The Extropist Examiner

By Hank Hyena

The USA political system and the Constitution it oozes out of like slime from a fetid egg - are shamefully flawed, an embarrassment to the citizenry they purport to represent. Although a moronic segment of the populace regards the decrepit 223-year-old document as a symetrical, semi-sacred text, akin to a Biblical addendum - anyone educated and/or rational can see that the American 18th century foundation is crippled, gouty, senile and impotent. Many fingers blame lobbyists and the absence of campaign finance reform as the worst maladies, but in my view, those blemishes are just parasites attached to a more gigantic rot, like vultures slurping on a walrus corpse. The US Constitution is putrid because it stymies participatory democracy; this depresses and enrages the electorate.  We need to slaughter the most disgusting tentacles of the blind master, and it’s obvious what needs to be annihilated first: The Senate.

What a mockery of justice this aristocratic assembly is! I’m surprised it wasn’t executed 155 years ago when it forced the United States into the Civil War. The Senate has been a horrible construct from the get-go; as a concession to “state’s rights” it was created to lure smaller entities into the union (i.e., “The Connecticut Compromise”). Today, miniscule land masses like Delaware and Vermont and near-empty wildernesses such as Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota have monstrously influential Senators, despite representing populations of less than 800,000 each. In contrast to this, Feinstein and Boxer from California are hamstrung with the same voting power, although they wave the banner for 37 million. The same gross injustice occurs in Texas (25 million), New York (19.5 million), and Florida (18.5 million). Today a mere 12% of the population can block the will of the majority. Who are these Senators, anyway? To get elected, they spent an average of $7.5 million each. As pundit James Fallows noted in his recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, we’d “be better off with a House of Lords.”

Let’s abolish the Senate! Replace it with something truly new and egalitarian, a system that gives us thrilling optimism and empowerment, something far more representative than the so-called “House of Representatives” which has been gerrymandered into petrification, plus it’s still packed with serpents who grovel for corporate money because they need an average of $1.375 million to win their campaigns. My proposal is to replace the moldering Senate with an electronic plebiscite system, i.e., something like Reddit.com.

Here’s how it works.

1. Everyone who reaches voting age gets a log-in ID and a password.
2. All bills advanced by the House of Representatives are posted on “reddit.com” for approval.
3. Upvote or Downvote, voters get two weeks to cast their ballots and to state their opinions in comments as lengthy and as often as desired.
4. The millions of comments are categorized in an efficient way so that the curious public can read all existing viewpoints. They are, in turn, also upvoted and downvoted as people find them more or less relevant
5. At the end of two weeks, all proposals that have received 60% (or another agreed-upon number) approval are enacted into law.

This would be an excellent first step in creating a more perfect democracy. Abolish the Senate! Replace with Reddit.com! Of course, this initial move would prompt other reforms; we’d quickly realize that the lower house was unwieldy, corrupt, and unnecessary, so we’d have to eliminate that as well, and replace it with a legislative e-body. Next, we’d scrutinize the two-party system, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, and the Presidency. Tsk, tsk, we’d shake our heads disapprovingly. Serious overhaul would commence, quite enjoyable.

Imagine a government that was actually “by the people, for the people”? Direct democracy can be ours if we truly desire it. Of course, the only way to legally destroy the Senate is to nullify it via an Amendment, and that only happens if its ratified by - you guessed it - the Senate itself. This obstacle should not deter us. The French, who possess the second-oldest democracy in the world, have changed their Constitution fifteen times since 1791. They helped us with our first Revolution and I’m sure they’d be happy to guide us towards the second.

References:

After the Crash: How America Can Rise Again by James Fallon, The Atlantic Monthly, Jan/Feb 2010

Abolish the Senate by Timothy Noah: http://www.slate.com/id/1006400/

The Black Hole Option: Abolish the Senate by Bob Fertik: http://www.democrats.com/the-black-hole-option-abolish-the-senate

Let’s Abolish The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body by Dylan Mathews: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=04&year=2009&base_name=lets_abolish_the_worlds_greate