There isnt really any significance between the people of one country and another, as far as things like intelligence and stupidity are concerned (especially one that is both not that old and whose population stems from a combination of different groups like the US, because by what mechanism could such a difference arise?). What we have in the US are the consequences of designing a political system badly. Id agree that the problem goes beyond merely the leadership, but I would be willing to bet that any group made to follow the specific system we have set up would eventually end up with roughly similar problems, just fit to the culture of the area in question.
I think America made critical missteps between 1930-1980 in terms of updating our government. Congress especially started to break down, with corruption heavily seeping in and things becoming more and more gridlocked until we get to today, where effectively nothing at all productive really happens in Congress.
Can anyone imagine any constitutional amendment happening these days, no matter how benign? I don’t think you could get them to agree water is wet.
Congress was the first branch to fall and rather than work to fix that, we’ve allowed the corruption to spread. Now the judicial branch is lost and the executive branch has taken supreme control.
America was founded on what is effectively an alpha version of democracy. Most other countries built upon that success and addressed obvious issues to varying degrees of success. Meanwhile America, instead of respecting the idea of a ‘living document’ instead venerated their constitution as a holy document and then calcified their government into total dead lock until it’s now about to collapse.
The supposition that the USA’s government was founded as an alpha version of democracy that failed to update seems ripe with American Exceptionalism. The claims suggest reform could have fixed a system built to serve a specific class. The system is working as intended with continued expansion of power into fewer hands.
The USA is not different in character from previous and existing systems of extraction. There is, and will continue to be, a class that benefits from said system. There are continued fomentings among the marginalized. Given the hegemony of the USA, Lemmy is a space where fomentings are happening. May such fomentings prefigure an end to extraction and heirarchy.
We really fucked up when we didn’t hang all the slave owners and give their land to the slaves like was promised. And just let the Southern states basically recreate slavery. The whole leadership and political apparatus of the South should have been destroyed for good after the Civil War ended not the milquetoast bargain that we ended up with.
The Union should have occupied those states and reformed the education system, the moral code and made damn sure anyone glorifying the Confederacy was hung. That and making sure the laws were just and fairly enforced.
We still are dealing with the consequences of it to this day.
The broken system is the reason there are so many bad faith actors in the first place. People are shaped by the systems around them. A well designed system wouldnt drive so many people to that point in the first place or incentivize actions on the part of the powerful that do so.
Liberalism was an improvement over monarchy for a specific class of merchant. The system has continued success for said class.
Using 1776 seems like a “life begins at conception” argument. The currently constituted system began closer to 1787. Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776. The Articles of Confederation were ratified in 1781. The Constitution was ratified in 1787.
No one is placing blame on the authors. It’s just a statement of fact. They created a system that had intrinsic flaws they were not aware of, due to the mechanisms that exposed some of the flaws not yet existing. Remember, the fundamental basis of this system we exist under was devised long before industrialization changed our economic and political landscapes. No one is faulted for their ignorance, you cannot account for things you do not know, but that doesn’t change the fact those systemic flaws still exist and have had far reaching consequences which have shaped society as we now know it.
If anyone is to “blame”, if you so need to assign it, it would be those who came after who saw the flaws manifest and, instead of correcting them, saw that they were exploitable for personal gain; so, endeavored to obfuscate those flaws as it served to entrench their own power of authority by exploiting them.
I think you could certainly argue they’d have been abolitionists if they weren’t mostly rich hypocrites but they quite literally took the next step on the ideological evolution that led to socialism.
The rise of liberalism was radical in a world of absolute monarchies. The rise of capitalism was radical in a world of merchantilism and protectionism.
Demanding that people who lived in that world just invent socialist thought is about as reasonable as me demanding that you personally make the final breakthrough on fusion reactors.
Even if you were capable of being a part of it, at this point in time you are working on the technology that will enable those future discoveries.
Later thinkers will build on your work. Marx both criticised and built on the thoughts of Smith and Locke.
There is not a continuum of political progress. Looking back at historical records, it is easy to create a narrative that political progress, like time, is linear and progressing toward some goal.
Systems without heirarchy continue to be an option. Prefiguring such a system without a monopoly on violence is the tricky bit.
