Yglesias says, "People figure that whatever political problems it might have will prove transient — just as happened before."<p>This is way too dismissive of what's actually happened in American history. The word "transient" implies that the political problems eventually went away, and American democracy kept on going.<p>But what actually happened is that each political problem was addressed by changing our government--either through Constitution amendment, through federal legislation, or through the creation of new court precedent.<p>So the American government of today would not look very familiar to the people who wrote the Constitution. If they were alive today, they would think that what they created has already been replaced. We'll feel the same way 100 years from now...big deal. People always feel out of place as they age.<p>The fundamental benefit of the American system of government is that it can be changed in a wide variety of ways without violence.
Rather than engage in outright histrionics, the author makes sensible points backed up by historical facts. However I think the author ignores that idea that sensible design alternatives exist to a lot of the perceived gridlock. We're a country of designers who find elegant solutions to problems. The perceived entrenched powers that doom us can be unravelled with sensible fixes. Our prison system can be reformed by sensible legalization/de-regulation coupled with how we prosecute crimes and fund prisons, no need for a revolution there. Regulation of rogue energy and financial institutions can be strengthened, we can make sure our regulators don't become enablers and we reform what we regulate to not strangle innovation, no need for a revolution there. Every day viable alternatives pop up to our toxic media, and Jon Stewart proved you can de-legitimize an entire network, not with violence, but with a sustained nightly attack of satire, no need for a revolution there.<p>In truth, this article engages in a sort of fallacy, we're only doomed if we think doom is the only outcome that's possible. There's another version of this article that could happen called "American democracy can be fixed with sensible design".
Quite an irritatingly-simplistic/tired headline. I choked that down and read, but there's quite a bit of "what if"-ing going on. We get it, all of this executive action after failed attempts to gain consensus is "a bad thing", but the writer's attempts to predict the future as far ahead as he is ("sometime before runaway climate change forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies") leave him an awful lot of leeway to wax on about what could happen, at the same time providing no ideas for what could fix things (beyond a coup that causes us to re-evaluate the constitution).
Active, aggressive democratic government across a highly diverse political, cultural and social environment is as tyrannical as any other political arrangement, perhaps worse due to the implied legitimacy of the governments actions ("We" bombed iraq, "we" tortured terrorist suspects.)<p>The only humane option is secessionism, which has been poisoned in american political discourse by its historical association with slavery. Why Alabama and California should have anything more than, perhaps, a mutual defense pact, at this point, is beyond me.
If he's so concerned about America exhibiting the signs of a Fascist dictatorship, perhaps he should take a long, difficult, critical look at the ideology that actually accomplished it: Progressivism.<p>We aren't "headed toward" Fascism. The Progressive Movement and their fundamental changes to the government of the US was a core <i>inspiration</i> for Fascism. This is old, old news.