Saturday, April 11, 2020

What Now?

The tumult and the shouting dies, the captains and the kings depart, still stands an ancient constitution, even though we got rid of the silly obese fart.

Two issues are, or were, predictable once Biden was sworn in:-

(1) Immediate "welcome home!" courtesies from most of the world leaders.

(2) Immediate movement of the USA to rejoin organizations for mutual defence, climate change, and so on.

One more issue will be addressed by columnists sometime within the next month:-

(3) Once Biden, Twice Shy

For the past four years, nations have come to terms with their independence from the USA.

As an example, Trump's bellowing and de-funding of NATO showed European nations that they had grown up. They were no longer the war-battered landscapes of the late 40s and 50s and 60s. They had used these seventy years to build their own nuclear arsenals, missiles, intelligence services, and in many cases had pioneered espionage technologies. "Who needs the USA?" might have been the chant, had not Trump been just an arm's reach away from a red button.

The individual nations that seventy years ago were competing against each other for trade with the USA are now busy trading with each other with disregard to borders and currencies. The population of the EU is about 445 million people, The population of the United States of America is 330 million people. A market just two-third's the size.

From this time forwards, whenever the USA is invited to sign a treaty, commit funds, or join a partnership, nations will remember how quickly the USA can pull the rug out from their feet. Canada will not forget the obstacles with oilfields and pipelines. Muslims will not forget the slur on their people. Australians will not forget Trump's various snubs of the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull .

(4) The elephant, as we say, in the room, is the Constitution of The United States. All seven articles and twenty-seven amendments.

Or Thirty Four Articles, if you prefer.

That's an Article every six or seven years as a meaningless measure of rate of change. Nonetheless it does show that the constitution can be changed.

If the States has learned anything worthwhile over the past four years it should paraphrase this "We can change!"

However, given the propensity of citizens of the United States to bear arms to protect their right to bear arms and their refusal to discuss, let alone abandon the wild-west approach to life, or at least, death, gives me little hope for them to adopt a change to their constitution to protect their constitution which affords them the right to bear arms.

So now you see just how these rustic folks have woven them selves into a trap.

Let me break that cumbersome paragraph down.

The US constitution gives citizens the right to bear arms. The trouble is that too many of these citizens have not studied their constitution, let alone studied the second amendment. Let alone read serious studies on their constitution.

I have.

The right to bear arms was the right to form a militia to defend a state's borders. Specifically to ward off attacks by the dastardly British over two hundred years ago. The result is a proliferation of pawn shops that trade in illegal pistols, and licensed gun shops that deliver the power to fire a great many rounds per second.

The police are armed with guns and are quick on the draw because they know that anyone around them (in front, or in back, or hidden off to the side) might be carrying one or more guns.

Now that's freedom for you!

If after all this time people can't distinguish between violence and cowardly-violence-at-a-distance, well, that's education for you.

So first one or two generations of citizens (330 million people and rising) have to be trained in logic, philosophy, and trained to read and study deep articles.

Say fifty years.

Then the mechanism of change must be fixed. Education again. You need to be able to calculate by two-thirds and three-fourths, take into account one or the other, work out whether Year One thousand eight hundred and eight has passed or awaits us, understand the ordinal positions third, fourth, and ninth, and know what "equals" means.

Right now the citizens don't know what "equals" means when applied to "people who aren't like me". I have a feeling that "equal Suffrage" will take another twenty to fifty years.

So, reckon on fifty to a hundred years before the citizens rise up, unarmed, and demand a re-written, simpler constitution that addresses real issues of our times.

That is to say, the times that prevailed fifty to a hundred years ago before we demanded change.

You better include History in that list.

And don't hold you breath while you wait for the USA to insert clauses that insist that a candidate can be ejected without notice if he, she, or it, is caught in a lie.

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