Do You Still Have Hope For the United States?

My understanding is of the ~1000 federal judge positions, there were about ~150 vacancies when Trump came to power. Trump is going to fill all of them with the GOP senate.

But adding new judge positions, I’d assume you’d need to overcome the filibuster to do that.

Close to half the federal judge positions are currently occupied by judges appointed by Obama or Clinton. So the courts are, for the time being, still in our favor.

In the unlikely event that the dem win the senate in 2018 (unlikely but still) they need to block all judicial appointments.

I have lots of hope for about 75% of Americans. About 25% of them seem permanently irredeemable.

I’ve lost hope and it has little to do with politics.

Let’s see…

I think a lot of the issues with America are a sort of cultural isolationism; I firmly believe that if Americans were to experience other cultures, talk to people they thought they hated, broke bread with them…that a lot of the divisiveness could be crossed, like a bridge.

I realize that many people, including myself, do not have the means to travel like this. But you can watch any manner of travel/food based shows like Bourdain and Zimmern to catch a glimpse of what I mean. Food is universal…we all need it. It tends to break down barriers.

Anyway, that’s just one thing. What really depresses me is this political system we’re locked into where you’re pinching your nose from the stench and pulling the lever for whomever you deem to be “the lesser of two evils”. That’s a lack of choice, and it’s all based around campaign money. We should have more parties/candidates that get some level of funding beyond what they raise for themselves just to get exposure. And enough with the negative TV ads already. Only stupid people buy into that shit. If I were running for office, I would ignore negative ads addressed towards me and focus on the things I was/am doing and what I will do to help the nation if elected.

I also believe that term limits for the Senate is a good idea, and possibly for the Supreme Court as well. Why are rich old white guys always deciding everyone else’s fate? The only positive ideology coming out of Congress is in the House and from first term Senators, and if they cross party lines, they’ll never get elected again. Political suicide these days to stand up for what’s right rather than toe the party line should be a badge of honor, instead, it becomes a smear campaign.

My Dad is a retired Army general, and has become enamored with the Republicans. The Party of Lincoln is so far removed from what it once was it’s unrecognizable. Instead of inclusion and representing the little guy and small businesses, it’s become the xenophobic Party of religious nutjobs, gun toters, zealots and naive poor white fools. My mom did a write in vote this past presidential election and voted for Snow White. She’s never shared whom she voted for with me before as she grew up in an era where that wasn’t discussed and was a private decision. I just simply didn’t vote. I couldn’t. Both candidates were so rotten to the core that it was disgusting, although at this stage I wish that Hillary had been President. There’s no way she could be worse than what we have now, and I’m betting she wouldn’t be expressing her ire at people via Twitter in the wee hours of the morning either. WTF is up with that, anyway? Who does that besides teenagers and disgruntled, cocaine addled celebrities?

In conclusion, it’s not over. Unless of course Trump manages to initiate a war with North Korea, which is my biggest fear. We aren’t prepared to fight such a war, millions will die, and even the ultimate reunification of the Korean peninsula will not be worth it.

Fuck it. I’m done. I still have hope, but it’s diminishing.

Your and other’s obsession with demonizing white people is pretty racist sounding. That’s not helping your cause.

There’s no obsession. Your and other’s support of racist white people is pretty racist sounding. It’s not helping your cause.

I’m white (and male, and hetero). Lots of people in America are white and male and they are decent. Bernie Sanders is a hetero white male over the age of 50. So is Howard Dean, Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, etc. All are white hetero men over age 50.

The issue always comes back to this fact.

Of the most deranged, dysfunctional, ignorant, arrogant, misinformed, dogmatic, anti-democracy, protofascist, morally bankrupt, brainwashed, dangerous, etc. voters the majority are whites over age 50. More often men than women. Does that mean all whites over 50 fit this bill? No, but it means most people who fit this bill are whites over age 50.

That is a statement of fact, not prejudice. As a white man, I can openly admit that while not all white men are bad people, a disproportionately large % of the voters who are the most deranged and unstable tend to be white men.

Young, poor black men commit a disproportionate number of serious crimes in America. Thats a fact. Not all young, poor black men commit serious crimes. But a disproportionate number of serious crimes are committed by young, poor black men. Again, fact.

