Hmmm . . . But wait
What is actually going on here now?
The American Experiment is failing. It was predicated on exactly what you described as the foundation for the new “democratic” constitution. Remember it was not actually democratic because they knew then that the idea was dangerous. The effort was made to restrict voting to the elements of society (in 18th century terms) that could be best counted on to provide an informed basis for their vote. The conflict inherent in their view of the legitimate members of intelligent society that excluded half the population, women, and then everything other than property owning white males was destructive. It attempted, however badly, to deal with the issue of who would screw things up by not being informed. Or by failing to understand the reason to vote and the reason to actively protect a limited set of “rights”.
The whole structure, including the deadly Electoral College, was a desperate attempt to get a representative government working in North America. It finally appears that the experiment has successfully proven that the hypothesized model does not work. Is there any reason to continue to beat the dead horse? We are one year into the death of the US by allowing a minority vote on a very questionable candidate who was, never the less, backed by other representatives dedicated to ignorance, racism, and bigotry in the interests of greed. The total gross incompetence is self defeating but it is not at all clear that this can be successfully recovered by managing to vote out some of the problems. There are, in the 21st century, deadly structural errors that allowed stupidity to rule. We, also, do not have the option of waiting for something to work out due to climate change alone. Reason is our only hope and the nonsense that has captured even a minority of the population is deadly.
We have much more successful models in Europe and elsewhere that may continue to evolve with a more balanced social-democratic structure. They all rely on a strong leader. Where that has been ignored or denied the same problems are appearing. The China model is different but uses a much newer mix of public decisions with a ruling hierarchy that is clearly held responsible for the total well being of the Chinese population. This produces fits of brutality against segments of the population at different times but justified by the overall benefit to China. This is now being accepted by a new generation of Chinese, partially educated in the west, who see it as adequately representative but primarily efficient and officially based on a recognition of rights much broader than in the US. The reality of acting in accordance with those rights is an issue. But an incompetent government publicly committed to racism and misogyny and dedicated to eliminating rights is somehow better?
