United States Politics Thread 47

[Raphael]

In this context, I'll refer back to this earlier post of mine: https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?t=1638

[zompist]

A Democratic administration could regain some ground but a lot of US soft power has been thrown away for good, and if O'Brien is right, not an inconsiderable amount of its hard power. (This will not, however, somehow produce a tankie paradise.)

a post-trump democratic administration -if such a thing does happen- would almost certainly regain some power in terms of like international standing and so on, just like the biden regime saw the US image abroad improve after the dip during trump 1.

People like it when a criminal regime reforms, yes. But I suspect trust has been eroded on a deeper level. If a state can depend on the US for defense only during a Democratic administration... well, that state is smart to rely more on itself and its real friends. Plus, will the US rebuild its soft power, its universities, its immigration system? Will people want to study and work here, or build factories, when a resurgent GOP could come back and deport students and handcuff Korean workers?

then again, after that admin, do we think the next republican president will be a sort of even-headed McCain type? and this is a genuine question, not an ironic one: how married to trumpism, qanon and so on is the republican party?

No one knows. But this Paul Krugman column has some relevant figures. Democrats and independents think the economy is getting worse. So do non-MAGA Republicans. Only MAGA-aligned Republicans believe Trump's lies that things are improving, and they make up 19% of the adult public. That doesn't look good for permanent fash rule. But, they're a majority of Republicans.

Political parties change, but usually only in response to sustained, massive defeat. E.g. the Democrats lost the presidency from 1980 to 1992, and Labour lost the UK prime ministership from 1979 to 1997. Both responded by moving toward the right. (We can disapprove of that, but that's what they thought was necessary to win.)

For a turn to the left, we could look back at Roosevelt in 1932. The Depression was enough to end a half-century of Republican domination and the entire laissez-faire system, and the Republicans were largely out in the wilderness for 40 years. So maybe it depends on just how much more damage the GOP does in the next two years.

[WeepingElf]

I have the impression that when a Republican is in the White House, things become worse - but when a Democrat is, they don't become much better again (and it doesn't make much of a difference who controls the legislature). Neither Obama nor Biden had, for instance, abolished Camp Guantanamo, or done anything effective against police brutality. So the US have one conservative party (the Democrats) and one reactionary one (the Republicans), but no progressive party of any significance. Progressivism is the plaything of a few thousand intellectuals without mass appeal, it seems. Alas, all this is what the US political system looks to the outside observer I am, and I am no expert on US politics, so better take my words with a grain of salt.

[Ares Land]

I have the impression that when a Republican is in the White House, things become worse - but when a Democrat is, they don't become much better again (and it doesn't make much of a difference who controls the legislature). Neither Obama nor Biden had, for instance, abolished Camp Guantanamo, or done anything effective against police brutality. So the US have one conservative party (the Democrats) and one reactionary one (the Republicans), but no progressive party of any significance. Progressivism is the plaything of a few thousand intellectuals without mass appeal, it seems. Alas, all this is what the US political system looks to the outside observer I am, and I am no expert on US politics, so better take my words with a grain of salt.

I really don't know! There is now a progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and it looks stronger than ever. The election of Mamdani is significant here. But I really can't tell if it's going to amount to anything in the long run.

People like it when a criminal regime reforms, yes. But I suspect trust has been eroded on a deeper level. If a state can depend on the US for defense only during a Democratic administration... well, that state is smart to rely more on itself and its real friends. Plus, will the US rebuild its soft power, its universities, its immigration system? Will people want to study and work here, or build factories, when a resurgent GOP could come back and deport students and handcuff Korean workers?

I don't know if I agree or not So just to be contrarian: defense that doesn't depend on the US, a tech sector that can rival with the American tech sector, the size of the US market, Hollywood... You can replicate all of that elsewhere, and in fact do even better; but all of this takes time; realistically beyond 2028. If someone more reasonable is elected in 2028 -- I don't know if states will feel it's worth the effort.

Europe definitely has the means to organize its own defense and could very well run NATO without the Americans. But it'd be long. It'd be an insanely long and exhausting chore getting the Brits, the French and the Germans to agree on anything. Will it still feel worth the effort by 2029? Especially given that in quite a few countries, either the party in charge or the opposition doesn't really disagree with the GOP that much (and probably privately wish they could do mass deportations or plan ocean resorts in Gaza too.)

In IT, I hear a lot of talk about independence from American products, for good reason. Reliance on Oracle, Microsoft or AWS can be hurtful, between the tariffs, the nasty commercial practices and the unclear legal question of whether an American judge can subpoena your data. And yet... not that much happens. Moving everything to free software and local hosting is possible and is in fact happening; it won't be done by 2029, and maybe then it won't feel so urgent and using Office 365 will feel so much easier.

