General Discussion

The idea that everyone should be represented is a species of delusion, since most people aren't represented right now.

According to Dr Robert Dahl, generally regarded as the most important scholar of democracy in the world, for the US to be what it claims to be (a representative democracy), 5 criteria would need to be met:
- every substantive adult member of the demos has the vote
- every voter has an equal opportunity to understand the situation and the issues
- every voter has an equal opportunity to determine the agenda
- every voter has an equal opportunity to cast their vote
- everyone's vote is counted, and counted equally

Good, sensible basic criteria, right?

How many of those are being met?

None of them.

Which means, Dr Dahl says, the US is not a democracy and only rhetorically has the form of one.

The facts that (a) everyone nominally has the vote and (b) there's never been any limitation on the amount of propaganda the rich can buy (Citizens United just made it worse) are the source of the problem.

People who received a crappy education and now have to work their arses off just to barely keep their heads above water have neither the background nor the time to filter out the crap we're all bombarded with day in and day out by the leisure-class psychopaths and their henchcreatures. Oh yeah, we do finally filter it out (e.g. war opposition)...but by then it's too late.

And so they routinely vote against their own interests because they suffer from a kind of manufactured psychosis: the psychopathocracy has made it virtually impossible for them to distinguish reality from fantasy.



So yes, I think there should be a test. And it should cover really basic information such as how government actually works and what that means.

To prep for the test they should have all sorts of materials available to them, from books to cartoons to tutoring. And, to get rid of any Jim-Crow bias, people should have the right to choose the form of administration (verbal, paper and pencil, etc), and even their own examiners from those who have passed the test.

And those who can't pass the test should get a different ballot in menu format that lets them vote for the elements of the life they want rather than for individuals.