IF the Late Juan Linz Called It Right, American Democracy May Collapse Soon
“In a merciful twist of fate, Juan Linz did not quite live to see his prophecy of the demise of American democracy borne out. Linz, the Spanish political scientist who died last week, argued that the presidential system, with its separate elections for legislature and chief executive, was inherently unstable. In a famous 1990 essay, Linz observed, “All such systems are based on dual democratic legitimacy: No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of the people.” Presidential systems veered ultimately toward collapse everywhere they were tried, as legislators and executives vied for supremacy. There was only one notable exception: the United States of America.”
Is there a way to settle the shut-down and debt-ceiling dispute? The answer is in this especially frightening conclusion to this article:
It is the nature of fundamentalist religion, of whatever stripe, to be authoritarian, sexually repressive, and patriarchal. But beneath that there is also the lingering stench of sex abuse — human nature will not be denied, and when healthy sexual expression is not supported its dark side pedophilia emerges. I have done many pieces on the Roman! Catholic Church, and several on the Ultra-orthodox Jews. Now comes a report from inside the Evangelical Protestant world about what is going on there.
AUSTIN, Texas (RNS) The Christian mission field is a ‘magnet” for sexual abusers, Boz Tchividjian, a Liberty University law professor who investigates abuse said Thursday (Sept. 26) to a room of journalists.
While comparing evangelicals to Catholics on abuse response, ”I think we are worse,” he said at the Religion Newswriters Association conference, saying too many evangelicals had ‘sacrificed the souls” of young victims.
“Heroin trafficking is the lubrication that keeps the wheels of Western politics moving as intended.”
It was only a week ago that the US government released Eric Harroun, a former soldier who had been fighting with foreign backed al-Qaeda terrorists and the CIA against the Assad government in Syria.
This week, former Army sergeant Joseph Hunter and a group of other veterans, one from Germany’s armed forces, were arrested for much the same thing, offering “security services” for Colombian drug cartels.
Were worldwide press censorship to ease, the public would learn that America’s drone program is used more for maintaining control of drug production and distribution than terrorism. In fact, according to Russian officials, heroin from Afghanistan, all produced and exported under unspoken but very public approval of US officials, killed over one million people last year.
Following from Defense One, a relatively new newsletter. I'm not a political scientist, but much of what's said below seems reasonable to me. I would tell you that the current situation clearly tells us that our Constitutional republic has failed, probably irrevocably so and that we need a lawful Constitutional convention in order to rebuild the country and our Constitution from the ground up, line by line, issue by issue.
Step back. Try for a moment to extrapolate what a government shutdown and discredited U.S. currency could do to the economy and the public's faith in government. Think beyond next year's congressional elections or even the 2016 presidential race. Factor in existing demographic and social trends. I did, and this is what I concluded:
1. The Republican Party is marginalizing itself to the brink of extinction.
2. President Obama can't capitulate to GOP demands to unwind the fairly legislated and litigated Affordable Care Act. To do so would be political malpractice and a poor precedent for future presidents.
3. Despite the prior two points, Obama and his party won't escape voters' wrath. Democrats are less at fault but not blameless.
4. This may be the beginning of the end of Washington as we know it. A rising generation of pragmatic, non-ideological voters is appalled by the dysfunctional leadership of their parents and grandparents. History may consider October 2013 their breaking point. There will come a time when Millennials aren't just mad as hell; they won't take it anymore.
Nominally a sequel to The Good Soldiers, his 2009 account of an American infantry battalion at war in Iraq, David Finkel’s new book actually serves as a perfect companion to George Packer’s recent bestseller, The Unwinding. Like Packer, Finkel examines the human detritus left in the wake of fraudulent promises and collapsed illusions. In The Unwinding, Packer contemplates the fate of those victimized by cataclysmic economic change. In Thank You for Your Service, Finkel looks at those victimized by egregious military malpractice.
The post-industrial, high-tech, information-age economy unveiled near the end of the 20th century supposedly offered a template for permanent prosperity. The Great Recession upended such expectations. Although some Americans have gotten very rich indeed, far larger numbers of ordinary citizens find themselves unemployed and unemployable. With impressive sensitivity, Packer tells their story.
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Concocted at about the same time, a post-industrial, high-tech, information-age approach to waging war supposedly offered a template for assured victory. Iraq and Afghanistan have shredded such pretensions. Although some high-ranking military and civilian officials found ways to cash in, far larger numbers of ordinary soldiers (and their families) suffered, many of them grievously. In painful, intimate and at times almost voyeuristic detail, Finkel tells their story.
More specifically, Finkel, a reporter with The Washington Post, attends to what he calls the “after war.” His concern is with the soldiers who return from the war zone bearing wounds — and with the loved ones on whom those wounds also become imprinted. Above all, he is concerned with wounds that may not be fully visible: the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and related conditions that affect roughly a half-million younger veterans. Make that a half-million and counting.
To translate this disturbing statistic into flesh and blood, Finkel checks in on some of the soldiers featured in his previous book. What he finds is anger, anxiety, shame, depression, guilt, sleeplessness, self-abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse and suicidal tendencies, sometimes acted on, sometimes not. Shouting matches, crying jags and bizarre behavior along with guns and two-pack-a-day smoking habits abound, but not much in the way of useful therapy. Of one soldier, Finkel writes: “He began to take sleeping pills to fall asleep and another kind of pill to get back to sleep when he woke up. He took other pills, too, some for pain, others for anxiety. He began to drink so much vodka that his skin smelled of it, and then he started mentioning suicide.”
As the United States approaches its 2014 deadline for military withdrawal from Afghanistan, one often overshadowed aspect of the conflict is the hard-won progress made by previously marginalized segments of the Afghan population, particularly women, girls, and young people.
Afghanistan has one of the highest proportions of young people in the world – many of whom have known only war. The median age of the population is 15.6 years old, the median age of marriage is 18, and half of mothers surveyed during a country-wide mortality survey had their first child when they were teenagers.
But “while more than 70 percent of Afghanistan’s population are under 25 years of age, young people’s voices are rarely heard,” said Maiwand Rahyab, Counterpart International’s deputy director of Afghanistan.
“Let’s not be naïve about the current reality,” Rahyab said at the Wilson Center. “Afghan society is conservative and hierarchical,” making it difficult for young people to contribute meaningfully to policymaking and government reform. But over the last decade, there have been improvements in schooling, health, and opportunities for young people, which he and other panelists described during a special half-day event on June 24, “Afghanistan Beyond the Headlines: Women, Youth, and the War.”
This ought to be fairly self-evident. That it isn't tells us something about our media and the American voters, neither very complimentary. It should also be noted that the Republican Party has been doing everything in its power to destroy the Unions. If you are a working person and you vote Republican, I'm sorry, you're nuts. Anyone who cares about the middle class ou! ght to support Unions, and here is the evidence.
The middle class brings home a substantially larger share of aggregate earnings in states that have high rates of union membership than in those where fewer workers are organized, a Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) analysis of Census data shows. Amid very high and still increasing income inequality, union density appears to offer some buffer for middle-class Americans.
