The USA has been falling apart since 1975 and voting for MAGA, not once, but twice is accelerating the process.
A broken country elected a broken leader.
America was already broken, that’s why trump got elected. Everything from education to financial security is an ongoing disaster. Then trump & co. destroyed the rest.
Trump is a symptom of a problem that’s been brewing since the heritage foundation formed in the 1970s.
No, when the American Civil War was ended without ending all of the enemy leadership. Giving clemency to traitors who are fundamentally evil, was and is a foolish thing to do.
If there is a 2nd American Civil War, it is a lesson worth remembering.
(Nick cage “you don’t say” meme)
Naw. America stopped pretending when it reelected Trump.
He lost the first time. Harris lost the second time (because she refused to promise sanctions against Israel for genocide).
Trump never won. Don’t spread those lies.
What kind of YouTube bullshit is this of course he won.
The New York Times is partly responsible for this. The bullshit centrist coverage by mainstream media allowed the Democrats to shift to the right, which led to Hillary and her loss.
Seriously, NY Times and all of Mass Media gave us Trump by sane washing his absolute batshittery for clicks.
America didn’t give Trump a second chance. That implies he was caught and convicted, and punished for something he did wrong.
He did not spend a single day in jail. His sentence in New York was effectively commuted.
He was never even charged at the federal level.
He was allowed to continue his tyranny.
Because Democrats refused to actually hold him to account.
Because Democrats refused to actually hold him to account.
because they don’t want to set any precedents for their own fuckery.
It’s all gotta go
The total lack of selfawareness is staggering.
Maybe some damage is irreversible but the goal should still be a return to the liberal status quo that was actually working quite well before American voters decided to break it anyway. I don’t concede that the goose that laid the golden eggs is quite dead yet despite voters’ attempts to kill it.
Agreed. That seems like the “good old days”. We had reason for hope, and change (even if that was the previous guys slogan). Government may have been slow and have way too much red tape but it generally seemed to do the right thing.
The status quo was not working, and the systems upholding it needs to be dismantled.
A Project 2029 cannot be a collection of Democratic Party agenda items. It must articulate a broad new conception of the nation’s political order — one that will guide the way a future Democratic-led government might wield power. Above all, Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction — for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought — not restoration of what was.
The whole article puts eloquent prose to the thoughts in my head (looking from outside the US) as to what the USA needs to recover post-Trump; it’s more than striving to going back to normal.
The issue is that centrist Democratic voices have been kind of developing their vision by committee over any aims to make it cohesive and comprehensive. In my view the plan has to recognize and tackle these three things:
- Internal complacency within the Democratic party to do good things for people rather than just talk about them
- Reforming the outdated systems that simply relying on trust that the system wouldn’t corrupt itself or overlook corruption.
- Fixing the destruction caused by the Trump administration, then taking steps to prevent a cult like Congress and a bought-and-paid-for judiciary to surrender the republic to the executive.
The important thing is you can’t grandfather in the corruption while you fix it.
He also writes
They need, in particular, a commitment to a constitutional order centered on the power and prerogatives of Congress
which yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me as a European – but as I understand it, congress is not a very popular institution in the US. I’ve been following the aggregators for Trump’s favorability/approval ratings - and while they’re not very high, they are a lot higher than the ones for congress. This is going to be tough to do.
Still possible, but I think it depends on the “good things” you mentioned being very clearly good and noticeable in peoples’ lives.
Also, nice to read a comment from someone who actually read the article
They’ve not been popular because they made themselves impotent by refusing to do anything to fix anything since the '80s.
The important thing is you can’t grandfather in the corruption while you fix it.
100% this (from an Americanist’s perspective). Just think of slavery and how it was enshrined in the constitution despite being on the way out. You had to have a whole-ass civil war, shooting and all, to fix it. And arguably still didn’t, cf. the pervasiveness of Confederate nostalgia and the prison industrial complex.
The same forces that successfully lobbied to keep slavery going are lobbying to keep systemic corruption going. Telling you at every opportunity in all the media outlets they bought that it’s the American way, baby!
The only solution to this mess is to finally redefine who “We the People” actually are. If it’s still going to be a bunch of rich white dudes with an aversion to taxes, woe betide you.
Of course that raises the question who would have the authority to perform this redefinition and how they would gain it. Barring a bona fide revolution, I just don’t see it at this point.
Thoughts and prayers from Europe.
I’m for second chances…when the stakes are lower. A waiter messes up a few people’s orders, you give him a chance to improve. A president of a country steals classified documents and attempts a violent coup to stay in power, you ban from ever being in a position of power again
The people capable of preventing him from to getting back into office condoned what he did. The oligarchy will never charge one of their own
My will to live.
They broke my will to live.
You need to recast that. They broke your will to live in the U.S… There are still some nice places in the world.
Example?
Australia and New Zealand are pretty great
New Zealand
They’ve slipped a bit since voting in Luxon and his merry band of cunts, but it’s still not bad
Switzerland
Good luck. Everything is expensive. You’ll be broke in a few months
Broke ain’t the right word. Revealed could be used, or accelerated.
Simple people love simple answers.
It’s a lot easier to blame trump personally and pretend we’d have been fine without him. Even tho most of the people saying Trump’s the only problem, said the same thing about Bush.
It’s easier to blame the sacrifice goat (especially when the goat is evil) than it is to understand if that goat was never born the same people would have just brought out a different goat.
Republican and neoliberal presidents are always just empty suits for the oligarchs.
But simple people never pay enough attention, they don’t look past the surface. They’ll never understand how to fix the underlying condition, because they only notice symptoms.
America was broken before this. Giving Trump a second chance (or a first) was a symptom.
