Also, because our school’s are funded through property taxes in most places, we have ensured that we can maintain generational poverty and a rigid class system.
Fair enough: The* formal democratic procedural *side of how the American republic is ruled, which we like to shorthand as just plain “democracy” is not broken, or at least no more broken than at times past ( Let us not forget that for a large part of our history, into the lifetime of people living today, a very large portion of the states were racial supremacist regimes under de-facto one-party rule – but we were very proud of being “a democracy” all through that time, weren’t we?). * It’s the political culture of American civil society that has come unhinged (being sort of kludged together to begin with anyway), and the procedural democracy works just fine to reflect exactly that. *
What is often overlooked is that formal procedural republicanism does not in and of itself create or sustain a rechtstaat, a State of Lawful Right. That requires the cooperation of the general social culture. Because together with the institutions of a procedural democracy, you depend on evolving consensuses on what are justice, fair play, respect for the rule of law, compromise, etc. or else why would you abide by a piece of paper.
The current situation in the USA reflects that a faction looked at the Law and noticed… that nowhere was it written down that certain elements of those standards of justice, fair play, and respect for rule of law are mandated, nor that there’s sanction imposed for not observing them. That many of those standards were more akin to traditions, or gentlemen’s agreements, or “unspoken rules” of common decency… and so why should they be abided if they are contrary to MY rightful interests? So goodbye to that way of doing things and welcome to total winner-take-all zero-tolerance “crush them, drive them before us, and hear the cry of the women” politics, and anyone standing in the way is standing in the way of American Greatness.
And the Derps are full of passionate intensity.
JRD, you are correct. But in there lies also the solution: As long as the republican system is in tact, all it takes for our society to become less divided is for us to elect less divisive politicians.
That of course is easier said than done. Because it starts with ourselves. We have to become less divisive. We are being sold the product we ask for right now. To stop it, we need to stop demonizing the other, stop speaking in pejorative terms of issues and people we disagree with.
As to the particulars of the abuse of the system, we’ve been here before. There were machines which could reliably churn out votes on demand in many cities, and these votes did include those of dead people. There were states where it was seemingly impossible for the non-dominant party to get any traction ever. At one point, the very number of justices on the Supreme Court was in play.
Last, the party in power gets to make (many of) the rules. Great when it’s your guys, horrible when it’s not. That’s what majority rule is. The answer has always been the same. Field a candidate which carries enough of your values, but can appeal to at least a part of the base of the other guys. Easier when you don’t call those guys you want to win over all sorts of bad names.
Ok asahi, make a couple of predictions about the midterms and a couple miscellaneous ones. That way we can see how good you are.
I am very bad at predicting the future so pay no attention to me. But I am also discouraged by the dysfunctionality of American politics and see things getting worse.
I’ve wanted to start an IMHO thread with a title like
Let’s talk about the different types of severe civil disorder and what the prerequisites are for each.
I hope someone with better grasp of history will start such a thread. What would actually happen in America in the most pessimistic scenarios?
My best guess is that Fascist tendencies may continue to grow but a largely complacent middle-class won’t push back. Ethnic division are often prerequisite for some civil disorder, so expect more injustice against blacks and other distinguishable groups.
There’s a strong correlation between gun ownership and bigotry (and other despicable right-wing ideology) — that’s not a happy thought. As Trumpists get more and more sullen, expect more violence by bigots — we seem to be seeing this already.
I don’t hate you at all. If every 3rd post on here was by you, that would get annoying, but that goes for pretty much everyone.
I think you are completely wrong though. You’ve got a major lack of perspective if you think ALL republican voters are literally Nazis. We’ve seen a handful of rallies of literal Nazis, which involved maybe a couple hundred dipshits apiece, and THAT’S IT as far as literal American Nazism goes. It makes for good TV, but actually is one of the weakest movements in the country. A few rallies? Over a year ago? That’s it?? How weak can you get?
Compare that tothe kinds of crowds Beto O’Rourke regularly draws. That’s in fucking Texas, one of the reddest, Trumpiest states in the country. One of the most populated states, too. If people there can notice that there is something wrong with the GOP to the point that they very well may elect a guy like Beto, clearly we have not gone completely over the edge.
