Re: <nettime> why is it so quiet (in the US)

HI Ted, all,

Fascinating discussion in ominous times..

On 16 Nov 2020, at 04:02, tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com> wrote:

The US is breaking down, so it's not at all surprising that some of its language for describing the world would as well.

From a continental European perspective I’m watching this spectacle (don’t know what else to call it, without immediately invoking Debord and beyond), and I’m not well enough informed to have any definite reading, but my impression is not that the US is ‘breaking down’. Much rather it seems that the US is embroiled in a profound political crisis that plays out on many different levels.

For non-UK Europeans this whole electoral system tied to voting districts and the ‘first-past-the post’ principle does not make much sense, nor does the two party (Republicrat) party system, where none of the other political parties that do exist across the US get represented in the legislature.

Despite the important consideration that much of ‘democracy’ happens outside the formal legislative institutions (i.e. issue-based displacement of politics, freedom of assembly, the right to strike, referenda, and more spontaneous and/or affect driven forms of assembly), implying that we should not get trapped in a hyper-focus on the formal institutions, still at the moment when these formal institutions enter into a state of crisis, as is apparent now in the US, this warrants attention. At the very least these formal institutions should be able to guarantee these other ‘democratic’ or civil rights to be exercised extra-institutionally.

What this signals to me, from my limited Eurocentric (male / straight, etc.) perspective is an urgent need for institutional reform. At the very least some form of proportional representation in the voting system and a much lower threshold for different collective political actors to enter the legislature. Just to ask the most obvious question: ‘Where the f. is the Green Party or something like that in the US???

It would also allow the so-called ‘populists’ to enter on their own terms, which is a good thing because then they can be confronted head on. Europe has its own severe problems with those kinds of political movements and it forces the mainstream to acknowledge that and do something with it before they become a MEGA* type of movement. In NL we have seen a persistent presence for the last 20 or so years of political actors (the biological and political bodies changing and morphing all the time) of about 20% of the vote of people who simply want nothing (they don’t want immigrants, they don’t want environmental protective policies, they don’t want taxes, the don't want lefties, they don’t want the EU, they don’t want globalisation, they don’t want other people parking in the parking lot in front of their house, etc etc..).

Maybe Germany can serve as a model for the US? It also has a federal structure and a 5% threshold for parties to enter parliament. That all seems to work reasonably well (at least for the last 70 years).

The other thing is this presidential system. That just does not make any sense to me at all anymore - what is this some 21st century Leviathan? Get rid of that, appoint some symbolical nobody and let the country be run by a coalition of differential political groupings who can work out the best way forward together (harmonically if possible, contestationally if necessary).

Please people across the great pond, get your act together!

all bests,

Eric

p.s. - * MEGA - Make Europe Great Again