Is it too late for America to Save Itself?

Politics & Elections
21

I’m a little more optimistic, especially about Civil War.

Before the Civil War, you had bleeding kanas. Just 100 dead, but proportionately to today, over a thousand. Compares to January 6, that’s a lot.

Another comparison is to the election violence common in many countries.

This February headline is not unusual:

2 Mexico mayoral candidates from same town killed as political violence spirals ahead of elections

And Mexico, a middle income country, is not one of the worst.

The U.S. has been an exception, among presidential republics in the Americas, in having low levels of civil conflict for a long time. There are other happy examples in the Americas – I’m thinking of Costa Rica. But the level of hated and violence, in the U.S., is still far from exceptional internationally. And I think it is quite recoverable.

Now, if Trump wins, and his chaos winds up provoking a nuclear war, this will have been a silly post.

22

It pretty much comes down to this. When polled on individual issues, separately from Republican or Democrat issues, a large majority of Americans actually support the Democratic side on a lot of these “divisive issues”, but a lot of the Republicans don’t seem to realize it.

So if there was a large enough shock to the system, large enough to actually wake those people up to the reality that supporting the GOP means losing on a lot of issues they actually do care about, you could Save America.

The question is, how large a shock would do that? I thought COVID would be that shock, but clearly that was a mistake. But that gives us a baseline: Over a million US deaths over two years or so isn’t enough. Either more deaths in that time frame, or the same number of deaths in a shorter time frame might do it, but I’m out of the predictions game, beyond saying, “More.”

23

A key difference between now and the past is that we’ve been underinvesting in both infrastructure and education (i.e., the future and the future) for a couple of generations now. I think the lack of investment in education is starting to show in the ease with which demagogues can do their thing.

We have a strong push to consider financial and economic implications above all else, but only in the short term—at maximum, one election cycle.

All of this is to say that I think the future is going to be a time with an ever-increasing number of major disasters, and a population less equipped than ever to deal with it. How this intersects with partisanship I’m not sure, but it certainly puts more pressure on the system.

24

IMO …

There is no hope as long as it is profitable for private enterprise to stir the pot and destabilize the country by playing into the know-nothing paranoia that seems to a special streak of the American pysche.

As long as there is Fox and QAnon and thier ilk, the USA will reel from crisis to crisis at best, and descend into Philippines or worse levels of anarchy at worst.

25

Whether or not you believe it’s too late, I think, comes down to whether you think it’s possible to enact major reform via constitutional amendment, or hopeless. Under the current structural formulation, the country is on a slow but accelerating downhill slide, and absent significant changes which require fundamental attention at the constitutional level (e.g. blunting the effect of money in elections, some form of proportional voting and/or representation, etc.), meaningful democracy in the US will come to an end.

If you think those reforms can be enacted, then it’s not too late. If you don’t, then it is.

26

Apologies if I missed it, but what exactly does it mean for America to “save itself”? Is the sole requirement avoiding Civil War?

27

I’d say, “Remain a recognizable political entity, with a personality that I generally recognize as “America””.

A Civil War would be the easiest way to destroy the US, but even that’s not a guarantee. After all, the first US Civil War ended with a unified country, and the personality still remained largely intact. There were major changes, but aside from the slaveholders and racists, no one really thought “Man, America just doesn’t exist any more!”

But there would be other ways for the US to fall. The country might stay together, and call itself “The United States”, but if the political and social structure was altered enough, I could see people saying “America is dead”. Or it could collapse without an actual war. Imagine a Fascist takeover of the US government that screws up the Federal government enough that several States decided to break away, and the newly-crippled Fed doesn’t have the capability of stopping them. “The US” as we know it would largely cease to exist, even if there was no war involved.

28

The standard I’m using is that at a minimum we avoid having a POTUS who turns the country into an authoritarian state that’s a DINO (democracy in name only). For specific examples, if we end up like Hungary or Turkey, that’s enough of a decline for me to say that we’ve failed.

29

I thought it seemed as though folk were using different definitions in their replies.

I don’t think it likely that at any time in the near future the country will break apart - that the red states will secede for example.