Are things bad? Well, yeah. The thousands of kids in prison camps is absolutely outrageous, and I don’t fully understand why the people responsible are not themselves in jail. Plus, there is too much other fucked up shit going on to even list it all. But your response is… to put tens of millions of people in re-education camps? Simply from a practical level, it is completely and utterly unworkable. A doomed, not-even-in fantasy-proposition. Try to write a novel about that and see what kinds of glaring logical impossibilities you run into.
What am I going to do? I sort of fell into the answer by default- I don’t have kids, and while it is not too late, I probably won’t. It would take a national-political catastrophe to knock my personal life off course- I’m talking about a depression bad enough that I don’t get to cash in my 401k or pension, or crowds of yokels burn down my house, or they drop The Big One. I hope none of that happens. But lesser catastrophes, like a war with Iran, say, probably would not affect me, personally, all that much. I’ll do what I can do prevent going down a dipshit path like that for the sake of preventing suffering on a global scale, but OTOH I am just one guy and it is not really my problem.
Try to step back from demonizing Trumpists as animals and insects for a minute. They’re people- really. This “kids” theme plays into it IMHO. I think a majority of adults have kids, they have to work a lot, then they have to attend to their families, and they don’t have the kind of freedom I do to explore public issues in depth and really be informed (insofar as that description even applies to me, heh, I don’t know everything). So they tend to get swayed by loud blaring voices and simple solutions, not because they are stupid but because they can’t spare the attention.
Really, people aren’t generally stupid or evil. Consider rural red state people. Pretty dumb, right? Trump voters mostly, right? Well, my gf grew up on a farm in a red state. Today she has a PhD and spends her days attending to mental patients. Had she stayed on the farm, she’d be a rural red state person who could have gotten a PhD. Just like plenty of the other people who stayed in that situation and are bogged down with jobs and kids. They really, truly aren’t lesser beings, even if they are less informed or less successful. They need support, not jail.
Or take my ex-gf. She’s a goddamned globe-trotting, Southern Christian conservative self-made millionaire (yes, I’m a little jealous). She remains in one of the reddest places in the country, but 1. she is totally not stupid and 2. she hates Trump. She also grew up on a farm. Poor. Abusive, drunken father. Totally fucked up background, like some kind of nightmare rural Southern stereotype. Yet she pulled it together and now is one of the Masters of the Universe. Lots of people who seem like they’d be someone you could never accept have this kind of potential within them. Try to look for that, Asahi, instead of indulging in your hateful tendencies.
What am I going to do? Well again, it goes back to kids. I don’t have any of my own, and so, condescending as it may seem, all of you are kinda sorta my kids. I plan to use what little influence I have to try to shepherd things onto a more productive path than what we’re on now. When I have the appropriate net worth, I will switch to becoming a school teacher, or maybe run for some low level office. I’ll do what I can.
Try to keep some perspective. I’m just one guy, you are just one guy. We have limited influence. That’s where democracy comes in. To have an effect on the really big issues, we need to get the message to lots of people and get them to work together. Take on a more American attitude for this project- people aren’t animals; all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Remember?
Asahi: I usually like reading your posts because often you offer insightful political observations. But… when you go off the rails, and you go off the rails pretty often, you FUCKING GO OFF THE RAILS!! Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and you apparently gotta despair. I hope you get better.
There’s also the issue of competency. This is Donald Trump were talking about. And the people that choose to work for him. These people are barely able to run a functioning government that was handed to them. How are we suppose to believe they are capable of overthrowing a government and setting up a new regime? These clowns couldn’t rob a convenience store without getting caught.
trump’s incompetence may be, as I’ve said before, his saving grace. But there are those around him, whose names we may not even know, who are quite competent.
RT - thank you for the kind words. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but like 70% of the time I see a post from you, in my head I whistle a bar or two from a Marx Brothers movie. Usually something like, “No matter what it is or who commenced it // I’m against it!”
What has happened lately is that America is now wearing its dirty underwear outside of its nice suit instead of inside. It has always sucked for certain members of the population. The citizenry are not called “human resources” for nothing. If there has been a time or a place when the wealthy oligarchy did not run things for their own personal benefit, someone please point it out to me.
The problem with incipient fascism, which is what we’re talking about is that it can go from undiagnosed to metastatic pretty darned fast.
Maybe. But fascism isn’t going to happen under Donald Trump. He lacks the skills that a fascist demagogue needs.
