This is how a government is supposed to govern: by passing laws. I'm glad to see work product come out of Congress and a bipartisan bill, at that. I'm tired of Executive Orders and and SCOTUS...
This is how a government is supposed to govern: by passing laws. I'm glad to see work product come out of Congress and a bipartisan bill, at that. I'm tired of Executive Orders and and SCOTUS being they only way rules get made, regardless of whether I agree with them.
Congress has approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an Act of Congress.
The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which passed out of the House on Thursday and is expected to be signed by President Biden.
Relevant article: "Trump will abandon NATO. " The Atlantic. This is, of course, a good step by Congress. But as this article makes clear, there is really no mechanism that can stop a determined...
This is, of course, a good step by Congress. But as this article makes clear, there is really no mechanism that can stop a determined President from effectively abandoning NATO (short of impeachment).
Our whole government, really every civilized government, is built upon a foundation of "good faith". The rules, the procedures, everything, was laid down and established and organized with the...
Exemplary
Our whole government, really every civilized government, is built upon a foundation of "good faith". The rules, the procedures, everything, was laid down and established and organized with the expectation that everyone involved will act in good faith.
That the officers and empowered agents of the government will undertake their duties in good faith, will proceed with good faith understandings of duties and responsibilities, that everyone and everything will proceed with a good faith effort to act as officers and agents of the government. Even the corrective allowances (like impeachment, or censure, expulsion, penalties) are assumed by the system (as the system is designed) to be there when needed, to be employed after good faith evaluations, and by people acting in good faith that the situation does call for corrective action.
All of that's clearly an antiquated concept. The modern version is "I've got mine, so fuck you." Or, if one prefers a slightly less ribald version, "Just win baby." It's an amusing sound bite in football, but football has rules that are enforced; politics doesn't. That's what good faith was; rules that keep things civilized.
The only people who don't agree Trump vastly, vastly, overstepped the powers (and certainly the responsibilities) of his office are the Republicans. Why? Because they "want to win." They're greedy. They're playing the game, not acting as good faith Senators and Representatives. They can't "give in to" the Democrats. They can't "show weakness." They can't allow anything that prevents them, the Republican Party, from uniting together in a march to victory.
There's no good faith in that.
There's a scene, from West Wing, where Bartlett sits down with a key Republican Congressional leader. And they agree that they agree on practically nothing ... except (whatever that episode's issue was). And then they agree to work together on that thing.
That doesn't happen anymore. It used to. As much as West Wing was a political fantasy, once upon a time (phrasing chosen deliberately), government did operate like that. Political rivals could despise one another's positions, but find common ground and agree to disagree so Things Got Done.
Until Gingrich rolled out the "Just Win Baby" political playbook. Where, again, there's no good faith anywhere to be found. Every single situation in modern politics is either a crisis to be managed, or an opportunity to be seized.
Someone "on the other side" does or say something that "becomes a thing" ... seize upon it, hammer it home, drive upon it like a road to victory as far and as fast as you can keep the PR and Messaging apparatus churning. Someone on your side creates a good thing; claim it, herald it, build it up so the shadow blots out everyone else.
America is pretty close to the edge of a political collapse. It's becoming increasingly obvious. The system is fracturing because it's designed with an expectation that the "leaders" want to keep the system (aka, the country) working. Functioning.
That means sometimes "you win", and sometimes "you try again next session." Sometimes you have the votes, sometimes you don't.
But today's playbooks call for eternal doubling down. Don't have the votes? Double down. Still don't have them? Double again. Debt crisis, key ally going unaided, widespread chaos and concern over something that's going undone? Double it and keep doubling it no matter what happens, what they say, what anyone says or does. Just keep doubling down.
Wait for "them" to blink and give up. Wait for victory. Then, when whoever decides to "be the adult" gives in, ridicule them, dance on their trampled bodies, and bask in the cheers of "your base." Because "you won". Never mind what it cost anyone, everyone else. You won, which makes you better. Just win baby.
That's no way to run a country. It would be chaotic for a fucking island nation of a few thousand citizens, and it's certainly insanity for what is widely believed to be the most powerful nation in human history.
We are on the verge of collapse. And history shows us governmental realignments (whether it's an internal major reorganization of the rules and system of government, or something that more or less gets to the point of dissolution that sees the original entity turn into two or more new entities) get very messy.
