Stephen Erickson

My thoughts exactly. Thank you, Jeff Tucker, for all you do. @jeffreytucker

The era of Donald Trump’s overbearing presence in American politics might soon end thanks to the historic rout of the Republicans in Congress last night. The Democrats will be firmly in control of both the US House and the US Senate. The Democrats will gain at least twenty-five seats in the US House, with sixty-five races still undecided. The Democrats have picked up seven seats in the US Senate, with two races yet to be called. That the two remaining Senate races undecided are in the Republican strongholds of Alaska and Mississippi tells you all you need to know about the depths of the Republicans’ devastating defeat. The Republicans have lost Senate seats in Texas, the Carolinas, Kansas and Maine. The election is a massacre for the Republican Party and a complete repudiation of Donald Trump. The impeachment of President Trump should now be expected. If the Democrats were willing to impeach him after a phone call to Ukraine in his first term, impeaching him for starting the war with Iran will be a no-brainer. There will be no doubt be other charges as well. Might Trump be convicted in the US Senate and removed from office? It’s a high bar, since conviction requires two-thirds of the Senate. Eleven to thirteen Republicans (depending on the election’s final results) would have to defect to the Democrats to remove Trump. But do Republicans really want to carry Trump’s baggage into the 2028 presidential race? Might Trump—with little toleration for public humiliation and losing—resign? Some wily Democratic politicians would probably prefer to keep Trump around for political reasons, to keep reminding the public that Trump is even more loathsome than they themselves are. Impeaching and removing a president for starting a war without congressional consent—let alone a declaration of war—would be a wonderful precedent. Similarly, impeaching but ultimately not convicting a president for single-handedly starting a war is a bad precedent. It would seem to invite the same thing to happen again. The problem of extricating the United States from the situation in the Persian Gulf remains. Iran won the election also, which is a truly terrible outcome, the blame for which can only be laid at the feet of President Trump for starting a war without the support of the American people. You will hear Democratic politicians celebrating their massive victory, which is only natural. They will cheer the democratic process. But don’t lose sight of how broken our political system is. The losses of GOP Senate seats in deep red states indicate a profound public repudiation of Donald Trump. Nevertheless, at least 88% of all US House incumbents will be reelected, so difficult is it to remove a sitting member. The switching of party control in Congress is only possible because the population of the United States is so evenly divided between red and blue. Incumbency remains entrenched and sending a normal person to Washington DC as anything but a tourist is still difficult to impossible. Looking back, the improbable election and reelection of a man with the unsavory personality of Donald Trump can only be explained by an extreme public distaste for what the Democrats have been offering. Have the Democrats reformed themselves for the better or have they doubled down on what made them so unpopular? That the Democrats will overplay their hand seems as certain as Trump’s impeachment. A good and reasonable American people yearn for a government that truly represents them. It won’t happen until we fix the system to permit normal citizens the possibility of controlling their own government. Learn how We the People can fix the system to end politics as a profession: citizensrisingusa.substack.c…

Sometimes an ad is the best thing I see on a screen all day.

In Federalist 10, James Madison said, "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Right now, our government does not control itself much at all. Federalist 10 is really important, so let's stick with it. Madison understood that various interests could exploit government for selfish reasons. Madison used a word, "faction," in a way that we no longer do. But he defined faction as any interest contrary to the good of the whole. We can read "faction" as the same as "special interests." Madison was deeply concerned that special interests might capture the government and subvert the common good of the people as a whole. James Madison was obviously very prescient. The system of checks and balances was designed to prevent any one interest (or faction) from having its way. An interest might get what it wanted in the US House, for example, but hopefully the Senate or the President's veto would stop it. What Madison never anticipated was the modern state, which is so powerful that it can serve very many interests all at once. Today, innumerable selfish interests feed at the trough of power together. Unfortunately, today, the common and long-term good of everyday Americans has no meaningful advocate in government. Our $40 trillion debt is exhibit A. The defenses against special interest built into the Machine the founders made have been hopelessly overwhelmed. What is the fatal dysfunction in our political machine? I believe it is the professional politician, who could care less about the future of the country beyond the next election. It is the professional politician who takes money from the same selfish interests that he or she is supposed to regulate. It is the professional politician who spends most of his or her time in office -- not working to solve pressing public concerns -- but fundraising, posturing and spinning. The hurdles to public office are so high, that it often takes a sociopath to get elected. The system selects for exactly the wrong sorts of people. I come at these problems as former doctoral candidate in Early American History and the former Resident Scholar at US Term Limits. I have spent my whole life thinking about these issues. I have published some on Madison. My Substack is about why we must abolish politics as a profession and how we might replace the professional politician-based operating system with crowdsourced representative democracy. It's not as difficult as you might think. Explore the possibilities with me here: citizensrisingusa.substack.c…

