USStateFramework

Five Years Before the Summer of Failed Aging

2019-07-14: The political situation ATM — At this time, in the realm of ordinary bourgeois politics, the apparent best outcome would be a Trump reelection which would essentially smother the old order, unless the GOP lost the senate. From the perspective of that order, the best outcome would be perhaps a Warren-Sanders ticket which could kick the can down the road a long way. To do for the democrats what Buck has done for the GOP you need a Biden but it looks like he'll not make it, nor anything like him with a similar interring effect. The thing calling itself the Left can't produce an authentic challenge to the Established order, such as Trump superficially is, because a) it already has done so superficially with Obama, and b) it can't do real real against its normal fake real and Bucks real fake, so it just stumbles blindly off the stage of History as the oblivious establishment it in fact is. Impossible to guess at the odds with no ticket at this point, but there's no doubt the mentioned one, or one like it, could restore the broken order, prevent a reelection.
2020-03-03: Polls haven't closed yet but looks like the establishment maneuvers to stop Sanders in favor of Biden will succeed, as unlikely as that seemed last week.
2020-03-11: By my valuation of Lichtman's keys in Biden vs. Trump, Trump will be reelected, as things stand now and can be expected to be in November.
2020-05-18: What a difference a couple of months can make! Now Biden v Trump is set and the pandemic has acted as a light turned on to illuminate globally what was only partially clear before. Looked at the 538 site and an article where it is wondering why people think Trump will win. They seem incapable of grasping that people would let Trump have another four years even if the best that can be said for Biden is that the claims of his assault accuser are probably false because she is a liar. That and he's not Trump. So naturally people think, and they are likely right that Trump's energized and now detached (from the formerly restraining GOP establishment) dead end coalition will prevail as a result of gerrymandering, an energized base and the opposite of that on the not even pseudo left party of Obama and the Clintons. So things have come full circle and the alternation I mentioned at the start last Bastille day is now the present locked in lesser evil rerun that will be forced in November. In fact an unforeseen possibility now looms of a Trump reelection with Democrats taking the Senate but not by enough to swing a second impeachment. Any foreseeable outcome now will only more or less highlight the decrepitude of the US state structure with the additional solvent of an American Chernobyl.
2020-09-08: Is POTUS a Bullshit Job, in David Graeber's sense? Maybe when it's occupied by an innocuous figure like an Eisenhower or Clinton or Obama or any normal occupant before the current one. Trump reflects the real character of a large swathe of the US population which feels it has nowhere to go but with him and if he loses as he likely will, Biden/Harris is not going to change them into something they aren't since their base shares much of that character as well and they are only opposed to it in a superficial partisan way. If he wins, then that character will become an existential issue for those that don't share it (the educated and progressive) and thus for the current nation state, as slavery was at its last such conjuncture. As Chris Hedges put it in a recent sermon where he says he will vote for the Green candidate, this year you get your choice of representative of the oligarchy. The out of power party is betting if they can punt with at least four more years of Clinton/Obama, by 2024 the demographic shift will be sufficiently complete in their favor that whatever form Trumpism takes by that time will be unable to have more than a regional effect. The unaddressed contradiction is that in any national election, about 30% of the electorate decides because 45% don't vote.
2020-11-14: In this one it was more like 40% partly from Buck turning out his non voting base and otherwise a general tiredness of the winning. Xi has acknowledged and all 50 states have been called with 306 for Biden so the single act of the Buck show comes to it's expected end with he and Putin awaiting events. The clarity of the impending redivision in North America would seem like the point from which the recombination in the discussion on the obverse commenced.

Aurodia Ventifol and Luleo Primoc present a musical interlude

(huttese, vocoder makes it sound like french)

Thoughts below and at my User Page are speculation¹. Ofc I don't expect anything to come of such thinking, it is far removed from what is conceivable in the Old Republic. America (i.e. los Estados Unidos) unfortunately appears locked in a culture of mass ignorance and backwardness which only seems to flip between the obstinate and oblivious and the not even wrong, more violently the more heated the friction between global secular progress and local parochial recidivism becomes. A big part of this I think is that the supposed left, isn't really in fact a left at all, except in formal opposition to it's Sith moeity over a base of shared values. As constructs of they can hardly be any threat to the established order. I think the Bill and Melindas ² understand this and for this reason are largely unconcerned about actual revolutionary change such as occurred in Russia or France, assured an Obama or a Trump is as much of an actual revolution as the consuming masses will try or buy anymore (thanks Uncle Joe).

The replacement of the elected king with the living will of the people is meant in the scheme I spin with the caveat above to be a first step in a complete overhaul of the state framework but gradually and conservatively with transformation of the existing institutions piece by piece. The successive steps would be pursued only upon the successful completion of each prior.

Post POTUS, the most failed institution of the Old Republic, and with the people in direct executive control, the next transformation would be the Congress and of course finally the Judiciary completing a thorough modernization of the tripartite framework, top down.

First the Senate would be replaced with a body of subject matter experts, perhaps on the model of tenured academics and of course with a selection process based on merit/peer review rather than popularity, it would cease to have a legislative function as such, cancelling its effect as perhaps the most undemocratic element of the Old Republic. These might preserve state representation by a bridging rule from the old constitution.

Then the House of Representatives would be reformed to be a body of actual citizen representatives, more like what it originally was before a permanent professional political class took over. Since the Senate would be merely an advisory body, this would result in a unicameral structure with say 1 representative for every N 100K citizens, with N <= 5 initially for a count similar to the current apportionment. N would decrease to 1 as the body was devolved to the states with only committee and tripartite functions remaining in the capitol resulting in a body similar in size to the CPC NPC but in continuous session between elections (by the executive polling mechanism).

Finally and at some distance due to the technical challenges, the Judiciary would be replaced by automation, subsequent to a general reform of the body of law and delivery of legislation to make same possible, at every level, the federal last.

Globally and locally, a resolution of the culture wars by a rearrangement of states into larger and more diverse unions of more finely partitioned cultural preservation blocks carrying the currently contending factions into a more harmonious and efficient whole as part of the denouement of globalization with the Ancient central unions of Europe, China and India in leading roles and with a total number of on the order of 10 or fewer such but with increased local autonomy combined with efficiencies/possibilities that come only with a global scale of management, as has already been partially effected by late capitalism (q.v.).

In English speaking North America, this would take the form of new unions of red and blue counties superseding the former state and provinces which become like the ceremonial counties of various European countries which are distinct from the current operating jurisdictions. In this was the former state and federal structures of Canada nd the United States would become largely ceremonial with a shift of power to the counties and their representation in the supercontinental polity ("America").

There are more and pointed things to be said about human development, metabolic economic change, nationalism, populism, and race but they are even further removed from anything likely to break thru the prevailing mortmain so leaving them unsaid here, already done in bits elsewhere.

---

¹ In a good way, not like Ancient Aliens, man.
² A better version, as befits a more advanced epoch, of the Louis and Marie and Nicholas and Alexandras of an earlier version of essentially the same order.