This is such a depressing read. What is becoming of the USA? Let's hope sanity prevails and the next election cycle can bring in some competent non-grievance based leadership.
This is such a depressing read. What is becoming of the USA? Let's hope sanity prevails and the next election cycle can bring in some competent non-grievance based leadership.
This isn't a one-election thing. It's going to be a generational effort to fix what these people are breaking more of every day. I hope I live to see it come to some kind of fruition - I recently turned 50.
Some people are calling it the "American century of humiliation"
No other country that went through a phase like this has ever recovered. Not even in a century.
> Some people are calling it the "American century of humiliation"
They should wait until some or all of the following things have happened:
1. Camp David is sacked, looted and burned to the ground by foreign troops. [1]
2. Foreign naval vessels patrol American rivers to protect foreign corporate interests in America. [2]
3. Foreign nations have unrestricted access to American ports and trade. [3]
4. America pays a large indemnity for attempting to resist. [4]
5. Foreign nationals become immune to US law. [5]
6. Multiple military defeats and territorial losses. [6]
7. This goes on unfettered for 100 years.
All in all perhaps it is a bit early to call it that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Summer_Palace#Destruction
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_Treaties
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Indemnity#The_clauses
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality#China
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation#History
I won't give in to doomerism.
Germany, Italy and Japan are all wealthy, stable democracies right now. Not without their problems and baggage, but pleasant places in a lot of ways.
All three have active US military bases on their soil and enjoy the economic surplus of living under the US defense umbrella.
The post WWII system was imperfect in many ways, but it was also mutually beneficial and worked out pretty well despite the problems.
And we're throwing that all out the window.
US military bases aren't what made those countries modern, prosperous, democratic places. It took the will of the people to rebuild something better after the war.
don't make it out like its a favour. The US have done very well out of their defense umbrella ensuring its global dominance for most of last century.
Most powers have to pay in blood to do what they want geo politically without question. The US inherited a global state where many potential rivals were weak and helped keep them weak. It was a cost worth paying and its a shame that current US leaders are so cheap and foolhardy to not see what they're throwing away.
You seem to imply the US reaps no benefit from providing security?
Britain essentially ceded its bases to the US at the end of WWII - these things aren’t as durable as they may seem.
that's cos WW1 financially broke Britain, then WW2 happened.
All that economic surplus - and much more - flows back to the US. How do you think the US can sustain that amount of USD printing without inflation ? The rest of the world is buying those dollars.
Germany: functionally paralyzed government that has the far right knocking at the door because the fractured coalition of left-centerleft-centerright continues to refuse to do what voters ask for.
Italy: Nominally center-right government, similar problems as Germany, less the energy issues
Japan: just elected a landslide right wing government that is going to change the constitution so they can build an offensive military again
Curious.
I don't perceive those problems to be inherent to the territories or peoples of the countries. All have had potential to change and have done so extensively since the Second World War. There isn't a universal explanation or root behind the issues these countries are facing today, unless you are willing to abstract it to just "economics".
They got bombed to shit first
It'd be nice to avoid that part.
Then it won't work. The current iteration of Germany is fully based on having been bombed to get a fresh start. If you already have something, you won't change it. If you have to re-build, you will implement improvements. No bombs, no reset, no joy.
It is not inevitable that you come back improved. It is not inevitable that you come back at all.
Ok what about the Netherlands, Spain, Nordic countries?
Very different countries.
The Netherlands for example got their last reset by completely losing the Dutch empire.
Also, some societies have flatter curves than others. That really maps 1:1 to your style and culture of living and where the priorities are.
If your priorities are to be the best as fast as possible (Germany) you will have less time between resets. If your priorities are "let's chill and wait until the coconut falls from the tree into my hand", your society might be able to have a far longer time between resets.
But in the end: It's an iterative process. Which means: There must be iterations.
This sounds about as scientific as phrenology.
No, it's really simple: Programming, Math, AI, blabla - those are all abstractions of what we have seen in nature.
Once you have understood that, you can just apply the rules learned backward, and they will typically match pretty well. I can buy fractal veggies in a supermarket.
And also, it's just data. Just take some random samples. That even civilizations like the Mayas who have faaaar more time on the clock than say than the US had multiple full resets.
Another random sample I've just pulled out of thin google air: San Francisco Fire of 1851. Everybody knew that wood burns. And that wooden buildings burn. And that wooden cities burn. Did anyone decide to tear down their house and re-build with a different material? No. This happened after everything had burned down to the ground. That was the reset needed.
I think it is very clearly an iterative process. Have a look.
>And also, it's just data. Just take some random samples.
You are not at all working with "data" or "samples". You are just making arguments and supporting them with examples. That's not science, that's philosophy or persuasive essay writing.
You are generalizing those arguments in insane ways. Just like the worst philosophy. You are drawing conclusions from extremely weak claims that don't even map to reality in the first place.
You can't say "Math works to describe the head of broccoli so I can just think hard enough and understand geopolitics". That's emphatically not science.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. What you are saying has a lot of truth to it. It is directly observable in the history of nations.