The idea of America’s “personality” is much more problemmatic to discuss. What is/has been the American personality? There has long been incongruity between Americann stated ideals and actual practices. I think various developments have made such inconsistencies/hypocrisies move evident.

(I’m not trying to overly dump on the US. Just saying, it is tough for women, people of color, or residents of countries we’ve invaded to agree that the US has always been some shining beacon.)

The 2 biggest factors I see involve the prevalence of arms and the example of 1/6, and certain exercises of state’s rights.

If Trump is re-elected and gets to rewrite the history of 1/6, pardoning those “POWs”, that will set a horrible example. The recent trend under Trump was to legitimize intolerance and incivility. There have also been recent instances of groups seizing public facilities, or confronting officials. (Not sure how much I include “occupations” by the left.) If it becomes increasingly common and accepted, it will definitely suggest a different American than I ever knew previously, where violent protest was considered criminal.

The recent flexing of states’ rights - re: abortion, the border…, with the support of the Supremes, is making clear that the US is a republic, not a democracy. I can readily foresee a future in which there are drastic differences between various states, and the ability of the federal government to impose consistency across the nation is constrained. Some folk might feel that desirable. Others, not so much.

30

Excellent points. I agree that we haven’t always been a shining beacon. On the other hand, I think we had been making steady progress from the presidencies of FDR up through Obama. That’s a good 3/4 of a century of making progress. That all stopped when Trump came along, for the reasons that you mention and many other things that Trump and MAGA have done. We have yet to go into reverse gear, thanks to the efforts of Biden, but the threat isn’t over.

31

I don’t see those as all that different. A DINO would not be the America that I used to know. As limited as Democracy might have been in the US (White men only, for the ultimate example), there was always the idea that democracy mattered, and that the votes would count. Even during the Civil War, you held elections, and those mattered. If elections in the US start looking like those we just saw in Russia, then this fundamental aspect of the American Identity is lost, maybe forever.

32

I’m in Türkiye right now, actually. I happened to be in Istanbul on the previous Sunday when they had local elections throughout the country and many mayor’s races in major cities, including in Istanbul, went for opposition parties by much larger than expected margins, in what observers believe is a significant snub to Erdoğan. We had dinner the next night with a Turkish friend who lives in the city and was very happy and excited about the future of her country’s politics.

I agree that Erdoğan is an anti-democratic figure who has damaged institutions and will continue to do so in order to retain power, and that the country has many problems in general, but I also see a country where lots of people are clinging to the hope of democratic reform and working hard to support it, whereas a troubling number of American voters, by contrast, seem perfectly content to take their hands off the wheel.

I would therefore be curious to know the basis of your comparison that the US is somehow clearly a superior democracy and Türkiye is a cautionary case to whose level the US does not want to descend.

33

It’s that Erdoğan seems to have set himself up as president for as long as he wants to be. I don’t know enough about Turkish politics to say that his situation isn’t an FDR situation, but my impression is that his victory in the most recent election was due in part to control of the media, in a similar sense to Trump having control of US right wing media, and gained mostly on the votes of the Turkish version of MAGA. My guess is that he will have similar advantages compared to his opposition during the next election, should he choose to run again in 2028. In other words, it’s the sort of situation Trump would like to have here in the US.

I’d say the countries aren’t all that different, but an arbitrary line has to be drawn somewhere, and IMHO the US is just barely to the left of that line and Türkiye (I’m still trying to get used to the correct spelling) is just to the right of the line.

34

Just stating the obvious that the America you know (I do not know your race/gender so will presume white male) is unlikely the same America a poor black woman in the south knows.

Not criticizing you or anyone else, but I’ve long had difficulty identifying exactly what “American values” were. Or how consistent what America SAID were its values were with what its ACTIONS showed its values to be. For example, I’ve long questioned America’s claim to support democracy worldwide - when we had a pretty consistent history of getting in bed with awfully nasty folk if we felt it to our advantage. And as strong a history of genocide and slavery as anyone.

And it is one thing to claim the less fortunate deserve more - in terms of rights/resources/services - so long as the more fortunate folk aren’t paying for it. And that isn’t limited to the Right. I’m consistently disappointed at the selfishness I perceive among the privileged Left.

Hell, even the concepts of “rights” and “freedoms” are subject to varied interpretation.

