4 ms·

The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at thi

The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the populace is already badly split into warring camps.

rayiner 1y ago
The U.S. is VMS. France is BeOS. The former actually does work regardless of how kludgy it is.
- cool_man_bob 1y ago
  They’re both obsolete?
dmix 1y ago
> The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Do you mean the French Revolution? If you actually read the history on that (even basic stuff beyond the "Reign of Terror") I don't think any person would want to experience that for their country. It had tons of indiscriminate violence and took a decade of chaos before they sorted out into a real government, which then resulted in Napolean's coup
- AceyMan 1y ago
  I suspect the OP meant their semi-presidential/dual-executive system w/ parliament (although at this point, storming the Bastille is starting to look pretty good...).
- ternus 1y ago
  I read this as a reference to the Fourth and Fifth Republic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic (I've read that the French are talking about a Sixth, given that they've gone through several prime ministers in the past few weeks/months and seem unable to maintain a government long enough to pass anything.)
  - eqvinox 1y ago
    ACK on all. I should be a bit more clear maybe.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- kalavan 1y ago
  It's more likely a reference to France currently being the Fifth Republic.[1] The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence. [1] https://thegoodlifefrance.com/short-history-of-the-five-republics-of-france/ https://thegoodlifefrance.com/short-history-of-the-five-repu...
  - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
    Interestingly, the Fifth has then been running for 67 years so far, which makes the Third Republic still the longest running republic of France! I guess in around three years they'll be having a grand party.
    - eqvinox 1y ago
      Those 3 years are on shaky grounds, the way they're burning through Prime Ministers ;)
      - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
        Compared to some other places around the world, looks pretty stable :) Take Peru as an example, they've had 5 different presidents in the last 5 years, shortest one being president for 5 days, and since Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), not a single president has completed their full term.
  - eqvinox 1y ago
    Thanks, yes, it was a reference to Fourth to Fifth, and maybe soon Sixth Republic (depending on how things go…)
  - taink 1y ago
    > The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence. Quoting from the article: Things came to a head in 1958 as France struggled to decolonize. There was strong opposition within France to Algerian independence and part of the army openly rebelled. Important generals threatened a coup unless de Gaulle was returned to power. They sent paratroopers to capture Corsica in case anyone missed their point. The article even fails to mention Operation Resurrection. Hopefully we don't need coups every time we want a new constituent assembly.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- jonathrg 1y ago
  Yeah that's pretty much what happened last time I tried to reinstall my distro
- Maken 1y ago
  You never want the French Revolution... except when your country is ruled by an absolute monarch and you are essentially his slave forever. The American Revolution had the advantage of having the king an entire ocean away and no other neighbor kings panicking and declaring war on you immediately.
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    we actually had the help of the french king as well, in a sort of "enemy mine" scenario that has resulted in towns near me with french names pronounced in american accents. We've got North Vur-sales (Versailles) and Shar-luh-roy (Charleroi) and I can't help but think that Lafayette would've gone right back home if he know we were gonna do this to his language. Prussians, too. A lot of Europe seemed to not really feel one way or another about the plucky little colony but had very strongly defined feelings about damaging Great Britain.
- Pxtl 1y ago
  The term "the French Revolution" is kinda misleading because by the normal definition of "revolution" they had a few of those not just one.
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    it's misleading without context. luckily nothing humans ever do is without context and the french revolution has referred to the revolution of 1789 since...well, since 1789.
    - Pxtl 1y ago
      I don't mean it's misleading in that people are wondering "which revolution?". Everybody knows the French Revolution means the one involving The Terror and the death of Louis XVI. I mean that it implies France didn't have several other revolutions.
      - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
        if the phrasing leads everyone to the correct understanding then it's not misleading. it's leading. it's reductive, but it's not misleading.
forgotoldacc 1y ago
Tech corps and ex-PayPal guys would be putting billions into making a new constitution and it would be far, far worse than what we have now. And while the French love using violence and destruction to defend their countrymen and their rights, Americans would gladly be lemmings off a cliff so long as someone told them it pissed someone else off.
