From: slider@anashram.com

The one event more outrageous than a mob storming the Capitol was the
spectacle of 43 Republican senators endorsing the attempted coup and its instigator. By refusing to impeach Donald Trump, they left all other democracies aghast, delighting autocrats everywhere.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/16/two-party-electoral-system-factions-voters

“This sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile,” said Joe Biden. Fragile indeed, when the erstwhile leaders of
the democratic world refuse to defend democracy’s first principle, the transition of power by loser’s consent. Why bother lowering America’s founding documents nightly into a nuclear bombproof shelter beneath the National Archives, when they are ripped up by Congress in broad daylight?

The real coup happened when the Republican party was captured by Trump, throwing moderates under his chariot wheels. What saved him from
impeachment was his yelled-out warning to Republicans at his “Save
America” rally: “If they don’t fight, we have to primary the hell out of [them],” he said. “We’re going to let you know who they are.” He told his
mob: “You’re going to start working on Congress and we got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world. We got to get rid of them.”

The seven Republican senators who dared to vote to impeach have come under attack from their local parties, two of them announcing they are standing
down, and the 10 House Republicans who stood against him already face
Trumpites trying to unseat them. Donald Trump Jr has tweeted: “Let’s impeach RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] from the Republican party!!!”

Fear of deselection is a despicable reason for failing to punish a coup.
Some are genuine Trump fanatics but many are just saving their jobs.

Westminster, like Washington, suffers widespread “drain the swamp” voter cynicism about elected representatives, on doorsteps you hear it all the
time: “They’re all the same, only in it for themselves.”

Republicans are left to fight out their future like rats trapped in a
sack. But once a party is captured by extremists, it’s hard to pull it
back to electability: Trump has never won the popular vote, he was nearly
3m votes behind Hillary Clinton in 2016. In a two-party
first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP), capturing a party is the only
way to change politics: FPTP’s iron electoral law bars new parties
emerging to react to new circumstances. The worn-out defence of FPTP is
that it creates “stability”: that’s not how the US feels, lurching from Barack Obama to Trump to Biden, the system denying coalitions of
compromise. Both countries’ democracies are failed by their archaic voting systems.

In the UK, long ago, the Tory party was captured by Brextremists, as for
years tiny local parties of mostly old white men selected only Europhobes.
Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine were purged, along with other prominent anti-Brexiters. Any “moderates” that remained caved to Boris Johnson’s stonking 80-seat majority, won partly because our duopoly offered only
Jeremy Corbyn as alternative prime minister. Though I and the Guardian
backed Corbyn as better than the rogue Johnson, the choice was a
democratic outrage. After a crashing defeat, Labour turned pragmatic,
choosing an electable leader, but it is still riven between leftists who
joined for Corbyn and those who rejoined for Keir Starmer, making
selections for local office or MP a familiar tug of war.

Each party’s fragile coalition is destined to straddle a country divided across numerous political fault lines. Johnson’s new red wall seats demand high northern spending, opposed by traditional small-state low-taxers of
his southern shires and suburbs. Johnson swivels between rebellious anti-lockdown libertarians and more cautious red wallers and old folks:
watch the autumn spending review force defining choices. Labour is struck
dumb on Brexit’s many calamitous results, because its urban, university
town, ethnic minority and young base is irreconcilable with those northern Brexit seats Labour imagines it can regain. Never has our electoral system looked less able to reflect voters’ views.

Starmer is summoning a constitutional review, so far focused on devolution
and federalism, in the vain hope of spiking the Scottish National party
(SNP). It needs to put electoral reform at the forefront. A year ago,
Starmer said: “We’ve got to address the fact that millions of people vote in safe seats and they feel their vote doesn’t count. That’s got to be addressed. We will never get full participation in our electoral system
until we do that at every level.” Indeed, cynicism is bred from people feeling their vote won’t affect an election’s outcome.

Few expect Labour to win the necessary 124 seats next time, plus boundary changes will gift the Tories 10 more. An alliance is the only route, so
forge a pact now, as advocated by Compass, with Liberal Democrats, Greens
and, yes, the SNP, sealed by a pledge on electoral reform. In 2019, more
people voted left of centre than Tory.

A proportional system would allow both miserable old parties to divorce. Instead of holding noses to vote for the least worst, voters on the right
could choose between pro-European Macmillanites or the Boris-Gove world of Brexit deregulation fantasy. It’s high time voters on the left were
released from Labour’s dysfunctional forced marriage, free to choose
between an authentic socialist party and a social democratic party (though
they would still have to work together).

No electoral system devised by the crooked timber of humanity solves all problems. But a future of coalitions would see the power of factions
within a ruling government defined transparently by electoral votes. It
would mean no more extreme factions ambushing selection processes within parties, of the kind that cowed Republicans over impeachment. Breaking the two-party straitjacket opens up the pluralism that is one of many tests in
the Economist Intelligence Unit’s global democracy index. In 2020, it reports, only 8.4% of the world’s people lived under a fully-functioning democracy – fragile indeed.

### - only 8.4 percent huh? sounds about right heh, thus in reality a
democracy in name only!

smile, when push came to shove in south africa and all that remained
otherwise was the end of their world altogether if things remained the
same, the right wing was ultimately absorbed/merged into the left and
something new came out of it all to go forward with or die! and difficult
as it surely was they chose to live and to 'have' a future!

and well, the rest of the world is now slowly but finally catching-up to
such a development, and in fact now needs something similar itself lest
the whole damn thing goes down and never rises again...

perforce the change from old thinking to the new thinking required to
solve the insolvable problems created by the old thinking, is gonna be difficult and fraught with danger and we might not even survive it, but
it's gotta be done or face the same disastrous fate south africa was
facing!

iow: it's time to grow up folks!

AND is probably our last chance to do so, to change/evolve beyond our limitations...

or that was it! the peak of civilisation! and was as far as we gots before
it all came crashing down!

so good luck humanity, coz boy we're so gonna need some luck ;)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)