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Have you considered government incompetence is an intentional goal, at least in the US? One of the major political parties often works to hamstring government t

Have you considered government incompetence is an intentional goal, at least in the US? One of the major political parties often works to hamstring government to hurt the other party in power. Both parties do it. It's a feature of first past the post politics, that negative sum tactics hurt your opponents more.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Could you provide a couple of examples that demonstrate what you consider to be the Democrats "hamstring[ing] government to hurt [the Republicans]" ? Thanks.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  I could see interpreting the occasional government shut down as both parties "cooperating" in an attempt to spite each other, with the useful bits of government caught in the crossfire.
- jancsika 4y ago
  I'll bite: I believe Trump declared by fiat that we should leave Afghanistan twice-- once at the beginning of his term, and again in an explicit written directive to the Pentagon after he lost the election in November. (That written directive was essentially ignored by the Pentagon.) Where was Democratic support on those two occasions? And if they didn't offer overwhelming unconditional support for Trump's position of complete withdrawal (which I believe they didn't), what possible reason could there be other than hurting Republicans? Keep in mind that Dems still strongly support Biden's withdrawal, even given how botched the execution of it was.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    The claim that the afghanistan withdrawal was botched has been subject to some criticism. It's certainly true that the (presumably) intelligence based assessment of what the Taliban would try and be able to do and how quickly was disastrously wrong. But compared to other large scale troop pullouts, it was actually remarkably smooth, especially for it's size and scale. The morality of leaving behind so many US collaborators is appalling, but the idea that the Biden administration had some total fuck up over there really isn't correct from everything I've read about. It's a POV widely held by Republicans, I suspect in part because a Republican president failed to even initiate the withdrawal, despite talking about it. Anyway, I think that's largely orthogonal to the original point, which was more about what happens when you have one party whose political philosophy more or less dictates a smaller, less functional state and another that actively seeks to use the power of the state to accomplish things. "Lack of Democratic support" for Trump's spoken intent is real, but not really the same thing as, for example, the idea that public education is a mistake (widely held view among Republican primary voters).

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

Could you provide a couple of examples that demonstrate what you consider to be the Democrats "hamstring[ing] government to hurt [the Republicans]" ? Thanks.

tbrownaw 4y ago
I could see interpreting the occasional government shut down as both parties "cooperating" in an attempt to spite each other, with the useful bits of government caught in the crossfire.
jancsika 4y ago
I'll bite: I believe Trump declared by fiat that we should leave Afghanistan twice-- once at the beginning of his term, and again in an explicit written directive to the Pentagon after he lost the election in November. (That written directive was essentially ignored by the Pentagon.) Where was Democratic support on those two occasions? And if they didn't offer overwhelming unconditional support for Trump's position of complete withdrawal (which I believe they didn't), what possible reason could there be other than hurting Republicans? Keep in mind that Dems still strongly support Biden's withdrawal, even given how botched the execution of it was.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  The claim that the afghanistan withdrawal was botched has been subject to some criticism. It's certainly true that the (presumably) intelligence based assessment of what the Taliban would try and be able to do and how quickly was disastrously wrong. But compared to other large scale troop pullouts, it was actually remarkably smooth, especially for it's size and scale. The morality of leaving behind so many US collaborators is appalling, but the idea that the Biden administration had some total fuck up over there really isn't correct from everything I've read about. It's a POV widely held by Republicans, I suspect in part because a Republican president failed to even initiate the withdrawal, despite talking about it. Anyway, I think that's largely orthogonal to the original point, which was more about what happens when you have one party whose political philosophy more or less dictates a smaller, less functional state and another that actively seeks to use the power of the state to accomplish things. "Lack of Democratic support" for Trump's spoken intent is real, but not really the same thing as, for example, the idea that public education is a mistake (widely held view among Republican primary voters).