And fascism is unlikely to happen in America in 2018. You need a sense of desperation and despair that we don’t currently have in America. Things are fundamentally too good for people to be seeking a radical change.
If people insist the system still works and this too shall pass, they have to make it so. The only way to put the kibosh on the Republicans within the system is to tromp them at the polls to a degree that no voter suppression or gerrymandering can negate, to the point where they are entirely powerless on the national stage. Republican politicians will still be crazy and evil, but neutered. This won’t deal with the possibility of their revisiting deranged authoritarianism the next time they have some political power, and it won’t deal with the racists and bigots and just plain fools that compromise the bulk of Trump’s supporters, and it won’t deal with the status quo regarding the US federal government being pretty much owned by banks, but an overwhelming electoral victory while elections still count is the only means within the system of putting a stop to the current wave of Republicans behaving like true ninnies.
Every other option is some variation of waving pitchforks and muttering “rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.” Things like internment camps for non-white children and attempts to negate peoples’ citizenship and putting judges who are of the opinion the president ought not to be able to be indicted while in office are not a dress rehearsal; the Republicans are in it for the long haul, doing awful things and making sure they won’t face legal repercussions by jiggering the legal system. If you want to stop that sort of thing using the political system you’re trying to preserve, you have to vote your faces off, like, now.
What clued you in? The fact that the US has imprisoned vast swaths of the population for decades or the election of Donald Trump?
Your answer to that is evidence of your unseriousness.
I want to make just two observations. One, regarding comparison with the Sixties, yes, there were lots of young people marching and protesting, and getting drafted and killed in Vietnam; there were assassinations and riots and talk that society was falling apart and lots of gloom and doom about the future. And yes, the future actually turned out pretty good, at least in the medium term. Even Republicans were relatively sane, proposing things like health care reform and environmental regulation, and appointing moderate and thoughtful justices like John Paul Stevens.
But what was happening in the Sixties was drastically different than what’s happening today. The most disturbing things that are happening are not social changes, they are changes in the nation’s fundamental institutions, which were a bedrock of stability in the Sixties and formed the basis of future progress. Today the Office of the President has been disgraced by an idiot man-child, the credibility of the Supreme Court is about to go down the toilet with the confirmation of a lying partisan hack, and Congress has revealed itself to be a collection of grossly irresponsible ideologues who are the enablers of this malfeasance. Facts no longer seem to matter in the national dialog; complete fantastical fabrications – emitted via Twitter – are just as good, and national media are pilloried as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”. It truly makes one wonder – and to seriously doubt – whether the US is capable of governing itself. I have no objective basis for saying that this is worse than the turmoil of the 60s, but it’s objectively different and will therefore have different outcomes. It’s also a clear drift to the right, to a climate of ideological extremism, dogma, populism, and authoritarianism.
The other observation is that at least one of these institutional changes, that to the makeup of the Supreme Court, is likely to be long-lasting, and may prove to be the undoing of virtually any piece of progressive legislation that any self-serving corporate entity wants to bring suit against. For instance, health insurers against effective health care reform, or as I mentioned in another thread, coal or oil companies against clean air or emissions reduction legislation. So one can be pessimistic about the attitude of “get out and vote or all will be lost”, because no amount of voting is going to restore balance to the Supreme Court in the foreseeable future.
The idea that the US has not undergone drastic changes in institutions many times in its history is fantastical.
The myth of “fundamental institutions” is a Boomer delusion.
This thread is a good start.
Less seriously, if you aren’t going to learn by observing the world, the SDMB isn’t going to help. And yet another tantrum when you don’t get what you want isn’t going to help either.
Regards,
Shodan
My comment about changes to institutions was to draw a contrast with what was happening in the 60s. Yes, it has happened before, and is not necessarily bad. But it’s definitely bad when said institutions are being degraded and corrupted, like by a president who is a self-serving mercenary imbecile and who sides and colludes with a Russian dictator instead of his own nation, and demonizes his own country’s security agencies. Or an unhinged lying partisan asshole being appointed to the Supreme Court, and the corrupt partisan hacks who put him there.
As for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government not being fundamental institutions, you are – as most of us already know – a fucking moron. Also, I believe, a libertarian imbecile who would like to live in an anarchy devoid of pesky governments, which explains much of your incoherent blathering that infests these boards from time to time.