At Least The Impeachment Has Given Clarity

[TimeTravel]

Since the impeachment is winding down and we pretty much know how that will end, seems to me in thinking about November's election and the future, have to ask what type of country do you want.

Three choices: 1) Monarchy 2) Socialism 3) Something between 1 + 2

[ZAFCorrection]

The impeachment is a red herring. The election which may give another four years of Donald Trump is a red herring. Even the debate about socialism/monarchy/in-between (apparently there is only this one low-variance dimension?) is a red herring. What about organizations at the state level? County level? Neighborhood level? Next-door neighbor level? Except for some elected officials or maybe activists one agitates with occasionally, I doubt many people have much concept of governance that is not what is reported nationally. And for non-governmental structures (e.g. schools, churches, clubs, professional associations), who actually participates in them beyond just a token effort to get what one wants? Even Jacob afaik can't find a few people in person to ERE it up with on a regular basis.

The idea and practice of engaging socially in a systematic way has gotten lost*. People got this attitude that society is gonna get fixed by staying in their respective boxes and rabble-rousing to get some dude elected/appointed so he/she can press the "fix society button" in Washington or LA, depending on whether we are talking governmentally or culturally. No direct personal action required. No consideration of how government and popular culture are a reflection of the choices and interactions of millions of individuals.

*Except for protests which are basically just public temper tantrums if they are not accompanied by anything else substantial.

[TimeTravel]

ZAF - Good post. I actually agree with many of the points you mentioned.

Maybe there is hope after all, thanks to the local elections.

[IlliniDave]

I don't buy the monarchy hype. The longest Trump will be around is one more term, and a second term is not certain. Executive power under Trump is under siege and it's actually in the legislature where naked power grab attempts are occurring. Seems like the string-pullers among the Dems are working against Bernie and trying to open the door for Bloomberg's checkbook. Should be an interesting primary race.

To me, looking through the whole Russia thing, the Ukraine/impeachment thing, and the Next Thing (one can almost guarantee a new issue initiated by anonymous leaks, probably to the NYT, will begin before the end of next week); what is truly concerning is the extent to which unelected government officials and other power brokers feel emboldened to flout laws in an effort to control who holds elected offices. That's an area where some true reform is needed, and from whence de facto totalitarian rule might actually arise.

To me the only thing about which impeachment has given clarity about is just how corrupted and self-serving the federal government is.

[TimeTravel]

Yeah, I know. Monarchy might be too strong a word as that means lifetime, like the Queen in England. But the precedent set by the senate is that as long as the senate has the majority with the president, then the house is pretty much powerless.

For example if Sanders or Warren wins the election and the Dems control the senate, they could go ahead and start pushing through executive orders for medicare for all with less checks and balances than before the precedent that was just set.

[jacob]

The 20th century global political structure (US dominated liberal democracy) is currently undergoing a collapse or disintegration. It's still hard to identify where it's going for lack of anything better. People (who read or rather write books) have settled on "illiberal democracy" as a descriptor for the interim transition period. This concurs with LTG as well as Strauss and Howes' predictions. It's conceivable that liberal democracy was a 20th century thing ... or an Ancient Greece thing.

At this point, enough voters have become consumers of misinformation and bubble-formation to co-opt the existing legal and cultural structures in practice if not in spirit. The average human is okay with where things are currently going: They're a-okay with other people losing their freedoms because populist politics still pertains to "the other" which is inherently acceptable to the average human because following the law/orders excuses a lack of empathy---and they don't realize the consequences. Keep in mind that the average human is willing to commit a lot of atrocities when someone tells them to (see Asch or Stanford experiments). Lost freedom doesn't matter as long as one doesn't know or care about what or who is lost. As long as freedom is not perceived, it's easily surrendered http://earlyretirementextreme.com/what-is-freedom.html

Some are still going through it: US, UK, Australia, Canada (hmmm, what's the commonality here)
Some have played with it and rejected it: Denmark, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, France (commonality?)
Some countries have already made the transition: Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Russia (again?)

[This will be on the test!]

So... where is this going? Always hard to tell when you're in it...

Still, voting (peasant influence) is a historically rare privilege. It's only been possible for very short eras of human history. It's not naturally ingrained, so the average human won't insist on it until it affects them personally at which point it's usually too late to make a difference.

[IlliniDave]

Yeah, I know. Monarchy might be too strong a word as that means lifetime, like the Queen in England. But the precedent set by the senate is that as long as the senate has the majority with the president, then the house is pretty much powerless.

For example if Sanders or Warren wins the election and the Dems control the senate, they could go ahead and start pushing through executive orders for medicare for all with less checks and balances than before the precedent that was just set.

Powerless in what way? No, the House can't unilaterally remove a president, which is as it should be. The purpose of impeachment was not intended to be bouncing a president over policy squabbles. The only precedent that has been set so far is a completely party-line impeachment vote by the House (only members of one party voted for impeachment), and some questionable practices in the investigation leading up to it. Convicting requires 2/3 of the Senate so in a completely partisan scenario one party would have to control the House and a 2/3+ of the Senate. It was a Republican Senate that acquitted Clinton after a Republican House impeached him (and much like this impeachment I did not support the Clinton impeachment).

Regarding executive orders, the check and balance for those is traditionally the courts. The House still has some ability to undermine an executive order through appropriations. Impeachment is not the remedy for overreaching executive orders.

