I like your writing, John. I just wish you provide insight into our setup as well. Our system is divide-and-conquer and the system doesn’t care about color; it cares about our being divided.
Your message is ultimately promoting the same message, but the core of the system got away scott free — and it shouldn’t.
The structure of our nation is based on the powers we are given. With voting, we are segregated in voting districts and we fight each other over that one seat.
That is classic divide-and-conquer, and it makes everything worse.
We believe we live in a nation with a We The People system, and we sometimes even get legislation that is We The People indeed. But when push comes to shove, divide-and-conquer always wins the day in our nation.
This is us, to the left. Voting minorities of as large as 49.9 percent of the voters remain unrepresented; they don’t sit at the tables of decision making. Fifty percent plus one vote can dictate the outcome to unrepresented voting minorities. It doesn’t matter if the voting minority is African American, women, homosexuals, the poor, socialists; when not in the majority, no seat is obtained. Yes, white guys tend to be the majority winning the seats (still).
To the right one can see the actual We The People system. As shown in this example of a city council with eight seats, almost 90 percent of the voters are guaranteed that their vote translates into a representative they handpicked themselves. There are no substantial voting minorities unrepresented in this system.
In 1996, New Zealand changed its two-party system to incorporate proportional voting. The number of female representatives jumped by 47 percent in the first next new election. This shows real well how bad divide-and-conquer really is.
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The good news is that the US Constitution is already demanding the We The People system for cities and counties. Here is a visual.
A: Federal and State governments are given powers and freedoms.
B: The 14th Amendment demands the better system put in place.
As shown to the left, Federal and State governments received #A from the US Constitution and unfortunately they can use this to create themselves some leeway with #B.
Cities and counties are not even mentioned in the US Constitution, and yet they must fully abide by the highest document of the nation.
States did not receive the freedom or the power to hand freedom and power to third parties within that extends this to the same level.
Cities and counties must follow #B strictly. But as you can see in the same visual to the right, they assume to have those powers that they do not have. They perpetuate the divide-and-conquer system to a level that is not allowed. They should have the We The People system in place, per the highest document in the nation.
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We can change our bad system today, at the local level.
We can hold the feet of our local representatives to the fire and demand our Constitution-given better system — today. It’s the law of the land.
Thank you for your article. I am glad you picked an audience that needs to hear what you are saying. But let’s not forget that words alone do not establish real action. When the divided fight the divided, the winners on the sideline win even more. It is so easy to divide people and have them fight each other.
Divide-and-conquer is mean, and we should remove it where we can and stop perpetuating it where we can. Keep on trucking, bro.
