Mandatory voting

If participation dropped so far as to significantly undermine the claim of government to rest on popular will I would favor mandatory voting, if it allowed casting ballots only partially filled out, or even not at all.

Are we already there?

Maybe, thanks only in part to the efforts of one party to discourage and diminish participation on a scale big enough to matter.

Guess which party would rather see blood run in the streets than see a smoothly functioning system of mandatory voting and overwhelming participation.

Yet another proof of the folly of allowing a constitution to be changed by a single, simple majority plebiscite

David Campbell stupidly blew the UK out of the EU with such a plebiscite.

This is just way too foolishly democratic.

I am terrified at the thought of what American voters might do with such power, and you should be, too.

Russian voters overwhelmingly back a ploy by President Vladimir Putin to rule until 2036

He has already been in power for about twenty years.

Really excellent video

The Abolitionists, a PBS American Experience series.

And very, very far from allowing any sort of moral equivalence to obtain between these folks and the slave owners and their broader alliance, the opponents of the abolitionists all over the country, including the mobs of the North.

Who, watching this, does not see that struggle as continuous with the struggles not only of the Civil War, but also of Reconstruction, and of the Civil Rights Era?

Or the struggle even today?

Oh, and last night there was the chilling Hitler on Trial, also on amazon video.

Also, in its way, the same struggle.

For liberté, égalité, and fraternité.

Not easy not to hate Republicans

Another way to recoup the terrible deficit and increasing debt created by their trillion dollar tax cut for corporations and the rich.

True friends of the forgotten fucking little guys.

Trump administration announces Medicaid funding overhaul

Trump voters who drive junkers and live in trailers are living proof democracy cannot save the lower orders from their own malice and stupidity.

Trump tweets to congress: this is all the notice you're going to get, and I won't seek and don't need your permision

I will wage war without asking and without even advising in advance, he is saying.

Pompeo and other nutcases are fine with all this egregiously illegal and unconstitutional behavior.

And the congressional Republicans?

Trump warns of 'disproportionate' response if Iran strikes US targets

President Trump warned Sunday of a "disproportionate" military response to Iran if it carries out a retaliatory strike against the U.S. 

Trump said "these Media Posts" -- seemingly referring to his tweets -- "will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.”

“Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!," he added in his tweet. 

Steve M. has been warning for months that the Duce will not leave the White House if he loses in 2020 or when his second term (if he wins one) runs out in 2024.

I took that to be entirely Democratic bullshit propaganda.

But maybe not, eh?

Unsurprisingly, justification for such a refusal has already been provided by Pat Buchanan in several of his columns about how democracy - the republican order of our representative government - is harming the US and authoritarianism might be just the thing.

The authoritarian being Trump, or anyone of his ilk.

Pat Buchanan continues his long, slow slide to almost fascism

Although not quite.

Anyway, not yet.

If you think that what, about supranational institutions like the EU, the UN, or even NATO, bothers the new nationalists of Europe and America in part is their democracy deficit you are a fool.

And if you think they are even in part moved by concern for the political position of the world's eurowhites, or the rayonnement of their civilization, the much touted and much damned Western Civilization, you are again a fool.

Their increasingly evident love for authoritarian nationalism wherever it is to be found, while strengthening racism and racist policies within infected states, undermines both.

Let Them Howl, Boris!

PB here continues to celebrate stupid things ever less compatible with the rule of law, with republicanism, with responsible representative government.

The bourgeois revolution in China.

China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Protesters

Right now, that makes it a kind of latter day Cold War between the dictatorship of the Communist Party on the one side and the protesters on the other.

With the local government of Hong Kong a weak player in the middle

What do they want, these protesters?

What did the protesters of Tiananmen want?

The Revolution of 1848 in China.

The French Revolution - or any one of several - in China.

Think of that, but scaled back to cover only Hong Kong.

For now.

It is a direct challenge to the party's exclusive hold on power.

What a provocation it must be to Chicom nationalist eyes to see in the Times a photo of a gray-haired protester in the street waving the Union Jack, the banner of the former Western, white, racist, European colonial power, or demonstrators rushing around the Hong Kong airport, a youth among them waving the Stars and Stripes, as viewers of CNN saw this morning.

The talking heads of mainstream American cable news, all in varying degrees conscious or unconscious Children of Zinn, are accustomed to demonstrators burning the US flag and interviewees and guests who revile it as a symbol of slavery, genocide, misogyny, homophobia, Christianism - or indeed, simply Christianity - and racism.

They hear and repeat, day after day, that it is the banner of an evil regime of white males that is only a recent outpost of a larger evil white thing of millenia, Western Civilization.

They must have to try hard not to gag, reporting on a courageous democracy movement of nonwhites for whom the Stars and Stripes - and the colonialist Union Jack! Colonialism! What, better a Brit colony than one of the last Red Empire in Beijing? - are symbols of exactly the free society and government they want.

Meanwhile, the Beijing tyrants, relying on the Great Firewall of China to make easier their task, are incensing nationalist sentiment against the demonstrators with dangerous success, portraying them as criminals and terrorists manipulated and funded by foreigners and particularly the CIA.

The clashes have been off and on, and more on than off, since early this year.

The government clearly is in no hurry to send in the tanks and would prefer to wait it out.

And that could work, given enough patience.

Chaos Grips Hong Kong’s Airport as Police Clash with Protesters

And this inane remark by the moron in the White House is both hilarious and disgraceful, exactly as you would expect.

