Maybe. Maybe not. While the Russian monster Vladimir Putin might be—wow! did that moron miscalculate!—the Chinese one, Xi Jinping, is not. Fascism is on the move worldwide, buoyed up by the economic downturn, the remainders of the Covid-19 pandemic, OPEC+ greed (driven by the fascists MBS and Putin), and hunger and starvation caused by the loss of Ukrainian grain (also caused by Putin). The world’s oldest democracies are faced with war in Europe, if not nuclear armageddon and waffling, young democracies that are wondering whose side to pick; autocratic countries that are far worse than the old colonial powers or the chaos any democracy must deal with now in order to survive.
The US isn’t immune to this fascist pandemic, a long-term existential one compared to Covid. We’re fighting our own battles against the Fascist Party of America (FPA) aka Good Old Piranhas aka Republican Party. True conservatives in the US are rare and becoming extinct; the elephant has become a fascist bull out to gore and destroy American democracy. As stated in my previous post, many in the FPA want a civil war. It will be a bloody one if it occurs.
Meanwhile, democratic sanity and reason have to survive two important elections, the 2022 midterm and the 2024 presidential election; there’s a possibility that fascist insanity and chaos will win, and our spiral down into the cesspool of fascism will continue.
But let’s assume the country doesn’t go completely to hell in 2022 or 2024. (Given the current state of affairs in the US right now, that’s a big assumption!) In fact, let’s assume that the Dems control both houses of Congress after 2022 and the presidency after 2024. (One can hope.) What steps must be taken to make the country safer?
Reform SCOTUS. We must stop the fascist junta of judges in the highest court in the land from making its continual attacks on rights and its usurption of legislative and presidential powers. That’s easy to accomplish, given the hypothesis above: Add enough judges to neutralize the fascist ones! Term and age limits should also be put in place. Or change the appointment of judges to elected ones so the will of the people can prevail.
Reform the Senate. Again, term and age limits are required. The filibuster should be eliminated. Even better, we should do away with the Senate completely! It’s an aristocratic body that the Founding Fathers saddled us with and now only serves to obstruct and adds an unneeded layer, giving lobbyists one more chance to thwart the will of the people.
Do away with the Electoral College. Another anachronism the Founding Fathers saddled us with, this was an undemocratic bow to their fears of the popular vote. It’s as useless as your appendix and can many problems for the body politic. How many elections have there been where the presidential candidate wins in the EC and wins the popular vote? Not recent FPA candidates, that’s for sure. (Both Bush and Trump got creamed in the popular vote. Biden won both!) The popular vote should determine our president, not a bunch of unpopulated red states!
Weaken the power of the states. Both the Senate and the EC were created by the Founding Fathers to ensure states’ rights. In our modern world, federalism has to take precedence or we’re doomed. In other saner democracies, states (often called provinces) become mere administrative units. Taking away most of their powers in favor of federalism would prevent isolated states from going over that fascist cliff (women’s reproductive rights are a recent victim, but there are many others). It would also create a more agile and logical bureaucracy—federal, state, county and muicipal levels—each with its administrative duties and federally sanctioned rules and limitations. In any case, the federal government should always trump the lower levels.
Of course, the immediate existential problem for the US and world democracy is to defeat the fascists. Only then can we create a new and saner world order. You can start by voting for the Dems in 2022 and 2024. We can’t let the fascists win!