The General US Politics Thread

I didn't say their crisis was caused by their form of governance, just that if you want to hold out theirs as somehow better than ours, you have to totally ignore all of its disastrous failings over the past eight years.

I dispute the idea that we'd be run by a dictator if we faced their type of crisis; one of the reasons why the U.S. weathered the storm of 2008 so much better than Europe in the first place is that our federal system is designed to backstop the states when they run into fiscal crises. Greece, like Florida, had a huge real-estate driven crash and a resulting balance of payments catastrophe, but unlike Greece, Floridians can count on direct fiscal support from the federal government. They don't go bankrupt because people in New York pay for their welfare until they can get back on their feet. Can you imagine Germans doing that? Hah.

edited 6th May '16 6:48:27 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

"Moreover, do you seriously not see the problem with Libertarians and Evangelicals having to share a party, or, on the democratic side, actual communists and socialists having to share a party with neoliberals if they want to have any impact whatsoever on policy?"

The alternative is having various Single-Issue Wonk parties that are constantly jockeying to be the Kingmaker in a contested election, which leads to the instability of governing majorities, and because the lack of any sort of internal ideological check, radicalization. Honestly, I don't want a libertarian party or a socialist party or an evangelical party or a communist party with actual congressional delegations because these internal factions tend to be insane on their own, when they're forced to come up with independent agendas and policy aims.

Now, I'm not saying what, for example, is happening to the Republicans is good, but if, for example, Democrats split into many different parties depending on what flavor of left they are, the result would be catastrophic for American liberalism in general.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

@Fighteer: Presidential systems where you give an official executive power make it much easier for someone to gain effectively absolute power through manipulation of the system, that's a simple fact which is supported by mathematical analysis via game theory of how presidential vs parliamentary democracies function; that's in fact why Endrogen is trying to reform Turkey into a Presidential system. That doesn't mean dictatorship is inevitable, just that it's easier for a dictator to seize power in a system like ours versus parliamentary systems, and it's conversely easier for a parlimentary system to turn back from the point of no return; we might even be seeing that in Turkey to go back to that previous example, as Endrogen's party no longer has enough seats to form a majority government alongside Turkey's other major right wing party, which will force them into a coalition with one of the parties adamantly opposed to his apparent power grab.

edited 6th May '16 6:53:24 PM by CaptainCapsase

Tell that to Hungary. They have a parliamentary system, and they elected themselves a dictatorship. Methinks you read too much Robert A. Heinlein. Not that I don't like Heinlein; he's a fantastic author, but Revolt in 2100 is not a thing we're going to have to deal with in all probability.

edited 6th May '16 6:54:49 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

brb, looking at the list of logical fallacies to identify the one present here, but the general gist is that you're comparing apples to oranges; the economic situation is not even remotely comparable. If you want a better comparison, try one of the big three in the EU, France, Germany, and the UK; they've got their own issues with demagogues, but it's relatively under control in the UK and Germany. What's different about France? Oh yeah, it has a head of government/state with executive power.

Also, no, not Heinlen, Juan Linz, among other political scientists and sociologists who have criticized presidential democracies as being more prone to dictatorship than parliamentary democracy. I don't agree with Linz's conclusion that Presidential democracies are doomed to collapse, but I do definitely agree that they're more prone to becoming dictatorial/oligarchic.

edited 6th May '16 7:07:30 PM by CaptainCapsase

The United States just declared Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee for President. Nationalist anti-establishment sentiment is very much alive and well, even in the United States. It's really not looking very good for the First World right now between that and Europe's problems.

Wizard Needs Food Badly

It's not looking good for Democracy in General, Turkey's PM just got booted which means he will try to consolidate more power in himself. And if a middle income country like Turkey, where Democracy is supposed to be secured, falls, it will mean other countries like it, India and Brazil for example, could be vulnerable. Be very afraid my friends be very afraid.

edited 6th May '16 7:18:23 PM by JackOLantern1337

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

Brazil's democracy IS vulnerable. Not the thread to go into it right now, but much like in the US, unabashed neofascists are gaining a thoroughly uncomfortable amount of support.

Ah shit, hadn't heard about that, things were actually looking up in Turkey for a bit with their last election where it became clear Endrogen wouldn't be able to give himself executive power.

edited 6th May '16 7:21:07 PM by CaptainCapsase

I'd also like to point out that Linz's hypothesis for why Presidential democracies are less stable than parlimentary democracies is eerily prescient: because both the executive and legislative branches of government are elected by the people, a situation can arise where the executive branch is in a deadlock with the legislative branch, which a Presidential democracy has no adequate means of resolving, and which can easily become self-perpetuating, at which point, a crisis is inevitable.

Now, the checks and balances present in the system used by the United States has enabled it to avoid collapse at the slightest provocation, but under Linz's analysis, the checks and balances would only be successful at averting a crisis as long as political polarization remained fairly low. That's ceased to be the case, and it only looks like things are going to be getting worse in the future. For a rather unsettling comparison, the current political polarization hasn't been this bad since before and immediately after the civil war, which I'd say definitely qualifies as a crisis.

Edit: Sorry about the double post.

edited 6th May '16 7:40:28 PM by CaptainCapsase

Well he went and got himself a war to make things better for himself. Still though, to be fair, he didn't start it, why did the goddam PKK have to attack the Turks? Also Brazil is under threat. Shit this is really bad.

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

The West in general is dying.

iIt's not just the west that's headed towards a crisis; the coming century is going to truly test the durability of human civilization as we know it.

Mostly because of climate change.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Climate change, peak oil, the emergence of antibiotic resistance, and the massive economic shifts that automation will force to name four crises that are looming.

All but one of which directly make renewed armed conflict between great powers increasingly like going into the future.

I've said this before, but we are not only facing an existential threat to modern civilization, but to the survival of the human species in the coming centuries.

Natural Selection dictates that a species that is unable to adapt to changing conditions in its environment goes extinct. It is the height of anthrocentric arrogance to assume this does not apply just as much to our own species as it does any other.

edited 6th May '16 9:04:41 PM by CaptainCapsase

We should be thankful that nuclear weapons have kept us in check. Were it not for those, we'd probably be on our fourth if not FIFTH World War, by now.

New Survey coming this weekend!

And everything points to the incoming (if not already approved) replacement for the President in Brazil is likely to go Cameron-Osborne on the country (Austerity across the board, slash everything, and take the money and run). And austerity in a country already in riot/protest is probably going to be ugly, but that's probably for the Brazil thread.

(Politico) Did Donald Trump Just Hand the Senate to Elizabeth Warren?: Progressives are sad she didn’t run for president. But she’s playing a long game no one is talking about.

Warren is essentially the go-to for Democrats strapped for cash in their campaigns, which gives her ENORMOUS control of the conversation and who gets access to that money. So basically, if Clinton wins AND the Democrats take the Senate, Hillary's going to have to put on her progressive pants if she wants things from the Democrats in the Senate, as while Warren might not be de facto leader of the Senate Democrats, she essentially can control what the Democrats do, or find themselves screwed election time.

Sanders with Maddow: His beef with the Super Delegates isn't that they exist, but he feels they should be an impartial body that contains supporters neither from his camp nor Hillary's, and by Hillary doing so, she's corroding the party's image of legitimacy.

Once again the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission has brought charges against Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore. Chief Justice Moore is being charged with violating judicial ethics in regards to same sex marriage by instructing Alabama probate judges to ignore both a Federal Court ruling and the Supreme Court rulings legalizing same sex marriages. He will be suspended with pay until his case is resolved before the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. - Douglas Adams

The billions who would have died in industrialized wars without the atom bomb would pale in comparison to the trillions who would never be born were it to be used in anger.

edited 6th May '16 9:30:24 PM by CaptainCapsase

Before you start painting your sandwich boards of doom, I think you should know I pretty much was convinced the world would end by 1999 —and, not because of the Y2k bug.

I was sure the Cold War would turn hot, that the decreasing ozone layer would give everybody cancer, that Yellowstone was going to blow, that AIDS would decimate the population... And, so on and so forth.

26 or 27 years later, and my doomity gloomity surety has rather taken a few knocks. :/ Sure, problems loom. They kind of always do. Remember when the Black Death and the fall of Byzantium were signs of the coming apocalypse? Or, how about the crumbling disaster of the Western Roman Empire? About that doomful Mongol horde of devastation...? Or, the Ice Ages? Heck, the disappearance of the rainforests must have caused the few australophiths who could process that the changes were happening a few sleepless nights...

edited 6th May '16 9:50:40 PM by Euodiachloris

And everyone knows it, which is why they won't be used. Best of both worlds: the threat of them keeps smaller conflicts from escalating for fear they'll actually be used, because no one is actually stupid enough to want them used.

Regarding the thing about the US soldier who was killed in Syria: there's an important distinction between "being in combat" and "being in a combat mission". Being in combat just means you're fighting someone. It happens. Being on a combat mission means you're there in order to engage in combat. The US mission there is not a combat mission (they're not supposed to be fighting the enemy directly, they're supposed to be training and advising other people on the best way to combat the enemy), but that doesn't mean they won't end up in combat if things go pear-shaped. The fact that a soldier was killed in action is unfortunate, but does not suddenly make it a combat mission.

edited 6th May '16 9:46:33 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

We were at several points in time quite literally one person's judgment call away from that eventuality due to instrumentation errors.

That's a false dichotomy and you know it; humankind has only had the capacity to self-destruct in such a manner for a tiny fraction of our existence as a civilization.

edited 6th May '16 10:01:31 PM by CaptainCapsase

You know it makes sense that Sanders is running for President while Warren continues her work in the Senate. Bernie Sanders is getting on in years and will likely retire sooner rather than later, but what he can do is serve as a more visible symbol for the Progressive movement in America and bring those issues to the national stage. Meanwhile, Warren's work in the Senate will sow the seeds and bring in more Progressive Democrats if only to have access to Warren's fundraising apparatus.

Wizard Needs Food Badly

And it didn't happen, because no one is that stupid. Even when the "rational" thing to do was turn the key, it didn't happen, because everyone knew how horrible it would be.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Actually the rational thing to do wasn't to turn the key because there was reason to believe instrumentation error was possible in the particular scenario I'm describing.

My whole point was that nuclear deterrence is a uncertain blessing. Also, reverse slippery slope fallacy; just because we haven't destroyed ourselves yet, doesn't mean we won't, nor does that necessarily make having the capacity to self destruct at any time available in the event of a severe misunderstanding particularly comforting.

edited 6th May '16 10:05:35 PM by CaptainCapsase

Yes but it wasn't the rational thing because they knew that nobody would be that stupid, not only is nobody stupid enough to start a nuclear war nobody seems to be stupid enough to think that someone else has started a nuclear war.

There's a reason that a lot of militaries have opted for second strike, the guys who launch that stuff know that a nuclear war happened.

Oh and as for the US and breaking up the big parties, you don't have to move to a parliamentary non-FPTP system to do that, no obviously you can't break the big blocks when it comes to the presidency but you should be able to get smaller parties in congress and/or the senate, I wonder if part of why you don't is the primary culture. People don't form their own parties because it's very easy to fold into the democrats of republicans. In other countries all votes are a closed primary, you also tend to have to pay to be a member of a party and can be suspended/expelled if the party executive don't like you/what you represent.

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran