Without getting into the rest of your post, I think Moldova isn’t really that good an example here, as they (like Ukraine and Georgia) have Russian-backed separatists in Transnistria. Granted, that’s probably more of an issue with not being in NATO vs. the EU, but I’m sure people who live in former Soviet republics that are now part of the EU are probably very happy not to be like Moldova.
One could argue that Trump pulling America out of INF was beneficial, because Russia was flouting the treaty anyway and the U.S. can now develop intermediate-range missiles to counter China’s development of such missiles.
If you have a specific objection then raise it. At the moment, as you say, you don’t know where to begin. As such, you haven’t provided anything for me to address.
And yes, obviously it’s not the ideal format. If I had the time and resources to take a few months to flesh out every mini-section into its own 10 page chapter, back that with research and cites, and create a nice book-like position paper, I’m sure that I’d enjoy doing it and I am sorry if the fact that I’m trying to pack what is probably a few hundred pages of content into a few paragraphs makes it difficult to get through the post.
I am happy to try and explain anything which was unclear or to offer cites as necessary, if you doubt any part.
Sorry for replying to this again but I think I understand your objection.
To be sure, I could have just written that Trump is screwing up our place in the world over the long term and left it at that.
But, a) some people like that and b) what if they’re right?
If msmith537 or anyone reading is one of the people who doesn’t like globalization or global policing, then any argument which is, at its core just, “We’re doing less globalization and global policing.” Isn’t going to be very convincing. It would be like telling an Pro-Life person that the problem with reducing funding for Planned Parenthood would be that it will cause more people to have children and expecting them to think that’s a bad thing. They’ll just be happy.
But, most people who are anti-globalist have probably never really thought things through from the beginning. They had a gut reaction to the idea that the US is dealing with other people’s shit and they reject that instinctually.
So we could agree to disagree or we could walk through some of the actual practical effects of that course. While doing that, I can be honest or I can be slightly dishonest and hide some considerations. Of the two, I prefer the first. I think that it makes more sense to give a positive argument against globalization first. It says that yeah, your side has some arguments and I’ve considered them. I’m not opposed to you for arbitrary reasons or because I’ve accepted some dogmatic view from the start and the blinders are on too tight to allow me to even consider any argument that would lead to the other side.
That doesn’t mean that I have argued for isolation. It just means that I’m being honest and fair. As it is, I haven’t even touched on a fair number of other arguments (for nor against globalization) but I am willing to do so if anyone is on the fence or wonders what the arguments are (so far as I am aware).
Saying that people contend that Brexit is going to turn the UK into a post-apocalyptic hellscape isn’t being “honest and fair,” it’s being some combination of flippant, strawmanning, and facile.
Trying to give a list of what’s wrong with your screeds in this thread is like being given a Jack Chick page-a-day calendar, and then being asked which bits are bothersome. But I’ll throw in another: your contention that the Constitution directs that the Federal government’s main responsibility is international affairs, and asserting that if one disagrees, they haven’t read the Constitution.
Jesus Christ, kid, the Constitution’s references to foreign affairs is barely more than like six clauses out of the whole damn thing: off the top of my head, two references to treaties, one clause on commander in chief, Art I Sec 8 on international trade, receiving ambassadors, and probably a couple others. That’s it. Don’t lecture others about reading the Constitution when you are seriously misrepresenting it.
It’s alright to have a little levity in a serious conversation.
If it doesn’t appeal to you, then that’s fair, but that is all it is.
(Technically, I would say that the arguments against Brexit have focused too much on the short term and that that is almost certainly a false view of how it will go wrong - and the short view argument hurts the situation since most people realize that there really won’t be any major, immediate, effect of Brexit. People will bitch and moan that they have to do things in a different way, but they’ll just switch to doing things in a different way and life will go on. There was a time before the UK was part of the EU and everything was fine. Everyone knows that. Trying to convince them otherwise isn’t going to work. That argument will only make people think you’re being dishonest with them when you say that we need to stay in the EU.
The better argument would be to point at the Middle East where they were about equal with the rest of Europe around 1900, in terms of social and technical development. And they had a choice whether to go forward, embrace change, trading with others, giving up power to a more centralized government, etc. A hundred years have passed and we can look at how that affected them. They’re all still there, but they haven’t advanced. They’ve been left behind. The problem of Brexit isn’t economic hardship, it’s being left behind.)
6 clauses for foreign.
How many for domestic?
In terms of specific policy, the best thing he’s done is require that a regulation be deleted for every new one created. My understanding is that regulatory bloat has been limited, and that the regulatory agencies are actually doing better than 1:1 now that they’ve been given the green light to get rid of old regulations even they didn’t like. Regulations are a huge unseen burden on the economy, and I would guess that a good amount of the better economic performance we’ve seen in the last couple of years is due to the reduction in regulatory burden.
