Sarah Kendizor: The election shows the United States is a broken country

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-election-shows-america-is-a-broken-country/

On election night 2016, I wrote an op-ed for The Globe and Mail titled “A fascist’s win, America’s moral loss.” The premise of the piece was deemed provocative by those still clinging to the illusion of American exceptionalism. Surely the land of the free could not succumb to fascism. Surely checks and balances will hold. Surely more than 200 years of constitutional law could not be upended by the former host of The Celebrity Apprentice.

But Donald Trump was always an aspiring autocrat: one who spelled out his brutal policies during his campaign and put them into practice in office. He followed the dictator’s playbook: packing courts, purging agencies, profiting off the presidency, installing his family members into power, demonizing minorities and dismantling the institutions that could hold him accountable.

Mr. Trump is a historic president: the first president to say his political opponent (Joe Biden), his opponent’s family (Hunter Biden), his predecessor (Barack Obama) and his former opponent (Hillary Clinton) should all be jailed. He is the first president to be named as “Individual-1” in a federal criminal probe. He is the first president whose former campaign managers were all arrested for different crimes. He is the first president to be impeached for soliciting aid from a foreign state (Ukraine), the first to win an election with help from illicit foreign aid (in 2016 from Russia), and the first to pressure foreign leaders for dirt on the rival he baselessly thought should be imprisoned.

One should view these dubious milestones with profound unease. Mr. Trump never set out to govern, but to rule – and to profit. Mr. Trump’s backers are a mix of corrupt plutocrats, theocrats, oligarchs, and other bad actors who seek to strip my country down and sell it off for parts. They view the American people are disposable, as their response to the COVID-19 crisis has made abundantly clear. They will let us die, and they do so with brazen indifference, because they understand that in this system ordinary people have little leverage and even less protection. America is not yet a fully fascist country, but it is run like a mafia state.

Where does that leave Joe Biden? He is as vulnerable as the rest of us, running in an election whose basic legitimacy was in question before he even became the candidate. Domestic voter suppression, foreign interference, unsecure voting machines, and, more recently, the attacks on the U,S. Postal Service threatened election integrity. Failure to address these dangers led to voter disenfranchisement and, in terms of the destruction of postal infrastructure, sabotage by the Trump camp. And even if Mr. Biden is revealed to have won despite these obstacles, Mr. Trump, as we saw in the early hours of Wednesday morning, will likely refuse to concede or will claim the election results are invalid.

*snip*

[KPN]

1. Let me just add this one other paragraph from the piece to provide a bit more lucidity:

Regardless who is deemed president, Tuesday’s results were again, as I wrote in 2016, a moral loss for the United States. Mr. Trump still got millions to vote for him. Unlike 2016, they were not voting for a hypothetical president, the strongman savior he advertised himself to be. They voted for a known kleptocrat who let hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens die.

[pbmus]

2. EC..EC...EC...EC...EC...EC...EC...EC...EC

Much of the problem lies in the adherence to a written, static constitution that is not permitted to evolve (save and except for an amending mechanism that is almost impossible to work with). As a result, matters are locked in a manner that may have been right in 1776, but don't look so great in hindsight. Most notably, the electoral college system may have made sense when there were 13 colonies of more equal population, but now there are 50, many with low population, carrying disproportionate power.

Also, as the country becomes more urbanized, the "winner takes all" system within each state seems off--New York City carries New York State (good luck to a Republican there), and urban dwellers in Texas similarly are not heard. No one imagined, in 1776, a great urban migration and the differing views of its urban citizenry.

There are a myriad of other things that warrant revisiting, but cannot be, due to this rigidity. For instance, why are voting hours and requirements, down to the number of polling stations, so varied by state?

This all results in unfairness, a feeling of not being represented, and polarity of two ruling parties which no one imagined in 1776 would result.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. fubar

[Peregrine Took]

4. Thom Hartmann called it today. The Dems lack of 24/7 media exposure.

No matter how remote the area, if you turn on the radio all you get are evangelical preachers and hate radio.
When it comes to tv we are totally at sea. No channels no networks.
Why don't some of our billionaires buy a network?

[area51]

5. "They view the American people are disposable...."

Successive governments have viewed the American people as disposable; notice that we don't have healthcare as a basic right.

[Poiuyt]

6. Kick for later reading