By Emmit Other
You are one of us
If you shut your mouth
We are the servants
We are the second class
We are equal by our servitude
We proudly bare our neck for the yoke
And we will make you serve with us
Bend the knee with us
We will break you
Just like they broke us
Whether you like it
Or not
We've previously argued about the idea that a majoritarian electronic democracy with very reliaable non corruptible state structures could actually work in a way that makes no one happy but makes Representative Democracy look as quaint as Fuedal Monarchies did in terms of abusive structures. But if Just In Time flat structures do exist; with the bite of the state but the nearest utopian style minimalism that reality still demands for a functional state. But for the state to do the things that most people want it to do like deliver the mail and protect you from slavery and poverty and loniliness it will need to have structures. It will need to have institutions. And at some point, you make decisions in a fair society based on geographic region. It is only acceptable to make decisions by region rather than by population when you get to the level at which society must regard the needs of the one with the needs of the many. The many MUST recognize the needs of the invidivudal, because the individual is the many.
Which is a lot of fancy words for saying take what history says with a very heavy dump truck of salt. On the other hand, in the normal real world, people want to have a reason to get up in the morning; have something to do, and not worry about their basic needs like feeding themselves, clothing themselves, and being able to spend their time doing the things that they want to do and do it at level for their own needs not those of a small elite few who are particularly assholes. That means democracy, there is no way around that, and that means that there will be disagreements about how to do things. So you need to decide where we need to be free as a society and be free as an individual and they are not the same and they are the same. And extermists will continously and sometimes with out reason push their own view there; when most of the time common sense and intuition says it has to be a balance, and that no one can really decide what that balance is but the majority.
But everyone lives somewhere. And your sense of where that somewhere is may very. For some people, their whole world is a part of a city that is a few blocks and everything they would ever want government to do should cover that area and what those people in that area would want is all government should ever be or do. And then there are some who believe the world should have no borders and that anything that happens within those borders should apply to everybody everywhere. And for most of us, we dont really think of the world like that. We just want things to be normal and let us care about what we care about. But for those fringes, it isnt about me or you but really about grouping people all as one big whole for everything that it is they care about against the things that people in one part of the country want compared to everyone else. And those people will form coalitions of the things they want. That's been happening for as long as we can remember.
Even in a minimalist flat utopia, nobody wants to have trash dropped where they live, no one wants to be the last in line for resources or even the newest upgrade to vital technology like telephones or the internet or whatever random thing it is next infrastructure wise. Your system of government needs to understand a sliding scale of invidivuality by geography to understand that you cant let a group of people dominate even a small geographic area against its will any more than you can decide to make just .000001% of your population be slaves. You are either all the way against slavery, or you are a slaver. And no one wants just a little poop in their sandwich. That means in a just society, a truly just society you need to balance the needs of the city or even the city block against the needs of a nation. You need to treat the people of 16th street and Elm just the same as you treat the people of Wyoming.
And to me, the sweet spot for that to happen isnt some demonic compromise of self sovereignty of the many by minority geographic tyranny. Its to make sure that when the rubber hits the road to decide whether a street is going to get paved here or there, that both parties have an equal voice in the room. And that means that the people who show up and engage in the policy making at the institutional level have to have the right to do that. It comes to how you spend your time and focus. I dont have all the answers, but I know at the department level, the actual top level of execution, those that want to be in a self identified geographic location should be able to have their interests equally represented. And I dont know what that structure will look like, but I imagine a just version would be as chaotic as the web of life itself.
I come not to Praise the States, but to Bury Them.
So let's start off with the fact that I am not biased against Rural areas, but rather evil, and since Conservatism is the most consistent and reliable form of evil and one of the areas conservatism tends to manifest the most is in Rural areas, be aware of my perspective. Indeed, to me, Rural areas should be serene and dynamic places with schools just as good as cities, where people can work from home and still live and shop locally. Before dealing with a psychotic boomer landlord, we had nothing but positive experiences in Greenfield MA, but that is because the state actually provides some decent infrastructure for the city in education and other benefits instead of turning it into Laboratories for Meth. The term "Laboratories for Democracy" refers to a supposed strength of the federal system in which the states can try localized solution to wide spread problems. And sometimes this has worked; the legalization of marijuana, reform of Gay Marriage etc, but for every success there are ten failures.
The American South and its record on rights and now the American Red State and its record supporting fascism is simply unacceptible. And for a long time, rural areas have resented cities and in several states in America, fuck things up for them as much as possible. Almost every red state does this; as well as New York. in the case of Illinois or Oregon, its the opposite with more progressive and enlightened urban areas dominating the politics of the rural areas. Needless to say, what you never see in any state except Massachusets, Vermont or Hawaii are education rural areas fighting educatated urban ones. When 47 out of 50 laboratories let a third of their employees snack on lead paint chips like potato chips, then something is not working. And the States allow walking talking pieces of Excrement like Desantis or Noem or Abbot to literally terrorize their citizens, then its time to review the entire concept of the state.
