The Senate, was, again, conceived of when there were 13 States. There was very little difference in the population of them, so that each received 2 did not matter as much as it does today:
Population-1770
1. Virginia 447,016 2. Pennsylvania 240,057 3. Massachusetts 235,808 4. Maryland 202,599 5. North Carolina 197,200 6. Connecticut 183,881 7. New York 162,920 8. South Carolina 124,244 9. New Jersey 117,431 10. New Hampshire 62,396 11. Rhode Island 58,196 12. Delaware 35,496 13. Georgia 23,375
The middle States here especially are nearly identical in population for the most part. The only actual glaring disparity is between Virginia and Georgia at 1/20th the former's size.
Now?? California has 39 million people. States like ND (the one I live in) has 750,000, or less than 1/40th. Wyoming is even less at just over half a million. Los Angeles alone has 4 times more people than these two States. Now, this IS what the House is for, but the disparity in State populations that would rise up as 50 States were added could not have been anticipated. Furthermore, the Senate is by far the more powerful body.
Deltago- "countering" an actual election map by replacing it with one, using the same data, created by a politco journalist to save face doesn't counter anything. you can tweak the graphics based on arbitrary variables to make it look more pleasing to your side all you want, it doesn't actually counter the fact that trump represents a broader size of the country than the left did this time. That's why he won all the vast majority of the map, even the all-purple one.
As an aside, those colors are so close together you need like 90% or more to even stand out as purple or red. That offers nothing of insight since you can't tell the difference between 40% or 80% without a microscope.
Semitic- Incorrect, the Electoral College is not unrelated to the purpose of broader representation and is in fact is a direct part of it. The guaranteed minimum number of votes each state has works out to more Electoral College voting power per resident in small states compared to larger states.
Can we also say, since the left are the open borders advocates, that most terrorist incidents involving immigrants are also their fault? That would stand to reason to me, considering terrorism is a big reason for conservatives to advocate for stricter immigration controls from countries with organized factions who want us dead while the left considers that unacceptable and racist.
Immigrants are statistically more law-abiding than natural-born citizens (and more economically productive, too, including being a primary source for entrepreneurship at a point when it is worryingly low in the US economy). So conservatives advocating for this are either unaware of or do not actually care about the facts.
Oh, and the United States murders a lot more people in countries that are a source for "terrorism" than the reverse, but putting that indisputable and easily checkable fact aside, immigration to the US is already strictly controlled and banning immigration/travel from Muslim countries (including several who have never generated anyone who have made a terrorist attack on Americans) is indeed racist and unacceptable.
Naturally, of course, refugees are not legally or morally considered immigrants and are thus a different topic altogether (though they are also statistically more law-abiding than natural-born citizens). Not that anybody would confuse the two, of course.
By the by, lots of the "left" are not open borders advocates. I'm an open border advocate, and I can assure you most of the left in your country, my birth country, and my current country are not in line with my views. "Less restrictive than you want them to be" |= "open".
Recently, someone also mentioned the Electoral College and how it disenfranchises voters. I disagree entirely and argue that it works to make sure all areas of the country had representation rather than one or two major cities with their own unique politics that are totally different from the rest of the country. Look at the electoral map broken down by county. Nearly the ENTIRE COUNTRY was pro-Trump except for a mere handful of highly dense, populated areas.
More PEOPLE live in those areas. Why are the opinions of somebody from Montana worth more than the opinions of people from New York? Why are they more valuable? Why should they be protected at the expense of the more popular opinion? Why are New York's politics somehow more "unique" than the politics of mostly rural states?
You want Montana enfranchised and actual voters disenfranchised. There's an honest argument to be made there, but defend it for what it is, not what it isn't. Most Americans, and most voting Americans, didn't vote for Trump. What earthly difference does it make what amount of ground their counties covered, except as an attempt to marginalise the voters you don't agree with?
Deltago- "countering" an actual election map by replacing it with one, using the same data, created by a politco journalist to save face doesn't counter anything. you can tweak the graphics based on arbitrary variables to make it look more pleasing to your side all you want, it doesn't actually counter the fact that trump represents a broader size of the country than the left did this time. That's why he won all the vast majority of the map, even the all-purple one.
As an aside, those colors are so close together you need like 90% or more to even stand out as purple or red. That offers nothing of insight since you can't tell the difference between 40% or 80% without a microscope.
No, you can tell, and it paints a more realistic representation of the population than a single binary one.
For example, your red/blue map ignores 37,000 people in Nevada (just picked a state at random) alone in those red boxes (and to be fair 452, 000 overall). Those 37,000 probably don't feel like they are being dictated too. But when they see a red/blue map, I bet they feel ignored.
And the kicker, when you look at that bright red map of Nevada in the link, Hilary won the 6 electoral votes for the state.
But you can feel free to ignore it as it doesn't fit your narrative of "the whole country except the large cities are pro trump." If more in depth numbers won't convince you, nothing will.
Deltago- "countering" an actual election map by replacing it with one, using the same data, created by a politco journalist to save face doesn't counter anything. you can tweak the graphics based on arbitrary variables to make it look more pleasing to your side all you want, it doesn't actually counter the fact that trump represents a broader size of the country than the left did this time. That's why he won all the vast majority of the map, even the all-purple one.
The problem is that the nation is sharply polarized. Winner-take-all the votes mentality is killing. Gerrymandering is BS.
I personally feel that elections should go to proportional representation, not simple popular vote. This is the 21st century, we have computers and we can do more advanced math than 50%+1 for something as important as a quadrennial election for the leader of the single most powerful nation in the world.
What I'm saying is, if Trump got 30% of California, Trump should get 30% of the 55? electors of California.
Ok, I will do the math of it, using the table on Wikipedia of the 2016 Presidential election.
My method is % of state vote goes to % state electors, with "remainder" electors going to the person with the highest % remainder (So for example, Georgia, a state of 16 electors, would be 7.3 Clinton, 8.1 Trump, .5 Johnson, or 7/8/1). I discount a few cases where votes for "other" could have been an electoral vote (because I am assuming that they are for a bunch of different people).
The results are rather surprising.
If it was straight up nation-wide popular vote, it would be: 259.2 Clinton 247.9 Trump 17.7 Johnson 5.7 Stein 2.9 McMullin 4.5 Other
If it was straight % state-by-state, electors would be: 256.2 Clinton 249.8 Trump 18.5 Johnson 5.9 Stein 3.1 McMullin 4.6 Other
This is, of course, nonsense because an elector is a whole person, not a decimal, and it's not quite % total popular vote either, because the math is different, since it is state-by-state, and the discussion is about disproportionate representation. It is, however something to compare to the following, which is what I actually got:
By state-wide proportional representation, and being whole people, electors voted would be: 260 Clinton 261 Trump 15 Johnson 1 Stein 1 McMullin 2 Other votes were discounted (1 each Washington and California) because of my reasons above, and the vote went to the next lowest % remainder (Both wound up going to Trump). Michigan was also extremely close, at the 2nd decimal place, Clinton lost it to Johnson.