The worst thing he’s done is what he’s doing now by using tariffs as a political weapon. It’s costing everyone a lot of money, it’s disrupting supply chains and businesses, and it’s increasing tensions with allies and foes alike. It’s accelerating China’s attempt to expand its influence around the world, and angering allies like Canada.
One comment : Your entire post above talks about slow, predictable periods of decline as specific organized nations slowly fail from systemic flaws. (and the nature of their systems prevent effective fixes to those flaws.)
It does appear that the USA is in such a period of decline, and it may or may not be capable of a turnaround.
But that isn’t going to matter. The way technology is going, we’re going to see some very rapid, prompt, possibly dramatic events happen within under 30 years.
Sort of how in the Chernobyl explosion, all the mistakes made by the designers and operators set the stage, but only the last 2 minutes actually mattered. This is the power of exponential processes. (up until the last 2 minutes the operators could easily have brought the reactor under control)
Obviously, with AI/robotics, it’ll mean not only vast manufacturing and economic changes, but many kinds of knowledge work - including science, choosing public policy, etc - should be doable with various forms of machine algorithms with superhuman ability. And it’s exponential. Designing better computer chips, optimizing software, and designing and optimizing machine learning algorithms are all tasks that have defined quality metrics and thus can be sped up with previous iterations of the hardware and algorithms. Similarly, designing better robotic platforms and manufacturing the robots that supplant millions of human workers need not take very long at all…
The math all checks out for this, but, well, we haven’t hit the last 2 minutes yet. Right now we just have power levels of a few megawatts and some of us are denying that anything dramatic can happen at all…
I had forgotten about that.
Given what I’m about to say, this might seem like a dishonest question but have you seen a review? I’d be curious to see one.
Though…as said… I would have to question the reliability of any such review.
If I cut down the regulations on coal plants, that does reduce my and their costs in the short term, but not necessarily over the next 20 years. Between lawsuits by their employees for dangerous working conditions, waste cleanup, lifespan of the equipment dependent on care, etc. the burden of complying with regulations might have been cheaper in the long-run. Regulations are more a of a “20 year” proposition than a “2 year” one, in terms of cost/benefit analysis.
This isn’t to say that one can’t cut regulations and have it just be all win, all around the table.
But, for me, the main consideration would be, “Is the person reviewing the regulations a reasonable and intelligent person, who actually sits down and does the work?”
The 2-for1 Executive Order, we should note, is the eight year old’s version of an executive order to perform a review of the state of things and recommend changes. Like, doing a review is almost certainly fair. It should be done periodically. But, for all I know, it was already being done periodically. The CBO might be turning out a recommendations paper every single year and, every year, the different executive departments have made those changes, cutting out old regulations. Maybe not, I don’t know. Do we think that Trump actually checked? But where periodic reviews are fair and good, “2-for-1” is silly. If a power plant explodes and wipes out most of Wisconsin, someone’s going to be in a serious hurry to write some new regulations to prevent that sort of thing. And in that hurry, maybe they don’t have time to do a serious review of all regulations ever. They just sort of pick two that, on a brief glance, seem useless and axe them. But they were in a hurry and they might have just accidentally gotten rid of a regulation that will later cause us to lose most of Connecticut.
Bulk review is more efficient and more effective. 2-for-1 is among the stupider implementations that you could do.
And that doesn’t bode well when we ask the question of who is doing the reviews? Does Donald Trump hire the best and brightest? Does he hire people who we can trust to do the job in an intelligent, methodical, and reality-based way?
You can have the right policy - taking on China, fighting regulations and government sprawl, getting the EU to do more to cost-share global defense and health care, etc. - and still just bungle it all and do worse than having done nothing at all. It’s not just a matter of working on the right things, it’s also a matter of not being a fucking moron.
If you’re a fucking moron (by which, I’m referring to Donald Trump), I’d just rather you not touch it. By all means, feel free to be on my side, but stay home and eat cheese burgers. We’re good.
So, I am curious to see if someone reliableish has done any sort of review of the ramifications of 2-for-1. But I would caution the early read, even if it’s good. It’s still early, and this government isn’t the most forthcoming about numbers harmful to their mission.
If you’re claiming to understand to Constitution and expecting me to say there are five or fewer clauses of the Constitution dealing with domestic matters, you’re in deep trouble.
First, let’s note that there’s something to be said about the size of a power, not just the quantity of powers. But let’s list the domestic powers:
- Taxing
- Printing money
- Running a postal system
- Patents
So firstly, yes, less than 5.
And secondly, between “waging war” and “running a patent office” there is a qualitative difference as well. Are you currently more concerned about Donald Trump’s control over the Post Office or over the Nuclear Codes?
