What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[DGuller]

Do you think the current situation is exactly the same as 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, 92, 96, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012?

Yes and no.
2000 was pretty bad.  You had 5 Supreme Court justices intervene in a state process for choosing that state's electors, a process that the Constitution confers exclusively on the state governments, to effectively dictate the result of the election and confer the presidency on a candidate of the party of the President that originally appointed them.  They did so in an opinion that took the extraordinary, unprecedented and legally incoherent step of declaring that although it purportedly relied on a general constitutional principle, it should be deemed as non-precedential.

OTOH when it happened, Al Gore complained for a bit, considered some options, then conceded,
If something like that happened to Trump, he would call out the military, National Guard, the bikers, and the "very fine people" and we'd have ourselves something between a Kapp Putsch and a Second American Civil War.

It's mind-blowing to think about just how incredibly unlucky the left (and I would argue the US as a whole) has been ever since the turn of the century.  The right needed a couple of inside straights in a row to hit, and they got them all.  The 2000 and 2016 were both extremely consequential and hinged on a fluke set of events that were not free of controversy.  The course of history would've probably gone in a very different direction had GOP not gotten either of those gifts.

[dps]

You need the occasional smaller war to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new models and the obsolescence of the old.

The USN has gone from diesel powered subs at the end of WW2 to nuclear SSBNs and attack subs of breathtaking complexity, cost, and capability without, so far as I am aware, ever firing one single shot in anger.

You are talking about just the subs never firing one shot in anger, right, not the USN as a whole?

Even then you'd be mistaken, because I remember that when we went into Afghanistan in 2001 hearing about at least one US sub in the Indian Ocean firing SSMs at targets in Afghanistan.

Still, it's easy to see why the idea that war is good for business has some currency in the US--our economic infrastructure never really came under direct attack and war spending helped lift us out of the Great Depression.  OTOH, it's hard to see why anyone in the UK would think that WWII was good for business--aside from being bombed a good bit and the U-boat war not falling that far short of starving the UK out of the war, the demands of the war pretty much ran the UK's industrial infrastructure into the ground.  And it's even harder to see how anyone in, say, Poland or Japan would think that the war was good for business.

[DGuller]

The saying that "war is good for business" always struck me as one of those trite sayings of people who use cynicism to sound smart, because that's the only way they can sound smart.

[Berkut]

You need the occasional smaller war to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new models and the obsolescence of the old.

The USN has gone from diesel powered subs at the end of WW2 to nuclear SSBNs and attack subs of breathtaking complexity, cost, and capability without, so far as I am aware, ever firing one single shot in anger.

You are talking about just the subs never firing one shot in anger, right, not the USN as a whole?

Even then you'd be mistaken, because I remember that when we went into Afghanistan in 2001 hearing about at least one US sub in the Indian Ocean firing SSMs at targets in Afghanistan.

Talk about a distinction without a difference!

[Threviel]

The only nuclear powered submarine to fire a torpedo in anger was HMS Conqueror (IIRC) in the Falklands. They had to use a WWII vintage torpedo for some reason.

Lots of SSNs, SSBNs and assorted other types have fired cruise missiles or sent away special forces scout or attack teams.

There are rumours that different nuclear subs also tried, or at least seemed to try, ramming against other subs shadowing them. The Crazy Ivan tactic mentioned in Hunt for red October is an example of this I believe.

I'm quite sure that Grumbler can expand on this greatly.

[Malthus]

"War is good for business" is often used as an illustration of the broken window fallacy in action.

[The Minsky Moment]

You need the occasional smaller war to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new models and the obsolescence of the old.

The USN has gone from diesel powered subs at the end of WW2 to nuclear SSBNs and attack subs of breathtaking complexity, cost, and capability without, so far as I am aware, ever firing one single shot in anger.

Hmm . . . the Virginia class was notable for being far cheaper than its predecessor and is planned to be a 40 year program.  I think the sub builders might view the matter differently.

[Habbaku]

The saying that "war is good for business" always struck me as one of those trite sayings of people who use cynicism to sound smart, because that's the only way they can sound smart.

