and Zombie TV shows are so popular, Evil rules, and they the evil daemons have turned the majority into Zombies, Got any idea`s how to de-zombify people?
Very true, Kojo. The tools have been tweaked and put into place over the decades, waiting for the most opportune time to be used (abused) to the benefit of those in power. Maybe Netanyahu rushed the scenario by a few years or a decade, but eventually we would be experiencing what we're witnessing today--endless wars and genocide and the suppression of free speech and human rights.
"Rushed it? No. In fact, since 2003, Netanyahu has been barking like a mad dog for two decades, and this wasn’t destiny, it was all planned. Netanyahu and the warmongers had their guns pointed at seven countries in five years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wtn2EGoIyg
None of this was necessary: the lies, the destruction, the deaths. There’s no way to rationalize the past 25 years. Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Netanyahu, they’re not insane. No, in fact, they’re fully aware of what they’ve been doing.
All the deceit, the inhumanity, the fermenting of hate, when you strip away the propaganda, you’re left with only one answer, its just evil.
Raised Catholic, I long ago concluded that there was no god, no devil, no angels, no spirits, no heaven, no hell. But now I’ve come full circle: there are demons. They are the presidents, the prime ministers, the billionaires, and they commanded armies of mindless thugs who take pleasure in killing and torture. They’re aided by armies of self-centered, privileged slaves who operate the systems controlling the rest of us, by taxing, spying, manipulating, masses and of-course, keep us ignorant and afraid.
AI is just another tool in their arsenal. The difference? We’re welcoming it into our lives, just like we did with Siri and Alexa.
Yep, everyone wants to talk about Trump but you can easily search back and find examples like this:
Bush and Alberto Gonzalez
https://todayinclh.com/?event=attorney-general-ashcroft-upholds-the-rule-of-law-in-famous-hospital-confrontation
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/legacy-torture/
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/08/john-yoo-and-alberto-gonzales-discuss-the-torture-memos-nine-years-later.html
Obama and Eric Holder
https://www.msnbc.com/the-cycle/holder-people-just-need-be-patient-msna253661
https://freedom.press/issues/obama-used-espionage-act-put-record-number-reporters-sources-jail-and-trump-could-be-even-worse/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
Now no one ever called any of them "fascist" but you know what, they all worked as a team to bring the ball downfield to just in front of the end zone.
BTW here is a little bonus of sick and twisted hypocrisy:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/12/alberto-gonzales-kamala-harris-endorsement-00178746
I would be for a better system of representation and a total neutering of the oligarchy. In your system, I do believe there is a little room for a head of state of sorts. It could come from the same place diplomacy is generated and said person would be more of a face for the people when dealing with heads of other states. That said, I believe many of our foreign policy issues would be mostly resolved by proper diplomacy rather than what we have now... forced capitulation to irrational hegemony.
Nothing in this universe is immune to entropy, not the stars in the heavens, nor any creation of man.
Our grand dream of democracy has become our nightmare. Perhaps this is simply our nature: no matter what structures some strive to build, others will work just as hard to dismantle or corrupt them.
Maybe it’s time we abandon these corrupt popularity contests and explore alternatives, such as Sortition, once endorsed by Aristotle. A civic lottery, in which public servants are selected at random from among able-bodied, sound-minded citizens.
Instead of voting to elect career politicians, we draft ordinary citizens to serve. And at the end of their term, we don’t re-elect, we vote to either reward or punish them based on the merit of their service.
It sounds good on paper but who gets to decide who is an "able-bodied, sound-minded citizen" to become a public servant? Do we have age limits? Gender limits? Racial limits? As I recall, in ancient Greece women and non-Greeks were all thought of as "inferiors." That's why I believe it's more "fair" if we simply elect people who put themselves out for an office rather than randomly picking them (except for possibly temporary positions).
And why does the person have to be"able-bodied"? Can I be in a wheel chair and wear hearing aids and corrective lenses and still be considered in this public servant lottery? Could a person born with birth defects be kept out? Would all persons over a certain age be disallowed, because we all know that older persons have more physical and sometimes mental challenges than younger ones?
Whoever deems who is "able-bodied" and "sound-minded" is acting more like they're "superior" to the rest of us. I thought that was something to be avoided--a king or emperor with "divine rights" to pick and choose who's worthy and who isn't.
It’s a bit insulting to both our intellects to suggest we would carelessly undo hard-won social progress. Every society sets criteria for citizenship, age, education, physical and mental capacity, and criminal record. We could debate every one of these, and no doubt we’d all have strong opinions. But instead of getting lost in hypothetical, I’ll ask simple question; “What is the definition of insanity?” Repeating a slightly altered version of the same broken practice is still insanity.
Elections, as we practice them, are deeply flawed, not simply because of corruption, but because of how humans make decisions. We rarely act purely on reason. Instead, we are guided by aesthetics, in the broad philosophical sense. That is: we value what looks good, what feels right, what pleases us, it never been what is just, or true.
This explains why celebrity endorsements sway us more than policy, why we tolerate lies from those we love, and why some people despise Trump not for his crimes, but for his face, his voice, his vulgarity, even when he says something that exposes a deeper truth about the empire. Aesthetic disgust overrides cognitive judgment. And that’s dangerous.
I mentioned Sortition, as an alternative lens, not a solution, its food for thought. But the idea of randomly selecting citizens for public service places the burden of leadership on everyone, not simply those seek out the fame. What matters is the underlying principle, that we all share responsibility to lead, not just to vote. Leadership isn’t reserved for elites. A functioning society requires participation, not delegation.
My understanding of societies and humanity changed most when I became a parent. I live on the edge of a city, where farmland meets suburb. When my kids started walking to school, I noticed the trash along the roadside, bottles, cans lying in the gutters. Tired and unable to point the blame, I realized one day it was my job to clean it up. It has became an every day routine. Sometimes my bicycle basket is full by the time I return home.
What started as a small act turned into something more. My kids joined in, then others. What began as a daily routine became organized park and riverside cleanups. But even now, people still litter. And they always will. If everyone followed the rules, we wouldn’t need rules. That’s the point. Change can be slow, or fast, but some things won’t ever be perfect, but it does not excuse inaction.
I keep returning to the words of John Donne: “No man is an island.” We are not self-sufficient island . We are bound to one another, whether we admit it or not.
We’ve reduced democracy to a mark on a ballot, relegating our responsibility to others, choosing lesser of evils about whom we know next to nothing. Democracy about participating, about staying informed being aware, being a conscious thinking being not just another dumb sheep.