Empires crumble, they don't adapt. And besides the 18th Century model of the mechanical clock, as you say, every generation's regressive members have exploited the built-in brakes for their own benefit. In CARO's LBJ biography, 2nd volume Master of the Senate, there is a gigantic chapter describing all the bottlenecks and hidebound controls against change encrusted, and how only somebody with LBJ's psychological drivers could spend thirty years learning all the tricks and loopholes, and how he was able to make it work, how the country had been ready for over 40 years for civil rights changes, but the Southern stranglehold on seniority and rules kept everything in the ditch.
So what did we hear in 2000, that something had to be done so that that would never happen again? Did anything happen, something like getting rid of the Electoral College - don't be silly.
For the wingnuts to claim there is something sacred about living by 18th Century clock rules is just acknowledging that all the deadwood in the governmental apparatus will not change, as you say, and there will have to be a breakdown of the whole for something else to replace it. Actually, we live by paying lip service to something, while really living by other rules. We could easily decide to throw states rights totally out, having the states as provinces ruled by governors implementing the federal rules everywhere. We could have regional primaries ending campaigns in three months. We could have a one house congress based on population. We could have publically funded candidates. Lots and lots of things COULD work. We could have enlightened leaders talking sense, like a European saying on a late night radio show that there is NO such thing as home schooling tolerated in Europe, that everybody has to go to public schools.
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