Yes. What makes now different from the past is that the political parties no longer share the same reality. Trump revealed that you literally could fool some of the people all of the time and that they would worship you for it, because they desperately want to be fooled.
In the later years of the Trump administration I had the same feelings as @Horatius’s post that what it would take would be a shock to the political system likely a far-right terrorist attack that would pierce the reality bubble and cause the not quite so far right to join the left in condemning the attack.
At first I thought that Jan. 6th might be such an event, and for a few days after the attack as legislators of both parties reacted in shock it seemed like we might have reached a tipping point. But then the poll numbers came in revealing the the bubble still held and that the Republican base either blamed the left or saw the attack as a good thing. Now that it has been established that the bubble can hold even under those circumstances no right wing politician is going bet against it going forwardand so will not waver in their partisanship no matter what the circumstances. If an Idaho militia nukes San Francisco and then releases a manifesto saying that they did it for Trump, Fox news and the right wing social media will still find a way to blame the liberals and absolve themselves of any responsibility.
Sure, that would still be recognizable as “America”. The problem is, rhetoric aside, these people don’t want the America of the 1950s. People then still remembered that the Nazis were the bad guys, and would have been horrified at how Trump tried to subvert the 2020 election and hold power illegally.
Trump wants a fun-house mirror version of the 1950s, where everyone is white, hetero, and married, but also willing and able to kill anyone who isn’t on board with the Trumpist agenda, no matter how deranged that agenda gets.
Exactly. Imagine what they would have said about Eisenhower sending in the national guard to forcibly desegregate a school at gunpoint. He’d have been characterized as being worse than Hitler.
Has the well being of ordinary Americans improved or declined since Reagan? I never understood why so many hard working middle class folk supported him or the Bushes - when so much of their policies seemed aimed at advantaging the wealthiest at the expense of the working meddle class.
Sure, today we all have cell phones and PCs, but wealth inequality is (I believe) as high if not higher than it was under the robber barons like Carnegie, Vanderbilt… Are individuals more or less free than we were in 1999? Sure, lots of places yahoos are free to wear guns publicly, but that is not a “freedom” that makes ME feel more safe.
Sounds good. But how do you ensure that we pass the mantle to the EU, rather than China and/or Russia? Or OPEC…
I’m not quite sure about the first part. IMHO peak prosperity was some time around the end of Obama’s second term. Have we regressed to where we were in 1999? I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but we’re closer than we were in 2014.
As for the latter, I don’t think we would have a say in the matter should China pass us. FWIW I highly doubt that Russia will ever be in that position. For Russia to get to that point it would likely take an apocalypse and rebuilding of civilization with the people in what is now Russia randomly ending up on top. Short of that Russia is never going to achieve the kind of domination of the world stage that they had back in the Cold War days.
Even though those making all those profits have their eyes closed to the fact that a dictatorship/oligarchy is likely to be personally dangerous to them. Offend the dictator and he may have you tossed out a window.
Short-term profits are all they can see.
And moreover, they would pay you handsomely to do it.
I tried, probably incompletely, to spell out some examples in the OP, but was perhaps compromises by the fact that I was explaining that -both- political parties believed that the system was broken, and had ever less reason to try to mend it, rather than replace it, which leads to:
So yes, an abandonment, rebuilding (remember my comment about “build back better” in an ideal world) of both the Constitution, and as is already happening, the institutional norms that the Republicans gleefully have tossed because it was in the way of pure power. The Constitution has always been a pretty bare bones document, and required those norms, additional laws, and rulings to remain relevant. If one side is abandoning them, then the other feels (correctly or not, and IMHO correctly in this case) that there’s no use in preserving it, when they can do better.
And that’s why I didn’t WANT a hard definition. Democrat or MAGA (abandoning the polite fiction that for America right now there’s a significant number of non-MAGA Republicans of influence remaining) are defining America in such dramatically different ways that I don’t think the center (what’s left of it) can hold. It’s going to be pulled one way, or another, or break. Now will the break be dramatic? Maybe. Will it be more like that badly chipped mug you keep because you love it, despite the fact that you risk cutting your lip every time you take a sip? Perhaps. Or maybe it’ll just grow ever more battered until it breaks the next time you wash it.
And, barring Trump’s worst impulses (avert!) it may not be immediate, it’ll likely take several years or decades. But one thing I’ve learned from history, is that power once taken, or once abandoned is rarely recovered. The Federal government grew with each major conflict in our history - and for its MANY flaws, it was generally the federal government creating a better nation for all, often over certain state’s desires. If the SCOTUS as currently constituted, decides to hand over more power to the states, then we’ll end up with a dozen or so regional powers, balkanization to the point that (using Texas as an example again) that leaving the Greater Texican Republic to the Mountain Collective for Abortion will be a hanging offense.
An extreme example? Sure. Likely to be soon? No, not at all. But 30-40 years down the line at this point barring major changes and political priorities? Very possible if perhaps still not likely.
