the Presidency is overly powerful and essentially equivalent to an elected king. The representation of states in the Senate is drastically unrepresentative of the country (states with 16% of the population control over half the votes). The Electoral College is an archaic relic that was created to give more power in elections to slave states.

and the presidency is a far cry from a monarchy. it might seem that way with how republican congresses roll over for republican presidents of late, but that's the corruption the republican party has brought to the equation, not really a flaw in the constitution.

i mean, ask obama if he felt he had the powers of a king when he was in office.

the electoral college and the disproportionate representation of the population in the senate was by design, the founders didn't buy into outright democracy. they wanted the house to be the people's voice and the senate to the the states' voice. this was necessary in order to get the states to agree to the constitution in the first place.

i'll readily agree this is imperfect, and centuries later, now that democracy is widely accepted, the power of the states in the senate is a bit of a relic. that said, in practice this has merely served to slow down progress, not prevent it altogether.

i'd be supportive of making the senate more representative of the people, but in practice we've had good senates and bad senates. the quality of the people in it is what really matters.

because of competing claims of democratic legitimacy when the presidency is controlled by one party and the legislature is controlled by another. The USA is the only one that hasn't broken down that way (yet, anyway).

And drones and targeted assassinations and sweeping surveillance powers? Obama was better than the alternative, sure, but let's not pretend he didn't abuse the powers of the imperial presidency.

whether due to corruption or the governmental system simply not being able to adapt to changes in the country (demographic usually).

in fact i think ours is the longest surviving political system, at least of any major country.

ours has gotten rather corrupted, but it's not yet beyond redemption. if donnie somehow survives all this and manages to get re-elected, we could very well be doomed.

Rome's imperial system lasted 1500 years. Venice lasted hundreds of years.

Democracy does not work. I don't want to live with Deplorables. We should end this farce.

and if you don't want a democracy, well, you've got something in common with the deplorables, then.

Not hereditory leadership yet. Give her time.

as opposed to what? What would you prefer? Traditional airstrikes? Commando raids?

All of which would kill more people.

Or should we leave ISIS and Al Qaeda alone and broadcast Kumbaya over their airwaves?

Sweeping surveillance powers? How many people do you know that were brought up on charges because of something the CIA or NSA caught in their surveillance? The answer is zero. When surveillance is actually a problem, and there are many examples of countries where that has been the case, you would not be able to answer zero to that question. Ask anyone who lived through the STASI in East Germany.

Probably not. "We're using the broad latitude of executive authority to carry out extrajudicial executions targeting an enemy created by a previous administration's fuckups" is a pretty lame defence (and the raid targeting Bin Laden was honestly kind of grotesque. We hanged a lot of Nazis, after WWII, but they got a trial, first. So would Hitler have done if he'd been taken alive by the Western Allies.)

Al Qaeda.

ISIS would not exist per se. However, those who started it would have operated elsewhere under the Al Qaeda banner

http://www.newsweek.com/isis-al-qaeda-feud-499052

We don't and shouldn't have free markets.

free markets freedom of choice as buyers and sellers, but it also implies reasonable regulation and adherence to good laws. for example, internalizing externalities so a buyer and seller can't profit by effectively steal from the commons or from a third party.

what republicans call "free markets" is actually "anarchic markets" or "economic anarchy" -- letting people (mostly sellers, because they have far more power in most cases) get away with whatever they can get away with. who cares about pollution or unsafe working conditions, etc.?

The cornerstone of a free market economy.

and not sufficiently enforcing anti-monopoly, anti-trust, anti-competition laws.

but you not only that we *don't* have free markets, but also that we *shouldn't* have free markets.

you have something better in mind than the government properly regulating and enforcing free market rules on a free market system?

We do have great constitution.

Economic system.

It's not just the trump voters who have lost their minds.

