Worldtraveller
Veteran Member
I didn't want to derail the other thread with this discussion, but I think this point made by Pyramidhead is a good place to launch a discussion.Chris Hedges is not a Russian spy. He's a socialist, and socialists often feel the need to remind people that there is another end to the political spectrum, from which the difference between Democrats and Republicans is vanishingly small. It doesn't mean you shouldn't vote or that you shouldn't vote for the least bad candidate (or as may be required, vote against the worst candidate), but the problems of the American system of politics go far deeper than the differences between the two major political parties. Voting every two years between parties that are basically in agreement on most issues, even as they may differ in areas that have important consequences for millions of people, is no substitute for the actual democratic shaping of society by its citizens, which neither party has any interest in. So, while it's not as if the consequences of Republican and Democratic governance are the same in all respects, we should still constantly question the cultural framing of "get out and vote" as something noble and participatory. We need people like Hedges to remind us of what else might be possible if we don't assume that this system is the best possible one.
I actually agree with you here. Unfortunately, that wasn't how the discussion here was framed.
I would be interested, though, to hear what you mean with "what else might be possible if we don't assume that this system is the best possible one." Obviously, other countries have different political systems, so we could have a debate about the merits of each, but is that what you are talking about?
There are many ways of running a government and an economy that have not been thoroughly explored in our short history as a species. For some reason, the majority of people seem to think that the way we produce and distribute goods is just a natural reflection of human nature and is the best we'll ever come up with, despite the fact that the peculiar system of markets and property relations we have been using is actually only a few hundred years old. I don't want to derail the thread, but this tendency is another manifestation of the "righward shift" spoken of in another topic here, where as a society (in our media, our classrooms, our casual conversations) we imagine the scope of possibilities for humans living together on a single landmass as much narrower than it actually is, and right now that scope is hugely skewed toward market capitalist solutions to every problem. The arguments are over which kinds of regulations might soften the impact of the recurring downturns without scaring away investment or burdening businesses, but nobody seriously wonders whether recurring downturns that periodically decimate our livelihoods is something we should be trying to accommodate, something that must just be accepted as the way of things with no other option but to patch it up now and again. Trump and his administration are aware of a small contingency of people who are starting to question that assumption, which is why the disgusting little pamphlet about the "opportunity costs" of socialism is now making the rounds. But judging by the Democratic party's actions recently, if the shoe were on the other foot then Clinton might be circulating just such a pamphlet to dissuade people from considering anything to the left of Eisenhower.
First, though we should probably agree on what the goal/purpose of a political system should be (and we may not get past this point, we'll see).
If we have a goal, then we can maybe think of what the best system would be to achieve that goal (democracy, dictatorship, fuedalism, whatever).
If we can agree even vaguely on what the best system would be, then maybe the best way to achieve that (various voting systems, arena combat, whatever....)