United States Politics Thread 47

[bradrn]

I'm now seeing talk that Trump's plan is to have Maduro, as part of a plea deal, "confess" to having manipulated the 2020 elections, use that to justify declaring a state of emergency, and use that to justify taking over the elections and making sure the GOP "wins". Not that I want to sound like malloc, but I'd really like to know how to stop this.

Why not just be simpler about it, and suggest that Trump could go to Congress tomorrow, shoot machine guns until everyone is dead, and appoint himself Dictator for Life? That would be bad. Can anyone prove that he won't do that?

What if he takes off his mask, reveals himself to be a reptiloid from Planet 10, and explains that through climate change he is terraforming Earth for his fellow aliens? That would be bad. Can we prove that it's not true?

Is there really not enough to worry about in the world?

There is no "state of emergency" to declare. There is no "taking over the elections", there is no "make sure the GOP wins." We can't prove this to you, but we shouldn't have to, for the same reason we don't have to disprove every nightmare someone on the Internet comes up with ten times a day.

Unlike malloc, you should have some basic understanding of US elections, and US elections are not run by the federal government.

Well, we might see what they're up to on Thursday.

Thursday? Why Thursday?

[Raphael]

Well, we might see what they're up to on Thursday.

Thursday? Why Thursday?

Trump has announced a televised address on Thursday, and hinted at releasing supposed new intelligence findings.

[Torco]

Why not just be simpler about it, and suggest that Trump could go to Congress tomorrow, shoot machine guns until everyone is dead, and appoint himself Dictator for Life? That would be bad. Can anyone prove that he won't do that?

More: show

What if he takes off his mask, reveals himself to be a reptiloid from Planet 10, and explains that through climate change he is terraforming Earth for his fellow aliens? That would be bad. Can we prove that it's not true?

Is there really not enough to worry about in the world?

There is no "state of emergency" to declare. There is no "taking over the elections", there is no "make sure the GOP wins." We can't prove this to you, but we shouldn't have to, for the same reason we don't have to disprove every nightmare someone on the Internet comes up with ten times a day.

Unlike malloc, you should have some basic understanding of US elections, and US elections are not run by the federal government.

just to clarify, is your position here that it is impossible, or perhaps vanishingly unlikely, since very little is actually impossible, for orange man to attempt to and/or impossible for him to succeed at somehow bypassing term limits, get a third term, suspend elections under some bullshit excuse or stuff like that?

[zompist]

Unlike malloc, you should have some basic understanding of US elections, and US elections are not run by the federal government.[/more]

just to clarify, is your position here that it is impossible, or perhaps vanishingly unlikely, since very little is actually impossible, for orange man to attempt to and/or impossible for him to succeed at somehow bypassing term limits, get a third term, suspend elections under some bullshit excuse or stuff like that?

Let me put it another way. Seeking to understand and predict Trump's actions, what model do we use?

1. Full Darth Vader. He uses the Force and is unstoppable.
2. Third World dictatorship. He simply seizes power from the legislature and the states when he wants, using machine guns; no one can tell him no; the only recourse is another armed strongman.
3. First World dictatorship, à la Orbán or Erdoğan. He attempts to stack the judiciary, attack the press, attack education, attack the powerless, stack electoral commissions. But the apparatus of democracy is left in place and he can lose an election.
4. He's just a meaner version of Mitt Romney, no one has to worry, he's a weird aberration that will pass.

1) is a fantasy. Events so far are understandable with (3), they are not understandable with (2). If you follow (2) you cannot explain why Supreme Court decisions hold, why Republicans sometimes defy Trump, why Democrats win special elections, why white people are not shot by armed goons every day, why Minneapolis created a well-organized resistance.

The problem is that people don't feel (3) captures their outrage. They want a movies supervillain. They want to have no hope. Or to be charitable, they are full of WWII stories and expect Trump to act precisely like Hitler, rather than like Orbán.

