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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Julep: Obama, for one. You know how the right claims Obama has been dangerously overstepping the bounds of executive authority? That's completely true if you go by historical precedents. The same thing was said of Bush by democrats, and you know what? It was also true.
At some point during the post 9/11 era, the American political system started unraveling. I hope this dysfunction will reverse itself, but I see no signs of it stopping, and if it doesn't the political system of America by 2050 will probably more resemble that of Russia than America as we know it.
edited 8th Oct '16 8:33:17 AM by CaptainCapsase
From what I understand, Obama spent a lot of time during his mandates with a hostile senate, meaning that a lack of "authority" was akin to "sitting in his chair and play darts in the Oval Office".
And for all I know the GOP claims that nominating a Chief Justice in the last year of a mandate is "overstepping his authority", while history clearly proves it's wrong and they were just being obstructive.
edited 8th Oct '16 8:35:45 AM by Julep
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Krieger and I both posted about it on this page, so feel free to click either link (NY Times or the speech emails themselves).
I think that's at least a little unfair - I see it far more as his daring to be President without an (R) next to his name. The Republican mindset, on the National scene, has increasingly become "Only we can run the government right, and we'll prove it by sabotaging the process at every turn if we don't have the Presidency!"
edited 8th Oct '16 8:38:45 AM by ironballs16
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"@Capsace: Like with many such things, claiming that "authoritarianism is bad" without giving any context or justification is a semantically null statement. Anyway, Obama is not authoritarian in the classic definition. He is statist, meaning that he sees strong government as essential to solving problems and managing society. Authoritarian would imply that he suspends democracy or suborns our system of checks and balances to get his way, and that's completely false. In the balance of power intended by the Founders, the idea that the executive branch could act when Congress sat on its hands was part of the deal. The President's ability to do stuff is one of the checks on legislative power.
edited 8th Oct '16 8:40:58 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
It's not a check on power (the presidency accumulating power when congress is in conflict with the executive branch), it's the most clear path to a dictatorship in America's political system; continued, untenable conflicts between the legislative and executive branch result in the presidency gradually accumulating virtually all power, and the courts and congress being reduced to rubber stamping departments, not unlike how such institutions more or less exist to rubber stamp Putin's decrees in modern Russia.
edited 8th Oct '16 8:45:30 AM by CaptainCapsase
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The brutal irony is that many of those that oppose gay marriage do so based on the Slippery Slope Fallacy of it leading to relaxed attitudes towards bestiality, pedophilia, and... polygamy.
And, naturally, Hannity's also callously ignoring the whole "I can do it because I'm famous" bit from Trump, which means that the attention isn't exactly mutual.
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
If you'd like an easily digestable source on fears about American democracy being in a dangerous position, try this
. For some scholarly/semi-scholarly sources, there's Sheldon S. Wolin's "Democracy Incorporated:
Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism" which addresses some of the problems with how modern American democracy is conducted.
Then there's The Danger of Deconsolidation
which more generally addresses a growing sense that western democracy may be unraveling.The takeaway; younger generations, while quite left leaning, are also increasingly disillusioned with the democratic process, and those that aren't tend to hold fairly authoritarian viewpoints.
As far as Obama goes, well that article provides one example; his executive orders on immigration; deportation by executive order is not something that has a precedent in recent memory. Then there's some executive orders on gun control that sound a lot like legislation passed unilaterally by the executive branch.
edited 8th Oct '16 8:57:19 AM by CaptainCapsase
One example?
Still, reading the story:
- ""aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government — but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."" - it would have been nice to explain whose fault it was that it broke down, because Pinochet did not appear out of thin air thanks to the will of the Chilean people.
- "Latin-American countries have experienced many episodes of democratic breakdown," - seriously, the writer assumes that those democracies spontaneously ended? I mean, there is being naive, and there is this. You can't call political systems that were victims of coup helped by foreign interests being "prone to crisis", unless you are, again, supremely cynical or naive.
- "In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved." Sure, ask Spain or Belgium about that.
- "But within a presidential system, gridlock leads to a constitutional trainwreck with no resolution. The United States's recent government shutdowns and executive action on immigration are small examples of the kind of dynamic that's led to coups and putsches abroad." - Oh please, he blame authoritarian decisions on the putsches in Latin America? Geez.
- "The uniquely diffuse character of American political parties " - "diffuse" means "dispersed", right? Are we talking about the same system with only two parties who ever got in power? And a system where you need an alien like Trump to start seeing cracks in the party's unity? It's quite Americano-centrist to claim that the American political system is "uniquely diffuse" - I'm sure a British, German, Greek or Italian troper could give you many examples of "diffuse" parliaments that are no less impressive than the US'. I know that I can at least do that for France.
- "The Honduras scenario" - ...really? Using Honduras as a reference on Presidential democracies?
Well, this whole article is about the Senate - any Senate - behaving like a bunch of cunts, and claiming that it somehow means that the end of the system is near. The fact that the biggest victim of Senate cuntism was the first black president is probably coincidental, just like the fact that the current Republican nominee is a racist cheeto.
There is nothing in that even remotely looking authoritarian. France's 48-3 is miles ahead of anything Obama ever did, for a start.
edited 8th Oct '16 9:08:34 AM by Julep
I just provided a second, see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/us/politics/obama-says-he-will-act-on-gun-control-in-coming-days.html
I can keep going, and can find matching examples for Bush if you care. Plus a similar though much more extreme pattern in the lead up to the American civil war, which is the last time American politics were as hyper-polarized as they are today. It should be noted that this isn't a criticism of Obama as a president so much as it is a criticism of the American political system. It's long been known that executive power increases in response to gridlock. My position is that this ad-hoc check on the legislature is no substitute for a proper constitutional deadlock resolution mechanism as is found in parliamentary democracies.
I would also recommend the scholarly sources. I posted the vox article because it's something easily accessible and digestible, not because it makes a compelling argument.
edited 8th Oct '16 9:10:18 AM by CaptainCapsase
I'm not advocating for that; I'm in favor of this sort of gun control, but doing it via executive order is questionable at best.
@Angelus: it's more centrist authoritarian than left given where the overton window is in America, but the issue remains; the current political polarization and deadlocking is dangerous to democracy.
edited 8th Oct '16 9:14:27 AM by CaptainCapsase
Obama didn't change the US constitution to give the executive branch under his power more agency or power than it has or approved measures undermining the Legislative and the Judiciary systems in the US.
If Obama wanted to be authoritarian it would involve him overreaching his power, passing motions that neither the Legislative or the Judiciary couldn't shoot down and centralizing the power structure of the US Government in the Pot US position.
Obama didn't do any of those things.
Inter arma enim silent legesI am so confused. We've known Trump had sexually molested women for a while now, but GOP was easily able to slip that under the rug. Why is it such a big deal now? And why is this the thing that crosses the line? Trump should have crossed the line a year and a half ago , but he somehow didn't. Why now ??
x5 ...and responsible at worst? If anything, the gun control issue raises the problem of the influence of lobbies on legislative and executive power, I have a hard time seeing Obama who repeatedly made post-shooting speeches essentially saying "Yeah, I know, but I can't do anything because what I will propose won't pass" as a sign that the US Presidential system is unraveling due to excessive authoritarianism.
Hell, Obama got out-veto'ed last week. That doesn't scream "authoritarian" to me.
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Impossibility to deny, and vulgarity, and advocating extramarital sex, all wrapped together.
edited 8th Oct '16 9:17:10 AM by Julep
Once again I must emphasize that I'm not saying the left is currently authoritarian in America, or that Obama is an authoritarian president. I'm arguing we are moving in that direction. Now before anyone says it, I'll add that how other countries' democracies work isn't necessary going to be a good example of how such things would work in America, any less than it would be for a third country.
A political system's success is contingent on its participants adhering to certain mutually agreed upon standards of procedure. Deviating from that, even in ways that have been done elsewhere in the world, is something that should be avoided whenever possible.
edited 8th Oct '16 9:24:22 AM by CaptainCapsase

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Outside the South American continent, the Left isn't that authoritarian. Not to mention the US really lacks a left on the proper socialist molds, instead of the center right that passes for left in the US.
Inter arma enim silent leges