Reince Priebus out of Trump White House

As I wrote (a year ago!) in that other thread,

Our system is also maddeningly slow, but sometimes that too isn’t a bad thing - just look how quickly the UK broke itself because of one idiot trying to placate another idiot with an ad-hoc referendum. If Trump wins we’re all going to be exceedingly grateful for the inertia in the system.

I’ve been thinking about the question of what constructive things people outside the US can do to help slow the Trump train, and a couple occurred to me:

  • Identify organziations whose job it is to oppose his agenda in the courts, and donate to them. The ACLU, American Immigration Council, and EFF are three to whom I boosted my donations this year, but there are others.

  • Foreign contributions to candidate are illegal, but there are advocacy groups like the CAP and PFAW that keep policy arguments alive and lobby legislators. I understand it might grating to some to support anything with the word “American” in it, or anything that works with the Democratic party.

  • Work on your own legislators to force them to publicly stake out meaningful policies that are independent of the US. Trump doesn’t give a toss about the opinions of other countries, but the State Department leadership and - more importantly - several GOP legislators do.

In a the US political system the way to influence political decisions is to get the legislators to believe that supporting your position is in their personal interest. (Corporate lobbyists have so much leverage in the US because our elections have become so expensive so legislators need lots of money to keep their jobs.) The post-Trump demonstrations in the US don’t seem to have accomplished much, and it is easy to say that more tear gas would have helped, but in fact they have been effective, in unifying the Democratic legislators into more of a block than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Likewise the town hall meetings. If the GOP legislators believe that Trump policies are a genuine impediment to implementing international policies they (or their corporate donors) support, they will have incentive to at the very least permit hearings on the policies, rather than just fearfully rubber stamping them. People outside the US can go a long way to helping them believe this by stepping up appropriate political activity in their own countries.

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