We are so going to get another four years of this orange jackass.

Trump on Hong Kong protests: 'It's a tough situation … but I'm sure it'll work out'

“We’ll what see what happens,” Trump said before boarding Air Force One for an event in Pennsylvania. 

“But I’m sure it’ll work out. I hope it works out for everybody, including China, by the way.”

UK should give British nationality to Hong Kong citizens, Tugendhat says

What, does he think they want to be airlifted to East Anglia?

Trump isn't the only moron.

Revolutionary what?

Capitalists and their allies support coups or revolutions against regimes of representative government only if they fear someone else will do it first and use power against them.

Anti-capitalists do it because they cannot prevail, ever, without fanatical totalitarian dictatorship.

And anarchists? Well .  .  .  .

Chile alone could be offered as a counter-example.

A highly questionable one.

But, anyway, one could ask whether it always works out for the best for the generality of people.

Because of the Nazis, mostly.

But not only.

Still, looking at Russia, China, Cambodia, and the rest, the horrible regimes the capitalists have accepted seem much less bad.

Nazis, maybe, excepted.

The Youth of Hong Kong want a Bourgeois Revolution

While in America the ignorant young boobs, the kind who used to (still?) wear Che tee shirts, say they want socialism.

"Democratic socialism" is an oxymoron and the only really existing socialism that ever happened in the modern world was the ghastly horror of Communism.

But anyway.

In Hong Kong, It’s Now a Revolution

Hong Kong separatism apart, it's a rerun of the revolt in Tiananmen Square, decades ago.

No doubt it will share the fate of that revolt, too.

Hong Kong : Pékin lance une mise en garde sans précédent aux manifestants

“Nous devons mettre en garde avec fermeté les groupes violents et ceux qui les manipulent : à trop jouer avec le feu, vous finirez par en payer le prix. 

"Tous les participants auront à répondre de leurs actes en justice. 

"Ce message s’adresse à tous les fauteurs de troubles : ne prenez pas notre modération pour du laxisme, ne sous-estimez pas la détermination du gouvernement central à maintenir la stabilité [de Hong Kong].” 

C’est par ce message sans ambiguïté que Yang Guang, du Bureau des affaires de Macao et de Hong Kong, a mis en garde, ce mardi 6 août, les manifestants hongkongais, rapporte le South China Morning Post.

Pékin peut-il s’engager à ne pas recourir à l’armée pour trouver une issue à la crise actuelle à Hong Kong ? 

À la question, le porte-parole s’est contenté d’une réponse sibylline : 

“Mes réponses ont été préparées, mais je tiens à souligner une fois encore que le gouvernement central est attaché à la prospérité et à la stabilité de Hong Kong. 

"Nous ne laisserons impuni aucun acte qui s’en prendrait au principe ‘Un pays, deux systèmes’.”

Oh, so that's how this "responsible government" thingee works, huh?

U.K. Voters’ Frustration High as 99% Are Sidelined in Prime Minister Election

A small slice of party members within each party chooses that party's leader.

That leader is the person who will be PM, head the government, if the party is called upon to form a government.

That happens if the party has or gains a majority, or leads a coalition making up a majority in the Parliament.

The Tories have since since the parliamentary election of 2017 led a coalition majority with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland, and that has not changed just because Theresa May has resigned her post as Tory party leader and so as PM.

There isn't going to be another parliamentary election until 2022 unless an early election motion [is] passed by a super-majority of two-thirds in the House of Commons or a vote of no confidence in the government is passed which is not followed by a vote of confidence within 14 days.

The replacement of May involves only the party choosing for itself a replacement in the role of party leader, a replacement who, given the situation, will step into the role of PM of the UK.

Looks like it's going to be Boris Johnson, and it looks like he's going for a no-deal Brexit.

Something only a smallish minority of Brit voters actually want, though a majority of Conservatives support it.

What there is and what there isn't

There is democratic capitalism (capitalism under representative government, actually), as urged and celebrated by Barack Obama.

There is despotic, tyrannical socialism as urged and celebrated by Lenin and his followers.

There is not and never has been or will be democratic socialism.

Socialism under representative government.

That is a political myth.

Saving the Republic

Nazis, communists, and others can use means that shred the republic, since that's their aim.

But republicans cannot.

Which is why the Democrats, at some point, cannot employ the vicious means of the Republicans.

At what point?

I don't know.

Nobody has done more . . .

. . . to bring contempt upon representative government than the contemptible Republican Party.

Male New Hampshire Lawmakers Wear Pearls While Gun Violence Victims Testified

They were pissing in the faces of the gun violence victims called to testify.

John Oliver is right

When the Tories decided to let so momentous and difficult an issue be decided by a simple majority in a single plebiscite they tossed the burden of decisions from those who know most about how horrendously difficult it is to those who know pretty much nothing.

It is because responsible and informed political choice is a full time job and a hard one that the modern "democracies" are actually representative governments in which the people do not make such choices but choose representatives to make them for them.

And on this one those representatives just irresponsibly and stupidly funked it.

Go watch his Brexit III on You Tube.

At last, Jeremy. Now Labour’s mission must be to prevent any Brexit.

Brexit is proof that too democratic an approach to a crucial political issue is stupid and dangerous.

So is Donald Trump.

No smoke-filled room would ever have nominated him.