I put (4) in there, an obvious nonstarter, because people devoted to (1) and (2) are apt to think that any exposition of (3), though it covers the facts better, is "really" a defense of (4). It is not; Orbán was a monster and there were times he seemed untouchable. But neither political science nor punditry nor resistance should be based on what seems to be, or on simple terror.

[Torco]

okay, but 2 and 3 aren't natural categories, nor is your 3 itself monolithic: erdogan is not the same as orban, after all. perhaps we can put these people on a spectrum, where orban is like a 3.2 and erdogan is like a 2.7, hitler a 2.1 and, i don't know, king leopold a 1.8 or something like that. we can argue the particulars but the point is there's a lot of positions a strongman can occupy along this axis. erdogan and putin have been more successful than orban, who was moreso, for a time, than... i don't know, berlusconi (?), and strongmen occupy different points in the scale as they consolidate power [or fail to, as the case may be]. if we had looked at fujimori before the autogolpe, he would have had a different score than he had after the autogolpe.

so like, i ask again, given that the metamodel doesn't work (i.e. that 4s can become 3s and 3s can become 2s), do you think he won't try and reduce his score in this metric? that he will try and fail? after all there's nothing magical about the first world. germany was as first world as it gets (which is not to say trump hitlerization is inevitable, merely not, i think, impossible)

[Travis B.]

okay, but 2 and 3 aren't natural categories, nor is your 3 itself monolithic: erdogan is not the same as orban, after all. perhaps we can put these people on a spectrum, where orban is like a 3.2 and erdogan is like a 2.7, hitler a 2.1 and, i don't know, king leopold a 1.8 or something like that. we can argue the particulars but the point is there's a lot of positions a strongman can occupy along this axis. erdogan and putin have been more successful than orban, who was moreso, for a time, than... i don't know, berlusconi (?), and strongmen occupy different points in the scale as they consolidate power [or fail to, as the case may be]. if we had looked at fujimori before the autogolpe, he would have had a different score than he had after the autogolpe.

so like, i ask again, given that the metamodel doesn't work (i.e. that 4s can become 3s and 3s can become 2s), do you think he won't try and reduce his score in this metric? that he will try and fail? after all there's nothing magical about the first world. germany was as first world as it gets (which is not to say trump hitlerization is inevitable, merely not, i think, impossible)

Essentially you're saying because this isn't exactly hard and fast, there's nothing stopping Trump from going full supervillain...

[Torco]

well, not quite... there are things stopping trump from going supervillan, and there are things moving him towards going supervillan. what i'm saying is that democracy, like many other features of countries, isn't like guaranteed by anything on paper, or by a country's wealth. it's not that there's nothing stopping him, but more like it's not the hand of god stopping him. in the words of the V-dem institute's 2026 report, the speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.

[zompist]

okay, but 2 and 3 aren't natural categories, nor is your 3 itself monolithic: erdogan is not the same as orban, after all. perhaps we can put these people on a spectrum, where orban is like a 3.2 and erdogan is like a 2.7, hitler a 2.1 and, i don't know, king leopold a 1.8 or something like that. we can argue the particulars but the point is there's a lot of positions a strongman can occupy along this axis. erdogan and putin have been more successful than orban, who was moreso, for a time, than... i don't know, berlusconi (?), and strongmen occupy different points in the scale as they consolidate power [or fail to, as the case may be]. if we had looked at fujimori before the autogolpe, he would have had a different score than he had after the autogolpe.

Sure, think of it as a continuum if that helps; just don't default to (2) because it's a congenial position. It doesn't help anything to be unable to distinguish Orbán from Hitler.

so like, i ask again, given that the metamodel doesn't work (i.e. that 4s can become 3s and 3s can become 2s), do you think he won't try and reduce his score in this metric? that he will try and fail? after all there's nothing magical about the first world. germany was as first world as it gets (which is not to say trump hitlerization is inevitable, merely not, i think, impossible)

There is no rule in the Big Book of God that the only metric of tyranny is Adolf Hitler 1933, forever and ever, amen. I beg of you, read up on some political events that have happened since 1950. Like fucking Orbán. CPAC idolized him for years, invited him to their conferences, went to his conferences in Hungary; Vance campaigned for him this year. That is their model, and it's worth looking at both what he did and what he didn't do.

