WELL: One last semi-serious thought before I go to the Bang! I've been working on a model of markets and democracy in Iraq (for Scott Page's class), and on the democracy end, I've pretty much begun with the idea of a federated democracy along the lines of the US: it would reassure, I think, on the local and regional levels, a great deal of stability for presumably obvious reasons. The big problem has been how that translates onto the national level, where you have powerful, motivated factions with radically different ideas of what should be going on. How on earth do you keep all the pieces together, when their motion naturally suggests they fall apart?
Then it came to me: gerrymandering. No, seriously. One of the nicer features of US electoral districts is that there's little rhyme or reason to how they're laid out: can anyone outline specifically what areas are in, say, Ann Arbor's US House area and not in that of the adjoining districts (like, on the street level, where the lines are)?
Extrapolate this idea to Iraq: draw the lines in whatever insane erratic way you can, in either majority-minority or even-chance districts. How can you get mad at the people who elected a certain person when you can't even figure out which people elected them? Nothing in here has to contravene the general principles of republican democracy, so it seems immune to that type of charge.
Thoughts?
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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