Parts of this essay remind me of the 2020 novel Time Shelter [1] by Georgi Gospodinov (another Bulgarian). Especially this part:
My feeling is that all the troubles we’ve been witnessing over the last decade—Trumpism, Brexit, the rise of nationalism all over Europe, Russia’s virulent imperialism—are attempts to disrupt not just the dominant political systems, but the zone of eternal repetition. In most cases, these attempts are ridiculous, ersatz, misguided imitations of ideologies borrowed from the past, exposing their own imaginative shortages—they aspire to move the hands of the clock, even if backwards—but it’s hard to deny they represent dissatisfaction and resentment with the way things are. There is, it seems to me, a subconscious craving to be taken out of the boredom of timelessness and be thrown back into the flux of time, even if that means violence or war—anything but the broth!
To me, this excerpt reads more like a person standing politically left not willing to accept that the deal with democracy is that they can not have their way every election. Trumpism, Brexit and the rise of nationalism are simply an expression of the democratic pendulum swinging from side to side. Interestingly, a few years back, I could never have seen that in this light But now it is clear as daylight. If one side would always win, it would be a dictatorship.
For a good long while it seemed like one side was definitely going to use power, if it got power, to stay in power forever -- look at Hungary for a good example -- but lately it seems like the younger generation of the other side wants the same thing, which historically makes sense: totalitarianism has every bit as rich a history on the Left as on the Right.
So yeah, it's dangerous to think you will always win because your ideas are the only correct ones. But it's possible to rig the system so the "good guys" (you) always win, and then say it's because your ideas were correct. At which point you might find you have not a dictatorship per se, but merely an illiberal democracy that guarantees continuity of government.
how democratic is a system where losing the popular vote doesn't imply losing the election?
the Senate being a strange beast is not surprising, it's by design. it's important to prevent tyranny of the majority. (after all usually populism quickly switches gears into that, then slowly but surely throws off the other restraints and it becomes a usual dictatorship.) of course, it bears asking how well the Senate is doing at this prevention.
My feeling is that all the troubles we’ve been witnessing over the last decade—Trumpism, Brexit, the rise of nationalism all over Europe, Russia’s virulent imperialism—are attempts to disrupt not just the dominant political systems, but the zone of eternal repetition. In most cases, these attempts are ridiculous, ersatz, misguided imitations of ideologies borrowed from the past, exposing their own imaginative shortages—they aspire to move the hands of the clock, even if backwards—but it’s hard to deny they represent dissatisfaction and resentment with the way things are. There is, it seems to me, a subconscious craving to be taken out of the boredom of timelessness and be thrown back into the flux of time, even if that means violence or war—anything but the broth!
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58999261-time-shelter