[-empyre-] a week to go on the trump effect

[Alan Sondheim]

A couple of points - everyone in the US, I think, should read both the 
Guardian article and the Wikipedia entry; they're excellent, for which 
thanks. Second, William points to a fundamental issue in the US and 
perhaps elsewhere - that so much of what we find catastrophic here is 
fundamentally infrastructural. Yet we act as if the issues are symbolic; 
if you watch, for example, Colbert and company, there are comedic attacks 
on Trump, which are brilliant - but at the same time they mask that T. 
isn't the problem, so much as the neoliberal/corporate/diplomatic 
structure that creates this kind of brutal power base in the first place. 
We talk on Fb about the fact that something like 30-40% of the country is 
now evangelical - with all that implies - and yet we don't act on a local 
level that deals with schoolboards and the defunding of public schools - 
including drastic defunding of arts, music, social studies and civics, 
blockplay for early levels, and even gym or outdoor play - all in favor of 
charter schools, STEM, and the like. Religion replaces civics; subter- 
anian racism replaces equality issues. Right-wing radio and websites are 
enormously popular; they talk, not _to,_ but _with_ the right, "they're 
one of us." Couple this with the gerrymandering mess (which seems 
irreversible) all over the country, along with county power in places like 
Georgia, and all the comedy falls away.

- Alan

On Sun, 2 Apr 2017, William Bain wrote:

*/had to cut and paste here/*

Personally I?ve learned a great deal from this discussion, not least from 
the way it started somewhat sakily and then grew out along different 
paths. Right now I just wanted to mention again the well known idea that 
the voting system needs overhauling. I mentioned proportional 
representation at some point and this morning I looke d over a few 
documents found on the internet. One is a short but thoruough runthrough 
of the situation from *The Guardian* dated June 2016. It?s a piece by 
Trevor Timm:<https://www.theguardian.com/comme> 
m-broken-democracy-clinton-sanders-primary [www.theguardian.com]> Into 
Wikipedia with /electoral reform in the united states/. What comes out 
there after a general discussion is that as I?m sure people here are 
already aware, there are different systems in different states. Section 4 
of the article mentions these systems, especially good (and abbreviagted) 
under the subtitle /electoral reform in specific states/. I think 
California and Oregon give the best basic assessment. Section 5 of the 
article is /References/ including a link to Laurence Lessig?s ?Republic, 
Lost; How Money Corrupts Congress [?]. That?s 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform_in_the_United_States 
[en.wikipedia.org]>

Best wishes, William