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  I'm not getting any traction here these days, so have decamped to Bluesky: @johnmacgregor.bsky.social And X: @JohnMMacgregor My Kim Iversen interview from last week is here: https://rumble.com/v6fhwem-revolutions-are-coming-to-the-west-fixing-the-fatal-flaws-that-cause-inevit.html?e9s=src_v1_mfp Thanks! #Politics #USPolitics #Auspol #PoliticalScience #Democracy #Constitution #alp #lnp #DeliberativeDemocracy #DirectDemocracy #CampaignFinance #Lobbying #Plutocracy

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  I've reached the reluctant conclusion that because Organized Money controls ~100% of the channels of communication - media, social media, education, think tanks... - it can persuade 80 to 90% of the population of anything it likes. (E.g. that a Gaza genocide is regrettable but unavoidable. Or that a Russo-Ukraine war will be won by Ukraine.) The 10 to 20% who have the time to do their own reading can be algorithmically nudged aside. Democratic reform will need to include information r...

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  https://www.beeyou.tv/seanstone/watch/WAGpqkCP2POjJIh15th22 My interview yesterday with US podcaster Sean Stone (son of Oliver), on remaking democracy for our era. My idea is that our democracies have been 'gamed' by tricks our 18th & 19th Century constitutions couldn't have foreseen. And that we need new architecture to reverse this.

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  @Bot4Sale @MorpheusB

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  The state usually is an instrument for elite rule, but that is because most states have been so poorly designed. It doesn't have to be.

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  In my book, I said that every modern movement should carry pictures & banners of/from Wat Tyler (Peasants Revolt, 1381), the Chartists, the Suffragettes & the 1960s antiwar movement. We're in a rare era where this doesn't happen. The Levellers carried pictures of Wat Tyler, 300 years later. Australia's Eureka Stockade sprang out of Chartism. The whole of history is a peasants' revolt - it's all the same thing.

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  Israelis pause to remember the Holocaust last week - in the middle of perpetrating one. Believed to be a world first.

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  Under any rational democratic system, an issue of this importance would be subject to a series of citizen deliberations to establish the facts, followed by a national referendum for a Yes/No from the people. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/block-sunlight-british-scientists-global-warming-b2740295.html

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  Our archipelago of world crises is, in fact, an undersea mountain range. Whilst each ‘island’—environmental overshoot, war, surveillance, inequality—is different from the other, each is anchored in the Stone Age impulses of ‘This is mine’ & ‘I must prevail’. Stone Age societies were organized to neutralize those impulses—which is how they survived. We should do the same. https://books2read.com/thirddraft #Democracy #Politics #ThirdDraftDemocracy #DemocraticReform #BookRecommendation...

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  Our archipelago of world crises is, in fact, an undersea mountain range Whilst each ‘island’—environmental overshoot, war, surveillance, inequality—is different from the other, each is anchored in the Stone Age impulses of ‘This is mine’ & ‘I must prevail’. Stone Age societies were organized to neutralize those impulses—which is how they survived. We should do the same https://books2read.com/thirddraft #Democracy #Politics #DemocraticReform #NonFiction #SystemChange #PoliticalBooks...

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  A happy birthday to the United States - the only nation since Athens to be founded by an entire roomful of geniuses As Americans haven't done what the Founders suggested - to revise the Constitution to match changing times - it's been overtaken by a constellation of ruses, games & riggings by special interests On its 249th birthday, the United States doesn't have fiscal, social & environmental problems—it has a democracy problem https://books2read.com/t...

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  Our crises go back to plutocracy: to Organized Money capturing government policy If we don’t fix that, we won’t fix much Donors } industry pressure } political capture } Vietnam war Donors } industry pressure } political capture } Iraq war Donors } industry pressure } political capture } Gaza genocide Plutocracy is bipartisan The deep state attacked the populist, antiwar Left in the 1980s & the populist antiwar Right from 2016. https://books2read.com/thirddraft #Democ...

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  @Walrus Would be lovely. Probably needs a plan. Some architecture by which it could be practically achieved. https://books2read.com/thirddraft

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  @Daojoan 'There are a lot of fake quotations floating around the Internet.' - Abraham Lincoln

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  I think we should also be thinking of the next genocide. That'll be met with the same lack of energy by our pols. Rewriting our captured system (to end capture) would put an close to that. https://books2read.com/thirddraft

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  I don't think the EU will make decisions that are either ethical or rational until it democratises. There is more than enough democratic architecture waiting in the wings for member nations to run their own governments democratically (replacing the present oligarchies), & to enact cross-border governance for regional matters. All do-able. No longer rocket science. https://books2read.com/thirddraft

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  I guess law is as law does, & right now it is doing little to constrain fascism locally or internationally. Most people (including conservatives) want stronger democracy. So that IMO is where we start from. Once the people control the government, the courts will have to follow. https://books2read.com/thirddraft

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  The old anti-oligarchy parties have been purchased by oligarchs. Electing a new guy won’t change much.

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  @ionica I am a big fan of the em.

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