JULY 21, 2021 – If I were a physician and America my patient, the metaphorical conversation would go something like this . . .
AMERICA: Tell me straight up, Doc. Am I gonna make it?
ME: You’ve got lots of potentially life-threatening issues going on.
AMERICA: I know. I feel very crappy, and lately I’ve had trouble climbing a single flight of stairs.
ME: If you want to live past your next election cycle, you must take drastic action.
AMERICA: Isn’t there a pill or a patch you can prescribe to counter all my bad habits?
ME: It’s called “surgery.”
AMERICA: Huh?
ME: Most of your problems stem from a serious, congenital, political flaw that only radical surgery can correct.
AMERICA: Congenital flaw? You’re getting personal.
ME: Nothing’s more personal than your health, and I am your doctor.
AMERICA: What’s congenital?
ME: Your constitution.
AMERICA: My constitution? No way! The folks who wrote it were geniuses and products of the Enlightenment. What they devised was an ageless, miraculous form of government guaranteed to advance life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for all of citizens.
ME: Not exactly.
AMERICA: Huh?
ME: Your Founders were a bunch of monied men; many were slaveowners. Their motivation was to escape taxes for which no compensating benefit was granted. The system of government they devised ensured that the rabble couldn’t take over and that they—monied men and slaveowners—would remain in control.
AMERICA: Eventually, Blacks and women gained the right to vote.
ME: After you nearly died in the 1860s. And today, members of a minority party wield power at odds with the needs and desires of a majority of citizens.
AMERICA: Don’t blame the Founding Fathers!
ME: To protect their self-interests, your “genius” Founders established the electoral college, thwarting majority rule, as you experienced disastrously in 2016. The “Fathers” also gave extraordinary power to the Senate, in which a handful of members representing a tiny fraction of your entire population, can control the legislative agenda, advancing what’s good for, say West Virginia, but bad for the rest of the country. These flaws, more than anything else, are now putting the country’s future at risk.
AMERICA: It’s worked so far.
ME: How well and for whom? Moreover, when your constitution was adopted, each member of the House represented 30,000 people. Today, each member represents 700,000. And again, there’s the Senate, wherein Wyoming, with a population of 579,000 has equal footing with California, a state with nearly 40 million—which, by the way, is nine times the size of the state that’s given Mitch McConnell oversized power. Your framework makes it impossible to address issues that threaten your very survival.
AMERICA: So . . . surgery?
ME: It’s your only option, but it’s complicated; it’ll take time to schedule and once they cut you open, it becomes risky business. You could try piecemeal surgery, that is, amending your constitution, but the prescribed process is unwieldly and protracted. It was designed when there were only 13 states with a total population of 3.9 million. Moreover, lots of powerful albeit minority interests have absolutely zero incentive to change what serves those interests perfectly well.
AMERICA: Meanwhile?
ME: Hold your breath.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
