That’s by design. Would you have wanted Trump to have been enabled to govern more decisively in his indecisiveness?
Sadly, when I was 13, I worked on John Boehner’s campaign. Mostly by just being a cute kid that went along with canvassers. I was on his float in a parade, too.
I think that’s why I am involved now, to make up for that.
Most of those more advanced nations give less power to the executive branch, but still manage to get things done quite well through their legislative.
I’d be happy to move away from our current system to something more parliamentary.
I think the biggest source of Trump-based disillusionment I have is this - I’ve never been able to wrap my brain around how the typical rural working class Trump supporter came to believe that a bloated caricature of a Manhattan billionaire with a 40 year reputation for corruption and excess somehow has their best interests at heart.
That’s the thing. When you have a lot of people who “hate the way things are” because they can’t find meaningful employment or they feel like their government is failing them, it’s easy for an unscrupulous person to align them with other people who “hate the way things are” because they’re…you know…racists.
Reagan and Shrub left us with problems that deliberate obstruction prevented us from course-correcting. I’m not a Ron Paul “end the fed” libertarian nutter when it comes to the national debt, but the amount of doubt we’re piling on and, more significantly, our inability to use national fiscal policy in a wise and coherent manner, is worrisome. It’s as if conservatives have implemented a political policy that deliberately wrecks the budget so that we will have no choice than to eliminate things like social security, medicare, and the like.
Debt is a problem when inflation starts. Right now, there is no reason to believe it is imminent.
Lack of spending is a problem when the economy slows, like right now. So I am not worried about incurring some (low-risk) debt to avoid an economic disaster.
When the economy (not just the Dow) is chugging along, we need to have surpluses. No question. But spending now is necessary.
They can be fixed; the question is will they, and whether they can be fixed before a much more significant and complex set of problems descends upon us.
The problems we have faced up to this point are the human problems of negotiating power; the problems that confront us in the not-too-distant future introduce the variables of unpredictable social, political, and atmospheric environments, and environmental and economic scarcities as consequences.
This republic is already facing great dangers to its continued function and existence but these challenges are solvable. More serious problems begin when our situation changes so frequently and so rapidly that our mechanisms cannot possibly keep up. The pandemic was exactly this sort of event. As bad as it has been and as badly as we’ve handled it, it’s just one such event. Throw in a few devastating droughts, some crop failures, another pandemic on top of this one, a few more mass migrations, and that will strain even the most well-designed political and bureaucratic system.
Yes, debt is a problem when inflation starts, but inflation can start for various reasons, such as when countries lose faith in the inherent value of the dollar relative to other currencies, or if they simply believe that the US may not be serious about repaying the debts it has generated.
You pretty much solved your own mystery right there. Solving real problems is hard. Blaming and hating is easy.
With each passing year of my life, I find myself wishing I’d been been born in Scandinavia or Canada.
“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you: [Donald Trump] is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character, …”
– “The American President”
He wouldn’t have been elected President in 2016 under a system better reflecting the will of the American voters.
But the EC is only the start of our problems. A powerful head of state is another system design failure that, as has been noted, most better governed, more advanced nations have deftly avoided. And don’t even get me started on gerrymandering as opposed to proportional representation.
Wanna bet that nine out of ten Trump supporters, seeing that clip from the movie, would fill in Biden’s name?
Yeah, I just feel like Donald Trump would be the sort of person the typical Trump supporter would be blaming and hating for their working class troubles.
“This idea that I’m somehow the ‘Hollywood elite’ and this guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable’”
–George Clooney
Most of us are pretty logically inconsistent - to hypocritical when it comes to politics, but the DJT supporters in my world are The Least Self-Aware People I Have Ever Met In My Life.
This great post by Wesley_Clark explains and sums it up better than anything I could ever put into words.
To answer the OP more directly: I was disillusioned before Trump, but much more so now. And not with America, but with “America.”
Growing up in the 70s I was more or less indoctrinated with the idea that the US was the greatest country on earth, which may have been true in many empirical ways in the decades after WWII. But as I grew up and learned stuff, I realized that the “America” narrative left out some key details:
- We had an enormous advantage in 19th century industrialization – an entire continent to pillage.
- We accomplished that pillaging by wiping out indigenous civilizations and leveraging slave labor.
- We had an enormous advantage in WWII – an ocean on either side protecting us from invasion.
- The post-war boom years did little to bring non-white Americans any closer to equal opportunity.
So while I still thought this country was pretty great, all things considered, I abandoned the idea that “America” was anything so magically wonderful it was beyond criticism or improvement. Maybe what’s been so disillusioning about the last five years is knowing there are vast communities of my countrypeople for whom “America” is all the argument they need.
I am disillusioned that Trump let the genie out of the bottle and it cannot be put back.
The country has many social, socio-political, economic and systemic problems rooted in the core long before he arrived on the political frontier. These problems have not been solved fully. They’ve not been solved properly. Trump did not try to solve them but I expected that. That’s not the big problem he has brought to this country because he’s not alone in that count.
The big problem is he has allowed what used to be a fringe mentality of anti-intellectualism, of anti-expertise, of conspiracy theories, of phony populism which is not based on helping the common man but to hurt the uncommon man to rise and be enabled and be encouraged. This is not going to be reversed. These people had a taste of being centred and they resorted to storming the Capitol and trying to tear up democracy to maintain it. They’re not going anywhere.
He has turned people who ten years ago would have scolded their children for using wikipedia for their homework because anybody can edit it to latching onto insane, unhinged, maniacal theories because some guy on youtube said so. He has made paranoia and resentment a virtue of strength while actual virtues of consideration are seen as weakness. He has developed a cult of personality that has taken over a political party to worship him despite being the first president to lose his party the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives in 90 years in one term. Think about that.
That’s Trump’s legacy.
The Manhattan (faux) billionaire isn’t brown or black.
I agree, and am sorry it had to happen.
I’m very grateful he was not re-elected, that’s for sure. It still boggles my mind that so many people think 80 million voters were cheated.