Maybe the OP has some hyperbole going on but the country is going down a distinctly undemocratic road.
How long will a majority be ok being ruled by a minority?
History shows us these arrangements never end well.
The abortion situation is going to impact a very large number of ordinary citizens. Mass shootings are making a lot of people afraid. I think we are outside the realm of the abstract at this point.
Yes, and the states are legal fictions and divisible themselves.
It is in Northern Illinois (my mom lives in NWIN, so I’m familiar…)
Straight Democratic ticket both times.
Yes, the MAGAs are trying to do what Hitler did: take power quasi-legally, then hold it forever.
Trump already tried to do this once! I’m flummoxed that there are people on this overall intelligent message board who are asserting that we are in situation normal, lol!
I don’t have access to that news site.
Can you give me a specific example of a presidential executive order directed to a state Governor, which is your assertion which triggered this discussion?
ETA: fixed typos
No, it’s a minor point anyway.
So you just made it up for the purpose of your rant. I see.
You know, as unfortunate as this recent decision is, women - and America - survived somehow for near a couple hundred years w/ abortion largely illegal.
Will be interesting to see how the changing demographics come into play…
The point is that there could be conflict between different parts of the government.
My OP was also not a “rant.”
What with people here today? So odd!
My own view is that it’s both. Merging with entire states is a whole different matter from welcoming the immigration of individual Americans, many of whom have already come here because of US politics. While Canadian culture is generally very similar to American culture, there are also important differences that we greatly value: universal health care, strong gun control, a fairly robust social safety net, an apolitical Supreme Court, and relatively low crime.
I wouldn’t describe it as a “vassal state”; it’s more a matter of economic ties. The Canadian economy is intimately tied to the American economy and to American trade policy. But as noted above, Canada is also a sovereign nation with some significant societal differences. Still, there is bound to be some spillover of American problems into Canada, as we see, for instance, with gun smuggling into Canada, or Americans coming here for much cheaper prescription drugs.
While this is somewhat true, it’s a bit misleading as it seems to suggest that Canadians don’t much care about their own politics. We very much do, and voter turnout is generally much higher than it is for US elections. It’s just that Canadian politics tends to be sane and hence usually pretty low-key and boring, whereas American politics is filled with interesting extremists and lunatics of all kinds.
Back to the OP. I think there are important elements of truth in many of those points, but it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and lose perspective when the chaos is all around you. There are some elements of the present situation that are comparable to the turmoil of the 60s, and one should remember that at the time there were gloomy predictions that society was literally falling apart, but in fact the 60s led to a period that we fondly look back on as one that was in many ways a period of extraordinary stability. More than anything, the 60s was just the coming of age of an exceptionally large cohort of baby boomers. The worst thing about it was that because of the draft and the Vietnam war, it was a dangerous time to be a young American male.
So while we have a tendency to exaggerate the perils of any given time that we’re actually living through, there are also some unique perils in the present day. Trumpism is unprecedented in the way that a criminally unethical and dangerously incompetent demagogue is able to command such a loyal following of unwavering sycophants. Trump himself will eventually go away but the zeitgeist that propelled him to power will remain, and it’s one that is frighteningly reminiscent of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. And the radically activist far-right Supreme Court will continue to wreak its damage on American society for years to come.
This won’t kick off a new Civil War.
It’ll just continue the same Civil War we’ve had for the past 160 years, and never actually finished.
Yes, you’re basically right, but I think it will set off a new, hotter stage of the war that will lead directly to a national breakup.
Thank you for an intelligent response!
Canada is a vassal state in that it subordinates its foreign policy to that of the US and does without a substantial military as it knows it enjoys the unequivocal protection of the US. That said, Canada has become the better and more civilized country. We should have your government and your political system instead of our own. OTOH, Canada is also in the position of hogging a vast territory with a small population while letting the US do the dirty work internationally. But for a few accidents of history, we would be one country. I can’t blame you for not wanting to be one country now, however. There is no advantage to Canada.