[TimeTravel]

Powerless in that Senate are not impartial jurors. Of course, we new that going in anyhow. So no surprise of outcome.

[TimeTravel]

Reminds me of that John Kasich ad that went something like ...."You may not care .... until he gets around to you ... you better hope someone's there to help you."

[IlliniDave]

Powerless in that Senate are not impartial jurors. Of course, we new that going in anyhow. So no surprise of outcome.

There is no chance of getting objectively "impartial jurors" in an elected legislative body (in the coming days four of the Senators will be voting on whether to oust the guy they would potentially compete against for the presidency in the next election, for example). I think that is intentional because the "jurors" are answerable to their constituency so what the people want is still reflected in some way, and politics are part of it. The only way that a president will ever get removed from office via the impeachment process is if the offenses are so heinous that she/he loses virtually all public support as well as support of his/her party. It's a high bar.

That said, I think the partisanship in both the House and Senate proceedings was arguably a bit overboard this time.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Gotta agree with ZAF here. It's important for all of us to get engaged civically, at the local level and elsewhere. Institutions only exist if we help them exist. Things are challenging now, but when in history have they not? It's a bit hyperbolic to say the US is on the way to socialism or monarchy. More likely we'll continue to have a lumbering semi-democratic oligarchy, but when have we haven't? When the country was founded, only white men with property could vote. So it's not like this is a trend from some magical democratic past to the present.

The future depends on what we do collectively. Thinking of de-democratization as inevitable is half the problem.

[Lemur]

Yes, the impeachment has set a precedent for the Federal Government and future presidents, regardless of political party, to abuse executive power...specifically allowing foreign countries to interfere in our elections while also employing foreign countries to investigate our political rivals..being one example.

I'm not sure about the choices between monarchy, socialism, etc...this seems to be a bit of a false dilemma unless we're presuming that voting Republican = Monarchy and voting Democrat = Socialism. Likely, high probability is we will keep the same system we've now. I don't think the Democrats are going to let a progressive have the nomination. At least not forcefully but I think the deck is stacked against the progressives anyhow (media, superdelegates, etc.).

[IlliniDave]

At this point, enough voters have become consumers of misinformation and bubble-formation to co-opt the existing legal and cultural structures in practice if not in spirit. The average human is okay with where things are currently going: They're a-okay with other people losing their freedoms because populist politics still pertains to "the other" ...

Some are still going through it: US, UK, Australia, Canada (hmmm, what's the commonality here)
Some have played with it and rejected it: Denmark, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, France (commonality?)
Some countries have already made the transition: Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Russia (again?)

[This will be on the test!]

This is a little off-topic ...

I suspect these guys might flunk your test but I found this very interesting (a couple Swedes visit the IDW). Seems like some of the forces that create bubble-ism exist in even the most noble cultures and are similar to what we Americans experience; and even in Sweden attempts to pierce the bubble meet with a certain amount of hostility. A lot of it is same old same-old, but I found it interesting to listen to a perspective from a different point on the map and culture.

Warning, one of the Swedish guys is a comedian and says some things that at least for a US general audience are borderline bad-taste, but the host steers him towards being more civil a couple minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRBfoQRdpY

[AnalyticalEngine]

The pattern here seems to be:

English-speaking countries = turning into illiberal democracy
Previous Soviet block = already there
Non-English Eurozone = resisting turning

So if English-speaking is the trend here, the implication is the primarily English-speaking Internet/social media rumormill is to blame?

[Jason]

There's an expression and I paraphrase - Europe loves Marx, America loves Freud. If you look at the Red Scare of the 1950's it was only the intellectual elites at the table. In the US, the people most required for socialism - the workers - have never been interested. There has never been a Socialist party in the US partly due to the extensive social safety net already in place. But even in the 19th centuries the socialist evangelicals who came to the US saw arid ground and migrated to Canada. We do have unions but they have been in decline. The basic core American identity - ruggedly individualistic - militates against socialism. Mileninial socialism is not socialism. It's just a generation who learned history from Howard Zinn who was an actual communist (I actually took a college course with him and he was a complete buy my book asshole) and think Bernie Sanders is their grandfather.

If you want to say that the Executive branch has become progressively monaarchical, I think you could make the argument. It has had mini-dynasties throughout the years and when you have an acquiescent legislative branch, it essentially operates in that manner.

[bostonimproper]

English-speaking countries have been particularly innovative when it comes to media, to good and ill effect. 24-hour cable news and the major social media outlets of our time are largely products of the US. Shared language allows it to bleed into other English markets with some of the same major players (e.g. Aussie Rubert Murdoch).

Edit: To clarify, I don't think this stuff is exclusively developed in US and moves outward. Just that same-language markets can propagate the same changes in media faster than cross-language.

[Jason]

I think you have it backwards. Rupert Murdoch came to America and applied British tabloid ethos to American journalism. Despite their complicated relationship, bottom line, no Murdoch, no Trump.

The creation of the US was an anti-monarchical act. The most important polemic at the time Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" is a treatise against The Rights of Kings. Communism obviously didn't exist at that time. That being said, what has developed, at least from a psychological perspective, appears to be something resembling a feudal society where the public anticipates their beneficence to come not from the Aristocracy but from the administrative state. Being that feudalism has no real political theory behind it- its studied from a historical/relational and not a political perspective - might have allowed it to sneak in the back door. Not to mention it was most fully realized by the last President allowed to serve more than two terms.