And white people over 50 (more often men than women) make up a disproportionate number of the most deranged, ignorant and dangerous voters in America. That is also a fact. Not all white people (more men than women) over age 50 are deranged, morally bankrupt, wildly ignorant and dogmatic when it comes to politics. But if someone is those things, they are probably a white person over age 50, more likely a man than a woman.

Also as far as domestic terrorism, islamic extremists are a major threat but conservative white men are also a major threat of domestic terrorism.

Again, facts.

If I didn’t have hope, I would feel obligated to pretend that I did.

I was hoping this was going to end in some kind of Aristocrats-style joke. So disappointing.

The United States is not going to cease to exist, and despite the schism in socioideology and decline of the middle class I don’t foresee a civil war or the overwhelming rise of fascism taking over or any other obvious calamity. But the current administration certainly has the United States on a rapid decline in global status and leadership that it has enjoyed with greater or lesser success since World War II, and some of the changes that will have long term impacts such as dismantling government agencies which exists to promote and protect public welfare and the appointment of politically conservative judges to lifetime federal appointments do not bode well for the ability of the nation adapt and adjust to changes in society, economy, and technology. In particularly, the coming demographic shifts in employment which may eliminate many service jobs while an aging population requires increasing professional care will require preparation in both education and public finance, issues that essentially no one of any political bent is currently addressing in earnest. Similarly, failing to plan for coming changes and needs in energy policy, information technology, crucial environmental issues that may impact agriculture and industry such as fresh water depletion, extreme weather events due to global climate change, public health and potential pandemic failures, ceding technical leadership to other nations as the US fails to produce indigenous expertise and places undue barriers on employment foreign technical experts, et cetera, is essentially planning for failure. That the current batch of yahoos can’t cooperate enough to even produce a comprehensible tax reform bill—something they’ve campaigned upon and promoted for decades—and yet are in a rush to pass something such that it at least looks like progress does not speak toward an ability to address genuine problems in an effective and practical manner, nor appreciate the long term impacts of such hasty decisions. (For those offended by the partisanship of such a statement, I’ll make essentially the same claim about the failure of the Affordable Care Act to actually do anything about reigning in increased costs and influence of health care and insurance companies.)

I have some hope that, barring the nuclear war that President Trump is seemingly eager to engage in or a catastrophic natural disaster, the United States will recover from the missteps of the last fifteen-odd years, will effectively reengage with other industrial nations to negotiate in a mutually beneficial manner, and address some of the long standing problems of socioeconomic and gender imbalance as well as dealing with radical changes in health care, employment, finance, and technology, but I suspect it is going to take a pretty radical economic or social event to provide impetus for dramatic change. Historians are not going to look back on the direction and leadership of the United States in the post-Cold War environment with a favorable view; it will be looked upon as a time in which the US could have had positive change in the world by converting old enemies to allies, promoted democracy in a positive diplomatic fashion, led the development and application of research science and technology for more useful ends than farting out ignorance en masse across the Internet, and used its economic and technological might to deal with global problems of poverty, injustice, inequity in education, ethnic strife and conflict, conversion from petrofuels and coal to more sustainable and less polluting energy production methods, and generally acting as a global leader should, and will instead look to the US as petty, self-absorbed, often insular nation which ceded the lead in scientific research and promotion of freedom and welfare to smaller, less capable nations while engaging in destructive, costly, and often unilaterally-led conflicts with no plan or strategy for an endgame.

Stranger

I’m not sure how to put it into words -at midnight after 3 glasses of Montenegro-, but I feel you cheapened what Uniqueorn had to say. It’s almost like you’re saying, “well yea, but what do you want us to do?” I’ll put words in Uniqueorn’s mouth and say that it’s a call for us all to stand up and do something else. To hell with discounting our behavior as “human nature”. We’re better than that. I’ve read your posts, Thudlow… I know you’re deeper than that. But [del]no one[/del] few of us want to think outside of their (your words) *human nature *and try to be a better person.

This wasn’t an attack on you, just using your post to make my post.

Human nature, hell…WHAT DO WE DO? How is this division between us and North Korea resolved without war, for example?

Given how badly the Republicans/conservatives have fucked up the country during their last few times in the White House, not to mention their absolute refusal to work with Obama on anything during his two terms, we as a nation may not survive if we keep letting the Right run things.

The fact that you are pleased with the job Trump has done only lends credibility to my assessment. I don’t think that you’re a bad guy, **Clothahump[/]. But I think you’re being incredibly myopic about the state of the country under the current regime.

