The Grand Illusion
Trump called the Mueller investigation a coup. The Trump campaign keeps talking about the Congressional impeachment investigation as a “coup” intended to put liberal Democrats in power.
Those claims are totally false. In the first place, a coup is an attempt to replace a lawful head of government illegally and by force. The impeachment process is an integral part of the U.S. Constitution, and therefore by law and definition cannot be illegal. It’s also a process carried out by law, and not by force. Second, even if Trump were to be impeached and convicted, the Democrats still wouldn’t be in control of the Executive Branch, because the extremely conservative Republican Mike Pence, as Vice President, would succeed Trump, and he could name another conservative as the new Vice President.
So why all the Trump ads and comments about a coup?
Clearly, it’s not about law. It’s not even about Conservatism. It’s about playing on the fears and ignorance of Americans who don’t understand the Constitution and don’t want to. Those who endorse Trump’s slogan of Make America Great Again aren’t interested in the law or the Constitution. What they want is the America of the 1950s, where white men controlled almost everything, where women were clearly secondary, where semi-skilled factory workers made as much as skilled professionals, and sometimes more, and where minorities “knew their place.’
Trump and his appointees are doing their best to tear down the rule of law, to circumvent and ignore legal requirements they don’t like, to use threats and force on foreign governments to get them to attack Trump’s opponents.
So… if anyone is staging a coup, it’s Trump, because he and his crowd are the ones using illegal means to stay in power. And charging the Democrats with trying to stage a “coup” is a brilliant diversion of attention from what Trump and his confederates are actually doing.
Just maybe MAGA doesn’t mean that to everyone. Bringing jobs back by playing hardball in trade deals helps (if not without some downsides). Attempting to roll back a lot of the previous administration’s executive over-reach helps too.
Don’t pay attention to anything Trump says, or even the posturing; look at what gets done. _You_ may not like it, but it doesn’t take something as narrow as a WASP male sentimental for the ’50’s to like it.
He’s not a statesman at all; good. We’ve had enough suave liars, it’s about time to have one that lies bold and brazenly without caring whether anyone knows or not, and that gladly offends every foreign leader on the planet. And who kicks over all the entrenched inside the Beltway, that have gotten far too comfortable with their perks and corruption.
Careful RH.
Your usual hypocritical biased BS is showing. Again.
LEM is right; You know it and again choose to ignore it so as it suits you and others like minded.
I’ve said this before, the “..it’s about time to have one that lies bold and brazenly without caring whether anyone knows or not, and that gladly offends every foreign leader on the planet..” pretty much sums up the modern GOP (Party/Ideology first before country) gone so far rightwards with little hope for redemption.
George Wallace must be so proud of you all.
I still do not have an answer as to how such position as described by RH has developed and is sustained in 40+% of US voting citizens (according to the polls)!
… Trump and his appointees are doing their best to tear down the rule of law, to circumvent and ignore legal requirements they don’t like, to use threats and force on foreign governments to get them to attack Trump’s opponents….
The acceptance of Trump’s behavior moves the USA directly toward the governance of dictatorships of the Soviet Union, Putin’s Russia, and Xi’s China, if not North Korea. We are doing this to ourselves (even if assisted by Russia etc. through Facebook and other media). Why?
Too great an economic gap between the haves and the have-nots? Too low a standard of education? Too little diversity within the decision making groups? Are we too lazy? Are we too comfortable? Are we not engaged enough in how are lives are managed within our society?
The chaos of anarchy will just support the treachery in our everyday life which Trump et al wish to live by. What alternative government can we evolve that allows the least intrusive and the most supportive administration of our society which will encourage positive development?
Democracy not being good, but being the best form of government there is, is no longer an acceptable end to the discussion.
Nobody but libertarians and (pertaining to matters from the borders outward) conservatives are fit to hold office. Leftists in office are ALL in violation of their oath to uphold the Constitution, which is about a limited federal government, not about solving all problems, real or imagined. The problems of the individual are the individual’s responsibility. Yes, the deck is often stacked against people, whether by bad genes, abused ethnicity, class, economics, lousy parents, environmental lead poisoning, whatever. Too bad. Nature does not provide fairness, and fairness is NOT equal outcomes; it’s ONLY due process in front of a judge, and a degree of access to opportunity. If it’s difficult, you get stronger or you don’t; ultimately you live longer and more satisfyingly or don’t. The success of one does not deny opportunity to another, unless you can actually convict a specific successful person of theft or gross negligence or the like.
