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The myth of an ending: why even removing Trump from office won’t save American democracy

braces_for_impact

braces_for_impact

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A good read, and a pragmatic look at the state of our democracy and how the end of the Trump presidency won't fix our problems.

I think this article is spot on, and I find myself saddened by the state of our political system. Until recently, I've been pretty optimistic about our country, but I'm becoming increasingly the opposite. Discuss.
 
He's got some good points in there. The dissatisfaction with the way US government functions has been present for a solid chunk of my life. I know I've been secretly desiring a Guy Fawkes style reboot of Congress for about 20 years now. We've got old, entrenched, life-long politicians in power, who mainly focus on keeping their seat rather than serving the public, who are susceptible to special interest groups and corporate agendas that help them finance their constant focus on the next election, and who are so busy fighting the other party that none of them are interested in fulfilling their obligations to the American public.

It's part of why I'm not really all up in arms about Trump being president. Sure, he's horrible... but to me so are all the other options. When I spend each election voting for the lesser evil, it really hammers home the fact that they're all evil. Trump is just more of the same old shit. Hell, he might be slightly better, if only because at least he's a new scent of and I was tired of the prior odor. When all you've dealt with is dog shit... sometimes pig shit is a refreshing change for a short stint.

All this shit stinks. Hey, that's a new kind of shit! I mean, it's still shit, but at least it's a slightly different kind of shit! This is exciting, we get to try out some new shit for a while! :p
 
Missing from that article is a simple truth:

The motivation for political change is rooted in economics, and right now things are for the most part pretty good. Unemployment is low. Stock market is high. Consumer confidence, the housing market, gas prices all seem to be hovering in positive territory and there's no indication that it will all come crashing down in the near term. Are there problems? Of course. The rich are getting richer at the expense of the rest of us, Trump's robber baron administration is kneecapping any sort of regulation which might stave off the inevitable economic downturn, and Congress couldn't start a fire if you gave them two sticks and a gallon of gasoline, but the voters that matter - white, older, middle class - are to borrow a term from the article muddling through.

The Tea Party wouldn't have happened if the unemployment rate in 2010 had been under 5 percent and the boomers' 401k accounts hadn't been halved. The anger over the trillion dollars worth of stimulus was misplaced, but real nonetheless, and that anger was swiftly hijacked and turned into a massive Congressional win for the GOP. Now, many of those same Tea Party folks in Congress just signed off on a tax cut that will cost more than the stimulus, and the old white middle class voters aren't concerned one tiny bit.

I myself am an older, white, middle class voter. I got a few extra bucks in my paycheck due to the tax cut, my house is worth almost what it was at the peak of the market before the crash, and while some of the funds I've got money in have taken a hit lately, it isn't bad. Someone in my position who wasn't all that politically engaged would probably give at least a passing grade to Trump and his band of merry idiots. And should the Mueller investigation come out with a long list of impeachable offenses, it won't matter as much to the average citizen because of the dual cliche's of fat, dumb & happy, and bread & circuses.

We'll get our political revolution when the economy comes crashing down (again) and Joe Six Pack is out of a job (again) but not before.
 
As a bank robber empties the safe deposit boxes, global warming remains unaffected.
As a rapist tortures a person to death, the stock market remains positive.
As a terrorist murders dozens of people, millions of children are still receiving an education.

so.. everything is just fine.
 
Ford said:
We'll get our political revolution when the economy comes crashing down (again) and Joe Six Pack is out of a job (again) but not before.
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If the rethuglicans are truly skilled at one thing, it is manipulating the timing of economic downturns to their advantage. It will be the Democrats' fault, no matter what. That's why they assented to giving away 1.5 trillion dollars to the top 1% and the corporations they own. It wasn't because they need the grateful votes of the top 1% - the Repugs already know they're fucked come election day, since their boy toy has made such a mess of things and is such a national embarrassment. But shortly after election day the chickens will come home to roost, and either taxes will go up or services will be cut or both - Joe sixpack will feel it and it will be 100% the Democrats' fault.
 
I've repeated this comment many times at this forum, but imo the core issue in the US is how far to the right it's political spectrum leans. Conservative policy leads to sub-optimal social outcomes, and sub-optimal social outcomes make the problem worse. So I think what we're seeing is the culture of the U.S. taking it's course on a less than ideal trajectory.

