8 ms·

It looks to me like so many are bothered by Trump because he didn't wrap all the lying and cheating and manipulation in a likeable, family-friendly public perso

by blub 6y ago

It looks to me like so many are bothered by Trump because he didn't wrap all the lying and cheating and manipulation in a likeable, family-friendly public persona, like the presidents of the past did. He certainly said a lot of outrageous or false things, but policy-wise he didn't really make any horrible decisions. So many of you want to desperately believe that the abnormal situation in the US can be pinned on one man and that once he's gone everything will go back to normal, or if not the situation will normalize to a certain extent. That just doesn't seem possible. Trump is just the convenient scapegoat for the disastrous globalisation which hollowed out American industry, for the race but especially class conflicts which were never really settled and for the ultra-aggressive capitalism which creates many more losers than winners and for the two party system which is fundamentally vulnerable to corruption.

docbrown 6y ago
>but policy-wise he didn't really make any horrible decisions. This is where the problem lies within our current political discourse: both parties have fundamental differences within themselves on what they view as being morally on the up-and-up. Both parties view certain demographics in their own way and this allows them to engage in policies that allow them to accomplish their end goal while never causing harm -- because they genuinely believe they are not causing harm to anyone. They're only following through on policies that match their moral compass. Until this country has a reckoning on what its fundamental values should be, there will always be a sense of distrust and skepticism between each other.
- lliamander 6y ago
  > Until this country has a reckoning on what its fundamental values should be, there will always be a sense of distrust and skepticism between each other. Do we need to agree on fundamental values? How might it be possible to avoid reaching a (likely impossible) agreement?
  - docbrown 6y ago
    Perhaps we may not need to agree on every topic but there must be a discourse happening between each other in good faith. This rarely happens in our current political climate as most people (using Twitter as a sample group) is hyperreactive to any sort of criticism from their opponent. If we, or all nations, want to come together, our first step is to recognize the importance of the United Nations. If we are able to understand that the United Nations can be an apolitical checks and balance to all countries, it may be a major step forward. An ideal theory is that all countries begin living by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights[1]. Incorporate this into the foundation of your countries government and it sets a tone and example for which type of moral values you prioritize within your borders. [1]: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ind...
    - lliamander 6y ago
      > If we, or all nations, want to come together, our first step is to recognize the importance of the United Nations. Interesting that the other response to my post (thus far) essentially argues for the opposite. That a re-emphasis on local politics would be preferable. Personally, I think letting people go there own way as much as possible is the best course, and empowering the United Nations is pretty much the opposite of that. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of good stuff in the Declaration of Human Rights, but to have a super-ordinate body that is in no way directly accountable to the people over whom it rules, and which attempts to reconcile increasingly disparate cultures, will result in authoritarianism and war.
      - docbrown 6y ago
        > Personally, I think letting people go there own way as much as possible is the best course, and empowering the United Nations is pretty much the opposite of that. As in a Native American reservation type of self localized governing? That’s the only way I could see any good coming from separating each individual locality apart and attaching their own executive branch to it. We currently have 50 seperate states which almost govern in that way but they still must answer to an executive branch and that can be confusing. Should one branch have a say in all local decisions? Who gets to decide on which person makes those decisions for all? My fear would be that governing completely independent of any other branch could also lead to authoritarianism: if one person persuades the locals they have the best mind to guide them through troubles, they’d ultimately have the final say in decision making once they gain their trust and the ability to govern. (Apologies if formatting makes it sound confusing, I jumped off my laptop and am instead currently using mobile. Will edit to clarify any discrepancies.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
lol636363 6y ago
Policy wise he probably didn't make any bad decisions. But his words have made it okay to be racist. As a minority, I experienced more minor forms of racism in last 4 years than in last 20 years before. He made it cool to be racist. He made my life slightly more inconvenient. And I am sure if I didn't had high paying job I would have suffered more balant racism. Trump is evil human and I am glad he will gone soon enough.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  > But his words have made it okay to be racist. As a minority, I experienced more minor forms of racism in last 4 years than in last 20 years before. He made it cool to be racist. No, he didn’t. He denounced white supremacy more than any politician ever has, but folks were obsessed with these “Trump is a Nazi” lies. There’s a reason that more minorities voted for him than any GOP candidate ever. In fact, the only demographic that he lost ground on was white men. What minor forms of racism are you saying he caused in your life?
  - jonsno56 6y ago
    > He denounced white supremacy more than any politician ever has, Source? I’m very curious to learn more about this
    - abc-xyz 6y ago
      Here’s a video compilation of Trump denouncing racism and white supremacy on 38 different occasions (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc).
      - rubygiuliani 6y ago
        Do you have a source for that source? What about his emails in his laptop?
      - nphard85 6y ago
        But Trump [1] also says the non-white congresswomen known as "the squad" should go back to where they came from. Even riled up his supporters [2] to chant "send her back". You know "go back to where you came from" is a common racial insult hurled at non-white immigrants decades or generations after they naturalize in the USA? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMZnemqsCdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMZnemqsCdI [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqLxxbjVG_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqLxxbjVG_k
randomsearch 6y ago
> but policy-wise he didn't really make any horrible decisions. I'm not sure if this is permitted by the guidelines. I can prefix perhaps with: I get why a lot of people voted for Trump, and I have sympathy with some of his policies, but I think there _were_ some policy decisions that were judged to be horrible, including by NGOs and internationally. Some examples listed below. I'm not saying other presidents don't made horrible decisions, but I am saying that there seems to be a tendency to excuse his behaviour by a whataboutism argument, and it's really important to get down in the detail, into the facts, and not let Trump's style of politics trickle down to us all. Separating children from their parents to deter immigration: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-administration-s-child-separations-moral-stain-voter-issue-n1244263 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-administration-s-c... The Travel Ban: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/licence-discriminate-trumps-muslim-refugee-ban https://www.amnesty.org.uk/licence-discriminate-trumps-musli... Science and medicine cuts: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5468112/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5468112/ Abandoning the kurds: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/turkey-syria-the-kurds-and-trumps-abandonment-of-foreign-policy https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/turkey-syria-t...