Germany has to be forced to accept that, although it was advanced, it could not have the European empire it thought it deserved. Japan had to learn a similar lesson. The speed and horror of the reset was in direct proportion to the potential for advancement and high society in these nations.
Ghana, where I come form, for example, has not has to experience any massive upheaval even from its pre-colonial and colonial days up till now. Our society is laid-back, and moves slowly. Even many other African countries have had to have their national reckoning in the form of civil wars and other huge upheavals in order to settle into a viable way of existing and advancing.
And, like you said, this is iterative. Given the nature of people in a nation and its fundamental geopolitical position, the same question will need to be answered after every N generations. Germany is central to Europe, and already a generation that is far removed from the world wars are starting to rethink why it shouldn't assert itself more strongly. Same in Japan.
THe way to analyze the iterations of the US is to understand that the primary threats are from within. It may not implode complete, but civil war and the civil rights era show that the potential is there for massive unrest and violence.
[I am getting downvoted all the time because the combination of German directness with autistic directness and lack of empathy combined with dark humor is not exactly compatible with societies where it is seen as offensive, rude or even aggressive not to sugar coat your messages. If one side treats this as a data exchange, and the other side processes the data but including emotions it will obviously have compatibility issues. But that's my "problem", so I accepted that typically if I post stuff, I first get upvoted massively, and after a day downvoted to hell. And that's OK. Again, my problem to be incompatible with a standard.]
And yes, it is interesting to see that on Polymarket people are betting involving a lot of emotions. No, you will not bet on getting killed by masked militia. Nobody is going to say "Hey, I'll bet $1000 that I will get cancer soon!".
But if you leave aside all the emotions, and just look at the data: No, there is no realistic scenario the US could magically recover from all checks and balances and rules and laws and regulations and decency having been destroyed. Competence, leadership and shared knowledge had been erased in all areas of society - Science, Development, Capitalism, Arts. How are you going to rebuild all of this, especially if the best case is that 60% of the people will agree to rebuild, while 40% insist they need to keep destroying stuff?
This is not a scenario looking at historical data any prior "high culture" (or whatever to call this) had been able to recover from.
Elsewhere in this thread is was mentioned that Germany still had all the Nazis in place everywhere because else the country would not have worked. But that is not the point. The reset was:
a) All is destroyed and MUST be rebuild because else we will freeze and starve to death.
b) Your Nazi neighbor is still there, but it has been made VERY clear who is the new sheriff in town: First the allies, but then pretty much the USA. Germany is still paying for having US solders in the country, providing valuable expensive land for free, and paying for most of the supply chain that is not staffed with US soldiers. And that is the accepted normal.
c) What was left on industry was physically taken as reoperations. Especially the soviets, but also the French did dismantle hole factories and machinery, moving that to their own countries (rightfully so.)
From what I know from school, reading and talking to grandparents: Germany before WW2 doesn't have much relation to pre-WW2 Germany. Suddenly it was normal that women can to "men's jobs" (due to those being more on the dead side). McDonalds. Hollywood. etc
It really makes sense to have a look at a couple of pictures of what was left of Germany after WW2. It's just someone slapping an existing brand name onto a new product. And in this case, personally I would have regarded the brand as damaged and would have picked a different name.
I am less confident about my predictions for an uncertain future. There's all kinds of ways different things could go.
I didn't say we needed to follow their example to the letter; it was just one counterexample to the "woe and ruin for 100 years" comment.
Yes, but it is actually scientifically correct and proven on all sorts of layers. Biology, Maths, whatever. Not doomsdaying, just data analytics.
Societies are not operating like a sinus curve like say summer/winter cycles. They are upside-down "U"s. After the peak comes decline, but after the decline there is NOT recovery/growth again before you have a reset.
Germany was the huge winner of WW2 in the sense that after having had a high society they directly were allowed to get another such run. But as nobody wants to bomb us ) anymore, Germany is also in decline now waiting for a reset to come one day...
Sadly the USA will also need a reset before things can begin getting better again.
) I was born in Germany and lived there for 40 years.
References to scientific proofs?
Germany wasn't a fresh start. The de-nazification ended up being a bit of a joke and (AFAIK) the first governments were full of ex-Nazis.
James May did a documentary loosely based on this. "The Peoples Car"
Basically analysing the economies of WW2 participants via their automobile industries.
Its staggering how being bombed into the ground has forced technological and economic innovation. And how the inverse, being the bomber, has created stagnation.
I don't think it would matter even if the us did have to start again. The entire us alliance after ww2 benefited from the same structural causes of increased pluralism and egalitarianism. A fractured elite, complex international trade, expanding and increasingly difficult to control communication channels, and a growing bureaucracy. These all inhibit autocratic concentration of power. International trade became uncomplicated, there is one manufacturer that is not a consumer, and many consumers. This leads to an increasingly less fractured elite. The structural reasons for democracy and rules based order are all fading. The us is just a really big canary.
The people running the show are all building generational fallout shelters in new zealand. As seems to be the real 'whitehouse ballroom' plan too. They seem to be expecting that part.
Congress is the problem, but not in the way most describe.
Congress has abdicated its powers because as an institution it is broken. Several inland states with total state wide populations less than that of major metro areas on the coasts have the same amount of senators as every other state has - two. This means voters in a lot of states are over represented. Meanwhile, they say land doesn't vote, but in the United States Senate the cities and localities with the most people that drive much of our growth and dynamism are severely underrepresented. The upper and most important chamber of the Congress is thus undemocratic. Given it's an institution deeply susceptible to minority gridlock that depends on wide margins to do anything, well now more often than not it simply does nothing. An imperial presidency thus frankly becomes the only way the country can actually get most things done.
This two senators for every state arrangement was a compromise agreed to when constitutional ratification was in doubt, when the USA was a weak, newborn country of about 3 million people confined to the Eastern seaboard at a time in our history where our most pressing concern was being recolonized by European powers. The British burned down the White House in 1812 imagine what more they could have accomplished if the constitutional compromises that strengthened the union had not been agreed to.
This compromise has outlived its usefulness. No American today fears a Spanish armada or British regulars bearing torches. These difficult compromises at the heart of America already led to one civil war.
The best we can do is create a broad political movement that entertains as many incriminations as possible (probably around corruption/Epstein, which must make pains to avoid any distinction between say a Bill Clinton or a Donald Trump) so we can get past partisan bickering to get enough of mass movement to try to usher in a new age of constitutional amendment and reform.
If it doesn't happen this cycle of Obama Trump Biden Trump will continue until this country elects someone who makes Trump look like a saint. It can happen. Think of how Trump rehabilitated Bush. We already see the trend getting worse. And if it does, then the post WWII Germany style reset being mentioned here will then become inevitable.
How do you think this would play out? Changing the apportionment of the Senate, aside from being a political and legal nightmare, would also create monumental constitutional crisis.
First, the Connecticut Compromise is a democratic underpinning of the US. It was central to the formation of the nation, and any attempt to alter it would be a foundational structural change to the constitution to say the least.
I understand the concerns about one generation binding another without recourse. Legal scholars differ on whether Article V, which implements the compromise, can be amended or not.
But for the sake of argument, let's say it can. It would be an insurmountable task requiring the following:
1. A supermajority in both houses of Congress (67% in the Senate and 66% in the House) to propose the amendment.
2. Ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 out of 50 states) or by conventions in three-fourths of the states.
3. Consent of the states that would lose their equal representation in the Senate.
4. Overcome any legal challenges that would likely arise at every step of the process.
The result would be a dramatic redefinition of federalism and democratic representation. This wouldn't be a cosmetic change, it would be a fundamental alteration to the structure of the government and constitution.
Very few things were deemed "unamendable" and entrenched in the constitution before, both explicitly and implicitly, but now it would all be up for grabs. Now nothing is irrevocable.
What's to stop future generations from altering other fundamental principles? While we may complain of being bound by the decisions of our ancestors, we would be opening up a Pandora's box of constitutional instability for future generations, binding them to the whims of a (slim?) majority of the current generation's political agenda.
I think that is the best case scenario. The worst, and I think a very possible scenario, is that states losing representation would claim that such a drastic and material change to the constitution upends the root of the bargain that led to the formation of the union, and would likely seek to secede. You may have achieved your goal of changing the apportionment of the Senate, but at the cost of the union itself. There are far easier and less risky ways to achieve political change.
We could add new states. For example, Washington DC has 702,000 people with zero Congressional representation, and they're currently occupied by Federal troops without any voting recourse. If they were made a state, they'd be bigger than Wyoming and Vermont. Puerto Rico is also a US territory with 3.2 million people and zero Congressional representation. As a state it would be larger than 20 existing states. This doesn't "fix" the problem but it does ensure that more U.S. citizens gain access to representation in Congress, while also shifting power to more densely-populated areas.
True. I'm not as familiar with the politics of DC, but my limited understanding of the PR statehood situation is that the GOP is unlikely to approve what would presumably be 2 new safe democratic seats in the senate.
If I remember correctly, the governor of PR would appoint the first 2 senators. A tactic could be to promise to appoint 1 republican senator as an enrichment to approve statehood. It's a real shit situation.
There are more Puerto Ricans living in NYC and Orlando than in PR. I'd like to visit before the little family I have left there leaves or dies out.
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Japan's economics are mostly rooted in population issues. Have you ever been? Even though wages are stagnant, the people are among the healthiest in the world and they're known for the way their society's public services ACTUALLY work.
Not sure about Italy, but Germany, while not without its problems, is a beacon of democracy, progressivism, and self-correction.
> Germany is still extremely weird about anything to do with Jews
> I've never been to Italy but they don't seem very productive either.
Ok green poster. You need to look up more about world economies if you are going to confidently say things like Italy isn’t that productive. Combined with your comment on Jews in Germany I just assume you’re here to push propaganda, but if not please read up more on Italian economic output compared to, I don’t know, maybe the G7 countries?
