All power to the...

Further to yesterday's peice. I just want to ruminate on the logic of the situation, chiefly, on the power of the Power of Appointment.

So, the democratic centralist Central Committee nominates a new slate - usually unapposed, but with the possibility of opposition. The appointed CC appoints an EC and Officers.

Right, so the outgoing EC and Officers, part of the CC, will doubtless want to nominate a CC based on a knowledge of who will want to do what next year. i.e. they will propose new members who are willing to attend CC meetings, perhaps, and no more. That is, the officers and EC will want a CC that ensures they retain their positions. There will thus be likely no dispute among the new CC when they are appointed. Indeed, political cohesion will be a grounds upon which people are included on this CC.

This means oppositional factions will be unlikely to be represented on the CC, their existence will be confined to Conference until such time as they can find sufficient delegates to vote for an alternative CC slate, in effect, until they run the party, and exclude the current ruling group. Such utter exclusion is at least one cause of major factionalism, the fact that the leadership are an effective faction, albeit one rendered invisible by the rulebook, which means to compete their competitors must become one (and hope that in the process of compiling their slate, of getting people to agree to serve on their CC list, they don't get rumbled by the party machinery and knacked for their factionalising).

This is the worst kind of block-vote, and wholly undemocratic in it's exclusion of minorities. We have to ask, if these people won, would they run society this way.

But, and here comes the tangent part, we can see societies being run like this. Ameriky has it's fair share of entrenched power. This is a choice gobbett from Electoral Vote:

...the fact that eight of the nine Supreme Court justices are past the traditional retirement age of 65 and four of them have been treated for cancer, it is likely that the choice of who the next president will nominate to the Court will weigh increasingly heavily on the minds of many voters as we approach election day.

The Supreme Court is hugely relevent in American politics because of the entrenched nature of the constitution, it's so hard to change it that governing élites have usually found it easier to re-interpret it.

For instance, I was born the day the US Supreme Court changed it's mind and decided that execution did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and opened the way for it's re-institution to horrific effect acrosss the states. The constitution didn't change, but the court did, and so the constitution did change. If you, er, see what I mean.

Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life, they are accountable to no-one, and their appointment is a power of the President. The opportunity to appoint so many justices, to shape the constitution for decades to come must appeal to the prresidents-to-be.

The power to define the cosntritution belongs to that part furthest removed from public acountability - think on it. Democratic Centralist America.