But that's a world of difference from the extremes we're seeing because of the first-past-the-post/winner-take-all system.
My point is, one can preserve the electoral college, but have a more representative election.
The problem, of course, is that it does not address representation DISproportion between states. You'd have to axe off 2 electors per state (because it's CAUSED by each state having 2 electors because of 2 senators) if one wanted to remove this disproportionate representation.
Removing the winner-take-all means that people's vote MATTERS AGAIN.
None of this "Oh, my state is so (Dem/Rep), why bother voting, it's just wasted".
This is important for America NOW, not America as it was 200 years ago.
As an aside, those colors are so close together you need like 90% or more to even stand out as purple or red. That offers nothing of insight since you can't tell the difference between 40% or 80% without a microscope.
That's the point.
It's showing us that we, the Americans who voted in the past election, really aren't as different from each other as the polarizing media and administration would like us to believe.
Deltago- "countering" an actual election map by replacing it with one, using the same data, created by a politco journalist to save face doesn't counter anything. you can tweak the graphics based on arbitrary variables to make it look more pleasing to your side all you want, it doesn't actually counter the fact that trump represents a broader size of the country than the left did this time. That's why he won all the vast majority of the map, even the all-purple one.
The problem is that the nation is sharply polarized. Winner-take-all the votes mentality is killing. Gerrymandering is BS.
I personally feel that elections should go to proportional representation, not simple popular vote. This is the 21st century, we have computers and we can do more advanced math than 50%+1 for something as important as a quadrennial election for the leader of the single most powerful nation in the world.
What I'm saying is, if Trump got 30% of California, Trump should get 30% of the 55? electors of California.
Ok, I will do the math of it, using the table on Wikipedia of the 2016 Presidential election.
My method is % of state vote goes to % state electors, with "remainder" electors going to the person with the highest % remainder (So for example, Georgia, a state of 16 electors, would be 7.3 Clinton, 8.1 Trump, .5 Johnson, or 7/8/1). I discount a few cases where votes for "other" could have been an electoral vote (because I am assuming that they are for a bunch of different people).
The results are rather surprising.
If it was straight up nation-wide popular vote, it would be: 259.2 Clinton 247.9 Trump 17.7 Johnson 5.7 Stein 2.9 McMullin 4.5 Other
If it was straight % state-by-state, electors would be: 256.2 Clinton 249.8 Trump 18.5 Johnson 5.9 Stein 3.1 McMullin 4.6 Other
This is, of course, nonsense because an elector is a whole person, not a decimal, and it's not quite % total popular vote either, because the math is different, since it is state-by-state, and the discussion is about disproportionate representation. It is, however something to compare to the following, which is what I actually got:
By state-wide proportional representation, and being whole people, electors voted would be: 260 Clinton 261 Trump 15 Johnson 1 Stein 1 McMullin 2 Other votes were discounted (1 each Washington and California) because of my reasons above, and the vote went to the next lowest % remainder (Both wound up going to Trump). Michigan was also extremely close, at the 2nd decimal place, Clinton lost it to Johnson.
But that's a world of difference from the extremes we're seeing because of the first-past-the-post/winner-take-all system.
What you are describing is a representation similar to what Canada does.
How we do it is split the provinces by seats (or in US case, it'd be electoral votes) and then divide up the province in chunks according to population to vie for those seats.
So looking at Nevada again with its six seats, three would be belong to the middle counties (divided by population), two would belong to Vegas and one to Rio (or vis versa).
This still gives weight to the electoral college and can still cause divides (here in Canada, it is said if you win Toronto and Quebec, you win the federal government, leaving the rest of the country isolated) but IMO, it is better than winner takes all.
Dividing where the borders go is always a tricky proposition however, and usually leads to criticism whenever it needs to be redrawn due to population shifts.
Heh, how times have changed. From a 2004 Vahlen mod review I just read:
"I whipped out my calculator to save you some time. 16 point reputation drop.. That bombshell is probably equivalent to the president getting caught in a motel with a dead hooker and a kilo of coke."
I think we can safely say that's probably more like, maybe, a 6 point drop in 2017.
Absolute incoherence from Trump in an interview with CBS News on the issue of pre-existing conditions, because, again, he has no clue what he is talking about:
JOHN DICKERSON: Okay. So what I hear you saying is pre-existing is going to be in there for everybody, it's not going to be up to the states? PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Pre-existing is going to be in there and we're also--
JOHN DICKERSON: And it's not up to the states?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --going to create pools.
JOHN DICKERSON: Okay.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And pools are going to take care of the pre-existing.
JOHN DICKERSON: But on that crucial question, it's not going to be left up to the states? Everybody gets pre-existing, no matter where they live?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, but the states--
JOHN DICKERSON: Guaranteed?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --are also going to have a lot to do with it because we ultimately want to get it back down to the states.
JOHN DICKERSON: Okay. Is it a guarantee?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Look, because if you hurt your knee, honestly, I'd rather have the federal government focused on North Korea, focused on other things, than your knee, okay?
He is not prepared for this. He doesn't know anything, he doesn't want to learn. He couldn't explain his health care policy if his life depended on it. George W. Bush wasn't exactly a policy wonk either, but he would damn sure take the time to at least PRETEND that he was and enter interviews with a set of talking points that showed where the Administration stood. You can't reason anything out of this, and it's because he has no frame of reference for where the question is even coming from. Also, apparently the Federal Government cannot focus on North Korea and health care policy at the same time. And, admittedly, it's probably pretty difficult when you spend every single weekend golfing.
I recently heard Adm, Harris,US Pacific Command make a comment on C-SPAN at an Armed Services Committee meeting use the phrase 'Chew gum and walk at the same time' in referring to something. I always liked that phrase. Looks like Trump is learning that being President is harder than he thought, the hard way (at least he admitted it though (I think JFK did as well). Not sure what kind of gum Trump is chewing but it must be some pretty hard OLD gum. I'd like to remind him to watch out for the grass in the lawn, might trip on it while chewing that gum (we know how high that White House grass gets .
I'm still TRYING to be optimistic but getting more pessimistic as time passes.
This last election had me about as excited in ALL the candidates of ALL the parties running as, well...as going to the hospital for a major operation. As time wore on, EVERYONE running kept getting more holes poked in there plans, by me.
Lately it seems that some of the left seems to ignore the facts and some of the right seems to ignore the truth, and THEN, vice versa on various topics.
On another note, I wonder when the last time a president even bothered to try and have a meeting with a N.Korean leader, person to person? Bunch of friggin grandstanding lately.
As far as health Ins. goes, I'm not hopeful it is going to be better until the drug companies are reigned in and beat with a hickory switch. My dang insulin alone has gone up more than friggin gas prices since the eighties. We don't have a health system, we have a health industry, and that just plain sucks.
Only guy in the whole of Trumps appointees I enjoy listening to is Gen John Kelly. He explains things so plainly and in a way that is easy to understand, if only the hardliners would open their ears.
