I see I touched a nerve, Mick, so let me try make it up with you some. We need not agree, but it is good to share ideas.

I think we share the same sentiment of being quite unhappy with where we are going. The point I did not like and from which I started my reply was that it appeared to me that a door got closed too soon.

I kind of see the same in your description of the Founding Fathers. You mention the points that were all wrong about them (a good number were slaveholders and we despise that for sure nowadays) but you used that to then throw out the baby with the bathwater. I don't throw the baby out exactly because it is impossible to change the US Constitution except by burning down the entire nation, and that is of course not the way forward. Revolutions tend to birth horrible babies because everyone is angry and no one is smart when they are angry.

Allow me to discuss what I see.

With this being the mid 1700s, we have to view the writing of the US Constitution in the larger historical setting of the greater movement from Medieval thinking toward the Enlightenment. (My view: we still have not reached full Enlightenment.)

Just Thomas Jefferson's voting system alone will already put these guys into the Enlightenment group, and I am fine if we agree that they still had warts and all and had just the wealthy landowners and the elite in mind. Allow me to say as analogy that we have 'the girl in the trailer camp' ending up planning a big city and doing a decent job because she was smart.

As we know, the Founding Fathers struggled quite a bit with the States to get the States all aligned into the Federation. It was quite complicated for them. We see how they were not able to get the Enlightened outcome they desired and that they had to compromise to get the document signed by all 13 States.

After they compromised, and we also know this quite clearly, they were not happy enough with the end result to the point that the Founding Fathers worked hard on getting the Amendments in place.

We therefore have an articulated US Constitution.

When viewing this from separate-but-equal, we have to accept that separate-but-equal is the way the Federal government is set up. There was no other way to get the 13 States to agree to their coming together. They are separate States and each other’s equals. They could not establish an Enlightened setup for the Federation. The voting system is still that backward voting system.

This part is actually extremely smart because the United States getting the Enlightened voting system of the Netherlands or Sweden would actually guarantee that the nation will split apart in many parts (likely form groups of States holding on to each other and then these groups further splitting up some time later on). The golden goose is then gone for sure, and these new nations will all 'go Argentina' real quick. The dollar will stop being the currency of the economic world, and economic growth will halt here like it did in Argentina.

The second part of the articulated US Constitution is the Bill of Rights, and here the Founding Fathers are making up for the lost Enlightenment they desired, and establish a rather strong Enlightenment comeback.

So, there is this intrinsic story that is real and worth repeating. For the Federation, they had to accept the Medieval voting system (which is the English winner-take-all voting system that was already used in England), and then they demanded everything to be Enlightened. What happened instead is that the States doubled down and concentrated powers deeper. They continued the lousy voting system at multiple levels of government.

I have to drive this point home to you because you seem to reject it. If we beat the drum one way, and when we add more drums that drum the exact same way, then we get a very deep base going on that it near-impossible to escape.

Limiting representation so the winners have all the seats is fine, if we do it just once. If we do it two times, Fed + State, then we are concentrating powers further.

If we do it three times, Fed + State + local levels, then we established a jail. There is no escape. The way we vote today is a form of being in jail. Getting more voters to come out to vote will not change the fact that we are partially in jail.

The powers that be concentrated the level of concentration of powers further, beyond the desired level of concentration. They concentrated it times 3 instead of the times 1 that the Founding Fathers put in place.

Had these State powers not done that, we would have had a four or five-party system at the Federal level, today. The Supreme Court would have been balanced. The voters would have been represented by their true political views and not by their warped political views.

If you want to disagree with me, no problem. But this is the point I want to discuss with you, because this is the crux. More people coming out to vote while not getting anything extra out of it, that is the problem. There will not be an escape because good cop/bad cop is all this system delivers.

What the Founding Fathers set up was very smart, but not followed. If we want a better nation, then our best bet is to have the US Constitution with the powers that be abide to it.

I hear your specific points well, and I agree with them. But the devil is not in the details. The devil is in the big picture this time. If we get a four or five-party system going, we are all going to be much better of. And we don't even have to change the US Constitution to start doing that today.

Thank you for your direct and honest response. I want you to know I appreciate it.