It's not "magic" that has stopped Trump's worst dictatorial impulses. It is things like nine old people in robes, or thousands of ordinary Minneapolis citizens, or Senators refusing to end the filibuster. It's not "magic" that made Germany different in 1933— a country that then had 15 years' experience with democracy and most of that bad. It's not "magic" that makes 2026 America harder to subvert immediately than 1954 Guatemala, which BTW had then had all of 10 years' experience with democracy.

[Torco]

no one's defaulting to 2. i'm just saying there's no metaphysical guarantee of x >>> 2, and that it's not delusional to be worried, as raph was, about the current unprecedented democratic backsliding in the most powerful country in the history of ever

[Raphael]

On a trivial note, almost 16 months since the start of Trump 2.0, and the announcer still tells people to "please stand if you are able to"? Don't get me wrong, I see that as a clearly good thing. But I wonder how many exploding heads it causes among MAGA types.

[Raphael]

On a more worrying note, people are arguing that the fact that Clarence Thomas, who is 78, and Samuel Alito, who is 76, are apparently not retiring this year can only mean that they got ominous reassurances behind the scenes that no matter what happens, Republicans will still have certain overall control of Supreme Court appointments next year.

[Lērisama]

On a more worrying note, people are arguing that the fact that Clarence Thomas, who is 78, and Samuel Alito, who is 76, are apparently not retiring this year can only mean that they got ominous reassurances behind the scenes that no matter what happens, Republicans will still have certain overall control of Supreme Court appointments next year.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg also didn't resign when it was clearly in her partisan interest¹ to, and that wasn't because Barack Obama was planning a coup. Less flippantly, it's unlikely² the democrats retake the Senate this year, and I'm sure they don't want to admit to themselves that they're getting older, or lose their power.

¹ It feels really odd talking about the partisan interests of judges, but hay, America!
² Possible, but they'd have to win every state feasibly possible³. Honestly the fact it's being talked about given the states up for election is more due to Trump's unpopularity than anything else
³ Ish. It's a little more complicated than that.

[zompist]

On a more worrying note, people are arguing that the fact that Clarence Thomas, who is 78, and Samuel Alito, who is 76, are apparently not retiring this year can only mean that they got ominous reassurances behind the scenes that no matter what happens, Republicans will still have certain overall control of Supreme Court appointments next year.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to retire, and died in office at the age of 87. You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain why Supreme Court justices want to keep doing their work, especially as the Senate is a toss-up.

(For foreigners: Senatorial terms are staggered so that only 1/3 of Senate seats are contested in any one election.)

[malloc]

There is no rule in the Big Book of God that the only metric of tyranny is Adolf Hitler 1933, forever and ever, amen. I beg of you, read up on some political events that have happened since 1950. Like fucking Orbán. CPAC idolized him for years, invited him to their conferences, went to his conferences in Hungary; Vance campaigned for him this year. That is their model, and it's worth looking at both what he did and what he didn't do.

It's worth noting that Orbán had to work within the European Union which otherwise consists of democracies and includes human rights protections. That greatly constrained his ability to build dictatorship or carry out atrocities. Trump has nothing like the EU holding him back.

I'm now seeing talk that Trump's plan is to have Maduro, as part of a plea deal, "confess" to having manipulated the 2020 elections, use that to justify declaring a state of emergency, and use that to justify taking over the elections and making sure the GOP "wins". Not that I want to sound like malloc, but I'd really like to know how to stop this.

Sounds like he finally found a way to checkmate democracy. Even if the courts resist him taking over the elections, having Maduro "confess" could itself prove disastrous in terms of public opinion. Imagine the impact of every major news channel airing this story for weeks on the average person.

