> This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Western culture.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I'll try to rebut in case you can help clarify things for me further.
> You make progress in the West by winning over your naysayers by memetic warfare, and ideally by grassroots sentiment/political engineering.
I think this is another way of saying that leaders do not have absolute power and there must be some level of consent of the governed behind what the leaders do.
The word progress entails views that could be described as "politically progressive". While I agree that what you describe (grassroots efforts, awareness, shifts in public opinion) have characterized progressive movements in the US, I think those represent only a subset of the relevant political trends to consider in our analysis, such as right wing movements that have been remarkably retrogressive.
> In recent decades, there have been issues with the system as a whole that have made it difficult for the system to self-correct. Namely, the obsession with never revisiting laws on the books to simplify the act of legislating, the dismantling of the legislative branch as the ultimate source of law through delegation to the Executive branch and dissolution of vital apparatuses like the Office of Technological Assessment, and overreliance on an overloaded Judiciary as a relief valve for legislation largely driven by donor/special interest organizations.
I would characterize the items you mention as (broadly) institutionalized corruption. As powerful interests obtain greater advantage, they allow the system to evolve in ways that protects their power. There has not been any significant public movement to alter the course of this trend.
> Resistance in the United States, and the West in general was never intended to be "buy the vote" but rather the end result of pushes to modify public sentiment through bottom up pressure, with laws being passed at the lowest level possible such that each State was free to run itself as it saw fit with minimal undue influence from other State, with a Federal body of jurisdiction to mediate cross-State issues.
This was indeed the intent at the outset, but we have seen a massive growth in the size and reach of the Federal government, both in terms of size/scope of the government itself and also in terms of the percentage of lobbying dollars spent at the Federal level. For lobbying interests, it's easier/cheaper to focus on one target than 50.
> At no point was the U.S. Government ever expected or desired to be able to control the populace. That was specifically avoided and straight up poisoned through various Constitutional Amendments, as well as quite elegantly rejected in the Declaration of Independence
We have seen in recent decades a substantial weakening of the bill of rights, which is, to your point, the most concrete embodiment of the initial importance of protecting the people from government:
1st amendment: We've seen the past several administrations conduct a war on whistleblowers, as well as prosecute journalists under the espionage act.
2nd amendment: Many Americans support the total repeal of this one.
4th amendment: Immigration oriented laws remove 4th amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure within 100 miles of the US border. 80% of the US population lives within 100 miles of a US border.
5th amendment: Courts have been convicting child pornographers in ways that are troubling for broader 5th amendment protections against self incrimination.
The notable thing here is not that the protections against government have been reduced, it's that they have been reduced and nobody cares.
> The Government is there to serve the populace. Not suppress, dominate, or terrorize them.
What government has in its constitution the idea that it would do anything else?
> Any contest of wills in the States is fundamentally a difference of opinion between people; not a challenge to the superiority of the State.
This is only due to the selective focus on in-fighting between political groups, such as the abortion debate. I'd argue that the state should not have been allowed to get away with the following abuses of authoritarian power (and big budget, state actor scale PR efforts):
- Sloppy accounting of the GSEs that led to the financial crisis in 2008
- Dishonest accounting of social welfare systems and their sustainability (Social Security, Medicare)
- Dishonest leaks of intelligence information (or deliberate leaks of fake info (Hersch)) leading to the costly Iraq war, along with dishonest cost projections.
- Inappropriate classification of information about the Iraq and Afghan wars (Wikileaks)
- The attacks on press freedom mentioned above
- The attacks on urban black populations that occurred during the 1970s (Chicago) and were aided by Federal law enforcement.
- The negligent handling of water pollution (Flint) which is actually happening in many US cities. Lead and contamination tests are often performed improperly, leading people to think their water is clean.
The above are predominantly akin to theft, but some are graft and some are obstruction to prevent accountability. Generally speaking, all would be highly criminal if done by a private firm.
That Americans do not mind these things illustrates that there is total compliance with authoritarian excesses and criminal behavior. The distraction from these issues and focus on partisan tit for tat issues is generally just what it looks like when the population is complacent about its authoritarian overlords.
I'd be curious to read your responses. I think we agree on the conceptual (idealistic) objectives of the US form of government, and we agree that the current instantiation has problems. My take is that we can measure authoritarianism by looking at how much it is challenged by the democratic process... more authoritarian means there will be fewer challenges, which is our status quo in the US.