representing territory instead of people
If the US Senate were a state legislative house it would be unconstitutional.
That's according to a Supreme Court decision in 1964 that decided states could not do what the US Senate does: they could not apportion legislative representatives according to defined territorial boundaries without taking into account the number of people living within those territories -- states had to follow the (newly discovered) Constitutional principle of "one person, one vote".
Prior to 1964, most states followed the United States model of two legislative houses, with a lower house based on population and an upper house based on a defined territory, such as a county. But just as US states had disproportionately different populations from the very first census in 1790, ditto for state counties.
[In 1790, Virginia had 13x as many residents as Delaware. But from the start, each US state was allowed to send two and only two Senators to the US Senate, regardless of population. Over the centuries, urbanization has worsened the population disparity --> in 2020 California had 69x as many residents as Wyoming.]
From the beginning, the US Senate was not supposed to represent "the people", it was supposed to represent the states, because the states had been sovereign before joining the Union, and the principles of federalism have always protected a level of self-government for states. At the original Constitutional Convention of 1787, the smaller states feared their interests would be ignored by the larger states unless they received equal representation in one of the two legislative houses. Thus, a compromise was brokered --> one house would be apportioned according to population, the other would not.
As each state adopted its own state constitution, many of them came up with similar compromises between rural and urban areas. Rural interests feared domination by urban interests -- and this was back when the vast majority of people lived on farms or in small villages -- in 1790 only 5% of the US population was urban. By 1960, 70% of the US population was urban, and the Supreme Court decided that the disparity between urban and rural voting power inside the states could no longer stand.
But between the states -- the rural states still get two Senators each, and the urban states still get two Senators each. California has 69x as many people as Wyoming, and the same number of US Senators. The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution provided that Senators would be popularly elected instead of appointed by the state legislatures, but kept the number of Senators at two per state.
Given the way the US Constitution may be amended, requiring approval by 2/3 of the Senators and 3/4 of the states, it is unlikely that rural states would give up this "equal" representation in the US Senate -- 33 states would lose power if the Senate were abolished or made proportional. So we're probably stuck with this "equal" representation until the United States falls apart. But this means we have a built-in flaw in our republic that blocks the will of the majority unless enough rural states go along with whatever.
The Electoral College extends this undemocratic flaw by giving each state as many Electors for choosing the President as it has Senators and Representatives. So the smallest states that only merit one Representative by population, still receive three Electors. It's how Trump and Bush both won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote, in 2016 and 2000. Neither Republican would've served a first term in the White House without this undemocratic rural-state bias.
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I've written about much of this before. But if my goal is to create a global democracy with proportional representation, I've got to start where I live. But how would I change the structure of the US Constitution to allow proportional representation? I'd have to get 38 of the 50 states to go along with reducing the power of the smaller states and generally making states less relevant to our federal system. Instead of having a legislative house where small states can block legislation, we'd have a legislative house with proportional representation from all parties in all states. So, yes, California could beat up Wyoming and take its stuff and tell it what to do, heh. But the alternative is that all the rural states gang up and beat up California, creating minority rule instead of majority rule.
I've suggested that people like me would literally have to move from the more populated states to the less populated states in order to fix this. For example, 33 million Californians would have to move.
The only other way out that seemingly doesn't violate the Constitution would be for the larger states to secede and then form their own New United States based on a new set of democratic principles.
But in 1869 the US Supreme Court held that states are not allowed to secede. Perhaps a different set of Supreme Court Justices would hold differently in the future, but ...
In 1861 when several states tried to secede, we ended up fighting a civil war over it. The Union won.
So it seems the only nonviolent/Constitutional method to fix our flawed democracy would be for over 100 million residents of the US to move to less-populated states, at least temporarily, to amend the Constitution. Yeah, about 1/3 of us would have to move. To what kinds of housing and jobs? There are not houses and jobs for six million new residents in Wyoming.
For me, it would be easiest to move to West Virginia, that's the closest state to most of my friends and family. Or Idaho, if T moves to Seattle and K remains in Portland. And I may still do this after I retire. But how would I convince over 100 million other people to do this? Uproot your lives, your livelihoods, your families, your social networks. This would be traumatic for many folks.
