I understand that a sizeable number of users are exhausted by this administration, and if what floats your boat (or merely gets you through your day) is to ignore all coverage of the Antichrist, I cannot stop you. To some, this thread may be redundant because nearly every news item turns into a full-blooded discussion in the comments. But I wanted to have a thread independent of any particular development and more to serve as a snapshot of people's thoughts, a pulse check.
It's been about six weeks since Trump has taken office. What's different now that he's president? What will stay different? What will stay the same?
Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.
Frankly? I'm surprised at how poorly it's gone. Trump isn't a great businessman but he's not an abysmal one and he's a semi-talented showman. I would have expected that a semi-talented manager, when faced with a Herculean labor like "learn to be President", would at the very least have gathered some clever people around him.
But it appears that he doesn't even have the basis of knowledge to discern who the clever people are. Sycophants are fine if all you want is adulation but if you want respect beyond the first degree, your sycophants have to be charismatic and knowledgeable, too. It's got to be driving the GOP crazy that they've got the House, the Senate and the Presidency and it's all been derailed by the 24-7 circus sideshow. Not to say that a foreign government co-opting our electoral process is merely a sideshow but you'd think they'd get a thing or two done, aside from blowing up the already-dead TPP and jump-starting the Charter-TW merger.
Read an articlet today talking about the Rachel Maddow show and how their ratings are up 200% or some shit. They credited their success with steadfastly ignoring Trump's Twitter feed. From their perspective, what the administration says is largely irrelevant because none of them have any credibility. What matters is what they do and so far, what they do is "botch things."
I'm sure that one, two or six months from now I'll look back on this and wish for those halcyon days when the Trump administration was busily shooting itself in the foot on full auto but I'm not at all sure they'll ever get competent. I now worry about what the Trump administration will accomplish despite itself, rather than what the Republicans will do with no real checks on their power.
- “This is a somewhat stunning, in so far as the president of the United States doesn’t need to get his information about classified activity from Breitbart,” says Cato Institute fellow Julian Sanchez.
And that's kind of where we've ended up - of course the President is getting his information from Breitbart because we all know he's completely disinterested in the actual levers of power. John Oliver made the point that the country lost its shit when Dan Quayle misspelled "potato." Trump took three whacks at "hereby" and then managed to misspell "tap." But we were too busy speculating that he'd just inadvertently decliassified his own FISA warrant.
- Take Nixon in the deepest days of his Watergate paranoia, subtract 50 IQ points, add Twitter, and you have Trump today.
Terra incognita, man. I'm confident the country and the government will recover and function but I do not know how this show's gonna go.
So here are some things I like about Trump.
He is not selectively enforcing the immigration laws. I think that was a very dangerous precedent that President Obama set by 'prioritizing enforcement.' But I'm a Libertarian. We're supposed to be all about free trade and open borders right? Yep. That's why I like this enforcement. It showcases how ridiculous our immigration laws are. We're trying to 'stem the tide of immigrants' that is actually a net negative since 2009.
He's going to enforce marijuana laws. Which is going to force the federal repeal of those laws or the election of people who will in two years. Republicans are going to start seeing that as a liability against Democrats really soon and are going to all of a sudden remember that they're supposed to be about states rights and freedom and bullshit like that.
He's going to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I'm not silver-lining this one. The ACA is a terrible solution to a real problem. The Affordable Care Act is a terrible compromise bill. It makes no damn sense. You literally force everyone to buy insurance from the companies that helped craft the bill, and then you brag about coverage numbers? Yeah dude, you made it illegal not to buy it, you're going to get people buying it.
But most of all, Trump is now holding the keys to the grossly expanded power of the executive branch after years and years of unbridled expansion at the hands of anti-terrorist Patriot Act fuckers like Bush and Obama.
Remember PRISM, and the metadata programs? They're still going on, and now Trump has the keys. As are a ton of other programs that you've never heard of. And he's going to use them in crazy Nixon esque ways. And I hope he does because then people will get royally pissed off a shut them down.
The glory of Trump is that he's going to use all the power that everyone gave him and then we'll be reminded of how stupid it is to give the president that much power. And as for the constitution being inadequate and ossified, that's because we've stripped it of so much power. Who can declare war? Constitutionally: Congress. Now? The President and I'm not just talking about the War Powers and Police Actions. I'm talking about the blanket power that Bush got when we decided that we can declare war on terrorism. So now Trump can just declare some group terrorist and he can declare war on them as a part of the GWOT without congressional input. Good job, check and balances!
This shit is going to get crazy. Old Man Coyote is going to make it rain.
- Remember PRISM, and the metadata programs? They're still going on, and now Trump has the keys. As are a ton of other programs that you've never heard of. And he's going to use them in crazy Nixon esque ways. And I hope he does because then people will get royally pissed off a shut them down.
Thunderous applause.
I'm going to start crafting a list of positives from this shitshow. It probably won't be long, but it will be interesting.
