United States Politics Thread 46

[masako]

I'm not really interested in whether he goes to jail, though I get why some are focused on that. Thing is, he's a former president, which means the federal government will know exactly (down to 3 meters) where he is for the remainder of his natural life (because of secret serice protection).

No, what I want to see, is someone, somewhere, with the intestinal fortitude to keep this fool from public office in perpetuity. I don't think that's what he deserves, mind you, but I think it's a minimum consequence that ***might*** keep his followers calm, and satiate those that fear/dislike the thought of his return to a position of authority.

IMHO, it's the "best case" of an absolute shit storm.

[doctor shark]

The key thing is that he must be sentenced for his crimes in George and/or New York, to prevent him from just pardoning himself.

Given the politics of most of Georgia, the Governor there would probably pardon him, too.

If you would've asked me pre-2020, probably. Post 2020, I'm not so sure of that. However, the Governor of Whoregia Georgia actually doesn't have pardon authority, that power being vested in a state board of pardons. I don't know if that's better or worse in this case.

There is some question, however, over how absolute or infinite the president's pardon authority is in terms of whether or not they can self-pardon. A definitive answer won't likely come until they try to do so, but, most likely given the current Supreme Court, it likely wouldn't be struck down.

I'm not really interested in whether he goes to jail, though I get why some are focused on that. Thing is, he's a former president, which means the federal government will know exactly (down to 3 meters) where he is for the remainder of his natural life (because of secret serice protection).

No, what I want to see, is someone, somewhere, with the intestinal fortitude to keep this fool from public office in perpetuity. I don't think that's what he deserves, mind you, but I think it's a minimum consequence that ***might*** keep his followers calm, and satiate those that fear/dislike the thought of his return to a position of authority.

IMHO, it's the "best case" of an absolute shit storm.

I think that's a lot of why a lot of onerous bond conditions haven't been placed: bond and bail are both supposed to keep somebody from absconding and ensure their appearance in court. Given both the fact he has Secret Service protection and is a bit of an attention hog, I think that's less of a concern.

Honestly, I don't care about whether or not he ends up in jail. I just want his supporters to realize what fools they've been (and are), but I don't see much hope for that. (Hopefully I can also get a pretty red passport sooner rather than later so I can stay far, far away from that for an indefinite period...)

[masako]

I just want his supporters to realize what fools they've been (and are)...

You're more likely to be struck by lightning after winning the lottery with a shark attached to your leg and being next in line to the German Throne. Twice.

I've taken to just letting crazy be crazy. I steer clear of them and make it a point to avoid gatherings of more than two red-hatted folks at all times.

[doctor shark]

I just want his supporters to realize what fools they've been (and are)...

You're more likely to be struck by lightning after winning the lottery with a shark attached to your leg and being next in line to the German Throne. Twice.

I've taken to just letting crazy be crazy. I steer clear of them and make it a point to avoid gatherings of more than two red-hatted folks at all times.

I'm writing a grant application right now in which I have to pretend everything's magical Christmas land where everyone gets a pony, so maybe I'm in wishful thinking mode. Either way, still working on figuring out how to get a pretty red passport so I can remain at arm's length (or ocean's width) from the majority of the craziness, which definitely (and unsurprisingly) includes some of my relatives.

[alynnidalar]

That being said, the folks up the road from my parents' took down their Trump 2024 flag! I was ever so proud of them for replacing their Trump 2020 flag last year, and now they've got no Trump merch outside at all.

Of course, as my sister pointed out, folks who have Trump flags are one of the least likely groups of people to ever lose faith in the guy. And it's entirely possible they just moved out. But I'm clinging to the faint possibility of hope.

[masako]

But I'm clinging to the faint possibility of hope.

Depending on how much confidence you (or anyone) have in polls, your hope seems to be gaining traction.

[Raphael]

Going off on a tangent of something that zompist wrote in a discussion over in the Random Thread...

Is it actually healthy to continue celebrity culture in an sf utopia? There can only be one ultra-champion in chess, only one top-selling rock band, one most-produced playwright, whether a civ has 10,000 members or a trillion. I'm not sure any author has come up with a solution to this.

This brings me to one of my pet peeves about US politics: the way how, apparently, people across the political spectrum seem to assume that in principle, everyone could, or should, be able to rise to the top. This takes different forms in different political camps: right-wingers often seem to believe that everyone can rise to the top except if they're too lazy, while left-wingers often seem to believe that everyone can rise to the top except if they're hold back by the one or other kind of systemic oppression.

