The US Political System: A View from the Confused UK

I currently reside in the UK. Many people I know or have overheard in pubs find the US political system extremely confusing. Trump's attack on Iran has prompted new questions about his ability to start a war without the approval of Congress.

OK, Brits find other things confusing, like baseball and American football, just as most Americans find cricket, rugby, and FIFA football confusing. As George Bernard Shaw put it, "The English and the Americans are two great peoples separated by a common language." 

Brits are expressing their confusion about US politics more often in the Trumpian Era, because Trump is always in the news. Many of their comments since November 2024 relate to the question, How did the US "elect" such a despicable charlatan twice? What about learning from experience?

An American could reply, "Hey, UK voters made another charlatan, Boris Johnson, prime minister." That's true, but there is this difference: when enough people in the UK realized what a bloviating, bullshitting, devious narcissist Johnson was, they sent him packing. His own party did, in fact, responding to angry public opinion. 

That's one advantage the parliamentary system has over the presidential. Prime ministers serve at the pleasure of the party in power. The party in power can jettison their leader at any time, if they become sufficiently toxic to the voters. Presidents serve fixed terms. It is extremely difficult to get rid of an incompetent or vile one before the next election. 

The Conservatives (Tories) mistakenly allowed their members to pick Johnson's successor. The members tend to opt for candidates with extreme views and limited ability. That made Liz Truss the perfect choice. She managed to nearly destroy the UK economy in just a few weeks. Tory MPs could not get her out the door fast enough. Point taken.

Back to the UK view of US politics. The most common question after the 2016 election, was Why didn't Hilary Clinton get elected? She got 3 million more votes than he did. 

In order to answer that question, I had to try to explain the Electoral College, which of course has nothing to do with education. Have you ever tried to explain the English Wars of the Roses to glassy-eyed undergraduates? I have. I don't recommend it. 

I explained how the Founding Fathers in their wisdom created the Electoral College to prevent the US from becoming a democracy. They feared that the "people" would elect some nut who would threaten "property," including human property. The EC does not represent the "people." It represents the states, each of which has a certain number of "electoral" votes, based on their population, sort of.  

Three times in US history presidential candidates who lost the popular vote have become president, because they got a majority of electoral votes. 

The most recent time was in 2016, when the EC assured the "election" of a nut who wants to restore slavery and admires Hitler. Trump still claims he won the popular vote in 2016, just as he continues to claim he won the 2020 election, not Biden.

Yes, the Founding Fathers wanted a republic but not a democracy. And they are not the same thing. A country can be a democratic republic. It can be an undemocratic republic. It can also be a democratic monarchy, like the UK and quite a few European countries. The monarchs in these countries have no real power. They are titular heads of state. 

Of course, all this was not enough to explain Trump's rise to power.  There were many more questions to answer, even tougher ones. 

To be continued. 

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The Myth of Sisyphus: Capitalist Version

Sisyphus angered the gods. The gods punished Sisyphus by condemning him to push a large rock up a hill endlessly. Each time he pushed the rock near the top of the hill, it would roll back down to the bottom. 

As you can easily understand, this routine was both tiring and boring, a lot like working for a large corporation. Meaningless, it seemed. But Sisyphus managed to make the job more interesting, less tiring, and quite profitable. He gave it meaning. Every time he got to the top of the hill, he filled his pockets with soil and walked down to resume his task. 

Sisyphus repeated this procedure for many years. The hill got smaller and smaller as he removed the soil. Eventually, there was no more hill. The curse of the gods was lifted, for he could not roll the rock up a hill that no longer existed. 

Moreover, Sisyphus had managed to earn a substantial bonus from his labors. He had collected a huge amount of soil from the former hill, thousands of tons in fact. He proceeded to market the dirt to farmers, gardeners, and developers as "the finest topsoil in the world." He made a vast fortune peddling dirt. Eventually, he became a billionaire, then a trillionaire, and even bankrolled the gods. 

One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Not from rolling the rock up the hill, but by walking back down without it, pockets full of soil.

Apologies to Albert Camus and the Greek Mythologists

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What is to be Done to Save US Democracy?

If they wish to save democracy, the leadership of the Democratic Party must start actually leading, showing more (some?) courage and genuine outrage, and never compromising with authoritarians.

The Trump administration violates the law and constitution on a daily basis. The argument that as the minority party Democrats are helpless is bogus. The Republicans have never been helpless when in the minority. They have used every mechanism possible, fair and foul, to stop, slow down, amend, and derail Democratic measures. 

Democrats, at least the leaders and corporate Dems, have been too nice. They are playing by the rules of a game their opponents have changed beyond recognition. 

At Davos, Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, claimed rightly that the old world order is gone, thanks in large part to Trump's actions. The same is true of the political system in the US. 

Only radical action can impede Trump. Democrats must stop cooperating with him in any way. Do not vote for any Republican measures that advance his authoritarian agenda as seven did a few days ago to fund ICE, which operates outside the law as a form of domestic terrorism. 

