Originally written 10/6/2023, but only published now. At the time I did not feel the need to dump this “shit” on the USA because I still have lots of loved ones living there and I know these words will read like daggers specially to the folks that can’t easily get out like I did. I recognize my privilege to be able to able to leave, so I kept these words to myself. I’m sharing now as the situation with the reelection of Trump becomes more dire.
As I noted in my previous post brewery plans update, it was the news of ICE separating families seeking asylum and locking kids in cages in June 2018 what finally prompted me to want to leave the USA. At that time I decided that this journey that started in 2001 when I first moved to Austin, TX from Medellín, Colombia was coming to an end.
Since that summer of 2018, I’ve had dozens of conversations with different friends that have tried to persuade me to not leave the USA with the argument: “Things will get better. Just wait for the next Presidential election”. And sure enough Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the USA and Democrats have a slim majority in Congress. Unfortunately that is not going to enable the democratic wave the USA needs to correct course. Allow me to ellaborate.
The USA Electoral College
The Electoral College gives states a certain number of votes based on population from the last census (performed every 10 years). However by default each state gets 3 votes. This causes that for example the vote from someone in the state of Wyoming is worth the same as the votes from 4 people in California which is anti-democratic.
Additionally most states give their votes to the winning candidate regardless of how the vote was spread: for example 38 electoral college votes from Texas went to Trump in 2020 and 0 to Biden, even though Biden got 46% of the votes.
A popular vote which is the system used by almost every other democratic country in the world is the most democratic way for electing a president.
I don’t see any political will to change the USA voting system.
The USA Senate
Unlike the Electoral College that attempts (but doesn’t quite achieve) to keep a fair number of votes representing the population of each State, the Senate is formed by two representatives from each State. This means that both California and Wyoming have the same number of representatives in the Senate no matter the fact that California has roughly 68 times more population. The Senate is constantly voting on laws, and the fact that it fails to represent the population of the USA clearly shows that this is an anti-democratic institution.
The House of Representatives much better represents the way the country population is distributed.
I don’t see any political will to change the USA Senate composition.
The USA Constitution
The Constitution defines “the rules of the game” for a country. In its pages the Constitution defines the rights and duties of its citizens and the role of the government. As a country evolves, the Constitution needs to evolve with it. Several countries have decided to rewrite their Constitutions because at some point this document is so outdated and not aligned with the times, that it is easier to start from scratch, than to amend it. Colombia for example had a constitution written in 1886, but in 1991 the entire constitution was rewritten into a more modern document that has guided the country the last few decades. Chile for example is currently trying to write a new constitution to replace one created at one of its darkest times during the dictatorship of Pinochet.
The USA Constitution was written in 1789 and it could not be more old, antiquated, out of touch with the times, etc. In other words: anti-democratic. Sure it has been amended several times, but it is past due and could use a redo. The last amendment was done in 1992: that was 30 years ago and a lot has changed since.
Most Unitedstatians are taught in school that the USA Constitution is the most perfect document ever created by these ‘semi-god’ founding fathers. But in reality this document, while significant at the time it was written, it is old and no longer reflects the modern society the USA is today.
I don’t see any political will to rewrite the USA Constitution.
Super-PACs
In many countries each political candidate receives certain amount of public money to run their campaign. They can spend that money into advertisement, polling, canvassing, etc. and for the most part all candidates are playing on a leveled field where each has the same amount of resources for campaigning.
Of course the USA doesn’t do that. In the USA anyone can create a Political Action Committee (PAC) which are organizations that support a candidate during campaigning. These organizations can advertise, poll, canvas, etc on behalf of a candidate as long as there is no coordination between them, which is something very difficult to enforce. To make matters worse a Supreme Court ruling from 2010 known as ‘Citizens United’, ruled that these Super-PACs can spend as much money as they desire to support a candidate campaign. This anti-democratic ruling completely changes that ‘leveled play field’ mentioned above because corporations can now donate millions of dollars to support a candidate, ensuring that candidates backed up by wealthy donors are the only ones getting elected for office.
The way the Supreme Court justified this decision was by equating money with free speech. For them, a corporation spending millions in advertising is a form of free speech that needs to be protected by the constitution. This ruling produced a famous sarcastic phrase that says ‘corporations are people’.
Making things worse
The four items listed above (Electoral College, Senate, Constitution and Super-PACs) are at the core of the anti-democratic system running in the USA government. But this then has a trickle effect into other problematic areas that just exacerbate the problem.
- Gerrymandering: this is an anti-democratic ‘mechanism’ used by different states to gain more seats in the House of Representatives skewing the democratic number of representatives the state should get for each political party based strictly on the number of voters. This practice should be made illegal and districts should be selected based on a geographic division of constituents or any other non-partisan methodology.
- The USA Supreme Court: this is an anti-democratic institution elected by an anti-democratic Senate and an anti-democratically elected President thanks to the anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College. And to make matters worse, the Supreme Court judges are elected for an indefinite period, so after many years these old judges might have an antiquated, out of touch, anti-democratic view of the society they are supposed to represent. Additionally judges hear cases and rule them under an anti-democratic and antiquated USA Constitution from 1789.
The unwritten rules
Not only the USA has a set of antiquated and anti-democratic written rules built into its Constitution and institutions, but it also has a set of unwritten rules that make things even worse.
One example of this is the Filibuster ‘rule’, that requires 60% of the Senate approval to pass any law. This ‘rule’ is totally made up, it is not part of the Constitution and has been historically used to perpetuate racism.
Another example is the unwritten ‘rule’ that prevented President Obama from naming a Supreme Court judge during his last year as President in order to replace the deceased judge Scalia. Conveniently that same ‘rule’ was completely ignored by Trump in order to nominate a 3rd judge when RBG passed.
Conclusion
The USA at its core is built on top of an anti-democratic system, and there doesn’t seem to be enough political will and power to change it. The system self-preserves and changing it will be extremely hard. Anti-democratic systems eventually completely erode and turn into Autocracies. That is not the case for the USA today, but it has been slowly and steadily going in that path.
The election of Biden over Trump in 2020 was a step in the right direction, but it is a tiny step nonetheless. And most Unitedstatians lack introspection and self criticism, and don’t see these as problems and instead believe they have the strongest and best democracy in the world. Some will even label these words as anti-patriotic and anti-American.
So I’m out.