I'd imply anyone who's opinion is different than mine has lost their mind as well, as doing so is both mentally convenient and simplistic, thus stroking our wee little bias in the money-spot, and leaving our narratives righteous and pure from opposition thought.

mostly, anyway.

reagan didn't merely slash taxes, especially on the very rich, he made greed fashionable.
gone was jfk's civic sense of "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
gone was any sense of being proud to contribute to society via taxes.

this was replaced with "it's your money" and "why should i pay for someone else's (whatever)".
pride in paying taxes was replaced with the indignation of a rich person who thought he wasn't getting enough back for his money.

this led to hate radio, and later foxnews, feeding this sick selfishness and anti-civilization attitude.

eventually, this in turn led to hyper-partisanship, extreme, gerrymandering, and even more hyper-partisanship, to the point where shouting, interrupting, and outright lies are perfectly acceptable. civil discussion on the merits of policy is completely out the window.

now we have a thoroughly corrupt, inept president supported by a thoroughly corrupt, but (unfortunately) somewhat capable congress, supported in turn by corrupt state governments who engage in all manner of voter suppression.


the constitution is, by and large, an incredible document that has survived far longer than our founders could have ever dreamed.
but even they knew that the institutions they created could only be as good as the people who occupied them. they had a great idea of setting the branches against each other, but that doesn't work when corrupt people team up across the branches to foil the original intent.

it's easy to tag these things on various presidents, but ultimately the presidents and congresscritters and SCOTUS justices represent the American people -- or at least enough of a plurality to make a cultural case for it. the zeitgeist lags the "progressive agenda" by several decades, like how Jim Crow outlived FDR by 25+ years, or how Reagan got a big share of the vote from union members even as he intervened to break strikes and crush labor movements in Central America. we haven't gone back in time, we were just never as far along as we might have liked to think we were. even if W's antics didn't wake us up to this, the whole "tea party" BS should have been a clarion call to arms for progressives. our national ideals of democracy and freedom have historically been alloyed with slavery, racism, sexism, anti-immigrant bigotry, religious fanaticism, and land grabs from the indigenous population. we are not naturally a compassionate people, and often intolerant of differences.

i suppose i have to disagree with your contention that "we became a better people" under FDR. he may have appealed to latent strains of social decency that already existed, but i don't know that he significantly altered who we are or how we behave personally.

we may have enacted laws and court decisions that liberalized our democracy, but a significant portion of Americans never bought into it.

we've never grappled with our social demons the way Germany did after WWII. instead we put those issues on the back burner and pretend they don't affect us. and then they come back and bite us directly on the ass.

what fdr did was put that on the back burner and brought the social contract to the fore.

this essentially lasted until reagan made greed fashionable once again. sure, reagan didn't invent greed, but he brought it back to the foreground and pushed the social contract out the window. it's been a long, slow decline ever since.

nt

accumulating wealth and political influence during periods of relative stability - which is most of the time. The cycle goes the other way only as a result of social upheaval - like the Great Depression and WW2. The non-wealthy have to pay an enormous price (e.g., widespread food and economic insecurity, being drafted in large numbers to fight overseas) before they demand and before the wealthy consent to economic policies that significantly redistribute wealth.

So I don't think that anything has "gone wrong". This is how the US system operates.

The problem stems from the motivation of those who are tasked with interpreting how new situations should be addressed within that framework.

The Electoral College needs to be either eliminated or revised substantially.

Representation in exchange for taxation should be interpreted as an argument against accepting campaign funding contributions from outside of one's district...


Unfortunately, the motives behind much of the legislation passed and EO's signed have strayed away from that of "representation of constituents" / "best interest of the people"
And motives are now rooted in partisan rivalry and serving only the needs of special interest groups willing to generously contribute to re-election campaigns.

while going home to beat and rape their slaves.

My parents were children when FDR was elected and he was their President through to their teens and early 20s. At the time, their families pretty much worshiped FDR for the New Deal changes that were pushed through during the Depression, and they had to deal with living through a war, and the rationing and other things associated with it. But they were also keenly aware that he wasn't "perfect" and was in fact detrimental for whole swaths of the U.S. population who were systematically oppressed (notably Japanese-American citizens rounded up and put in camps) or left behind (blacks, who were living in a segregated world, whether de jure or de facto), and thus he should NEVER be promoted as being a godsend for everyone when social justice is factored in.

EDIT to add: @ your sig graphic!

Point - different times, different issues & problems, different mindsets.

Welcome back.

I am also very surprised at all the negatives regarding the post, DU isn't what it used to be.

We're seeing the effects of both as they manifest their damage on the vision of our Founding Fathers.