US Politics - Term of surrender? Or is it wise to follow the Dumpty?

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

I think Bloomberg's team has run out of ideas for ads

Wow.  Ok, let's be fair here.  His preference for "big gay ice cream" as the best is an important policy position.  We need to defend against the proponents of "small straight ice cream," that's just a threat to society.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

59 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

DON'T KINK SHAME ME

Ever heard of the discredit rumor about Eva Peron?

That can be your inspiration.

[DMC]

Comparing old classic westerns, Grace Kelly was really hot in High Noon.  Discuss.

[Ormond]

30 minutes ago, DMC said:

Comparing old classic westerns, Grace Kelly was really hot in High Noon.  Discuss.

Sorry, I'd rather discuss the hotness or not of Gary Cooper, Lloyd Bridges, and Ian MacDonald in that film. 

To link this to politics, that would be a place where Buttigieg and I would agree.  

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Ormond said:

To link this to politics, that would be a place where Buttigieg and I would agree.  

High Noon is rife with politics already.  The story is rather explicitly an analogy to McCarthyism and one man standing up to mob mentality - as screenwriter Carl Foreman himself was blacklisted after his testimony to HUAC.  Alternatively, Tony Soprano tells us that Gary Cooper represents "the strong and silent type," a beacon of classic American individualism in an increasingly socialistic government and world.

But yeah, Cooper and Bridges were pretty hot too.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Comparing old classic westerns, Grace Kelly was really hot in High Noon.  Discuss.

This conversation begins and ends with Claudia Cardinale in Once Uoong a Time in the West. 

37 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Sorry, I'd rather discuss the hotness or not of Gary Cooper, Lloyd Bridges, and Ian MacDonald in that film. 

Same movie, I'll take Henry Fonda, whom older women seem to think I look like (I look nothing like him).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, James Arryn said:

It’s like a game show to keep raising the bar for ‘how corrupt can you be?’ And you just know the next time they rant about the Constitution or free speech or rule of law or w/e, they will sound exactly as emphatic and indignant as they ever have.

The brazenness of it is shocking, and it my help explain this post by @The Anti-Targ. Other world leaders are watching what Trump is doing and probably testing if they can get away with it to. We've have a number of examples of leaders parroting Trump's idiotic talking points.

I mean, just look at Congressional Republicans. They are being so openly corrupt. How can any sane and decent person both argue “that we don’t have any first hand witnesses, making the House’s impeachment invalid” and “we cannot hear from Bolton despite him being one because reasons that aren’t totally about making sure the truth doesn’t come out?”

[DMC]

24 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Other world leaders are watching what Trump is doing and probably testing if they can get away with it to.

This is..backwards.  Trump doesn't have some handbook on "how to be an autocrat in America today."  He's learning, mimicking, cribbing from other autocrats across the world.  It's rather plain to see in how much he'll adopt whatever autocrat he's kissing ass to at the time's certain rhetoric.  The nationalistic trends throughout the world hardly started with Trump, and will not end with Trump.  He's not the one generating this, and other leaders aren't so much parroting Trump as he's parroting them.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I forgot to get to something from last week. @DMC and @Mlle. Zabzie, I believe it was you discussing revolutions and debating if they worked in 20 or 80 year cycles. How familiar are you two with the Strauss-Howe generational theory, better known as The Fourth Turning. I hate agreeing with Bannon on anything, but I once heard him mention this and it makes an interesting point. Basically it argues that you were both right, that giant cycles work on roughly 80-90 year trend lines marked by a major historical event (Revolutionary War, Civil War, WW 2 and now theoretically), and that within them there are four 20-22 year turns, Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Each season marks the trend of that 20 year cycle, rebirth, blossoming, decay and death. It's largely seen as pseudoscience, but still, it's interesting.

[OldGimletEye]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

 He's not the one generating this, and other leaders aren't so much parroting Trump as he's parroting them.

Indeed. The rise of right wing authoritarianism/nationalism isn't solely confined to the US and its disturbing that it cropping up around the globe.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is..backwards.  Trump doesn't have some handbook on "how to be an autocrat in America today."  He's learning, mimicking, cribbing from other autocrats across the world.  It's rather plain to see in how much he'll adopt whatever autocrat he's kissing ass to at the time's certain rhetoric.  The nationalistic trends throughout the world hardly started with Trump, and will not end with Trump.  He's not the one generating this, and other leaders aren't so much parroting Trump as he's parroting them.

Well in that sense wouldn't it be more cyclical? Trump imitates authoritarians, and it turn, non-authoritarians begin to imitate Trump as a means of grabbing power. I could be wrong, but it feels like that's what we're seeing.

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

How familiar are you two with the Strauss-Howe generational theory, better known as The Fourth Turning.

