Senate The US Politics discussion

So what comes after our empire? Will America still be here, just stripped of its power, or will it die entirely, a nation gone?

 

Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom are still around despite their empires collapsing. Germany, China, and Russia still occupy the same geopolitical position as their relatively recent empires despite being controlled by different states (FRG, Russian Federation, PRC). The post-WWII international consensus has tended to lean toward territorial integrity and preserving states, and the collapse of the U.S. is something other powers would be very interested in preventing.

And I think the chicken little analysis that the U.S. will be "stripped of its power" dubious. The U.S.'s relative position in the global order is declining and Trump is probably accelerating it, yes, but it's a good thing. One power with only 5% of the world's population should not dominate world affairs despite the American delusion of righteousness; and the U.S. still has inherent advantages in a very large population, its geographic position, its abundance of natural resources, and other factors that won't change because of China or Europe or India.

The U.S. will collapse when every other state collapses due to climate change and general ecological destruction causing things such as extreme heat waves (looking forward to more 122-degree days in Phoenix!), prolonged droughts, sea level rise, food shortages, hurricanes devastating major cities, billions of refugees, etc. There's no reason to be Americentric about the prospect of catastrophic decline.

 

About those 122 degree days-- we're built for that here to some extent. To put it another way, we have so much air conditioning infrastructure here, and generations of experience among the natives (i.e. people like me), that we could adapt to higher average temperatures. The problems happen when places without that infrastructure and experience have to deal with it. If we suddenly had to manage sustained cold temperatures, we would have major issues. We're not built for that here. Not likely to happen, but the opposite is true in many areas.

 

Where KW is posting from right now

 

Those images of protesters being dragged out of wheelchairs is disgusting.

 

The President has waded into this debate, though once again he is classy enough not to directly insult Trump-though he did use Trump's own "mean" comment to describe the bill. Probably not a great idea to draw President Obama out at the exact moment Democrats are looking for someone to lead them. He may never run for office again, but that doesn't make President Obama any less of a leader. That along with his still high approval numbers and ability to mobilize people could definitely make a dent on this issue over the next week as all eyes turn to "DONTcare"

 

Trump did officially start his 2020 election campaign, filing the paperwork and everything, in January (I think he's already raised like $50 million for 2020)

 

And the newest lawsuit for Trump is for his alleged violation of the Presidential Records Act-specifically the reported use of encrypted messaging apps. How many lawsuits is Trump up to now?

 

Not enough!

 

So here's a summary of the new healthcare bill

Helps the rich and healthy, screws the poor and sick.

Edit: And here we have a Senator live tweeting as he reads through it

 

It's health care rationing for everyone that isn't rich. It'll also make employee provided coverage a thing of the past as premium costs will explode.

I wonder what are the chances it would crash the economy.

 

It's not going to eliminate emplyer-provided coverage. It's going to erode its effectiveness through the loss of various requirements, along with perhaps an increase in cost. There are likely millions of people in the country who think that the AHCA won't affect them, when in fact it very much will.

 

If you're going to write a love letter to Rylo Ken at least make sure he's notified.

 

Siberia will become the breadbasket of Europe. That's something to look forward to.

 

Sorry, I am not a Malthusian, so it was more of a bat signal than a love letter.

 

climate change apocalypse and Malthusian overshoot are distinct from each other though. You can have one or the other or both simultaneously and mutually reinforcing if you're lucky. And neither of those things has anything to do with the rise and fall of the great powers scenario.

 

Hopefully enough Republicans fearing their reelection chances vote to block it again.

 

So, there's something I'v been pondering about a lot lately. It's the question of, "when is enough enough?" When do Americans rise up like they did in the 60s and during Vietnam? As we've seen throughout the world, recent impeachments have led to the ousters of presidents in Brazil and South Korea, but not here (not yet). Fox News and an extremely polarized media and political climate may have something to do that. But what other contributing factors might there be? The internet, possibly?

There's a certain mindset I think a lot of middle-class Americans, especially Gen X and younger, have, which is that they have their lives, and really really bad things just aren't things that happen to them or to their community and country. It's an indicator of just how many people there are in the middle class, and how good they've all got it. It's another form of "the other." "That's not me, that's other people!" And I think, even as the Trump era moves from nascent to more fully realized, a lot of Americans are still in this mode. I can only remember what my grandmother and other elders would say when we used to have conversations about WW2 and dictatorships and totalitarian takeovers. They were adamant about one thing, "It can happen here." Now most of those elders are dead.

 

Nothing quite matches war as a galvanizing event. That was part of the reason student movements in the late 60s gained traction, coupled with a draft, a war being run out of the WH, and civil rights. We are not in the same situation now.

 

Interesting. So, if Trump decided to attack, say, North Korea, in an effort to distract from the Russia investigation, that could possibly bite him in the ass, bigly?

 

Those elders probably had the commies in mind. Dictatorships can only come from unions and ingrate workers asking for preposterous things like livable wages. One blink of an eye and you've got a fifth column setting up shop turning America into a Soviet satellite state. I'm joking, but in seriousness, I think people's imagination of authoritarianism in those days was conditioned to be associated with leftward populism. I find it difficult to imagine that a drift to the far right even entered people's consideration.

Also, there's no wake up call quite like fearing a drafting to go die in a BS war for nothing halfway around the world to kick you out of complacency and make you reconsider some established truths.

 

Possibly. Or it could go the exact opposite and reach levels of support like HW Bush had after the first Persian Gulf War. But wars activate and galvanize people unlike any other event. Vietnam worked against because it was coupled with a draft.
Outside of a war, I don't see anything now that would push people out of their own stations and contentment(or apathy?). Economic downturns are another but not quite like a war. The difference is war can also work for a president's popularity. Vietnam was just poorly conducted and against the wrong people.

Violent Violet Menace, yes the draft along with an undeclared war and against that foe all combined to make Vietnam a mess.

 

As much as I would like to see college students protesting, the size and effectiveness of the anti-war movement in the 1960s tends to be overstated -- probably because college-educated white Boomers love playing themselves up. The decade ended with pro-war, anti-left Nixon in the White House and U.S. involvement in Vietnam combat operations didn't end until 1973. Many at the time were aware of the ineffectiveness of their methods which led to disillusionment and sometimes the adoption of or preparation for violence.