Democracy in Peril
I have not been so afraid for my country in my eighty years. Not during the Cuba missile crisis; not during the Vietnam War demonstrations; not during Watergate; not during the Rodney King riots; not during Black Lives Matters or even the January 6 events.
I see a democracy being destroyed by a movement that must assume it will never be out of power. Otherwise, its leaders would not be threatening myriad former government officials and non-political government employees with criminal indictments and investigations, changing procedures and precedents that have previously allowed the peaceful transfer of power after elections. Only if they feel they will never be on the losing side would they be initiating the retributions that are occurring. If they should lose power, would Brigham Young University and the University of Notre Dame be attacked as more liberal universities are being currently attacked. The Golden Rule says, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That is only necessary if after future elections, the party in power is concerned that it might be out of power someday
Until the courts have time to rule on merits (as opposed to injunctions) of many of the lawsuits that have been brought against the current Administration, there are no checks or balances in effect at the Federal level. Constitutionally, the next chance that voters will have to change this is the 2026 Congressional elections. That is why the Gerrymander War has begun; the current Administration and its supporters are terrified of losing control of the House of Representatives and its power of investigations and the budget process.
If non-MAGA Republicans and Independents are afraid that Democratic control of the House of Representatives will result in progressive left-wing legislation, they have no worries. The continued Republican control of the Senate and President Trump’s veto will prevent any legislation of which he does not approve from being enacted. There will be total legislative gridlock. However, there will finally be a check on Executive branch power.
I can understand the Democratic Party and Governor Newsom’s desire to counter the Texas Republican redistricting. However, I feel this is a losing strategy, since there are more Republican than Democratic states with legislative control of the redistricting process. It took too long in California to implement the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, the independent, nonpartisan body created by voters through the Voters First Act in 2008. To sacrifice this piece of good government for a losing strategy would be unfortunate.
My recommendation is that the Democrats abandon the redistricting efforts and pour their resources into turning the existing Republican Congressional seats Democratic. This is possible if they run more moderate candidates, supportable by Independents and non-MAGA Republicans, in competitive districts. In safely Democratic districts, it will make little difference whether a moderate or progressive candidate in nominated, but in swing districts, a progressive candidate will not be strongly supported by Independents and non-MAGA Republicans. As I stated before, control of a Democratic House of Representatives by moderates or progressives will not affect legislative outcomes in view of the Trump veto.
We are no longer playing a political policy game between MAGA or non-MAGA Republicans and progressive or moderate Democrats. We are fighting to protect the playing field itself, because if there are not checks on the actions of the current Administration, we will not have an opportunity in the future to fight over policy.
The trouble is, if we redistrict to often, voters will never know who thier representatives are. And since the HoR is determined by population we can’t just adjust as needed each year on speculation about population fluctuations. Especially if the country isn’t doing likewise. I am a lifetime history nerd and have been afraid for my country as long as I can remember, and I am over 40. This is probably part of the reason I have has chronic depression and clinical anxiety since childhood. I started sending the same letter to my representatives off and on since 2005. I never get a response. In 2005 or 2006 I even printed it and went to see my state representative at a museum event. Put it right in his hand, he never responded. That letter has gotten longer and is now an ungodly length as I have added things over the years, but still, no one who can do anything about it gives a shit. This is how every Empire on the planet has fallen (some more than once), economic failure, social division, political ineffectiveness and abuse of government power and humans refuse to quit doing the same thing. I have been nonpartisan since age 18, and that will never change. Both parties are equally culpable for the he//-hole our country has become. They have spent decades intentionally dumbing down Americans so that they can keep thier jobs, till death do us part. Then, when it matters most they assume Americans “aren’t that stupid”. 