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> By which, you surely mean, the next six. I think we have a very good chance of un-electing him. He's alienated all but his most dedicated core base, and ther

by _bxg1 8y ago

> By which, you surely mean, the next six. I think we have a very good chance of un-electing him. He's alienated all but his most dedicated core base, and there's a huge list of Democratic primary candidates from which to whittle down the very strongest. Lots of people who voted for him did it with the mentality of "The establishment's bad; let's try something different. Drain the swamp. Things couldn't get any worse." Now those people are saying, "Oh." > I think the past dozen presidential administrations have made it clear that good governance only happens by gentleman's agreement. The executive has no shortage of knobs, dials, and levers that it can pull on, to inflict 'irreperable' damage. This is definitely true, unfortunately. A government is made of people, and no government system can withstand being populated by bad (or at least shortsighted) people. Most of those before Trump weren't massively better people than him, morally speaking. Even Obama quietly did some really shady things. What they did have was tact, and intelligence, and self-control. They didn't take Putin's word over their own intelligence agencies (https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/695646320/andrew-mccabe-fbi-investigations-into-trump-were-extraordinary-steps https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/695646320/andrew-mccabe-fbi-i...). They didn't display such erratic behavior that their own white-house staff called psychiatrists to ask if they should be worried (https://splinternews.com/white-house-staffers-reportedly-told-psychiatrist-trump-1828884897 https://splinternews.com/white-house-staffers-reportedly-tol...). They didn't have a nuclear football installed in their personal residence (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/06/pentagon-nuclear-football-trump-tower-apartment https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/06/pentagon-nuc...). Whatever objectives his predecessors had, they knew those couldn't happen if they literally endangered the society underpinning them.

vkou 8y ago
That's the root of the problem, though. You're bringing up symptoms of the problem, not the root causes. The problem isn't that he has a nuclear football installed in his summer dacha. The problem is that the nuclear football exists, and that there exist two men that can, at a whim, end the world.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  Okay, but pragmatism dictates that we don't get a do-over with the governing structure of the most powerful nation on earth. We can work to make it better, but that's a long and slow process, and in the meantime we need to get the various buttons and dials out of the hands of a literal crazy person. I'll put it this way: I disagree with Mike Pence politically on virtually every issue. But it would still be a massive relief for me if he finished up Trump's presidential term.

by _bxg1 8y ago

vkou 8y ago

That's the root of the problem, though. You're bringing up symptoms of the problem, not the root causes. The problem isn't that he has a nuclear football installed in his summer dacha. The problem is that the nuclear football exists, and that there exist two men that can, at a whim, end the world.

_bxg1 8y ago
Okay, but pragmatism dictates that we don't get a do-over with the governing structure of the most powerful nation on earth. We can work to make it better, but that's a long and slow process, and in the meantime we need to get the various buttons and dials out of the hands of a literal crazy person. I'll put it this way: I disagree with Mike Pence politically on virtually every issue. But it would still be a massive relief for me if he finished up Trump's presidential term.