[mindslight]

Dissolving the Constitutional government isn't a "middle ground". Rather it's exactly what the big-money supporters behind Trump have wanted from the start - whether it's big tech looking to become the domestic government, or other countries looking to take the US down a few pegs.

I agree that we likely need a few Constitutional amendments, but that is a far cry from dissolution.

The amendments I believe we need:

1. Ranked Pairs voting to break out of this lesser of two evils race to the bottom. Get rid of the Electoral College merely because it's straightforward rather than quibbling about out how it could work with non-plurality voting.

2. Independent executive agencies chartered by Congress. Heads of which are independent executives elected just like the President.

3. Triple the number of senators (reducing this effect of moribund "senior" senators that benfit their state due to pull). National elections run every year (we shouldn't have to wait until "midterms" to course correct, and would also diminish the stark divide between "election promises" and "results")

4. Repudiation of Citizens United, and this general nonsense that corpos possess the natural rights of individuals. (something similar might happen at the state level, as states are actually the governments that charter corpos to exist/operate in the first place)

5. Repudiation of Wickard v Filburn and followup decisions that have allowed the federal government to characterize everything as interstate commerce. The federal government should only be able to get involved when states have a disagreement.

The first two are the critical foundation. Note that the overall effect is for an individual's vote to be more than a single bit of information. The last three might not be strictly necessary, but relieve the pressure from the path dependence of where we're at.

[collingreen]

All of those sound like helpful changes. There are plenty more that could push the system back toward supporting citizens and fairness and limited government power.

It sounds like the point here is "all we need is an honest and earnest legislative branch" and, yes, I agree that would help us get on the right track. Similarly, a judicial branch change of heart in the same way would really help relieve the anger and hopelessness people are feeling.

If you have ideas for how to actually make either of those happen they would be worth sharing and pushing forward.

[mindslight]

I don't really get the gist of your response. Yes, if we had a more honest legislative, judicial, OR executive branch then we wouldn't be having this discussion. But instead we've got the very best politicians money can buy.

The same problem applies to picking drafters/representatives/etc for any Constitutional amendments. But I'd hope with the utter breakdown we're facing, there might be enough political will, plus amendments have to be short, plus making the issues meta enough that entrenched interests can't straightforwardly lobby loopholes into them, that maybe the barriers could be overcome.

My point is that we don't need to be talking about a wholesale dissolution of the government and rewrite of the Constitution when we can focus on some powerful meta-issues that have led us to this place. In fact I'd expect such a process to be much more beholden to the sway of corpo lobbyists as making a new system from whole cloth would have much more complexity for such things to hide.

Honestly, the worst case scenario I see is Grump becomes a lame duck after midterms, leaves office in Jan 2029, and then the entrenched Democrats go back to uninspired milquetoast business as usual.