Political sectarianism in America

[filghy2]

Yes, but without the Electoral Collage the combined vote of the east and west coasts alone would win. Good video on Amazon Prime and I'm sure many other sources...

That can't be correct. The combined population of East and West coasts comes to about half the total US population, and obviously they don't all vote for one party. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li...%20more%20rows

In any case isn't government by majority rule the essence of democracy, subject to everyone having basic legal rights protected? The interests of smaller states can still be protected by the Senate.

[sukumvit boy]

Yes, I stand corrected regarding my hasty statement .However even at "about half of the total US population" that leaves the "flyover states" rural ,agrarian,and conservative at a severe disadvantage in choosing their next president .That's the problem the Electoral Collage was designed to address.
When I set out to satisfy my curiosity and learn more about the EC system I went into it of the opinion that this is a terrible system . However I came away with a better appreciation of the problems the system was designed to prevent. Can it be improved? Yes, no doubt . But discarded altogether ?,I think not.

[Stavros]

I wonder how Americans view the Founding Fathers with regard to the Electoral College. I can see the argumnt in favour of it based on the equitable distribution of votes that would otherwise mean large and populous states always dominating the outcome, but in a sense that happens if a State becomes so large its College Votes increase, and also if that State awards all of its College votes to the candidate in the election with the most votes.

Now consider that when the Constitution was signed in 1787 there were only 13 States, and neither women nor slaves had the right to vote. The language of the Constitution does not mention this, which has worked in the favour of 'the People', but conceptually, are we not dealing with -is it a paradox?- the fact that the 'Original' intention was that the Constitution would only apply to Men? It appears to some that the principles have held, that even with a significant expansion of both the number of States in the Union and the extension of the right to vote to, the system devised in the 18th century has survived. I don't think at the time, the men who wrote the Constitution envisaged that the College votes would either be close, or result in a popular vote in the General Election that was not ratified by the Electoral College -but I am not sure of this and maybe someone can clear that up.

[filghy2]

Yes, I stand corrected regarding my hasty statement .However even at "about half of the total US population" that leaves the "flyover states" rural ,agrarian,and conservative at a severe disadvantage in choosing their next president .That's the problem the Electoral Collage was designed to address.

That doesn't actually require the President to be chosen by an Electoral College though. That seems to be a constitutional crisis just waiting to happen. What if the Republican delegates in a few key states this year had been Trumpists who chose to ignore the vote count?

I'm also wondering how you expect to break down the two-party duopoly if you don't want to change the existing system.

[filghy2]

I can see the argumnt in favour of it based on the equitable distribution of votes that would otherwise mean large and populous states always dominating the outcome, but in a sense that happens if a State becomes so large its College Votes increase, and also if that State awards all of its College votes to the candidate in the election with the most votes.

That's a good point. If there was no 'winner take all' system the dominance of larger states would be lessened because their EC votes would be distributed more evenly. it would also eliminate much of the wrangling over margins of a few hundred or thousand votes.

[filghy2]

However even at "about half of the total US population" that leaves the "flyover states" rural ,agrarian,and conservative at a severe disadvantage in choosing their next president.

The more I think about this, the more I think that position is dubious. The problem is that it views people according to the single dimension of which state they live in, rather than as individuals with multiple dimensions; eg race/ethnicity, sex, age, socio-economic status, family situation, occupation, etc. Are these other dimensions less important than where they live?

Consider that according to the last Census 62% of the US population are non-hispanic whites. Couldn't it be equally said that this puts non-white people at a disadvantage in choosing the President? Couldn't the same be said for any group that is in a minority on some important dimension?

[sukumvit boy]

(off topic)
The Imperial Chinese 'Examination System' served them well for over 2000 years ,and it was very democratic and educational merit based.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...Imperial_China

[filghy2]

A recent poll by the American Enterprise Institute (conservative think-tank) provides a good insight into Republican voters' attitudes.
- 79% of them agreed that the political system is "stacked against conservatives and people with traditional values"
- 56% agreed that "The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it."
- 39% agreed that "if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions."

https://www.americansurveycenter.org...xceptionalism/

In addition, 65% of Republicans agreed that last year's election was marred by widespread fraud, 50% thought that antifa was mostly responsible for the Capitol riots, and 29% agreed with the QAnon conspiracy (with another 43% undecided).