So if we federalized the functions provided by the states, what would that mean? Well, it would mean that if we had a decent federal system of ranked choice voting and multiple parties and federal recalls then conservatives could never steal the opportunities of children ever again. It would mean a federalized police force would have federal standards for murder police; and dont get me wrong, federal law enforcement still murder with impunity but the worst offenses still get investigated by the inspector general and the FBI instead of off the chain sherrif departments or private militias taking over local governments with banned books and terrorism in local towns. We would have parties that were better balanced.
The consistent thing I keep hearing from liberals about the solution to nazification is education. And that is readily apparent in Massachusets; centuries of prioritizing literacy and education has made Western Massachusets remarkably nazi free for a rural area. But the operative term there is centuries. And let's remember that Europe still has its nazi parties in the far right or its nazi adjascent ones in conservative ones. But Europe has until the last few years proven far more resistant to nazification, and none of them except Germany had a federal structure. And yet despite the anti nazi laws (which I approve of) the AfD is running amok in the rural east. And its not like Germany hasnt spent money there. No, when you have local governments of a certain size, there is a risk of conservatives taking tehm over.
Now until the last few years, I've always liked Federalism. I still love the system in theory, but I have to ask this to counter the idea...Which of your rights do you want conservatives stealing or fucking up? Conservatives fuck up and corrupt and destroy everything they touch, and while they might gain control of a national government, they can be redone at the national level. Do you want your kids to grow up ignorant? Or framed for taking drugs they never touched by the local cops? Do you want your parks ruined and slimed by polluting businesses? Even your local traffic ordinances can be weaponized by fascism to try to kill you or have no safety mechanisms whatsoever. I know I dont want conservatives in charge of anything, and one way to do it is to ensure that there are no local governments for them to destroy and corrupt.
So I've said before that we need constitutional societies to teach this as a wide spread cultural practice; we should have lectures on new constitutions and whole univerisity departments but they should also be as common as historical reenactments. The province of reform and better government are something that belong to all of us and you can't have a grass roots democracy if there isnt civic training and civic participation. But classes are not a proper measure of how to do this. One of the most educational experiences I ever had was a program in high school called Youth in Government where we went to the Colorado State Legislature to actually make mock bills and have a shadow governor, shadow senators, shadow press agents and shadow representatives. Government is a practical active skill and all members of a democracy should understand actively how it works. When you know what a legislative committee is or what your legislators are doing it makes it less arcane which increases transparency and accountability. You know, for example, how terrible Republicans are in doing any kind of governance whatsoever, and how inept democrats are at treating fascism like the threat that it is.
One of the most interesting LARPs I've ever taken part in is the NSDM or National Security Decision Making Game, where two cells are typically made with roles and political positions representing the interests and structures of two competing governments and a baroque but functional system to resolve mirrors of the real world for things like the US vs North Korea or Iran vs Saudia Arabia etc. The games dont mimic the real world exactly, nor would they pretend that, but they are great ways to highlight one system vs another and how they actually work when the sausage of decision making actually takes place. My perfect example of how to do an exercize that could happen in every school in America would be a three day session, where you spend the first day teaching people the basics of what a constitution is, what governments around the world have done and what will be happening the other two days. The second day would be a larp and also a constitutional design session where you actually make a functional government (or disfunctional government) and the third would be a larp showing the government that people just made actually working in a crisis. This serves many purposes; including demystifying the process of making one, and also ensuring that people see the consequences for design decisions; like how baroque the Electoral College is and how it is a miracle that it took until 2020 before it was a serious threat to our democracy.
I really intend to run this eventually; though stability has thus far not allowed. In another blog I'm doing a bucket list and will be adding this to a bucket list. I think that the value of this exercize is you can explore about a lot of different systems of government and see what works, and once you do you can also see how easy it is to find something that works a hell of a lot better than the current crap 1789 constitution. I've said it before and I'll say it again; the 1789 constitution at the TIME IT WAS MADE, was brilliant and well ahead of its time; visionary even. But we've had close to 250 years to learn lessons from it and we've learned a lot, many of which I am applying as able to this political blog, but the short version of it is, the current systme is clearly not working by any defintion of the word and needs to be reformed. The problem is, we've ossified as a culture and trust our 'political leaders' to have our interests or that some other magical leader will come along and initiate this process.
Balderdash.
