Wednesday, August 3, 2016

When Enough of The People Fail In Their Responsibility to Act Democratically Democracy Will Not Work

I will make a prediction, that, unless the unthiknable happens and Donald Trump wins the election, that Republicans will adopt something like super delegates in their nomination process.   If Trump does to the Republicans what they fear, they will not be able to tolerate the cost and will take measures to avoid it happening again.  I doubt that they will look any more seriously at the fact that Donald Trump is a product of TV able to corrupt us in the most vulgar of ways, most hostile to truth and even thought, I haven't been able to convince many Democrats of that obvious truth, at least not enough for them to see through the slogans that gave TV that power.  

While, at their least wise, Democrats have nominated some weak candidates based on their popularity in Iowa or New Hampshire, the Republicans modern strategy of winning through appealing to the worst character flaws we are all subject to.   In this election it has reached a new depth of irresponsibility.   Trump is already setting up a condition which will incite his gun carrying, paranoid, irrational, racist and bigoted audience will operate on the idea that he was cheated out of the election. That is a hardly tacit call for open insurrection, terrorism and civil war.   We have not been so much in danger of something like that in a long time.   Even many Republicans are afraid of him, many of them for something of higher importance than their own piddling nomination to another Senate or House run.   There are still Republicans with a higher sense of morality than that exhibited by John McCain or Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio.  

A corrupted people will be unable to make a choice in an election that is compatible with democracy. That has been seen over and over again, especially in the post-colonial period when, tragically, countries released from British or French or Dutch domination or domination by others have their first and last quasi-democratic election.   Generally the issues are ethnic and other identity divisions, ideology, or merely the corruption that comes with holding control of the government without countervailing forces to stop that.   In a United States in which anything from a quarter to a third of people can give their support to an explicit fascist like Donald Trump, we are dangerously close to them giving us a fascist government or setting off a civil war.   That their belief in Trump is based in non-reality, in TV incited paranoia and fantasy will not be addressed because, "first amendment".   In the absence of that, some other means of blunting their power to put someone like Trump in reach of the presidency has to be found.  People who, by choice or otherwise make insane choices must be thwarted or the results will be catastrophic.  

I think in response to Trump the answer the Republicans come up with will have to be something like super delegates.   That it sounds anti-democratic won't change the fact that sometimes democracy fails, sometimes that failure is catastrophic.   That we have had 57 presidential elections won't, in the present environment of a degraded, propagandized electorate, save us from the same results that have happened in younger experiments in democracy.  It all depends on the collective mind of the electorate and when that fails, the results will be a catastrophe.   To ignore that fact because something doesn't sound right to you isn't moral, it's insane abdication of responsibility and facing reality.

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