Granted, I also think we're seeing something of a hollowing out of many Western economies, and so some of the issues in the U.S. aren't isolated to you, but at the same time your political system seems to be less suited to deal with change than many other governments. Polarization maybe?
 
Emily Lake said:
He's got some good points in there. The dissatisfaction with the way US government functions has been present for a solid chunk of my life. I know I've been secretly desiring a Guy Fawkes style reboot of Congress for about 20 years now. We've got old, entrenched, life-long politicians in power, who mainly focus on keeping their seat rather than serving the public, who are susceptible to special interest groups and corporate agendas that help them finance their constant focus on the next election, and who are so busy fighting the other party that none of them are interested in fulfilling their obligations to the American public.
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Old and entrenched. I hate it when doctors don't quit after 8 years. I hate it when engineers don't quite after a couple of terms.

Term limits aren't the problem. It is the us v them issue and then the GOP is fucking nuts and has been using propaganda for over three decades issue. The GOP has been having issues with reality since Nixon and it keeps getting worse. And their followers have been swallowing crap on AM radio and Fox News for decades and it is impossible to get through. That people actually thought the economy was worse in 2016 than 2008 just shows how bad the misinformation is.

It's part of why I'm not really all up in arms about Trump being president. Sure, he's horrible... but to me so are all the other options.
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No, no, no, and no. I'm sick of people not being able to handle observing differentials. Trump isn't just fucking over the US, he is fucking the reputation of the US for tradea/negotiations/agreements. You can't just step outside of treaties and expect it won't hurt down the road.
When I spend each election voting for the lesser evil, it really hammers home the fact that they're all evil.
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Yes, Obama is just as bad as Trump.
Trump is just more of the same old shit. Hell, he might be slightly better, if only because at least he's a new scent of and I was tired of the prior odor. When all you've dealt with is dog shit... sometimes pig shit is a refreshing change for a short stint.
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What a bunch of meaningless platitudes.
 
Removing Trump won't fix everything, just like removing a tumor does not mean you are cancer free. Further treatment is needed to get rid of the cancer, or other tumors can come up. But removing the tumor is still an important step in recovery.
 
BH said:
What do you think things in the US will be like in 20 years or even 50 years?
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Depends on whether you believe that a change in social perspective, biases, and generational beliefs are likely to have an influence on who gets elected. In 20 years, I expect little to know change. Mostly some continued pendulum effect vacillating between Republican and Democrat partisanship. So pretty much the same kind of bullshit we see now, either in a relatively stable oscillation or in escalation (I don't expect any decrease in a 20 year span).

In 50 years, however, I expect to see a meaningful change in the platforms of both parties. In 50 years time, we will have had a generational shift in the people being elected to office. The people who will be in their 60s and 70s in 50 years are only in their teens and 20s now. They're going to carry their formative experiences with them into office in the future. And I would expect that to drive evolution of the parties.

I don't know whether I would consider it a good evolution or a bad evolution... but change will be change.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Old and entrenched. I hate it when doctors don't quit after 8 years. I hate it when engineers don't quite after a couple of terms.

Term limits aren't the problem.
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I don't think I was particularly clear on this. It's not term limits that are the problem. It's politicians who have made a career of being a 'powerful politician' rather than being a 'public servant'. It's the never-ending cycle of campaign and re-campaign and pandering in order to retain one's seat as a politician that is the problem.

In my opinion, I think we'd have better overall outcomes if there were no term limits on representatives and senators... but if they were subject to a recall by their constituency either on an annual basis, or by special referendum. I could see an argument for using the same approach with the presidency, but I'd have to give it more thought.

As for the rest of your responses... You're perfectly welcome to provide your own beliefs and opinions on the matter, but I'd really appreciate you not passing judgment on others who hold differing opinions.
 
I thought that the article made a few good points about liberals deluding themselves over how easy it would be to fix everything by getting rid of Trump, but it seemed to fall short in delivering on what its title promised. That is, it did not make a strong case that American democracy was in some kind of death spiral. It is true that there are lots of systemic problems with American democracy, but that has always been true. Democracy has always been a work in progress. The author did point out some needed reforms (e.g. replacing the electoral college system with democratic elections and eliminating the filibuster) and some that I thought weren't such great ideas (e.g. eliminating midterm elections by giving all politicians the same term in office and electing all of them at once).