Yeah the human nature copout is tired.

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to clarify. I didn’t intend to invoke human nature as a dismissal or cop-out. What I saw as “grounds for optimism” was the fact that, even though human nature has elements that, as Uniquecorn said, value “selfishness over altruism, tribalism over internationalism, fear over empathy and belief over rational thinking,” still, altruism and internationalism and empathy and rational thinking have sometimes managed to win out, to some extent at least, which gives me hope that they can in the present situation.

But yes, we have to act. I reject both the kind of pessimism that says “There’s no hope: things are going to hell no matter what we do” and the kind of optimism that says “Things will be fine no matter what we do,” in favor of an attitude that what we do matters.

This is just stupid, not even up to your typical troll agenda. Please try harder.

I agree that there are degrees and variants, but we know whom we’re talking about I would think.

Sure they are, as are most self-identified progressives. But capitalism and trade have rules, and the question is, by what sets of rules do we regulate such systems? Most progressives I know never really argued against trade, but simply pointed out that the rules of trade need to take into account those who are displaced by factors such as outsourcing, automatic, and the like. Conservatives never seemed to question trade until it became clear that a lot of white conservatives and independents were angry about losing their factories to overseas competition working at half the price and the arrival of millions of brown-skinned immigrants due, in no small part, American policies that helped displace them.

We are at a time of greater danger than any point in our history. Sure, the Civil War was traumatic, but the nation survived because the good side prevailed militarily. It was a great danger to the prospects of the nation’s survival, but we know it came out okay. We don’t know if we will survive this current crisis.

The 1960s gave us left wing resistance to Vietnam and right wing resistance to civil rights. But you know what the difference was between then and now? We all read the same papers, we all watched the same news. You didn’t have the right wing bubble completely detached from reality as we do now. And I don’t buy the bothsidesdoitism that is the knee-jerk reaction. There is no liberal equivalent to Fox “News”, One America “News”, Sinclair Broadcasting, Limbaugh, Savage, etc. The right wing has its own version of reality and they spread lies constantly on Facebook and other social media. A significant number of people get their news from Facebook memes. The people are dumbing down rapidly.

The Republicans have shamelessly exploited the ignorance and bigotry among the least of us. All of our problems are due to “the other”. Muslims are all terrorists. Mexicans are coming to steal our jobs and rape the white women. Blacks all want free stuff and the won’t even stand for the national anthem! These lies now come in the form of train whistles where in the past they used dog whistles. Nixon’s Southern Strategy welcomed the racists with open arms. Reagan’s campaign opening in Philadelphia, MS was a dog whistle. His welfare queen fables were a dog whistle. Now Don the Con has made it acceptable for racists and bigots of all stripes to proudly wear their hatred and their ignorance like a badge of “honor”.

Yes, we’re in extreme danger and the fault lies 100% with Republicans. They’re the ones who refused to work with a black president. They’re the ones that used the lies about the ACA to take many state houses in 2010 and then gerrymandered themselves into dominance. They’re the ones trying to suppress the votes of the opposition.

We have one chance and one chance only- the 2020 election. If Democrats can win all branches of government and take enough statehouses to un-gerrymander the districts, democracy has a chance. If Don the Con himself or another Bannon disciple should win in 2020, then forget about it. The great American experiment will have failed.

One thing I don’t think people have mentioned is the self-sabotage. The tax plan is trying to make it impossible for graduate students. You know, the majority of people who do research.

They pushing aside alternative energy, for the sake of the dying cost and fossil fuels. China and Germany aren’t going to sit idly by. Just wait until other countries start offering research grants to Americans. Or help with student loans. We’ll see a brain drain.

Just want to comment on this point. We had another time where news was divided and we did survive it. The fairly balanced and honest news really only had a short run of maybe 1940s through 1980s. Then TV news became part of the Entertainment branch of TV. The rise of Radio Talk Show hosts began in earnest. Before 1920 the news was only fact based at times and had agendas. The NY Post was started as a politically biased paper and most newspapers had agendas. It culminated in the Hearst chain of papers but it was pretty much all papers.

I admit, news coverage is probably as bad as the 1890s but I don’t think it is even at its worst.

“The right wing has its own version of reality”

This is the biggest problem in a nutshell. Well said.