But really I don't know. I certainly feel the loss of trust; I'm not sure it'll last.

[Torco]

I have the impression that when a Republican is in the White House, things become worse - but when a Democrat is, they don't become much better again (and it doesn't make much of a difference who controls the legislature). Neither Obama nor Biden had, for instance, abolished Camp Guantanamo, or done anything effective against police brutality. So the US have one conservative party (the Democrats) and one reactionary one (the Republicans), but no progressive party of any significance. Progressivism is the plaything of a few thousand intellectuals without mass appeal, it seems. Alas, all this is what the US political system looks to the outside observer I am, and I am no expert on US politics, so better take my words with a grain of salt.

More: show

psst, it's cause they're kind of working together to increase wealth concentration and achieve other class goals, even though they may be genuinely adversarial vis a vis other goals. don't tell people though they'll accuse you of being crazy

I really don't know! There is now a progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and it looks stronger than ever. The election of Mamdani is significant here. But I really can't tell if it's going to amount to anything in the long run.

they said the same thing about obama, or AOC. he's really showing that an unabashedly left-wing, policy oriented and local agenda can really work for people, but it seems at least likely that he'll eventually either fall in line or get bernied.

overall, I'm with Ares on this one: nothing important is going to happen, as far as countries changing sides goes, before 28'. if a good democrat wins by a fat margin, and the the republican party goes on to condemn magaism or otherwise signal that the crazyness has stopped, no relevant first world country is going to become not-a-us-ally or anything. trump goes for a third term (yeah yeah not legal, he's done plenty that's not legal), or some mainstream neolib wins by a small margin, and the republicans go "fuck you trump did nothing wrong", then the us might start seriously losing international position at a more geopolitical level.

worst (for the US) case scenario, the guy dies near the end of his last year in office, maybe during the election. we are chaaarlie truuuum, we caaaarry the fuhlaaame ~. or, alternatively, by the time the election is near some of his wars becomes big enough that he cancels election by decree or somethign crazy like that. not certain, but not impossible.

[rotting bones]

Quite. These days it feels like our choices are between catastrophic reaction and maintaining a terrible status quo.

A lot of this is because of the ubiquity of right-wing propaganda. There is so much right-wing propaganda because right-wing propaganda outlets are hiring in massive numbers. The Indian right hires "IT cells" which are exactly what they sound like. Even I was offered multiple jobs in sciences and computers (not propaganda) associated with right-wing organizations (which I declined). Leftists are not creating a comparable number of jobs programs associated with ideologically left-wing institutions. Until this changes, the world will keep looking the way it does right now.

The liberal moral crusade doesn't adequately account for the fact that people need to eat first. Back when I turned down jobs from right-wing organizations, I underestimated liberal bullheadedness. They just don't listen. Like, AT ALL. Either they are paid actors too or they really believe humans are willing to starve honorably for the sake of the environment (edit: or justice or whatever). How privileged and disconnected from the masses do you have to be to be so deluded? Humans would happily set the world on fire if they are desperate enough.

[rotting bones]

I have the impression that when a Republican is in the White House, things become worse - but when a Democrat is, they don't become much better again (and it doesn't make much of a difference who controls the legislature). Neither Obama nor Biden had, for instance, abolished Camp Guantanamo, or done anything effective against police brutality. So the US have one conservative party (the Democrats) and one reactionary one (the Republicans), but no progressive party of any significance. Progressivism is the plaything of a few thousand intellectuals without mass appeal, it seems. Alas, all this is what the US political system looks to the outside observer I am, and I am no expert on US politics, so better take my words with a grain of salt.

Biden invested in green energy, right?

[rotting bones]

ICE pepper sprays senator: https://youtu.be/waa3UUCQVtU

[WeepingElf]

I have the impression that when a Republican is in the White House, things become worse - but when a Democrat is, they don't become much better again (and it doesn't make much of a difference who controls the legislature). Neither Obama nor Biden had, for instance, abolished Camp Guantanamo, or done anything effective against police brutality. So the US have one conservative party (the Democrats) and one reactionary one (the Republicans), but no progressive party of any significance. Progressivism is the plaything of a few thousand intellectuals without mass appeal, it seems. Alas, all this is what the US political system looks to the outside observer I am, and I am no expert on US politics, so better take my words with a grain of salt.

Biden invested in green energy, right?

