Re: <nettime> why is it so quiet (in the US)

The current state of the institutions in the US is that with legislative bodies in bitter deadlock, the executive branch, ie, the President, effectively rules by fiat (“executive orders”). The bad news is that there is too much decision-making power in the hands of the Senate, where a narrow majority rules on critical lifetime judicial appointments in “collaboration “ with the executive. This pushes critical protections outside of negotiations, since judicial appointments are made by bare majority decisions and impeachment requires a 2/3 majority. Impeachment being a kind of nuclear form of a no-confidence vote. In the current structure, all additional parties do is subtract critical numbers from one of the parties: Greens from the Democrats, Libertarians from the Republicans. Institutional reform wd have to be massive, including a non-partisan bureau of the census, since manipulation of census data allows partisan determination of legislative districts.

Polarization is possible even in a EU model where Belgium was unable to form a government for 2 years, was it? And Poland and Hungary have echoed the American model in their strategic abuse of the executive and the judicial right under the noses of the EU. Not sure how you prevent that? Sanctions? Explusion? Will institutional reform close the loopholes? Populist authoritarians seem to find them over and over. And now they can bypass or abuse mass-media. Trump, in part, rules or at least reaches his “base” by Twitter when even Fox cuts away from him or his minions.

The underlying social and economic divisions are reflected in the superstructure of “government” to use freighted Marxian terminology. The US formally entered the Debordian model when Reagan was elected and Trump is the echo-chamber echo of that, courtesy of reality tv and social media. Of course, Debord’s model was apposite long before that.

In the longer term, some social consensus about basic values must arise or social chaos and authoritarian abuse will continue. My hope is for more enfranchisement and participation. That seems to have narrowly turned the tide here. It is critical that the Democrats move further to the left if they hope to move past damage control which will be difficult unless those same forces that put Biden in the White House in Georgia can mobilize radically in the Georgia US Senate run-offs. I am doubtful that will happen since a critical small number of votes for Biden came from Republicans who otherwise voted a straight ticket down ballot (the American electorialmediaspeak for they only voted for Biden/Harris and otherwise voted Republican.)

Keith

On Nov 16, 2020, at 4:51 AM, Eric Kluitenberg <epk@xs4all.nl> wrote:

HI Ted, all,

Fascinating discussion in ominous times..

On 16 Nov 2020, at 04:02, tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com> wrote:

The US is breaking down, so it's not at all surprising that some of its language for describing the world would as well.

From a continental European perspective I’m watching this spectacle (don’t know what else to call it, without immediately invoking Debord and beyond), and I’m not well enough informed to have any definite reading, but my impression is not that the US is ‘breaking down’. Much rather it seems that the US is embroiled in a profound political crisis that plays out on many different levels.

For non-UK Europeans this whole electoral system tied to voting districts and the ‘first-past-the post’ principle does not make much sense, nor does the two party (Republicrat) party system, where none of the other political parties that do exist across the US get represented in the legislature.

Despite the important consideration that much of ‘democracy’ happens outside the formal legislative institutions (i.e. issue-based displacement of politics, freedom of assembly, the right to strike, referenda, and more spontaneous and/or affect driven forms of assembly), implying that we should not get trapped in a hyper-focus on the formal institutions, still at the moment when these formal institutions enter into a state of crisis, as is apparent now in the US, this warrants attention. At the very least these formal institutions should be able to guarantee these other ‘democratic’ or civil rights to be exercised extra-institutionally.

What this signals to me, from my limited Eurocentric (male / straight, etc.) perspective is an urgent need for institutional reform. At the very least some form of proportional representation in the voting system and a much lower threshold for different collective political actors to enter the legislature. Just to ask the most obvious question: ‘Where the f. is the Green Party or something like that in the US???

It would also allow the so-called ‘populists’ to enter on their own terms, which is a good thing because then they can be confronted head on. Europe has its own severe problems with those kinds of political movements and it forces the mainstream to acknowledge that and do something with it before they become a MEGA* type of movement. In NL we have seen a persistent presence for the last 20 or so years of political actors (the biological and political bodies changing and morphing all the time) of about 20% of the vote of people who simply want nothing (they don’t want immigrants, they don’t want environmental protective policies, they don’t want taxes, the don't want lefties, they don’t want the EU, they don’t want globalisation, they don’t want other people parking in the parking lot in front of their house, etc etc..).

Maybe Germany can serve as a model for the US? It also has a federal structure and a 5% threshold for parties to enter parliament. That all seems to work reasonably well (at least for the last 70 years).

The other thing is this presidential system. That just does not make any sense to me at all anymore - what is this some 21st century Leviathan? Get rid of that, appoint some symbolical nobody and let the country be run by a coalition of differential political groupings who can work out the best way forward together (harmonically if possible, contestationally if necessary).

Please people across the great pond, get your act together!

all bests,
Eric

p.s. - * MEGA - Make Europe Great Again

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