I've made a poem about it, but I'll retell the story here. Once I sat in a movie theater with my wife and the projector stopped working. It was a crowded tehater, andw e all sat there waiting for someone to fix it. Five minutes went by, and I looked around, and it was apparent that everyone else was thinking the same thing. I stood and went and got the people to fix the damn thing. I have always known and understood that there is no "Someone Else." I dont agree with the politics of the documentary "Waiting for Superman" but I do like the point of the title and the point the documetary that people knew education wasnt working but that they were all sitting around waiting for some magical messiah to fix things. To fix our political process we all need to roll up our sleeves and come up with a strategy and then take over the democratic party (since the Republican party is broken and pointless beyond repair) and initiate a constitutional fix.
It sounds like pie in the sky, but what's the alternative? It's not like the Democrats are actually going to fix things on their own. Why should they? They have a good thing going where they force progressives to vote for them by threatening them with the nazi republicans, and thanks to Duviger's Law and a lack of Ranked Choice Voting make third parties effectively non existant and useless in the United States. Even if the Republican Party implodes; what's waiting in the wings? The Lying Liberatians or the Russian Anti Vaxer Greens? Its the Democrats or nothing, and we need a whole hell of a lot more at this point to fix things than just a couple of laws. The Democrats always promise to make us live in Shangrila if they get the Holy Trifecta, but those are at best incremental reforms and dont address the fact that the 1789 Constitution allowed one of the two parties to become full on insurrectionist Nazis and has totally failed to address climate change. Look, I'm not saying the democrats havent done good things; Biden's Infrastructure Reduction Act and the Election Security Act were good things, but neither of them nor a damn thing that Biden has done or that Harris promises to do if she gets the Magical Holy Trifecta (blue no matta who!!!) will fix the underlying problem of Nazis.
A cabinet will have many ministeries or if American they will likely still be called Departments with Secretaries...but seven positions should be coequal and share the provisions that the current President as Head of Government has the following:
Head Legislator - This position directs the parties legislative efforts to push an agenda of the governing coalition. They are effectively also the head of the Party that runs the coalition.
Head Commander - This position is specically the civilian commander and chief of the armed forces. This person has no other duty but to command the military as dictated by the dictates of the parliament and if time permits the populace at large. His duty is to call and have votes to ratify a declaration of war and justify why it is needful. It should be ratified by the population or it doesnt happen. In war, he commands the army and war strategy.
Head Justice - This position represents oversight of the prosecutoral agents in each executive department or agency. He directs strategy and also directs the prosecution of all laws enacted by the Parliament. He can investigate anyone. Effective Head of all Law Enforcement agencies such as the FBI or DHS.
Head Treatier - This is not a seller of treats but a souped up secretary of state who is in charge of ensuring ratification of all treaties or international participation in multi national government organizations including Military / Mutual Defense treaties. He can veto any action by the Head Justice or Head Commander that violates an agreed upon international treaty. He is also able to investigate the Head Justice for criminal violations so that no one is in charge of investigating themselves.
Head Secretary - Runs all other departments or agencies not covered by Justice, State or Defense. May veto any action covering a law or regulation effecting their agencies. In charge of earned benefits and laws and regulations governing State Charters created by the National Chorus
Head Ombusman - Always has standing in any court. In charge of defending laws not enforced by anyone else. If the law isnt enforced by him for a period of time then it becomes null and void. In charge of receiving direct citizen positions and representing them in court so that the individual has a representative at the highest level of governments. The Elites deserve nothing.
Head Dodger - Able to veto over all other positioned. Named after the Artful Dodger and is in charge of admistration of courts and agencies that enforce the will of the courts. Prosecutes or decides all Contempt enforcement whether of court or the Parliament or the Chorus or the National Assembly/population. Is the effective voice of the National Assembly/Population at large and in charge of ensuring that the popular will is maintained and that election integrity ensures cooperation with the government. Also always has standing in any court.
All Vetos can be overridden by Parliament AND/OR by the National Assembly / Population.
So if we are flattening and democratizing government to keep capitalists and conservatives from destroying it, we need to make the voter the ultimate arbiter of everything and allow every judicial decision, bill, policy or appointment to be appealed to the people writ large, but we should also make people only need to get involved if they want. Parliaments mix party interests in the legislative and executive function, and I think having a cabinet of agencies with a devolved prime minister spread wide and flat allows parties to form deals which is what parliaments do best.
But the party law makers as legislatures should only draft legislation which must be ratified annually by the populace whi can vote simply by colored party line or get into the weeds and ratify or not ratify by individual bill; as well as have an option demanding a follow up election where that bill can be separated by sections and voted for or against. If the populace is educated and involved this endures a good society indeed but if its just parties them the parties know they can jam crap down peoples throats like the UK parliament and nasty tories; since they can be recalled at any time and ALL legislation but be ratified by the majority of the population.
Corruption is still possible, but corruption is alway possible but unless the population has some reason to get something out of the law, they will never approve it and since laws must be reratified every year that means it wont last if people dont want it.
