United States Politics Thread 47

[malloc]

*sigh* yet again you move the goalposts, and then wonder why nobody is as panicked as you are. read your own post. Generations ago, China was a kingdom, and generations ago, my ancestors were mining the Welsh hills, likely with your ancestors shooting at them.

The revolution that brought the current regime to power was 76 years ago, which certainly qualifies as several generations. The decades-long stability of China and many other dictatorships demonstrates that they can endure indefinitely without war to topple them. For that matter, it's been nearly forty years since the last serious protests against the Chinese government, which ended in a massacre of the protesters.

so you claim, despite every political and quasi-political group in the US doing anything but supporting him or his agenda.

Most government agencies are following his agenda and those who aren't are getting gutted and either restaffed or left to die on the vine. Sure some judges have ruled against him, but he can always appeal those rulings and the Supreme Court will generally rule in his favor.

clearly its escaped your notice, then, that firing the people who know what their jobs are and how to do them, does not make you better at getting that work done -- it doesn't matter how many yes-men you bring in to replace them...all you'd end up with, is a comedy skit.

Even assuming every soldier in the new Trump army is a complete naïf, they would still have basic training and access to weaponry far beyond civilian capabilities. It would only take one bomber run or drone strike to eliminate hundreds of protesters. More generally, the vast majority of liberals and left wingers have even less combat expertise than even a new recruit in the military.

[Travis B.]

malloc, you clearly want to believe that Trump is some unstoppable force, when in reality he has been chronically failing and waffling at much of what he has attempted to do. Look at how he turned around and backed down on much of his China tariffs for practically nothing in return! So much for being a master of 'four-dimensional chess'...

[Raphael]

What the fuck he thinks he's doing with tariffs, no one can figure out. I've seen the theory that they are a gangster's negotiating ploy— "offer me things to appease me"— but he jacked up the tariffs on China, then agreed to go down to 30%, in return for nothing at all.

As hwhatting pointed out earlier, he seems to have believed in tariffs as a magic cure-all for everything since the 1980s. Not sure why he's taken so many tariffs back, then, though.

[Torco]

What the fuck he thinks he's doing with tariffs, no one can figure out. I've seen the theory that they are a gangster's negotiating ploy— "offer me things to appease me"— but he jacked up the tariffs on China, then agreed to go down to 30%, in return for nothing at all.

What I don't see is any large probability of a world war. Trump is not gearing up for war. Xi may well want Taiwan, but he's also quite happy to increase trade with an independent Taiwan. The EU may become more of a military power, but only to defend itself.

A possibility is there's no long term plan, and the whole point is doing a series of short-term moves, each with its own scammy little angle: tariffs *could*¨be just so he and his guys can buy and sell stock as the markets reel this way and that. tariffs announced, buy the dip. tariffs retracted, sell the rise. rinse and repeteat. or the thing with taking some distance from israel after the gulf guys give him a plane.

you keep claiming we'll have an entrenched dictatorship by the time we go to war with the rest of the world - why wait? go out there and start the war yourself. I'm sure Trump would praise you and maybe name a seat cushion after you in his new jet.

i've heard the notion that he's trying to provoke dissidents into doing something he can frame as domestic terrorism in order to justify full on martial law or something like that. suspending habeas corpus, for example, something the administration has suggested, plus ICE kidnapping, disappearing and sending people to salvadorian gulags means people are a lot more likely to resist any arrest (since any arrest could end up with the arrested person in el salvador). as that becomes more common, the admin might claim "see? they resist the law, they're all terrorists, martial law is in order, drain the swamp, the best drain, the best martial law, the best in the whole world" etc etc.

[malloc]

malloc, you clearly want to believe that Trump is some unstoppable force, when in reality he has been chronically failing and waffling at much of what he has attempted to do. Look at how he turned around and backed down on much of his China tariffs for practically nothing in return! So much for being a master of 'four-dimensional chess'...

He has already accomplished many things, from rolling back rights for minority groups to eliminating government support for the sciences. Transgender people have been kicked out of the military, for instance, and American science is likely moribund owing to massive funding cuts. He has shown no interest in reversing either of those decisions, unlike his waffling on tariffs. Just as importantly, he keeps trying to achieve his goals no matter how badly they fail the first time. If he wants something done, it will happen eventually even if he has to arrest and replace dozens of judges or whatever.

[Otto Kretschmer]

The revolution that brought the current regime to power was 76 years ago, which certainly qualifies as several generations. The decades-long stability of China and many other dictatorships demonstrates that they can endure indefinitely without war to topple them. For that matter, it's been nearly forty years since the last serious protests against the Chinese government, which ended in a massacre of the protesters.

