In wake of the chaos of this Trump term, I’m not yearning for 2021 or 2017. Republicans have changed my worldview.
‘Normal’, to me, is 2 years of the Democrats fixing shit followed by 6 years of Republicans breaking it. If this is what our liberal democracy produces, it needs to change.
I wish liberalism resulted in a country that progressed ever forward, where these destructive or contrarian tendencies reduced as a result of that progress. But that isn’t the world we live in. Liberalism has proven nothing but slow political suicide.
I don’t want normalcy. If normalcy leads to this, it cannot be the path we commit to. We need to follow a path that destroys the Republican party, not just one that defeats it. We cannot embrace the paradox of tolerance as a virtue. It isn’t enough to give everyone rights; if you truly want to maximize freedoms you need to take them from bad actors.
The ideal normal wouldn’t be a flip-flopping mess that keeps handing over the reins to people that cannot be allowed to hold them. Right now, the best we can pursue is one-party rule where we intentionally do everything we can to stop democratic transitions to a Republican regime.
Frankly, I would support a national convention to permanently change not just the structure of our government but our electoral system. And significant other moves that may be seen as undemocratic as well.
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In wake of the chaos of this Trump term, I’m not yearning for 2021 or 2017. Republicans have changed my worldview.
‘Normal’, to me, is 2 years of the Democrats fixing shit followed by 6 years of Republicans breaking it. If this is what our liberal democracy produces, it needs to change.
I wish liberalism resulted in a country that progressed ever forward, where these destructive or contrarian tendencies reduced as a result of that progress. But that isn’t the world we live in. Liberalism has proven nothing but slow political suicide.
I don’t want normalcy. If normalcy leads to this, it cannot be the path we commit to. We need to follow a path that destroys the Republican party, not just one that defeats it. We cannot embrace the paradox of tolerance as a virtue. It isn’t enough to give everyone rights; if you truly want to maximize freedoms you need to take them from bad actors.
The ideal normal wouldn’t be a flip-flopping mess that keeps handing over the reins to people that cannot be allowed to hold them. Right now, the best we can pursue is one-party rule where we intentionally do everything we can to stop democratic transitions to a Republican regime.
Frankly, I would support a national convention to permanently change not just the structure of our government but our electoral system. And significant other moves that may be seen as undemocratic as well.
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>We need to follow a path that destroys the Republican party, not just one that defeats it.
Oh, don’t worry. Republicans are in the process of destroying the party.
>We need to follow a path that destroys the Republican party…
Okay.
How?
>Frankly, I would support a national convention to permanently change not just the structure of our government but our electoral system. And significant other moves that may be seen as undemocratic as well.
Yeah, start a constitutional convention and you’ll have severe authoritarians running the show. There is zero chance in the current political environment that Republicans would do anything but use it to formally harden their grip on power and control over individuals by codifying things like death penalty for anyone even remotely involved with an abortion. And hard Republicans run way too many midwest / rural states and would outvote the others heavily.
Just how antidemocratic are you willing to be? And what do you say to people who object?
How do you think about your argument in the context that we still live in a world today in which minorities and historically oppressed groups are still substantially better off today than they were even 20 years ago.
Gay marriage was illegal. Trans people were viewed even by many on the left with disgust.
We are definitely in a strong negative pendulum swing moment, but that doesn’t negate the fact that democratic liberalism has been prevailing over conservative ideas steadily over time. They just keep rebranding to keep up.
Half of the country voted for Republicans. Do you want to destroy them as well?
I think it’s four steps forward and three steps backward. There is progress, but it’s slow and jagged. Though I certainly agree with you there are actual structural systemic changes that would help a lot. Getting rid of the electoral college and ridiculous gerrymandering, and most importantly – reducing the influence of money in politics and getting rid of dark money in politics altogether. Ranked choice voting would help too. All those things and I’m sure there are more would shift the whole dynamic towards more fair and democratic. IMHO
>First they came for the far right and I didn’t speak out – Because I wasn’t a member of the far right.
>Then they came for the right and I didn’t speak out – Because I wasn’t a member of the right.
>Then they came for the center right and I didn’t speak out – Because I wasn’t a member of the center right.
>Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
I’ll pass on this Great Leap Forward.
I don’t want a return to normalcy either, but I’m more concerned with social structures like income inequality, workweeks, welfare, car centric and carbon heavy economics, etc.
Elections themselves are ultimately just a reflection of people’s will. Though I’m not at all opposed to simply wielding the exact power that Trump is first, either.
My suggestion would be to turn to China and start to find ways you can invest.
I’m not gonna say any of what you’ve said is wrong necessarily, but I want to provide some context.
EVERY political system is “noting but slow political suicide”. The human species, despite trying for about 10 thousand years at this point, has yet to come up with a political/societal structure that does not, eventually, crest then decay, or is subject to the slow creep of destabilization.
The more successful systems manage to stay stable, politically coherent, and prosperous longer or under more volatile circumstances, but none have been able to overcome eventual destabilization and implosion.
So, again, nothing you said is necessarily wrong. However, please keep in mind, it’s one thing to look at a runner gasping and stumbling and falling over, and chastise him for failing to complete the race. It’s another thing to then glance back at the course and see the path strewn with every other runner who also fell, and realize nobody has reached the goal. You are then able to judge the runner you are looking at with better context, not by whether or not they achieved the goal, but how they did compared to the entire field, in which no runner has ever completed the course.
If you look at it that way, I think Post enlightenment liberalism has done a hell of a good job in many ways, achieving soaring heights for humanity, but has also come with some obvious and extreme costs and consequences we are all aware of, some of which you’ve outlined. It certainly has done far better than what came before, the age of monarchs and empire. How will it compare to what comes after? None of us will live long enough to know. It is quite possible this actually is peak, that this, for all of it’s weaknesses, is as good as we as a species can do. None of us here will know, our great great grandkids might. I’m just suggesting you keep context in mind.
Have a little perspective. You’re going to have to look back further than 6-8 years to see the pattern that, yes, progress is being made.
It has become quite clear that the only way forward for the US or any Western country lies in the complete destruction and marginalization of the GOP and all kindred right-wing populist movements that plague us today.
I agree, that if this is what democracy keeps producing, then it is time to think of a different system that retains as many principles and virtues of democracy as possible, while also eliminating as many as necessary, lest we lose all traces of democracy completely.
In my mind the issue isn’t people being too misinformed or stupid – it is that they refuse to use their brain willingly. Enlightenment values need to be enforced much more harshly. If anybody says anything wrong or ridiculous in a school test, they’ll get an F.
I snapped out of my conspiracist delusions in my first year in college, when I had to write a scientific paper for the first time. I was FORCED to work scientifically and empirically. And I realized I actually knew how to do it all along, deep down I always knew what the truth was – I was just too lazy or needed conspiracy theories as my emotional support blanket.
Therefore, we have to make people use their brains and break the spell of irrationalism. We can do this in three steps.
First, regulate social media – force companies to disclose their algorithms and make them more conducive to mental well-being and learning. Eliminate all bots – this will have to include either paying for social media use – or registering yourself with an ID, as you do on trading platforms for example.
Second, if anybody wants to vote or affect policy in any way they must prove that they are both able and willing to think critically and they at least need to pass a basic civics test.
If people fail to qualify, let them retry free of charge once a year, for as many times as they like, until they get it.
Make them read books and make them understand watching TikToks or YT shorts of Andrew Tate aren’t good enough – and really drive this point home to them. There are means and ways out there actually smart people use to EVEN BEGIN understanding the world – while you are sitting here with your fully formed worldview without really knowing anything. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a thing because people tend to not know, what they don’t know.
Third, eliminate grievance politics and identity politics with full force. If people vent their anger at a certain group within society, like say refugees, force them to make an actual argument about what they want to change and how and how it would benefit society to do so, rather than just stirring up hatred.
To me, the problem with right-wingers always has been how they argue, not what – and this also informs how discourse ethics need to be enforced. Discourse must remain open to any possible results, but it must become much more closed to the barrage of contradictory, inflammatory and anti-rational bs that can and should be dismissed outright.
