4 ms·

... those aren't failed states, though? Failed state doesn't mean "shitty government" or "autocracy".

nine_zeros 6y ago
Alright. Let's wait until we become one for my comment to stand true. Jeez. Instead of being pedantic about textbook definitions, just look at where we are headed. The head of state wants to obstruct voting to usurp power.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  >The head of state wants to obstruct voting to usurp power This accusation is littered throughout this thread. Are there any sources? Where I've seen this covered by the usual partisan outlets, it has been the typical selective interpretation of his statements. Unsurprisingly, this is used to arrive at the widest possible exaggeration in a sensational fashion.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Even if he did that wouldn't necessarily mean we were a failed state. Again, it's got a specific meaning. The writer's an anthropologist so probably understands that just from exposure to the poli-sci department and/or reading enough about current events and politics to decide to write this article, and also being (one supposes) a thoughtful person. Again, look, I fully expect, when historians take a look back at this time, Trump's gonna fill a slot on damn near all of their "worst 10 Presidents" lists for a very long time. [EDIT, restore accidentally omitted sentence] But we're not anywhere near failed-state territory. However, sometimes history happens fast and maybe this time next year the US will actually be a failed state and the military won't be getting paychecks and will have disbanded or set up fiefdoms, and cartels will have de facto annexed Texas into the quasi-narco-state of Mexico that they already essentially co-govern, because no-one can stop them, and all our corporations will have scrambled chaotically to find ways to maintain continuity of operation and ownership of capital while moving to corporate structures overseas (incorporation, being a legal construct created by a given government, is worthless if it's granted by a failed state). That is what happens in a failed state, and if we become one, that's what will be happening. It is not what is happening now. But probably not. I dunno, I remember when everyone was sure Junior would try to become a dictator. Believe it or not the "other" side was exactly as sure that Obama would, too. I get that Trump is actually making public moves to screw with voting and doing all manner of other awful things, but I think one can be reasonably concerned about and upset by these things but also acknowledge that it's incredibly unlikely—not impossible, unlikely—that "failed state" will be an accurate term to apply to the US any time soon. Also sometimes I go read Wikipedia's summary of history for various years, going through maybe a decade in a sitting, to gain some perspective. Remember that time we killed a few hundred thousand of one another over the right to own humans as property? That was a bad one. And holy shit the 1960s were another crazy '60s. Black people and Episcopalians being straight-up murdered because they took part in civil rights protests, and I don't just mean by cops or by counter-protesters at the protests but by people later, in cold blood, for having participated in them. Quakers self-immolating in protest of the draft. Told a bunch of 18 year olds we were gonna stick them on ships and planes and send them to the other side of the world to die an/or become killers in some jungle over a war we lied ourselves into, and if they didn't like that they could rot in jail. That decade sucked, too. Good music, though. Lots of decades of US history are full of shockingly bad political stuff and strife. Most, maybe. [EDIT] maybe this provides a clear test: if the US state fails then the Federal government will no longer be able to effectively secure its own nuclear arsenal, pretty much by definition. Someone might keep them secure, but it wouldn't be the Federal government. If security of the bulk of the US nuclear arsenal is not yet something that a wide variety of foreign state and NGO actors are getting acutely nervous about, then you can be pretty sure the US is not yet a failed state. And no by security I don't mean worries about Trump having the big red button, I mean worries that anyone might walk in and take one, or the people guarding them might sell them, like everyone was worried about when the USSR collapsed.
  - burfog 6y ago
    When historians make "worst 10 Presidents" lists and "best 10 Presidents" lists, usually it is pretty accurate to swap "worst" with "best". The lists are really just a display of the politics of the people making the lists. The history books used in America today almost all portray the country in a really negative light. This probably drives much of our trouble; multiple generations have been taught that there is nothing much to like about the country.
    - spanhandler 6y ago
      Eh, sure, but those who are uncommonly inept, corrupt, and ineffective and also not very recent tend to end up down at the bottom, crossing political boundaries. Unless we have a run of exceptionally awful Presidents then I think when enough time has passed, we're likely looking at one of those situations. There's a certain class of President who ends up being widely considered to be quite bad, not so much because those ranking them disagree with what they stood for, but because they were ill-suited for the Presidency and were just... bad at the job. FWIW I think this despite not even thinking he's the most damaging recent President, by a long shot. Yes, even with the whole COVID thing. I'm pretty sure The Other Guy's (I hesitate to distract by naming him) easily safe from ever being lumped in with the notoriously-poor-at-Presidenting set of ex-Presidents—Trump, I think he's got that label in his future.
      - burfog 6y ago
        "widely considered" by the biased haters who write history? Whatever they say, the opposite is usually true. When they say "bad at the job" that should be read as "good at the job". Likewise, when they say "good at the job" it means "bad at the job". People with sense and a love for America do not often become history professors.
        spanhandler 6y ago
        Ok, but for one thing I only put that in there to provide the perspective from which I was hating on the article, and for another I agree that that’s typical and my point is that I don’t think we’re dealing with a Carter or a Reagan or even a Nixon, in terms of historical judgement, but, like, a Buchanan or a Johnson (and no, not LBJ) [edit] to illustrate: it’s 2080 and you’re a politically-motivated hack historian making a worst ten Presidents list. Do you list 10 political enemies? No. You make 5-8 uncontroversial safe picks, and 2-5 are your political enemies. My contention is that, due to his effectiveness in and execution of the office, Trump is likely to eventually land on a lot of those lists due to being in the “safe pick”, legitimacy-lending category, not the political one. Meanwhile, yes, he’ll be on those plenty for political reasons for the next decade or three.

