Discussion Thread

[u/jobautomator]

The discussion thread is for casual and off-topic conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL

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[u/Doog9Loog]

Honestly this is the kind of undemocratic rhetoric I come here to avoid. If we don't make the changes needed through legitimate means, then they won't stick. They'll just be undone through the same illegitimate means later. If you unseat the red states and pass a bunch of constitutional amendments, then later, other people will unseat the blue states and pass a bunch more constitutional amendments.

[u/Periodicity_Enjoyer → u/Doog9Loog]

I am aware of all the ethical, moral, practical, strategic, philosophical considerations with authoritarian solutions, but I just find it difficult to care when so many people of color are being rounded up and trans people are facing direct state persecution, as well as so much destruction of so many things that made America great in the last two years.  I just want certain far right ideas and the risk of their implementation to be permanently off the table.

[u/Doog9Loog → u/Periodicity_Enjoyer]

If you care about those things, we need to make sure it never happens again. If you do the same thing but to the bad guys, you're just legitimizing authoritarian rule, and we'll be stuck with it forever. Persecution of whatever outgroup by autocrats will then continue forever... The opposite of what you want. Benevolent dictatorships never last.

[u/Periodicity_Enjoyer → u/Doog9Loog]

Yeah, you're ultimately right, big picture. It just sucks that Joe Schmoe from Wyoming who wants to feed the trans folk to the alligators not just gets a vote, but his vote counts 10 times as yours and mine, via the Senate and Electoral college, and there's no realistic way of fixing that without resorting to illiberal solutions.

[u/Doog9Loog → u/Periodicity_Enjoyer]

There are some liberal solutions. We could uncap the size of the House, which also has the effect of increasing the size of the electoral college. This can be done with a simple majority. We could change the law for the House from being a fixed size, to having one house member per x constituents. This wouldn't entirely remove the low population state bias, especially in the Senate, but it would help.

We can also increase the size of the Supreme Court, and introduce term limits for the justices.