He did. I won't say that nothing changes to the better under a Democratic presidency, and that the Democrats don't have any progressives in their ranks, but it is not much, and the net effect of a Democratic presidency (in this century, at least; there have been times when this was different) is mainly to temporarily halt the political regression of the United States into a fascist dictatorship. This is different from what was usual in Western Europe for decades, where social democratic governments achieved genuine progress and conservative governments halted that progress but did not turn back the wheel much; this has, unfortunately, changed somewhat in the last few years with the rise of far-right parties, but in some countries at least, such as Germany or France, the conservatives show no desire to cooperate with the far right.

[jcb]

Political parties change, but usually only in response to sustained, massive defeat. E.g. the Democrats lost the presidency from 1980 to 1992, and Labour lost the UK prime ministership from 1979 to 1997. Both responded by moving toward the right. (We can disapprove of that, but that's what they thought was necessary to win.)

For those of us that remember, the Republicans did that too after losing in 2012, signalling that they were ready to become less racist and more inclusive, and then the 2016 primaries came around and Trump just kept winning, and the rest is history.

But Trump himself did change (or at least challenge) Republican orthodoxy on some other things, like free trade and and reindustrialization, which many people responded positively too. Unfortunately, Trump thinks that tariffs are fines that you slap on other countries, doing so haphazardly, so he's unable to realize any of the positive affects of his own policy, if you can call it that. (Trump is infamously too whimsical, impatient, and narcissistic to do policy.)

[jcb]

I have the impression that when a Republican is in the White House, things become worse - but when a Democrat is, they don't become much better again (and it doesn't make much of a difference who controls the legislature). Neither Obama nor Biden had, for instance, abolished Camp Guantanamo, or done anything effective against police brutality. So the US have one conservative party (the Democrats) and one reactionary one (the Republicans), but no progressive party of any significance. Progressivism is the plaything of a few thousand intellectuals without mass appeal, it seems. Alas, all this is what the US political system looks to the outside observer I am, and I am no expert on US politics, so better take my words with a grain of salt.

This is what I've been saying for a while. America has two parties: a conservative party, the Democrats, and a fascist party, the Republicans.

I also note that Obama declined to prosecute with gusto the bankers that caused the 2008 crash. Instead he maintained his class solidarity with them.

Edit: Regarding the Democrats' inability to do anything to stop police brutality, instead just settling for expanding the group of people that can participate in doing it, I again remind people that South Park pointed this out over 25 years ago.
- beginning of episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mtGkUAAfec
- end of episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNb-7Cy_INo

I disagree that progressivism lacks mass appeal. It's just that it doesn't have a vehicle to promote and embody it in a two-party system that's dominated by moneyed interests that can box anybody else out.

[jcb]

Our current situation is rather like when the Nazis launched their blitzkrieg across Europe and conquered vast swaths from Poland to France and seemed poised to win the war. Unfortunately there is no analog to the USSR or USA waiting to turn the tide against them.

Ignoring the inconvenient-for-this-analogy fact that the USSR started off on the Axis side in order to (try to) gobble up parts of Eastern Europe and only turned coat after Germany decided with how badly Finland kicked their ass they must have been weak enough to invade (proving once again that fascists are bad at war) this is doing rather a disservice to the British and Canadian heroes who broke the back of the German air forces while America's fingers were still in its ears.

This is a bit disingenuous. The Soviet Union made a non-aggression pact with Germany because Stalin thought that the USSR wasn't ready to fight Germany yet. He knew that war with Germany was coming, but wanted to put it off as long as possible. (This also explains why Stalin didn't give orders to fight back right away when the invasion started (leading to large parts of the army being captured), because he desperately didn't want to accidentally start the war.)

[zompist]

This is a bit disingenuous. The Soviet Union made a non-aggression pact with Germany because Stalin thought that the USSR wasn't ready to fight Germany yet. He knew that war with Germany was coming, but wanted to put it off as long as possible. (This also explains why Stalin didn't give orders to fight back right away when the invasion started (leading to large parts of the army being captured), because he desperately didn't want to accidentally start the war.)

That's an interesting way of describing an alliance with a fascist power. The USSR allied with Germany during its war with the West, grabbed a large swath of territory for itself, used hundreds of thousand of Poles for forced labor, and supplied the Nazis with enormous amounts of resources-- oil, rubber, grain, iron ore, lumber, cotton, phosphates, platinum, manganese, etc. In 1940 the USSR supplied 1/3 of Germany's oil, which was essential for the Nazi war effort. Iron is another obvious need for military production; Germany could only supply a third of its own needs. It had no manganese of its own: 100% of its supplies came from the Soviets.

