Trump

Also the smallness of his inauguration crowd obviously annoyed him to a preposterous amount.
I think that there is every chance that he will ultimately end up in jail... and I think even he realises that if the next president is vindictive enough to investigate him properly then he will be in very serious trouble. His best chance of delaying or avoiding that is by winning the next election and staying in power for as long as possible. This makes him very dangerous cos he's got away with cheating so far... I predict that the next election is gonna be the dirtiest and most corrupt imaginable. I also predict that if he loses he will try and pull out all the stops to declare the election invalid, to declare martial law... whatever, he will fight tooth and nail to stay in power in ways that we haven't seen before. And if he does win (by fair means or foul) it is very likely that as the end of his second terms comes into view, he will seek to change the rules so that he can have a third term (like his idol Putin). Presumably there will be a huge pushback against that but if he can do it then the US is really fucked....

More than it already is?

Yeah definitely. I mean that at the moment, even with just two entrenched parties who represent a tiny part of the possible spectrum of political views and yet leave no possibility of other parties being involved, even with Fox News, Super PACs, the electoral college and the vast barriers to entry meaning that only the super-rich have any chance of being president (which sounds pretty bad in itself when you say it - far from the American Dream), with the gerrymandered boundaries which mean that many areas are over-represented or under-represented and the especial unfairness of the way that the Senate is selected, the polarisation of the country and the lobbying and the lifetime appointments to the supreme court and so on and so on... even with all that, the US can just about claim to be something like a democracy. Of course it's far from the best functioning democracy around and it's hardly the example to the rest of the world that some of its citizens still believe (or claim to believe) but if you look at it with your eyes kinda half-closed and ignore a few problems and so on, it's possible to say - without feeling that you're totally lying or just bursting out in hysterical laughter - that there is a barely functioning but still limping on democratic system there.
But if you have a leader who has been impeached and avoided removal only by blocking witnesses and hiding evidence and with the collusion of corrupt senators who made arguments such as "It's was inappropriate but removing him would be too much trouble" and who has had to pay back stolen millions to a charity and who has been investigated forensically for cheating in the election which put him in power with the conclusion that he probably did it but cos he hid the evidence it can't be proven... if such a President is able to change rules which have been in place for more than fifty years specifically to limit presidential power and protect the country from a despotic leader, and to do this purely to keep himself from being convicted of crimes he is known to have committed then I'd say that it would be inarguable that US democracy no longer exists in any meaningful sense. And if that happens then, yeah, the US is fucked more than it already is.

I get you, but I don't know if it will be worse, or just more of the same, framed much more honestly. Cheating elections is nothing new, dividing the nation is nothing new, lobbying is nothing new. Man, go back to Clinton if you want all that. America has been living a well designed delusion for too long. I say bollocks to democracy there, no offence. There's been worse presidents than Trump. Much sneakier, doing way more evil things around the world to upset and unrest whole countries, cultures and religions - which the whole world is still living in the direct consequences of, and may do forever. With Trump at least we know where we stand. And so far he doesn't seem to be interested in doing those sorts of things which can be the permanent downfall of a foreign nation. I don't know for sure but I don't think he likes to operate on that level. I think, due to his psychology, that he likes the world to know when he makes a move. I think that's why he loves being president in the face of it all. He gets to act out his power. Totally get your point but I honestly don't think it will be much worse than the clusterfuck of mind games, murder and lies that it always has been.

I hear what you're saying... but I do think that Trump is worse. The way he's absolutely normalised lying has debased debate everywhere. His racism and bullying just leads by example and the country has become worse, abortion is slowly being made illegal, muslims are being banned and children are separated from tgeir parents and put in cages. His tariffs and so on are insane... the one thing going for him is that he hasn't started any wars... but as we saw with Solemaini, that's really just happenstance, he'd be completely happy to nuke Canada if it was a choice between that or releasing his tax returns, we've just been lucky that so far that hasn't come up.

Fair enough, but I really don't see any of that as new. America has been terrorising the world in one way or another since WW2. More black people were being killed by police on Obama's watch than now. That's going to rattle cage. The racism was always there and always will be. As for debate, I don't know if any legit political debate has gone on for half a century. Trump has unintentionally pulled away the facade. He's a strategic chaos agent. I sincerely believe he doesn't know the purposes he's serving.

One is to get people like you and me mad. Dont bite the bait. Zoom out a little.

It's the same with Bolsonaro. They're just the logo on the front of a very long train. They're (probably unwittingly) working for much higher powers that go beyond government.

pattycakes_ said:

It's the same with Bolsonaro. They're just the logo on the front of a very long train. They're (probably unwittingly) working for much higher powers that go beyond government.

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I like the phrase and I do they're symptom rather than cause... though I'm not convinced by the higher powers thing.
Agreed that kinda personalising it is silly but obviously a part of me enjoys the theatre of party politics. Especially when it's at one remove and doesn't directly affect me in the same way as UK politics does.

The higher power is the corporate state. The Military Industrial Complex. Its not lizards or whatever.

Oh yeah, I mean I understand they have to bow to these things and Goldman Sachs etc, but I don't see it as any kind of hierarchy, more as a load of competing powerful forces (most of them evil or at least amoral) buffeting them around in random directions.

Well, that went as expected.

Yep. I mean the witness vote was the big thing I think. Not that it would have affected the result but if they had seen the witnesses then I think Trump would have been fucked for the election. But they obviously managed to stave that off sadly.... i guess we just see what the fall-out is. He'll probably do something else unbelievably stupid next week and get impeached again for all I know.

Romney is apparently the first ever senator to vote for the removal of a president from the same party. Obviously he's still a right-wing religious nutter, but fair play on this particular score, I guess.

Leo said:

kinda depressing...

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Who can blame them? They ratfucked him last time and they're trying to do it again.

Wow, yet again centrists (and I use all these terms relatively) would rather fuck their entire party, making it a laughing stock in the process, than let the left wing win. Makes sense from a class-fidelity-over-political-party perspective tho. Ultimately better the Republicans win while Democrats perform opposition, than anyone wins who might actually undermine the existing order.

Trump is going to win by a mile, isn't he.

Probably the least they can do. Trump is going to obliterate them at this rate.

On a separate issue, and thinking about Buttegieg as the first openly gay candidate with any chance of winning (from what I understand) - US attitudes towards gay rights have got steadily if slowly more liberal over the last decade, which is not necessarily what one might expect in the current climate, especially as attitudes flatlined during the supposedly liberal 90s.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx

Sanders is now favourite in all states and if he can make the nomination its anyone's guess. There's all sorts of obstacles there, but unlike Corbyn he's hugely popular. Biden, it seems is finished.