PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
Hexbear’s resident machinist, absentee mastodon landlord, jack of all trades
Talk to me about astronomy, photography, electronics, ham radio, programming, the means of production, and how we might expropriate them.>
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Joined 6 years ago
Cake day: July 25th, 2020
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This sentimental attachment to the Constitution shared by many Americans is ultimately self-defeating. We choose to bear this 250 year old sclerotic republic like a yoke around our necks. We look at the innumerable harm it unleashes on people inside and outside of its borders as the consequences of misleadership, instead of taking Stafford Beer’s advice and reaching the conclusion that the purpose of a system is what it does.
When public approval for the institutions chartered in Articles I, II, and III are all deeply underwater, the path to judicial reform is sealed off for a generation, and the path to constitutional amendments is completely impossible (requiring the approval of no less than 78 state legislatures), it is time to consider that this thing is a liability. It cannot be fixed or restored in any meaningful sense without producing the outcome you see in front of you today. If you want a different outcome, you need to build the system differently.
Take some of the good bits. The Bill of Rights is a good start (but only a start, and woefully insufficient for our age). But don’t shackle yourself or your political movement to this sinking ship. Don’t be the last person wringing your hands about the desecration of a document that nobody has taken seriously for generations.
Get rid of the bicameral legislatures. The Founders explicitly wrote that these were created for undemocratic purposes. Get rid of the lifetime appointments. Get rid of all the explicit exceptions granted for putting down uprisings and slave rebellions. Explicitly prohibit the private consolidation of media and material resources. There is a lot of garbage in this constitution that we could get rid of. It is not a magical document by any stretch of the imagination.
Otherwise we play this game where we wait and see for five generations whether or not the situation of media monopolization or partisan gerrymandering can be marginally improved. We don’t have time for this shit.