Can America Be Saved
I am writing this as a citizen of a world that no matter where we live are strongly impacted by whatever America does and whatever happens in America
America is celebrating but it will take a lot more than the end of the Trump presidency to save America. Trump promoted and encouraged, and even used the office of the presidency to legitimize the worst of America. The worst of America existed before Trump, was made stronger with Trump, and will continue after Trump. It's proponents may even become more strident.
Saving America will require government policy changes, legislative changes and even constitutional changes, but most of all cultural changes.
The toxic and partisan nature of American politics is not going away quickly or easily and the politicians are not going to solve America's problems. Toxic partisanship means ideas from the other side are rejected and fought against because they came from the other side and are thus seen as evil. In the rare case they may be seen as good ideas they are opposed rather than supported so the other side cannot take credit for them.
How are Americans to come together to solve their problems in this political atmosphere. I would propose a constituent assembly of Americans to propose solutions together. This assembly should be diverse, include all incomes, occupational groups and the unemployed, come from all regions, religions, including the non-religious, and include people of all sexual orientations and gender identification. It should also represent a broad variety of political philosophies while purposely not considering party affiliations in the choice of participants.
They should sit down together as Americans to find away to make America the country that it can be and their political leaders should commit to implementing the required changes no matter how difficult it will be politically.
Now I can stop here and say let Americans fix America, but being who I am I cannot do that without proposing some solutions for some of the most obvious and worst problems facing America.
We just came through an American election so let us look at that first.
Election day is when almost all elected American officials are elected, federal, state and local. Nobody talks about this but that in itself is a major problem for democracy. Voters are expected to be able to make choices about who they want to represent them for a large multitude of offices. Can they really absorb and analyze all the information necessary to make informed decisions. This system, I believe, encourages voters to just give up on deciding who to vote for and just vote a straight "party ticket", further strengthening the hold of toxic partisanship on America's political culture.
The other fact, strange to me and I suspect the rest of the world outside America, is that America holds 50 separate elections for federal offices each with separate rules. How can every vote be equal when there are 50 different sets of rules for voters.
And then there is the election of the President by the Electoral College where some states elect more than twice as many electors per voter as other states, not to mention the fact that the winner take all system means close to 50 percent of a states votes may not count at all in the presidential election if the parties are close in that state.
The Electoral College supposedly protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority but is that not the Senate's role where Senators elected by a minority of voters have a veto over legislation passed by Representatives representing a majority of voters. The Electoral College system is more akin to the Tyranny of the Minority. Everyone voting for President should have an equal vote otherwise the President does not represent all Americans equally.
We have not even mentioned the fact the elections are run and controlled by (state) politicians where gerrymandering, voter suppression and other shenanigans are considered fair game as long as you can get away with it. American elections are simply a power game with only lip service played to democracy.
Other countries do it differently. Elections cannot be fair if they are controlled by one of the parties seeking office. America needs to have an impartial non-partisan agency to control their elections, and for federal elections the rules must be the same for all Americans. America should look at the Elections Canada model, perhaps the fairest and most effective model in the world, that not only ensures elections are fair but facilitates encourages the electorate to get out and vote.
Elections Canada says its system protects Canadian voters from U.S.-style drama (CBC News)
And then we have the American justice system where we have a misguided understanding of what democracy means.
In a democracy the laws should certainly be written by the elected representatives. However the application of those laws and the adjudication of them is something that must be done according to those laws, not according to the whims of public opinion. The police and prosecutors should enforce the law as it is written and judges should interpret it that way. There should never be a conflict between doing the right thing and keeping their jobs. But this is exactly what making these positions elected positions does. It makes law enforcement and the courts a matter of political partisanship and public opinion where they should only be guided by law and fact. We see this extended to an extreme in the appointment process for the United States Supreme Court.
The United States must depoliticize the legal and court system if it wants to be a true democracy and it must reform the Supreme Court appointment process.
They would be wise to look at the Canadian experience where one cannot predict how Canadian Supreme Court justices will rule based on who appointed them.