On another note, I wonder when the last time a president even bothered to try and have a meeting with a N.Korean leader, person to person? Bunch of friggin grandstanding lately.
There's something of a taboo about meeting with North Korean leaders on the grounds that they are the closest thing in this world to both the Soviet Union and Nazy Germany in terms of their human rights record--their concentration camps are on par with the gulags and to a certain extent also the German concentration camps. And to be fair, we are still technically at war with the DPRK.
But there's actually more than that. The North Koreans have been deeply suspicious about meeting on foreign soil ever since Kim Il-sung died shortly after meeting with the American side. Perhaps it's a superstition. And the concept of the U.S. president meeting on North Korean soil is just as unlikely, considering the security presence it would entail. It's hard to imagine the North Koreans letting a Secret Service detail walk around Pyongyang, or even the DMZ.
On a related note, North Korea has made a habit of more or less blackmailing the United States into sending its former presidents over on official trips as sort of a propaganda exercise. So, Bill Clinton had to travel to North Korea once after he left office to get some hostages released. But it hasn't happened recently because the odds of Bush Jr. paying them a visit were virtually nil. When former presidents visited North Korea, it was under very dark circumstances and there were lots of bad feelings.
Besides, what would the American opposition party say if the U.S. president sat down with Kim?
If the U.S. president could actually meet with Kim Jong-un, that would probably be a good thing for several reasons. But the reason it hasn't happened is more than just two men's big egos.
@semiticgod It's just the Conflict Negotiator coming out in me, being optimistic and wanting to apply some dialogic transformation . Needs neutral ground for sure, and that is getting to be tougher to find at times depending on who's involved. Ego's, opposition parties, security, armistice, etc., I just want somebody to have the friggin guts to open a decent disscussion and quit worrying about what all the rest of them think or care. I know the ol saying though, bout filling two hands with different 'stuff' and seeing which one fills up faster, but I mean jeeze.
On the North Korea end...From my limited research the end goal for NK is unification with, and control of, the South. The North didn't really need nukes for security before, an artillery strike on Seoul was a sufficient threat against attack. What nukes allow is the application of leverage against the US... Not that this plan isn't rather flawed, but any negotiation should take account of these goals, as espoused in NK internal propaganda, rather than the commonly aired argument that NK has been living in constant fear of being on America's hitlist. Their leader is only just starting to get a handle on how to present himself to the internal elites, he may been 'corrupted' somewhat by his stints abroad and unsure how to pose as a far-right leader.
We can probably expect lefty elements to win through in the SK election, which will further complicate things. They'll be more conciliatory towards NK, and perhaps more antagonistic towards conflict escalations- so NK will retain escalation dominance.
The electoral college was put in place specifically so that President's would be forced to look after minorities, that is, not to discard lesser population dense States.
The only benefit to a democratic process is as a safeguard to force elected representatives to listen to the people, The electoral college is not very different in aim, Bill of Rights is no difference, various Constitution Amendments are no different, Court System requiring everyone to agree someone is guilty (rather then a majority) is no different, all of which operate counter to Democracy. It just addresses a different part of the problem (how do we make sure the non-majority is also listened too), Democracy does not address this and in fact makes this problem worse.
'Everyones vote should be equal' Everyones vote is equal per State, However National Governance requires far more then simple mob-rule, and No System operating like that ever worked (Greeks Nation-States would collapse repeatedly in under one Generation).
Democracy should be viewed as a 'tool' that we may use to address a part of a problem, But it alone is insufficient, it should never be an ideal because it alone is disastrous, The Founding Fathers understood this very well.
As to Trump-Clinton win, the U.S. operates under the Electoral College and so it is meaningless to put weight to who got the most votes or what, if the U.S. operated like that, Both Campaigns would run fundamentally different and we could not even speculate what it would be like.
I will not be posting as much from now but i will address the two big Geo-political issue's currently as there is far too little understanding of the factors involved.
North Korea Problem I won't rehash the pre-Modern past history of North Korea, However i want to address the modern present problem of North Korea going for Nukes and more importantly will they stop.
Generally speaking, it is true (born out of looking at trade across countries) that countries with Nukes face far less antagonistic action from external States in a variety of area's so the reason for this is simple.
However the question 'Will they Stop' isn't good, the actions of past Presidents have complicated matters.
During Bill Clinton, the Ex-President Jimmy Carter stupidly and without consulting anyone flew into North Korea to negotiate and try to avert a Nuclear Crisis during his time. The concessions was that North Korea would dismantle two Nuclear plants and the trade was America, paid by proxy via South Korea, would build a non-Nuclear plant and subsidize the entire country heavily (on the rational that the non-Nuclear plant is much more inefficient so America has to make up for that) in food and basic supplies. Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his stupidity, Bill Clinton and the entire Democrat AND Republican party were blindsided completely and essentially all but refused to do this. North Korea around 1999 stated America didn't live up to the deal and restarted the Nuclear program.
Here is an interesting picture.
What happened in 2011? Libya U.N. crisis intervention.
Obama+Nato and Putin all but triggered a Nuclear Arms Race for all Non-Nuclear States. How so?
In recent modern times, there were in fact Two Countries that stopped their Nuclear Program and submitted Themselves to the U.N.
What were those countries? Libya and Ukraine, For doing this Libya and Ukraine were guaranteed protection by the U.N.
However as we know, Nato+America attacked the Libyan Government and Putin annexed Crimea.
Because of the actions of Obama+Nato and Putin, a Nuclear Arms race has been triggered since all Nation-States will never believe stopping their Nuclear program ever makes them safer.
For North Korea, from their perspective, the actions of American President's are both untrustworthy (for any deal) and America would be more keen to attack Non-Nuclear Nation-States even if they agreed or were part of the process and guaranteed not to for de-Nuclearization.
The electoral college was put in place specifically so that President's would be forced to look after minorities, that is, not to discard lesser population dense States.
The only benefit to a democratic process is as a safeguard to force elected representatives to listen to the people, The electoral college is not very different in aim, Bill of Rights is no difference, various Constitution Amendments are no different, Court System requiring everyone to agree someone is guilty (rather then a majority) is no different, all of which operate counter to Democracy. It just addresses a different part of the problem (how do we make sure the non-majority is also listened too), Democracy does not address this and in fact makes this problem worse.
'Everyones vote should be equal' Everyones vote is equal per State, However National Governance requires far more then simple mob-rule, and No System operating like that ever worked (Greeks Nation-States would collapse repeatedly in under one Generation).
Democracy should be viewed as a 'tool' that we may use to address a part of a problem, But it alone is insufficient, it should never be an ideal because it alone is disastrous, The Founding Fathers understood this very well.
As to Trump-Clinton win, the U.S. operates under the Electoral College and so it is meaningless to put weight to who got the most votes or what, if the U.S. operated like that, Both Campaigns would run fundamentally different and we could not even speculate what it would be like.
Actually, it is up to each STATE LEGISLATURE as to how the electors of that state are chosen, per the Constitution. There is nothing preventing a system as I described from existing.
