The electoral college chooses the president of the United States on December 19th. A number of arguments are being made about whether it would make sense to abolish the electoral college in the future, for the electoral college to act as "Hamilton electors" (and choose someone that nobody voted for) or for the electoral college to follow the popular vote and elect Hillary Clinton president. Now Drumpf has claimed, following conspiracy-theorist Alex Jones, that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote because "illegal" people voted for. her This latest tweet storm suggests that for the Drumpf followers, many of us aren't "real" Americans at all.
With that said, here are my suggested readings for the electoral college.
Frances Fox-Piven is a bugbear for the far-right, but that is only because she presents such compelling arguments that they cannot get her on evidence, thus they resort to conspiracy theories and ad-hominem attacks. Since her famous book with Richard Cloward, Why Americans Don't Vote, she has produced two updated works, first Why Americans Still Don't Vote, and most recently, Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters. Since false claims of voter-fraud have played a significant role in this election, this may be the first stop for the electoral college in deciding how democratic this process of election has really been, and where exactly the Constitutional crisis began.
Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night concerns the dynamics of collaboration with an evil regime, regardless of intention, with the moral that "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." I haven't read the book, but came across it in a discussion of the German physicists who continued to work for the Nazis throughout the war, and how it was they believed that what they did wasn't as important, as what they meant. But no, I agree with the author, what people actually do is much more important than how they feel about it, or what they mean deep inside. Along with this, they might also read Hannah Arendt's famous essay, Eichmann in Jerusalem.
This is a long one, but seems important in light of the recent laser-focus on the electoral college and the possibility that voting otherwise than in recent past-practice would provoke a Constitutional crisis that could imperil democracy (more so than the threats presented by the president elect). Michael Klarman's Framer's Coup explains how the Constitution was meant not to increase, but to deter democracy. It builds on arguments first put forward by Charles and Mary Beard, popularized for this generation by Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and then more recently explained in detail by Woody Holton who is also the author of one my favorite books on the American Revolution,, Forced Founders. According to the review linked above, Klarman presents more documentary evidence than the prior accounts.
And finally, for the specific threat posed by Drumpf himself, perhaps they might want to read this book, Trump Unveiled which is currently on sale for just $1 from OR books.
And for the listening portion of this edition of reading & listening, here is the German band Die Artze, whose anti-fascist song of the 1990s, "Schrei Nach Liebe" gained new popularity in Germany following fascist attacks on Syrian refugees last year.
With that said, here are my suggested readings for the electoral college.
Frances Fox-Piven is a bugbear for the far-right, but that is only because she presents such compelling arguments that they cannot get her on evidence, thus they resort to conspiracy theories and ad-hominem attacks. Since her famous book with Richard Cloward, Why Americans Don't Vote, she has produced two updated works, first Why Americans Still Don't Vote, and most recently, Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters. Since false claims of voter-fraud have played a significant role in this election, this may be the first stop for the electoral college in deciding how democratic this process of election has really been, and where exactly the Constitutional crisis began.
Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night concerns the dynamics of collaboration with an evil regime, regardless of intention, with the moral that "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." I haven't read the book, but came across it in a discussion of the German physicists who continued to work for the Nazis throughout the war, and how it was they believed that what they did wasn't as important, as what they meant. But no, I agree with the author, what people actually do is much more important than how they feel about it, or what they mean deep inside. Along with this, they might also read Hannah Arendt's famous essay, Eichmann in Jerusalem.
This is a long one, but seems important in light of the recent laser-focus on the electoral college and the possibility that voting otherwise than in recent past-practice would provoke a Constitutional crisis that could imperil democracy (more so than the threats presented by the president elect). Michael Klarman's Framer's Coup explains how the Constitution was meant not to increase, but to deter democracy. It builds on arguments first put forward by Charles and Mary Beard, popularized for this generation by Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and then more recently explained in detail by Woody Holton who is also the author of one my favorite books on the American Revolution,, Forced Founders. According to the review linked above, Klarman presents more documentary evidence than the prior accounts.
And finally, for the specific threat posed by Drumpf himself, perhaps they might want to read this book, Trump Unveiled which is currently on sale for just $1 from OR books.
And for the listening portion of this edition of reading & listening, here is the German band Die Artze, whose anti-fascist song of the 1990s, "Schrei Nach Liebe" gained new popularity in Germany following fascist attacks on Syrian refugees last year.