unethical_ban 1y ago
Yep. We might have been the first PC, but we're running windows 3.11 while the rest of the world runs a new OS. We need ranked or approval voting, elimination of gerrymandering. Strongly prefer elimination of Citizens United and the Senate.
- kelnos 1y ago
  Unfortunately, eliminating the Senate (or more precisely, each state's equal representation in the Senate) is the one and only thing that the constitution forbids an amendment from doing (see Article V, Section 5): > Provided that no Amendment [...] no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. (Awkward ellipsizing, but the elided text is another thing that's not allowed, which expired in 1808, and is otherwise thankfully no longer relevant.) Better voting systems can be implemented, but since the states run federal elections, each state would have to pass legislation requiring a different voting system. Of course I expect all 50 would not agree on which alternative system is the best, which may or may not matter. And I doubt red states would want to change, as voting systems that better reflect the will of the electorate tend to disadvantage the GOP. Eliminating gerrymandering is difficult, because it's hard to objectively define what is and isn't a gerrymandered map. There have been some attempts to do so, and I would say they've even been somewhat successful, but people can reasonably disagree with the methodology and thresholds used. The Citizens United SCOTUS ruling and precedent absolutely needs to be reversed; agreed. Corporations are not people and should not get first amendment protections. Or any kind of protections outside any that are defined in regular law. Another thing we need to do away with is the Electoral College. Presidents should be elected based on the national popular vote, not by per-state winner-take-all proxies, with vote apportionment that wildly advantages some states over others. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would effectively do away with the EC if states "owning" at least 270 electoral votes were to all sign it, but that's unlikely to ever happen. (Then again, it's more likely that the Compact would achieve that threshold than the passing of a constitutional amendment to abolish the EC.)
  - tguvot 1y ago
    clarifying/limiting presidential power and ending lifetime appointments for federal/supreme court judges could be useful
kelnos 1y ago
For better or worse, the US constitution does not have provisions or a process for dissolving itself and developing a new constitution. The closest thing we have is the amendment process. In theory we could use that to rewrite the entirety of the constitution[0], but good luck getting the required votes in place on any possible replacement. The bar is pretty high: amendments need to be proposed by either a vote of 2/3 of Congress, or by a constitutional convention convened by 2/3 of the state legislatures, and then ratified by 3/4 of all state legislatures. We couldn't get that sort of agreement to pass something as theoretically uncontroversial as the Equal Rights Amendment. It's laughable to think we could pass a "new constitution" that way. I expect the only way we could end up with a new constitution is through a bloody civil war, or some sort of coup. Hopefully no one wants something like that, though. I certainly don't. [0] Technically the entirety of the constitution can't be amended; Article V, Section 5 prohibits an amendment from changing each state's equal representation in the Senate. Though I suppose a "rewrite amendment" might get around that by preserving the Senate as-is as a ceremonial body without any power. That would certainly violate the spirit of that wording in Article V, so I imagine it would be challenged in court.
- drysart 1y ago
  It's worth noting that Article V, Section 5 doesn't prohibit itself from being amended away. So you just need the constitutional convention to refer two new amendments: the first one stripping the restriction itself, and the second one to do what the restriction prohibited being done.
- dimal 1y ago
  We don’t need a full rewrite. Despite the divisions in this country, there are a couple things that most people agree on: - Corporate money should be out of politics - Gerrymandering should be stopped If we had amendments for these two things, it could change A LOT. Congress might actually be able to function. Corporate corruption could be prosecuted. We might be possible to put meaningful limits on corporate power. Of course, the devil’s in the details. How do you write amendments for these two things in a way that actually accomplishes the goals? But though it would be difficult, I don’t think it would be impossible.
netsharc 1y ago
Heh, a balkanized USA, or one with different warlords like Afghanistan, would be interesting to see... "In this region, I'm the ruler, and here we believe in TERF!".
- sigwinch 1y ago
  Trademark Curtis Yarvin
- Pxtl 1y ago
  I wanna be a citizen of Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ashanoko 1y ago
The first Version had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism as a way to eject populists, treasonous agitators and destabilizing personal.