The question is why should Chinese people even want the CCP out of power so badly?

Is the country collapsing? No. In fact the last 47 years (since 1978) have economically been the most prosperous times for most people since at least the time of Emperor QIanlong and very possibly the best time in the whole Chinese history.

And if China is to transition to democracy (not a bad ideo IMO) - are you ready to accept democratic China as the new leader of the democratic world?

[keenir]

malloc, you clearly want to believe that Trump is some unstoppable force,

its unlikely, but perhaps Malloc is trying to get Trump to hire him? everyone else who proclaims Trump to be Godking on Earth, seems to be getting a job working for him, after all.

so you claim, despite every political and quasi-political group in the US doing anything but supporting him or his agenda.

Most government agencies are following his agenda and those who aren't are getting gutted and either restaffed or left to die on the vine. Sure some judges have ruled against him, but he can always appeal those rulings and the Supreme Court will generally rule in his favor.

weird how the US Supreme Court has not been ruling in his favor lately.

clearly its escaped your notice, then, that firing the people who know what their jobs are and how to do them, does not make you better at getting that work done -- it doesn't matter how many yes-men you bring in to replace them...all you'd end up with, is a comedy skit.

Even assuming every soldier in the new Trump army is a complete naïf, they would still have basic training and access to weaponry far beyond civilian capabilities. It would only take one bomber run or drone strike to eliminate hundreds of protesters. More generally, the vast majority of liberals and left wingers have even less combat expertise than even a new recruit in the military.

do your "the vast majority" include all the people forced to leave the military? because they would by definition have far more combat experience than any new recruit.

[keenir]

And if China is to transition to democracy (not a bad ideo IMO) - are you ready to accept democratic China as the new leader of the democratic world?

I'd guess No...because that wouldn't be horrifically depressing enough.

[Torco]

both travis and malloc are right about trump, i think: he *is* incompetent, unstable and ultimately might very well stupid himself out of power, but in the meantime he's a strong agent for change.... bad change, in many senses, but change nontheless.

The question is why should Chinese people even want the CCP out of power so badly?

a good point. there's really no indication that the regime's legitimacy, as far as public opinion goes, is anything but fairly good to excellent. higher than in most western countries, that's for sure.

I wouldn't expect china to do very well if it were to become a western-style democracy. this is just the opinion of a layman, i'm no expert on china, but from what i gather it looks like its extraordinary success has to do with some things that depend on their current political system. besides being really big and having vast amounts of manpower, i think china's sucess has to do with the way it can mobilize that manpower on demand. this is done through many means, but they include five year plans and a class of dual-function employee-party-members that's explicitly there to ensure the company follows part directives, whether that be prioritizing solar panels, or whatever else. take refining of raw materials, especially rare earths: as i understand it, they're not dominant in that industry because they have the most iridium or whatever, but because they have all of the refineries: refineries take vast manpower to build, but because there was a decision in some five year plan or other, they got built anyway, even if the investment took decades to pay off, and there was no guarantee from the perpsective of any given company that it would pay off, except the fact that all of the other companies were following the same plan, so there was sure to be some sourcing relevant ingredients, making relevant machines, and all the rest of it. liberal democratic capitalism, on the other hand, is unable to do this very well: long term planning is precluded by the election cycle, and big plans, those that require the coordination of many different sorts of companies, require that the plan is profitable for all of them. furthermore, the predominance of the financial sector means the productive energies of countries are funneled to to where anyone thinks would be a long-time good idea for the country, but where hype and investor whims dictate.

In principle, you could have a five year plan under a western style democracy, especially if its not politicians making the plans (or if its not the same politicians that are competing for the various branches of government), but you start having problems with whoever the plan doesn't benefit buying airtime and pundits and convincing everyone that the plan is stupid. and by all accounts it's easier to convince public opinion that something is stupid, harder to convince them it's a great idea. so no planning. I'd expect china to have the same things happen to it as other third world western-style democracies, if it changed system: western megacorpos would try to own its publications and social media, probably successfully, and their natural resources too! it'd be forced into austerity, social cuts, nationalism would be spurred on, threatening its national sentiment ("han" is a lot less homogeneous as a thing that some people think). and from my relatively sparse interactions with chinese people on xiaohongshu, the chinese (especially the male ones) really vividly remember the century of humilliation. i'd not expect many to be chill with "and btw now western megacorpos can buy chinese companies, channels, journals, politicians and natural resources" as a proposition.

... then again, i wouldn't hear much from the ones that are more pro-western, so there's that.