To be fair, the Rules of Acquisition also state that peace is good for business.

[PRC]

The saying that "war is good for business" always struck me as one of those trite sayings of people who use cynicism to sound smart, because that's the only way they can sound smart.

To be fair, the Rules of Acquisition also state that peace is good for business.

Their "war is good for business" most likely meant other species wars... then the Ferengi can sell arms to both sides.  Profit!

[dps]

Do you think the current situation is exactly the same as 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, 92, 96, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012?

Yes and no.
2000 was pretty bad.  You had 5 Supreme Court justices intervene in a state process for choosing that state's electors, a process that the Constitution confers exclusively on the state governments, to effectively dictate the result of the election and confer the presidency on a candidate of the party of the President that originally appointed them.  They did so in an opinion that took the extraordinary, unprecedented and legally incoherent step of declaring that although it purportedly relied on a general constitutional principle, it should be deemed as non-precedential.

OTOH when it happened, Al Gore complained for a bit, considered some options, then conceded,
If something like that happened to Trump, he would call out the military, National Guard, the bikers, and the "very fine people" and we'd have ourselves something between a Kapp Putsch and a Second American Civil War.

It's mind-blowing to think about just how incredibly unlucky the left (and I would argue the US as a whole) has been ever since the turn of the century.  The right needed a couple of inside straights in a row to hit, and they got them all.  The 2000 and 2016 were both extremely consequential and hinged on a fluke set of events that were not free of controversy.  The course of history would've probably gone in a very different direction had GOP not gotten either of those gifts.

A lot of things in politics have come down to luck, good or bad.  What if the burglers breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters in 1972 hadn't bee caught?  If was just back luck form their POV that it happened.  Without that, there's no Watergate Scandal, and Nixon serves out his 2nd term.  The 1976 election would have been completely different.  Even if the Democrats had won the Presidency, someone other than Jimmy Carter might well have been their nominee.

[Barrister]

A lot of things in politics have come down to luck, good or bad.  What if the burglers breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters in 1972 hadn't bee caught?  If was just back luck form their POV that it happened.  Without that, there's no Watergate Scandal, and Nixon serves out his 2nd term.  The 1976 election would have been completely different.  Even if the Democrats had won the Presidency, someone other than Jimmy Carter might well have been their nominee.

I dunno - wasn't the break in rather famously incompetent?

Better question might have been what if Nixon didn't install the audio taping system?

[crazy canuck]

There was a interesting episode on the CBC show Ideas on the rise and new normal of populism of the right and left.

The lecturers thesis is were are pretty much now in the land of option number 3 which the right will win in the near future but as climate change really takes hold the left will win and hopefully deliver on its promises - or we are all pretty much doomed anyway.

The lecture is delivered with good humor and I thought Monty Python would have done wonders with this theme.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/global-trumpism-bailouts-brexit-and-battling-climate-change-1.5321199

How did the middle class end up in perpetual debt? Why is there "no money" for infrastructure or social programs, but there is for waging war? And what does all this have to do with Donald Trump, or Brexit, or climate change?

If you're mystified about any of the above, then author and Brown University professor Mark Blyth can clarify things for you. He says it's helpful to use a computer metaphor to describe the economy.

In his lecture at McMaster University as part of the school's Socrates Project, Blyth compared capitalist economies to laptops: different makes, but similar in appearance. He argues these computers run just fine for a while — say, about 30 years. But all the while, there are bugs in the software that eventually cause the system to crash. Then you rebuild the hardware, fix the software, and reboot.

System breakdown
That's what happened in the 1970s and 1980s, when labour costs and inflation became a problem. The "system rebuild" included less powerful unions, more global trade, and central bankers who were put in charge of setting interest rates.

But this new system generated bugs of its own — among them, a runaway culture of lending, and a lack of wage growth among the middle classes, who did a lot more borrowing than they could afford.


We're living in a whole new political dynamic stemming from the financial crisis of 2008, according to Blyth, a political economist. (Arko Datta/Reuters)
Mark Blyth says this borrowing wasn't just driven by rampant consumerism.