Is this sorta “both-sidesism”? Yeah, there is a far left end of the Dems, but once you get past the extreme left, you get towards some basic decency and human rights which I think a sizeable majority of folk can get behind. I mean, a majority of EVERYONE supports SOME access to abortion, as well as some limitations on abortion. And while many Rs AND Ds may not agree on reparations, I think a sizeable majority believes people ought to be trated fairly whatever their skin color. And everyone is interested in safe places to live, healthy food, safe medicines, good roads, access to some level of health care…
I just think that the extremes - mainly on the right, but also on the left - distort how much so many of us agree on - and would be happy to work together on.
I don’t know that the Dem platform or practice is as extreme as the Repubs have become - by caving to Trump. If Trump loses, I suspect the MAGA will be revealed as an extreme minority which can be marginalized. (Well, I’m not sure any minority ought to be completely marginalized. But they ought not be allowed to dictate policy.). And I suspect the weasels like Graham, McConnell, etc., who have abandoned any principles to kowtow to Trump will happily shift back to representing more non-insane positions.
Kinda-sorta. I tried to explain that it is a flavor of both-siderisms, and where my personal values lie, so I’m not going to try to repeat it all over again. The short version though ties back to the section of @Cervaise’s argument I quoted. Democrats despair that in the current system, they can’t build a more equitable representation and world because the Constitution puts so much power in the hands of minority population states. In their search to, as you say provide basic decency and human rights, they are blocked at every turn by Republicans who are gaming the system.
Republicans want to burn down the system because they are terrified that their positions of power, and the “rights” to uneven power that their base expects and demands, are under threat by even our current levels of basic decency and requirements for equal treatment under the law. And they’ll game and eventually break the system to preserve those “rights”.
So yes, there is, IMHO a similarite in probably outcomes of both sides desires, but NOT a moral equivalency in the motivations!
one thing that doesn’t get into the debates is the Military and all the intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc). The military brass IMHO have to absolutely hate Trump. Plenty of letters signed by ex military leaders stating that the second coming of Trump would be a disaster. The intelligency alumni haven’t been so forthright as would be expected.
on Jan 6, trump tried a coup without the military. I hate to imagine what the military brass would have done if Trump had successfully kidnapped Pence, the fake electors scheme worked, and it got thrown to the Supremes. Constitutional crisis but I doubt if they would have acquiesced.
I have a hypothesis that the top military brass, especially General Milley, probably played a much larger role than the public is aware of in preventing Trump from launching a coup in his last days in office. Given all the shenanigans he’s pulled since he left office it makes sense to me he would have pushed as far as he could. That’s why I think there had to have been someone telling him that if he got serious in his attempts to hold on to power (even more serious than the rabble that participated in 1/6) that he would be prevented from doing so by people with guns who are loyal to the United States, not loyal to Trump as a person.
I think that one problem regarding “both-sidesism”, or “we have to give both parties and equal voice” is that post-Trump, the other side is unequivocally and absolutely dangerous and (not in a religious sense) evil and malevolent. The two sides are no longer different-but-equal, or equally well-motivated via differing political philosophies.
I believe that we are at a point that we can no longer be tolerant of their (Trumpists, GOP etc) “differing viewpoints” with an open mind etc.
I disagree. Trump found his niche, and is doing very well there (for himself, that is). If he is taken out of the picture, that niche still exists. Someone else will fit intp the niche.
That’s because the pre-War Status Quo was not a unified America but a fairly loose federation of states. A paradigm that was declining by the breakout of civil war but which was completely wiped away by Union victory and by reconstruction.
There was something those arguments overlooked. They failed to consider that younger, more assimilated, third plus generation Latinos, especially men, would start to become indistinguishable from young white men. Look at the names of the people involved in things like the Proud Boys, which is led by a Latino who is treated by his fellow MAGAs as a white person whose ancestors just happen to come from Spain rather than England or Germany. The same thing is happening, although to a lesser extent, with younger Black men. That’s why the demographic edge never became a permanent advantage.
Every president has a niche. Why hasn’t there been Obama II? W II? Reagan II?
GHWB certainly benefited from Reagan’s coattails. But I wouldn’t call him a clone. Neither is Biden a clone of Obama, obviously.
Trump’s progency, the only people he probably really cares about and will benefit from association with him, will probably run at some point. Sometimes this works (W). Often, it doesn’t.
So your thesis is that there are military personnel who are active within the body politic and are the ultimate determiners of what represents the best interests of the USA … and you are saying it like it’s a good thing?
Not to mention the 1/6 insurrectionists, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers and similar lifeforms who, if nothing else, consider themselves as “loyal to the United States”.
Answering for myself, yes, it’s a good thing. “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” Or so said Judge Hand. If a would-be dictator issues objectively evil orders, it’s my hope that our senior leadership would react with civil disobedience. This would be a rare, near-apocalyptic circumstance.
Who decides “objectively evil”? People do. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. And what if the usurpers are evil themselves? Then we’re doomed.