Does anybody care to argue with this? The only point that I would make is that hospitals and other medical services are more akin to police and fire protection than buying a television. When citizens cannot do without the service they need and the providers can charge whatever they want, then that is exactly what they do.

May God bless and save France, along with all of Western Civilization. Peace.

Shame on the USA for being this irresponsible. Shame on us still more if we don't reform our political system to forever end politics as a profession. Our career politicians of both parties have bankrupted our nation. We are paying for it --and will pay much more--with inflation. Inflation is a tax that hurts the working class most. It's terribly regressive. And it's unforgivable. Follow me and be part of a campaign to end careerism in politics. Follow the link and explore the solutions: citizensrisingusa.substack.c…

Arab political parties in Isreal anticipate winning more seats in the upcoming election. How many Jews in Arab countries will serve in their parliaments? Oh wait. Arab countries don't have meaningful parliaments. Oh, and all of the Muslim countries were ethnically cleansed of Jews many years ago. Arab parties on course for 17 seats in Israel election, early results show aje.news/l7fv0z via @AJEnglish

There will only be real change after we abolish politics as a profession. Join me at Citizens Rising. @SallyMayweather citizensrisingusa.substack.c…

Does it seem to you like no responsible party is ever in charge of government? I know that’s how I feel. Politics is a playground for the self-serving, the deceitful and the foolish. Think of the people you know from all walks of life. Are not most reasonably decent and knowledgeable about something? A few people you know will be exceptionally kind and generous. Others highly intelligent and accomplished. But those with the power seem entirely different. Many of them act like sociopaths. To make matters worse, their pathology trickles down to us. Why can’t a nation full of good people fix what’s going so very wrong? Why can’t we organize ourselves to do what is necessary? Here’s an alarming truth: we have not even taken the first step toward fixing our broken political system. James Madison—the Father of the US Constitution— anticipated our problem, which is astounding given how far his time is from our own. Madison was not only a deep political thinker; he was also a political organizer. Madison and Alexander Hamilton launched the convention that designed the US Constitution. Bear with me here, because what follows has everything to do with the place where we now find ourselves. In Madison’s time, critics said the republic he proposed for the United States would never work, because history showed that republics are only appropriate for small communities, like the city-states of ancient Greece. Madison’s political opponents said it was folly to try such a thing in a land the size of America. Madison countered that republics had always been unstable because they had all been too small. In a small group, it’s easy for a majority to form and oppress the minority. However, if the sphere is expanded to include many people in a large geographic region, it becomes increasingly difficult for that oppressive majority to coalesce. In a large republic, many diverse interests might check and balance each other, with none ever becoming strong enough to capture the government for self-serving purposes. As it turns out, a large republic is more stable than a small one, according to Madison. The idea is so prevalent in Madison’s writings and speeches that it’s like an obsession. He must have become a bore at parties. One can imagine Dolley Madison giving James a swift kick under the dinner table as he droned on about the virtues of a large republic where interests could check interests. Madison never imagined a modern government like ours, which is rich enough and powerful enough to serve a vast horde of special interests simultaneously. He also never could have anticipated the incredible changes in wealth, technology and society since his day. Still, Madison perceived a flaw in his own theory about the safety of a large republic that he almost never mentioned to anyone. Even most historians have not picked up on this. Writing privately to his friend, Thomas Jefferson, Madison expressed a worry that he usually kept to himself: “As in too small a sphere oppressive combinations may be too easily formed against the weaker party, in too extensive a one, a defensive concert (emphasis added) may be rendered too difficult against the oppression of those trusted with administration.” Get past the highfalutin language and see what Madison is revealing here. Madison’s “defensive concert” has nothing to do with cellos and oboes. He is referring to the difficulty of taking concerted action when the government no longer represents the people and when the society is large, geographically spread out, and splintered into very many interests and groupings. Is this not where we are today? I have deep and long experience trying to herd the cats for political reform. I have been trying to walk in the footsteps of James Madison most of my life and I bear the scars to show for it. No, I don’t pretend to solve great problems all by myself, but