Not very.  I don't have much use for works that are largely non-empirical in nature.  I mean, there are already great works of fiction that speculate on cycles of history, like Burgess' The Wanting Seed.  No matter what year interval you put on realignments of the two-party system, it's not a cycle.  It's shifting coalitions of interests, which is what compose each party.  Looking at it as a cycle does not make sense to me in terms of simply observing American political history.  That goes for (somewhat) more empirically-inclined scholars as well, like Skowronek's "political time" thesis.

18 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Trump imitates authoritarians, and it turn, non-authoritarians begin to imitate Trump as a means of grabbing power. I could be wrong, but it feels like that's what we're seeing.

Sure, yeah, that's a fair point.  Like the "art imitating life imitating art" cycle gone horrifically abjectly wrong.

[Fragile Bird]

3 hours ago, James Arryn said:

Lol, well, to get TMI, with twin girls due in a few weeks, at this point the right kind of breeze is good enough to get me going. 

Wait, what? Did you get married and I missed the announcement? Or you moved in with your BFF? Twin girls? Congrats!

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

This is..backwards.  Trump doesn't have some handbook on "how to be an autocrat in America today."  He's learning, mimicking, cribbing from other autocrats across the world.  It's rather plain to see in how much he'll adopt whatever autocrat he's kissing ass to at the time's certain rhetoric.  The nationalistic trends throughout the world hardly started with Trump, and will not end with Trump.  He's not the one generating this, and other leaders aren't so much parroting Trump as he's parroting them.

The big difference is that this is one of the first big democracies doing it and doing it in a time of relative prosperity. We've seen it many times in countries with no real democratic tradition and seen it a few times in countries with a tradition for corruption when they had problems, but never in one of, say, the g7 or whatever. 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

This is..backwards.  Trump doesn't have some handbook on "how to be an autocrat in America today."  He's learning, mimicking, cribbing from other autocrats across the world.  It's rather plain to see in how much he'll adopt whatever autocrat he's kissing ass to at the time's certain rhetoric.  The nationalistic trends throughout the world hardly started with Trump, and will not end with Trump.  He's not the one generating this, and other leaders aren't so much parroting Trump as he's parroting them.

The difference is when an autocrat arises in BFE hardly anyone gives a shit because they have very little effect on the world. But when one arises as the "the leader of the free world", in the biggest economy with the most powerful military, that's a bit more of a concern to everyone. And When the leadership of the self-proclaimed freest country in the world gets away with patently corrupt and anti-freedom practices, that gives the autocrats elsewhere a helluva lot of aid and comfort.

The US comes late to the party in a lot of things, but it almost always seems to get whatever it is that's going on across the finish line.

Or what @Kalbear said.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The big difference is that this is one of the first big democracies doing it and doing it in a time of relative prosperity. We've seen it many times in countries with no real democratic tradition and seen it a few times in countries with a tradition for corruption when they had problems, but never in one of, say, the g7 or whatever. 

Meh, that's a weird standard or constraint you're putting on it.  Obviously we've seen democracies fall a hundred years ago, although you're right they didn't have much "democratic tradition" at the time.  But if you're gonna confine it to that, neither do most states.  The UK is obviously going through a concurrent backlash.  In France, there's elements of it too.  Regardless, all are poor comparisons because they are not superpowers post-WWII.  This is where Trump gains traction with lots of people - Europe has relied on the US and has not put in its fair share.  And he's right, it's entirely hypocritical of them to shame our foreign policy while reaping the benefits.  They are, largely, in effect free riders when it comes to any time we all agree (rightly or - mostly - wrongly) military action is necessary.  Other than Canada, it's not like any other countries of the G7 haven't had to deal with this shit - both historically and currently.

To be clear, because I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of whiny responses about this, I'm not saying it's right that the US are the world police.  Just that most of Europe expects the US to be the world police, so then they can sit back and criticize America for doing the exact thing they usually wanted the US to do in the first place.

3 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

nd When the leadership of the self-proclaimed freest country in the world gets away with patently corrupt and anti-freedom practices, that gives the autocrats elsewhere a helluva lot of aid and comfort.

Yep, certainly.  Never said anything to the contrary.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Meh, that's a weird standard or constraint you're putting on it.  Obviously we've seen democracies fall a hundred years ago, although you're right they didn't have much "democratic tradition" at the time. 

I am not talking about democracies a hundred years ago. I'm talking about, say, Hungary and what it's going through. It clearly doesn't have a long democratic tradition, and it backsliding into autocracy is depressing, but not hugely surprising. Greece would be another example where autocracy flirting largely coincided with shitty economies. Italy is...odd. They have a weird history with populists in general, but they're still not particularly large on the grand scheme of things.