Often violent.
Things like that used to be in the very far back of the minds of those in government. It helped drive their notions of good faith actions. Sure they might want the highway bill to include this or that funding, they might want this or that law to not go through, or whatever the issue is right now. But leadership is about compromise. It's about consensus. You give some, they give some, and we meet in the middle.
Good faith.
Which is dead. There's only victory, and that's not governing. That's just dictatorship, autocracy by a different name. And now we're getting to the point where the autocrats are starting to say the quiet part aloud. Where they're beginning to publicly tire of "having to put up with this not winning bullshit." They're right, you see; and they'll stomp their feet and fold their arms, sulking while everything starts crumbling around them. Until you admit they're right.
Then they just do it again. And again. And again.
It's not government when one faction refuses to operate in good faith. A country isn't one faction. America sure as hell isn't. There are ~330mil people in America. They're not all going to agree. On any issue, some want X, some want Y, some want Z, some want shit the rest of us have never heard of.
Governing is finding the consensus to meet in the middle. Which doesn't happen anymore. One side just sulks, the other is forced to constantly look for maneuvers and tricks to keep the wheels turning, and it's like people fighting over the steering wheel of a tractor-trailer barreling down the highway at ninety miles an hour. Sooner or later there's a crash, and in the meantime the truck is taking a beating. If nothing else, eventually you manage to rip the steering wheel completely off fighting over it.
I'm not really a fan of either of America's major political parties. One is much more dangerous, much more obstructive and obstinate than the other, but neither really represents the needs of the common citizen. I'm sorry but it's true. What "governing" that does happen always seems to benefit the rich and powerful, while those who aren't watch helplessly without relief.
For a few years now, I've been trying to puzzle out how this can go. And short of a wholesale change in attitude across basically the entire political class in America, we're headed for some sort of collapse. This path can't lead anywhere else. We have to turn off it, and "we" means the politicians. Because unless you, the you reading this, is a captain of industry, a billionaire, or a Congresscritter, we can't do shit...
Unless we unite. Except "They" know this, and don't want the rabble to remember there are more of us than them. So the truck will keep careening out of control, and eventually we're going to crash into something bad enough to force ... something. Might be a big something that creates tremendous change, might be just a smaller something that manages to knock some good faith sense back into some folks in those key positions and a bit of sane consensus and cooperation can reemerge.
But that's where we're headed. The chaos with the Republican Speaker of the House crisis proves it. They're not just fighting "them, aka The Democrats" now. They're drawing "them" divisions amongst themselves along harsh ideological lines. There are children in power who truly believe in the Just Win playbook, and are prepared to keep their arms folded and their feet hammering stubbornly against the ground to drown any disagreement out until they get their way, always, all the time.
"Just Win" got the country to this point. Good faith held for about two centuries, more or less. It's taken less than a few decades of "Just Win" to drive us to the brink of collapse.
It was fun while it lasted. If there are any lights left after it all tumbles down, I guess it doesn't matter if anyone's alive to turn them off.
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but I see this a lot, and it's really just not true. If anything modern government was built on the premise of the exact opposite. The entire point of division of...
Our whole government, really every civilized government, is built upon a foundation of "good faith".
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but I see this a lot, and it's really just not true. If anything modern government was built on the premise of the exact opposite.
The entire point of division of powers and modern electoral systems was to spread power as much as possible while leaving the government functioning because they knew that such positions would attract greedy power hungry bastards, and the idea was that at least they'd have to work to better the country to some extent, and would get in each others way just enough to stop things from going to shit.
I would argue that modern governments still having elections and pushback DESPITE some recent leaders behaviors (and this isn't just the US for sure) is a sign the system is, to some point, working as intended.
Now that's not to say things are perfect. We have allowed things to devolve and undermine the concepts inherent in these systems. In the US specifically almost no one BUT extremists is involved in the early candidate selection, and our voting laws and things like citizen's united have vastly tipped the balance of power from "yeah I think so and so from down the street could do a good job" to "well i saw 800 commercial's saying X eats puppies...", and so so many other actions that strip rules and power.
But that's the inherent problem for all political systems. Corruption is political entropy. There is no rule system that will always be perfect because they can always change (and always stem from power), but at the same time, a US president sure as shit tried to have a coup, and it didn't work.
