We are witnessing a coup of the American government
NOTE: this text was not written by me and is from user u/IAmTheJudasTree. The only changes were minor formatting for readability. I would merely link to reddit if they had a way to highlight comments, but they do not.
The original post.
It’s a coup. That’s not hyperbole, we’re witnessing a coup of the American government.
Conservative coup blueprint years in the making:
- Gerrymander states so much that they lock in control of a majority of state governments.
- Neutralize the federal congress - this is achieved 1) with our senate system, which grants massive advantage to rural, conservative, hyper-low population states, and refusing to grant new statehood to places like DC and Puerto Rico, 2) with the artificial cap on House seats, which is relatively new to American government, and prevents high population states from gaining electoral advantage proportional to their population growth.
- Similar rules to the artificial cap on house seats also prevent high population states from gaining proportional advantage in the electoral college, meaning republicans also get a built in advantage in presidential elections. This is why republicans are consistently losing the popular vote yet are still able to win presidential elections, which in turn lets them appoint Supreme Court justices.
- With control of the Supreme Court, conservative justices rule that courts aren’t allowed to halt partisan gerrymandering, further enabling conservatives to lock in control of a majority of state governments.
The end result: a minority of conservative Americans control our government and laws through the Supreme Court and state governments, and all other government authorities are rendered irrelevant. The Supreme Court says that laws liberal states enact are unconstitutional, and say that laws conservative states enact are constitutional. In this way, the conservative Supreme Court is partnering with conservative states to force conservative policies on the entire country, all without any checks and balances and only having the support of a minority of Americans.
Millions more Americans are going to start waking up to the fact that a coup has just been performed with each day that goes by now.
Edit: For more clarity on the artificial cap on House seats and rules governing presidential electors that I mentioned:
https://www.thegreenpapers.com/Census10/FedRep.phtml
Wyoming receives one House representative for every 568,000 residents.
California receives one House representative for every 704,000 residents.
Wyoming receives one presidential elector for every 189,000 residents.
California receives one presidential elector for every 678,000 residents.
The artificial caps in place prevent big population states from gaining full electoral advantages when their populations increase. These rules, along with the 2 senator per state system, give all of the proportional advantages to the lowest population states, which tend to be rural and conservative.
Edit 2: Rather than reply to you all individually, I’ll address it here. To those saying:
“The two senator per state system is fair, because big population states get their proportional representation in the House and in presidential elections”
I’ll re-direct you back to my own comment, which you must not have fully read.
Low population states don’t just gain an advantage in the Senate. They ALSO gain an advantage in the House and in presidential elections. Low population states are given an advantage in every branch of government, there is no fair counterbalance for the big population states. So to repeat:
- Wyoming, 1 House representative for every 568,000 residents (704,000 for California)
- Wyoming, 1 presidential elector for every 189,000 residents (678,000 for California)