But relatively few people seem to realize that, even in a hypothetical society in which everyone would work extremely hard, and no one would be under any kind of systemic oppression, the vast majority of people still wouldn't rise to the top because it is part of the very definition of "the top" that the vast majority of people are never a part of it.

Of course it's very bad when right-wingers more or less directly assert things like "Our policies make things horrible for everyone who isn't rich? Well, it's people's own fault if they aren't rich!" But I don't think it helps that much when people on the center-left (the far left seems to be better on this particular issue) talk as if you can solve the problems of disadvantaged groups simply by creating more opportunities for their members to rise to the top.

Think, for instance, of the talk you occasionally hear about how, if the USA would get a woman President, every little girl would be able to dream of growing up to become President. Um, what? Even if that should happen, the vast majority of little girls who would, after that, dream of growing up to become President, still wouldn't end up as President. I mean, even right now, the vast majority of those little boys who are born rich, white, straight, cis-gendered, able-bodied, and into Christian families - that is, with all the standard forms of privilege you can think of - still won't ever become President. If there was a woman US President, the chance of a little girl to grow up to become President would rise roughly from the chance of winning the lottery if you don't buy a ticket to the chance of winning the lottery of you do buy a ticket.

How many women are there in the United States, how many PoCs are there in the United States, how many poor people are there in the United States, how many queer/LGBTQ+ people are there in the United States, how many people with disabilities are there in the United States? They can't all become President! And they can't all become astronauts, or movie stars, or billionaires, or Nobel Price winning scientists, either.

So, yes, there should be a lot more opportunities for disadvantaged people to rise, and that should be an important priority of progressive policy. But the most important priority of progressive policy should be to ensure that the lives of those who don't rise are still worth living.

[Ares Land]

This brings me to one of my pet peeves about US politics: the way how, apparently, people across the political spectrum seem to assume that in principle, everyone could, or should, be able to rise to the top.

My personal impression is that that idea is basically the foundation of the American social contract. Americans seem more tolerant of inequalities than we Western Europeans, partly because of the expectation that you could rise to the top.

(Just a personal idea. Americans should feel free to correct me )

[Rounin Ryuuji]

My personal impression is that that idea is basically the foundation of the American social contract. Americans seem more tolerant of inequalities than we Western Europeans, partly because of the expectation that you could rise to the top.

From my personal and purely anecdotal experience, there's a huge generational gap on that very point. A few decades ago, I would've thought that a fairly apt general description, but I think most Americans born in the 1980s and after, myself included, do not support the status quo (whence the notion of the "Millennial socialist"), however there is a broad feeling of powerlessness and disenfranchisement among those with more left-leaning views.

The sort of thing you describe is, incidentally, what I was told growing up (in the 90's and early 2000's, but looking backwards my instincts told me something was rotten in it), but the past fifteen or so years have taught me that that is nonsense under our current economic system.

[zompist]

My personal impression is that that idea is basically the foundation of the American social contract. Americans seem more tolerant of inequalities than we Western Europeans, partly because of the expectation that you could rise to the top.

(Just a personal idea. Americans should feel free to correct me )

I think it's more complicated than that. Americans used to be more egalitarian than Europeans. E.g. if you look at the charts in Piketty, France was much more dominated by capital than the US, up to the 1910s, and the top US income tax rates were higher than France's until 1980. Income distribution used to be much flatter, CEO income wasn't out of control, and productivity increases lifted up everyone. It's much easier to tolerate rich people in that kind of world.

I think the self-image of Americans is egalitarian. Note that even GOP rhetoric is populist and anti-elite, even when their actual policies are plutocratic. In general I don't think Americans have fully internalized the shift from liberalism to plutocracy-- though as Rounin Ryuuji says, a lot more people are dissatisfied with the system today.

[Raphael]

I think the self-image of Americans is egalitarian. Note that even GOP rhetoric is populist and anti-elite, even when their actual policies are plutocratic.

Quoting myself, if you don't mind:

All too many people from the USA still seem to have an image of their country as basically an honest, straightforward car mechanic who somehow managed it to get into a high society party, and is now telling the assembled VIPs there exactly what he really thinks of them and their pretensions. What makes this self-image so hopelessly outdated is, of course, the fact that for a very long time, everyone else in the world has seen the USA as the high society party.

[Raphael]

Reposting something I posted a few weeks ago over in the "What are you reading, watching and listening to?"-thread:

I'm currently working my way through Douglas Halberstam's classic The Best and the Brightest, about how some of the most celebrated graduates of some of the USA's most prestigious universities led that country into the Vietnam War.