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  While I agree with you on most of those points, abandoning allies of convenience when they are no-longer useful has a long history in US foreign policy, and the Kurds should really have known this might happen given that they were abandoned by Bush 1 in 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  I don't know enough about the other three, but there are many people who disagree with you on the child separation. We have 10 million illegal immigrants in the US. Previous administrations have been soft on border enforcement, which led to that number constantly increasing, putting regional pressure on wages, lower class jobs, and regional cultural identity. Trump increased enforcement of existing immigration laws. He wasn't going to put the kids in detainment centers with their parents. Children don't belong in prisons with adults, there would be incredible abuses that occur. Hence separation pending litigation and/or deportation.
truckerbill 6y ago
His track record on the environment is terrible. So is separating families from their children and putting them in cages.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  CO2 Emissions are the lowest they have been in 30 years. Lower than under Obama. And that includes pre-pandemic. Is that terrible?
  - EricDeb 6y ago
    https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/jun/18/environmental-protection-agency/are-greenhouse-emissions-down-under-donald-trump-e/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/jun/18/environmen...
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      Thanks, this confirms what I said. Also, it was written in 2018, and it has continued to decline as of the most recent data, which further undermines the latency hypothesis. Maybe you have another metric that you think is important, but this data says that his record is on this one is objectively not terrible.
  - arnoldsing 6y ago
    It’s terrible! Why is he giving into the liberal hoax, coronaclimate? Either he’s a good strong guy or he’s not and gives into the communists who make stuff up. What is a liberal? Fake news fake news
- o-__-o 6y ago
  You mean the cages that protesters staged during a demonstration? Or did I miss the actual child abuse that did not receive any sort of congressional oversight?
runamok 6y ago
> but policy-wise he didn't really make any horrible decisions You don't feel how he handled the Covid pandemic was a bad policy? The guy's vanity wouldn't allow him to wear a mask to act as a good example to his base. He blatantly ignored most of what his advisors told him and proceeded to advocate quack remedies and dubious advice. I really dislike the trope of "all politicians lie" when discussing Trump. It's the worst kind of "what about-ism". I do value a president talking to the American people like we are adults and tell us uncomfortable truths. I think Obama tried that on occasion ands it backfired on him in a major way (comment about those that cling to guns and religion comes to mind). I do agree with you that it's not solely Trump's fault. The republican party quickly fell into step behind him to get their way above any sort of moral high ground they could have hoped to claim in the past.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  I think that the OP's major point is that Trump was a symptom of the problems in US society, not a cause. He did say a lot of the quiet parts loud, which makes some oppponents regard him as uniquely bad. Has everyone forgotten that the Bush administration used similar magical thinking and logic: > The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community I think the real problem here is that the extremes of US politics (mostly the right) have been spreading lies and garbage to their base for years, and eventually, they got a President who believed the nonsense.
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    As the saying goes, a democracy gets the leader it deserves. Dictators sometimes get democratically chosen. The dictator chosen in Germany between WWI and WWII was also a symptom of a problem. You cannot simply deduce everything towards such one person; however you also cannot simply say he is executing the "Will of the People". We're not in direct democracies; we pick our leader for 4 years, and that leader (plus some others) have a lot of power during those. I used to say we rotate dictators we pick every 4 years, but back then I had a rather dystopian world-view. As for G.W. "you are either for us, or against us" [1] Bush, people forgive and forget quickly. Though I'd argue he was just a vassal for Rummy, Cheney, et al. For an insight into Bush, watch the movie Vice from 2018. It centers around Dick Cheney, how he became Vice President. Bush successfully managed to get the hardcore Christians behind him, which I suppose was a natural path given the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal. Another good documentary of around that time is Adam Curtis' The Power Of Nightmares which you can find freely and legally on Archive.org. [1] Bifurcation 101, very polarizing statement.
nso95 6y ago
According to Politifact, 72% of Trump's statements they fact checked were at least mostly false. Thats a hell of a lot worse than your average politician.
grasshopperpurp 6y ago
I think the style of lying is definitely part of it, but I do think the details matter. I was talking with a Trump supporter (I held my nose and voted for Biden, as I did for Clinton in 2016). He was pretty heated, because a lady he flirts with at work let him know that she was a hardcore Democrat and that she didn't think anyone should vote for Trump. It was toward the end of a long day, so I wasn't sure if I was up for the conversation, but he's a pretty decent guy, so I engaged, and we had a solid chat. I made a point that seemed to resonate with him - Biden represents high-level corruption, the kind of slick corruption that maintains stability and is relatively predictable. Trump, though, represents a mob style of corruption - or the kind of corruption you see from dictators in developing nations. If it benefits him in the short-term, and he can do it, he will. Chess vs Checkers. Some people prefer the latter, and it seems some view it as a more honest type of corruption, but for most people, stability is important. I've noticed a lot of Right-leaning people would also like to see some form of ranked voting, so I think it's the political parties (both of them) rather than the people holding things back. I think you bring up key issues in your closing paragraph, but the implementation of Globalization is what really hurt the middle class in the US. Whenever people lose a proper balance, they will suffer, and I think most everyone can agree that the US did a particularly poor job of ensuring balance - probably not by accident. Anyway, I feel for people who are troubled by the result of the election. I was in their shoes in 2016, and I can relate to some of their concerns. If we start from a place of understanding/trying to understand, we can build systems that work for everyone. If we allow the two-party system to perpetuate artificial divides, progress will be much slower, and we'll take more false steps. The loudest are typically the worst of us. We can't fall into the trap of using them as stand-ins for the other side. This was much more ranty than I intended, but I hope it makes sense.
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
How do you deal with any of those issues without being demonized as a socialist? My memory is that capitalism and globalization were such a winning platform for the republicans that even the democrats jumped on the bandwagon in the 90s. How do we get out of this mess?