I am convinced that if these three steps are employed and followed through, it will lead to the complete end of all right-wing populism for good.
There used to be a time when Dems won so much they got tired of winning. And instituted the 22nd amendment.
I don’t want to go back to that either. I keep trying to tell myself that burns are the natural order and we are long overdue for one. The thing is, we are going to have to sincerely fight for the edge in our government if we want the ability to rebuild it. And, I mean fight at every level – city, county, state, and federal. Throw the elbows and remove the worst from office. Otherwise, they will be the rebuilders.
It’s simply not realistic to get any sort of major changes to the structure of government. You’d need an amendment and the support will not be there ever. Politics is too polarized
Swing voters will simply not vote for major left wing change. They will choose the gop again rather than do that. Dems need to be moderate and call for a return to normalcy if they want to have any chance at all of winning. We just can’t go forward too fast, and no amount of gop misrule will get the swing voters to suddenly radicalize to the left
I agree that we shouldn’t want a return to the ‘normalcy’ that helped fuel Trump’s rise (hence why many are not taking kind to the Third Way Democrats).
But how we ensure this is where we have to be careful, because the GOP could easily twist something like a ‘one-party rule’ against us.
Yes, this is exactly what we warned for when Trump came in power. He’s breaking the system and if he doesn’t watch out, he’ll make his way of life (I quote from you: “Right now, the best we can pursue is one-party rule where we intentionally do everything we can to stop democratic transitions to a Republican regime.”; “If you truly want to maximize freedoms you need to take them from bad actors.”) the standard. You’re arguing against the existence of an opposition to your ideology and you’re setting the stage for the last act.
This shows that the democracy has backslided to such a degree that even the fierce opponents of the attackers are normalizing it. If put to practice, then the system has died and nobody can honestly tell us what will replace it without lying through their teeth.
You want my honest opinion: If this becomes mainstream among both parties, then the desired democracy is dead. May it rest in peace.
I am tired of the constant pendulum swings between the parties. It’s not enough that voters are (again) waking up to the tire fire that this administration is and boosting Democrats in these special elections. We warned you and you put the guy back in charge anyway.
No, you aren’t wrong. . . If nothing else, the old normal is what got us here.
One of the very few silver linings in all this from my viewpoint is that it’s finally shaking the establishment out of its complacency. For decades, conditions have been getting steadily worse for ordinary people and the elite have been staunchly insisting that “everything is great, how can you not understand economics, don’t you see the line going up you dumb fucking peasants?”
This is exactly the kind of thing that produces revolutions, and now we’re in one.
As much as I dislike Ezra Klein, his new “abundance” thing is a good sign. That core message of “get shit done damnit!” is exactly what my political faction has been saying for years. It’s also a healthy refutation of the “let’s just throw trans people, LGB folks, and brown folks under the bus” shit I’ve been seeing since the election from establishment Dems. What they don’t seem to understand is that all the Othering from the far right is at its core an economic argument. They never seemed to grasp the second part of that argument- you are doing poorly because the elites are giving your stuff to Them.
If we build an economy that really does work well for everyone, those arguments lose much of their salience. . . So let’s do it.
Yeah, James Carville actually said something on the news the other day which I found interesting. And that was that many Democrat politicians are actually conservative, in the sense that they just want to preserve the status quo. But we need radical change.
You can’t want a representative government and also not accept the outcomes.
Just accept that the United States is mostly full of malevolent idiots who will blame you for their bullshit.
Liberalism allows for countries to progress forward, but it doesn’t cause that. It just lets people decide. Most Americans decided that satisfying their infantile fantasies was more important than the country being rich and powerful.
You’re pretty much correct all around here. The people who advocate for “normalcy” are either forgetting that all this was born of neoliberalism and people’s hatred of it, they were beneficiaries of that unfair, exploitative order who probably wouldn’t mind sliding more into fascism as long as they personally get out okay, or they’re just ignorant.
And, yes, the only things that will solve this problem are fundamental changes in the country’s political institutions and systems. And, unfortunately, some of those changes would as you indicated have to be illiberal or otherwise “non-democratic” if they are to actually work.
I dont know. I kinda enjoy not having the global economy tank personally.