It comes down to: democracy isn't the most important thing to people. If it were, zero people would live in the District of Columbia, which has zero representation in Congress. Or, if it were, California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington would've seceded from the Union after Trump's victory in 2016.
This reminds me of all those people who did not move to Canada when Trump won in 2016, LOL. Even though most of us voted for somebody else, we peacefully put up with Trump's shit for four years, and we still haven't put him in jail for any of it.
Democracy isn't our most important value. For me, if it were, I'd quit my job and move to a rural state now, and devote all of my activism to getting more people to do the same. Or I'd agitate now for Maryland to secede from the Union.
Watch what we do, not what we say in our LiveJournals, eh?
Democracy is only one of the tools we use in our lives.
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And at least I live in a flawed democracy. What about the billions of people who have even fewer choices? Is it any wonder that Marxist/Leninist revolutionaries took over in countries where democracy had always been a mirage and the working class had been violently repressed by local aristocracies or foreign imperialists?
Yeah, there are the nonviolent movements that sometimes work, but if they always worked then we'd already have well-functioning democracies everywhere. Sometimes I think the ruling class loves nonviolent movements and praises people like Ghandi and MLK because they so rarely succeed and at least they're not violent. Compared to how the ruling class goes fucking ape shit over "terrorists".
But I'm not ready to advocate violence. Because, I'll say it again, democracy isn't our most important value. If it were, I'd advocate the violent overthrow of every government that isn't a well-functioning democracy, and the rest of you would quickly agree.
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I must admit that I prefer nonviolence to democracy. And I prefer continuing to work at my current job to democracy.
If the US and the world continue to retreat from our 20th Century peak democracy achievement, what will I actually do about it other than write in my journal? I do talk with friends and family and coworkers about stuff from time to time. But what will I actually do?
It's part of the larger struggle I'm having as I adjust to 2022 --> what am I going to do? So far I've been wanting to spend more time with friends and family (other than T), more time on hobbies and activism (other than reading news), less time eating (so I can lose weight), those are the things I've been doing. Not always as much or as efficiently as I'd wish, but I'm making efforts, making progress. And I'm realizing more that I am what I do.
That's according to a Supreme Court decision in 1964 that decided states could not do what the US Senate does: they could not apportion legislative representatives according to defined territorial boundaries without taking into account the number of people living within those territories -- states had to follow the (newly discovered) Constitutional principle of "one person, one vote".
Prior to 1964, most states followed the United States model of two legislative houses, with a lower house based on population and an upper house based on a defined territory, such as a county. But just as US states had disproportionately different populations from the very first census in 1790, ditto for state counties.
[In 1790, Virginia had 13x as many residents as Delaware. But from the start, each US state was allowed to send two and only two Senators to the US Senate, regardless of population. Over the centuries, urbanization has worsened the population disparity --> in 2020 California had 69x as many residents as Wyoming.]
From the beginning, the US Senate was not supposed to represent "the people", it was supposed to represent the states, because the states had been sovereign before joining the Union, and the principles of federalism have always protected a level of self-government for states. At the original Constitutional Convention of 1787, the smaller states feared their interests would be ignored by the larger states unless they received equal representation in one of the two legislative houses. Thus, a compromise was brokered --> one house would be apportioned according to population, the other would not.
As each state adopted its own state constitution, many of them came up with similar compromises between rural and urban areas. Rural interests feared domination by urban interests -- and this was back when the vast majority of people lived on farms or in small villages -- in 1790 only 5% of the US population was urban. By 1960, 70% of the US population was urban, and the Supreme Court decided that the disparity between urban and rural voting power inside the states could no longer stand.
But between the states -- the rural states still get two Senators each, and the urban states still get two Senators each. California has 69x as many people as Wyoming, and the same number of US Senators. The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution provided that Senators would be popularly elected instead of appointed by the state legislatures, but kept the number of Senators at two per state.
Given the way the US Constitution may be amended, requiring approval by 2/3 of the Senators and 3/4 of the states, it is unlikely that rural states would give up this "equal" representation in the US Senate -- 33 states would lose power if the Senate were abolished or made proportional. So we're probably stuck with this "equal" representation until the United States falls apart. But this means we have a built-in flaw in our republic that blocks the will of the majority unless enough rural states go along with whatever.
