Challenges to democracy

This is the “Challenges” page – with a long array of pain points, in red. Once perused, at the bottom below please find the link to “Opportunities,” where we may put our energies. Includes contact information. Linked also in the Menu upper left.

Lies – a cocoon of lies, against truth, e.g., the ‘Big Lie’, slouches toward autocracy, as history tells

The foundational threat, or challenge

[ See also Hannah Arendt, and Adorno’s f-scale ]

How far down the autocracy road have we come? See video [start at 1:31] documenting ‘normalization’ of political violence, the autocrat’s sine qua non

Political violence? Now DeSantis, the would-be proto-fascist, is dragooning a Florida civilian disaster relief guard into being his own personal Praetorian guard. To what skullduggery?

Money in politics – US a plutocracy, not democracy. The principal mechanism that drives the drumbeat of inequality, just above

Disenfranchising the majority – when majoritarianism is the cornerstone of democratic function

Stalemated Senate: Two votes per state gives disproportionate voting power to sparsely populated states (e.g., WY voter power is 68 X CA voter power). So, a minority of the country hold enough seats to keep the Senate deadlocked, unable to act

Over decades, when nationally there is wide – majority – voter agreement on legislation for urgent priorities, e.g., abortion, guns, immigration

In the House – nominally proportional – Representatives’ constituent totals range from 500,000 to 778,000,

granting a greater than 50% power advantage for voters at the ‘small’ end

Judiciary – the third leg on the democratic stool, legitimate only when strictly neutral (“justice must be blind”)

The judiciary – from district, through appellate, to supreme courts – regularly identified as unabashedly either ‘left-’ or ‘right-’leaning

In this tableau, of appointment choices that regularly tilt left or right

Forum / venue / court / judge shopping, as in Mifepristone, makes utter farce of judicial neutrality, shatters remaining legitimacy, and thus any useful functionality, of the federal judiciary

Supreme Court justices – hence ultimate judicial decision power – chosen by lot-tery as to left or right: the happenstance of which party, left or right, happens to hold the presidency when there is a Supreme‘s death

The shadow docket – The new conservative majority, flouting past practice, issues unsigned diktats with only one-line justifications. Hidden from accountability, dozens of times in three years, shifting judgments to favor the religious right

Then there is the Clarence and Ginni Thomas ethical black hole. To put another nail in the Supreme Court legitimacy coffin

Now Samuel Alito has joined the pair. Corruptly accepting a ~$100,000 gift from a billionaire, who then brings at least 10 cases before Alito and the Court. Then failing to report it, so this perfidy comes to light only a decade and a half later

Are there other cases out there among the Justices, just still hidden? How many, how deep is the stench from this rot?

Much too Rigid Constitution, treated like Holy Writ. Handcuffing any prospects to fix the above

When in fact it was written to effect compromises that accommodate _slavery_, decades before the Civil War intervened, before transition from agrarian to industrial society, and with no account for the concomitants of a vast technological evolution

Fox News not actually ‘reporting,’ to deliver facts. Rather, panders to its audience, regurgitating – back to them – lies the audience want to hear, to keep them from leaving, and so build its profits. Underpinning a cult of lies (SEE pivotal video, 1 min and 41 sec – again, lies)

Social media – platforms maximize revenues from advertisers, thus (private) profits, via:

Algorithms that pump up ‘birds-of-a-feather’ user engagement. Driving citizens into extreme, angry ‘corners’ –> polarization, more lies, again

Exemplified as the the debt ceiling debacle has taken the budget hostage. Where polarized irreconcilable positions threaten true global disaster, most calamitous for the US.

→ Faithful journalists gather and disseminate the facts, for the citizenry. The news becomes the essential conduit, shaping mass views and movements. Corruption –lies to the masses by the press – is the autocrat's handmaiden to destroy democracy, to inject the poison of lies.

Voter participation rate is anemic, commonly about half in a federal election, as high as about three-quarters when there is ‘uproar’

Disinformation war, on US democracy, by foreign governments, via fake social media bot accounts – again, lies

Example: Video [near end of the hour, start at 43:58 – 8 1/4 minute segment] documenting Russian and Chinese disinformation attacks on the US, after Trump's indictment

We see ... a voluminous array of threats. Do we have, on the other side, opportunities to correct, strengthen, restore our democracy, against threats?