Titanic Democracy

By Bill Maher

I keep thinking about how none of this would be happening if Trump hadn’t run against a terrible candidate AND he didn’t have the Russians AND the House AND the Senate AND the state houses to redraw the districts AND the courts to say voting rights are stupid. AND his own news network. AND if maybe we’d spent a little money to teach civics and critical thinking in school…

I keep going back to the unsinkable Titanic. Everything had to go wrong. There were sixteen watertight compartments, but the transverse bulkheads were open at the top. A hole in one compartment wouldn’t do anything but moisten the paddies in steerage, who could use it. But if you ripped a hole in six, you’d flood the bow of the ship, tip it forward and the water would flow over the bulkheads and drag down the whole thing.

Engineers talk about “cascading failure” – one thing leads to another.  Republicans get control of districting and then you can’t vote them out, so they appoint more judges who ignore voter suppression. I want to think we scramble up on the wreckage with Kate Winslet, but I don’t see how that happens. The Constitution is swell, because it spreads the power around, but thinking it protects America is like thinking Irish engineering protects the Titanic. It does until it doesn’t.