I'm increasingly bothered in the last few years in the crisis of ethics in the United States government. It isn't very important to the leaders, and it isn't very important to the voters. I don't think it is a "conservative vs liberal" issue. It isn't about religion. It is about basic morality and doing what is best for a functioning society.

I think about ethics more about once a year when my job has everyone take a small course on ethics. There is a lot of basic and obvious stuff in the course, but a big part of it is that even the appearance of conflicts of interest should be avoided. And I'm sure if this is important for the general workforce, it should be even more important for public figures.

I'm well aware that the government has done unethical things in the past, and some of them were horrific. But I don't remember a time when unethical behavior has been flaunted so openly. The president is fundamentally unethical. He constantly lies and takes open bribes and enriches himself at the expense of the proper functioning of the government. The supreme court is fundamentally unethical and barely tries to conceal taking bribes. The president's political party openly ignores their duty to hold the president accountable for crimes, and participates in them, including sedition. The top leaders of businesses and the press have been obviously captured by money and corruption.

For years we were concerned about "dark money" and who was funding the propaganda and disinformation. Well now we have the richest person in the world openly buying an election and taking over fundamental functions of the government.

This crisis of political ethics is a direct result of a crisis of ethics in all parts of society. I think it flows back and forth like a disease. The voters do not hold the leaders accountable because the voters themselves are not ethical. I don't think supporters of Trump are completely the victims of propaganda. I think they made an unethical choice for selfish reasons. Part of ethics is taking responsibility for making sure you have the correct information when you make a choice. I'm not sure that most are capable of learning that the price of eggs is worth the collapse of being able to trust each other and make progress as a society.

By the way, I think a lot of us are hoping that this open feeding frenzy of greed and dishonesty is part of a pendulum that swings back and forth. But I'm reminded that in 1977 Jimmy Carter was elected to help restore ethics to the presidency. He only served one term as president and was replaced by a highly unethical person who was supported by highly unethical people who created a right-wing propaganda network of talk radio and Fox News.

Maybe that's the point of a blitzkreig, but I'm thinking back to 2016 where we saw huge numbers of people taking to the street - the Women's March, anti-Trump marches - to show displeasure for Trump even being elected. In 2020 we saw some of the largest protests ever for BLM, potentially because folks had time to tune in and turn up because of the pandemic. But right now we're seeing an absolute assault on our institutions and it's up against absolute silence. I'm not trying to throw stones, I'm not out demonstrating either. Mostly because there isn't one to join. Does anyone have a theory or understand why we aren't seeing any public mobilization?

sorry for dumb question but here it goes: I remember during the first administration, Trump launched some tariffs against us and if I recall correctly, it resulted in the signing of the USMCA which replaced NAFTA.

So, where I get lost is, are these agreements non-binding? Like a country can just choose not to follow them and face no consequences before they expire? Cause I'd assume that what the U.S. is doing breaks the conditions of the USMCA?

and if it's non-binding, then that means that even if another agreement is signed yet again, if Trump wants to throw a new tantrum halfway through his presidency and do tariff wars again, there's nothing stopping him and we'd have to come up with and sign a brand new agreement yet again?

Like many people the results of the 2024 election felt like a punch in the gut. I've been a news fast since then. I'm ready to start looking at what happened.

I'm sure there are a lot of articles and videos.

Could anyone recommend a fact based analysis of why Trump won? Something in the style of The Economist versus hyperbole laden news videos. :-)