There’s nothing “modified” about a dictatorship. Whether power rests in one hand or a few, the result is always the same. Those in power answer only to themselves and govern in their own best interests. If an oligarch wants to empty an aquifer for the water, fine. If an oligarch wants to bulldoze a national forest, so be it. If the oligarchs at Exxon want to drill in Yellowstone or the Arctic Refuge, who are we to stop them?
This shit is game over if they win. And you know the briefs have already been drafted accepting this ISL bullshit because that’s what the fanatics on the court were put there to do.
The state legislature was responsible for acting in the citizenry’s best interests. However, the citizenry had no effective way to force legislators to act in the people’s interests.
Well, there was the guillotine. But do we have to resort to barbarism to be civilized?
I was doing some ancestral research yesterday, and discovered my great great great grandfather (?) was born in 1793 and immigrated from Germany (Prussia) in 1847. So, I went looking for what was going on there around 1847.
That year, German historian Wilhelm Roscher defined the concept of enlightened absolutism. The basic idea was “everything for the people; nothing by the people.” Essentially some guy would claim to have been chosen or destined or what-not to rule, and would rule in the best interests of the people.
My principal occupation is to combat ignorance and prejudice … to enlighten minds, cultivate morality, and to make people as happy as it suits human nature, and as the means at my disposal permit (emp added).
–Frederick the Great, 1740-1786
Of course, this mission did not preclude favoring autocracy, silencing opposition, crushing criticism, colonial exploitation, or personal profit.
Why would they leave that just to create it here?
ETA: or why would they leave such a paradise to come to a place “of the people, by the people, for the people”?
They don’t legislate now. The Republican party is about gaining and holding power, not governing. They gave that shit up 20 years ago. The goal is power for its own sake. Do you really think they’re running so they can “change things.” No, they’ve been beating the same worn out drum of crime and family values and no taxes for 40 years. They have no ideas, just bumper stickers and fear. And being in a position of power brings with it all kinds of corrupt perks. How much can they get paid for voting a certain way? What favors can they extract?
They want to live like kings on the inside of a corrupt system. Fuck the country, our history, peoples’ needs and lives. Fuck it all for a few yachts, a half dozen palatial mansions around the world and the best of everything. Just ask Putin’s oligarchs.
Much of what you say urgently needs to be heard loudly and clearly. But words and phrases such as “tut-tutting”, “eye-rolling”, “condescending”, “bullshit”, and “horseshit” only cloud your message and insult people. If there were a way to register an anti-like on a post I would have done so, and doubly so on your next post, which goes even further beyond the pale. Try to get a grip, please!
Would that be an electoral dictatorship? Or just our representative democracy gone amok? What would we call a government where the President, Senator and Representatives are elected solely by legislators from the states? Why do we even, still, have the Electoral Count Act, or an “Electoral College?”
I’m trying to figure out how my representative can get away with never holding a public meeting.
I’m trying to figure out how my state senator has never once sent me a mailing. I have a problem with signing up for someone’s email, when don’t they get to mail their constituents for free?
It appears that this idea of “Independent State Legislators” has been kicked around in the SCOTUS for a good while now. Rehnquist talked about it – so did Alioto and Thomas. Back in 2000.
In describing the “independent state legislature” as a legal theory the author accepts the false premise of the agitators who have come up with it. It’s perhaps more accurately described as an anti-democratic political theory, holding that state legislatures have unchecked power to limit the franchise.
In truth, though, it’s a political, and specifically insurrectionary, tactic. Its purpose, transparently, is to ensure that only Republicans can win elections. To accept the ridiculous notion that this is some sort of good faith legal interpretation of the constitution is to give the fascists an unearned public relations favor.
I was friends with Rod Serling’s older brother Robert. He was married to my boss so I met him many times at social gatherings. Robert was an accomplished author in his own right and wrote the screen play for several of Rod’s “Twilight Zone” episodes.
