Political action and the Trump Presidency

[Valmy]

I am sorry Valmy, but I think this is very much part of the problem. I see it often with my students - there is a clear limitation in how they can imagine the United States as being "of the world", that things which affect, and have affected other countries of the world, can, indeed, affect the US in the present, and in the future. Civil wars, dictatorships, coups: these, for some reason exist as possibilities in the minds of Tea Party supporters, but very rarely in those of the vast American center.  There is nothing foreordained in the American Republic, in its continuing existence, and in the ways in which the political life of this country unfolds.

I am pretty sure I do imagine those things. I would rather not have them. If the mystic hold the Constitution has over the body politic is broken there is no country. I think I well understand the ramifications of that.

[Valmy]

To expand on this a little without going into the full rant, there's a lot of energy for political change in this country and if it's not channeled in a positive direction it will be channeled elsewhere. We can't afford to ignore it and hope it will diffuse: there's a reason it built up in the first place.

I have already given my position on this multiple times. I have devoted my entire life and career to solving those problems.

[Valmy]

I don't buy it.  While the survival of the USA is not guaranteed, it's institutions are strong.  Trump's muslim ban - both of them - has been stalled in the courts.  An independent investigation has been launched by the Justice Department, and the Senate Intelligence committee is investigating as well.  Trump's administration has been incompetent to be sure, and will surely do damage to the reputation of the GOP and the US, but I hardly see it as threatening the survival of either.

Well here is hoping. I just wish I understood clearly what these people think Trump is saving them from. I mean the Democrats have run several states for decades, many of them very functional and successful states, and they have not collapsed or seceded from the Union or become dictatorships. But I think this is more of what Max is talking about. There are huge forces for change in the world and it makes people nervous. They are eager to blame their political opponents for the changes but nobody can turn back the clock.

[Maximus]

I have already given my position on this multiple times. I have devoted my entire life and career to solving those problems.

Do you have a wiki or something? I don't have a detailed catalogue of everyone's opinions in my head.

[Valmy]

I have already given my position on this multiple times. I have devoted my entire life and career to solving those problems.

Do you have a wiki or something? I don't have a detailed catalogue of everyone's opinions in my head.

I just restated it in the following post

We are in a period of rapid technological and social change. It is destabilizing. I am working hard to hopefully help those changes come in as positive a package as possible.

I just wish people would be rallying around some vision of the future. Instead people seem to be wringing their hands over restoring the past.

[Oexmelin]

It seems to me you're making the same argument as the NRO article - that Trump is an ap ocalyptic president who threatens the very survival of the republic.

I don't buy it.  While the survival of the USA is not guaranteed, it's institutions are strong.  Trump's muslim ban - both of them - has been stalled in the courts.  An independent investigation has been launched by the Justice Department, and the Senate Intelligence committee is investigating as well.  Trump's administration has been incompetent to be sure, and will surely do damage to the reputation of the GOP and the US, but I hardly see it as threatening the survival of either.

This is not quite what I was aiming for. I do not think Trump is an apocalyptic president. I think he is a disastrous president, granted. More importantly, I do not think he is an anomalous president. Which is the kind of thinking I see among many Democrats - that normalcy can only return, with boring Democrats and boring Republicans, and the news circus' usual antics. I think it's a comforting self-delusion.

I think the sort of wave that brought Trump to power is a symptoms of a much larger disaffection with a number of democratic values, and a reduction of politics to conflict, in an almost Schmidtian way. Trump's celebration of authority and will is not theorized, and it may not be terribly effective either. But it does empower like-minded people, and erodes the myriads of tacit mutual understandings that form the body politics, and which can never be entirely embodied in texts and laws and constitutions.

In short, my point is simply that waiting for things to return to normal is not an option. Not to me, at least.

[Oexmelin]

I just wish people would be rallying around some vision of the future. Instead people seem to be wringing their hands over restoring the past.

The future is nowhere now, in political discourse. Or rather, it's almost entirely contained within technological change - and even then, with much less imagination than we once had. The rest seem to be relegated to empty platitudes.

[Valmy]

But you said yourself that the technological is political did you not? Our way of life is coming to an end sometime in the next century. I think that is certain one way or another.

[Maximus]

I just restated it in the following post

We are in a period of rapid technological and social change. It is destabilizing. I am working hard to hopefully help those changes come in as positive a package as possible.

I just wish people would be rallying around some vision of the future. Instead people seem to be wringing their hands over restoring the past.

You're an incrementalist, aka a conservative. That's fine in most cases, but the pressure for change has been building for a while. It's going to happen, the question is what sort of change? Each oscillation swings farther than the last. Perhaps it's time to bleed some of that off before the whole system goes off the rails.

[grumbler]

You're an incrementalist, aka a conservative. That's fine in most cases, but the pressure for change has been building for a while. It's going to happen, the question is what sort of change? Each oscillation swings farther than the last. Perhaps it's time to bleed some of that off before the whole system goes off the rails.

This seems like something easy to say.  What specific actions would you recommend to "bleed off" this pressure for change?

[frunk]

You're an incrementalist, aka a conservative. That's fine in most cases, but the pressure for change has been building for a while. It's going to happen, the question is what sort of change? Each oscillation swings farther than the last. Perhaps it's time to bleed some of that off before the whole system goes off the rails.

Each oscillation of what?  Political rhetoric has been getting more extreme, certainly.  There has been relatively little governmental change (at least on the national scale) compared to what is happening in the society/economy for the past 20 years or longer.

[Oexmelin]

But you said yourself that the technological is political did you not? Our way of life is coming to an end sometime in the next century. I think that is certain one way or another.

Yes. And who carries that message? Who discusses the technological future in political terms? So far, it has been mostly billionaire tech gurus, and their political outlook is not the most appealing.

[The Brain]

I have written to several Americans telling them how to vote.

[Razgovory]

I joined Indivisible.  It's like Languish, but I get a cookie in the end.

[Valmy]

I joined Indivisible.  It's like Languish, but I get a cookie in the end.

Tell me more about this cookie giving place.