I have been trying to assemble diverse and public-spirited leaders who can. That is what James Madison did, in addition to his own intellectual contributions to the Constitution. Today, money and mindless partisanship plague political reform every bit as much as they debilitate sensible government. Vicious partisan media has otherwise smart and decent people believing that anything “the other side” is for must be stupid, wrong and evil. It is politically and socially costly to work with “the enemy,” so spiteful and knee-jerk have our politics become. I once brought a leading conservative thinker to a dinner with the entire executive leadership of Common Cause. We didn’t get past the appetizer before the President of Common Cause announced that Common Cause was a progressive organization, and implicitly, they were not partnering with any prominent conservatives, no matter how much each side might agree on getting money out of politics. After all, how might Common Cause’s progressive funders react if the organization partnered with notorious conservatives? Another regular feature of the sputtering political reform fiasco is what I call “the hero on horseback” phenomenon. Someone, almost always a male, will ride in with an idea and a small posse of financial backers. Because this hero prioritizes being the hero, he won’t work with anyone who won’t follow his lead. Invariably, little to nothing is achieved. Political reform fiefdoms can go on for years accomplishing nothing this way, until the funders start wondering what it is exactly that they have been paying for. At the dawn of social media, we were told that it had revolutionary potential to organize people to accomplish great things. That’s been true in tech and in the marketplace. The brilliant Linux computer operating system was developed through voluntary online collaboration among software developers. Google reviews and Yelp provide invaluable help to consumers by sorting out good products from bad ones. In politics, however, social media is used as a tool for political manipulation. It turns out that we scarcely need powerful propaganda organs when the people will police political thought themselves. Everyone is herded into the red or blue political narrative where we are kept in line through social punishment. If you dare dissent from a political narrative, you will suffer social abuse. Social media has us doing the work of Big Brother on each other. Rather than being revolutionary, social media is mostly a means of social control. Online political commentators are rewarded for producing content their existing audiences want to consume, rather than challenging assumptions or advancing solutions. Repetition in messaging, an essential practice in propaganda, reinforces political conformity. The same pundit on X will post the same partisan message all day long (assuming the pundit is not really an AI). Of course, there’s potential for constructive political online collaboration, but so far, the political action on the Web is mostly destructive. Meanwhile, the best content either never changes anything or remains siloed. Just as political reform organizations fight with each other over funders, so podcasters and pundits compete for swipes, clicks and subscriptions. A few social media personalities are independent-minded and public spirited, but they are too busy building their own brands to collaborate. Some of our most original thinkers and investigators leave their most important work behind paywalls. Our few constructive public intellectuals can talk and write about valuable subjects with great insight, but they leave the work of real problem solving to someone else who never arrives. The online propaganda, social aggression, scams and smears turn sensible citizens away from social media entirely. It’s hard to organize people when they are not there. All of the above is what happens when a self-serving leadership class is itself the problem. The United States, along with almost every other supposedly democratic nation, needs new leaders not selected through corrupted political processes. It’s not just me, or another hombre on horseback. We need all of us. The problems are so dire and numerous that there’s a place for every would-be civic leader. What we need—as James Madison would urge—is concerted action, because those “trusted with administration” systematically betray us. Leadership is a fundamentally human endeavor. Would-be leaders cannot be reliably judged through the lenses of social media and advertising. True leaders are recognized by their actions and reputations, seen and known by fellow human beings, in person. Those of us who want to fix our failing and corrupt institutions need to be in a room together. We need to look each other in the eyes, shake hands and make plans. It’s time for a Convention of the People. Follow me as we explore the possibilities. Subscribe on Substack to see how we might abolish politics as a profession. citizensrisingusa.substack.c…

Lovely.

I think this is brilliant. But my concern is that we don't have the systemic political structures to replace what must come down. Again, eliminate politics as a profession and crowdsource representative democracy to keep the people in charge of their own nations. See my link below. @brivael citizensrisingusa.substack.c…