solarbird | (Reply)

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I think - quite sincerely - that part of the problem is structural, in that there are simply too many individual voters (or, at least, citizens) per representative, so that you can freely outrage a larger number (in absolute terms) of people without caring in the least. Also, the number of representatives who need to be corrupted/bought out/etc is small enough to manage trivially.

I further think that the worst idea the Founders had in their brains was the idea that parties would be unimportant, or, at least, fluid. I have several interesting ideas about how to approach correcting this through Constitutional changes, none of which matter in the least.

However, all that aside, I also think that - as per that comment chain you read - authoritarianism, be it religious or secular, is exactly what large sections of the American public want, and I also think that these sections are geographically based. (This is evidenced in voting patterns and is in nontrivial part reinforced through self-selection over the last few decades.) This repulses me, but it is, as they say, what it is. Keeping that in mind, I suggest that you might want to read Martin van Creveld's The Rise and Decline of the State, except for the last chapter which I think is wishful thinking; I think for underlying reasons of communication and power technologies that the superstate has become outmoded, tho' it will do a lot of damage on the way down. Extended authoritarian is a natural response to this, though I think in the end a not just futile but counterproductive one.

I think, as silly as it might sound, that the EU, as a high-level collection of sovereignties, actually is the cutting edge of politics - in a very boring way, as Mr. Izzard would add. It's been extremely interesting to watch all these little nation-states re-emerge over the last couple of decades, most notably in that the first thing they do is go with their independence is join some higher-level structural organisation, be it the EU or NATO or whatever. I don't think this is a series of coincidences.