The Soviets received coal and old machinery; on the other hand, they shipped 18 months' worth of goods while being paid only for 6 months, before the German invasion-- which retarded the USSR's own military preparations.

Also, maybe Stalin would have been better prepared for war if he had been, you know, investing in defense, and not purging 47,000 officers from the Red Army, and not getting 125,000 soldiers killed invading Finland.

[zompist]

I have the impression that when a Republican is in the White House, things become worse - but when a Democrat is, they don't become much better again (and it doesn't make much of a difference who controls the legislature).

It can seem like that, but it's not true. Not achieving utopia is not the same thing as doing nothing.

Obama spend his first couple years on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)-- a major advance in health care. It's why I was able to have health insurance when I lost my computer job and just wrote books. Me and 25 million other Americans.

Both Obama and Biden enacted huge stimulus bills... recall that the Republicans before them left each of them a recession to deal with.

Neither of them spent their days on their phones tweeting about how great they were. Which makes them better human beings but maybe isn't good public relations. People read about bad news far faster and more eagerly than good news. I won't go and list individual things but I'd wager it's far more than most people are aware of.

It's also easy to forget that the US government is full of veto points, something only comparable to, say, the EU. Obama lost his congressional majority in 2010, and the system makes it almost impossible to do anything without one. One reason Trump depends so much on executive orders and simple illegal power grabs.

Neither Obama nor Biden had, for instance, abolished Camp Guantanamo,

Obama tried. The number of prisoners, 780 at Bush's height, went down to 55. The problem was that Congress prohibited moving prisoners to the US, so the administration had find other places for them, which was a slow process.

or done anything effective against police brutality.

Police aren't run by the federal government, they're run by the states. Again: many veto points.

Progressivism is the plaything of a few thousand intellectuals without mass appeal, it seems

Not at all. It's half the Democratic Party. It;s just that that means 1/4 of the electorate. And that's double what it was in the 1990s.

Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a socialist, won 43% of the vote in the Democratic primaries in 2016-- over 13 million people. That's an extraordinarily good showing-- just not good enough.

It's definitely frustrating to be a progressive in the US. A lot of things are against us. But are things any better in Germany? It sure seems that since 1980 you all have mostly been ruled by the center-right.

[WeepingElf]

First of all, thanks for the corrections, zompist. I am, as I said, an observer from far abroad, and no expert on US politics.

It's definitely frustrating to be a progressive in the US. A lot of things are against us. But are things any better in Germany?

Not much, I have to admit. The German progressives have their own parties (the SPD, the Greens, the Left), and thanks to proportional representation, they are all represented in the legislature, but they currently don't have a majority, and the SPD is in a coalition with the conservative CDU/CSU where they can't really do much except preventing the latter's worst moves. In fact, they are in a dilemma: they exhaust themselves in the coalition, but if they leave it, it would be mainly the far-right AfD who'd benefit from that. Unlike the US, though, the far right is not in power yet, and nobody wants to form a coalition with them (or at least they say so - I don't really trust the CDU/CSU in this point, but they have given their word, and can't go back behind it without causing a major scandal and alienating many voters and members; also, they disagree in some major issues such as foreign politics, especially concerning the EU and the war in Ukraine - the CDU/CSU is pro-EU and pro-Ukraine, the AfD is anti-EU and pro-Russia).

[malloc]

A lot of this is because of the ubiquity of right-wing propaganda. There is so much right-wing propaganda because right-wing propaganda outlets are hiring in massive numbers. The Indian right hires "IT cells" which are exactly what they sound like. Even I was offered multiple jobs in sciences and computers (not propaganda) associated with right-wing organizations (which I declined). Leftists are not creating a comparable number of jobs programs associated with ideologically left-wing institutions. Until this changes, the world will keep looking the way it does right now.

Quite. The right has definitely invested heavily in propaganda in ways that leftists have not. The explanation I have always heard is that the right simply has more money to spend on such things. It's difficult for leftists to close the propaganda gap when the other side has fossil fuel and tech billionaires bankrolling them.

In some unfortunate news, the Democratic candidate for senate Graham Platner has flamed out, costing the Democrats the opportunity to retake the senate this year. He was already quite a mess of a candidate despite some good policy positions so I figured this would happen. Nonetheless they really could have handled this race better and picked up a senate seat.

