Let's Clear Up One Point

In an election cycle like this one the full collection of hypocrisies, deceptions and outright lies present a "bank of topics" which will fracture even the most determined intention of remaining on track.  MeanMesa understands this.

Furthermore, the next sentence will not begin with the word "but."

We may need to "wander around" a little, but the entire point in this post is one point.  This "point" of ours will have essentially nothing to do with the latest polls, the economy, foreign policy, tax policies or toxic religion.  

What's left?

Democracy.

If you're holding out for a "lolly pop" 7th grade civics paper, this may not be the right blog for you.

A Short History To Get Things Started

While the smoke was still rising from the wreckage of Pearl Harbor, the more reckless voices among the Japanese high command were toying with the idea of invading California.  The world had seen how the Imperial Japanese military had behaved in the conquered cities of Asia -- Singapore, Rangoon and Hong Kong.

Our "single point" draws us to this question:  "What do we think would have happened to the 'democratic process' in the Western part of the United States if the Japanese had managed to invade and hold it?"

Remarkably, there would probably have been elections -- just not elections particularly similar to what we would expect in the United States.  We need not speculate too much more.  

The "single point" is, simply, that the process of representational democracy which is made possible by the "engine" of free elections in this country would not have been possible.  The traditionally democratic process would have been constrained by all sorts of interests imposed by the invaders.

Whatever might have happened would not have had much to do with representational democracy.

A Few Fundamentals

The United States is a Republic.  The Republic is controlled by representatives elected in a democratic process.  Our Constitution spells this out in no uncertain terms.

The democratic process is front and center in elections held in the United States.  Every free citizen of the United States can go to the polls and cast a secret ballot.  The results of the election hand over essentially total legal power to the next elected United States government.  

Briefly put, that "total power" includes collecting and spending taxes, making war, writing laws and so on.  As citizens, we find the exercise of that power palatable because it derives its legitimacy from a majority of the votes cast.  The elections elect representatives of the people who cast the ballots.

After that, those representatives -- House members, Senators, Governors, State officials, and so on -- are empowered to run the government.

This is the Republic's Constitutional process of representative democracy.

As for fundamentals:

1. The United States is a democratic, Constitutional Republic.

2. The country's government is comprised of democratically elected representatives of all kinds who legally rule over the affairs of the country.

3. Any party which attempts to disrupt the free and fair election of representatives -- such as our fictional Japanese invaders -- is an anti-democracy force.

4. A force which strives to destroy, sabotage or deny the democratic process under which all free citizens have a legal right to vote has attacked the Republic.

5. When that force is an external force, a declaration of a state of war will result from such attempts to destroy the democracy.  When that force is a domestic force, an act of treason has occurred, and the parties responsible must face the judicial consequences of their actions in a court of law.

The Full Wages of Voter Disenfranchisement

Among the daily horrors inflicted on the Republic by the oligarchs who presently control the Republican Party is wide spread voter suppression and outright disenfranchisement.  Current estimates suggest that as many as three to five million free United States citizens will be unable to legally vote because of state voter disenfranchisement laws.

No, No, it's just politics.  If it were treason, someone would have told us.  

(cartoon source)

One hundred million Americans know of this.  It is not a secret.

If the Japanese invasion of California had been successful, 20 million United States citizens would have been denied the right to cast a secret ballot in a free and fair election pursuant to the Republic's Constitution.  The remainder of the people of the United States would have known this.  The remainder of the population of citizens in the United States would have undoubtedly moved immediately to restore the democracy in the occupied territories.

The hundred million Americans who are now watching three to five million of their fellow citizens being disenfranchised are doing nothing.  We countenance treason.  Is there really room for a citizen to be a bit patriotic while, at the same time, countenancing treason?

Meanwhile, we sit, frightened, wondering what will come next.

Clearing Up the Point

The Supreme Court will not defend citizens' right to vote.  This means that it will not defend the Constitution.  When the Supreme Court is unwilling to defend the Constitution, it is unwilling to defend the Republic. 

When Republican state legislators have been purchased by ALEC, they conspire to disenfranchise legal voters.  The Republican governors don't stop them -- they join in to further the outrage.  This is an attack on the Constitution.  This is an attack on the Republic.

MeanMesa calls this treason and calls those who conduct this action traitors.

Hopefully, everyone gets the point.  If this stings your hide, you know where to find me.

A Visitor to MeanMesa! Enjoy!

A quick note of introduction from MeanMesa: The following is an absolutely delightful comment posted on Thom Hartmann's web by my respected friend "antifascist." That avatar is highly suitable once one gets to know him. He provides a link to the website of the material's initial origin and its author.

It is included here because it is simply too thought provoking to just abandon, leaving it where I encountered it.

“Facts Are Stupid Things” (http://badattitudes.com/MT/archives/2009/02/facts_are_stupi.html)
badattitudes.com
February 21, 2009

The title above is a quote from Ronald Reagan at the 1988 Republican National Convention. He was trying to access a John Adams quote, “Facts are stubborn things,” but something more appropriate to the man and the occasion popped out.

The essay below is from my neighbor Jim, more of whose stuff can be seen here (at the site in the link).

Compare and contrast:

1980 may seem kind of arbitrary as the jump off for the end of empire, but the economics bear it out. Under Reagan, government disbursements and revenues, as a share of GDP, jumped a full six percentage points. More, if you include his unfunded moral hygiene mandates.

All the Republicans talked Rand, Friedman, inter alia, but they acted like straightforward right wing military Keynesians. Military Keynesianism is of course nothing new in the US. But prior to 1980 there was a dominant Bismarckian consensus (have I dropped enough names yet?) that it had to be matched by social spending, otherwise the exercise of hard power would eventually become financially unsustainable.

You cannot extract surplus value — i.e. have capitalism — in great heaping bushel baskets unless you have a government willing to exercise single payer monopsony power over basic human needs, basic scientific research and renewable sources of the energy needed to drive all this. Lo and behold, the exercise of hard power is now done on credit, with only the threat of mutually assured destruction holding our creditors at bay.

I suppose one could point to a cultural shift in the eighties, as there certainly was one, but I prefer a bit more systemic determinism.

The political economy of capitalism is easiest to manage through psychological terrorism. It’s a cheap and effective way of outsourcing the quotidian enforcement of corporate feudalism to vigilante moral panic artists. There’s no shortage of people willing to enforce for free. Hell, they’ll even pay for the dubious privilege.

People become inured to this, querulous and rebellious, and the terrorism has to be stepped up. Red scares have to be coupled with ethnic scares, drug scares, satanic child care scares and so forth. Going against that, as Carter did in an achingly minuscule way, is a positive step for capitalism and a negative step for capitalists. Their enforcement costs look to climb. People who aren’t constantly depressed and frightened get a little feisty.

Under Reagan, the “clever” work-around was burgeoning unfunded mandates to make the states take on domestic psychological terrorism, and yanking the social safety net away, while the central government threw surplus value to the cretinous capitalists, hand over fist. It’s been down hill ever since.

I can’t see why anyone would want to be president after Bush. It’s not a sane thing to do. I thought, and still think, that the Democrats would have been better off throwing the election. McCain would probably not have lasted four years and right wing military Keynesianism would have been discredited for a good long time. Getting stuck with cradling the appalling, ghoulish offspring that are roving mindlessly over a dying empire would have ruined him, and the most cretinous of the cretinous capitalists.

The Democrats could have trotted out old social democratic wine in new bottles and enjoyed thirty or forty years of crowing from the top of the DC shit hill. So it goes, I guess. And my goodness, doesn’t Carter look like a saint in comparison to every asshole that’s come since.