Moral Bankruptcy

Despite or because of the parallels, I'm still following US politics as welcome diversion from domestic matters post-Brexit, but am becoming increasingly astonished at how dysfunctional their supposedly democratic system of government actually is. Maybe it's always been like this and I've just never noticed. As much as Trump was an obscenity, isn't there something very alarming seeing nice-guy Biden issuing daily decrees with the stroke of a pen and at an increasing rate?  

Having 50-odd ways of holding elections strikes me as bonkers, as does a system that produces a Congress and balance of power that seems to bear little connection to the popular vote and delivers a completely constipated legislative structure. For good measure add-in a politicised Supreme Court and dare I suggest that the much-lauded checks and balances inherent in a written constitution begin to look decidedly problematic? This article from The Atlantic 'What's So Great About a Written Constitution?' confirms disillusionment has been growing:- 

Finally, single, written constitutions often stifle much-needed constitutional maintenance. The lack of formal constitutional change in the U.S. over the past few decades has produced a strong form of constitutional disillusionment, both with the written Constitution and with the Supreme Court. The main problem is that formal amendment procedures are so exceedingly difficult, but a 5–4 Supreme Court decision can produce significant constitutional change. Further, a focus on elusive constitutional moments—in which there must be intense and widespread constitutional discussion and debate among the citizenry—as opposed to constitutional maintenance, has obscured the need for regular constitutional change to take place.

In the U.K.’s unwritten system, however, virtually nothing is too sacred to be amended: The prescribed length of time between general elections has fluctuated; reform of the U.K.’s top court has taken place; historical government positions have been altered or eliminated; the role of the monarchy has changed significantly; and even major constitutional principles, such as parliamentary sovereignty, have shifted throughout the years as political and economic developments arose. Most of these have been responses to societal change, and did not require tidal-wave constitutional moments.

Although the longevity of America’s written Constitution remains impressive, many of its structures and operations have always been highly questionable. But recent events seem to have only exposed and exacerbated its flaws: A popularly elected leader should not be able to receive 3 million votes fewer than the challenger but still win the electoral contest; a system of checks and balances should ensure effective and responsible government, not sow political dysfunction; and generations of Americans should not have to live their life without a practical and reasonable opportunity to amend their Constitution. None of those outcomes advances “We the People.”

The U.K.’s unwritten constitution remains far from perfect; mistakes happen, much-needed reforms often stall, and reliance on politics can prove extremely frustrating. But when it comes to educating the citizenry, facilitating a focus on popular sovereignty, and providing a means of regularly updating the constitution, unwritten constitutions can go head to head with written documents any day.

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Leaving aside constitutional matters, the state of the Republican Party in a post-Trump era continues to cause alarm and astonishment in equal measure as they indulge in the self-delusional belief that election success resides in remaining loyal to a disgraced sociopathic and narcissistic control freak. Despite being victims of an attempted coup, most have decided to indulge in what can only be described as moral bankruptcy and refuse to convict Trump of insurrection. 

Despite this they will clearly continue to carry the day in some States, but seem blissfully unaware that inexorable demographic changes will ensure other Georgia-style results, turbo-charged by increasingly bonkers conspiracy theorists within their ranks. To most of sound mind, if the GOP does not reform quickly, they are doomed. Again from The Atlantic, an article 'This Republican Party Is Not Worth Saving' from September 2020:-  

I was a Republican for most of my adult life. I came of political age in 1980, and although I grew up in a working-class Democratic stronghold in Massachusetts, I found a home in Ronald Reagan’s GOP. Back then, the Republicans were a confident “party of ideas” (a compliment bestowed on them by one of their foes, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York), optimistic boosters of the American dream at home, and fierce opponents of the Soviet Union overseas. While the Democrats were the party of recrimination and retreat, the Republicans were the party of the future.

I understand the attachment to that GOP, even among those who have sworn to defeat Donald Trump, but the time for sentimentality is over. That party is long gone. Today the Republicans are the party of “American carnage” and Russian collusion, of scams, plots, and weapons-grade contempt for the rule of law. The only decent, sensible, and conservative position is to vote against this Republican Party at every level, and bring the sad final days of a once-great political institution to an end. Then build the party back up again—from scratch.

I’m not advocating for voting against the GOP merely to punish Republicans for Trump’s existence in their party. Rather, conservatives must finally accept that at this point Trump and the Republican Party are indistinguishable. Trump and his circle have gutted the old GOP and stuffed its empty husk with the Trump family’s paranoia and corruption.

Indeed, the transformation of the GOP into a cult of personality is so complete that the Republicans didn’t even bother presenting a platform at their own convention. Like a group of ciphers at a meeting of SPECTRE, they nodded at whatever Number One told them to do, each of them fearing an extended pinkie finger pressing the button that would electrocute them into political oblivion.

Some Republicans, even while they grant that Trump is a sociopath and an idiot—and how unsettling that so many of them will stipulate to that—are willing to continue voting for Republican candidates because the GOP is nominally pro-life or because the administration’s judicial appointments show that the people around the president are doing what conservatives should want done.

But Trump’s few conservative achievements are meaningless when compared with his war on American democracy, a rampage that few Republicans have lifted a finger to stop. Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr have turned the constitutional order and the rule of law into a joke. If you’re Roger Stone or Michael Flynn, the White House will arrange pardons, commutations, or even the outright betrayal of the Justice Department’s own lawyers. Felony convictions are for the little people. The Constitution is just busywork for chumps.

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America needs two healthy political parties. So if the Republicans suffer a full-spectrum defeat in 2020, what comes next? At the least, a shattering loss should result in a wholesale purge of the Republican National Committee. Even donors who like what they got from Trump will not pour money into a losing proposition.

In the long term, sensible conservatives—who believe in limited government and the prudent, constitutional stewardship of national power and resources—might feel safe to run for national office as Republicans again. Those at the local level who were bullied into silence by their state organizations might be able to come out of hiding and challenge the people who led them to disaster.

Reconstructing the GOP—or any center-right party that might one day replace it—will take a long time, and the process will be painful. The remaining opportunists in the GOP will try to avert any kind of reform by making a last-ditch lunge to the right to fill the vacuum left by Trump’s culture warring and race-baiting. In the short term, the party might become smaller and more extreme, even as it loses seats. So be it. The hardening of the GOP into a toxic conglomeration of hucksters, quislings, racists, theocrats, and cultists is already happening. The party gladly accepted support from white supremacists and the Russian secret services, and now welcomes QAnon kooks into its caucus. Conservatives must learn that the only way out of “the wilderness” is first to vanquish those who led them there.

No person should ever get a second chance to destroy the Constitution. Trump has brought the United States to the brink of civil catastrophe, and the Republican Party has protected him from the consequences of all his immoral and illegal actions more ably than even Fred Trump did. Conservatives need to put the current Republican Party out of its—and our—misery.