The only 2 exceptions to the winner-take-all are Maine and Nebraska, and both happen to use close to what the framers actually intended, a popular vote by congressional district for each elector, and the overall state winner takes 2 statewide electors.
The intention was NOT state-wide choosing of electors, and the winner of the state popular vote gets ALL the state electors.
I don't know how you can just say that everything's fine when clearly, everything is not fine. On the one hand, you say Congress doesn't listen to the people. On the other hand, you say " the only benefit of democratic processes is a safeguard to force elected representatives to listen to the people", yet you say there's no reason that we shouldn't have a more democratic system when Congress isn't listening.
The winner-take-all ignores the votes of TENS OF MILLIONS. It is one of the leading causes of ennui about elections. So it needs to be fixed.
The Russian problem It is important to understand pre-modern Russian history to understand Russia, so i will briefly summarize.
The early Russian territory was a territory with no natural barriers, If you look at any map and focus on the core of Russia which was their original territory, you will notice it is simply open on all sides.
In the ancient-Middle ages, this was a massive weakness for Russia as they could not defend well militarily and everyone could attack them.
Starting from Ivan the Terrible, a new strategy was put forth. Expand aggressively until you reach natural barriers, Therefore if you look at any map you can see Russian expansion stopped at the South (where it hits mountains) and the east (where it hit the ocean).
You will also notice that the most 'exposed' part of Russia is their Western side, the link to Europe, and this is a major reason for Russia's expansion into Ukraine.
This strategy has been pursued to modern times.
However it has left a great weakness, because of this massive and fast expansion, Russia is a collection of vastly different cultural and geographic area's with almost no linking infrastructure (There is literally one train only connection most of southern Russia).
The Governments current form came from this, in order to Govern, the Government took on a heavily autocratic and centralized form to minimize and crush dissent, Secret Police are paramount to this model. Russia has become more autocratic as Putin removed more and more legal checks on himself, there is no opposition party and no successor.
This and Putin's actions have made Russia one of slow decline to collapse Putin and the Government has centralized more power in controlling every area of Russia, from military to the 'private' (ie almost non-existant now) sector.
This obviously creates massive inefficiencies and everyone knows the Russian economy is a sick dead thing, because they never diversified, Russia is still heavily dependent on their energy Sector to drive the entire country.
However the problem for Putin is that we live in a different age, Middle-Eastern countries have attempted to build a pipeline directly to Europe so Putin has to fight in a complete foreign place to prevent this (Syria).
America all but controls the worlds finance system, and so American sanctions pummel Russia to the ground.
It may be interesting to know that Putin's popularity was below 50%, but jumped to 80%, why? War, Whenever Putin goes to War, he gets sky-high approvals.
This has put Putin also in a bad place, he has to be permanently at war and that is a massive drain on the country.
Because of all these factors, Putin has pigeon-holed himself into meaningless permanent expansion with no focus on improving anything internally, the ruling elite are at each others throats permanently only stayed by Putin's hands.
Either the energy sector will collapse or Putin himself will collapse and all Russian territories will start to break away.
Actually, it is up to each STATE LEGISLATURE as to how the electors of that state are chosen, per the Constitution. There is nothing preventing a system as I described from existing.
The only 2 exceptions to the winner-take-all are Maine and Nebraska, and both happen to use close to what the framers actually intended, a popular vote by congressional district for each elector, and the overall state winner takes 2 statewide electors.
The intention was NOT state-wide choosing of electors, and the winner of the state popular vote gets ALL the state electors.
I don't know how you can just say that everything's fine when clearly, everything is not fine. On the one hand, you say Congress doesn't listen to the people. On the other hand, you say " the only benefit of democratic processes is a safeguard to force elected representatives to listen to the people", yet you say there's no reason that we shouldn't have a more democratic system when Congress isn't listening.
The winner-take-all ignores the votes of TENS OF MILLIONS. It is one of the leading causes of ennui about elections. So it needs to be fixed.
Proportional elector will not change anything significantly because party demographics over Geography are not spread out so evenly as to aid this, there will be Republican heavy area's and Democratic heavy area's.
Where it is spread evenly, it is not even clear it would work better as increasing bipartisanship inside State-Lines may just introduce more political gridlock.
So what you propose would achieve very little different from what we have now, and introduce a few more problems.
Democracy, itself, ignores millions of voters, that is built into the system of any democracy, or democratic process (ie majority over minority).
The major problem now is not the current voting system in America, it is the power of the upper-class which includes corporations and their total dominance in every field From Government, From popular culture, From Arts, From Technology.
To describe it another way, the upper-class (to which i belong) can completely dominate the entire country in all fields in terms of influence as to what issue's to address and how to address them.
We haven't lived in such a one-sided class-rule for a long time, You may even have to go back to the middle-ages for that.
I will not be posting as much from now but i will address the two big Geo-political issue's currently as there is far too little understanding of the factors involved.
North Korea Problem I won't rehash the pre-Modern past history of North Korea, However i want to address the modern present problem of North Korea going for Nukes and more importantly will they stop.
Generally speaking, it is true (born out of looking at trade across countries) that countries with Nukes face far less antagonistic action from external States in a variety of area's so the reason for this is simple.
However the question 'Will they Stop' isn't good, the actions of past Presidents have complicated matters.
During Bill Clinton, the Ex-President Jimmy Carter stupidly and without consulting anyone flew into North Korea to negotiate and try to avert a Nuclear Crisis during his time. The concessions was that North Korea would dismantle two Nuclear plants and the trade was America, paid by proxy via South Korea, would build a non-Nuclear plant and subsidize the entire country heavily (on the rational that the non-Nuclear plant is much more inefficient so America has to make up for that) in food and basic supplies. Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his stupidity, Bill Clinton and the entire Democrat AND Republican party were blindsided completely and essentially all but refused to do this. North Korea around 1999 stated America didn't live up to the deal and restarted the Nuclear program.
Here is an interesting picture.
What happened in 2011? Libya U.N. crisis intervention.
Obama+Nato and Putin all but triggered a Nuclear Arms Race for all Non-Nuclear States. How so?
In recent modern times, there were in fact Two Countries that stopped their Nuclear Program and submitted Themselves to the U.N.
What were those countries? Libya and Ukraine, For doing this Libya and Ukraine were guaranteed protection by the U.N.
However as we know, Nato+America attacked the Libyan Government and Putin annexed Crimea.
Because of the actions of Obama+Nato and Putin, a Nuclear Arms race has been triggered since all Nation-States will never believe stopping their Nuclear program ever makes them safer.
For North Korea, from their perspective, the actions of American President's are both untrustworthy (for any deal) and America would be more keen to attack Non-Nuclear Nation-States even if they agreed or were part of the process and guaranteed not to for de-Nuclearization.
Wat?
First: So...you're going to say NK decided to step up it's missile program, with supporting evidence of a picture, and say it's because U.N. intervened in Libya in 2011?