There isnt really any significance between the people of one country and another, as far as things like intelligence and stupidity are concerned (especially one that is both not that old and whose population stems from a combination of different groups like the US, because by what mechanism could such a difference arise?). What we have in the US are the consequences of designing a political system badly. Id agree that the problem goes beyond merely the leadership, but I would be willing to bet that any group made to follow the specific system we have set up would eventually end up with roughly similar problems, just fit to the culture of the area in question.
I think America made critical missteps between 1930-1980 in terms of updating our government. Congress especially started to break down, with corruption heavily seeping in and things becoming more and more gridlocked until we get to today, where effectively nothing at all productive really happens in Congress.
Can anyone imagine any constitutional amendment happening these days, no matter how benign? I don’t think you could get them to agree water is wet.
Congress was the first branch to fall and rather than work to fix that, we’ve allowed the corruption to spread. Now the judicial branch is lost and the executive branch has taken supreme control.
America was founded on what is effectively an alpha version of democracy. Most other countries built upon that success and addressed obvious issues to varying degrees of success. Meanwhile America, instead of respecting the idea of a ‘living document’ instead venerated their constitution as a holy document and then calcified their government into total dead lock until it’s now about to collapse.
The supposition that the USA’s government was founded as an alpha version of democracy that failed to update seems ripe with American Exceptionalism. The claims suggest reform could have fixed a system built to serve a specific class. The system is working as intended with continued expansion of power into fewer hands.
The USA is not different in character from previous and existing systems of extraction. There is, and will continue to be, a class that benefits from said system. There are continued fomentings among the marginalized. Given the hegemony of the USA, Lemmy is a space where fomentings are happening. May such fomentings prefigure an end to extraction and heirarchy.
We really fucked up when we didn’t hang all the slave owners and give their land to the slaves like was promised. And just let the Southern states basically recreate slavery. The whole leadership and political apparatus of the South should have been destroyed for good after the Civil War ended not the milquetoast bargain that we ended up with.
The Union should have occupied those states and reformed the education system, the moral code and made damn sure anyone glorifying the Confederacy was hung. That and making sure the laws were just and fairly enforced.
We still are dealing with the consequences of it to this day.
No system can survive the concerted efforts of bad faith actors to break it when they make up half of the population
The broken system is the reason there are so many bad faith actors in the first place. People are shaped by the systems around them. A well designed system wouldnt drive so many people to that point in the first place or incentivize actions on the part of the powerful that do so.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame the authors for not inventing socialism in 1776, but sure.
Liberalism was an improvement over monarchy for a specific class of merchant. The system has continued success for said class.
Using 1776 seems like a “life begins at conception” argument. The currently constituted system began closer to 1787. Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776. The Articles of Confederation were ratified in 1781. The Constitution was ratified in 1787.
No one is placing blame on the authors. It’s just a statement of fact. They created a system that had intrinsic flaws they were not aware of, due to the mechanisms that exposed some of the flaws not yet existing. Remember, the fundamental basis of this system we exist under was devised long before industrialization changed our economic and political landscapes. No one is faulted for their ignorance, you cannot account for things you do not know, but that doesn’t change the fact those systemic flaws still exist and have had far reaching consequences which have shaped society as we now know it.
If anyone is to “blame”, if you so need to assign it, it would be those who came after who saw the flaws manifest and, instead of correcting them, saw that they were exploitable for personal gain; so, endeavored to obfuscate those flaws as it served to entrench their own power of authority by exploiting them.
Had they been true to the “land of the free” motto, they would have.
I think you could certainly argue they’d have been abolitionists if they weren’t mostly rich hypocrites but they quite literally took the next step on the ideological evolution that led to socialism.
The rise of liberalism was radical in a world of absolute monarchies. The rise of capitalism was radical in a world of merchantilism and protectionism.
Demanding that people who lived in that world just invent socialist thought is about as reasonable as me demanding that you personally make the final breakthrough on fusion reactors.
Even if you were capable of being a part of it, at this point in time you are working on the technology that will enable those future discoveries.
Later thinkers will build on your work. Marx both criticised and built on the thoughts of Smith and Locke.
That’s just how fucking time works.
There is not a continuum of political progress. Looking back at historical records, it is easy to create a narrative that political progress, like time, is linear and progressing toward some goal.
Systems without heirarchy continue to be an option. Prefiguring such a system without a monopoly on violence is the tricky bit.