If that’s ignorant, then I think _your_ bias showing. A government’s job is NOT to make the planet a place where we can all sing Kumbaya or “Give Peace a Chance” together, it’s to protect its own citizens from outside threats, maintain a minimum of order, and leave people otherwise to make their own fates or fall from them. If they work together productively, great. If they exploit each other just short of outright theft, no, that’s not great, but everything not illegal is legal and should NOT be encouraged or discouraged by taxes, regulations, or other patriarchal meddling.
This administration, although pleasingly offensive (not that offensive per se is good, but it’s a refreshing occasional alternative to soothing hypocrisy aka pandering to those that the left never really cared about except as wholly owned supporters; the left is just a vast divide-and-conquer plantation), is NO MORE LAWLESS than those that came before. Nothing about DACA (for example) was authorized in law, but now it’s an uphill battle to undo it. There’s a lot more overreach to undo, and it’s about time that everyone standing in the way of that was dis-privileged; that every leftist had the choice of getting a real job providing actual productive goods or services (“community organizer” is communist insurrection and/or a guide to maximally exploiting the taxpayer, not productivity) or starving.
That’s a spicy take, “Everyone who disagrees with my libertarian views is evil.”
Based on your ‘whataboutism’ response to corruption in the Trump administration, you clearly don’t care about corruption. You only care whether you’re personally are benefiting from the corruption.
There a definite problem with your statement. Trump IS one of the corrupt ones, and he’s done absolutely nothing to kick out the corruption inside the beltway. Those people are still there. And if Giuliani trying to pressure a foreign country into intervening in U.S. politics isn’t corruption, then what is?
Seems to me there was some pressure to reveal alleged dirt by all sides going on (Ukraine was at times aligned with or against Russia, and also meddled in our domestic politics probably on behalf of both our sides, if with less consistency or sophistication). Should political opponents have their dirt be given a pass, esp. when the left has been taking the weaponization of politics to new levels? Not like Trump started that, it’s been escalating long before him; I can’t remember a Republican President that _wasn’t_ treated like trash by the Democrats (I’m not quite old enough to remember Eisenhower). It also seems that a direct quid-pro-quo was avoided (the mere implication of one being common practice, hardly scandalous); and Trump is either smart or arrogant enough to have publicly released more (transcript, etc) than the Democrat “investigators” expected.
As for foreign countries, it should be clear that the worst foreign meddlers were supporting BOTH sides here, in such a way as to maximize disfunction; there was clear evidence of both pro and anti Trump rallies of the more volatile sort being backed by the Russians, for example. Of course, both sides are playing into that. But for one side to refrain would be to commit unilateral disarmament.
Some cleaning is taking place, but the inertia is immense:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/08/28/a-progress-report-is-president-donald-trump-draining-the-swamp/
Even a NYT editorial that clearly despises Trump and considers him worse than this outcome, acknowledges that by sheer arrogant disruptiveness, a lot of dirt that was an open secret, conveniently ignored, is no longer being ignored.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/opinion/sunday/under-trump-the-swamp-is-draining.html
We _need_ such disruptiveness occasionally. Having let ourselves get to a place where nothing less would work, we probably even deserve it.
You did have at least one excellent point: the left is idiotic insofar as Pence would be a worse nightmare to them than Trump, the former being a social conservative too, while the latter doesn’t personally care one way or the other, merely doesn’t want to increase federal enforcement of social liberalism (IMO within some limits, a valid recognition that state sovereignty shouldn’t _totally_ be abolished by particular interpretations of the 14th Amendment; we aren’t one totally homogenous culture, as a voting district map of the last election clearly shows). Besides, any increase in civility under Pence would be strictly one-sided; the left would continue one way or another with their crazed notion that they’re the only ones entitled to power.
HR:
These quotes are from your posts on this thread:
“Nobody but libertarians and (pertaining to matters from the borders outward) conservatives are fit to hold office.”