Nothing separates America from the rest of the western world more than the violent nature of their society, and in particular American gun culture, which is somehow grounded in the Second Amendment, considered part of the United States Bill of Rights.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed [Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia]
Oddly most Americans, apparently including their Supreme Court, seem to ignore the first part of that statement.
Why a clause providing a right to own the means of mass murder would be included in a document intended to protect human rights only the Americans can answer, but I suspect the answer would not be very convincing.
The most compelling argument seems to be that America has become such an irreversibly dangerous and violent and lawless society that it is a necessity for everyone to be armed. I prefer to retain hope that America need not be such a society. However, regulating and reducing gun ownership is an absolute necessity to eliminating American's crime and violence epidemic.
The rest of the civilized world seems to manage quite well by considering firearms ownership to be a highly regulated privilege similar to automobile ownership but America seems to believe it is still living in the era of the wild west.
Compounding the problem of the Second Amendment is the American absolutist approach to rights, which makes it not only impossible to properly regulate gun ownership but also makes it near impossible to outlaw hate speech or prevent terrorist white supremacist war lords from forming private armies and using them to intimidate other citizens, usually non-whites or non-Christians, not to mention their threat to democracy itself.
A charter of rights need not be absolutist, as clause 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms demonstrates:
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982]
I must say that the Supreme Court of Canada has done an admirable job in interpreting that clause in a reasonable fashion, without any sign of political partisanship.
We have looked at issues that have the most obvious legislative and constitutional solutions. We are not going to attempt to deal with all the challenges facing America today, including race relations, police misconduct, misogyny, sexual inequality, LBGTQ rights, Islamophobia, anti-science attitudes, and on and on. Most of these issues require changes beyond public policy, changes to the social culture of America.
But we would be remiss if we did not examine the two pillars that make America what it is, and I believe hold it back from what it could be, the worship of unbridled capitalism and individualism, coupled with an irrational fear of "socialist" ideas.
Interestingly enough U.S. News & World Report has just issued it's quality of life ratings and the top 10 countries are countries with "socialist" ideas.
Meanwhile, under American capitalism income inequality today may be higher today than in any other era. As an example, Amazon's Jeff Bezos made 1.2 million times the median Amazon employee in 2017.
Of course he receives that income because he works 1.2 million times as hard as the workers that actually provide the services Amazon sells. It has nothing to do with worker exploitation or predatory business practices.
Amazon is only one example of how American capitalism has come to work. America is a long way from the theoretical pretense of fair profits and and decent wages and working conditions.
American capitalism is inextricably intertwined with American individualism and the idea that not only can anybody, but everybody, can become a millionaire. There is no need for redistribution of wealth when capitalism can create an unlimited amount of wealth. There is no such thing as limits to growth as the earth has unlimited resources and energy and the planet has an unlimited ability to absorb the effects of unbridled industrial capitalism. All of this of course is what the experts refer to as bullshit but it drives the American capitalist philosophy because it is a simple answer to so many complicated questions.
It is this frame of mind that links capitalism to individualism and the idea that if everybody acts in their own self interests the interests of society as a whole will be served and the somewhat related credo that "what's good for General Motors is good for America". This is what enables so many Americans to put the interests of the wealthy and corporations before all else and explains why so many voters tend to vote against their own self interests.
It also explains the hesitance of so many in America, during this global pandemic, to make small sacrifices of individual freedom, like wearing a mask, for the sake of saving the lives of their fellow Americans and their willingness to simply disregard the advice of experts when it is inconvenient for them. Contrast that with other western countries where the sense of community is much stronger than individualism and the infection and death rates are much lower.
Electing a leader that does not depend on the worst of America for his base of support will certainly help but if America wants to solve its problems it needs to build a sense of community. America has massive problems that will require much more than people seeking to serve their own self interests. They require people working together for the good of the whole society.
It is becoming obvious that the measures necessary to fix American society will require a tremendous amount of political will and fundamental cultural changes. No doubt the usual political observers and experts will all agree that that simply is not possible. We know who failed to even try, but can the American people Make America Great Again.
