…in a republic of representative government. Here it means “what the majority of us have decided the enforcement structure will enforce, and what we have decided should cease”. We have that power. It also means any who would change the definition of legal without the people, should be removed
...That presupposes a functioning democracy. Our democracy had been getting more and more moribund as the rich progressively captured more of our government over time. Now I'd argue we don't have a democracy at all, and the constitution is a dead letter.
It’s been functional until Trump, people are just generally under educated. Now could you make the arguement that an undereducated populace makes a democracy non-functional? Yea I suppose, but ultimately that’s the default of civilization, not education.
In theory, all legislation was done democratically, and thus I had a say, and should now accept the majority's decision. In practice, a big chunk of the legislation was made by the forces in power, in disregard to majority, justice or fairness.
Right. Your exactly right. There is a big difference between “I don’t agree with these policies and they hurt people but the majority of the country has decided this makes sense.” And “The existing power structure was barely voted in, and largely is harming most people and changing laws”
And before anyone gets any cute ideas that’s not an excuse to just accept objectionable legislation from the past when the majority of people can recognize that it is incorrect or harmful, like in the case of slavery. The rhetoric on the right lately is disturbing, not just objectionable
Going to repost this, it's important. Study was published in 2014. pnhp.org/news/gilens-...
Also I think your kindve not realizing that yes, end of the day a lot of very wealthy people are very good at what effectively is marketing for a broken two party system. We still vote, it used to still matter, Americans are just super easy to influence on large scales. We’re big on “team sports”
It’s not a big secret man. How a nation is designed to function vs how it’s functioning are different. We were more so discussing the current situation less literally and more “in terms of legality, this is what legitimizes that legality and this is what makes it worth casting aside”
...So our government hasn't been "for and by the people" for a while? I'm going to drag my carcass to work now.
You're not quite understanding my point in posting that study here. The study was done 11 years ago. It looked at the 25 years before *that*, and found the public had almost no influence over the legislative process. Meaning we've had a de-facto oligarchy for at least 35 years...
We had de facto oligarchy for thousands of years. The point of democracy is to silence the masses while making them believe they have influence. It works fine until the masses elect populists like Hitler or Trump
..."Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." share.google/otlSsRlDRnsV...