[zompist]

There is no rule in the Big Book of God that the only metric of tyranny is Adolf Hitler 1933, forever and ever, amen. I beg of you, read up on some political events that have happened since 1950. Like fucking Orbán. CPAC idolized him for years, invited him to their conferences, went to his conferences in Hungary; Vance campaigned for him this year. That is their model, and it's worth looking at both what he did and what he didn't do.

It's worth noting that Orbán had to work within the European Union which otherwise consists of democracies and includes human rights protections. That greatly constrained his ability to build dictatorship or carry out atrocities. Trump has nothing like the EU holding him back.

Can you name three ways in which the EU "greatly constrained" Orbán?

I'd say it worked the other way: since every EU state has a veto, Orbán greatly constrained the EU, especially in supporting Ukraine.

[Lērisama]

Can you name three ways in which the EU "greatly constrained" Orbán?

I can name one. They cut off some of the money flow, after Orbán was using it for corrupt purposes.¹

I'd say it worked the other way: since every EU state has a veto, Orbán greatly constrained the EU, especially in supporting Ukraine.

This is of course also very true, and moreso than the former.

¹ I think the official reason was lack of respect for the rule of law, but that can be translated as “too dictatory”

[malloc]

Can you name three ways in which the EU "greatly constrained" Orbán?

I'd say it worked the other way: since every EU state has a veto, Orbán greatly constrained the EU, especially in supporting Ukraine.

Well no since I am hardly an expert on EU law or governance. Nonetheless the EU does restrict the activities of member states in various ways, enforcing a minimum of human rights and rule of law and so forth. Consider the Civil Rights movement, where the federal government intervened to force Southern states to give up segregation. The same basic principle applies to the EU which can require member states to follow laws passed at the union level.

[Ares Land]

Can you name three ways in which the EU "greatly constrained" Orbán?

I'd say it worked the other way: since every EU state has a veto, Orbán greatly constrained the EU, especially in supporting Ukraine.

Well no since I am hardly an expert on EU law or governance. Nonetheless the EU does restrict the activities of member states in various ways, enforcing a minimum of human rights and rule of law and so forth. Consider the Civil Rights movement, where the federal government intervened to force Southern states to give up segregation. The same basic principle applies to the EU which can require member states to follow laws passed at the union level.

That's partly true but only partly (to my regret; I certainly wish the EU had more teeth)

The European Union isn't a federal government. All states remain fully sovereign; EU legislation has to be transcribed in national law and is applied by national governments. So it requires national governments to play along.
You can appeal under certain circumstances to the European Court of Human Rights. I'm not sure if individuals can appeal to the European General Court. In any case all of this has to go through national courts first Anyway their decisions are legally binding, but again the national government has to play along.
Hungary was condemned multiple times by the ECHR; the Hungarian government probably complied grudingly if at all.

Hungary under Orbán was in violation of multiple European treaties and conventions. Technically Hungary could have been expelled from the EU -- though realistically there was no chance of that ever happening.
There finally were fines and economic sanctions, after a process that took forever. I don't know the details, but the rough picture is as follows: several EU states, such as Poland, were (at the time) close ideologically to Orbán's Hungary; besides most of the European right-wing parties didn't think Orbán was that big of a problem.
The sanctions did hurt and contributed to some extent to Orbán's defeat.

In short, the EU can constrain member countries though preferably those countries have to be cooperative; the EU can force cooperation in its own way, but it's a very long and arduous process.

[zompist]

Paul Krugman is worried about election interference.

The posting is a little vibe-ish; Trump can't create new powers for himself in a video address, and if he or Congress could control the elections they'd have already done so. Plus, half his delusions seem to melt away after a few days (e.g. his proposal to charge illegal tolls on Persian Gulf ships). But Krugman is not an alarmist, so his warnings are worth reading.

[Link fixed; thanks, Raphael.]

[malloc]

And don’t say they wouldn’t do that. That has been famous last words every step of the way. The proposition that there were some things that even Trump and company would not do has been the best way to be wrong about everything, every step of the Trump administration.

Quoted for truth. Nothing really to add, just want to highlight this because this has been my point all along.