50% of kids leaving HS functionally illiterate, and more and more showing up at colleges needing remedial math. He//, I don’t know anyone under 35 (English Speaking) who can write in cursive, read an analog clock, change thier own car tire, or tell me who was president the year they were born. Whelp, here we are, exactly where the government wanted every time they declined to vote for more education funding. Dumb as a box of rocks, emotionally ignorant, no common sense and suffering from civic Stockholm Syndrome. They treat us like sh1t, but people vote for them anyway. A civics teacher once told me that the longer a politician is in office, the more loopholes they learn about (from older politicians) to screw over thier constituents. Name one politician in either party who did not leave office (dead or not) a millionaire/billionaire on less than 200k a year? Or if they already were, that the 200k a year (average) was all they earned in office. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results. That is literally what the DNC spent the last 4-5 elections doing. Barely winning 1, who was riding Obamas a55, not on his own merit or with his own policies, and losing 2. Then what do they do? They chant “Blue no matter who”!, that’s what. (AgentOrange was a democrat, remember??) As if that strategy hadn’t tanked the last 3 times……. Some of the founding fathers didn’t even want parties (look it up), and this sh1t is why. People join parties and literally let 2 committees of BILLIONAIRES decide who goes on the ballot, and on election day, just do what they are told. Even if that candidate has a clear, decades long record of doing absolutely nothing in thier constituents best interests. News flash. Abraham Lincoln was a spoiler. People are scared to “split the vote”, because politicians tell them it is a bad thing, and the establishment doesn’t want to lose thier jobs. Splitting is only a bad thing, and only happens when literally everyone on the ballot sucks. If everyone jumped to a spoiler (or different party) because thier “committee candidate” sucks, that wouldn’t be splitting it at all. Red/blue are both terrified of spoilers which is why they badmouth them all the time and have spent 90 years incrementally legislating themselves, and the voters into this destructive duopoly. People worry about “splitting” the vote. If that happens a few times the parties will have no choice but to choose superior quality candidates won’t they? Splitting the vote is civic tough love, you would let them make thier mistakes, and not Molly-coddle a bunch of senile octogenarians. 90 million stayed home because quality candidates do not exist. As it stands, both parties don’t discourage civically ignorant voter sheep from getting online and trying to guilt-trip, bully and gaslight literally everyone who won’t walk the red/blue line and choose thier side. They both say that declining to vote is the same as voting for “the other one”, and in the same breath bemoaning and blaming the 90 million voters that didn’t bother to show up. Any number plus 0 stays the same, that is basic math, not rocket science. Those 90 million refusals didn’t go to one side or the other, and that is why both parties are pi55ed. Because the nonpartisan voters they need to win over paid attention in math class, and can’t be guilt-tripped, bullied or gas-lit into helping them. Imagine what would have happened if more voters had not been forced to go MAGA because the DNC “lesser of two evils” StatusQuoKamala (and HE//ery before that) wasn’t actually” lesser” in thier opinion. “Lesser” is subjective, and NEVER in the voters best interests regardless of hat color. Musl1m Americans even voted for AgentOrange (used to be a democrat!) despite his threats to level Gaza to build hotels and resorts. You would think that would teach the DNC to select better quality candidates… Nope… AgentOrange wouldn’t have won that one demographic if the DNC wasn’t trying to force voters to deep throat Bidens pissy, watered-down, on the fence policies by voting for StatusQuoKamala, who had literally no platform of her own, just a HE//ery/Biden hybrid jalopy. Duopolies are, always have been, and always will be dangerous. Red and blue do get to pick thier po1son, arsen1c or cyan1de and the country dies puking its guts out or of multiple organ failure. Dead is dead. The rest of us just get to watch the country die of a cancer we didn’t ask for and tried to prevent. In college (before Brexit) I actually looked at the number of parties in each country worldwide. Look at other duopolistic countries on the planet. You wouldn’t want to live in ANY of them. And if you look at just the EU, the smallest country there is Malta, less than 50k in population with 4 parties. (?!!?!?!!??) And Belgium and a couple of others have the most with 14….. If we had 14 or (many) more national parties AgentOrange wouldn’t even have gotten a round 1 in the OvalOuthouse because he would have had to convince multiple parties and thier voters to side with him, and he certainly wouldn’t have a majority in Congress either.