The Electoral College extends this undemocratic flaw by giving each state as many Electors for choosing the President as it has Senators and Representatives. So the smallest states that only merit one Representative by population, still receive three Electors. It's how Trump and Bush both won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote, in 2016 and 2000. Neither Republican would've served a first term in the White House without this undemocratic rural-state bias.
-----
I've written about much of this before. But if my goal is to create a global democracy with proportional representation, I've got to start where I live. But how would I change the structure of the US Constitution to allow proportional representation? I'd have to get 38 of the 50 states to go along with reducing the power of the smaller states and generally making states less relevant to our federal system. Instead of having a legislative house where small states can block legislation, we'd have a legislative house with proportional representation from all parties in all states. So, yes, California could beat up Wyoming and take its stuff and tell it what to do, heh. But the alternative is that all the rural states gang up and beat up California, creating minority rule instead of majority rule.
I've suggested that people like me would literally have to move from the more populated states to the less populated states in order to fix this. For example, 33 million Californians would have to move.
The only other way out that seemingly doesn't violate the Constitution would be for the larger states to secede and then form their own New United States based on a new set of democratic principles.
But in 1869 the US Supreme Court held that states are not allowed to secede. Perhaps a different set of Supreme Court Justices would hold differently in the future, but ...
In 1861 when several states tried to secede, we ended up fighting a civil war over it. The Union won.
So it seems the only nonviolent/Constitutional method to fix our flawed democracy would be for over 100 million residents of the US to move to less-populated states, at least temporarily, to amend the Constitution. Yeah, about 1/3 of us would have to move. To what kinds of housing and jobs? There are not houses and jobs for six million new residents in Wyoming.
For me, it would be easiest to move to West Virginia, that's the closest state to most of my friends and family. Or Idaho, if T moves to Seattle and K remains in Portland. And I may still do this after I retire. But how would I convince over 100 million other people to do this? Uproot your lives, your livelihoods, your families, your social networks. This would be traumatic for many folks.
It comes down to: democracy isn't the most important thing to people. If it were, zero people would live in the District of Columbia, which has zero representation in Congress. Or, if it were, California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington would've seceded from the Union after Trump's victory in 2016.
This reminds me of all those people who did not move to Canada when Trump won in 2016, LOL. Even though most of us voted for somebody else, we peacefully put up with Trump's shit for four years, and we still haven't put him in jail for any of it.
Democracy isn't our most important value. For me, if it were, I'd quit my job and move to a rural state now, and devote all of my activism to getting more people to do the same. Or I'd agitate now for Maryland to secede from the Union.
Watch what we do, not what we say in our LiveJournals, eh?
Democracy is only one of the tools we use in our lives.
-----
And at least I live in a flawed democracy. What about the billions of people who have even fewer choices? Is it any wonder that Marxist/Leninist revolutionaries took over in countries where democracy had always been a mirage and the working class had been violently repressed by local aristocracies or foreign imperialists?
Yeah, there are the nonviolent movements that sometimes work, but if they always worked then we'd already have well-functioning democracies everywhere. Sometimes I think the ruling class loves nonviolent movements and praises people like Ghandi and MLK because they so rarely succeed and at least they're not violent. Compared to how the ruling class goes fucking ape shit over "terrorists".
But I'm not ready to advocate violence. Because, I'll say it again, democracy isn't our most important value. If it were, I'd advocate the violent overthrow of every government that isn't a well-functioning democracy, and the rest of you would quickly agree.
-----
I must admit that I prefer nonviolence to democracy. And I prefer continuing to work at my current job to democracy.
If the US and the world continue to retreat from our 20th Century peak democracy achievement, what will I actually do about it other than write in my journal? I do talk with friends and family and coworkers about stuff from time to time. But what will I actually do?
It's part of the larger struggle I'm having as I adjust to 2022 --> what am I going to do? So far I've been wanting to spend more time with friends and family (other than T), more time on hobbies and activism (other than reading news), less time eating (so I can lose weight), those are the things I've been doing. Not always as much or as efficiently as I'd wish, but I'm making efforts, making progress. And I'm realizing more that I am what I do.