Paralyzing Power of American Democracy

Democracy is not bad.

Truth can really be born in a dispute between partners who can determine the right direction of development in that way and begin to move in that direction. In the US, these supposed partners are Democratic and Republican parties (and their supporters, of course).
However, truth can be born in an argument only between equal partners and only when they have a common goal. Right now, DP and the RP are not partners, but adversaries, hating each other, and their main purpose now is to defeat their counterpart. This occasionally leads to apparent paralysis of US political and economic life, such as the US federal government shutdown in January 2019.

In my opinion, much worse is the apparent stagnation of the country - there is a lot of political struggle, but very little of social consent and, correspondingly, meaningful actions. The US now looks like a swamp where neither good nor bad decisions can be implemented because of the constant confrontation between DP and RP. This is a relatively new trend in the US politics, born out of and under former President Trump. Before both parties used to peacefully make money off the taxpayers together. That’s why we are now witnessing an increasing mess and growing lump of unsolvable problems in the country under the leadership of both (Democratic and Republican) governments. In a situation like this, many people really start thinking of an iron hand, which can bring an order because the American democracy obviously fails to do that.

This is how the democracies can move to authoritarian/totalitarian models, which citizens will fight after to achieve the next level of democracy.


It always takes a long time to democracy to resolve any issue, and in the case of opposing equal adversaries, it is very long, up to "never”. For example, 2 years have passed since the failed US Capitol attack and there are still no charges to Mr. Trump in the case. Apparently, the only reason for this is the top Republicans’ opposition. US Themis has only been able to indict Mr. Trump for the hush money payment, but the next in-person hearing was scheduled for December 4, 2023.

In the last couple of weeks, the debates over the long-term US problems - gun violence, abortion and LGBT rights - has intensified. RP and DP are fighting to the death here, RP wins sometimes (guns), sometimes Democrats win (abortion), and both parties lose in LGBT rights fight. However, the point is: there is just political fighting instead of solving problems of the country, Republicans and Democrats are pulling the country in the opposite directions, the things are clearly not getting better and the problems are piling up. This is a stagnation. The country is paralyzed, electrified, and this should cause a sense of impotence and anger, which could manifest itself in the form of a social explosion. If this explosion coincides with 2024 presidential election campaign (and I’m afraid it will), taking into consideration the mutual dislike and large number of weapons Americans have on hand, it could lead to a civil war.

The US Declaration of Independence guarantees all citizens «Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness».

The US Declaration of Independence was adopted 13 years earlier than the Constitution and stated that “… all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Americans seem to have forgotten about their unalienable rights, split into 2 parts and help two major parties destroy the country by their animosity.

Gun control = more collective safety = more Life? Gun rights = more individual safety = less Life?

Gun violence is a very serious problem in the US now as it kills very many people. This causes great public outrage, but politicians and their supporters cannot agree, the problem worsens and splits American society apart.

I recently posted an article «Mass Shootings and Disintegration of the State», and the main idea is in its title - mass shootings with relatively few victims can be a trigger for very many victims of gun violence and lead to the disintegration of the state. Some people have commented on my article on Twitter, as usual without reading it, and I really could see the division of American society into two almost equal parts. The Republican fans are strongly in favor of "gun rights", citing the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, and the Democrat’s followers are just as strongly in favor of "gun control" because too many people are killed by gun violence. Both sides make their (generally fair) arguments and never seem to agree.

This is a very hard question for the US, even, perhaps, an unsolvable one. Indeed, who is right? Both sides make convincing arguments in support of their point of view… And every point of view has to be taken into consideration in a democratic society...


Let’s first distinguish between the collective and the individual.
The US as a state is built on the collective principle of distribution of duties: the people work and pay taxes, the government distributes those taxes to various needs, including the police, which keeps the order. Thus, citizens enjoy collective protection and, in theory, do not need guns at all. Just dial "911" and you are protected. Unfortunately, however, the police cannot protect against mass shooters, because it is impossible to prevent a lone kamikaze attack.

That's why Republicans propose to allow everyone to “keep and bear” firearms in order to defend themselves. It is correct, but not in the US now, because in this case we are moving away from collective protection to individual one, which can do more harm than good in a collective state.

Why:
- First, because the use of firearms in a collective environment is bound to cause a few extra accidental casualties. It is one thing for two people with handguns to quarrel in the woods, and quite another one - in a movie theater.