rayiner 1y ago

The U.S. is VMS. France is BeOS. The former actually does work regardless of how kludgy it is.

cool_man_bob 1y ago
They’re both obsolete?

dmix 1y ago

> The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Do you mean the French Revolution? If you actually read the history on that (even basic stuff beyond the "Reign of Terror") I don't think any person would want to experience that for their country. It had tons of indiscriminate violence and took a decade of chaos before they sorted out into a real government, which then resulted in Napolean's coup

AceyMan 1y ago
I suspect the OP meant their semi-presidential/dual-executive system w/ parliament (although at this point, storming the Bastille is starting to look pretty good...).
ternus 1y ago
I read this as a reference to the Fourth and Fifth Republic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic (I've read that the French are talking about a Sixth, given that they've gone through several prime ministers in the past few weeks/months and seem unable to maintain a government long enough to pass anything.)
- eqvinox 1y ago
  ACK on all. I should be a bit more clear maybe.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
kalavan 1y ago
It's more likely a reference to France currently being the Fifth Republic.[1] The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence. [1] https://thegoodlifefrance.com/short-history-of-the-five-republics-of-france/ https://thegoodlifefrance.com/short-history-of-the-five-repu...
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  Interestingly, the Fifth has then been running for 67 years so far, which makes the Third Republic still the longest running republic of France! I guess in around three years they'll be having a grand party.
  - eqvinox 1y ago
    Those 3 years are on shaky grounds, the way they're burning through Prime Ministers ;)
    - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
      Compared to some other places around the world, looks pretty stable :) Take Peru as an example, they've had 5 different presidents in the last 5 years, shortest one being president for 5 days, and since Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), not a single president has completed their full term.
- eqvinox 1y ago
  Thanks, yes, it was a reference to Fourth to Fifth, and maybe soon Sixth Republic (depending on how things go…)
- taink 1y ago
  > The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence. Quoting from the article: Things came to a head in 1958 as France struggled to decolonize. There was strong opposition within France to Algerian independence and part of the army openly rebelled. Important generals threatened a coup unless de Gaulle was returned to power. They sent paratroopers to capture Corsica in case anyone missed their point. The article even fails to mention Operation Resurrection. Hopefully we don't need coups every time we want a new constituent assembly.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jonathrg 1y ago
Yeah that's pretty much what happened last time I tried to reinstall my distro
Maken 1y ago
You never want the French Revolution... except when your country is ruled by an absolute monarch and you are essentially his slave forever. The American Revolution had the advantage of having the king an entire ocean away and no other neighbor kings panicking and declaring war on you immediately.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  we actually had the help of the french king as well, in a sort of "enemy mine" scenario that has resulted in towns near me with french names pronounced in american accents. We've got North Vur-sales (Versailles) and Shar-luh-roy (Charleroi) and I can't help but think that Lafayette would've gone right back home if he know we were gonna do this to his language. Prussians, too. A lot of Europe seemed to not really feel one way or another about the plucky little colony but had very strongly defined feelings about damaging Great Britain.
Pxtl 1y ago
The term "the French Revolution" is kinda misleading because by the normal definition of "revolution" they had a few of those not just one.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  it's misleading without context. luckily nothing humans ever do is without context and the french revolution has referred to the revolution of 1789 since...well, since 1789.
  - Pxtl 1y ago
    I don't mean it's misleading in that people are wondering "which revolution?". Everybody knows the French Revolution means the one involving The Terror and the death of Louis XVI. I mean that it implies France didn't have several other revolutions.
    - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
      if the phrasing leads everyone to the correct understanding then it's not misleading. it's leading. it's reductive, but it's not misleading.

forgotoldacc 1y ago

Tech corps and ex-PayPal guys would be putting billions into making a new constitution and it would be far, far worse than what we have now. And while the French love using violence and destruction to defend their countrymen and their rights, Americans would gladly be lemmings off a cliff so long as someone told them it pissed someone else off.

