CSotD: How stupid do they think we are?
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That’s the $750 question, but, while we wait for those cartoons to come in, let’s examine the rest of the evidence:
Tom Toles (AMS) plays with a well-known Franklin anecdote, opening a difficult question.
The original was “A lady asked Franklin (at the close of the Constitutional Convention): “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin replied: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Someone on Bulwark noted the other day that, each time he mentions the US being a democracy, he gets a snippy email from some pedant reminding him that it’s actually a republic, which is true but rarely relevant.
It is here.
The Founders didn’t envision a pure democracy, in part because, Pericles and his lot aside, there really hadn’t been such a thing, at least in European culture.
Franklin took some inspiration from the Iroquois Confederacy, but their consensus government had the advantages of time and space: They were willing to talk things out almost indefinitely and, if a portion of the group didn’t accept the solution, they could go form a different village, retaining all the clan alignments and other communal aspects of the overall nation.
(And I’d note that, the more they had to interact with Europeans, the less well their own system worked, the Revolution being a near-fatal disaster.)
The other factor is that the Founders didn’t expect everyone to participate in government, which is, yes, elitist, but, then again, not everyone participates. However, they did set it up so that everyone could participate, the gender, financial and racial constraints being added by individual states.
Then, to guard against tyranny of the majority, they added the Senate and the Electoral College as a sort of breakwater in case a majority of nitwits or truly evil people were to arise.
But 125 years later, that majority decided the Senate, rather than being appointed by state legislatures, should be popularly elected, and Dr. Franklin’s warning started coming into play.
You don’t have to embrace Rick McKee (Cagle)’s politics to accept his point that the Democrats screwed with the Senate rules when they were in power and are paying the price now that they are out of power. (The exception for Supreme Court nominees, noted in that 2013 article, was dropped later.)
It’s said that, when Samuel Colt was a young lad, he stayed home from church one Sunday, disassembled his father’s pocket watch and managed to get it back together and working before the old man got home.
Well, Samuel Colt never served in government and it was some lesser would-be engineers who took the Senate apart and are now contemplating the resulting pile of springs and gears on the table before them.
I’m not sure how to get the toothpaste back into the tube, and it’s entirely possible, looking back again at the Iroquois, that this democracy business only works in communities bound by strong familial ties but with open space available to break out and restart if necessary.
Which sure as hell ain’t us.
And if the Senate was supposed to be a steadying body, something like the House of Lords but based on merit rather than bloodlines, it no longer fulfills that function, and you can’t blame the watchmakers for what some dumb kids later did to their work.
Meanwhile, the whole world is watching, leading to this
Juxtaposition of the Day
I do not believe Peter Schrank chose Dear Leader’s outfit entirely at random, but declaring his desire to act as a dictator is not nearly as frightening as Turner’s observation that Trump will question the returns in front of a court he has chosen himself.
In more sane times, that would come across as a joke, but we’re already watching the GOP manipulate the system to pack the Court, and hearing Deplorables declare that, if a loophole is legal, then ethics and morality don’t come into it.
Though it may be interesting to see if Dear Leader’s ability to loophole his tax bill down to $750 has any impact on their theory.
Not only were we warned, but he even conceded that he dodged the taxman and insisted that it meant that he was smart.
“I told you so” doesn’t offer a lot of solace in cold times, though I’d point out that I really dislike Hilary but I wasn’t stupid enough to boycott the vote, even though the polls assured us that she was going to win.
The same polls that show Biden with a clear majority today.
John Darkow (Cagle) asks a relevant question, and it’s worth noting that not only have some people already voted by mail, but I’ve heard some pretty intelligent people suggest that there aren’t a large number of undecideds at this stage, or, at least, not a lot beyond the ones who say they’re undecided when they really mean they have no idea what’s going on and aren’t going to bother to vote anyway.
And, if you don’t vote, it doesn’t matter whether you live in a monarchy, a republic or a democracy. You live in somebody’s hip pocket.
However, the importance of turnout may explain why politicians suddenly become so much more inclusive when elections loom.
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