Whatever happened to "Regular Order"?
Think back. Civics Class.
Legislation was introduced/suggested. Various Committees would evaluate, hold hearings, come up with somewhat of a bill capable of achieving bipartisan support.
Then there's that budget thing. What happened to that? All those Committees would take their slice, discusss, hold hearings, make a bipartisan resolution for their portion of the budget.
Then the House and Senate would each come up with their plans. Take it to the floor, discuss allow submission of amendments. Then take it to a Joint Committee to resolve differences and come up with a proposed legislative plan/ budget that could be supported by the House and Senate and fly it up to the WH for signature.
This actually used to work. A lot of the progress we made in the last century was because of this process. It overcame fringe positions. It overcame entrenched regional predjudices.
Then what we got was Continuing Resolutions. 2,000 plus pages omnibus bills. Elected Representatives too scared to actually vote on anything. And the Parties of Boehner/Ryan/McConnel and Nancy/Harry/Schumer.
This is stupid. Are we stupid?
Why in the name of all that is Holy have we come to this total collapse of the best society and form of government that has ever existed in the history of mankind (personkind?).
It is a puzzlement.
"Etc. Etc. and So forth"
Comments
"Well, Doctor, what have we got ..."
“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Benjamin Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Apparently, humankind has not quite evolved to the point where our comfort zone is no longer "overlords and serfs".
I do believe that we're getting ready to make -- or are in the process of making -- an evolutionary leap. Whether it will eliminate our need to seek and maintain an elite ruling class, and what the effect on the good old US of A's political structure (and even its continued existence) will be are unknowns at this point.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Ben Franklin also said
We seem to have reached that time.
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
Vive la revolution
Vive la revolution.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
@boriscleto We had about 30 years
We had about 30 years to fix it. Rather than attend to and nurture this new creation, we buried it in mythology and allowed the parasites we almost got rid of, to move back in and take over, again.
The genius of Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, et al, was that they convinced the powerful to go along, against their own interests, by using their understanding of their contemporaries' individual desires and foibles. The People he was referring to were not The People we think of when we read the words in today's context. Franklin spent most of his life as one of them and had no illusions about them or the world in which they live. Nor did he ever have any doubt about what they would try to do once left to their own devices.
@Greyhound
But it is in the interests of everyone to have a strong, functional sustainable economy, ecology and society. Unfettered polluting/militaristic/vulture/disaster capitalism ultimately destroys not only the hosts but the parasites and, when unfettered and powerful enough, within what should have been within the perpetrator's own lifetimes, as is now occurring.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
We need a shape-shifting revolutionary party that initially
attracts disillusioned and disgusted duopoly voters by taking the form of a single-issue, Medicare-for-all third party.