by blub 6y ago

docbrown 6y ago

>but policy-wise he didn't really make any horrible decisions. This is where the problem lies within our current political discourse: both parties have fundamental differences within themselves on what they view as being morally on the up-and-up. Both parties view certain demographics in their own way and this allows them to engage in policies that allow them to accomplish their end goal while never causing harm -- because they genuinely believe they are not causing harm to anyone. They're only following through on policies that match their moral compass. Until this country has a reckoning on what its fundamental values should be, there will always be a sense of distrust and skepticism between each other.

lliamander 6y ago
> Until this country has a reckoning on what its fundamental values should be, there will always be a sense of distrust and skepticism between each other. Do we need to agree on fundamental values? How might it be possible to avoid reaching a (likely impossible) agreement?
- docbrown 6y ago
  Perhaps we may not need to agree on every topic but there must be a discourse happening between each other in good faith. This rarely happens in our current political climate as most people (using Twitter as a sample group) is hyperreactive to any sort of criticism from their opponent. If we, or all nations, want to come together, our first step is to recognize the importance of the United Nations. If we are able to understand that the United Nations can be an apolitical checks and balance to all countries, it may be a major step forward. An ideal theory is that all countries begin living by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights[1]. Incorporate this into the foundation of your countries government and it sets a tone and example for which type of moral values you prioritize within your borders. [1]: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ind...
  - lliamander 6y ago
    > If we, or all nations, want to come together, our first step is to recognize the importance of the United Nations. Interesting that the other response to my post (thus far) essentially argues for the opposite. That a re-emphasis on local politics would be preferable. Personally, I think letting people go there own way as much as possible is the best course, and empowering the United Nations is pretty much the opposite of that. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of good stuff in the Declaration of Human Rights, but to have a super-ordinate body that is in no way directly accountable to the people over whom it rules, and which attempts to reconcile increasingly disparate cultures, will result in authoritarianism and war.
    - docbrown 6y ago
      > Personally, I think letting people go there own way as much as possible is the best course, and empowering the United Nations is pretty much the opposite of that. As in a Native American reservation type of self localized governing? That’s the only way I could see any good coming from separating each individual locality apart and attaching their own executive branch to it. We currently have 50 seperate states which almost govern in that way but they still must answer to an executive branch and that can be confusing. Should one branch have a say in all local decisions? Who gets to decide on which person makes those decisions for all? My fear would be that governing completely independent of any other branch could also lead to authoritarianism: if one person persuades the locals they have the best mind to guide them through troubles, they’d ultimately have the final say in decision making once they gain their trust and the ability to govern. (Apologies if formatting makes it sound confusing, I jumped off my laptop and am instead currently using mobile. Will edit to clarify any discrepancies.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