1. How about the evidence of a long history of missile tests in the 8 years prior to 2011 that is clear evidence of a long-standing research in rocketry? 2. You're kind of missing a massive thing. In 2011, THE RULER CHANGED. 3. Oh yeah, and to say again, THE RULER CHANGED, IN A TOTALITARIAN REGIME.
I'd say those two internal forces are a hell of a lot more relevant than distant external events.
Second, regarding the Russian annexation of Crimea, that is a violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a treaty in which Russia said it would respect Ukraine's EXISTING border (among other things) in exchange for Ukraine joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (and thus giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia as the heir of the USSR). I personally consider this more of a failing of Obama than his lack of intervention in Syria that he considers his greatest failure. True, Syria is a massive humanitarian disaster, but it is ultimately, more or less internal. Ukraine/Crimea is of an international treaty breach.
Third, no, possession of nuclear weapons are never going to safeguard a country. It worked in the Cold War by the threat of MAD. For any but a great power or a super power, that is not a credible threat to discourage non-intervention. If you piss off your neighbors enough (who have nuclear weapons too, by the way), the it really doesn't MATTER that you have nuclear weapons, they're still going to come in, nuclear weapons be damned, just because you ticked them off enough.
3.5, for proof of that, Israel WAS (and is) a nuclear power (officially declared or not) and they STILL got invaded in the 1973 Yom-Kippur war. So that right there is proof that nukes, in and of themselves, is not a de facto guarantee of military deterrence. They then kicked the ass of their invaders by conventional means. (I'm not really pro-or-anti Israel, just stating history).
Fourth, the political consequences of being the first one to pull the nuclear trigger. America has gotten a lot of crap for being the ONLY NATION to use nuclear weapons in a direct military application. And arguably, and probably likely, as a weapon of mass terror. We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki not because they were really military targets, but as a THREAT (terror) to force Japan into surrender, rather than an arguably more costly amphibious manned invasion. I would opine that North Korea would have to be invaded, to the extent of being about to fall, before the use of nuclear weapons would not be met with anything but universal condemnation among nations.
Ultimately, the purpose of a nuclear deterrence arsenal is a "You must be THIS committed to proceed" bar for military force. It neither guarantees that those who decide to commit against the arsenal don't feel justified in doing so, nor especially that the holder of the arsenal can make the right call to use them.
First: So...you're going to say NK decided to step up it's missile program, with supporting evidence of a picture, and say it's because U.N. intervened in Libya in 2011?
1. How about the evidence of a long history of missile tests in the 8 years prior to 2011 that is clear evidence of a long-standing research in rocketry? 2. You're kind of missing a massive thing. In 2011, THE RULER CHANGED. 3. Oh yeah, and to say again, THE RULER CHANGED, IN A TOTALITARIAN REGIME.
I'd say those two internal forces are a hell of a lot more relevant than distant external events.
1. The graph details exactly what you describe, so your ignoring it is silly. 2. North Korea made its decision by its body of rulers, not by one person.
Second, regarding the Russian annexation of Crimea, that is a violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a treaty in which Russia said it would respect Ukraine's EXISTING border (among other things) in exchange for Ukraine joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (and thus giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia as the heir of the USSR). I personally consider this more of a failing of Obama than his lack of intervention in Syria that he considers his greatest failure. True, Syria is a massive humanitarian disaster, but it is ultimately, more or less internal. Ukraine/Crimea is of an international treaty breach.
Third, no, possession of nuclear weapons are never going to safeguard a country. It worked in the Cold War by the threat of MAD. For any but a great power or a super power, that is not a credible threat to discourage non-intervention. If you piss off your neighbors enough (who have nuclear weapons too, by the way), the it really doesn't MATTER that you have nuclear weapons, they're still going to come in, nuclear weapons be damned, just because you ticked them off enough.
3.5, for proof of that, Israel WAS (and is) a nuclear power (officially declared or not) and they STILL got invaded in the 1973 Yom-Kippur war. So that right there is proof that nukes, in and of themselves, is not a de facto guarantee of military deterrence. They then kicked the ass of their invaders by conventional means. (I'm not really pro-or-anti Israel, just stating history).
Lol. Israel is one of the poorest countries to try and use as an example of no-deterrence, Israel by any measure has been insanely successful in deterrence.
Yom-Kippur war is also a poor example, that was a war over external occupied territory. Even the States against Israel didn't even say they their aim was ever to destroy Israel and made a point not to say that.
That fact alone shows you how much of a deterrence Nukes are, it is one of the reasons why wars are done by proxy.
You also seem to be arguing under a misunderstanding, You already agreed Nuclear weapons do serve as a deterrent.
I've never argued it guarantees the safeguard of any country from any or every attack.
The definition of 'deterrence' doesn't even specify that.
However the problem for Putin is that we live in a different age, Middle-Eastern countries have attempted to build a pipeline directly to Europe so Putin has to fight in a complete foreign place to prevent this (Syria).
America all but controls the worlds finance system, and so American sanctions pummel Russia to the ground.
It may be interesting to know that Putin's popularity was below 50%, but jumped to 80%, why? War, Whenever Putin goes to War, he gets sky-high approvals.
This has put Putin also in a bad place, he has to be permanently at war and that is a massive drain on the country.
Because of all these factors, Putin has pigeon-holed himself into meaningless permanent expansion with no focus on improving anything internally, the ruling elite are at each others throats permanently only stayed by Putin's hands.
Either the energy sector will collapse or Putin himself will collapse and all Russian territories will start to break away.
As an aside, I wouldn't say America "all but controls the world's finance system". A disproportionate control, sure, but probably 70-80% would be my guess. There's big markets in London, Tokyo, China is pretty massive, arguably bigger than the U.S. depending on your metric. The E.U. has lots of banking power and in total is bigger than either U.S. or China.
Anyways, you're basically calling out a replication of the USSR collapse?
As an aside, I wouldn't say America "all but controls the world's finance system". A disproportionate control, sure, but probably 70-80% would be my guess. There's big markets in London, Tokyo, China is pretty massive, arguably bigger than the U.S. depending on your metric. The E.U. has lots of banking power and in total is bigger than either U.S. or China.
Anyways, you're basically calling out a replication of the USSR collapse?
70-80% would be 'all but controls' to me.
I've no idea exactly what form the collapse will take, but as it is now there will be a collapse though who knows when.
Rule by Autocratic dictatorship tends to do that once that dictator goes, Its economic structure is also far too fragile.
In the NK case they already possessed means of deterrence through proximity to Seoul. Developing nuclear weapons was in pursuit of their long term goals, not just defensive, and I think it is slightly misguided to connect it to Libya- although that is a popular interpretation. America's recent dithering has confirmed the opinion of NK that America is unwilling to risk SK lives. It has also annoyed both the left and right in SK, by suggesting both recklessness and weakness. If the Trump administration is going to threaten to dial back support anywhere then officials might consider post-election SK, which will be inclined to circumvent sanctions on NK and conduct disputes with Japan. This is especially true as Japan's government uses NK missile tests to push for rearmament against local protests.
