Glad you used the slippery slope, Monica, because we have been a slippery-slope nation from inception. The Founding Fathers could have given us a better, more diverse democracy, but they opted for winner-take-all elections that we can easily translate into the slippery-slope system.
In winner-take-all the slippery slope is included twice into the system. Because there are no third parties, both #1 and #2 end up competing full out the best way they can. The are both engages in a rise to the top (rising to the occasion). Do recognize the established slippery slope upward, not downward.
Candidates (read: ideologies) must push until there is a slippery slope. The cliffhanger, if you wish, is included in the voting system. Each side dares the other to take a step further for the win. The Egyptian pyramid has a pointy top and only one can sit at that top level. Twice, the slippery slope is put in place.
Our voting system is not based on representation, but on winning first. The losing side gives it its all, and when not held back by common decency (the fear you describe real well), then the person at the bottom of the race can end up lashing out with a lot more force than everyone believed possible. You are very correct to wake us all up. The losing candidate can end up taking what it wants.
But... you are not pointing at the system that brings us all the way to the edge. We have an edgy voting system, and that is the real problem in need of addressing. When changing the Egyptian pyramid to the Mexican pyramid (with a platform in top that holds more than one ideology), then we can end up expressing ourselves without the slipperiest part of the slippery slope. There are no empowered losers — all end up at that platform.
Let's dig in a bit further why the Egyptian-pyramid system is so mean.
First off, all systems that are successful are in general not changed. The United States, while internally changing quite a bit, has been on a winning streak for most of its entirety, Wall Street crash 1929 that sent the world into a tail spin not withstanding. The US was already in the strongest position at that time, though it did not yet realize it had become the world's leading nation. It was the first expression of the American slippery slope in which competition leads to the end results, but where competition does not have a natural ending. It explodes, like Wall Street did in 1929. Money was invested for the sake of investing money, not for the sake of human economic progress. I hope you recognize the slippery slope upward once more. That’s our system. It does not have a natural ending, there is no line in the sand.
Then, after Roosevelt, much went really well for the US, leading the free world to more democracy, finally realizing it was the leading nation (with a super power enemy, Russia).
But at home, democracy did not change fundamentally, it only changed specifically (which was much needed). Again, winners don't change the overall game, and in our system critical mass did end up changing some parts for the better, but this did not address the system as a whole.
Fast forward to today where the world has changed dramatically. The US is not the super power it once was anymore because the field of empowered nations got very crowded all of a sudden. There is no true enemy to set ourselves against, and so we also do not have a system in place that matches the world as it exists today. We lack a true enemy and so our system behaves wobbly.
Winner-take-all does not thrive in a world with many different systems all doing well. Our Red&Blue system cannot accurately recognize the yellow and green steps the others are taking. We cannot match it and we are stuck in our competitive mindset. They are on the move where we are not. Many of the others are not competing to the level we are; they are simply improving their own positions partially without the competitive mindset (via yellow and green).
So, let's talk Argentina when it started to falter and had the Falkland crisis that turned the ship around. Argentina was too small to dictate the world. It was dictating itself, but it took a fight to have failure be written all over the faces of the regime. That changed the outcome.
Chernobyl wrote Failure all over the face of the Russians and their Soviet Union. Change was the result (not all too well, we know).
The United States may end up playing its most powerful card and go to war externally (with Russia, China, or some other rather important nation), in the hopes of dictating the world once more, but with less freedom to share. Or... the US can start to dictate internally, just as you describe. These would all be bad moves.
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This can all be prevented if we end up giving the United State a political system that fits the world we live in.
The Founding Fathers were called in once more after WW II to give the Germans a good voting system. They implemented the US system plus added in an overall adjustment, so the pitfalls of full-out competition between the only two parties around is avoided.
The American-German system leads to four, five, six parties, and satisfies both the need for political diversity and for political stability. The German slippery slope is never as steep as our slippery slope.
Lastly therefore, the box with rocks.
When a box with rocks gets shaken up and down only (the two-party system), then the little rocks end up on the bottom and the big rocks rise to the top. It has to do with mobility of the rocks. With each shake, the little rocks have the opportunity to fall down deeper than the big rocks because the big rocks create spaces, whereas the little ones do not. Keep shaking and the big rocks end up on top.
That is our political system to a T. Roosevelt had to step in with draconian measures toward a better society, otherwise we would have all recognized decades ago how lousy our system is. Roosevelt basically hijacked the system because of that Wall Street 1929 crash and the lousy reaction by the other party. So, the system worked when things did go extreme, but the extreme is what we must avoid today because we are not the natural leader of the world anymore. We have less playing field, and like 1929 we are not recognizing our position in the world very well. We can easily overstep or under-step ourselves because we have a one-eye closed democratic system. Successful when it is successful, and lousy for those crushed in the competition.
World War I started when England and Germany ended up being of the same economic level. Germany was about to win that race, but the English dominated the world (together with France, they held control over much of the world). The economic game was unfair and the English did not change their game. The Germans could have played nice, but the English had that voting system with the upward slippery slope in place. Someone was going to blow because the stakes got higher and higher. Ultimately, the US became the world’s hero, but only after another world war had taken place and then by siding with the colonies' desire for independence. The US broke the English and French hegemony of the world.
So, back to the box with rocks. We have to shake the box, but we also have to turn the box.
We must insert an additional turning mechanism next to the shaking. It does not need to be much, but right now we do not have any additional mechanism in place; we have shaking the box only. As you know, the US Constitution (14th Amendment) already demands proportional voting (at the local level), so there are natural options to just go there, and put it in place.
Excellent article, Monica. As always my pleasure reading your work.
Here’s my latest article:
