of anti-democracy in America.
"…Tennessee shows what gerrymandering does at the state level. There, Republicans tend to get about 60% of the votes but control 76% of the seats in the House and 82% of the seats in the Senate. This supermajority means that the Republicans can legislate as they wish.
Gerrymandered seats mean that politicians do not have to answer to constituents; their purpose is to raise money and fire up true believers. Although more than 70% of Tennessee residents want gun safety legislation, for example, Republican legislators, who are certain to win in their gerrymandered districts, can safely ignore them.
Tennessee shows the effects of gerrymandering at the national level as well. Although Republican congressional candidates in Tennessee get about 65% of the vote, they control 89% of Tennessee's congressional delegation. In the elections of 2022, Florida, Alabama, and Ohio all used maps that courts have thrown out for having rigged the system to favor Republicans. The use of those unfair maps highlights that the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives by only the slimmest of margins and explains why Republicans are determined to keep their gerrymanders.
Because their seats are safe, Republicans do not have to send particularly skilled politicians to Congress; they can send those whose roles are to raise money and push Republican ideology. That likely explains at least a part of why House Republicans are no closer to agreeing on a deal to fund the government than they have been for the past several months, even as the deadline is racing toward us, and why they are instead going to hold an impeachment hearing concerning President Joe Biden on Thursday..."
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/september-25-2023?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
This breaks my heart.
ReplyDeleteI went to a public high school and have been raised to believe that the United States of America is the greatest country there ever was or ever will be. I was told that my grandfathers gave their lives to the noble cause of defending this great nation, and that their sacrifice was the noblest thing they could ever do, even if it came at the cost of me not getting to ever know them. A part of my identity has been built on being an American, a sense of pride that has been eroded quietly away. Through education, I now know that that sense of pride I once believed so firmly in is nothing short of a facade, to hide the much deeper and harder to swallow truths of this country. This personally, has left a raw hole in my view of myself, but that’s neither here nor there.
I actually started this post because I wanted to talk about the connection between comparative politics and philosophy. I’m learning that these two things are more connected than I had previously thought, yet when they get too close, then tend to burn one another. Let me explain.
Empirical conclusions in Political Science are those derived from facts. They are the graphs and charts and number tables full of statistics you see that try to explain the world around us. However, what good is this numerical data if we cannot infer and apply their meanings onto our world. This is where Normative theories come into play. These are the theories that influence the “should” questions; should we allow this or that? Should this be done or not done? Should we care?
But how can one even ask these questions in the first place if they are not built upon the reasoning of philosophy? We would not be able to ask questions on the morality of a subject if we do not first define what morality is, and if I have learned anything from this class, it is that defining things in the world of philosophy is hard to do, because everyone has their own view point on the subject. I don’t think this should be viewed as a negative though, in fact, taking time to explore a subject from all different angles makes the ending conclusion that much stronger. Even so, within all conclusions, there will always be those unsatisfied with the answer, no matter how all encompassing it is.
This is where philosophy and politics can destroy each other. People can become so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of answers that all have their own basis to be believed that they simply throw up their hands and declare that they don’t care what’s right, they just want stuff to get done. This creates a scenario where an authoritative government has a chance to pounce. A charismatic leader might take total control under the guise of the morality of his own self proclaimed “philosophy” of which they will now impose on their subordinates. So I should clear up what I said before; philosophy does not destroy politics, instead the lack of freedom within the realm philosophy can swallow up the usefulness of politics. There has to be room to wiggle, to question, to explore within philosophy for it to be beneficial in politics, and what the republicans in Tennessee are doing is crushing that. This all wraps back around to my own personal anger in hearing this, because I have been raised on the unshakable principle that America was to far advanced to be susceptible to such treachery. I have been sold the lie that America is too great to squash the thing it pretends to uphold, the ability to decide what freedom and justice for all really means.
Thanks for reading my rant if you made it this far. :)
I understand your disillusion and frustration, and have felt it myself; but so long as we acknowledge the gap between our country's ideals and its actual practice, and resolve to do what we can to close it, we won't be tempted to say we "don't care what's right"... we'll call out what's wrong, which Heather Cox Richardson does in this column. I shared it because I worry that the Epicurean state of mind might tempt some to embrace an apolitical indifference to the undemocratic injustice of things like gerrymandering. I want to be the kind of epicurean who is informed and appropriately outraged by such practices, AND who resolves to stay happy.
DeleteAnd, I'd add, to be patriotic is precisely to be cognizant of the ideal-reality gap and to be motivated by it to act, not to become indifferent and cynical.