The major element is China, everything else is little different from the past circumstances of former Presidents.
Basically 4 countries in the immediate vicinity of North Korea. Land border with South Korea and China, obviously, but also apparently a 17 mile land border with Russia, and a short sea distance to Japan.
I wouldn't discount anyone, especially given that the major discussion you just had says that America's 2 biggest geopolitical problems are centered on 2 neighboring countries. Neither of which are...stable, shall we say.
Comments
Population-1770
1. Virginia 447,016
2. Pennsylvania 240,057
3. Massachusetts 235,808
4. Maryland 202,599
5. North Carolina 197,200
6. Connecticut 183,881
7. New York 162,920
8. South Carolina 124,244
9. New Jersey 117,431
10. New Hampshire 62,396
11. Rhode Island 58,196
12. Delaware 35,496
13. Georgia 23,375
The middle States here especially are nearly identical in population for the most part. The only actual glaring disparity is between Virginia and Georgia at 1/20th the former's size.
Now?? California has 39 million people. States like ND (the one I live in) has 750,000, or less than 1/40th. Wyoming is even less at just over half a million. Los Angeles alone has 4 times more people than these two States. Now, this IS what the House is for, but the disparity in State populations that would rise up as 50 States were added could not have been anticipated. Furthermore, the Senate is by far the more powerful body.
As an aside, those colors are so close together you need like 90% or more to even stand out as purple or red. That offers nothing of insight since you can't tell the difference between 40% or 80% without a microscope.
Semitic- Incorrect, the Electoral College is not unrelated to the purpose of broader representation and is in fact is a direct part of it. The guaranteed minimum number of votes each state has works out to more Electoral College voting power per resident in small states compared to larger states.
Oh, and the United States murders a lot more people in countries that are a source for "terrorism" than the reverse, but putting that indisputable and easily checkable fact aside, immigration to the US is already strictly controlled and banning immigration/travel from Muslim countries (including several who have never generated anyone who have made a terrorist attack on Americans) is indeed racist and unacceptable.
Naturally, of course, refugees are not legally or morally considered immigrants and are thus a different topic altogether (though they are also statistically more law-abiding than natural-born citizens). Not that anybody would confuse the two, of course.
By the by, lots of the "left" are not open borders advocates. I'm an open border advocate, and I can assure you most of the left in your country, my birth country, and my current country are not in line with my views. "Less restrictive than you want them to be" |= "open". More PEOPLE live in those areas. Why are the opinions of somebody from Montana worth more than the opinions of people from New York? Why are they more valuable? Why should they be protected at the expense of the more popular opinion? Why are New York's politics somehow more "unique" than the politics of mostly rural states?
You want Montana enfranchised and actual voters disenfranchised. There's an honest argument to be made there, but defend it for what it is, not what it isn't. Most Americans, and most voting Americans, didn't vote for Trump. What earthly difference does it make what amount of ground their counties covered, except as an attempt to marginalise the voters you don't agree with?
If most people are disenfranchised and are not represented by their vote how is that a good thing again?
For example, your red/blue map ignores 37,000 people in Nevada (just picked a state at random) alone in those red boxes (and to be fair 452, 000 overall). Those 37,000 probably don't feel like they are being dictated too. But when they see a red/blue map, I bet they feel ignored.
And the kicker, when you look at that bright red map of Nevada in the link, Hilary won the 6 electoral votes for the state.
But you can feel free to ignore it as it doesn't fit your narrative of "the whole country except the large cities are pro trump." If more in depth numbers won't convince you, nothing will.
I personally feel that elections should go to proportional representation, not simple popular vote. This is the 21st century, we have computers and we can do more advanced math than 50%+1 for something as important as a quadrennial election for the leader of the single most powerful nation in the world.
What I'm saying is, if Trump got 30% of California, Trump should get 30% of the 55? electors of California.
Ok, I will do the math of it, using the table on Wikipedia of the 2016 Presidential election.
My method is % of state vote goes to % state electors, with "remainder" electors going to the person with the highest % remainder (So for example, Georgia, a state of 16 electors, would be 7.3 Clinton, 8.1 Trump, .5 Johnson, or 7/8/1). I discount a few cases where votes for "other" could have been an electoral vote (because I am assuming that they are for a bunch of different people).
The results are rather surprising.
If it was straight up nation-wide popular vote, it would be:
259.2 Clinton
247.9 Trump
17.7 Johnson
5.7 Stein
2.9 McMullin
4.5 Other
If it was straight % state-by-state, electors would be:
256.2 Clinton
249.8 Trump
18.5 Johnson
5.9 Stein
3.1 McMullin
4.6 Other
This is, of course, nonsense because an elector is a whole person, not a decimal, and it's not quite % total popular vote either, because the math is different, since it is state-by-state, and the discussion is about disproportionate representation. It is, however something to compare to the following, which is what I actually got:
By state-wide proportional representation, and being whole people, electors voted would be:
260 Clinton
261 Trump
15 Johnson
1 Stein
1 McMullin
2 Other votes were discounted (1 each Washington and California) because of my reasons above, and the vote went to the next lowest % remainder (Both wound up going to Trump). Michigan was also extremely close, at the 2nd decimal place, Clinton lost it to Johnson.
But that's a world of difference from the extremes we're seeing because of the first-past-the-post/winner-take-all system.
The problem, of course, is that it does not address representation DISproportion between states. You'd have to axe off 2 electors per state (because it's CAUSED by each state having 2 electors because of 2 senators) if one wanted to remove this disproportionate representation.
Removing the winner-take-all means that people's vote MATTERS AGAIN.
None of this "Oh, my state is so (Dem/Rep), why bother voting, it's just wasted".
This is important for America NOW, not America as it was 200 years ago.
It's showing us that we, the Americans who voted in the past election, really aren't as different from each other as the polarizing media and administration would like us to believe.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2013/11/12/most-americans-live-in-purple-america-not-red-or-blue-america/?utm_term=.0986bb449792
There's more maps and graphs in this article for anyone interested.
How we do it is split the provinces by seats (or in US case, it'd be electoral votes) and then divide up the province in chunks according to population to vie for those seats.
So looking at Nevada again with its six seats, three would be belong to the middle counties (divided by population), two would belong to Vegas and one to Rio (or vis versa).
This still gives weight to the electoral college and can still cause divides (here in Canada, it is said if you win Toronto and Quebec, you win the federal government, leaving the rest of the country isolated) but IMO, it is better than winner takes all.
Dividing where the borders go is always a tricky proposition however, and usually leads to criticism whenever it needs to be redrawn due to population shifts.
"I whipped out my calculator to save you some time. 16 point reputation drop.. That bombshell is probably equivalent to the president getting caught in a motel with a dead hooker and a kilo of coke."
I think we can safely say that's probably more like, maybe, a 6 point drop in 2017.
JOHN DICKERSON: Okay. So what I hear you saying is pre-existing is going to be in there for everybody, it's not going to be up to the states?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Pre-existing is going to be in there and we're also--
JOHN DICKERSON: And it's not up to the states?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --going to create pools.
JOHN DICKERSON: Okay.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And pools are going to take care of the pre-existing.
JOHN DICKERSON: But on that crucial question, it's not going to be left up to the states? Everybody gets pre-existing, no matter where they live?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, but the states--
JOHN DICKERSON: Guaranteed?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --are also going to have a lot to do with it because we ultimately want to get it back down to the states.
JOHN DICKERSON: Okay. Is it a guarantee?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Look, because if you hurt your knee, honestly, I'd rather have the federal government focused on North Korea, focused on other things, than your knee, okay?
He is not prepared for this. He doesn't know anything, he doesn't want to learn. He couldn't explain his health care policy if his life depended on it. George W. Bush wasn't exactly a policy wonk either, but he would damn sure take the time to at least PRETEND that he was and enter interviews with a set of talking points that showed where the Administration stood. You can't reason anything out of this, and it's because he has no frame of reference for where the question is even coming from. Also, apparently the Federal Government cannot focus on North Korea and health care policy at the same time. And, admittedly, it's probably pretty difficult when you spend every single weekend golfing.
Not sure what kind of gum Trump is chewing but it must be some pretty hard OLD gum. I'd like to remind him to watch out for the grass in the lawn, might trip on it while chewing that gum (we know how high that White House grass gets
I'm still TRYING to be optimistic
This last election had me about as excited in ALL the candidates of ALL the parties running as, well...as going to the hospital for a major operation. As time wore on, EVERYONE running kept getting more holes poked in there plans, by me.
Lately it seems that some of the left seems to ignore the facts and some of the right seems to ignore the truth, and THEN, vice versa on various topics.
On another note, I wonder when the last time a president even bothered to try and have a meeting with a N.Korean leader, person to person? Bunch of friggin grandstanding lately.
As far as health Ins. goes, I'm not hopeful it is going to be better until the drug companies are reigned in and beat with a hickory switch. My dang insulin alone has gone up more than friggin gas prices since the eighties. We don't have a health system, we have a health industry, and that just plain sucks.
Only guy in the whole of Trumps appointees I enjoy listening to is Gen John Kelly. He explains things so plainly and in a way that is easy to understand, if only the hardliners would open their ears.
Back to my cave now
But there's actually more than that. The North Koreans have been deeply suspicious about meeting on foreign soil ever since Kim Il-sung died shortly after meeting with the American side. Perhaps it's a superstition. And the concept of the U.S. president meeting on North Korean soil is just as unlikely, considering the security presence it would entail. It's hard to imagine the North Koreans letting a Secret Service detail walk around Pyongyang, or even the DMZ.
On a related note, North Korea has made a habit of more or less blackmailing the United States into sending its former presidents over on official trips as sort of a propaganda exercise. So, Bill Clinton had to travel to North Korea once after he left office to get some hostages released. But it hasn't happened recently because the odds of Bush Jr. paying them a visit were virtually nil. When former presidents visited North Korea, it was under very dark circumstances and there were lots of bad feelings.
Besides, what would the American opposition party say if the U.S. president sat down with Kim?
If the U.S. president could actually meet with Kim Jong-un, that would probably be a good thing for several reasons. But the reason it hasn't happened is more than just two men's big egos.
Ego's, opposition parties, security, armistice, etc., I just want somebody to have the friggin guts to open a decent disscussion and quit worrying about what all the rest of them think or care. I know the ol saying though, bout filling two hands with different 'stuff' and seeing which one fills up faster, but I mean jeeze.
We can probably expect lefty elements to win through in the SK election, which will further complicate things. They'll be more conciliatory towards NK, and perhaps more antagonistic towards conflict escalations- so NK will retain escalation dominance.
The only benefit to a democratic process is as a safeguard to force elected representatives to listen to the people, The electoral college is not very different in aim, Bill of Rights is no difference, various Constitution Amendments are no different, Court System requiring everyone to agree someone is guilty (rather then a majority) is no different, all of which operate counter to Democracy.
It just addresses a different part of the problem (how do we make sure the non-majority is also listened too), Democracy does not address this and in fact makes this problem worse.
'Everyones vote should be equal' Everyones vote is equal per State, However National Governance requires far more then simple mob-rule, and No System operating like that ever worked (Greeks Nation-States would collapse repeatedly in under one Generation).
Democracy should be viewed as a 'tool' that we may use to address a part of a problem, But it alone is insufficient, it should never be an ideal because it alone is disastrous, The Founding Fathers understood this very well.
As to Trump-Clinton win, the U.S. operates under the Electoral College and so it is meaningless to put weight to who got the most votes or what, if the U.S. operated like that, Both Campaigns would run fundamentally different and we could not even speculate what it would be like.
North Korea Problem
I won't rehash the pre-Modern past history of North Korea, However i want to address the modern present problem of North Korea going for Nukes and more importantly will they stop.
Generally speaking, it is true (born out of looking at trade across countries) that countries with Nukes face far less antagonistic action from external States in a variety of area's so the reason for this is simple.
However the question 'Will they Stop' isn't good, the actions of past Presidents have complicated matters.
During Bill Clinton, the Ex-President Jimmy Carter stupidly and without consulting anyone flew into North Korea to negotiate and try to avert a Nuclear Crisis during his time.
The concessions was that North Korea would dismantle two Nuclear plants and the trade was America, paid by proxy via South Korea, would build a non-Nuclear plant and subsidize the entire country heavily (on the rational that the non-Nuclear plant is much more inefficient so America has to make up for that) in food and basic supplies.
Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his stupidity, Bill Clinton and the entire Democrat AND Republican party were blindsided completely and essentially all but refused to do this.
North Korea around 1999 stated America didn't live up to the deal and restarted the Nuclear program.
Here is an interesting picture.
What happened in 2011? Libya U.N. crisis intervention.
Obama+Nato and Putin all but triggered a Nuclear Arms Race for all Non-Nuclear States.
How so?
In recent modern times, there were in fact Two Countries that stopped their Nuclear Program and submitted Themselves to the U.N.
What were those countries? Libya and Ukraine, For doing this Libya and Ukraine were guaranteed protection by the U.N.
However as we know, Nato+America attacked the Libyan Government and Putin annexed Crimea.
Because of the actions of Obama+Nato and Putin, a Nuclear Arms race has been triggered since all Nation-States will never believe stopping their Nuclear program ever makes them safer.
For North Korea, from their perspective, the actions of American President's are both untrustworthy (for any deal) and America would be more keen to attack Non-Nuclear Nation-States even if they agreed or were part of the process and guaranteed not to for de-Nuclearization.
The only 2 exceptions to the winner-take-all are Maine and Nebraska, and both happen to use close to what the framers actually intended, a popular vote by congressional district for each elector, and the overall state winner takes 2 statewide electors.
The intention was NOT state-wide choosing of electors, and the winner of the state popular vote gets ALL the state electors.