unethical_ban 1y ago

Yep. We might have been the first PC, but we're running windows 3.11 while the rest of the world runs a new OS. We need ranked or approval voting, elimination of gerrymandering. Strongly prefer elimination of Citizens United and the Senate.

kelnos 1y ago
Unfortunately, eliminating the Senate (or more precisely, each state's equal representation in the Senate) is the one and only thing that the constitution forbids an amendment from doing (see Article V, Section 5): > Provided that no Amendment [...] no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. (Awkward ellipsizing, but the elided text is another thing that's not allowed, which expired in 1808, and is otherwise thankfully no longer relevant.) Better voting systems can be implemented, but since the states run federal elections, each state would have to pass legislation requiring a different voting system. Of course I expect all 50 would not agree on which alternative system is the best, which may or may not matter. And I doubt red states would want to change, as voting systems that better reflect the will of the electorate tend to disadvantage the GOP. Eliminating gerrymandering is difficult, because it's hard to objectively define what is and isn't a gerrymandered map. There have been some attempts to do so, and I would say they've even been somewhat successful, but people can reasonably disagree with the methodology and thresholds used. The Citizens United SCOTUS ruling and precedent absolutely needs to be reversed; agreed. Corporations are not people and should not get first amendment protections. Or any kind of protections outside any that are defined in regular law. Another thing we need to do away with is the Electoral College. Presidents should be elected based on the national popular vote, not by per-state winner-take-all proxies, with vote apportionment that wildly advantages some states over others. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would effectively do away with the EC if states "owning" at least 270 electoral votes were to all sign it, but that's unlikely to ever happen. (Then again, it's more likely that the Compact would achieve that threshold than the passing of a constitutional amendment to abolish the EC.)
- tguvot 1y ago
  clarifying/limiting presidential power and ending lifetime appointments for federal/supreme court judges could be useful

kelnos 1y ago

For better or worse, the US constitution does not have provisions or a process for dissolving itself and developing a new constitution. The closest thing we have is the amendment process. In theory we could use that to rewrite the entirety of the constitution[0], but good luck getting the required votes in place on any possible replacement. The bar is pretty high: amendments need to be proposed by either a vote of 2/3 of Congress, or by a constitutional convention convened by 2/3 of the state legislatures, and then ratified by 3/4 of all state legislatures. We couldn't get that sort of agreement to pass something as theoretically uncontroversial as the Equal Rights Amendment. It's laughable to think we could pass a "new constitution" that way. I expect the only way we could end up with a new constitution is through a bloody civil war, or some sort of coup. Hopefully no one wants something like that, though. I certainly don't. [0] Technically the entirety of the constitution can't be amended; Article V, Section 5 prohibits an amendment from changing each state's equal representation in the Senate. Though I suppose a "rewrite amendment" might get around that by preserving the Senate as-is as a ceremonial body without any power. That would certainly violate the spirit of that wording in Article V, so I imagine it would be challenged in court.

drysart 1y ago
It's worth noting that Article V, Section 5 doesn't prohibit itself from being amended away. So you just need the constitutional convention to refer two new amendments: the first one stripping the restriction itself, and the second one to do what the restriction prohibited being done.
dimal 1y ago
We don’t need a full rewrite. Despite the divisions in this country, there are a couple things that most people agree on: - Corporate money should be out of politics - Gerrymandering should be stopped If we had amendments for these two things, it could change A LOT. Congress might actually be able to function. Corporate corruption could be prosecuted. We might be possible to put meaningful limits on corporate power. Of course, the devil’s in the details. How do you write amendments for these two things in a way that actually accomplishes the goals? But though it would be difficult, I don’t think it would be impossible.

netsharc 1y ago

Heh, a balkanized USA, or one with different warlords like Afghanistan, would be interesting to see... "In this region, I'm the ruler, and here we believe in TERF!".

sigwinch 1y ago
Trademark Curtis Yarvin
Pxtl 1y ago
I wanna be a citizen of Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

ashanoko 1y ago

The first Version had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism as a way to eject populists, treasonous agitators and destabilizing personal.