Was it closer than I'd like? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Is it a problem he's even contention after that? 100%.
But it's hard for me to take people seriously because they're just now noticing that politics is a shitshow. The initial philosophies that built these systems were solely based on "people fucking suck, so how do we turn that into a positive"
This is how a government is supposed to govern: by passing laws. I'm glad to see work product come out of Congress and a bipartisan bill, at that. I'm tired of Executive Orders and and SCOTUS being they only way rules get made, regardless of whether I agree with them.
Relevant article:
This is, of course, a good step by Congress. But as this article makes clear, there is really no mechanism that can stop a determined President from effectively abandoning NATO (short of impeachment).
Impeachment and removal.
As we've learned, impeachment doesn't actually do anything.
Our whole government, really every civilized government, is built upon a foundation of "good faith". The rules, the procedures, everything, was laid down and established and organized with the expectation that everyone involved will act in good faith.
That the officers and empowered agents of the government will undertake their duties in good faith, will proceed with good faith understandings of duties and responsibilities, that everyone and everything will proceed with a good faith effort to act as officers and agents of the government. Even the corrective allowances (like impeachment, or censure, expulsion, penalties) are assumed by the system (as the system is designed) to be there when needed, to be employed after good faith evaluations, and by people acting in good faith that the situation does call for corrective action.
All of that's clearly an antiquated concept. The modern version is "I've got mine, so fuck you." Or, if one prefers a slightly less ribald version, "Just win baby." It's an amusing sound bite in football, but football has rules that are enforced; politics doesn't. That's what good faith was; rules that keep things civilized.
The only people who don't agree Trump vastly, vastly, overstepped the powers (and certainly the responsibilities) of his office are the Republicans. Why? Because they "want to win." They're greedy. They're playing the game, not acting as good faith Senators and Representatives. They can't "give in to" the Democrats. They can't "show weakness." They can't allow anything that prevents them, the Republican Party, from uniting together in a march to victory.
There's no good faith in that.
There's a scene, from West Wing, where Bartlett sits down with a key Republican Congressional leader. And they agree that they agree on practically nothing ... except (whatever that episode's issue was). And then they agree to work together on that thing.
That doesn't happen anymore. It used to. As much as West Wing was a political fantasy, once upon a time (phrasing chosen deliberately), government did operate like that. Political rivals could despise one another's positions, but find common ground and agree to disagree so Things Got Done.
Until Gingrich rolled out the "Just Win Baby" political playbook. Where, again, there's no good faith anywhere to be found. Every single situation in modern politics is either a crisis to be managed, or an opportunity to be seized.
Someone "on the other side" does or say something that "becomes a thing" ... seize upon it, hammer it home, drive upon it like a road to victory as far and as fast as you can keep the PR and Messaging apparatus churning. Someone on your side creates a good thing; claim it, herald it, build it up so the shadow blots out everyone else.
America is pretty close to the edge of a political collapse. It's becoming increasingly obvious. The system is fracturing because it's designed with an expectation that the "leaders" want to keep the system (aka, the country) working. Functioning.
That means sometimes "you win", and sometimes "you try again next session." Sometimes you have the votes, sometimes you don't.
But today's playbooks call for eternal doubling down. Don't have the votes? Double down. Still don't have them? Double again. Debt crisis, key ally going unaided, widespread chaos and concern over something that's going undone? Double it and keep doubling it no matter what happens, what they say, what anyone says or does. Just keep doubling down.
Wait for "them" to blink and give up. Wait for victory. Then, when whoever decides to "be the adult" gives in, ridicule them, dance on their trampled bodies, and bask in the cheers of "your base." Because "you won". Never mind what it cost anyone, everyone else. You won, which makes you better. Just win baby.
That's no way to run a country. It would be chaotic for a fucking island nation of a few thousand citizens, and it's certainly insanity for what is widely believed to be the most powerful nation in human history.
We are on the verge of collapse. And history shows us governmental realignments (whether it's an internal major reorganization of the rules and system of government, or something that more or less gets to the point of dissolution that sees the original entity turn into two or more new entities) get very messy.
Often violent.
