Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/22/dems-should-pledge-reversal.html
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I linked this article in the Trump thread last night, too.
Setting aside all the sensationalism and scandal, the stacking of the judiciary with ultra conservative fundamentalist judges, and ignoring net neutrality, 45 and his merry band of sycophants have still managed to do real and lasting damage to the country and the world.
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After the year’s events, I wish more people were less complacent (or less stupid or ignorant or greedy or deluded) and grasped the fact that there is a sustained, on-going, well-funded and loosely co-ordinated assault on liberal democratic institutions in progress, not only in the U.S. but throughout the industrialised West. This is 1930s-level ideological warfare.
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The Republicans will just pull out one of their favorite sound bytes for any criticism on the listed policies. “Soft on crime”. Then they will start talking about an imaginary crime wave.
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I don’t understand why the Democrats don’t greet each of these acts with a public promise to repeal them if they take office. It would at least put businesses on notice not to make any plans that rely on these decisions remaining intact, and would give Dems a rejoinder for aggrieved execs when they do repeal these rules: “We told you on day zero that this new rules were doomed. If you didn’t listen to us, that’s your problem, not ours.”
I appreciate that from the party’s perspective, this could be a useful tactic to gain votes. And maybe it’s necessary with respect to truly destructive policies. But if both parties did that with policies they didn’t like, it seems like it would create a difficult environment to run a business in. How do you make any long term plans as a business if every change in administration brings sweeping policy changes?
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With this administration, there are so many “this one thing alone screws up the US” elements. The Stacking of the judiciary with young, incompetent reactionaries is probably the worst so far, but changes in the EPA and Department of Justice, gutting of the State Department (loss of institutional memory, diplomats and ambassadors), even what’s being done in the Department of Agriculture will have long term effects, some of which won’t be felt for years (e.g. slashing research into climate change’s impact on crops, potentially leaving us starving in a few decades), losing vital time during significant moments which we’ll never be able to make up. It’s really disheartening.
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Buying a Congress-critter or three?
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Problem is that one or three won’t be enough, sadly.
Two sides of the same coin, am I right?
It still is difficult to believe our populace was collectively amoral and vicious enough to put that pervert and his representative fellow swine in office. The years of designed misogyny against Clinton certainly helped but I have to wonder how much russia and/or other actors literally changed votes, vote count. If it was truly just voter stupidity how do we save ourselves from these dullards who want to live in the dark ages? Or is it, as many of our ancestors decided, time to leave this country to the democratic rule of mentally and morally defective people. It would, for me, entail picking up my life, selling off possessions and moving to another country. To find another country at my age will be a challenge. Perhaps I will look more for physical environments where governments have little reach. The sickening slaughter of consumer protections and the fueling of pathways for the rich to get even more power is really more than I’m willing to tolerate. I hate it. I love the beauty of America and most of it’s people. Leaving will be a difficult decision I really never expected to need to make. And now the most base and vile primate to hold our highest office has stained a country that once was looked upon as the best model of government in the world. sickening, just sickening.
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It was virtually incalculable how much damage the methodical and diabolical Sessions will be able to achieve if he’s in office for the next 3 (or 7) years.
That’s why Sessions will endure any indignity and any insult from Trump as long as he retains his position of power. Like a robust parasite, he just keeps burrowing into our country, infesting it with disease and rot, undoing decades of progress, rendering it a more friendly habitat for parasites of his like.
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It still is difficult to believe our populace was collectively amoral and vicious enough to put that pervert and his representative fellow swine in office.
Well, the white evangelical racist part of it. The rest you should spew bile at for staying home or thinking fucking Gary Johnson was the right idea.
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Don’t forget the fucking DNC who kept making like the most popular politician in generations wasn’t an option. And they’ll do their best to screw up the next one, too.
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I’d refine that to places where bad governments have little reach. This increasingly means large global and regional powerhouse cities in America that have the prosperity and demographic clout to defy incompetent or (increasingly) malicious state and federal government policies. We already see this happening with cities pushing back against Il Douche’s climate-change denialism and xenophobic anti-immigrant initiatives. America’s big cities are last bastions of liberal democracy just as much as countries like Germany and Canada and Finland and NZ are.
The hinterlands of the U.S., in contrast, are going to be dominated more and more by bad government, be it federal, state or local. I don’t envy the economic and political prospects of anyone who’ll be stuck in America’s crumbling small towns and exurbs and rural areas in the coming decades.
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What are some of the countries you have considered?
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I’ll most likely go to Peru where I have a 25 year connection. In the Amazon basin nature is the dominant force and people have a strong need to cooperate with each other. I have become part of a family there during my many extended stays and have 2 adopted sons. Both have their own families here now. Politically it favors the rich as is the norm everywhere yet the jungle is a force above laws and greed. My family there joins in a community labor force called a Minga once or twice a month or as needed to clean build and maintain the commons area. I’m not blind nor do I consider it a utopia but the president in Lima is a long way from the villages along the remote tributary rivers.
[quote=“gracchus, post:16, topic:113011”]
regional powerhouse cities in America
[/quote].
I have never lived in a city or town. At my age now I have little desire to start adapting to such ways. A small rural or isolated village perhaps would be ideal. Something along the lines of an extended family unit. I have that connection in Peru. one of the beauties of such places is their ability to abandon one site and spring up in a better spot when necessary
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