- Secondly, your individual actions will be judged by collective laws, and that is a slightly different point of view and, therefore, different justice.
Let me give you an example: a friend of mine once killed with a knife one of the 5 guys who attacked him. (That happened in Ukraine, not in the US, but both these countries live by collective laws). He has spent half a year under the investigation and was acquitted only because he proved in the court that he found the knife on the ground, when in fact he had it on him. As you can see, according to the individual law of survival, my comrade was absolutely right - he was defending himself. However, the court looked at the case from a collective point of view and my friend would very likely go to a prison for many years for wilful murder if they prove him carrying the knife. He did carry it intentionally, right? So, he was plotting a murder and thus he was dangerous for society. And what if he had a registered gun on him?
So collective justice is very particular. It is dangerous for someone who carries a gun.

The collective state does not tolerate the individual protection because if it cannot protect its citizens, the meaning of its very existence is lost.


I am a "no party affiliated" voter In the US and can be objective. I think that the Democrats are more right now than the Republicans on the gun issue:
1. The number of victims of gun violence is, in my opinion, too high as for the developed country: 20200 people died and 38550 people more were wounded in the US during 2022. It feels like a war and something must be done about it.
2. The free purchasing and bearing of guns inevitably translates into the free use of guns. If many Americans will carry the guns, defending from possible mass shootings (which actually produce relatively few casualties), the number of gun violence victims will skyrocket because of the growing Big Dislike in the country.
3. The "guns for all" approach worked well in the Wild West, but now there are a lot more people and it’s much more crowded everywhere. If everyone is allowed to carry a gun, there will be an unreasonable number of unintentional casualties and many unintentional murderers will go to prison.
4. The Democrats are not in favor of “prohibition to possess”, but for «allowed with permit” guns like many other developed counties do. The Republicans are in favor of "no permit required" which is equal to “guns for all”, which seems to me to be an extreme. Extremes are bad; the truth is always in the middle.


The Republican’s point of view on guns and individual self-defense will come true, but later - when the US breaks down into the separate states. Then all citizens will need guns as a means against tyranny in their states (as it is stated in the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution) and as a means of self-defense against other citizens.

Abortion – the Liberty of women (not of the state) to command their bodies.

Here there is also a conflict of the collective with the individual - the collective state with its vision interferes with the individual rights of citizens. I've written on this topic before.

The main conclusions stated in that article were:
- The state (both parties, not just the Republicans) interferes in this issue because 1) it needs more taxpayers and 2) supports public morality, which is tied to the religious beliefs of the citizens.
- Modern advanced science has not articulated yet what life is, so people have no way of agreeing, particularly, in which trimester of pregnancy a fetus is "alive" and which is not yet, so the moral element of this question can be omitted.
- Raising children is expensive, so it's up to whoever needs them to keep them, so the state has no right here to force women to keep children if they don't want to.
- If the state does not want a woman to get rid of a child for any reason - it should conclude a surrogacy contract with this woman, assume all the costs of carrying the child, giving birth and keeping it for, for example, 1 year and then raise its future taxpayer in a special school along with others alike.
- Humanity is already experiencing reproductive problems that will get worse, so in the future every child will be worth its weight in gold and women who manage to get pregnant will be forced/requested/stimulated to parturiate. The morality of the matter as well as the individual rights of women will be stripped away then.


Recently there were the elections for a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice seat and mayor of Chicago. Both positions were contested as usual by representatives of the DP and RP (or liberals and conservatives). In both cases, liberals won, pledging to vote (judge) and lead policy (mayor) in the direction of restoring women's rights to abortion. The Democrats seem to have found a good idea in the battle for votes: "Abortion wins elections."

So now the Democrats are getting it right on the abortion issue, and the Republicans will have to recognize women's right to abortion like they have already recognized the same-sex marriage if they want to win elections. It takes time, but somehow democracy works in the US.

In the future (I think, within 20-30 years), given the declining of fertility of humanity, the current Republican viewpoint (i.e., banning abortion) will win and they can be proud of their far-sightedness if there will be the US Republican Party by then.

LGBT rights – a hard Happiness of being who you are.

Recently, the Biden’s administration came up with changes to Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972, which prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educational program, receiving funding from the federal government.

Unlike the Republicans, Democrats have proposed not full ban on the transgender athletes’ participation in school and college sport competitions, but imposed some limitations and added some flexibility to the competition of teams in sports that were consistent with the athlete’s gender identities.

