I think this goes both ways, at least to a degree. I have a friend who works tirelessly to get anybody with a D next to his/her name elected and loves to insert cliches like “baby steps” and “two steps forward, one step back” into any political discussion. She doesn’t really seem to care what the person stands for, she only cares about the probability he/she can get elected, especially if it means displacing a Republican.
Me, I’d rather waste my vote on a Green Party candidate who doesn’t stand a chance than choose between a D plutocrat and an R plutocrat. (I shouldn’t say “waste,” in truth I feel like my vote is wasted if I cast it for someone I don’t actually want representing me, at least within certain limits.) I’m pretty much done with centrists (though as many here have pointed out, the center has shifted pretty far to the right in recent years). Joe Biden is my nightmare candidate in the current Democratic field for 2020.
Needless to say, my friend and I don’t really see eye to eye despite wanting more or less the same thing in the long run.
not really, obama was a modern human and although he didn’t relinquish nearly enough of the enormous powers george w seized for the executive he was still a calm and reasonable man. what we need is a president who is not a racist thug.
The pressing issue of the moment regarding political compromise is that establishment conservatives are all too willing to appease right-wing populist demagogues.
The former are making the classic mistake of thinking that they can control the latter and through them continue to use the Know-Nothing base as marks who help keep wealth further concentrated at the top. Like Hindenburg before him, though, GOP establishment politicians like Lindsey Graham are learning that it’s all or nothing when you give fascists power.
In the longer run, though, it’ll ultimately be up to young people what we end up with. I’ll quote Malcolm Harris on this yet again.
If, as blockbuster audiences seem to both fear and relish, America is quickly headed for full-fledged dystopia, it will have gone through us Millenials first, and we will have become the first generation of true American fascists. On the other hand, were someone to push the American oligarchy off its ledge, the shove seems likely to come from this side of the generation gap, and we will have become the first generation of successful American revolutionaries. The stakes really are that high…
The effects of climate change and ever-increasing inequality are only getting started, though. And if China reaches the point (probably in 15 years) where it feels comfortable calling in all that debt to punish some future brain-dead protectionist American President it’ll be Weimar time in the U.S.A.
I for sure think that both parties are trying to lock down party loyalty among voters. And yes, we can find flip flops on both parties of the issue. But for example, I don’t see the Democrats suddenly calling for a wall if the Republicans suddenly became anti-wall. In your examples it is pushing party loyalty. Which I feel is a cancer as well.
But who knows, maybe we were really at war with Eurasia the whole time!
As for your 2nd issue, if we had a weighted voting scheme, then a third party would have a fighting chance. Other wise it’s shit sandwiches and giant douches for all. I do find it interesting how due to there being more parties in the UK and the way parliament works, there is an ebb and flow of political parties coming and going.
In what ways do you believe the Contract With America to be comparable to the Treaty of Versailles?
I dunno about that–I think that might diminish what those who have lived under actual dictatorships have gone through. You can still go on TV in this country and say whatever you like about Trump, you can protest in the streets, there are still courts who counter his wishes, and there is still an opposition party that from time to time acts like it.
Don’t get me wrong, I think we either pull back soon from the brink or the erosion of our institutions will be beyond repair, and our republic as we know it probably can’t survive another Trump term (or, god forbid, if we go to war with him at the helm), but I think there is significant room before we actually bottom out.
For what it’s worth, that system has also led to their current situation and the real possibility of a hard Brexit with Boris Johnson leading the country, so I’m not sure whether it’s more about the system or those who inhabit it.
You still feel that way after seeing what Trump has brought to the table?
Not to pile on, but I think the right wing have always known that their ideas can’t win out in a democracy. The march has been long and steady, and it started well before Reagan.
That is why the right’s strategy has had little to do with winning votes and everything to do with rigging the game - whether that is gerrymandering, voter suppression or breaking with convention to stack courts.
(Like, Merrick Garland was already a compromise Supreme Court nomination, but the Republican Senate threw out convention and refused to appoint him. What were Democrats supposed to do? Relent and nominate someone more in line with Gorsuch?)
As an uncompromising and inflexible document, it certainly limited reasonable policy options and contributed to a more economically and politically divided society. Not a direct analogue, but in the context of this article there are similarities.
Closer to say that we’re in the early stages or perhaps the prequel to dictatorship. Again, though, it’s not a direct analogue. Putin shows the way for this new form of autocracy, where free elections and free speech and a judiciary that is independent all technically and to a certain degree practically still exist, but where corruption and fear rule the day when it suits the dictator.
I would have agreed with that until recently. The scarcity and mass movements of people and local disasters caused by climate change are accelerating, and that’s driving the concentration of individual and national wealth to greater extremes in a race to have enough resources when the ladders have to be pulled up.
We have room to work, to elect progressive representatives who’ll enact sane economic and environmental policies, but we’re already way behind and the elections of the past few years have placed vandals fully in charge throughout the West.
Well no system is perfect. I just find it interesting that there are at least power struggles in the UK. Granted in this case I think it ended badly, but I don’t see any upstart movement coming to power in the US any time soon. The best you can hope for is to glom on to one of the existing parties.
An example would be AOC who had some success and is certainly more left than mainstream Democrats, and now the establishment wants to help lock shit down so that doesn’t happen again. Odds are she may be gone in 2 years. The Tea Party movement had some success getting elected, but they basically went nowhere and were controlled by the Republicans.
I mean, I suppose one NICE thing you could say about Trump, is that the established powers of the party don’t seem like they can control him.
But in general I feel that in the US we have pretty much all of the political power consolidated, and anything out side of that structure has no chance.
With all due respect to @gracchus 's thoughtful reply, I think that this loose comparison minimizes to an incredible degree the importance of the Treaty of Versailles, both in what precipitated it and the place it held in its society.
The CwA was a generational piece of shit policy document championed by idiots and villains, but it was the product of our democratic process, debated and passed within our system of government. It wasn’t imposed on us from outside, and it’s difficult to imagine Obama hauling a train car out of a museum to use as a setting for a legislative victory over its proponents.
Seems we’re in relative agreement, given your statement “Closer to say that we’re in the early stages or perhaps the prequel to dictatorship.” I think that’s exactly where we’re at, a very dangerous period of history but with a lot of room for things to get worse.
If one has de facto rigged elections – gerrymandering, lawless disenfranchisement, essentially a one party corporatist state – where news reporting irresponsibly echoes only establishment promoting BS, and rampant state-supported sexism and racism, a state where many are above the law, where our state is corrupted and a tyranny of the minority, I dunno, seems close enough to a dictatorship for me. Problem seems to me to be that the masses for the most part have no idea how much America is not a democracy.
The question is what constitutes a ‘side,’ though. Compromise with the GOP? No, clearly not, they are faithless slime. You can trust them as far as you can throw them. But you have to have compromise between people. Actual voting humans. Because you can always get rid of a political party, but the only way to get rid of ~40% of the electorate is a civil war. Or partition. Both solutions have been tried worldwide and they have, in general, not gone well.
I think where we differ is on the adjective “significant”. We’re one crisis away from a Putin-style dictatorship in this country, and that crisis could easily be a manufactured one.
