...because, either by choice or ignorance, contrarianism has replaced principle based foreign policy.
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Hard Power and Soft Power
- Thread starter taxi1
- Start date
If this were only about him doing his job, then I might not take as much issue with the "what" and "how" of what he is doing. However, I believe he- and the Executive Branch as an institution- has gone far beyond Constitutional limits.
As for the concept of favorability mandate, it's my contention that the Democratic opposition lost because they are out of touch, and had no cohesive, clear plan. Republicans won because while they are equally out of touch, they adopted a plan which capitalized on people's anger over policies that are needlessly intrusive, and a government that appears increasingly sclerotic and ineffectual.
I do not believe most critically-thinking folks would vote for unelected oligarchs to be brought into government, drug dealers and violent criminals to go free, and "wasteful" government agencies to be "rapidly disassembled" before a suitable alternative framework was in place. None of that seems to be helping the average American family, but it's not hard to see how it helps Mr. Musk and his cronies. I think a lot of Trump voters simply felt that the alternative was worse, and wanted the newspeak and constant barrage of identity politics out of their faces. Although I didn't vote for Trump, I felt that way myself. Democrats have long since lost the thread there.
On point of wasteful and outdated methods: Perhaps the reason there are still people in a limestone cave doing paperwork by hand in 2025 is that the mechanics of a workable alternative are difficult and no funding line has existed to modernize. Perhaps the reason there are 20M deceased Americans on SS is due to the fact that the SSA needs to track deceased individuals, and may even help them prevent SS fraud. I highly doubt they have been receiving benefits beyond the grave, except possibly in isolated cases of administrative mistakes. Perhaps actual solutions take time.
I do NOT believe Elon Musk is so much smarter than everyone else that he came in and "discovered" all these flaws in two weeks. Were someone external and hostile to Twitter (okay, "X"... lame...) to go in and data-mine their system, I am 100% certain they could "discover" all kinds of waste and organizational issues. Big human organizations tend to be that way.
Apologies if I'm re-hashing arguments already made.
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Sigh...
What we're experiencing boils down largely to an epistemological problem. We have large swaths of the American population who are functionally illiterate on the basic mechanics of how anything works. It has always been so, but it has gotten much worse in the last 20 years. They have no idea how government works, or what the various local, state and federal entities do on their behalf. They don't understand businesses, or basic economics. They cannot distinguish between how something seems to them vs objective reality.
They are fed a steady diet of dopamine hit-reinforced disinformation by politicians and malign foreign agitators that control hordes of social media bots intent on generating outrage. They will believe the most outlandish things, as long as it's coming out of the mouth of a politician or influencer they like. We have vast portions of the American people who don't have the ability to determine fact from fiction. It transcends partisan politics. This provides fertile ground upon which corruption, cults, grift, and lawlessness find purchase. This should terrify each one of you. We're fucking doomed as a society if we don't figure out how to fix this.
What we're experiencing boils down largely to an epistemological problem. We have large swaths of the American population who are functionally illiterate on the basic mechanics of how anything works. It has always been so, but it has gotten much worse in the last 20 years. They have no idea how government works, or what the various local, state and federal entities do on their behalf. They don't understand businesses, or basic economics. They cannot distinguish between how something seems to them vs objective reality.
They are fed a steady diet of dopamine hit-reinforced disinformation by politicians and malign foreign agitators that control hordes of social media bots intent on generating outrage. They will believe the most outlandish things, as long as it's coming out of the mouth of a politician or influencer they like. We have vast portions of the American people who don't have the ability to determine fact from fiction. It transcends partisan politics. This provides fertile ground upon which corruption, cults, grift, and lawlessness find purchase. This should terrify each one of you. We're fucking doomed as a society if we don't figure out how to fix this.
Again, you are word-smithing. You started by noting that Trump’s win wasn’t substantial (a purely political point of view) and I provided examples of how anyone could argue, without violating fact, that he indeed did. If you want to roll in the narrative - how a bombastic, crude, poorly educated, circus-barker overcame three impeachments, several politically focused law suits, and a solid wall of journalistic antagonism to somehow win, and help win several Senate races, and (barely) hold on to the House, then you have a story that defies traditional political science thus rendering ideas like “red,” “blue,” and even “purple” almost meaningless - for the moment. Trump hit a nerve, he somehow opened generations of people to wanting wild-ass, radical change. I don’t yet know what it is (although I have an idea) and I think many political science types don’t want to know. Use the words you wish…but Trump’s win was extraordinary.
Totally agree, but as others have noted, there isn’t actually a party to stop him - at least not yet.
Oh good, the bourgeois are here to lecture the little people. Why, for goodness sake do we even let those things vote?
Well as long as we're dispassionately discussing facts...
It is not elitist to say that many Americans don't understand how the government works. Using epistemological is, maybe, a tad bourgeois but the overall point still stands.
People have become a lot more misinformed courtesy of social media and its derivatives. My wife - a highly educated doctor - has had no shortage of patients say something to the effect of "well that's not what I read on TikTok" and then leave the clinic.
The road of history is paved with many a recently elected president who mistook their win for a mandate. Rewind to 2021 for one such example.
While he does condescend and use sarcasm (I've been a target more than once), @Brett327 is making some good points here. If you took it as talking down to you, I think that has more to do with your interpretation of his post than what he actually said. As far as limiting the vote, he didn't say anything about that at all.
I, for one, am in the "fix it" camp, before we lose this society totally (or more likely, become a sort of techno-feudalist state, where good education and accurate information are only for the privileged few, and the rest have to resort to scams and petty crime to make ends meet.)
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
Apparently 4-day weekends could be on the chopping block.
Say it's not so!!!!!!
In my 2 years of living on an Air Force base I thought it was hilarious how the authority for these days off rested at such high command levels, whereas in the Navy we entrust our COs to make that call.
Totally. My first thought when i saw the article was “That isn’t a unit CO’s call? Oh yeah, Air Force…”
You've done nothing in this thread but hand waive some of the worst behavior imaginable. WTF is wrong with you?