Ihear complaints that “they” are destroying our constitutional democracy. Are they really? Is there a democracy to destroy? I want one. You want one. As there is none, we will have to create one.
What democracy? The 15 smallest states that voted for Trump, and about another half of a state, have a combined population the same as California. California’s 39+ million people have 2 representatives in the Senate. Those 15 and a half have 31 representative for essentially the same population. They also have 29 more votes in the Electoral College. One person, one vote?
I keep hearing that the Electoral College was created as a concession to the slave states. No. The slave states were allowed to count slaves as three fifths of a (non-voting) person to increase their presence and power in the Congress. The reason for the creation of the Senate was to get the approval of the Constitution of the small states that feared being ignored and overruled by the big states. Adding those 2 votes from each state to the Electoral College then distorted it as well.
Originally, senators were appointed by either the governor or state legislators. It takes a strange definition of democracy to allow that in.
Then we come to the truly bizarre. Money is ‘free speech.’ Governments at the federal, state, and most local levels are bought by the highest bidder. A study of over 2 thousand bills is instructive. These bills were selected because they were contested and one side or the other was supported by significant majorities of the populace. Eighty-four percent lost because they were supported by corporation and oligarchs.
We the corporations. Maybe it’s just me, but my copies of the Constitution read just a bit differently. I would find it easier to accept that if they could be incarcerated or executed or were required to serve in Afghanistan, et al.
I don’t believe we should permit corporations to impose their religious perversions on their employees or customers if they miss attending church, temple or mosque services three weeks in a row. Our so-called democracy represents money and acreage, not human beings. There is no need to wonder at many of the problems John Q. Citizen faces or to be surprised when we get a president that is as far as possible from being representative of the hoi polloi.
[Stepping down from the pulpit.]
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