Considering What Just happened in the US, It should Be Painfully Obvious Why Canada Should Change Its Voting System

It's hard to believe but it's true.  Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States of America.  A man who has never held a public office in his life now is Commander and Chief of the most potent and lethal military force in history.  Put another way, the fate of planet rests in the apparently small hands of a man many consider to be a narcissistic sociopath. 

Yes, this man now has access to the nuclear codes.  I sincerely hope and pray he doesn't decide to nuke anyone.

So, how did this happen?  Much has been written in the aftermath of Trump's victory.  Most of the analysis concentrates on socio-economic variables centered on gender, class, and race.  But the fact of the matter is that Trump did not win the Presidential election.  He lost the popular vote.  Indeed, Hillary Clinton received approximately 2.5 million more votes than Trump.  What occurred is that the Electoral College awards its votes on a state-by-state basis.  Whoever gets the most votes in the state (with the exception of Maine) gets all of the state's electoral college votes.  Add them up and the President-elect is the one who gets the majority of electoral college votes.  In other words, it is the distribution of votes in the winner-take-all electoral districts that determine the winner of the electoral contest.

Was this election democratic? No! Clearly, the democratic result of the popular vote was overturned by the mechanics of the voting system.  The name of the game in a Presidential election is to win as many states possible that produce the greater number of electoral college votes.  The margin of victory in any given state does not matter.  For example, the fact that Trump did poorly in the most populous states of New York and California did not matter since he won a greater number of smaller states that in the end produced 20% more electoral college votes than what Hillary won.

This is not the first time the candidate who loses the popular vote has gone on to become the American President.  The last time it happened was in the 2000 election when Bush defeated Gore despite not having the support of the majority of American electors.  Electoral results carry consequences like the war in Iraq, which was clearly the result of the lie that claimed that the Iraqis possessed arms of mass destruction that required a US military invasion.  What now lies in store for America and the world at large has given rise to great concern for the safety of the global community.

Certainly, the question that needs to be raised is how can the most powerful nation in the world use such a dubious electoral system to decide who will lead the nation?  Simply put, the problem is that the Americans have never gotten around to modernizing their electoral system, which is, for the most part, a relic of its colonial past as an English settler state.  Winner-take-all electoral districts are still in use in England, the USA, Canada, and Australia.  The rest of the world, however, has moved on to adopt electoral systems that do not produce such aberrant electoral results.

It just so happens that Canada is now in the process of deciding whether to change its voting method.  During the last federal election in Canada, the soon-to-be-elected Prime Minister Trudeau promised that the 2015 election would be the last using the winner-take-all, plurality system called first-past-the-post.  Ironically, Trudeau became Prime Minister as a result of the distortion brought on by the voting system: his Liberal Party only received 39% of the popular vote; but in one region, the Maritimes, he won 61 out of 61 electoral districts with only 56% of the popular vote, thereby giving him a "majority" government, meaning that the electoral system had created a majority when in reality his party only had the support of the minority of the population.

Fabricating majority rule and the reversal of popular vote are only two of the major problems of first-past-the-post.  It also systemically under-represents or denies altogether representation to smaller political parties.  Essentially, the supporters of such parties are effectively disenfranchised.  In the 2004 federal election, for example, the Green Party of Canada received almost one million votes but was denied any representation in Parliament thanks to the electoral system.

Canadians have been aware of these problems for almost one hundred years.  In fact, in the provinces other voting methods have been used, but for many reasons we have never taken these problems serious enough to make a qualitative change to the voting system at the federal level.  Looking at what just happened in the US, we should realize that a hostile take over of one of Canada's traditional governing political parties by a demagogue is wholly possible.  In fact, Germany adopted proportional representation largely to prevent this possibility from ever happening again given the tragic turn of events leading to carnage of the Second World War.

Let's not be smug Canada.  It could happen here.  Do the right thing.  Adopt proportional representation and make Canada Trump proof.




























 

Life, Liberty, and the Sociopathic Pursuit of Wealth

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

(The United States Declaration of Independence)


Well, it has been decided.  Donald Trump will be the Presidential Candidate for the Republican Party and Hillary Clinton will be the candidate for the Democrats.  I know.  It's so easy to say that "these are the choices?"  Yes, they are and it says miles about what kind of nation the United States of America has morphed into.

The nation was indeed founded on lofty ideals arising from the Enlightenment, extending to the early settlers primarily from Britain, but the rights were not extended to the indigenous peoples and the African slaves.  It would take a bloody civil war during the nineteenth century and the struggles of the civil rights movement of the twentieth to arrive at some semblance of all humans being created equal although many members of the indigenous, feminist, and LGBT communities might disagree.

