I should add that I heard some former Bush admin official on NPR (maybe David Frum?) rightly pointed out that invoking the 25th Amendment or pursuing impeachment are specifically not Constitutional crises, contrary to what the fucking coward writer says. They are both specifically in the Constitution (duh).
What is a constitutional crisis, according to Frum(?) is his own staff just ignoring him and working around him, literally removing documents from his desk before he can sign them, ignoring his direct orders, etc.
Wouldn’t that begin by requiring them to accept that the immense majority of jobs can be held by people of any gender? Many of them don’t, buying into those “traditional gender roles” which got invented in the 19th and 20th centuries. When someone begins by not accepting that a man can be a primary school teacher or a woman can be CFO, “equal pay for equal work” becomes the kind of line that makes those of us who accept such radical ideas throw up a little.
Do you have any evidence that such attitudes predominate in conservative circles? I know quite a few people who are conservative in their beliefs and none of them would have the slightest objection to male primary school teachers or to women as CFO (or CEO for that matter. Until recently I was quite a fan of Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, and I remain one of Sheryl Sandberg, despite our differing political ideologies). On the other hand, I have not been a fan of Marissa Mayer, not because she’s a woman but because I felt she was doing a poor job at Yahoo.
ETA: I would add also that a great many of the country’s conservative voters are women themselves. This fact often seems to get overlooked in these sorts of discussions. In fact, the most passionate conservative posters whose comments show up on my Facebook feed are predominately women.
Again, we’re left with the same conundrum I asked about before: if most Trump voters are intelligent, rational, principled, non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic, pro-civility, responsible and civic-minded, then why on earth would they find Trump appealing in the first place?
If these conservatives are not in fact ideologically opposed to the fundamental achievements of liberal progress in the areas of equal rights, social justice, environmental protection etc., but are mostly just cheesed off about secondary issues of social decorum and civility, then what did they realistically imagine an anti-decorum, anti-civility lowlife like Trump would or could actually achieve for them as President?
Laugh at him not as someone who fell down a manhole, but as someone who was bragging about how much money he made selling of the manhole covers as he fell down a manhole.
My hope is that once the McConnell type slimy GOP lizards realize that with the tax reform done to further feed the 1% and SCOTUS firmly in conservative Hands, they don’t need their orange monkey in the WH anymore and dump him, latest after midterms.
I would go along with this line of thought, but for the fact this is America, and you’re allowed to support your own interests, and he is surely helping a small sub-section of the populace (rich folks). I’m more ashamed that he had no better competition during the election, even from conventional Republicans. That was the real political tragedy.
I don’t think we are at this stage YET. Better to do things the legal way anyway. If he wants to go nuclear, for example, the best response is for his aides to say “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that”. Then send for the security weenies and the nice men in white coats to take care of the offending party.
As yet it is hard to point to specific harm that Our Donald has done, or for me at least, but he is perpetuating and encouraging the trends that have weakened and divided America. <snip long discussion of these trends> And as for “another amateur who is nothing more than a marketing huckster”, well, that is what the electorate got in 2008 and every election since, and probably 2020 as well. Even if the USA magically gets a POTUS who tries to turn things around, the mess is so large that a recovery will be beyond the time in office of any incumbent. Many of the problems are in any case due a fundamental shift in the world away from the Cold war military, financial and political setup and the increasing development of a massively multi-polar world. It is just not possible to go back to some imagined Golden Age in, say, the 1950s.
Just off the top of my head: He has initiated what can now legitimately be called a trade war, and he has strengthen Russia’s hand against our traditional European allies. Both of those things can be reversed, but until they are, they are harming our country.
Agreed. Trump has no ideology beyond strident patriotism and making money. His political discourse is about at the level of a 12 year old (would MacArthur have something to say about that?) and his knowledge of political theory seems to be minimal. Don’t confuse this with any fascist-style methods he used, such as the stormtrumpers who got physical during the election run-up. In a way he is Reagan with an attitude, not actually doing much but making aggressive noises, whereas Ronnie got the benefit of the doubt by not expressing his decidedly right-wing views in other than very restrained terms.
In many ways Trump seems to model himself on Mussolini, but almost certainly while knowing next to nothing about him. The chin up stance, the penchant for grandiose statements and bluster, softened by an inability to actually get much done. Trump’s desire to rebuild the American empire echoes Mussolini’s dreams of reviving the Roman empire, if he did but know, but he won’t until somebody does a sound bite for him.
We can’t envision the harm that has already been done to the USA by trump, because we are america and we think in very limited terms about our vulnerabilities. In this we are like little babies who have never been outside.
The harm is in international relations, and internal issues, schisms that are exacerbated by russians and now trump, in an absoluteley seamless and logical manner. For our purposes trump and russia are functionally the same. How many weeks or months of that before we are harmed? It started right away. No delay.
Places like India and Japan are virtually one party systems, ruled most of the time by the dominant Congress Party and the LDP respectively… The political fighting goes into getting to the top of the respective parties, which tends to perpetuate an insider mentality.
The USA has never had a viable third party to challenge the two party cartel, and this is increasingly a problem, as the two parties are perceived as being very similar under the skin. Rightly so, in many ways. But part of the problem may be yet to come, if either party implodes or splits down the middle. Trump could wreck the Republican Party, while the Democrats are desperately trying to reinvent themselves and find a passable presidential candidate as well. To my mind, they are failing miserably at both.
The alternative is provided by places like the Netherlands, with 5 parties each having about 20% of the vote. The result is is a succession of relatively fragile coalitions. But it is also possible for mainstream parties to shrink dramatically and suddenly. A historical example is the British Liberal party, which was replaced by the up and coming Labour party. In several European countries there is a current trend where the mainstream left of center and right of center parties are shrinking fast, being replaced by protest parties on the far left and far right and to some extent, special interest parties. This could happen in the USA, but whether that wold lead to a viable and sizeable third party is debatable.
This isn’t a constitutional crisis either; it’s more like mischief. I seriously doubt it’s the first time that an aide has found ways to subvert the president or congressman he’s working for.
The constitutional crisis is Republicans enabling and encouraging the president to abuse his powers under the constitution.