Some of the terminology Halberstam uses hasn't aged well, to put it politely. At some points, the accounts of bureaucratic infighting within the US Government get a bit tedious for someone who, like me, isn't really into soap operas. One thing that didn't bother me, but might confuse people who aren't as good as me at following stuff like that, is how he sometimes jumps back and forth between talking about things that happened in the 1940s and talking about things that happened in the 1960s. And I'm not sure how much the book is going to tell me things that I don't already know - ironically to some extent because they became common knowledge thanks to the book's own influence and stature.

But, with those caveats, it's a pretty good book. It gets me curious: are the long-established East Coast old money families still as well-represented in the USA's ruling bureaucracy today? Or do they prefer more subtle and indirect ways of exerting their influence these days?

I'm posting this here because I wonder if anyone has an answer to the question at the end.

[Travis B.]

Just a minor quibble, but the author of The Best and the Brightest was David, not Douglas, Halberstam. (I was wondering why I did not get a zillion results for it when I googled for "Douglas Halberstam".)

[Raphael]

Just a minor quibble, but the author of The Best and the Brightest was David, not Douglas, Halberstam. (I was wondering why I did not get a zillion results for it when I googled for "Douglas Halberstam".)

Ooooooooops! Sorry, my bad. Somehow I keep getting that wrong.

[masako]

I think it's more complicated than that. Americans used to be more egalitarian than Europeans. E.g. if you look at the charts in Piketty, France was much more dominated by capital than the US, up to the 1910s, and the top US income tax rates were higher than France's until 1980. Income distribution used to be much flatter, CEO income wasn't out of control, and productivity increases lifted up everyone. It's much easier to tolerate rich people in that kind of world.

I think you're hinting at Reagan, which is good, but you should feel free to just say it...that man up-ended the US economy in ways that are still having a massive impact. He also was pretty blatant about it, claiming that "trickle-down economics" was a real thing that would work. It ain't never worked.

Chart for a visual.

Besides his economic policies, he can also be blamed for the far right, starting with Evangelicals, and the Christian Nationalists.

Shows what happens when a faux-celebrity get's the most powerful job in the world, huh? Oh yeah, it's a theme.

[zompist]

I think it's more complicated than that. Americans used to be more egalitarian than Europeans. E.g. if you look at the charts in Piketty, France was much more dominated by capital than the US, up to the 1910s, and the top US income tax rates were higher than France's until 1980. Income distribution used to be much flatter, CEO income wasn't out of control, and productivity increases lifted up everyone. It's much easier to tolerate rich people in that kind of world.

I think you're hinting at Reagan, which is good, but you should feel free to just say it...that man up-ended the US economy in ways that are still having a massive impact. He also was pretty blatant about it, claiming that "trickle-down economics" was a real thing that would work. It ain't never worked.

I'm not hinting; I've been blaming Reagan for years.

[masako]

I'd not seen that page.

If you have time, this was also insightful for me; link.

[Raphael]

So apparently, Lachlan beat James.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66881306

Does this mean that things are going to get even worse? Or is it just irrelevant for the overall amount of messed-up-ness in the world in general, and US politics in particular?

[masako]

Does this mean that things are going to get even worse?

Probably more so for the Murdochs than the general public. There has been infighting among the older children for decades, both about inheritance and the "direction of the company." This means that Fox - which is their crowning jewel - will likely suffer to some degree over the next few years, and probably much more so once Rupert finally dies.

What that means for the broader political/media landscape is really up in the air, but it creates space for OANN and Newsmax to continue to gobble-up market share,...which is a horrifying thought.

Or is it just irrelevant for the overall amount of messed-up-ness in the world in general, and US politics in particular?

I kinda want to say "touch grass" here...I mean, yeah, things are never utopian, but they are alright. The global community has thus far prevented a multilateral conflict in Ukraine, the economic woes of the pandemic are waning (admittedly in mostly developed Western countries), and even with recent talks among some of the world's assholiest leaders, the overall picture is one of improvement.

As for US politics in particular? Well...I honestly think that until Trump is dead or in prison, we will be stuck on this treadmill of lunacy indefinitely.

[Raphael]

Does this mean that things are going to get even worse?

Probably more so for the Murdochs than the general public. There has been infighting among the older children for decades, both about inheritance and the "direction of the company." This means that Fox - which is their crowning jewel - will likely suffer to some degree over the next few years, and probably much more so once Rupert finally dies.

But hasn't Lachlan pretty much won out in those struggles now?