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Looking closely at the aforementioned unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it seems clear enough that one has the right to be alive and to be free to do as one wishes within the existing legal framework, but it is the pursuit of happiness that raises the most concerns, especially how it is presently pursued in the United States.  To be happy requires, at the very least, that one's basic survival needs: food and water, adequate shelter, clothing, education, and the possibility of earning a living are met and in a manner in which that one doesn't have to worry from one day to the next if they will be.  That being said, it is evident that millions of Americans have reason to belief that their pursuit of happiness has been seriously impeded by social structures that favor one segment of the society, the rich, at the expense of the majority of Americans.

To be sure both candidates represent the interests of wealthy Americans who desire to focus their pursuit of happiness on their pursuit of wealth.  In fact, both candidates are multi-millionaires.  In the case of Donald Trump, he inherited his wealth from his father and has continued in his father's footsteps as a real estate developer.  In the case of Hillary Clinton, she was born into a family of more modest means, but yet somehow managed to team up with her husband, the former President of the United States, Bill Clinton, to parlay their public service careers into a multi-million sum of net worth.  In other words, one was born rich, the other got rich.

Essentially, they represent two sides of the same coin, the sociopathic pursuit of wealth.  By that I mean that they embody characteristics often associated with sociopaths: narcissism, lack of empathy, a belief that they are exempt from societal norms and rules, and engaging in intentional deceit to advance their self interest.  Taken together these characteristics bring forth an attitude of indifference with regard to how their behavior might have negative consequences for others.

Of the two candidates, it is much more apparent that Trump manifests sociopathic tendencies.  He is unabashed in his efforts to promote his name and image -- to such an extent that some journalists are saying that he is not a serious candidate and is only using the Presidential campaign as a means to promote his name and the Trump brand.  Given his outlandish statements, for example, telling people he intends to build a wall between the United States and Mexico to keep out the drug dealers and rapists and will get the Mexicans to pay for it, it doesn't seem out of the realm of the possible that he is testing the limits of what he can say and do as a candidate in order to cash in on his exploits at a latter date.  Moreover, his crass comments about minorities clearly demonstrates lack of empathy and his refusal to make public his personal financial records show a blatant disregard for the public's right to know sufficiently the background of the person they are contemplating voting into the most powerful political position on the planet. 

Of course, his economic plans include reducing the taxes of the most wealthy and improving the economic lot of white, lesser educated, males by implementing xenophobic social and economic policies.  Less immigrants supposedly means more jobs for white people, not necessarily good paying jobs with benefits, but jobs nonetheless.

With Clinton, the sociopathic tendencies are not as readily apparent, and she exploits the constant opportunity to redirect attention concerning important questions about her character and behavior towards the easy target, Donald Trump.  Repeatedly, members of the public raise the question of how could the Clintons become so rich as politicians supposedly employed by them to advance the public good.  It is well known that she was paid princely sums to give speeches to associations from the financial sector on Wall Street, but she refuses to make public the transcripts of the speeches.  Perhaps, the so-called speeches were little more than bribes attached to services rendered and to be rendered at a later date.  Likewise, what are the connections between the Clinton Foundation and the US State Department, of which Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State?  It appears that donations to the Foundation opened doors within the Obama administration.  Answers could be forthcoming but unfortunately people who could shed light on what was happening behind closed doors end up dying under mysterious circumstances before they have the opportunity to testify.  Similarly, important and troubling questions about how the integrity of the Democratic Party Primaries leading to Hillary's nomination as the Party's Presidential candidate remain unanswered to date although a number of lawsuits alleging electoral fraud have been launched, the President of Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced to resign, and a few people who worked on Clinton's campaign have also met their untimely demise. 

Although Hillary appears to be much more liberal in her social views, her economic policies favor the pursuit of wealth by the rich liberal elite, those educated at Ivy League universities, like Hillary, Bill, and Obama, who parlay their social connections in the financial, legal, technology, and entertainment sectors to do very well for themselves in the neo-liberal order they helped to create.  It should be noted that Hillary is already more than half way to her goal of raising one billion dollars for her presidential campaign.

Looking forward to the Presidential election in November the average American has very little to hope for.  Both candidates represent the interests of the already and the soon-to-be rich.  For those on the outside looking in on the spectacle of the ostentatious display of wealth that the modern-day Gatsby-like personas love to put on, good luck to you.  However, if you believe that your vote could make a difference and you are thinking that maybe it is in the best interest to limit the damage that either one of these sociopaths could inflict upon America, you should consider voting for a progressive candidate in the Senatorial or Congressional elections.