I was riding the Muni Streetcar in San Francisco. It started in a white-people area and ended in a black-people area.

It was a fun ride because slowly the white folks got replaced by black folks.

Tension started rising exactly when it wasn't that obvious anymore who the majority was.

Tension started subsiding when it became obvious again who the majority was.

Through my European eyes, this was all very American, because the American voting system is not based on full representation, but on majority domination. Only the majority gets the representative. This was very nicely played out in front of my eyes.

The real point being, of course, is that this was not pure racism but more about nobody wanting to be the minority (any kind of minority), because the minority is not empowered. The minority has to do what the majority decides to do. That is the American (18th century) system.

Where I grew up, we don't have anything that old-fashioned. So, this was all very obvious to my eyes. I don’t think others were conscious about what really took place because they may have thought it was pure racism.

I wrote an article about it, using Doughnut Economics as the source:

https://fred-rick.medium.com/doughnut-politics-8c6257c91b1e

The truth is that American democracy is not the real deal. It is not based on We the People but rather on domination of the political majority. It really does not matter who the majority is. It is being in the minority that makes us uncomfortable.

Exactly at the moment when an established majority starts to lose its majority, that is when the shit can really hit the fan. If my fellow Americans were smart, they would change the voting system to become more like a real democracy (but do limit the number of parties to five or six).

We don't need more repeats of January 6th. It's just politics. So, let's just organize our voting system well for all of us, and remove that stupid 18th century domination aspect; it truly is useless and yet can cause a lot of harm.