The Cow Hat Revolution

This is from a Journal/Essay entry on my own blog.  I did not intend it to evolve into a stand alone entry but it did so I brought it here and gave it a title.

Events are working out that shows my democracy topic is a timely choice to write about.

A man in a cow hat representing a rebel without a cause mob shut down congress while congress certified our President elect. A mob of rabble roused by Donald Trump who refused to leave office and foolishly attempted a coup. His childish ill thought out tantrum has embarrassed America. Five people died. It can't be argued that our political system is not broken. We need to fix it. America is a mess.

A known Q Anon provocateur. I suspect well paid by someone.

To fix our broken democracy we have to understand what democracy is and how in America it is broken. There is a solution. I was going to start with an example of the solution but the Washington DC events this week make me realize, if I jump right to an example people will freak out and stop reading. The solution is contrary to American indoctrination. Context has to be set before the solution can be understood and given the consideration it deserves.

Democracy is when people choose their own legislators. This simple definition means a small group does not make social decisions without representation from everyone. This simple bland definition does not make you think. Saying something is a certain way does not mean it is that way. If you are troubled because democracy is not working in America you know everyone is not being represented despite machinery for picking legislators by the people allegedly being in place. But thinking that we might not live in a system that is democratic is unpleasant. In America money corrupted elections and took control away from people. Thinking we might have less control of our destinies than we believe is a scary thought.

Democracy in Athens, the birthplace of democracy, was different from American democracy. The difference is typically explained by saying we have a representative democracy instead of a direct democratic system. The practical reason given that America is not a city state like Athens was. America is a huge nation. But this is a thoughtstopper of a reason. Sausage is assumed but how it is made is ignored. Voting is our sausage.

The human love of technology imagines voting, the patch that makes representative democracy resemble real direct democracy in an obtuse way, to be an improvement. But our pure unquestioning love of technology makes you not ponder beyond if an election was honest and fair or a fraud. Necessity forces a fairness evaluation on you because voting depends on honesty. But an honest election is always considered good in America with untarnished perfection. A dishonest election is simply bad unless your side wins. But the process of voting can be a perversion of democracy even when honest. How this can be I will explore in my next entry.

Voting is aristocratic. In America voting was crafted to preserve the power of politicians and political donors. The established order of things. Rules and traditions in American voting are set to serve the needs of money not people. As things are, we get nothing from government that people need unless money is also served.

Climate change is a human need that money will ignore. We will not get climate change legislation in our broken democracy. Money never favors equality or human need without pressure. Money defers to profit for owners in all decisions. Until we fix our democracy to serve people, lack of health care will continue to kill most of us. Student debt, regular employment at a living wage, pick your issue, if you want any of what you want then American democracy needs to be fixed. It needs to be fixed before anything else can get fixed. Fixing democracy is not more important than other problems, but to have any chance of solving any critical issue, democracy has to be fixed.

Equality in general is a good thing and something society should move to. People in more equal societies are happier and live longer. That is a measured fact. Equality in representation is something American Democracy needs or only power is served. Power unchecked will ruin the world and may cause our extinction. People, not the few, need the power. In American Democracy we do not have equality of representation. The needs of people, real human need, won't be provided for until we change how we elect. Democracy has much to offer. Americans have not explored all it can offer.

I will get into what sortition is in detail eventually. I intended to learn more about it and make the exploration of the topic into a project here as a way to organize my effort. If I do a good job (and I will) it will be worth reading. That is good enough, but I intend this effort to be more than good enough.

On my right sidebar you can see a Zardos cube with Biden's face on it. Biden won the election. The cube spins. The cube used to switch between Biden, Trump or Myself when you could make a straw vote for POTUS here. One vote for each IP address was allowed. I added myself as a choice because I think I am a better choice than Biden or Trump was. After the election I left the cube to show Biden since we are stuck with him now.

Adding myself as a choice was not arrogant. I have at least average capabilities and the American leadership bar is very low. Neither Biden nor Trump glows with competence IMHO, and both are career politicians. Trump pretends to be something else, but Trump is a Politician even if he is something else. Politicians are factotums of money and power who do not represent the will of the people. The will of the people being equal representation to address common problems as I will explain.

Had I been elected I would have surrounded myself with very smart people and had them run the country. Rule by experts with me making sure their decisions serve the people, basic morality, and their decisions moved us in the right direction. Sometimes experts have trouble with the right direction. It would be a job I would have taken for a while hoping to do a good enough job to enjoy an unsupervised road trip across the country when my term was up.

My method would not have been exactly like sortition. I fantasized my method before I knew what sortition was. On the surface my method looks ordinary, but my imagination saw sortition. I have figured a few things out. Localize if possible, so people own their actions. Government is an exercise of public trust. Everything short of raw military movement must always be transparent. Julian Assange with Wikileaks tried to bring transparency into the world. Julian Assange is a soldier in the battle for truth who is trying to give democracy a missing ingredient, transparency. Transparency is needed because there are good men and women but there are also broken people who do evil things. Full transparency of public service helps. Like local control where appropriate, it makes make people responsible. I came to realize that people become lost in their own realities and understand sortition is a way to stop that from happening.

My straw poll/election in my sidebar was neither serious nor was it a joke. The Secret Service certainly did not consider it a joke. Of that I know. More evidence of a broken system but that is a topic for another day. I will stay focused on democracy and avoid personal segue. That said, this is a work in progress.

My next entry will examine flaws in American Voting. Sortition involves random numbers, so I will have to give more background than I have about the problems with our existing system before anyone will see randomness as part of a reasonable solution.

If you want to see the spinning cube you have to go here. https://chasingthesquirrel.com/