The reality is that Donald Trump has not finished damaging the US government, so getting rid of him is imperative. I am convinced that Mike Pence will make a terrible president, but he will at least render US government policy more predictable to enemies and allies. And he will give us more stability. Presidents do not have absolute power, and there is going to be a strong backlash against Trump, if the spate of recent special elections is any indication. Americans were fed up with dysfunction before, but the current situation is far worse than it was when a Republican Congress was just doing everything in its power to stymie a popular president. This one is far from popular. The main point that the article got totally right was the point that we need to keep our heads and figure out how to muddle through this presidency, which is not going to go away for months, if it goes away at all before 2020.
 
The article does not take into account two primary factors: 1) There was no significant ideological shift to the right (Hillary won the vote) and 2) the effect of removing Trump (however it may be accomplished) will have an even larger “collective consciousness” impact than we felt on Election Day. It will be a righting of what should not have gone wrong in the first place and that is a very powerful sea change.

Pence will be the lamest of lame duck Presidents presiding over our first treasonous administration. He will not just have no mandate, he will likely face a Congress that will have no part of his Trump-infestation. We will likely win back the House (if not the Senate as well) and anything Trump-connected—except for the irrelevant 10% radical nazi fringe—will be scrambling to distance themselves from his stench.

It’s not like he will just walk out with his head held high. He’s a wannabe mob boss and a privileged little bitch who will fight dirty to the very end—his ego never allowing him to accept his downfall—and show his ass again and again and again until all but the irrelevant core screams, “ENOUGH!”

All the evidence anyone needs in support of this was Ryan’s hasty exit before all that shit starts hitting the fans. He’s one of the most sniveling of the rats and he knows exactly what is coming. And is planning on running in 2020 accordingly; getting out now so that he can avoid the shit show and come back around as the more “moderate” Republican later.

ETA: The other fundamental claim the article gets wrong is perhaps the most lazy canard of late; that a dissatisfaction with the “establishment” has been brewing. Horseshit. That dissatisfaction was a false narrative first borne of the Occupy nonsense (itself a publicity stunt for a Canadian parody magazine). They in turn saw the flames they had fanned in the mirror radical left and used that and the new social medium to run Sanders on a false equivalency narrative that Trump likewise was running on.

Two sides of the same coin—both fueled by Russia and the GOP noise machine—to shut out the true choice of America as a whole. Yes, Hillary, as the votes (both counted and contested) conclusively prove. In short, extremist exaggerations from both sides of the radical fringe that normally—prior to the internet and the newly ascendant mainstream news source now being fucking facebook—would have been rightfully ignored and soon forgotten as footnotes.

Sanders stayed in a race he knew he could not win as early as March. Why? It served no other purpose but to damage Hillary and help pave the road for Trump electoral.

The only ones diassatisfied were white people and the reason they were dissatisfied has more to do with latent and overt racism—along with a heaping helping of ignorance—than anything ideological.
 
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Sorry Koy... but your post reads very much as a narrow-field partisan view.

It seems to essentially be... "Clinton is the very best, she was awesome! And anyone who didn't think she was awesome is either a rube who's been conned by the evil GOP-Russia consortium or they're racists! It can't possibly be anything else because Clinton and the entire DNC are awesome!"
 
Until we have publicly-funded campaigns, elected politicians will do what donors want instead of what voters want.

Since donors want different things than voters want, this will probably end in something like the French Revolution. The wealthy won't stop screwing everyone else over for financial gain until the roving pitchfork-wielding mobs are at their doorstep. Even if they tried to reverse course, they spent so many decades and billions indoctrinating right wing voters that they would not be able to turn the ship around in time to avoid politics descending into chaos.

Even if every wealthy person and large corporation agreed that government needs to help the voter instead of the elites, Republican voters would continue voting to make things worse because they were told that voting that way will make things better for them. The only way to avoid driving the whole nation into a ditch would be to convince millions of Republican voters that they are wrong, and I just don't see how that's possible. Decades of indoctrination have made them completely immune to facts or reason.
 
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