American Politics Discussion Thread

[Tarkeel]

Separately I know about 23/24 hours on Fox they go "BUT HUNTER". He is 100% guilty of some tax fraud and the gun charge (although if he had been the presidents son there is some good comparison that he wouldn't have been charged for the gun charge).

First off: Yes he was guilty of some tax stuff (fraud isn't the right word), but it's not customary for the IRS to prosecute when you've paid back-tax and fines on it. For the federal gun charge, these circumstances are very rarely charged, and might not even be constitutional. Regardless it should be covered by the diversion agreement (and thus unchargeable). For the plea deal that wasn't, I refer to Popehat, but it seems like Weiss tried to renege on what was offered in the plea.

If you look closet at the life of the "laptop", you find traces that his identity was being stolen during this time.

(In general I highly recommend Emptywheel for good analysis of the ongoing cases.

[Cyneheard]

If this really was a democracy, surely people would get to vote on issues?

So people get stuck on the differences between a direct democracy vs a representational democracy. The US is a representational democracy. Don't get me wrong there is a lot wrong with our representative democracy, but I will argue tooth and nail it is better than an autocracy (and have done so).

Picking some nits here. While the US is a democracy in practice, it very explicitly is not formally so due to how the electoral college is structured. No, not the part where not every vote counts equally, but that the electors are not bound. The president is thusly formally appointed (by mostly elites) and not elected from the people.

(I'm not going into the issues with FPTP other than to say it doesn't exactly result in representative representation.)

I'd also recommend reading OSCE's election reports, it's probably the best third-party review of the process.

Your argument would also very clearly say a Westminster-style democracy isn't one because the PM is also chosen by elected officials (or theoretically by the Monarch, but that's only really relevant if, say, a UK PM tried to pull a Trump and stay in office past their mandate) - and arguably ANY system where a coalition government forms after an election, because it's the elites making the decision. That's a nonsense formal standard to hold.

[Tarkeel]

Your argument would also very clearly say a Westminster-style democracy isn't one because the PM is also chosen by elected officials (or theoretically by the Monarch, but that's only really relevant if, say, a UK PM tried to pull a Trump and stay in office past their mandate) - and arguably ANY system where a coalition government forms after an election, because it's the elites making the decision. That's a nonsense formal standard to hold.

Apologies, that was not what I intended to convey by adding in elites there. My own country is regularly governed by a coalition. Lately it's even been common to have minority coalitions ruling, with some form of support from non-ruling parties.

I have no problems with a system where the votes are vested in representatives that then pick their leader. My opposition is that the US system is explicitly designed the way it is to suppress the will of the people if the wrong kind of person won the vote. Ie, it was designed to stop someone like Trump from winning, but then didn't perform as intended.

Edit: What we do have here is a problem of people switching their party allegieance after the election, which has become too common, but fortunately only on the local level (so far). That is a real problem IMHO.

[Mjmd]

I mean I've freely admitted our democracy has problems and could be better definitely including getting rid of the electoral college. It was part of that original quote.

I do think the UK and US show the advantages and opportunities of democracy over time though. 1 civil war in a combined some 550 years. Both moved from only allowing votes to landed men to a better represented voting base (again there is some work to go specifically with things like electoral college and voter suppression). Its not like these things don't take work and aren't hard, but they are possible.

[greenline]

You can see how the rhetoric around the word democracy confuses things.

The US government was designed with the intention of not being a democracy in several ways. The electoral college meant an additional layer of deliberation between raw votes and the outcome, as well as the division of legislature between the house and the senate. But even if the electoral college was removed, there would still be nothing like direct democracy, with citizens directly voting on bills to be passed. At best, they can pick a representative and hope - the electoral college has a minute effect on the outcome that representational democracy offers.

The constitution of the US was designed this way with specific outcomes in mind: to ensure a limited government, separation of powers, and the protection of individual rights. The first two practices have long since been lost, but the third still stands, for now, albeit with erosion. I do not think it will last past the next presidential election.

One can hope the US government stands forever as it currently is, because any sort of instability or civil war would be worse. Civil war and instability are pretty bloody things. But a sclerotic government can also massacre and tyrannize its citizens, and the current one is now staffed with too many bureaucrats who openly fantasize about doing so. Nothing lasts forever, and all empires eventually turn to cannibalism.

[Mjmd]

Ya we should probably try to prevent the slide of our country as we've discussed previously. We should continue to work on bettering after that. Its a slow intensive process, but it can be done. The constitution was a flawed document and the electoral college is the legacy of one of the obvious flaws (IE slavery) and it like 3rd down my wish list of improvements.

[greenline]

You keep saying "we should improve things". What are your solutions like?

The US shares power of the government between the actual representatives and a large body of multinational corporate conglomerates, a large complex of shadowy NGOs, an ever growing pensioned bureaucracy, and exclaves of foreign nationals who like to sneer at the locals. What would eliminating the electoral college do in this case beyond making it easier for the progressive wing of the administrative-security state to win elections, when these elections do not significantly change people's lives?

Immigration depresses wages, for both the hated white man and minorities alike. If you gave every American a direct vote on whether to reduce immigration or not, the likely outcome would be a strong pass in favor of reducing immigration. Will this ever happen?

You spent a lot of energy into trying to tell people here of the earnest and imminent danger of the Republican party, the side of representatives that controls a small fraction of the capital and wealth of this country, commands the loyalty of a minority of its elite class and almost none of its academics. Nor does it hold the loyalty of any significant paramilitary forces, who tend to be wholly in the grip of the FBI before anyone else. What would be solved by the imprisoning of Trump and the forcible return of America to 'normal politics'? The likely result of that would be a faster decline in civil liberties and a steady continuation of the economic decline seen since the start of COVID. Certainly, it would embolden the left-wing radicals who have ideas like an anti racist amendment to the constitution, and putting onerous carbon taxes in place on the individual. Or are all those things actually Good Ideas, regardless of whether they impoverish the nation and make the state totalitarian.

Not that I think such trends can ultimately be stopped. I'm making my peace with the death of America and the West. But it's terribly tiresome to go looking for little safe havens and then hear the propaganda mill still going strong, straight out of people's mouths.

[Mjmd]

Ah there it is. Death to democracy to save the nation!

Should the non landed citizens of our early country have risen up to overthrow the political elites? Should Andrew Jackson have launched a civil war when the political elite denied him the presidency? In the last gilded age when the powerful were violently oppression their workers should the nation have risen up in revolution! Should minorities have skipped the whole peaceful protest part of the civil rights movement and violently resisted! There were those who thought so. The strength of democracy is we CAN make change. It takes work. The problem is some people are drawn to the easy or despair. You may think the challenges we face today are insurmountable. That some autocrat would be better to fix it all. This is flawed logic. A) there are plenty of examples of democracies being able to fix their problems democratically. B) there are plenty of examples of autocrats where the power sharing only gets less and less and the corruption only grows more and more.

I will skip some of the interesting, false, and misleading meandering and say YES I want to return to normal politics. I want to return to not having to worry about our democracy every election. I want to return to voting for Donald Duck in cases where there aren't good candidates.

My wife also sometimes despairs at the state of our democracy. Something I point out time and time again, is that many people fight for democracy. They fight not knowing the final form it will take. They fight not knowing if it will succeed. They fight and die for it. Should we give it up because of despair over historically lesser problems than we've faced in the past?

What is my solution? We work. We protest. We organize. We work to dispel lies and fallacies. We write letters to our representatives. We call. We vote. Its slow. It isn't easy. Democracies are messy, but we've done it before, we can do it again.

[greenline]

Where did I ask you to revolt, or even vote for an autocrat? I asked you to give solutions that would improve the lives of Americans.

The only concrete benefit of returning to 'normal politics' you gave me was that you would feel less anxious about democracy being under threat. Many of your class and background share that anxiety. But they live pretty comfortable lives, so long as they are insulated from everyone else's problems. Forgive me for not holding such anxieties in high consideration.

Everything else is a nebulous appeal to 'progress' and 'change', even though anyone with eyes can tell that has been moving in a consistently negative direction for the past few decades.

[Mjmd]

I mean you seem to be fine voting for Trump and you stated you were fine with the death of America.......

Campaign finance is an obvious start. That is my #1 wish. #2 is ranked choice voting.

Why those two? Basically because it forces our representatives to be more responsive to the needs of the people. IE give more power to the voters.

So on issues like rising deficits hopefully the billionaires have less say in giving them tax cuts. Hopefully that cuts out some of the lobbying for the defense department and healthcare. Hopefully we get that 1900s push against monopolies. Democrats vaguely do stuff here, but its not the the extent I think most people want. Hopefully we don't allow children to be starve. Hopefully it helps keep the world from burning.