And while Britain and France and Germany have flirted with rising reactionary populist movements, none have shown the kind of institutional breakdown in common democratic norms that the US has, at least so far. The US is leading the field. USA! USA! USA!

2 hours ago, DMC said:

But if you're gonna confine it to that, neither do most states.  The UK is obviously going through a concurrent backlash.  In France, there's elements of it too.  Regardless, all are poor comparisons because they are not superpowers post-WWII.  This is where Trump gains traction with lots of people - Europe has relied on the US and has not put in its fair share.  And he's right, it's entirely hypocritical of them to shame our foreign policy while reaping the benefits.  They are, largely, in effect free riders when it comes to any time we all agree (rightly or - mostly - wrongly) military action is necessary.  Other than Canada, it's not like any other countries of the G7 haven't had to deal with this shit - both historically and currently.

I really don't understand this and fail to see how it is relevant to actual failures in Democratic processing or the original point of how there's a marked difference between, say, Hungary going autocrat and the US doing it. 

 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And while Britain and France and Germany have flirted with rising reactionary populist movements, none have shown the kind of institutional breakdown in common democratic norms that the US has, at least so far. The US is leading the field. USA! USA! USA!

I'm not sure how you measure the backslide.  And I really don't care to get into a comparativist argument because it's not productive.  Point is, this isn't new, has been going on throughout the "west" for awhile, has been identified as a problem for last quarter century among experts, but if you want to say the US is leading the charge, sure, fine.

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I really don't understand this and fail to see how it is relevant to actual failures in Democratic processing or the original point of how there's a marked difference between, say, Hungary going autocrat and the US doing it. 

I don't understand what you don't understand.  You asserted there were "big differences" in the US being the first "big democracy" that somehow "never" verged upon this type of autocracy - and specifically cited the G7.  Well, that's just not true -- unless you are treating the US as the superpower it is and has been in the post-WWII era.  In which case, that's what I was responding to.  If not, then yeah, the US is confronting the same forces that are going on throughout white-dominant society.  In the same way there's no American exceptionalism, America is not particularly unique in the MAGA regard either. 

[Kalbear]

18 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'm not sure how you measure the backslide.  And I really don't care to get into a comparativist argument because it's not productive.  Point is, this isn't new, has been going on throughout the "west" for awhile, has been identified as a problem for last quarter century among experts, but if you want to say the US is leading the charge, sure, fine. 

I think that there's a much bigger difference from what the US has done to what other countries have done. I'm entirely willing to believe that this is US-centric thinking, but to my recollection we haven't seen much of countries openly saying and accepting that the rule of law is not as important as party values. Part of that, IMO, is that there aren't a whole lot of two-party systems in the Democratic world; most are multiparty parliamentary systems, and most also don't have an elected executive. Both of these are uniquely problematic in terms of autocratic takeover. 

18 minutes ago, DMC said:

I don't understand what you don't understand.  You asserted there were "big differences" in the US being the first "big democracy" that somehow "never" verged upon this type of autocracy - and specifically cited the G7.  Well, that's just not true -- unless you are treating the US as the superpower it is and has been in the post-WWII era.  In which case, that's what I was responding to.  If not, then yeah, the US is confronting the same forces that are going on throughout white-dominant society.  In the same way there's no American exceptionalism, America is not particularly unique in the MAGA regard either. 

Ah, I see the problem. Yes, I was talking about post WW2. You're totally right, prior to WW2 there were obviously plenty of problematic democracies failing, though even then they didn't have a ton of history of democratic practices. Germany in particular hadn't been super democratic for more than what, 2 generations - heck, maybe not even that, just one? (Given that they had an emperor and whatnot, and before that Bismarck, and before that Germany wasn't even a country). 

As to the same forces - perhaps, but they're manifesting significantly more strongly in the US. Boris Johnson is a huge ol' piece of shit, but he doesn't have the same kind of control over the courts that Trump wields, and he's the next closest as far as I can tell. Multiparty parliaments tend to block a lot of this sort of thing fairly nicely, IMO. The only place I can think of with non-majority rule and with the flouting of rule of law similar to the US is Hungary. 

[Kalbear]

12 minutes ago, Triskele said:

And now Jacobin predictably has a response to that Chait piece, and it's called "Jonathan Chait is Wrong About Everything, Including Bernie's Electibility."  

Interesting segment:

 

 

The notion that the 2018 midterm was 'only' 51% is pretty insane, given that it was the best attended midterm in a generation. 

And again, the problem is that if Sanders is talking about improving turnout, why couldn't he beat Clinton? The logic would still hold there, no? It should still hold in this election as well. If he can't get those young voters to vote for him in the primary, what is the logical leap necessary to indicate that they'd come out in the general?