lol636363 6y ago

Policy wise he probably didn't make any bad decisions. But his words have made it okay to be racist. As a minority, I experienced more minor forms of racism in last 4 years than in last 20 years before. He made it cool to be racist. He made my life slightly more inconvenient. And I am sure if I didn't had high paying job I would have suffered more balant racism. Trump is evil human and I am glad he will gone soon enough.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
> But his words have made it okay to be racist. As a minority, I experienced more minor forms of racism in last 4 years than in last 20 years before. He made it cool to be racist. No, he didn’t. He denounced white supremacy more than any politician ever has, but folks were obsessed with these “Trump is a Nazi” lies. There’s a reason that more minorities voted for him than any GOP candidate ever. In fact, the only demographic that he lost ground on was white men. What minor forms of racism are you saying he caused in your life?
- jonsno56 6y ago
  > He denounced white supremacy more than any politician ever has, Source? I’m very curious to learn more about this
  - abc-xyz 6y ago
    Here’s a video compilation of Trump denouncing racism and white supremacy on 38 different occasions (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc).
    - rubygiuliani 6y ago
      Do you have a source for that source? What about his emails in his laptop?
    - nphard85 6y ago
      But Trump [1] also says the non-white congresswomen known as "the squad" should go back to where they came from. Even riled up his supporters [2] to chant "send her back". You know "go back to where you came from" is a common racial insult hurled at non-white immigrants decades or generations after they naturalize in the USA? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMZnemqsCdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMZnemqsCdI [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqLxxbjVG_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqLxxbjVG_k

randomsearch 6y ago

> but policy-wise he didn't really make any horrible decisions. I'm not sure if this is permitted by the guidelines. I can prefix perhaps with: I get why a lot of people voted for Trump, and I have sympathy with some of his policies, but I think there _were_ some policy decisions that were judged to be horrible, including by NGOs and internationally. Some examples listed below. I'm not saying other presidents don't made horrible decisions, but I am saying that there seems to be a tendency to excuse his behaviour by a whataboutism argument, and it's really important to get down in the detail, into the facts, and not let Trump's style of politics trickle down to us all. Separating children from their parents to deter immigration: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-administration-s-child-separations-moral-stain-voter-issue-n1244263 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-administration-s-c... The Travel Ban: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/licence-discriminate-trumps-muslim-refugee-ban https://www.amnesty.org.uk/licence-discriminate-trumps-musli... Science and medicine cuts: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5468112/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5468112/ Abandoning the kurds: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/turkey-syria-the-kurds-and-trumps-abandonment-of-foreign-policy https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/turkey-syria-t...

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
While I agree with you on most of those points, abandoning allies of convenience when they are no-longer useful has a long history in US foreign policy, and the Kurds should really have known this might happen given that they were abandoned by Bush 1 in 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
I don't know enough about the other three, but there are many people who disagree with you on the child separation. We have 10 million illegal immigrants in the US. Previous administrations have been soft on border enforcement, which led to that number constantly increasing, putting regional pressure on wages, lower class jobs, and regional cultural identity. Trump increased enforcement of existing immigration laws. He wasn't going to put the kids in detainment centers with their parents. Children don't belong in prisons with adults, there would be incredible abuses that occur. Hence separation pending litigation and/or deportation.

truckerbill 6y ago

His track record on the environment is terrible. So is separating families from their children and putting them in cages.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
CO2 Emissions are the lowest they have been in 30 years. Lower than under Obama. And that includes pre-pandemic. Is that terrible?
- EricDeb 6y ago
  https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/jun/18/environmental-protection-agency/are-greenhouse-emissions-down-under-donald-trump-e/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/jun/18/environmen...
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    Thanks, this confirms what I said. Also, it was written in 2018, and it has continued to decline as of the most recent data, which further undermines the latency hypothesis. Maybe you have another metric that you think is important, but this data says that his record is on this one is objectively not terrible.
- arnoldsing 6y ago
  It’s terrible! Why is he giving into the liberal hoax, coronaclimate? Either he’s a good strong guy or he’s not and gives into the communists who make stuff up. What is a liberal? Fake news fake news
o-__-o 6y ago
You mean the cages that protesters staged during a demonstration? Or did I miss the actual child abuse that did not receive any sort of congressional oversight?

runamok 6y ago

> but policy-wise he didn't really make any horrible decisions You don't feel how he handled the Covid pandemic was a bad policy? The guy's vanity wouldn't allow him to wear a mask to act as a good example to his base. He blatantly ignored most of what his advisors told him and proceeded to advocate quack remedies and dubious advice. I really dislike the trope of "all politicians lie" when discussing Trump. It's the worst kind of "what about-ism". I do value a president talking to the American people like we are adults and tell us uncomfortable truths. I think Obama tried that on occasion ands it backfired on him in a major way (comment about those that cling to guns and religion comes to mind). I do agree with you that it's not solely Trump's fault. The republican party quickly fell into step behind him to get their way above any sort of moral high ground they could have hoped to claim in the past.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
I think that the OP's major point is that Trump was a symptom of the problems in US society, not a cause. He did say a lot of the quiet parts loud, which makes some oppponents regard him as uniquely bad. Has everyone forgotten that the Bush administration used similar magical thinking and logic: > The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community I think the real problem here is that the extremes of US politics (mostly the right) have been spreading lies and garbage to their base for years, and eventually, they got a President who believed the nonsense.
- Fnoord 6y ago
  As the saying goes, a democracy gets the leader it deserves. Dictators sometimes get democratically chosen. The dictator chosen in Germany between WWI and WWII was also a symptom of a problem. You cannot simply deduce everything towards such one person; however you also cannot simply say he is executing the "Will of the People". We're not in direct democracies; we pick our leader for 4 years, and that leader (plus some others) have a lot of power during those. I used to say we rotate dictators we pick every 4 years, but back then I had a rather dystopian world-view. As for G.W. "you are either for us, or against us" [1] Bush, people forgive and forget quickly. Though I'd argue he was just a vassal for Rummy, Cheney, et al. For an insight into Bush, watch the movie Vice from 2018. It centers around Dick Cheney, how he became Vice President. Bush successfully managed to get the hardcore Christians behind him, which I suppose was a natural path given the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal. Another good documentary of around that time is Adam Curtis' The Power Of Nightmares which you can find freely and legally on Archive.org. [1] Bifurcation 101, very polarizing statement.

nso95 6y ago

According to Politifact, 72% of Trump's statements they fact checked were at least mostly false. Thats a hell of a lot worse than your average politician.

grasshopperpurp 6y ago

I think the style of lying is definitely part of it, but I do think the details matter. I was talking with a Trump supporter (I held my nose and voted for Biden, as I did for Clinton in 2016). He was pretty heated, because a lady he flirts with at work let him know that she was a hardcore Democrat and that she didn't think anyone should vote for Trump. It was toward the end of a long day, so I wasn't sure if I was up for the conversation, but he's a pretty decent guy, so I engaged, and we had a solid chat. I made a point that seemed to resonate with him - Biden represents high-level corruption, the kind of slick corruption that maintains stability and is relatively predictable. Trump, though, represents a mob style of corruption - or the kind of corruption you see from dictators in developing nations. If it benefits him in the short-term, and he can do it, he will. Chess vs Checkers. Some people prefer the latter, and it seems some view it as a more honest type of corruption, but for most people, stability is important. I've noticed a lot of Right-leaning people would also like to see some form of ranked voting, so I think it's the political parties (both of them) rather than the people holding things back. I think you bring up key issues in your closing paragraph, but the implementation of Globalization is what really hurt the middle class in the US. Whenever people lose a proper balance, they will suffer, and I think most everyone can agree that the US did a particularly poor job of ensuring balance - probably not by accident. Anyway, I feel for people who are troubled by the result of the election. I was in their shoes in 2016, and I can relate to some of their concerns. If we start from a place of understanding/trying to understand, we can build systems that work for everyone. If we allow the two-party system to perpetuate artificial divides, progress will be much slower, and we'll take more false steps. The loudest are typically the worst of us. We can't fall into the trap of using them as stand-ins for the other side. This was much more ranty than I intended, but I hope it makes sense.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago

How do you deal with any of those issues without being demonized as a socialist? My memory is that capitalism and globalization were such a winning platform for the republicans that even the democrats jumped on the bandwagon in the 90s. How do we get out of this mess?