Pretty good editorial: http://www.slate.com/id/2201245/

Oooh, another interesting piece.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/bigsort/default.aspx
Whose to blame, the leaders or the followers?

Something I know I experience is that I rarely believe "experts" any longer.
People aren't following anymore. And not just in the United States. University of Michigan political scientist Ron Inglehart has been polling worldwide since the 1970s. (See his World Values Survey here.) What Inglehart finds is that people in richer countries are less "elite-directed" and are increasingly engaged in "elite-challenging" activities.

Oooh, another interesting piece.

Something I know I experience is that I rarely believe "experts" any longer.

After reading these two articles I am inclined to believe that the first thing that whoever gets to be the next USA president -must- do is to change the election from a district system towards one of proportional representation. It is the only way to ensure that the moderate voice regains any influence at all. Right now succesfull politicians need to appeal to the extremists because that is where the deciding vote comes from. The voters for the other party are incondequential as they will not vote for any candidate but their own party's.
And unless this trend is stopped the country will continue to segregate and radicalise, and I can not see any other outcome than a new civil war (or at the most lucky a more or less peacefull split into two countries with radically and diametrically opposing social, cultural and political ideas).

Sadly, if McCain wins I can not see him, nor his party, to make any move in that direction (it has won the republicans the last two if not three elections and is likely to bring them the following ones too). And I do not believe Obama has the force of personality to force such a change through (if it is at this point any longer possible to get enough of both parties behind such a fundamental constitutional change, given that they can not agree on anything much much more innocuous anymore).


Eri