To be worthy of their name, Democrats must join with democratically minded people and propose a measures designed to protect and advance democracy, as well as reverse the anti-democratic measures of recent years.

I have drawn up what I call the People's Charter for the USA. It derives its name from the democratic program drawn up in the UK in the 1830s. It had six points or demands. Five became law. My charter is longer but I believe American citizens should demand all of them.  

• 1.       Abolish the Electoral College, an anti-democratic institution that has empowered American reactionaries since slavery times. Replace it with the National Popular Vote. People in other countries find the Electoral College bewildering and idiotic, because it is.
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• 2.       Prohibit gerrymandering. Create an independent, non-partisan commission to draw up boundaries of congressional constituencies. This is done in other countries.
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• 3.       Overturn the obscene Citizens United decision of SCOTUS. It is responsible for hugely increasing the influence of big money in elections. Nothing like this exists in other democracies.
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• 4.       Prohibit political ads. They are virtually useless as information, misleading or untrue, insulting, and damned annoying. Prohibited in most democratic countries.
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• 5.       Introduce proportional representation or ranked voting to end the stranglehold of the corrupt two-party system. Some people will argue that this would make efficient government impossible. Ask yourself, is what we have now efficient? 
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• 6.     Make the Senate representative of the country. It gives the less populated states collectively far more power than the most populated. California with 40 million people and Wyoming with only half a million have the same number of senators. This is both absurd and grossly undemocratic.
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• 7.       Make voting simple, safe, and convenient. Voting is an obligation. It should not be a survival test, torture, or a danger. Eliminate voter suppression of all kinds. Other countries do not do things this perverse way.
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• 8.      Fund public education adequately and fairly. Public college and university education should be free or cheap, as it was when I went to college and university in the late 60s and early 70s. Why are we short-changing our children and dumbing down our voters? 
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• 9.      Establish a national, affordable health care plan that covers everyone. The present for profit system is a disgrace and an international laughingstock. The system costs the US twice as much as in other developed nations, and the results are worse in terms of mortality and morbidity. Scores of millions are uncovered or inadequately covered. Health insurance must be affordable, universal, and disconnected from employment. The present system turns many workers into virtual serfs tied to their jobs.
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• 10.       Require the payment of a living (not minimum) wage for all adult workers. This should vary according to local living costs. It costs a lot more to live in California than in North Dakota. Why should workers have to have two or even three jobs to make ends meet?
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• 11.     Reduce the period between the election of the president and the inauguration to two or three weeks, preferably less. This would have minimized Trump's ability to create havoc after the "stolen election" of 2020. In the UK and many countries, a new government generally takes over immediately after the election. This can be done because the parties have already selected the members of the cabinet and other ministers.
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• 12.     Reform the judiciary. Judges should be selected by professional bodies, not by presidents and Congress. This includes the Supreme Court, whose bias towards Trump is flagrant and dangerous. Justices of the SCOTUS and all judges should serve fixed terms, not for life. They should operate according to a code of ethics established by an independent board of legal and political scholars. 

Effective, fair gun control is imperative. I did not include it under these reforms but it would follow if they were implemented. Not possible? Check out other democratic, developed countries. 

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American Exceptionalism, Part II

The US is truly exceptional. What other country could have produced a leader as exceptional as Trump, a man who combined the talents of a gangster, grifter, bully, bullshitter, liar, pedophile, rapist, racist, fascist,  traitor....and elected him to the highest office in the land -- not once but twice.   

Under Trump 2, the US has become more exceptional than ever.  His bellicose actions toward Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, and Nigeria are merely the latest examples of American Exceptionalism. 

"American Exceptionalism" derives from the argument that the USA is fundamentally different from other countries; that it is superior to them, "Number 1," "The Greatest Country in the World." The reality is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984.

American exceptions abound:

The only wealthy country without a system of universal health insurance coverage. Existing health insurance plans verge on robbery.

A Department of Health and Human Services doing its best to revive diseases previous generations had virtually eliminated and to bring us more epidemics and pandemics.

A Department of Défense (War?) that thinks indiscriminate killing of civilians around the world is "legal" and OK. 

A Department of Homeland Security that spends most of its time terrorizing the American people.

A Department of Justice devoted to undermining existing laws and eroding human rights. 

A Department of Education seeking to undermine public education.

A minimum wage far below the level of a "living wage." A long history of union busting and bashing.

A railway system far inferior to that of every other developed country. Poor public transit in much of the country.

A deteriorating public education system. 

A government friendly to pedophiles and other sexual predators.

Number 1 in billionaires.

Number 1 in medical bankruptcies.

Number 1 in mass shootings

Number 1 in Covid deaths.

The US is currently in the grip of Christian-capitalist fascism. Its evolution into this obscene system did not begin with Trump. It is the result of decades of far right brainwashing and the gradual erosion of constitutional and legal protections of political and human rights. 

Trump is a product, a symptom, of this evolution. He did not create it. It will not go away when he does without radical reform of the political system.

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