"How do you get by when ... everybody tells you there's no inflation, yet the cost of everything that matters is actually going up? Education, health care, all that sort of stuff," Blyth said in his lecture.

"And the only way you can fill in the gap is to borrow more money."

Cue the 2008 financial crisis
However, this time, Blyth says there was no rebuild. Instead, the United States Federal Reserve led a bailout of the big banks, domestically and internationally. The rich got much richer, the middle class got perpetual low interest rates to keep carrying their debts, and the poor had their social programs cut in the name of austerity.

Blyth contends this dynamic is what lit the fuse of global populism: the rise of leaders who appeal to public outrage, alienation, and lack of trust toward career politicians and traditional political parties.

"Your debts are too high," he said. "You can't pay them off, but you can roll them over. They're not going to be eaten away by inflation, and the people who brought you here have zero credibility."


Blyth compares populist leaders to rogue code-writers hacking into the software of a system that was never properly rebuilt after the crisis of 2008. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if it strengthens democracies.

"[Populism] is now part of the furniture.... It's already changed, so just get used to it. And let's remember historically that 100 years ago, the people who were the populists then, the people that everyone was afraid of, became the established parties in many cases," Blyth told IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed.

"So every now and again you have to have a little revolution, and that's what's happening now."

Populism is springing up on the right and the left, said Blyth. The difficult choices that need to be made about climate change could come from a left-wing populist movement not unlike the so-called Green New Deal proposed by younger American Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Looking at how things may unfold in the not-too-distant future, Blyth speculates "right populism wins round one."

"But ultimately, left populism wins round two, because left populism is the only one that takes climate change seriously," he concludes.

[Threviel]

You need the occasional smaller war to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new models and the obsolescence of the old.

The USN has gone from diesel powered subs at the end of WW2 to nuclear SSBNs and attack subs of breathtaking complexity, cost, and capability without, so far as I am aware, ever firing one single shot in anger.

Hmm . . . the Virginia class was notable for being far cheaper than its predecessor and is planned to be a 40 year program.  I think the sub builders might view the matter differently.

That's because the Seawolf class preceding it was silly expensive, the second most expensive submarine ever. And it was an SSN, not even an SSBN. Also the Virginia could re-use a lot of the stuff developed for Seawolf. All in all the Virginia is highly successful, but less capable and cheaper than its predecessor. But still twice as expensive as a Los Angeles.

[grumbler]

You need the occasional smaller war to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new models and the obsolescence of the old.

The USN has gone from diesel powered subs at the end of WW2 to nuclear SSBNs and attack subs of breathtaking complexity, cost, and capability without, so far as I am aware, ever firing one single shot in anger.

You are talking about just the subs never firing one shot in anger, right, not the USN as a whole?

Even then you'd be mistaken, because I remember that when we went into Afghanistan in 2001 hearing about at least one US sub in the Indian Ocean firing SSMs at targets in Afghanistan.

Talk about a distinction without a difference!

  First Rule of Holes!

[grumbler]

Hmm . . . the Virginia class was notable for being far cheaper than its predecessor and is planned to be a 40 year program.  I think the sub builders might view the matter differently.

That's because the Seawolf class preceding it was silly expensive, the second most expensive submarine ever. And it was an SSN, not even an SSBN. Also the Virginia could re-use a lot of the stuff developed for Seawolf. All in all the Virginia is highly successful, but less capable and cheaper than its predecessor. But still twice as expensive as a Los Angeles.

I was involved in the development of both designs, and can say for sure that the design processes were very different.  Seawolf was designed based on "what is the best we can do?" concept, and that failed to meet the reasonability standard.  Three were built as, essentially technology demonstrators.  Virginia was designed based on "what is the best we can do for $1 billion per unit?" and, it turned out, the Navy could get 80% of the submarine for 1/3 the cost.

The exact same thing happened to the DDG(x) program and the new FFG(x) program:  design-to-cost beating out an unaffordable cost-to-design.