Things like that used to be in the very far back of the minds of those in government. It helped drive their notions of good faith actions. Sure they might want the highway bill to include this or that funding, they might want this or that law to not go through, or whatever the issue is right now. But leadership is about compromise. It's about consensus. You give some, they give some, and we meet in the middle.
Good faith.
Which is dead. There's only victory, and that's not governing. That's just dictatorship, autocracy by a different name. And now we're getting to the point where the autocrats are starting to say the quiet part aloud. Where they're beginning to publicly tire of "having to put up with this not winning bullshit." They're right, you see; and they'll stomp their feet and fold their arms, sulking while everything starts crumbling around them. Until you admit they're right.
Then they just do it again. And again. And again.
It's not government when one faction refuses to operate in good faith. A country isn't one faction. America sure as hell isn't. There are ~330mil people in America. They're not all going to agree. On any issue, some want X, some want Y, some want Z, some want shit the rest of us have never heard of.
Governing is finding the consensus to meet in the middle. Which doesn't happen anymore. One side just sulks, the other is forced to constantly look for maneuvers and tricks to keep the wheels turning, and it's like people fighting over the steering wheel of a tractor-trailer barreling down the highway at ninety miles an hour. Sooner or later there's a crash, and in the meantime the truck is taking a beating. If nothing else, eventually you manage to rip the steering wheel completely off fighting over it.
I'm not really a fan of either of America's major political parties. One is much more dangerous, much more obstructive and obstinate than the other, but neither really represents the needs of the common citizen. I'm sorry but it's true. What "governing" that does happen always seems to benefit the rich and powerful, while those who aren't watch helplessly without relief.
For a few years now, I've been trying to puzzle out how this can go. And short of a wholesale change in attitude across basically the entire political class in America, we're headed for some sort of collapse. This path can't lead anywhere else. We have to turn off it, and "we" means the politicians. Because unless you, the you reading this, is a captain of industry, a billionaire, or a Congresscritter, we can't do shit...
Unless we unite. Except "They" know this, and don't want the rabble to remember there are more of us than them. So the truck will keep careening out of control, and eventually we're going to crash into something bad enough to force ... something. Might be a big something that creates tremendous change, might be just a smaller something that manages to knock some good faith sense back into some folks in those key positions and a bit of sane consensus and cooperation can reemerge.
But that's where we're headed. The chaos with the Republican Speaker of the House crisis proves it. They're not just fighting "them, aka The Democrats" now. They're drawing "them" divisions amongst themselves along harsh ideological lines. There are children in power who truly believe in the Just Win playbook, and are prepared to keep their arms folded and their feet hammering stubbornly against the ground to drown any disagreement out until they get their way, always, all the time.
"Just Win" got the country to this point. Good faith held for about two centuries, more or less. It's taken less than a few decades of "Just Win" to drive us to the brink of collapse.
It was fun while it lasted. If there are any lights left after it all tumbles down, I guess it doesn't matter if anyone's alive to turn them off.
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but I see this a lot, and it's really just not true. If anything modern government was built on the premise of the exact opposite.
The entire point of division of powers and modern electoral systems was to spread power as much as possible while leaving the government functioning because they knew that such positions would attract greedy power hungry bastards, and the idea was that at least they'd have to work to better the country to some extent, and would get in each others way just enough to stop things from going to shit.
I would argue that modern governments still having elections and pushback DESPITE some recent leaders behaviors (and this isn't just the US for sure) is a sign the system is, to some point, working as intended.
Now that's not to say things are perfect. We have allowed things to devolve and undermine the concepts inherent in these systems. In the US specifically almost no one BUT extremists is involved in the early candidate selection, and our voting laws and things like citizen's united have vastly tipped the balance of power from "yeah I think so and so from down the street could do a good job" to "well i saw 800 commercial's saying X eats puppies...", and so so many other actions that strip rules and power.
But that's the inherent problem for all political systems. Corruption is political entropy. There is no rule system that will always be perfect because they can always change (and always stem from power), but at the same time, a US president sure as shit tried to have a coup, and it didn't work.
Was it closer than I'd like? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Is it a problem he's even contention after that? 100%.
But it's hard for me to take people seriously because they're just now noticing that politics is a shitshow. The initial philosophies that built these systems were solely based on "people fucking suck, so how do we turn that into a positive"