Many Republican-leaning states have enacted transgender sports bans in recent years. Eight states enacted such bans in 2022. The conservatives correctly (as for me) argue that transgender women who participate in women's sports are bigger and stronger than their cisgender rivals and thus have an unfair advantage.

Interestingly enough: the Democrats didn't go far in their long-awaited Title IX changes, and just like the Republicans also paid attention to “fairness in competition” and “preventing sports-related injury”: “The Department's approach would allow schools flexibility to develop team eligibility criteria that serve important educational objectives, such as ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”
It is a rare case of a coincidence of views of irreconcilable political opponents.

LGBT rights activists are disappointed and feel betrayed.

The rule most likely will be challenged in court.


It looks like the RP and DP just don't want to mess with the issue of transgender athletes. Republicans are in favor of a total ban on transgender athletes. The Democrats offer a selective approach and under the guise of "flexibility" are actually shifting the solution of the issue to schools and colleges.
Both parties, I think, rightly point out at the lack of “fairness in competition” and possible “sports-related injury” caused by differences in physical conditions of transgender and cisgender athletes.

So, how many young transgender people are there in the US who may want to compete? Pew Research Center reports that 3.1% of US adults younger than 25 are either a trans man or a trans woman. Frankly, it looks like insufficient quantity for the legislative changes and the cautious proposals of the Biden’s administration made on April 6, 2023 are a proof of that. It seems there won't be any legislative changes soon about the issue. And in the future...

Pew Research Center also gives some interesting statistics on the dynamics of transgender births in the US: «Some 5.1% of adults younger than 30 are trans or nonbinary… This compares with 1.6% of 30- to 49-year-olds and 0.3% of those 50 and older who are trans or nonbinary.”

As you can see, the number of transgender and non-binary people in the US grows over time. Someday politicians will take notice of them (they are voters, too) and will have to make some real changes. That's very democratic, however as of now both Democrats and Republicans in the US government don't give transgender people a chance to pursue their Happiness.


The number of transgenders and non-binary people is growing worldwide, too. As of 2021, on average about 2% of people in the world identified themselves as transgenders or non-binary, which is about 160 million people. It should be a little more by now. I also wrote earlier that humanity is mutating, being guided by the Program, which we all live in. LGBT is a necessary step in the evolution/degradation of our species. First, there was a convergence of the sexes (when women began to wear pants in the end of 19th century), then same-sex attraction (lesbians and gays) and attraction to both sexes (bi-sexuals) came, and now we moved to mixing of the sexes and sex changing by medical means.

We cannot avoid those changes, this is the Program at work.


The Republicans are also called “conservatives”. I am a conservative, too.
Conservatism is not bad. It’s the unwillingness to change the viewpoint too quickly for not to miss something important or accept something unneeded. Conservatism in a society is as necessary as the brake in a car. The Program no longer helps humans and humanity is changing rapidly; many our established notions of "normality" are outdated and don't work. We need to accept our inability to hold something within the old framework and begin to adjust. The "keeping out" everything new is necessary (this is the essence of the conservatism), but only for testing its viability. If it is impossible to "keep it out," we have to accept the new, even if we think it's weird (queer).
We (conservatives) will not defeat the Program.

Conclusion.

The growing pile of the problems and, in particular, gun violence, abortion ban, LGBT rights shows that the US as a collective democratic state cannot provide safety (Life), Liberty and pursuit of Happiness for its citizens. Governments change one another and the problems only get worse, which means different governments fail to manage the country. Both Democrats and Republicans constantly blame each other, refuse to negotiate, and together are driving the country to a deadlock.

The Declaration of Independence provides the advice to future generations of Americans for such case: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The Americans must decide for themselves whether or not the government has already become “destructive” to the country. This is complicated, so the US citizens have divided into two camps instead and also began to fight among themselves, proving to each other that fools are better than scoundrels. The Americans, apparently, really believe that the US government (consisting of Republicans and Democrats) works for the public good, not for their own pockets. And even the recent corruption scandal with Supreme Court Justice C. Thomas will not affect their opinion.

Let me tell you a secret: in every country the politicians are quite rich people just because they are elected for the common good, but work for themselves, i.e. against the common good. That’s why the politics is the source of corruption in any country and politicians can't (do not want) stop it.


Democracy is a form of social organization of a collective state. And the collective state has now become so large that it broke its internal ties, especially the link between the elites and the people. In addition, the elite and the people of the US are divided into Democrats and Republicans, feuding with each other, so the democracy in its current form paralyzes the country.


P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov