Until there is.
We have thus far been supremely lucky that irrational actors have not acquired a nuclear bomb. But the reality is that throughout history most leaders have been irrational.
My country (America) is behaving increasingly irrationally. I've been hearing fringe conservatives calling for nuking the middle east since the early 2000s, but the rot has spread and became deeply religious.
Now I hear talk of the end times from the most powerful people in the country, actively building bunkers. Groups of Republicans openly talking about the US being allowed to take whatever we want from anyone we want through war (Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Canada).
Almost all of our leadership has been replaced in every branch of government. SCOTUS is clearly compromised and bought. The legislative may as well be dead. Almost all executive agencies have been purged, what remains have had their heads swapped with sycophants. Something like half of the military generals have been turned over. The DoD was renamed to the DoW with cheers, as an alcoholic prison guard was put in charge and has started touting hypermacho religious warrior catchphrases and openly advocating for war crimes.
The other day we testimony from judges before legislature who refused to say if Presidents can run for three terms or that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Under oath, just simply refused.
And that's before getting into how the President of the United States started a war to distract from his involvement in the highest profile sex trafficking ring in human history, and has continued to use his position to perform insider trading on oil prices repeatedly for weeks.
If you said any of this would be happening in 2005, I would have laughed at how "that would never happen in the US". And now it's just... reality. Like Russia. And it seems to have no end in sight. So what actually happens if Trump gets so deranged he hits the red button? And if not him, who will the loonies pick tomorrow - someone who actually believes in "the cause", who doesn't understand it's a grift?
And what are the external long term consequences of Trump's actions in countries like Iran and Venezuela and Ukraine? The US is not to be trusted anymore, every country has a clear signal to build their own nuclear arsenal ASAP. We have a river of blood behind us, so are we just expecting to get lucky that no one in Iran, for instance, who gets to a position of power leverages an irrational hate for the US and just... Does it in a religious or hate-driven Armageddon?
Incompetence is one thing, but the aspect of the current leadership that I (as a non-American) find most shocking is the corruption. That is, the use of state power to enrich an individual and his family members and to bend state institutions into tools for conducting petty personal vendettas. Pardons are sold for “investments” into private business owned by the president. Legal “settlements” agreed with organs of state under the direct control of the executive. Granting themselves perpetual immunity for tax evasion. The use of federal regulatory bodies to force private media companies to cancel comedians who hurt the president’s feelings.
The fact that these actions barely seem to register with the US public at large truly blows my mind. That over 35% of the population are completely fine with this stuff is frightening. The fact that none of the constitutional checks and balances are effective in preventing this abuse of office is alarming.
> That over 35% of the population are completely fine with this stuff is frightening
Most literally don't even know, because what little information filters down to them, is all radical right-wing propaganda from Fox or worse. The country has been drowning in it for decades.
The US is still fixable if young people will just fucking vote. Irreparable damage has been done, which means the old structures are gone, but they can be replaced with new ones -- a hypothetical Democratic president would need to clean house top to bottom. Obama's greatest flaw was that he didn't see the need to do that after Shrub.
While it would certainly help, you perhaps underestimate the numbers of young people who would vote in support of continued irreparable damage.
I don't fall in the ring category, but I will be voting Democrat for the first time. That's how bad this is getting for me. I have real reasons to hate the Democrats as a party, but I'm scared of them less than the modern Republicans .
>We have thus far been supremely lucky that irrational actors have not acquired a nuclear bomb.
Cough, cough. Who is currently in the White House?
Read the rest of my comment, I get there eventually.
Fair. And I agree with nearly everything in your comment.
One thing about tRump, is that he is more blatantly obvious about the "bully" side of America. He is not the first bully; just the first un-subtle American bully.
What I find disturbing is the others who enable him. I've long despised the Repugnant Party for their anti-worker ideology but under tRump 2.0 they've gone to a new low that I never thought possible. As much as I despise tRump, the other Repugnant members of congress (the odd rare exception) are absolutely disgraceful.
And then is there is the feckless Democrats...
I think there's probably a "in a long time" missing from unsubtle bully. American diplomacy was a lot less subtle in the past.
What I still struggle with is the huge percentage of people that support the behavior. Seeing what the Tate brothers did and seeing the sheer number of people who cheered on the crimes and exploitation they did was shocking. The fact that Epstein is just a minor talking point now. Did I miss when we became so evil? I actually know a kid who went down the red pill path following Tate -- he seemed like a good kid, but to do the things he has done is something that I can't imagine any person with any heart doing.
I fear I've lost so much faith in the goodwill of many people. At the same time, I know that so many people are good. But there numbers of truly bad people are much larger than I thought.
I remember looking around at the people in my friend and family circles who supported and defended the imprisonment of migrants at CECOT, often repeating the propaganda that they were terrorists and criminals, etc - and realizing chances are they'd do the same if it happened to me. Quite a surreal, scary feeling.