At the risk of threadjacking, the question I keep coming back to personally is whether our problem systems can be torn down, as in saving the system, or whether it's too late and we're stuck with burning it all down. At one point I was almost convinced the US represented too much geography and population to manage effectively via representative democracy.
Increasingly I've come to the opinion serious term limits across all elected and appointed positions, effectively implemented, is the ultimate future of democratic government. It's one of those lessons you sort of have to learn the hard way. It will happen in waves, as these sorts of changes always do, and it may still be a century or more in the future for all I know.
Let's say we implement my overly ambitious term limits throughout the government. We've perhaps changed the flow of appointees to the bloated politicorporate machinery, but what's going to cut out the rot? How many decades do we have/are we willing to wait for that? I think a lot of things will become clearer, much quicker suddenly, perhaps more than once.
My oldest daughter is already voting age, my second youngest will be there in a month and a half, and 3 1/2 years from now all my kids will be voting. They belong to a generation which has had a peek behind the curtain and been confronted with the country's political and corporate machinery in a raw and personally meaningful way. What some of us argued in vain for decades is now common knowledge. Is it too little too late? Is it just the normal course correction of democracy?
What do you think? Can we tear out the rot in the US or should we burn it down and start over?
Also, in the case of a bloody revolution leading to the balkanization of the former United States, which part of my former country do you recommend landing in when the dust settles? Iowa would still be a vital transportation hub in the new world order, but I'm not sure I want to live in a country without a coastline.
