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by refurb 1789 days ago
Authoritarian decision making is great until the authority starts making the wrong decisions.

The bipartisan politics of the the US is not a bug, it’s a feature. It was entirely intentional that power was split and broad consensus was required to get anything done.
2 comments
oreally 1789 days ago
Categorizing it as either a bug or a feature is thinking at extremes and is indicative of the influence of the media on your minds, leading to poor decision making. It's a feature with weaknesses.

As another example, the NRA preventing gun control laws in spite of school shootings. The path the US has chosen is both poison and boon. The trouble is who gets to suffer from the poison?

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bllguo 1789 days ago
nobody disputes if it was (broadly) by design, it's whether the design is outdated and needs modernization.

by the way, i actually really disdain founding fathers veneration, but two-party deadlock was infamously _not_ intentional. neither was our increasingly corporatocratic government.

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refurb 1789 days ago
i actually really disdain founding fathers veneration, but two-party deadlock was infamously _not_ intentional

It absolutely was.

Canada, where the majority party can pass whatever they want (their majority practically guarantees it), the unelected Senate almost always rubber stamps it and the head of state is one and the same as the ruling party, it's clear that the US design is intentional.

Nothing gets passed in the US unless: 1) House approves it, 2) Senate approves it, 3) President signs it. All three bodies are independently elected.

It was clearly intentional to be much more challenging to pass legislation in the US. What you call gridlock, I call the system operating as designed.

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