America, We Have a Problem part 1

That the boat is full of water is obvious.

The President is acting completely unhinged, communicating with the public by tweet, making policy statements that come directly from material in Fox news programs, legislating by edict, refusing to disassociate his business from his elected office, calling federal judges “so-called judge” when he loses a suit over one of his edicts, selecting candidates for cabinet positions that are beyond unqualified, a better description being destructive, and so on. The legislation by edict generally involves some illegal action, the curtailment of civil rights, or both.

The list is long and he has only been in office for a few weeks. For some time, the media has insisted on judging a president by accomplishments in the first hundred days. It is obvious that 100 days are not needed for an assessment of the performance of this president.

What to do about the boat is not obvious.

Since the boat is the country we live in, abandoning ship is not really a realistic solution. Emigrating is not as easy or pleasant as it sounds.  We have a lot to learn from South Africans who are fleeing their country.

That leaves saving the boat.

How to save the boat is a matter of contention.

There are two parts to fixing a boat that is full of water.

• Remove the water from the boat.
• Prevent water from getting into the boat.

In the instant case, remove the water from the boat would be a complete change in the government. We’re stuck with the executive branch until January 2021 and literally can’t do anything about it until November 2020.

We can begin to change the legislative branch in 2018. Success in that regard can render the actions of the executive branch ineffective, effectively starting to fix the holes that are letting the water into the boat. The administration can do a lot of damage in two years. Various forms of activism can help mitigate the condition of the boat by bailing water out, perhaps as fast as it is coming in, but if not, hopefully fast enough to prevent sinking until a rescue mission arrives.

The nature of the rescue mission is in strong contention. Some believe that the harbor is the only place for repairs. They have their focus set on the 2020 presidential election. Most of these folks always have their focus set on the presidential election. They turn out to vote every four years, while Congress is taken over by the opposition party two years later.

There is a lot of contentious discussion about how and why we got here. It was Sanders. It was Stein. It was Johnson. It was the voters. It was Clinton. It was the DNC.

If the point of the contention over blame is vendetta, scapegoating for personal satisfaction, or self-righteousness, it is a useless endeavor. There is an applicable three word phrase for this kind of action:

Get Over It.

There is no time nor purpose for that.

The point of determining what happened is prevention. Given that, let’s look at the situation:

• Trump won the electoral vote. Clinton won the popular vote.
• 45% of those eligible didn’t vote.
• Of the 55% who voted, the votes were distributed:
  • Trump – 45.94%
  • Clinton – 48.03%
  • Johnson – 3.27%
  • Stein – 1.06%
  • McMullin (Independent) – 0.53%
  • Castle (Constitution Party of the United States) 0.15%
  • 26 others combined – 1.02%

The first and most obvious suspect is the Electoral College, a procedure set forth in the Constitution Article 2 Section 1 and modified by the 12^th Amendment. Lots of folks dismiss this subject with We just need to get rid of the Electoral College. Well, folks, it isn’t all that easy. A constitutional amendment must be introduced in Congress and passed by a two thirds majority, then sent to the states. The legislatures of 38 states must then ratify the proposed amendment. That takes a lot of homework that hasn’t been done, so like it or not, that’s what we live with.

There have been opinions that the problem was Stein, Johnson, or Sanders (as a write-in) siphoning off the votes that should have been Democrat (as far as the Democratic Party is concerned). There are scenarios offered in which any of the three cost the election. These scenarios are similar to a sports commentator observing that If this team loses to that team and this other team loses eight of their next twelve games, we still stand a good chance of being in the playoffs. If it will take that much luck to make the playoffs, the team probably isn’t championship material anyway.

There were some number of Sanders supporters and perhaps others that voted for Trump. Trump was perceived as the lesser of two evils. That’s not a really good reason to vote for someone, but that kind of choice has become normal over the past five or so decades. Perhaps these people gave Trump the election, but if so, it would have been another what if what if what if situation.

The Democratic Party has said that the election was lost due to voters that should have stayed loyal to them. There is no should have. Party loyalty is a concept that the parties expect; however, they seldom provide anything in exchange. Our elections have too frequently been choices between bad and worse, or put another way, the lesser of two evils.

Forty-five percent of eligible voters did not vote. That can readily be attributed to voter apathy: people too lazy or disinterested to bother voting. There has not been a lot of thought given to the cause of the apathy perhaps being the poor offering of candidates to vote for.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are affectively the same party. Both parties accept enormous amounts of money from rich people and corporations and perform their duties as expected/instructed by those rich people and corporations. Both parties offer candidates that they (and/or their donors) select. That the term donor class has entered common usage is disgraceful. That the donor class runs the country is despicable. Part of those who voted for Trump or for other non-Democrat candidates, those that might not have under different circumstances or as some might state, should not have, were voting against the status quo and what they perceived to be the lesser of two evils. However, they failed to put a lot of thought into associating their intentions with their actions.

(part 2: Fixing the Boat)