I don't know how you can just say that everything's fine when clearly, everything is not fine. On the one hand, you say Congress doesn't listen to the people. On the other hand, you say " the only benefit of democratic processes is a safeguard to force elected representatives to listen to the people", yet you say there's no reason that we shouldn't have a more democratic system when Congress isn't listening.
The winner-take-all ignores the votes of TENS OF MILLIONS. It is one of the leading causes of ennui about elections. So it needs to be fixed.
It is important to understand pre-modern Russian history to understand Russia, so i will briefly summarize.
The early Russian territory was a territory with no natural barriers, If you look at any map and focus on the core of Russia which was their original territory, you will notice it is simply open on all sides.
In the ancient-Middle ages, this was a massive weakness for Russia as they could not defend well militarily and everyone could attack them.
Starting from Ivan the Terrible, a new strategy was put forth. Expand aggressively until you reach natural barriers, Therefore if you look at any map you can see Russian expansion stopped at the South (where it hits mountains) and the east (where it hit the ocean).
You will also notice that the most 'exposed' part of Russia is their Western side, the link to Europe, and this is a major reason for Russia's expansion into Ukraine.
This strategy has been pursued to modern times.
However it has left a great weakness, because of this massive and fast expansion, Russia is a collection of vastly different cultural and geographic area's with almost no linking infrastructure (There is literally one train only connection most of southern Russia).
The Governments current form came from this, in order to Govern, the Government took on a heavily autocratic and centralized form to minimize and crush dissent, Secret Police are paramount to this model.
Russia has become more autocratic as Putin removed more and more legal checks on himself, there is no opposition party and no successor.
This and Putin's actions have made Russia one of slow decline to collapse
Putin and the Government has centralized more power in controlling every area of Russia, from military to the 'private' (ie almost non-existant now) sector.
This obviously creates massive inefficiencies and everyone knows the Russian economy is a sick dead thing, because they never diversified, Russia is still heavily dependent on their energy Sector to drive the entire country.
However the problem for Putin is that we live in a different age, Middle-Eastern countries have attempted to build a pipeline directly to Europe so Putin has to fight in a complete foreign place to prevent this (Syria).
America all but controls the worlds finance system, and so American sanctions pummel Russia to the ground.
It may be interesting to know that Putin's popularity was below 50%, but jumped to 80%, why?
War, Whenever Putin goes to War, he gets sky-high approvals.
This has put Putin also in a bad place, he has to be permanently at war and that is a massive drain on the country.
Because of all these factors, Putin has pigeon-holed himself into meaningless permanent expansion with no focus on improving anything internally, the ruling elite are at each others throats permanently only stayed by Putin's hands.
Either the energy sector will collapse or Putin himself will collapse and all Russian territories will start to break away.
Where it is spread evenly, it is not even clear it would work better as increasing bipartisanship inside State-Lines may just introduce more political gridlock.
So what you propose would achieve very little different from what we have now, and introduce a few more problems.
Democracy, itself, ignores millions of voters, that is built into the system of any democracy, or democratic process (ie majority over minority).
The major problem now is not the current voting system in America, it is the power of the upper-class which includes corporations and their total dominance in every field From Government, From popular culture, From Arts, From Technology.
To describe it another way, the upper-class (to which i belong) can completely dominate the entire country in all fields in terms of influence as to what issue's to address and how to address them.
We haven't lived in such a one-sided class-rule for a long time, You may even have to go back to the middle-ages for that.
First: So...you're going to say NK decided to step up it's missile program, with supporting evidence of a picture, and say it's because U.N. intervened in Libya in 2011?
1. How about the evidence of a long history of missile tests in the 8 years prior to 2011 that is clear evidence of a long-standing research in rocketry?
2. You're kind of missing a massive thing. In 2011, THE RULER CHANGED.
3. Oh yeah, and to say again, THE RULER CHANGED, IN A TOTALITARIAN REGIME.
I'd say those two internal forces are a hell of a lot more relevant than distant external events.
Second, regarding the Russian annexation of Crimea, that is a violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a treaty in which Russia said it would respect Ukraine's EXISTING border (among other things) in exchange for Ukraine joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (and thus giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia as the heir of the USSR). I personally consider this more of a failing of Obama than his lack of intervention in Syria that he considers his greatest failure. True, Syria is a massive humanitarian disaster, but it is ultimately, more or less internal. Ukraine/Crimea is of an international treaty breach.
Third, no, possession of nuclear weapons are never going to safeguard a country. It worked in the Cold War by the threat of MAD. For any but a great power or a super power, that is not a credible threat to discourage non-intervention. If you piss off your neighbors enough (who have nuclear weapons too, by the way), the it really doesn't MATTER that you have nuclear weapons, they're still going to come in, nuclear weapons be damned, just because you ticked them off enough.
3.5, for proof of that, Israel WAS (and is) a nuclear power (officially declared or not) and they STILL got invaded in the 1973 Yom-Kippur war. So that right there is proof that nukes, in and of themselves, is not a de facto guarantee of military deterrence. They then kicked the ass of their invaders by conventional means. (I'm not really pro-or-anti Israel, just stating history).
Fourth, the political consequences of being the first one to pull the nuclear trigger. America has gotten a lot of crap for being the ONLY NATION to use nuclear weapons in a direct military application. And arguably, and probably likely, as a weapon of mass terror. We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki not because they were really military targets, but as a THREAT (terror) to force Japan into surrender, rather than an arguably more costly amphibious manned invasion. I would opine that North Korea would have to be invaded, to the extent of being about to fall, before the use of nuclear weapons would not be met with anything but universal condemnation among nations.
Ultimately, the purpose of a nuclear deterrence arsenal is a "You must be THIS committed to proceed" bar for military force. It neither guarantees that those who decide to commit against the arsenal don't feel justified in doing so, nor especially that the holder of the arsenal can make the right call to use them.
2. North Korea made its decision by its body of rulers, not by one person. Your supporting my point here completely. Lol.
Israel is one of the poorest countries to try and use as an example of no-deterrence, Israel by any measure has been insanely successful in deterrence.
Yom-Kippur war is also a poor example, that was a war over external occupied territory.
Even the States against Israel didn't even say they their aim was ever to destroy Israel and made a point not to say that.
That fact alone shows you how much of a deterrence Nukes are, it is one of the reasons why wars are done by proxy.
You also seem to be arguing under a misunderstanding, You already agreed Nuclear weapons do serve as a deterrent.
I've never argued it guarantees the safeguard of any country from any or every attack.
The definition of 'deterrence' doesn't even specify that.
Anyways, you're basically calling out a replication of the USSR collapse?
I've no idea exactly what form the collapse will take, but as it is now there will be a collapse though who knows when.
Rule by Autocratic dictatorship tends to do that once that dictator goes, Its economic structure is also far too fragile.
I wouldn't discount anyone, especially given that the major discussion you just had says that America's 2 biggest geopolitical problems are centered on 2 neighboring countries. Neither of which are...stable, shall we say.