I heard an interview between Ezra Klein and Kara Swisher in which the latter likened Trump's ascendency to the "creatively destructive" forces epitomized by Silicon Valley but now being wrought on government. To continue that line of thought: The constitutional framework and the country it scaffolds would probably be unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers. Yet we've kept the constitution around, in one form or another. Trump is stress-testing the limits of that system.
What if the system doesn't serve us anymore? Not because the new administration is tyrannical or despotic, but because it's ossified and unresponsive. And the methods by which we could streamline decision-making or make the system more democratic--measures to discourage gerrymandering, campaign finance rules, etc.--require inordinately difficult coordination, namely constitutional amendments.
(Natural brakes on the system are a feature, not a bug. It should be hard to pass a law, and especially amend the constitution. But I can acknowledge that design principle and still think that constitution fails in significant ways.)
Paul Gilding recently highlighted several silver linings to a Trump administration, namely that trickle-down economics and capitalism will be exposed even sooner for the incomplete and insufficient systems that they are to face the demands of the future. The business class and corporatists are in the driver's seat, so they will suffer the blame when Shit Hits The Fan. (This seems a bit like wishful thinking. Haven't we already, countlessly, put to rest trickle-down economics? Yet here we are again). Also, Trump has galvanized an enormous segment of the population. It's too soon to tell if this will result in any electoral or policy changes, but he has a point.
I'm not a fan of this New Nihilism where concerned liberals determine that the whole damn system is broken if we can elect a clown and as big a fan of Paul Gilding as I am, he's got a Hugo Drax view of the world; there's a short li'l chapter in The Great Disruption where the world gets better and lots of problems are solved because countless millions die. He's sympathetic and he sees it as regrettable but also inevitable. That sort of eschatological viewpoint can be limiting. It's like the preppers - when you've got a basement full of guns and tuna, every crisis is "TEOTWAWKI."
I would like to think that I take a principled semi-nihilistic view of our representative government, as opposed to a knee-jerk emotional response (see "I have not forgiven the DNC" for the tone I distinguish myself from).
That said, I do think that the fact our system allowed a clown to the highest office in the land is a point for nihilism. At the very least, it means a large part of our electorate is politically illiterate and prey for demagoguery of the ugliest, stupidest kind.
- That said, I do think that the fact our system allowed a clown to the highest office in the land is a point for nihilism.
I agree with you there. However, the fact that progressives turned protesting into the new brunch is a point against. It's easy to forget that the Trumpkins are numerically inferior by any measure and that the establishment apparatus is no less establishment just because they've been left out in the cold.
- But the courts have generally held that new administrations need to justify such reversals. The Reagan administration tried to rescind a rule requiring airbags in passenger vehicles. The courts found the move unjustified.
“It is not a relevant or adequate defense to say that the president told us to do it,” said Michael Eric Herz, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.
The Trump administration could face a host of similar challenges — the requirement that agencies must find two regulations to eliminate before enacting any new rules is already being challenged in federal court.
In addition, Democratic attorneys general from New York, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Oregon and Vermont have threatened in recent days to sue the Trump administration to try to block some of the regulatory rollbacks.
It is a radical role reversal for state attorneys general — their Republican colleagues spent the last eight years suing the federal government to block the enactment of many Obama-era rules. Now the Democrats are planning to try to prevent many of these same rules from being revoked.
“Demolish the administrative state? I don’t even know what that means,” Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts said during a visit to Washington last week, where she and other state attorneys general met with Mr. Trump at the White House.
Leashes Come Off Wall Street, Gun Sellers, Polluters and More
It's fairly obvious to state that this isn't politics as usual. It's still definitely politics, though.
- the fact that progressives turned protesting into the new brunch is a point against.
Oh, jesus, that's hilarious. Sad, but cuts for a reason.
- It's fairly obvious to state that this isn't politics as usual. It's still definitely politics, though.
It looks and smells like the same ballpark as politics. But when does it pass a tipping point into constitutional crisis, or worse? That's not a rhetorical question, even if it's unanswerable. It may be the case that the tipping point is self-evident when it comes, but I've had to cop new strategies for dealing with circus that the administration is and constantly second-guessing how soon society will grind to a halt. (The cracked article with 5 strategies helps--remember that outrage is now a currency exchanged on most of the internet, so don't get played.)
Part of the impetus of this discussion was me finding out how other people are dealing with this on a daily basis. The best I've come to find is a selective news diet, meditation, and homework.
The 2000 election was a constitutional crisis. It sucked. The outcome was sub-par. But we survived.
I think I'm less shell-shocked than most of my friends because my understanding of governance is one of custom, not of rules. Yeah, rules are nice and rules are the ultimate arbiter but if you're politicking and run afoul of "rules" you done fucked up a lonnnnnnng time ago.
Government is a collection of people who argue about shit in order to determine the best path forward. It's currently headed by a man who doesn't even really want to enter into discussion. If you are a firm believer in rules, this is bad for the government. If you believe more in custom, this is bad for the head.
Young'uns forget that when Reagan was shot, Al Haig sort of inadvertently declared himself de-facto President.
It was interesting for about a week. Thing is, it takes a lot of decisions to make a government and most of them never make it to the President.
I don't see our system as particularly ossified and unresponsive. I see our populous as particularly anxious and afraid. The middle class is diminishing, as is the ability for the uneducated to make a decent wage. For these reasons, there is much discontent, and the blame has fallen upon the system.
Much bureaucracy needs to be destroyed, but that is going to happen without Trump trying to rebuild his version of 1950. Silicon Valley is a byproduct of the computer and the internet. There exists a culture that has built up around the replacement of old technology with these new ones, and the creation of new economic models. It's a mistake to think the culture is the seed of what makes Silicon Valley what it is. Our politics are going to change, because our technology has changed our economics. In our anxious impatience, Trump might seem like one way to precipitate that revolution. Unfortunately, his thinking is mostly regressive, and his power base definitely has a regressive agenda.
Trump's politics aren't what worries me. His lack of character, his anti-intellectualism, his racism and misogyny, and his reactive nature worry me the most. Progress has been derailed for centuries in the past. He's more vociferously attacking the independence of the press and the electoral process as he is red tape.
I don't view the "creative destruction" that Trump is wreaking as being the bureaucracies he's eliminating or the regulations he's dismantling. I mean more that he's violating the faith we place in our institutions as they exist today to fairly produce goods for society. Also, creative destruction has positive connotations, and I'm not endorsing or liking what he's doing (or undoing I should probably say).
- I don't see our system as particularly ossified and unresponsive.
This falls along a spectrum, but the fact the primary races are tantamount to victories in a large number of districts due to gerrymandering, and this number just keeps growing, means the system isn't moving towards a coalition that can get anything done. It's a solidification of business interests first and foremost.
- I see our populous as particularly anxious and afraid.
Agreed. What hope does collective action have against highly energized and motivated special interest?
If you unpack your complaints, it all comes down to gerrymandering and the noncompetitive nature of representation.
I suspect that will change. The whole argument for the electoral college was to prevent people like Trump from being elected. QED the electoral college is obsolete. Trump may be Republican but he sure ain't establishment; the Gray Men of Government are more likely to defend the parts of the system that work against the virus than they are to let populism destabilize their process.
But I haven't the foggiest how that's going to shake out.
- Agreed. What hope does collective action have against highly energized and motivated special interest?
Collective action can easily win. It can crush special interests overnight. It's just important that we fight for proper representation and good governance, not for political ideologies. That has been the disaster unfolding these last twenty years. These people that anger us so much are public servants, but we have allowed them to become ideological leaders that have little responsibility beyond fighting the opposition.
Trump is little more than a hand grenade.
Well let's hope he can keep perspective when faced with criticisms from foreign leaders, or the courts, or civil rights institutions. He's the most powerful leader on the face of the planet, he owes it to every one to act with some degree of dignity and reserve. The most powerful man on earth is really doesn't need to be a vengeful prick, it's something beyond white or rich privilege to pretend that he's being persecuted by scrutiny
Trump has been back and forth from bankruptcy, built major companies, major structures, runs a major enterprise, conducted a SUCCESSFUL major campaign AGAINST the establishment (who the media was in the corner for, undeniably). But you doubt his ability to conduct himself for the successful interests of the United States?
The public voted against decorum and dignity in 2016, Trump won, now he's acting like it, going about business the way he knows how.
"I think enough intellectuals are hellbent on destroying this man's power that we can expect it to vanish in the near future."
that's a nonsense proposition, if it was true trump never would have won, so I told him to be quite.
I wrote :) to show that I am just the type of optimist you suggested
I think enough intellectuals are hellbent on destroying this man's power that we can expect it to vanish in the near future.
Well, we have someone serving in the highest office of public service, who has no understanding of the concept of "service".
He belittles the military, the security services, the police, the secret service, all non-profits, and anyone that has ever helped anyone else.
He is, at his core, 4 years old. Anything he can grab is MINE! MINE! MINE! and if you didn't grab it first, well fuck you.
And he has enabled and empowered an army of moron child-men who feel the same way.
My biggest concern is that, no matter how corrupt or money-grubbing or faithless they were, politicians largely understood that they were public servants. Their role was to serve the greater good. Now in this "new normal", it's OK for anyone to just grab the wheel of the bus and jerk it to left and right and see what happens.
Problem is they have removed all the safety belts and brakes, and a lot of people are going to get actually hurt. Physically.
And that's a bummer.
- My biggest concern is that, no matter how corrupt or money-grubbing or faithless they were, politicians largely understood that they were public servants.
Perhaps more generally, successful politicians understand that their fate depends on determining, shaping and serving the consensus view. Long-term, short-term, whatever, a politician has to serve the opinion of the majority of those who elected him and we got Trump because he found a voiceless contingent willing to support him.
That he has no clue how to further serve them only matters if he wants re-election. Which is a bummer for all of us: the GOP caucus didn't want him either so now here we are.