That’s just historically inaccurate. You had massive upheavals across numerous countries throughout time, this is small in comparison to the civil war’s impact on the USA for instance. You think this is worse than half the government rebelling and revolting and killing an amount of young men that today would be equivalent to 6 million deaths? It’s bad now but your comment lacks historical evidence.
China seems to have recovered pretty well.
Not really. China only seems good because there is a war in Europe and the US is shooting themself in the foot. They're polluting and strip mining their country, suppressing wages and funneling the profit into companies all while increasing surveillance and decreasing freedom of opinion. Oh but they put down a few solar panels and then paid for people to write articles about it.
Their economy lifted a bunch of people out of poverty. That's positive.
However, in terms of 'democracy' they're still way worse off than the US right now, even if the US is headed in a bad direction.
> Their economy lifted a bunch of people out of poverty
This is fallacious as every economy that started at extreme poverty lifted a bunch of people out of poverty.
Unless we invent a time machine and do an A|B test we can't really attribute the success to policy when _any_ policy would have clearly lifted out a bunch of people out of poverty (basically almost impossible to not go up from extreme deficit). The closest we can do is look at similar scenarios like Taiwan which also lifted a bunch of people from poverty while retaining more human rights.
Plenty of places have managed to "keep on keepin' on" with their poverty levels.
I'm not saying what they've done was the best way, only way or anything of that sort: only that it happened.
> They're polluting
They absolutely are, but per capita, USA is polluting 49.67 % more than China.
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/carbon-fo...
Also they are making all our stuff for us. That’s our pollution too guys.
But only half as much per dollar, so the lower pollution per capita is just poverty, which is likely to decline over the next few decades as it has been (assuming we have decades left).
>Oh but they put down a few solar panels
the few solar panels in question are a united kingdom worth of green energy each year, about a royal navy worth of marine tonnage every two and they lifted more people out of poverty over the span of two generations than most of the rest of the world combined. Shenzhen produces about 70% of the entire world's consumer drones, now the primary weapon on both sides of the largest military conflict in the world. Xiaomi, a company founded in 2010 15 years ago decided to make electric cars in 2021 and is now successfully selling them.
As Adam Tooze has pointed out it's the single most transformative place in the world, if you're not trying to learn from it you're choosing to ignore the most important place in the 21st century for ideological reasons
I used to pretend China wasn't absolutely smashing the USA, but it looks like it is. They basically make everything modern civilization relies on, that's an insane amount of leverage over the rest of the world. That combined with renewables and nuclear and their diminishing need for foreign oil because of that is pretty incredible.
They're also speedrunning a world class power distribution system and deploying a massive amount of renewable power amoung a whole mess of other infrastructure. They've got the ability to focus an entire nation into achieving technical goals and they're rapidly improving quality of life in average while maintaining an industrial base that the US can only remember fondly. They might not meet western standards for individual freedoms and rule of law, but they're undoubtedly a rising world power.
This doesn't make much sense. Since the late 19th century, every country that got rich also heavily polluted the environment, though increasingly less over time. As it stands, fossil fuel demand in China has plateaued. The "wage suppression" thing also doesn't track; their citizens got much, much richer since Nixon's visit, despite being on average poorer than Westerners. Their GDP per capita is low because there's like a billion of them in the country.
The only thing to say is that it's still authoritarian. Once that gets a hold of a country, it's very difficult to shed off. Interestingly, both South Korea and Singapore shifted away from being dictatorships and were not ideologically socialist. Countries taken over by Communists remain authoritarian. The true believers will never give that up.
Agree with much of this. However: plenty of Central/Eastern European countries seem like they have pretty definitively shaken off communism in favor of pretty standard European style capitalism/social democracy.
That is true, though I chalk some of that up to disdain for Russian imperialism/colonialism, and bargaining to remain out of its influence
On eastern social media a big discussion going around right now is referring to America as being on the “kill line”.
The world knows the US is close to folding in on itself.
U.S. Civil War? Roman Crisis of the 3rd Century? Russian Revolution? England's War of the Roses? China's periodic dynastic changes?
They usually don't come back with the same political organization - that's sorta the point. But plenty of civilizations come back in a form that is culturally recognizable and even dominate afterwards.
I’d be interested to see some specific examples cited as it’s hard to take this comment at face value.
This is a laughably ridiculous assertion.
Rome was 'in decline' for 1000 years... these things are mostly feel good blather and not realistic statements on the position of nations
Is this a joke that’s going over my head? The country we all know the term “century of humiliation” from has recovered and is literally a superpower right now?
The Unenlightenment. Dereconstruction.
> No other country that went through a phase like this has ever recovered. Not even in a century.
Oh I can think of a couple in the '40s that bounced back after a while.
> generational effort to fix
You imply that there are folks that willing to fix or even recognize that things are broken in the first place
> It's going to be a generational effort to fix what these people are breaking more of every day.
That assumes you have people wanting to fix what is broken - and I have a hard time believing even now that they are in the majority.
MAGA and their supporters? They want to see the world burn, if only for different motives: the "left behind" people in flyover states just want revenge, the Evangelicals literally believe they can cause the Second Coming of Christ by it [1], the Russia fangroup wants to see Ukraine burn to the ground and the ultra-libertarians/dont tread on me folks want all government but maybe a bit of military to go away. That is what unifies so many people behind the Trump banner.
The problem is, on the left side you got a bunch of people completely fed up as well. Anarchists of course, then you got the "left behind" people who still want revenge on the system but aren't willing to enlist the help of the far-right for that goal, you got revolutionaries of all kind... and you got those who believe that the rot runs too deep to fix by now.
And let's face the uncomfortable truth: every one of them, bar the Evangelicals and the Russia apologists, actually has a decent point in wanting to see the world burn. Post-Thatcher capitalism has wrecked too many lives, the US Constitution hasn't seen a meaningful update in decades and no overhaul in centuries, the "checks and balances" that were supposed to prevent a Trump from reaching office or rising to the position of effective dictator have been all but destroyed, the "American Dream" has been vaporware ever since 2007...
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20g1zvgj4do
Yeah… turns out you have to keep a certain balance of domestic industries to keep 350 million people employed in a capacity where they don’t want to burn down the whole system. But that would be socialism.
Now you’ve got the people whose jobs suck and want their old jobs to come back vs the people whose jobs suck and just want to dispense with the illusion that everyone needs to be employed. Either way, the money-generating corporate automaton needs to cough up some of its profits to fund people’s existence. If everyone could just agree on how, maybe they’d get somewhere.
Meanwhile, I will continue to cling to my slice of the corporate automoton pie.
I’ve been called bad things on HN for suggesting there’s even a whiff of corruption in this administration. That alone scares me. Deeply.
there's more money and "don't rock the boat" mentality on here as a consequence of that and they try to keep the moderation light. So its just not discussed enough to give people still tragically mired in that tribalism, the appropriate levels of shame.
Hope is not a plan, unfortunately, so if that's all we've got, I don't have much hope.
> What is becoming of the USA?
There was a coup by a foriegn adversary and Americans lost.
The current situation in the US is the depressing thing- articles like this give me hope. Real Americans aren't having these BS authoritarian violations of our constitutional rights.
You mean, what's been happening to the USA? this isn't a new trend. Militarization of police, open attacks on democracy, unilateral foreign policy moves.
the country jumped the shark post 9/11 and has been on a slow rot since then.
Indeed. Bin Laden succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He kickstarted our self-destruction.
I think the shoe lace bomber did more than bin laden - decades of ritual humiliation at airports was normalised.
The TSA wouldn't exist with bin Laden. The TSA still exists, but the effects of the shoe bomber are now done, in the sense that shoes aren't required to come off as of last year.
No, this is cope, Trump is deeply different.
Trump is different because he is flailing to deflect from the fact he is deeply legally compromised. But he is reaching into a toolbox of things that have already been made available.
yeah there is close to little relation between the current administration and pre-Trump GOP. That entire party is now compromised. Beforehand you could always assume they'd be locked out by legal, business, or party pressure but that hasn't been seemingly much of a thing since Trump (as seen most recently in the illegal tariffs the administration continues to try to apply globally).
The framework for collecting the data to feed to the AI, exposed by Snowden, was designed and implemented in the wake of 9/11 by Bush when Trump was still busy banging teenagers with Epstein and not even thinking about politics.
Then Obama re-authorized and expanded it. Trump and Biden haven’t even moved the needle, really.
Now they’ve put up tens of thousands of permanently installed facial recognition cameras (not Flock ALPR, those point the other direction to get number plates) all over SoCal and southern Nevada (that I’ve directly observed; presumably it is happening in many other cities as well), and TSA and CBP are collecting as many ID-verified sets of facial geometry as they possibly can, whenever they can. ICE is of course using it nonstop, as well as feeding additional geometry into it. They’re flying drones 30 feet above sidewalks in downtown LA to mass collect faces.
The DoD can’t wait to deploy SOTA AI against Americans en masse.
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"Recently turned American citizens" have every bit as much right to free speech, as guaranteed by the 1st amendment, as any other American citizen does. That's the whole point of the constitution. To pretend otherwise betrays the core values of our democracy.
Yeah well my family's been here for hundreds of years and fuck him. They're more American than that piece of shit will ever be.
> They're more American
Do you mean your family, or Congresswoman Omar?
The latter, but both for sure.
That's congresswoman "recently turned American citizen" to you sir. BTW she became a citizen 26 years ago. My favorite part of Ilhan Omar being an outspoken congresswoman who keeps getting reelected is how it drives islamophobes crazy.
Complaining about the head of the government publicly so important that its included in the first amendment instead of one of those other ones.
Selective memory as usual, outright dishonest at that. Let’s remember MTG heckling Biden. The when and who started heckling the sotu is well known.
Let’s rush to destroy all norms entirely, since the other side started it it’s totally justified and will have no negative consequences whatsoever.
This is an intellectually dishonest response. The person I responded to clearly attempts to place blame on one side, ignoring the facts of when the violation of norms began. It does matter that one side has destroyed all norms.
I think it was “you lie” under Obama. But my history knowledge awful. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a duel at a pre civil war sotu.
Uh yeah, there was certainly, um, a "duel"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner
The south sent him new canes to replace the one he nearly murdered a guy with. The problem we are experiencing with Trump has been here for a very very long time.
My brother in Christ we shoot our Presidents for sport in this country. There's nothing more American than heckling the government and God bless any immigrant who doesn't put up with its bullshit.
The irony inherent in this post is stunning in its purity. Weapons grade. I should be wearing goggles just to view this post. It's off the charts.
All of what's happening is a symptom, there is no reason it would change course with the next elections, all of this is the logical development of decades of cultural, political and morale rot in the US society. Trump isn't a bad moment we have to push through before we get back to the baseline, there has been no serious push back from anyone so far, it's here to stay
> Let's hope sanity prevails and the next election cycle can bring in some competent non-grievance based leadership.
Would be nice, but I have a bad feeling that the impact of widescale mostly unregulated AI adoption on our social fabric is going to make the social media era that gave rise to Trump, et al seem like the good ol' days in comparison.
I hope I am wrong.
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That seems to be a denial of reality. Democrats are already winning races all over the country, in places that (traditionally) have been Republican strongholds.
But don't let me stop you from believing in a worldview that contradicts reality ... lost of Republicans (and some Democrats) do it too.
Democrats are mostly winning because the republicans have totally lost it, not because they are bringing forward a political vision that makes sense. I guess that’s where we are.
And after 4 to 8 years of Democrats running things and nothing improving, the people vote Republicans just in case it's better. It keeps happening. It's the circle of life!
People only think nothing improved because thats what Republicans are saying. Anyone even mildly politically informed can see the progress that happens under Democrat leadership.
Progress such as...?
Sadly apt. Democrats don’t make progress fast enough, while Republicans pull us backwards on vaccines, diversity, environment, abortion, healthcare, global prominence, naked corruption, oligarchy, theocracy, and military oppression.
Local county races and dog catcher races do not matter. What matters is who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That is the only race that counts.
False. Local races directly determine the day-to-day laws and rules you live under way more than a POTUS could effectively decree. I don't know about you, but I sure enjoy having reliable electrical, water, and sewer systems.
They have that in Saudi Arabia too but I would not want to live there. Set higher standards.
This is absolutely, in my mind, the opinion that has done the most damage to this country. If people didn't abandon politics that affect them at every level for a celebrity superbowl type show we wouldn't have this circus of Presidential campaigns.
House and Senate are probably more important than the president.
That's just not true. If you iive in Texas or California or wherever, your governor, state reps, judges, etc are all going to affect you far more than the President.
So wildly inaccurate. If you disconnect yourself from the cable news outrage pornography cycle you'll find most things that actually impact you happen at the state and local level. A lot of spooky things on the TV to be afraid or mad about, but for the average person there is vanishly little real effect.
Dems have lost to Trump twice and it looks like they want to run the same campaign strategies in future elections. They are relying too heavily on "trump bad" to win and I worry about what that will ultimately result in down the line.
This is a statement you can make.
It's also a statement entirely divorced from reality when you look at the fact that those winning candidates are not in fact doing that, and neither are the candidates that are getting the most national attention like Talarico.
Newsom has a vested interest in making it sound like he's the maverick here that knows the special formula, but it's been obvious to damn near everyone that they couldn't run out the same losing playbook.
> neither are the candidates that are getting the most national attention like Talarico
It's a pretty close race with some recent polling indicating that Crockett will win the primary. Impossible to tell though. I clock her as being a more traditional democrat ultimately policy wise.
I'd expect she or Talarico has a good shot at winning in TX. They both have the potential to pivot to a more traditional position in the general election.
My main concern is the current elected leaders of the democrats and how the incoming dems view them. Frankly, if a candidate isn't saying "we need to oust Schumer/Jeffries" then I take that as a pretty decent signal that they align close enough with the moderate position to worry me about the future party.
I worry about the actions of the dems after election. I think they'll win the midterms, maybe even take the senate. I even think there's a good shot that they win 2028 presidental elections. The problem is that I think they'll run a biden style presidency and future campaigns once they get in power. That will setup republicans for an easy win in 2030 and 2032.
I'm a Texan so I'm following this pretty closely. I slightly prefer Crockett to Talarico, but I voted for him in the primary because I think he's got a significantly better shot to win.
Texas is going to need moderate and centrist votes to swing blue - we're not making the state more liberal at a rate that is gonna hand either of them a victory. Both are actually fairly progressive. But Talarico is a lot better at selling those progressive values to everyday people. The hispanic vote is one of the biggest factors in Texas, and while they're obviously not a monolith, culturally a lot of them have much more mixed social values than other voting demographics. Statistically, way more likely to be heavily religious, and that's at odds with a lot of the social values from more progressive candidates. Talarico effortlessly refrains these issues in a way that aligns with stuff he can directly quote scripture on.
I'm an atheist so I don't care what scripture says on the matter, but it's the sort of thing that plays well with a lot of a key voting demographic that Crockett just can't do.
Trump also lost everytime he was in a vote against Sleepy Joe Biden. Newsom went in a different tact with the redistricting effort instead of “they go low, we go high”, but yea I am also concerned to see if anyone else in the party actually updates their strategies for our current era instead of pre 2008 politics.
If Democrats actually knew how to message on what they accomplished instead of letting the other side control the narrative and refocus everything on to fringe issues that only the fringe of the party cares about, as well as matching every Biden brain fart/stutter/"senior moment" with the equivalents from Trump, I suspect a Biden vs. Trump rematch would have been a Biden victory.
But they suck at that. And when they failed to convince Biden to drop out early, they should have stuck with him and just ran hard on actual accomplishments during the admin. But Harris was a last minute pivot and it showed. I think she would have been perfectly fine as a president, and I voted for her, but not surprised in the slightest that she lost - and I expected her to lose bigger than she did.
The fact that Trump couldn't even get half the popular vote when running against a last minute ticket change that was never selected to be the presidential candidate by the party she was representing is a pretty big indictment of how unpopular he really is.
I think there's been learning that you can't just be "not Trump", but yeah - I don't know that the party in general has any idea how to handle messaging and narratives.
Agree with you on their failure of messaging, Biden was the most progressive President since Carter and I only limit myself to that because I am not as well versed in history at that point.
Yet somehow the progressives found him more unpalatable than the MAGAs if you look at people like Brianna Gray and Jill Stein.
It’s too far out for me to say I will definitively vote for Newsome but so far he’s the only Democrat whose started throwing hands both legislatively and on social media.
I hope the dems figure out how to do more of that and better, instead of returning to shit like the October shutdown and the exchanging leverage for pinky promises from Mr. John “I am an obligate pinky promise liar” Republican.
> Yet somehow the progressives found him more unpalatable than the MAGAs if you look at people like Brianna Gray and Jill Stein.
Gaza and the border were two big issues where Biden and democrats at large were notably not progressive.
And, as you might imagine, funding a genocide is something that's really hard to stomach no matter how good Lina Khan was.
It also really didn't help that Kamala and her brother, where they did promise changes, it was to eliminate Khan and double down on prosecuting "transnational criminal organizations". They notably made a hard pivot from what was initially a somewhat progressive message to one of Kamala campaigning with Liz Cheney and celebrating the endorsement of a war criminal, Dick Cheney.
Yea, those progressives called Biden “Genocide Joe” while Trump was ranting about how the Israelis hadn’t gone far enough.
They somehow thought the lesser evil was actually a greater evil somehow. It’s like watching the pre Nazi party takeover of Germany where the Communists decided that the Social Democrats were worse than the fascists. It makes zero logical sense, unless they are accelerationists and think that the people will have some glorious revolution after everything gets bad enough despite all of history proving the contrary.
> They somehow thought the lesser evil was actually a greater evil somehow.
Trump is a monster, he's evil, and he had a less evil position on Gaza than Biden did.
In 2 years, Biden did jack shit to curtail Israel's genocide. The majority of the genocide happened while he was president. He continued to sign and promote bills funding Israel and he openly talked about how he was a Zionist and believed in the Israel project. His foreign policy advisors were horrendous. Israel killed so many American citizens and aid workers under Biden and his admin took Israel's side each time or would simply put out a "it's troubling, we are looking into it" which they never did.
But you know why I say Trump was better on Gaza? Because he did 2 things Biden and Kamala refused to do. He met with people that supported Gazans and he forced peace negotiations. Negotiations, mind you, that are worthless and israel is violating. Negotiations that have allowed Israel to illegally take over a huge swath of gaza. But none the less, peace negotiations.
Biden would put up a red line, watch Israel cross it, and then literally just move the line (the goalposts) or ultimately ignore the issue all together. There would not be even a peace deal today under a Biden presidency. Literally, we were told to just hope that Kamala who was shutting down this conversation, would be better.
And the autopsy on this issue shows that the Campaigns of both Biden and Kamala were well aware that if they didn't shift on this, they'd lose the election. There are reports that campaign when getting issues from phone banks was instructed to hang up on people that raised Gaza as a problem.
It's not the voters problem that Trump won. It's the Biden and Kamala campaign who prioritized supporting a genocide to continue getting AIPAC funding and support over doing the right thing and the thing their voters were screaming at them to do.
People were watching Nazis go on a rampage and their government giving them billions to do that rampage. They did not vote believing there was no difference between the two parties. That was a glorious failure of the biden and kamala campaign. And something we know they knew because of a leak of an autopsy which democrats don't want to reveal because they still want AIPAC support today.
> Trump is a monster, he's evil, and he had a less evil position on Gaza than Biden did.
lol
Prove me wrong.
Biden had 2 years to address Gaza. What action did he take that was better than Trump's 1 year.
I point to the peace negotiations under Trump. Where is Biden's version of that?
The aid to Palestinians.
Trump is advocating for a takeover of Gaza and letting the Israelis go nuts in the West Bank.
Also lol at peace negotiations, do you think Trump ended 8 wars already as well despite violence still ongoing?
We’re in phase 2 of his “peace plan” which requires Hamas demilitarizing, which they say they won’t do, and fighting is still happening.
To paraphrase the office, he didn’t say peace he declared it.
> The aid to Palestinians.
You mean the aid they gave up on delivering? [1]
> Trump is advocating for a takeover of Gaza and letting the Israelis go nuts in the West Bank.
And Biden simply allowed Israel to do that. Trump is saying the quiet part out loud, but the plan has been the same. Words without actions are meaningless.
> Also lol at peace negotiations
Yeah, an actual action that happened almost immediately under trump. [2]
> do you think Trump ended 8 wars already as well despite violence still ongoing?
No, I already said that it was a somewhat meaningless peace negotiation, but one that is measurably more than what Biden accomplished in 2 years.
> We’re in phase 2 of his “peace plan” which requires Hamas demilitarizing, which they say they won’t do, and fighting is still happening.
They actually did agree to that. [3] There's not ongoing fighting, it's Israel murdering civilians. But because big news organizations have never cared about Israel's war crimes, it is very under-reported. Trump flagging peace was enough for them.
I don't like trump and I think this is a travesty. However, he has objectively done more. Biden did nothing for peace in Gaza. And it's not like Biden didn't have a lot of levers to pull. He simply refused to pull any of them because he full heartedly supported Israel's actions. I wish he didn't.
Trump at very least cares about the optics of Gaza which is the only reason he's put in the slightest amount of effort. Still genocidal, still supporting Israel, but also at least pushing them to make PR political moves. Which is more than Biden did.
[1] https://abcnews.com/Politics/bidens-floating-pier-off-gaza-w...
[2] https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/01/16/israel-hamas-ceasef...
[3] https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/palestinian-terri...
You should take up a day job in comedy
> I don't like trump and I think this is a travesty. However, he has objectively done more. Biden did nothing for peace in Gaza. And it's not like Biden didn't have a lot of levers to pull. He simply refused to pull any of them because he full heartedly supported Israel's actions. I wish he didn't.
Trump is advocating for Israel to go whole hog while Biden tried, and I agree failed, to rein them in but Biden is the one you classify as fully supporting their actions?
Also in your third source
> The source said that Hamas has already handed over arms and tunnel schematics “through a mechanism that has not yet been revealed.”
Totally happened bro just trust me
You’re also ignoring the air drops for aid, inb4 you yell that people died from the crowds of hungry people rushing in for some food.
If you think Trump is better for the Palestinians than Biden despite all evidence and stated goals, then I kinda just think you have a mental issue going on. good luck
In a nutshell, this is the problem with mainstream dems (and I include Newsom in this) looks an appearance matters a lot more than actual policy leadership.
The policies that actually affect people's lives, there's a lot of overlap for both mainstream dems and republicans.
I live in Idaho, and school teacher here are also extremely underpaid (My kid's teachers all have second jobs). Yet our state has magically found $40M to give away to private school while it's also asking the public schools to find 2% of their budgets to cut.
In I think both cases, the solution is simple, give the teachers a raise and probably raise taxes to pay for it. However, both parties are fairly anemic to the "raise taxes" portion of the message and so they instead look for other dumb flashy one time things they can do instead.
Federal democrats have relied way too heavily on Republicans being a villain and vague "hope and change" promises to carry them through an election cycle. They need to actually "change" things and not just maintain the status quo when they get power.
The Democrats are currently overwhelming favourites to win the House with a decent chance of also winning the Senate in the 2026 midterms and strong favourites to win the 2028 presidency.
I'm not sure why you think they are doomed.
Fox news is going to talk about trans people a lot is the thing. Journalists will turn up to press conferences about anything and ask about trans people. Any response at all will be all that appears on TV.
Last election cycle the "niche issues" people complain about were overwhelmingly talked about more by people saying they opposed them.
Controlling the narrative is very easy when you have a cowardly or bought media, and plan to traffic in rage and clickbait.
Trans is so last year. People have moved on.
It's interesting that in the UK the traditional two-party system is broken, because everyone realises that both of the traditional parties have been bought by rich folk and business interests, only serve their own interests, and can't be trusted any more. The main contenders now are Reform and The Greens, a situation that no-one predicted five years ago.
The same is true in Australia, though there's no charismatic left-wing leader emerging, and the Farage-equivalent is a laughing stock who struggles to be coherent at times. But because of billionaire money, she's still up there on the polls.
The US system makes it much harder for new parties to form, so it's probably going to be factions in the existing parties. And, of course, MAGA is the new faction in the Republican party; effectively a new party itself. So the ground is fertile for a new left-wing faction in the Democrat party to rise.
Yeah. They really are trying hard to lose.
What do you mean? You think any company should do whatever the government tells them?
Not at all. It's a depressing read because the US Government is doing such things that would have been considered insane before 2016.