When we discuss changes we are experiencing - such as abortion, civil liberties, gun rights, treatment of migrants, whatever - we have to acknowledge the imperfect basis for many of those rights. Namely, our imperfect Constitution, and limitations on Congressional action. Things like national defense and the regulation of commerce have long been presumed the responsibility of the federal government. But how broadly is something like “commerce” defined"? And what happens if the feds fail to rationally and effectively control our borders and manage immigration? As much as I dislike Texas, I find it hard to criticize them for wanting to do SOMETHING WRT the people flowing across the border.

And health and safety is generally a state’s province. So, is abortion covered under health and safety, or reserved to the feds under an unstated right to privacy?

Then there is the legitimate issue of Congress delegating powers to the bureaucracy. Again, I see legitimate arguments on both sides - Congress simply lacks the resources to legislate every specific. But in some cases, oughtn’t Congress provide more specificity rather than just generally delegating.

Then, you’ve got the whole fucked up Senate and electoral college (and even the House), where the smallest states get a disproportionate say.

As Cervaise attests WRT Turkiye, A LOT could change about the US, before my personal lifestyle would change all that much. I often find myself in a situation where my outrage concerns my philosophy and values, moreso than my personal health, safety and comfort.

Sorry - having typed that, I see that I have pretty much just blathered without saying much. But since I typed it, I’ll press “Reply”…

35

I was actually thinking about that issue. American Democracy has always been flawed, but “some white guys end up being treated as badly as women and Blacks were treated historically” is probably a good measure of the whole thing finally collapsing.

36

The problem, even if everyone agrees on American values like “equality, freedom” is that those things mean vastly different things to everyone as well. To the point where sometimes two sides hold OPPOSITE views of what they are.

37

Sure, we’ve never been perfect. But as I mentioned, I think a strong case can be. made that we were making good progress since FDR was elected. Yes, there were some occasional setbacks, but overall we were making progress, a progress that was not limited to upper class white men. We’re now in danger of starting to reverse that. It’s not too late, but we’re a lot closer now than we have been at any time since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression.

ETA: And IMHO this isn’t limited to the US. My impression is that the western world in general was making steady progress from the end of WWII up through around 2015. Since then we seem to have lost our way, whether it be the United States, the UK, Hungary, Türkiye, or any other western nation.

ETA 2: The reversal since 2015 seems to be worldwide. Even those countries that were already authoritarian have gotten worse since then. Russia, China, Iran, etc. have all seemingly moved to the right on the the democracy vs. authoritarian scale over the last 10 or so years.

38

Yes, this is a world-wide phenomenon, but losing the US to it will just accelerate what’s happening elsewhere. A fascist government in the US will almost certainly move quite a ways back towards the isolationism of the past. They’ll care about what’s happening in Canada and Mexico, at least to the extent that those countries directly affect the US, but in Europe, Asia, and Africa? Forget it, sort yourselves out, and that just leaves the door open for Russia, China and the like to move in and replace the US influence.

39

I tend to agree. Of course, I was disheartened when I recently rewatched The West Wing, and felt that - other than legal pot and gay rights - pretty much all of the same storylines held true.

My personal thought was we missed a huge opportunity after 9/11. Instead of strengthening multinationalism and our position as someone to be emulated, we looked for an opportunity to achieve strategic advantage, while killing some “others” - and casting off basic civil liberties and encouraging a police state along the way. Then I had high hopes under Obama. What COULD’VE BEEN if he had been followed by a strong, capable woman president. But instead, we saw how quickly a huge chunk of America responded to a license to give free rein to their personal prejudices and hatreds.

And - kinda playing devil’s advocate - if we were to go back to the America of the 50s or 60s - wouldn’t that still be pretty much a recognizable America?

Yeah, I think America is somewhat in decline, and will remain so. But really, ought we be the 500# gorilla on the world stage, dominating as strongly as we have since the end of the Cold War?

40

Depends on what’s declining. If what’s declining are the rights, freedoms, and well being of ordinary Americans then clearly that’s a bad thing. If it’s the US being the “leader of the free world”, I’d be ok with passing the title on to the EU, South Korea, Japan, or any other country or group of countries that are liberal democracies.