Perhaps, maybe , you guys can take thise no doubt fascinating discussion elsewhere, and let us return to the OP?
To bring it back to the topic then, as requested, let’s say that the principal focus of the Federal government is the domestic picture. Running the US military is an ancillary focus that only exists in the sense that the Federal government is expected to be ready to defend the land inside of our borders. Beyond that, zip.
So, in that case, Donald Trump is currently increasing the US military budget by about 7% every year, which is reasonably hefty. The current estimation (from this site) is that we’ll be paying about 29% more for the US military by 2020 then we were when Obama left office. That’s a pretty big boost.
But, the size and capabilities of the US military is way way way beyond what’s necessary to protect our borders. If the aim of the Federal government is domestic defense, then Donald Trump is doing it wrong.
On the other hand, if the principal focus is international, then we have to point out that Trump is trying to get out of everywhere. He’s leaving Syria to Iran. He’s probably happy to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban. Neither of these seems like a particularly great idea, given our previous international aims nor, for example, our current actions to try and sanction Iran. Our actions in Syria make sense if, for example, the President wants to look outwardly like he’s opposed to Iran, when in fact he’s been told to leave them alone (note the dates). But otherwise, the only explanation is that Trump has no plan and rival factions are in charge of the matter, because Trump’s giving them no guidance.
No matter which way you view it, Trump’s doing it wrong.
And if you consider how it looks to other militaries to draw back your troops, but increase spending and build up a larger and stronger army back in reserve - one that was already massively overpowered for home defense - it doesn’t necessarily look like your ultimate plan is really to hang back. And that is, pretty liable, going to make some people get a bit antsy.
In the age of nukes, “antsy” isn’t really a word you want to use to describe the militaries of fellow nuclear nations.
Pretty much, in a nutshell. 
The one positive thing that I’d been aware of that Trump had done was to okay burning the poppy fields in Afghanistan.
I’ve just checked and apparently - for unknown reasons - that never happened and instead they tried to track down drug processing labs and take those out. That was so difficult to pull off that they’ve now given it up.
I’d be strongly curious to know what caused the change.
Speaking of the trade wars, his former bankers have calculated what businesses are losing thanks to Trump’s tantrums.
Of course, even with that the economy is still strong, for the time being… but one can get the feeling that Mr. -expert in geting away with bankrupting suckers while still getting money out of a business even when it goes to pot- Trump is expecting to leave the bill to others.
IMHO the worst thing Trump has done that he will be remembered for is setting back the fight against global warming. We had started to make some progress with Obama, so Trump has basically set us back at best 12 years, possibly even more depending on how the 2020, 2024, and 2028 elections turn out. My assumption is that by 2032 that if Republicans won those elections and continue to follow the path of burn now and burn more that the consequences of AGW will be too obvious for most people to continue to deny. When their coastal cities are underwater even the people of places like Mississippi and Alabama will start realizing they were lied to.
Will they? Really? And what if the Republicans of that era claim that they were on the side of reducing emissions the whole time and those damn Democrats were at fault?
We seem to live in a world where any fact can be looked up in a second and mass numbers of people believe substantial lies and bullshit.
To be more based on research, the estimations are that that about one to two meters of an increase of the ocean levels can be expected by the end of the century *, of course with the acceleration of the loss of the ice caps that could happen by the middle of the century, but even the more likely expected 2 feet rise by 2050 will already cause a lot of issues, a main one is that under those conditions hurricanes will cause more damage. Also that rise of the oceans (and the increase of droughts) will most likely cause mass migrations. Ironic when the Republicans are so hell bent against immigration. Nice job breaking it hero Trump!
- Of course since it is likely that the world will not end, regardless what some evangelicals can tell you, the ocean rise will not stop just there, again, controlling our emissions now is the best way to prevent worse effects later.
This guy says more like a horse in a hospital.
Setting aside the whole conservative vs. liberal tug o’ war thing, as that is just business as usual* the chief damage he has done is destroying the reputation of the US internationally. Whether trade or treaty we are no longer seen as reliable and it will be a long, long time before we are again. And why not? What is to keep the US voters from voting in Trump II some time in the future?
During the election campaign I read an article where a contractor in Atlantic City during the casino-building boom said that the experienced contractors would add about 20% to their bids when Trump was involved. That way they’d still make some profit when he inevitably reneged on paying his bills; he said they called it a “Trump surcharge.” The rest of the world has learned it needs to apply a Trump surcharge when treating with us and will continue to do so long after he has been replaced.
As for the good he has done… Let me get back to you. All I’m seeing right now is short-term gain and long-term pain.
*Although sitting on a supreme court justice vacancy for over a year was not.