With all the kvetching about the loss of democracy in the US, it’s important to remember that the US ceased to be a functioning democracy on December 12, 2000 when the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, determined that not every vote should be counted and the conservatives on the court fully politicized it.
Everything since has been consequences.
The Court, as it exists today, is no longer an institution. Every branch of government is now fully politicized. There is a chance to save it, by implementing term limits and expanding it, but neither of those are likely to happen due to pure corruption in the Senate on the Republican side and a brainless fealty to the past coupled with a willingness to ignore the present state of affairs on the part of some Democrats.
The court will not be fixed. Neither will any other part of government. All that remains is how this ends. I would hope that leaders at the State level would begin having conversations about the necessity of national divorce, at the very least as a final demand for reform. There is no reason at this point not to demand a new Constitutional Convention and either do the hard work of implementing reform or determine how to terminate our experiment and begin a new one.
I do not have any hope at this point in the future of the US as it exists today. We are living, quite literally, on borrowed time and money and the best hope some of us have for escape is to demand a separation. It’s time the red areas of this country live up to their claims of self sufficiency.
The rest of us are quite tired of paying the bill.