Perhaps not surprisingly, these views are correlated with religious and racial attitudes, with white evangelicals far more likely to agree with the statements.
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/11/96649...may-be-necessa
Three-quarters of Republicans also agreed that discrimination against Whites is now as great a problem in the US as discrimination against Blacks and other minorities, consistent with other evidence that racial resentment/anxiety is a strong indicator of support for Trump. This group was also more likely to agree that political violence may be necessary.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/14/p...ent/index.html

In light of recent events, this raises the question of whether the Republican Party might turn into a de facto fascist party. Fascism is difficult to define, but three of the key elements seem to be a leadership cult, willingness to use violence for political purposes and some kind of ethno-nationalist agenda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

[filghy2]

As a companion piece, this is a good discussion of factors that promote mass radicalisation.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...rection-468746

"First, you have to have a vulnerable audience receptive to the extremist narrative—individuals who are scared, angry, isolated and looking for answers that satisfy their own personal biases, looking to cast blame for their problems on someone else. They find narratives that tell them their problems are not their fault; it’s the product of a conspiracy trying to undermine your way of life and well-being.

The second thing you need is an influential voice pushing the extremist narrative. And over the past 4½ years, we have had a very influential political leader [President Donald Trump] pushing a narrative that is not only polarizing—not only highlighting that the right and left are far apart on policy issues and disagree on discretionary spending—it’s a narrative of “othering.” It’s a narrative that casts the other side as evil, as “enemies,” as individuals you have to fight at all costs in order to preserve your way of life.

The final thing you need is a mechanism to spread that narrative to the masses. Historically, mass radicalization took time. If an influential leader wanted to spread a message, they’d do it through newspapers or political speeches in towns and cities throughout their country, and it could take a while for that message to spread. But that’s not our reality anymore.

Our reality now is one in which a radicalizing message can be broadcast to hundreds of millions of people in a matter of seconds. And if it catches on, you’re virtually guaranteed that millions of people will [believe] that narrative. We’ve seen this in the more traditional forms of media, with outlets like Fox News pushing some of these conspiratorial views, but we’ve also seen it with social media companies not cracking down on this rhetoric early, and instead letting it fester."

[Stavros]

I would argue we are seeing a revival in the form of a 'New Wave Fascism' that attempts to rescue the original ideas of the Nation from the lamentable histories of Italy and the variants as experienced in Spain and, via Military Coups those 'Fascist' or 'Fascistic' versions in South Korea, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Greece and a host of African countries.

The key thinker to me is Roger Scruton, who in the years prior to his death moved away from his original work on Aesthetics to chamipion the view that European and American Capitalism and Democracy was rooted in, indeed, built upon Judeo-Chrstian Civilization. He used this in the Introduction to Bill O'Reilly's abysmal book The Closing of the Muslim Mind, because Scruton rejects any claim that Islam has had any influence on Europe -not in Maths, Geometry, Medicine, History, Geography and so on, indeed sees Islam as a theat to the integrity of the Nation, which is also how sees the concept of 'Ever Closer Union' that has driven the evolution of the European Union since the 1950s.

In some cases, the Christian legacy is vital for Scruton, in others, such as the second of the American appraisals linked below it is downplayed. Michael Gove was a supporter of Scruton, and I believe Steve Bannon too. In Bannon's case, the New Wave Fascism he extols believes there is nothing that the USA needs that cannot be made in the USA, hence 'America First' and a belief that all the production offshored to China and the rest of the world can, indeed should be repatriated to the USA. It is summed up in the core beliefs of Italian Fascism -'Everything Within the State. Nothing Outside the State. Nothing Against the State'

A key element of this New Wave Fascism is the concept of loyalty, which is, I think intended to replace any idea that Race is or should determine who the Citizen is to whom the State belongs. It means it is possible to be a Jew, maybe even Black and be a citizen, but the dilemma is how one defines this loyalty, particularly if for Scruton, a Religious element is desirable, even essential. His hostilty to Secularism and Islam is based on the tendency of advanced capitalist states to be either secular, in the case of the 'original' community, or religious in the case of immigrant communities, but an 'alien' religion that threatens the identity of 'Who We Are; threatening to relegate it to 'Who We Were'.

The dilemmas mount: New Wave Fascism is opposed to Globalization, but can any economy survive in isolation from the rest of the world?

What does one do with those citizens who fail the loyalty test?

Scruton's view here-
https://www.roger-scruton.com/articl...ed-for-nations

An American view here-
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2...-nation-state/

Another US view here-
https://theimaginativeconservative.o...mccormick.html