[Raphael]

Re: situation in the US vs. Germany, I should also note that basically everyone in Germany outside the far Left is a deficit hawk. The Obama and Biden stimulus packages would have been unimaginably left-wing by mainstream German standards. It was sometimes amusing to watch the major German legacy media outlets, which generally loved Obama at the time but also hated deficits, wonder how to report on those packages. And, of course, German deficit hawkishness has caused enormous suffering in other European countries.

And re: malloc's point on propaganda, again, I kind of think that right-wingers generally tell people the things that, for many, feel true, while left-wingers - at least in the more thoughtful and less repulsive parts of the Left - tell people the things that actually are true, which leaves them at a disadvantage. This means that right-wingers are usually very good at winning power and very bad at using it.

[WeepingElf]

And re: malloc's point on propaganda, again, I kind of think that right-wingers generally tell people the things that, for many, feel true, while left-wingers - at least in the more thoughtful and less repulsive parts of the Left - tell people the things that actually are true, which leaves them at a disadvantage. This means that right-wingers are usually very good at winning power and very bad at using it.

This is, sadly, true. Because the truth is often complex, and the claims of the right-wingers are deceptively simple.

[rotting bones]

Quite. The right has definitely invested heavily in propaganda in ways that leftists have not. The explanation I have always heard is that the right simply has more money to spend on such things. It's difficult for leftists to close the propaganda gap when the other side has fossil fuel and tech billionaires bankrolling them.

That's why my proposal operates outside the bounds of a capitalist market economy.

Re: situation in the US vs. Germany, I should also note that basically everyone in Germany outside the far Left is a deficit hawk. The Obama and Biden stimulus packages would have been unimaginably left-wing by mainstream German standards. It was sometimes amusing to watch the major German legacy media outlets, which generally loved Obama at the time but also hated deficits, wonder how to report on those packages. And, of course, German deficit hawkishness has caused enormous suffering in other European countries.

My understanding is that under the capitalist model, when countries try the things the US does, it leaves them in debt to China. When the US goes into debt to China, China does nothing because their reserves are in dollars. Wrecking the US economy will deplete their reserves. Countries that don't directly control the world's reserve currency have less flexibility when it comes to not going "broke", meaning being forced to hand over control of their economy to foreign powers.

And re: malloc's point on propaganda, again, I kind of think that right-wingers generally tell people the things that, for many, feel true, while left-wingers - at least in the more thoughtful and less repulsive parts of the Left - tell people the things that actually are true, which leaves them at a disadvantage. This means that right-wingers are usually very good at winning power and very bad at using it.

Until around 1990, there were big left-wing movements around the world. As soon as the USSR collapsed, human nature mysteriously changed, and now everyone is literally Hitler.

In reality, there's no more money in fighting the CIA talking points about Communism being the worst society to ever have existed. It turns out there's no way to incorporate Solzhenitsyn's Francoism into one's worldview and continue to push for a leftist movement.

The controversy that now polarizes the world of ideas is whether and how much to tolerate Islamism, the last non-Western ideology with any significant financial backing. This is why I think it's pretty safe to ignore everything the 21st century has to say in matters of political economy. All the geniuses today producing refined analyses of contemporary controversies are in no way engaging with anything that actually matters. Contemporary intellectual life needs to undergo a spiritual mass lobotomy and move on.

[Ares Land]

Until around 1990, there were big left-wing movements around the world. As soon as the USSR collapsed, human nature mysteriously changed, and now everyone is literally Hitler.

In reality, there's no more money in fighting the CIA talking points about Communism being the worst society to ever have existed. It turns out there's no way to incorporate Solzhenitsyn's Francoism into one's worldview and continue to push for a leftist movement.

The controversy that now polarizes the world of ideas is whether and how much to tolerate Islamism, the last non-Western ideology with any significant financial backing. This is why I think it's pretty safe to ignore everything the 21st century has to say in matters of political economy. All the geniuses today producing refined analyses of contemporary controversies are in no way engaging with anything that actually matters. Contemporary intellectual life needs to undergo a spiritual mass lobotomy and move on.

By Francoism I suppose you mean Solzhenitsyn being a reactionary crank, which is true. What is also true is what he documented about the Gulag, which is also absolutely true and shouldn't be ignored.
I think the sane path is to incorporate a realistic view of the former Eastern block, which (CIA or not) is not attractive. It's really not incompatible with a leftist movement. Leftists movement often chose not to; it doesn't mean it's impossible.

I think it'd be more productive to take some time to figure out what went wrong with the Eastern block (or Venezuela) rather than come up with excuses for ignoring that example.


I'm more optimistic than you are on the rest, there actually is quite a lot of intellectual life. It's not all right-wingers frothing at the mouth about Islamism.