“the left would continue one way or another with their crazed notion that they’re the only ones entitled to power.”
Of course you, and everyone else to some degree, think you’re the correct one, and that everyone else misses the mark. But, come on, can’t even you see the sad truth is that polarization has taken over?
Backing away from ideological extremism is not backing down…it’s opening up to observe the world, think creatively instead of dogmatically and, just maybe, could lead to meaningful civility and maybe even workable compromise.
Sometimes, some people do not deserve a voice. You don’t need to hear them in the name of tolerance. The Paradox of Tolerance demands that the intolerant be denied equal time at the mike, eschewed from conversation and placed on notice that it’s actually simply not okay to say the things they want to say in a tolerant society. “To maintain order in a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance” Karl Popper. Maybe it’s time to stop listening and stop giving intolerance a platform from which to declaim? “Know thy enemy” isn’t enough. We know who the enemy is. “Everyone deserves their say” isn’t actually true. Some people clearly do not. Otherwise, again, as the Paradox of Tolerance states, a tolerant society will be captured, subverted and overwhelmed by intolerance. It’s like it should be a guiding principle in some workable version of the Ethos Effect…
I am an American: I cannot tolerate waiting for anything; not even the appearance of a charismatic leader who is adept with Ethos, Pathos and Logos!
Intolerant as I am – what do I do about political suicide in a Democratic Republic?
Hope that people use their 1st Amendment rights to stand up to those in power. And also hope that the idiots clinging to a version of the Constitution that only includes the 2nd Amendment don’t decide to use it to purge their left-leaning neighbors?
I suppose the bottom line is whether Donald Trump secures the Republican nomination for the next election – assuming he survives the current impeachment process (likely).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/08/28/a-progress-report-is-president-donald-trump-draining-the-swamp/
From 2016 to 2018 largest of Federal Agencies showed a change in personnel
Gainers Total of 5 of 25 including …
Small Business Administration 39%
Homeland Security 11%
Department of Veterans Affairs 5%
Office of Personnel Management 3%
Even Total 2 of 25
Loosers Total of 18 of 25 including …
Department of Energy -17%
Department of Education -15%
Department of State -12%
Nuclear Regulatory Commission -12%
… So far, it’s a mixed record. In most agencies, payroll was cut. But, the hiring at two large agencies binged. Now, the total head count of the federal bureaucracy is at an all-time high. The administrative state has mastered the art of permanent survival – even in the era of Trump. …
The Congressional Budget Office reported its evaluation of the budget on July 13, 2017, including its effects over the 2018–2027 period.
Mandatory spending: The budget cuts mandatory spending by a net $2.033 trillion (T) over the 2018–2027 period. This includes reduced spending of $1.891T for healthcare, mainly due to the proposed repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA/Obamacare); $238 billion (B) in income security (“welfare”); and $100 billion in reduced subsidies for student loans. These savings would be partially offset by $200B in additional infrastructure investment.
Discretionary spending: The budget cuts discretionary spending by a net $1.851 trillion over the 2018–2027 period. This includes reduced spending of $752 billion for overseas contingency operations (defense spending in Afghanistan and other foreign countries), which is partially offset by other increases in defense spending of $448B, for a net defense cut of $304B. Other discretionary spending (cabinet departments) would be reduced by $1.548T.
Revenues would be reduced by $1 trillion, mainly by repealing the ACA, which had applied higher tax rates to the top 5% of income earners. Trump’s budget proposal was not sufficiently specific to score other tax proposals; these were simply described as “deficit neutral” by the Administration.
Deficits: CBO estimated that based on the policies in place as of the start of the Trump administration, the debt increase over the 2018–2027 period would be $10.112T. If all of President Trump’s proposals were implemented, CBO estimated that the sum of the deficits (debt increases) for the 2018–2027 period would be reduced by $3.276T, resulting in $6.836T in total debt added over the period.
CBO estimated that the debt held by the public, the major subset of the national debt, would rise from $14.168T (77.0% GDP) in 2016 to $22.337T (79.8% GDP) in 2027 under the President’s budget.
I see no indication of draining the swamp nor do I see any advantage for smaller government, of this type, for this nation.