Alright. Let's wait until we become one for my comment to stand true. Jeez. Instead of being pedantic about textbook definitions, just look at where we are headed. The head of state wants to obstruct voting to usurp power.

aww_dang 6y ago
>The head of state wants to obstruct voting to usurp power This accusation is littered throughout this thread. Are there any sources? Where I've seen this covered by the usual partisan outlets, it has been the typical selective interpretation of his statements. Unsurprisingly, this is used to arrive at the widest possible exaggeration in a sensational fashion.
spanhandler 6y ago
Even if he did that wouldn't necessarily mean we were a failed state. Again, it's got a specific meaning. The writer's an anthropologist so probably understands that just from exposure to the poli-sci department and/or reading enough about current events and politics to decide to write this article, and also being (one supposes) a thoughtful person. Again, look, I fully expect, when historians take a look back at this time, Trump's gonna fill a slot on damn near all of their "worst 10 Presidents" lists for a very long time. [EDIT, restore accidentally omitted sentence] But we're not anywhere near failed-state territory. However, sometimes history happens fast and maybe this time next year the US will actually be a failed state and the military won't be getting paychecks and will have disbanded or set up fiefdoms, and cartels will have de facto annexed Texas into the quasi-narco-state of Mexico that they already essentially co-govern, because no-one can stop them, and all our corporations will have scrambled chaotically to find ways to maintain continuity of operation and ownership of capital while moving to corporate structures overseas (incorporation, being a legal construct created by a given government, is worthless if it's granted by a failed state). That is what happens in a failed state, and if we become one, that's what will be happening. It is not what is happening now. But probably not. I dunno, I remember when everyone was sure Junior would try to become a dictator. Believe it or not the "other" side was exactly as sure that Obama would, too. I get that Trump is actually making public moves to screw with voting and doing all manner of other awful things, but I think one can be reasonably concerned about and upset by these things but also acknowledge that it's incredibly unlikely—not impossible, unlikely—that "failed state" will be an accurate term to apply to the US any time soon. Also sometimes I go read Wikipedia's summary of history for various years, going through maybe a decade in a sitting, to gain some perspective. Remember that time we killed a few hundred thousand of one another over the right to own humans as property? That was a bad one. And holy shit the 1960s were another crazy '60s. Black people and Episcopalians being straight-up murdered because they took part in civil rights protests, and I don't just mean by cops or by counter-protesters at the protests but by people later, in cold blood, for having participated in them. Quakers self-immolating in protest of the draft. Told a bunch of 18 year olds we were gonna stick them on ships and planes and send them to the other side of the world to die an/or become killers in some jungle over a war we lied ourselves into, and if they didn't like that they could rot in jail. That decade sucked, too. Good music, though. Lots of decades of US history are full of shockingly bad political stuff and strife. Most, maybe. [EDIT] maybe this provides a clear test: if the US state fails then the Federal government will no longer be able to effectively secure its own nuclear arsenal, pretty much by definition. Someone might keep them secure, but it wouldn't be the Federal government. If security of the bulk of the US nuclear arsenal is not yet something that a wide variety of foreign state and NGO actors are getting acutely nervous about, then you can be pretty sure the US is not yet a failed state. And no by security I don't mean worries about Trump having the big red button, I mean worries that anyone might walk in and take one, or the people guarding them might sell them, like everyone was worried about when the USSR collapsed.
- burfog 6y ago
  When historians make "worst 10 Presidents" lists and "best 10 Presidents" lists, usually it is pretty accurate to swap "worst" with "best". The lists are really just a display of the politics of the people making the lists. The history books used in America today almost all portray the country in a really negative light. This probably drives much of our trouble; multiple generations have been taught that there is nothing much to like about the country.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    Eh, sure, but those who are uncommonly inept, corrupt, and ineffective and also not very recent tend to end up down at the bottom, crossing political boundaries. Unless we have a run of exceptionally awful Presidents then I think when enough time has passed, we're likely looking at one of those situations. There's a certain class of President who ends up being widely considered to be quite bad, not so much because those ranking them disagree with what they stood for, but because they were ill-suited for the Presidency and were just... bad at the job. FWIW I think this despite not even thinking he's the most damaging recent President, by a long shot. Yes, even with the whole COVID thing. I'm pretty sure The Other Guy's (I hesitate to distract by naming him) easily safe from ever being lumped in with the notoriously-poor-at-Presidenting set of ex-Presidents—Trump, I think he's got that label in his future.
    - burfog 6y ago
      "widely considered" by the biased haters who write history? Whatever they say, the opposite is usually true. When they say "bad at the job" that should be read as "good at the job". Likewise, when they say "good at the job" it means "bad at the job". People with sense and a love for America do not often become history professors.
      - spanhandler 6y ago
        Ok, but for one thing I only put that in there to provide the perspective from which I was hating on the article, and for another I agree that that’s typical and my point is that I don’t think we’re dealing with a Carter or a Reagan or even a Nixon, in terms of historical judgement, but, like, a Buchanan or a Johnson (and no, not LBJ) [edit] to illustrate: it’s 2080 and you’re a politically-motivated hack historian making a worst ten Presidents list. Do you list 10 political enemies? No. You make 5-8 uncontroversial safe picks, and 2-5 are your political enemies. My contention is that, due to his effectiveness in and execution of the office, Trump is likely to eventually land on a lot of those lists due to being in the “safe pick”, legitimacy-lending category, not the political one. Meanwhile, yes, he’ll be on those plenty for political reasons for the next decade or three.