What this election has told us, in multiple ways, is that our country has fundamentally changed and that breaks my heart.
"that our country has fundamentally changed and that breaks my heart."
Mine too. IMHO America has already fundamentally changed. People are rioting in the streets and some being killed, while the police are told to stand down. The cancel culture denies some people the freedom to speak their minds if it contradicts the prevailing opinions, some even lost their job or are attacked in the media. People are afraid to say who they voted for; that ain't cool.
"more districts where a minority of the voters controls a majority of the seats. Not unique to Republicans, but increasingly utilized by them."
Where is the Congressional district where a minority of voters controls a majority of seats? Or a state? Gerrymandering has been going on for some 200 years, and no less by democrats than republicans. FYI:
The term gerrymandering is named after American politician Elbridge Gerry (pronounced with a hard "g"; Vice President of the United States at the time of his death, who, as Governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed a bill that created a partisan district in the Boston area that was compared to the shape of a mythological salamander. The term has negative connotations and gerrymandering is almost always considered a corruption of the democratic process. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander.
As a matter of fact, tens of millions of dollars from the democrats went into Texas to try to win seats in the Texas legislature, who does the gerrymandering for the next 10 years.
If Trump wins, I see a further dismantling of our nation’s democratic infrastructure and a continued decline in our image and effectiveness abroad. I see complete politicization of our departments, from tiny VOA to DoJ, and entire civil service where personal loyalty is demanded over competency and professionalism. When Trump talks about reorganizing military leadership, is he attempting to politicize the military.
I believe that Obama did far more than Trump in dismantling and politicizing our democratic infrastructure and gov't departments. Do you think the IRS was impartial under Obama? How about the DOJ and FBI? When did Trump lie to the FISA Court? What about the State Dept, under Hillary was it impartial? Or the ATF? How impartial have Kagan and Sotomayor been during their time on the bench?
If Trump wins, and continues his assault on long established unwritten rules of behavior and social norms what will we see coming out of this? When society agrees to an unwritten set of norms and our leaders hold to it, our institutions function smoothly even with bumps and potholes. But when those potholes become so extreme they threaten the structure and people can no longer navigate, we are forced to create laws or rules we never thought would be needed. Example: media resorting to fact checking, because the volume of disinformation and political lies exceeds the ability of our society to handle, and it is coming from our leadership. I fear, if Trump is re-elected further attacks on truth, on facts, and on genuine journalism.
The media should ALWAYS be fact-checking and confirming what any elected official says, not just the president and not just the GOP either. You tell me, how many times did Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi and the rest of them lie to us about the investigation into Russian collusion? "Oh yeah, we got incontrovertible proof that Trump is guilty." And the Mueller Report comes out and came up empty.
Journalism is fucked up in this country because it was already politicized against Trump before he won his election and even before that. He never got a fair chance, numerous studies have told us that negative reporting on Trump is around 95%, what's he supposed to do? He fights back, as his supporters want him to do; granted, he's too rude and crude about it and say a lot of dumbshit things, but then so do the democrats. It is the democrats who have also violated long established unwritten rules of behavior and social norms, how many times have we seen stories about Trump that turned out to be false? The democrats and the media have ganged up him and tried to deny him the ability to lead, and they did it partly because they hate him and partly because they wanted to kick him out of office before he was even sworn in. Or lose his re-election in 2020.
But Trump doesn’t need to win for this. It is already rolling down on us. If Biden wins, a huge segment of America voted for Trump. Huge! And that is dismaying and unsettling, to me, because I see this election as not about which candidate to elect, but as who we are as a country and who we want to be going forward.
Trump won in 2016 because a huge number of Americans were sick and tired of what was going on in Washington. Excuse me if that was unsettling and dismaying, but the country needs to take a long look at our gov't and what it has been doing for too long.
This election was EXACTLY about which candidate to elect and almost nothing else. You were for Trump or against him, it wasn't about policy it was about feeling and emotion. The man is a ******* jerk, no doubt about that, but look at what he's done while in office. His policies far outshine Obama's and Biden's too if he wins as I expect he will.
If Biden wins, what, at best will happen? A rollback of EO’s? Competent people making decisions? Rebuilding the integrity and professionalism of our battered institutions: DoJ, State Department, EPA, CDC, VOA,....
LOL, thank God the Senate remains in GOP hands, otherwise the deluge of Far Left nonsense would be catastrophic IMHO. As for the integrity and professionalism of our battered institutions, it was under Obama not Trump where those organizations were politicized and lost their integrity and professionalism in the 1st place.
If Trump wins, there is nothing to stop him from using his office to go after his “enemies“, every person who has ever criticized, spoken up, or gone against him and firing those who won’t do it.
Nothing other than the democrats, the media, and even some in his own party. Even though he has appointed 3 SCOTUS justices, they aren't going to rubberstamp whatever he decides he wants to do. Not like Sotomayor and Kagan have voted the other way almost all the time. Many of his EOs have been struck down and that won't change with ACB instead of RGB.
I think this, coming from the top of our leadership, is an existential crisis. If Biden wins....maybe the Republicans can create a better party, without Trump.
I'll tell you what would be an existential crisis, if Biden wins and the Democrats take control of the Senate and the House. Have you looked at the shit they want to do? Abolish the filibuster, pack the court, admit new states, and basically turn this country into mob rule. Am I to believe Biden won't allow that? Please. The man has no principles, he has flip-flopped on everything and lied about it too. Wouldn't tell us his position on packing the court, right? Which means he doesn't have the balls to take a stand until he knows which way the wind is blowing.
Right now the GOP has as much of a schism as the Democrats do. Fiscal and social conservatives vs the populists, and maybe that's the way it should be in a representative republic like ours. What would constitute a better party? BTW, it'd be nice if the Democrats did the same thing.
I read, somewhere, that an alarming number of people no longer feel democratic principles are so important, and that a strong (authoritarian) leader might even be preferred to the messiness and uncertainties of democratic systems. I'm trying to find links to this, because I wonder if it plays into sentiments driving our country today.
People on both sides want their policies to be enacted and they don't really care how it gets done. They see Congress as an impediment that does nothing and so they want action. And they are pretty loud too, trying to influence the rest of us to agree with them and support whatever they want to do. There's a reason why the Senate has the filibuster, it is supposed to foster or even force some degree of compromise and cooperation between the 2 parties. Lately, that ain't happening, there's too much all take and no give in both parties and I don't know when that'll change. I wonder if we'll have to go through some catastrophic times for that to happen.
Trump won 2016 by very narrow margins. 2020 will be the same, who ever wins. Will the people win?
I wish. Not too optimistic about it though.
www.nationalreview.com