Well, the point is that the Blue states (and cities) want to escape from the red in order to enjoy this superior civilization. So those cultural and societal differences would more or less not exist in the areas that Canada would absorb.
If the breakup of the US happens, Canada could lose its comfy vassal state position and might benefit from forming a new union with our civilized parts. But my guess is that Canada would prefer to lie low in such a situation to becoming a bigger, more powerful country.
I mostly buy that, but sadly it’s clear that you have your own MAGA idiots would would probably want a Trump-led US to take over your own country. The number does not seem large enough, however, to have any substantial influence.
I don’t know that the 1960s “led” to that; more like, they failed to lead to something new and better, and we kept on trying to do what worked 1945-1963 with varying levels of success. There was also not talk about the breakup of the US at that point. There was never such talk until the last 10 years or so.
Yes. What’s different now is that the fascists and white supremacists are open about their intentions, and Republicans are not afraid to court their vote (or actually be such people). The gloves are off. This is an ongoing coup attempt. They are going to stop as much as Hitler did after his failed putsch of 1923.
Before I would have written this off as hyperbole. Electing people like MTG, AOC, Lauren Boebert, Maxine Waters, etc. as Representatives is a feature not a bug in our system. Supporters of the Federalist system (like we are supposed to be) have no problems with states flexing their muscle. Complaining about the Pubs in the Senate is just boo-hooing that our side plays politics better than your side. Then 1/6 happened. So now there is no telling what is going to happen.
Did you read the Texas Republican platform? We focus on the secession talk, but they also talk about nullifying Federal Law that is at odds with Texan goals. The last time we saw that was 1860. Normally I would take this as political grandstanding. Then 1/6 happened. So now there is no telling what is going to happen.
I told my students that no matter who won the Presidency, Trump or Biden, we would have a peaceful handover of power and even if they hated who won, they could take comfort that that transition of government power makes us the greatest country in the world. Then 1/6 happened.
This attitude is exactly why we are collapsing.
It isn’t, and they’re mostly (though not entirely) in Alberta. Since Texas has a lot of them, too, I attribute it to brain damage from oil fumes.
But the evidence that we don’t have many of them is the quick and utter failure of a cable channel that tried to be a sort of Canadian version of Fox News, and was basically a propaganda channel spewing right-wing talking points. They never managed to attract any kind of audience big enough to stay on the air. As a last-ditch effort to survive, they asked the CRTC (equivalent to the FCC in the US) to grant them must-carry status with cable providers, on the grounds that they were a legitimate news channel, just like CBC News Network, which does have must-carry status on the basis that an informed public is essential to a functional democracy.
CRTC regulators laughed and threw them out of the building. At which point they closed down. Whereas Fox News I believe has a much bigger loyal following than any other news network in the US, despite being a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and not actually a news channel. This is another big problem: the political beliefs of roughly half of American voters are based on complete bullshit.
Exactly, the dependence on the magical thinking of American Exceptionalism, that because some of our ancestors worked really hard to stave off crises that they saw coming, somehow means that we can ignore the current crisis and everything will be just fine is exactly the complacency that will cause the next crisis that we are not able to handle.
Pointing to past performance as an indicator of future results is rarely useful, and even less so when you use it as an excuse to assume that the problems with magically fix themselves, with no effort expended or pain felt from them.
I’m not as pessimistic as the OP, but I do find the complacency disturbing. Democracy requires vigilance, and a complacent democracy is ripe for either collapse or corruption.
Four days of protests, if that, then everything is back to normal by Thursday because we have the 4th of July weekend coming up. Even four days of protests is stretching the attention span of the average US citizen.
Much hand wringing in the media that is really just there to support fodder for the 24 hour news cycle, and then, and then, nothing changes. Something new comes up, yada, yada, yada, I’m bored already.
A lot of them didn’t.
I didn’t want to hijack this thread, so I started a new one: