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There is a concerted effort at the top of our government to subvert the republic and turn it into a new oligarchy, why we haven't openly branded certain members
by Grimm1 6y ago
There is a concerted effort at the top of our government to subvert the republic and turn it into a new oligarchy, why we haven't openly branded certain members of congress and the current administration traitors and dealt with them appropriately is beyond me. We're passed the point where cleaning house would be seen as weakness or instability on the world stage, because the current admin is weak and unstable. Cleaning house now would reassure our allies and restore some legitimacy to our government.
I'm not suggesting violence, but that our forces responsible from protecting us against domestic threats do their job here, I think the idea that the optics of arresting a sitting president and members of congress is less worse than restoring a functioning legislative and executive branches.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoIn ancient Rome, the senators thought that it was in the good of the republic to disband Julius Caesar. A group of them banded together and killed him. What they failed to realize was how popular he was with the lower and middle classes. His reign had drastically improved their quality of life. His murder led to a string of civil wars and instability. Think hard before disbanding populist figures.
- Grimm1 6y agoYour point is noted, but Trump is popular with less than 44% [0] of people currently and has done nothing to improve their lives. Comparing the current admin with Caesar is giving a huge compliment to them, that they do not deserve. [0] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
- kingkawn 6y agoTrump is a symptom of a deeper cultural problem for which we are all participants. Take him out too viciously and the entire country would implode forever. Our chance is to address the problem directly by economic relief for rural poor (among others) so that the symptom resolves.
- louwrentius 6y agoExactly, Trump is an outcome, a symptom of a deeper, more systemic cultural problem within the US. It's not only him, look at the entire GOP, and what forces are at play to keep these people in place. The people currently in charge are there to protect historic interests/positions and they know they will lose them forever in a fair election. Because most of the country has moved on culturally.
- frockington1 6y agoThe cultural lines with the two parties seem to be changing. Back in early 00's, I remember the conservatives were saying you can't say ______ because God forbids it. Now it seems to be liberals saying you can't say _______ because it offends XYZ. I don't know why this is happening but it is kind of strange to see as censorship and silencing has never been a popular position
- epistasis 6y agoLiberals have always said "you can't say X" for all sorts of things, not as a matter law, but because they don't want people to be assholes. The term "PC" was invented a looong time ago for this. The only thing that's changed is that people are pretending that it's new and unprecedented, as a way to garner more outrage.
- eli_gottlieb 6y agoWe can kill two birds with one stone: let's onshore a productive non-virtual, "building shit" economy, and use geographical anti-concentration laws to ensure areas outside the professional-class urban centers get a slice of the pie.
- germinalphrase 6y ago“geographical anti-concentration laws” Any examples of this in practice?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ben_w 6y ago44 is indisputably a minority. It is still enough people that I wouldn’t want to see the corresponding headline.
- metalchianti 6y agoAmerican Patriots were only 40-45% of the population in the 13 colonies [0]. [0]https://books.google.com/books?id=xK1NuzpAcH8C&pg=PA235#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=xK1NuzpAcH8C&pg=PA235#v=on...
- Ididntdothis 6y agoThe opposition party could easily end this if they actually tried and offered a competing vision and a compelling candidate. They didn’t do this in 2016 and neither are they doing it in 2020. No need to kill anybody.
- Grimm1 6y agoI completely agree, and while Trump is my main focus of the above comment I honestly think we need to do full scrutiny of both GOP and Dems I imagine we could hand out a lot of arrests on both sides of the isle. The corruption runs both ways and I don't find democrats as some amazing preferable choice, in fact Joe is a wet noodle. I think we need a reset all around which I'd be comfortable with being achieved by a combination of term limits and arrests for those who have broken the laws.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoI never understand why people think term limits would do anything. Instead of long term corrupt people you would get a steady flow of people who jump from industry to government, do the bidding of the industry, and then go back. The result would be exactly the same.
- Grimm1 6y agoBecause the full view is term limits + lobbying is illegal + any thing that looks like what you described triggers an investigation for something like "corruption of a public servant" + none of the money as speech + reduced campaign time + no pacs or super pacs + a few more other things. There needs to be a multifaceted implementation of new policy. Term limits in a vacuum are useless, but if we didn't have a government that was pretty much a proxy for large corporations we could do neat things that would make anyone engaging in that type of arrangement's life a lot harder.
- Ididntdothis 6y ago“if we didn't have a government that was pretty much a proxy for large corporations “ I agree with that. I just don’t think term limits will make a difference in this effort.
- joelbluminator 6y agoWell, I see his approval rating barely changed the last 3 years by the link you posted. It was 43.4% on March 2017 and it's 44% now. It means a huge chunk of the American public likes what he has been doing the last years, or at least can't find a better candidate. I'm afraid it's wishful thinking to think most Americans are sick of Trump. Some are, for sure, but the data you posted isn't showing anything significant happened. He will likely win again from what I'm seeing.
- vvG94KbDUtRa 6y agoDifference being Trump has improved nobody's life
- maest 6y agoThat sentence is so extreme and definitive that it's most likely provably false. Separately, opinion polls show that plenty of people support the current US president, so, regardless if their lives have been "improved" (whatever that means), those people will be upset if the president leaves.
- ironman1478 6y agoI mean, has he really improved people's lives outside of the really rich or the bigoted (which makes you technically right)? I'd like to see evidence because I'm not aware of him actually improving things for anybody else. the only policy I think that he's passed that makes sense is to force hospitals to make costs available up front and public.
- Izkata 6y agoVery much so, article from Jan 2018: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/working-class-families-are-winning-big-under-trump https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/working-class-families-ar... And more from Oct 2019: https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/middle-class-incomes-surging-thanks-trump-policies https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/midd...
- frockington1 6y agoMy taxes are lower and I've made a considerable amount of money in the markets. Other than that not much has changed, I'm much better off than I was 4 years ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- louis_pasteur 6y agoWhat you're talking about won't come without a revolution. Yes, a freedom movement kinda revolution like Boston Tea Party of 1800s in America or the 1942 Quit India Movement against the British. Today's people are probably too feeble for something like that. They're afraid of even speaking against the system/establishment even when they know that some parts of that system might be rotten to the core.
- kylek 6y agoIt's pretty unfortunate that article 5 conventions are so hard to get started. It's the only bloodless way I see to fix things.
- bsanr2 6y agoWe have elections coming. I am all for arrests, impeachments, and the like, but boy, it would be super helpful if we coul prime the pump by removing some of these ghouls at the top. That signals a mandate. Many of you live in San Francisco. Your House rep, Nancy Pelosi, with whom I am sure you are familiar, has a serious challenger in Shahid Buttar. He is pushing to debate her, which should be the bare minimum for electoral rivals, yet AFAIK no date has been set. No one in the media or in the political establishment is holding her feet to the fire. We could start there.
- eli_gottlieb 6y agoSure, except that replacing a corporate liberal with a slightly less corporate radical liberal isn't really the change the country needs. Sorry, I support Buttar too, but replacing Pelosi with Buttar while keeping Mitch McConnell accomplishes little to nothing. We need to take the rightmost edge of the Overton Window, and push that to the left, making the obstruction of "merely" liberal policies with broad public support, like the CARES Act and Heroes Act, unacceptable.
- fennecfoxen 6y agoI'd like to close the Overton window on the sentiment, "Opposition to my preferred policies must be unacceptable." Two trillion in CARES Act spending and it's unacceptable to second-guess it? Sorry, this is precisely where more scrutiny and critical thought is needed, not less.
- bsanr2 6y agoPelosi is effectively right-wing, as far as the rest of the world would be concerned, and the DNC is already supporting McConnell's Democratic challenger. We can dethrone both.
- eli_gottlieb 6y agoSure, but personally, I'd concentrate more on McConnell, since he's the one who runs the Senate as an authoritarian party-state in which everything is evaluated by how it affects Republican power. Also, I frankly don't trust Californian politicians of any stripe, "liberal" or "leftist", to implement the left-wing agenda they claim to stand for.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago> why we haven't openly branded certain members of congress and the current administration traitors and dealt with them appropriately is beyond me. What is "appropriate" for "traitors"? Execution? Prison? Being stripped of their rights, including the right to participate in the democratic process? You see, the irony is that alleging vague subversive activity from your political enemies and then dealing with the "traitors" like this subverts the republic, turning it into a new oligarchy. It's a very banana-republic suggestion.
- Grimm1 6y agoIt's almost like we have laws that dictate how we deal with them and as such the appropriate way to deal with them is what our laws state. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381
- fennecfoxen 6y agoSo for the crime of treason, you advocate death — or at least five-year prison sentences with $10,000+ fines — for various not-explicitly-identified Trump administration members. That's cool and edgy, I guess. But, well.... It's almost like our Constitution spells out how "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii It's almost like James Madison knew from experience there'd be someone who would float this type of proposal, and so codified a rebuke into the supreme law of the land, some 200 years in advance. (Postscript. The obvious next step is for you to change your mind and stop saying these random members are committing oligarchycrimes and say instead that Trump himself is giving "aid and comfort" to our enemies in Russia. I'm sure there's some lovely jurisprudence to be had getting that laughed out of the courts and wish you the best of luck.)
- Grimm1 6y agoRight but, "or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." is the part Trump is a traitor for and Mitch + a whole gaggle of flunkies beneath them.
- metalliqaz 6y agoMoney buys all things, including support for the Oligarchs.
- panzagl 6y agoThe current administration was elected to clean house. They're just supporting a different set of oligarchs than earlier administrations.
- throwafellow 6y agoThere needs to be some sort of reset function which removes everyone from office and replaces them with randomly chosen citizens. It's too easy for corruption to continue otherwise since the pipeline has been established to subvert elections.
- krapp 6y agoWhat leads you to believe random citizens can't be corrupt?
- Yoofie 6y agoI think his point is not that random citizens can't be corrupt, it's that a random assortment of citizens are less likely to be corrupt (and probably more likely to call out corruption if they see it).
- krapp 6y agoA random assortment of citizens seems just as likely to be more corrupt than less, if it's even possible to measure that objectively. However, it does seem likely to me that random citizens would be less capable of governing effectively in areas where actual knowledge of law, politics or some degree of domain knowledge is required.