[zompist]

Nothing lasts forever, and fascism has a particularly poor record. Let's look at the history books,

The Confederacy: 5 years
Nazi Germany: 12 years
Mussolini's Italy: 23 years

Authoritarian right-wing regimes can last longer, but again let's look:

Áñez in Bolivia: 1 year
Bolsonaro in Brazil: 4 years
Greek juntas: 7 years
Kaczyński in Poland: 8 years
Milošević in Serbia: 11 years
Argentine juntas: 15 years (excludes 2 years of the Peróns)
Orbán in Hungary: 15 years and counting
Pinochet regime: 17 years
South Korean dictatorships: 27 years
Franco in Spain: 39 years
Assads in Syria: 53 years
Nationalist China: 59 years

You can find longer ones, but those are of questionable relevance, due to historical or geographic contingencies.

Some regimes get voted out, a few exit at gunpoint, but it's common for dictatorships to collapse, including ones that looked unassailable just before the end.

This is far more clear today than it was when I was young: Dictatorships are a high-energy and thus high-tension form of government, and are also usually a drag on their economy. They dominated the world circa 1975 because that energy was supplied externally by the US/USSR Cold War.

If the economy is booming they can last a long time— cf. South Korea.

History geek note: dismantling a dictatorship can take years after their official end; and of course in many of these cases the right-wing parties didn't actually disappear. And there are edge cases— Modi is pretty awful, for instance, but he lost his absolute majority last year and I don't think he can be called a dictator.

[malloc]

Nothing lasts forever, and fascism has a particularly poor record. Let's look at the history books,

The Confederacy: 5 years
Nazi Germany: 12 years
Mussolini's Italy: 23 years

Those all collapsed from losing wars rather than internal problems, though. They could easily have lasted indefinitely if they had avoided or won their respective wars.

This is far more clear today than it was when I was young: Dictatorships are a high-energy and thus high-tension form of government, and are also usually a drag on their economy. They dominated the world circa 1975 because that energy was supplied externally by the US/USSR Cold War.

The opposite has often seemed the case to me. Democracy requires constant effort and vigilance to prevent politicians from accruing too much power and oligarchs from corrupting the system. Under democracy, the average person must pay close attention to politics, regularly vote against corrupt politicians, and and protest against harmful policies. Under dictatorship, the average person can turn off their brain and simply follow whatever arbitrary directive the dictator commands. The fact that numerous countries have managed to sustain democracy and avoid collapsing into dictatorship for generations is itself remarkable.

[Travis B.]

This is far more clear today than it was when I was young: Dictatorships are a high-energy and thus high-tension form of government, and are also usually a drag on their economy. They dominated the world circa 1975 because that energy was supplied externally by the US/USSR Cold War.

The opposite has often seemed the case to me. Democracy requires constant effort and vigilance to prevent politicians from accruing too much power and oligarchs from corrupting the system. Under democracy, the average person must pay close attention to politics, regularly vote against corrupt politicians, and and protest against harmful policies. Under dictatorship, the average person can turn off their brain and simply follow whatever arbitrary directive the dictator commands. The fact that numerous countries have managed to sustain democracy and avoid collapsing into dictatorship for generations is itself remarkable.

Dictatorships are brittle, and cannot yield to opposition but rather seem to hold firm but ultimately can fail very quickly. Liberal democracies weather crises much better, because if things go awry, they provide an outlet in the form of voting out the people currently in power while still ultimately preserving the underlying system.

[keenir]

Nothing lasts forever, and fascism has a particularly poor record. Let's look at the history books,

The Confederacy: 5 years
Nazi Germany: 12 years
Mussolini's Italy: 23 years

Those all collapsed from losing wars rather than internal problems, though. They could easily have lasted indefinitely if they had avoided or won their respective wars.

you really think the Confederacy could have survived the Dust Bowl? they were too deeply tied to soil-exhausting habits to survive, and thats assuming they could have survived being torn apart from inside - the State Of Jones and West Virginia weren't its only internal problems.

This is far more clear today than it was when I was young: Dictatorships are a high-energy and thus high-tension form of government, and are also usually a drag on their economy. They dominated the world circa 1975 because that energy was supplied externally by the US/USSR Cold War.

The opposite has often seemed the case to me.

given your tendancy towards doomscrolling, its not toooo much of a shock that you doomscroll in your reading of history as well.

. Under dictatorship, the average person can turn off their brain and simply follow whatever arbitrary directive the dictator commands.

oh so thats why you have that hardon for dictatorships?

or is it just for absolutism?