[ExI] Electoral College

[John Clark]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 8:32 PM, <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:


> >
>> >…Trump also swore to be loyal to the Constitution, but a oath means
>> nothing to a man like Trump…John K Clark
>
> *>*
> *Sure, but an oath to the constitution means a lot to the people who
> command the military. *
>
>
That's probably true for the average military person but the average is not
what's important, only a small subset picked by Trump are important. By
2020 all the top military leaders will have been appointed by Donald Trump,
now look at the sort of people Trump already picked for his cabinet and
tell me you are confident the generals of 2020 will be of high moral fibre.

*>*
> *You can be sure, if there was a way to declare oneself president for
> life, it would have been tried by now.*
>
> As I said Trump is unique, we've had some bad people become presadent
before but never anybody as evil or as stupid as Donald, vice-president
Aaron Burr was probably the closest but fortunately he never became
president and although evil unlike Trump Burr was not stupid. Usually its
good that a evil person is stupid but not if you're presadent of the USA
with your finger on the nuclear button. Trump is so stupid he doesn't know
he's stupid so even if he doesn't have the brains to become dictator he
probably thinks he does, and even a unsuccessful attempt will be a
nightmare and the worst internal crises since the Civil War.

I'm nostalgic for the good old days of 2016 when we were young and innocent
and the worst horror we could conceive of was Hillary Clinton's E-mail
server!


> >
> *Regarding the Electoral College, it helps make state governments
> relevant.  The way our republic is designed, states are to do the heavy
> lifting in government. *
>
> That doesn't explain why the burden a California voter must lift is 70
times as heavy as a Wyoming voter; I wouldn't mind if the Wyoming voter was
70 times wiser but that can be proven false by just 2 words, "Iraq" and
"Trump".

*>*
> *This is also particularly relevant in this age of American history, for
> it is easily foreseeable that the American federal government will soon be
> in default on many of its obligations.  With Social Security obligations in
> particular, that day is probably within 20 years.*
>
>
Predictions about what economic conditions will be like in 20 years have
almost always proven to be wrong and today with its fast changes in
technology its even more difficult to make predictions. Nevertheless I will
now make a prediction, the acceleration of the wealth gap between rich
people and poor people in western democracies will NOT continue for another
20 years; I'm not sure what will stop it but one way or another it will
stop, and some of those ways are uglier than others.


> *>*
> *The constitution is a marvelous device.*
>


It wasn't bad for the 18th century but it had flaws in addition to slavery
and the boneheaded Electoral College. It's dumb they didn't let woman vote,
its dumb they redundantly said the people should have religious freedom
when, they had already said they had freedom of speech and assembly
and so got religious freedom automatically, its dumb that all states
regardless of size get 2 Senators and it's dumb that until the 17th
amendment the people couldn't even vote for their Senator. The Tea
Party wants to repeal the 17th amendment as does Trump apologists Ted Cruz
and Mike Huckabee. Rick Perry wants to repeal it too, he's Trump's energy
secretary and replaced Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize winning physicists who
was energy secretary under Obama. Do you see what I meant about the quality
of people Trump picks for his cabinet and for his generals?

John K Clark
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