Thank you for allowing to see more of how you think and establish arguments in your own mind, Bob.
I am going to counter-argue those points. See if you understand where I am coming from.
The United States is some kind of European nation.
The New York Times gets it right a lot of the time.
Minor arguments should not close our minds to the larger perspectives.
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I strongly believe that we should use all sources to see all perspectives -- only then can we make up our own minds. By reducing what we see, we are actively creating our own reality about reality. That is not the best way to see the big picture.
We should not reject any source of information, but we should value rather the specifics from these sources that are worth valuing.
Blank rejections do not help in understanding the world we live in.
Remember that brainwashing is most effective when we do not take in information. Not opening a door means not seeing what is behind the door.
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At the large bottom of all voters (who are not-represented at the tables because they picked the losers), we see an enormous dissatisfaction with the political outcome.
Only when seeing that the bottom-right is just as dissatisfied as the bottom-left (if you get my drift here of putting all disgruntled folks in a left-and-right scheme), only then can we open up their specific doors and read from the inside what is going on.
Low and behold, from perhaps a strange angle we can see that the majority of people are not feeling this democracy any longer. They are very disgruntled, yet with not seeing where to take their anger, they end up taking it out on whatever is found in front of their faces that they do not like. Left can indeed end up fighting with right because they got brainwashed not seeing the large picture any longer.
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Italy has a very American political system in that their politicians sit on their hands almost as much as our politicians sit on their hands.
The political setup is different, but sand in the machine is sand in the machine, no matter the machine.
What happens in Italy that is very unique in the world in that they have House and Senate and both of them can make a government fall.
In the Netherlands, as another example of House + Senate, the House supports the government. The Senate can turn just its thumbs up or down for bills that passed the House and they can do nothing else. They cannot drop a cabinet.
In Italy, House + Senate can both drop the cabinet, and they do. It's like driving in a car with two steering wheels. Crazy. The result is less governmental influence, and that leads to greater control by those that want less governmental control. Even in lousy systems, there are winners that will say the system is great.
Perhaps a surprise, but Italy is one of the larger European economies (fourth in Europe). Their economy is strong, competitive. The Italian voters are less empowered than Scandinavian voters because their voting system is set up in the weirdest way. That benefits the businesses while the government takes on more debt than it should.
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The Founding Fathers studied Switzerland and the Netherlands as part of the known examples of Federalism. Switzerland has been a republic since the 14th Century, the Netherlands was a republic for more than two centuries (16th - 18th century).
The European Enlightenment (Spinoza, 400 years ago: “Separate state and church”) is readily seen in the US Constitution. The intellectual Fathers of the Founding Fathers were all European. But there is a good chance you did not learn this in school.
By rejecting parts, we can never see the full picture, Bob. Instead, it is important to reject what is false, but to accept as true (for ourselves or true for others) what is not-false from all directions.
Only then, with all the building blocks, only then can we build a correct view of the world and only then can we see our place in that world.
It does not mean that how you see the world today is incorrect. Not at all. You may even end up seeing that what you saw in a blink of an eye is still part of that ultimate view that took years to build. But the blink is not as informative as the accomplished vision, and will not be as nuanced as the accomplished vision.
Thank you for a good conversation. I am no fan of the Italian democracy (including giving the Pope its own nation so the Italians don't have to deal with the church, basically denying the Pope lives in Italy and therefore this top religious person in Italy is beyond the reach of the law — typical Italian scheming).
