[aedron]

You know what a lot of people consider worse than Donald Trump? The status quo.

That's what I feel is missing in all this indignation - where were you before? The political system has been deeply broken for decades, with the same unjust policies being pursued regardless of which public face was on it - imperialist militaristic foreign policies abroad, economic inequality at home. All sold to the public with glib marketing campaigns through a monopolized mass media. The whole democracy road show feeling like a sham for the gullible to eat up.

There's a lot not to like about Donald Trump, but for one thing he is an outsider to the established system (I believe in this because of how hard the mainstream media is bent on pulling him down). It is hard for me to see that as anything but an improvement.

[verbify]

> he is an outsider to the established system

He's a billionaire who inherited around $750 million. He didn't pay his taxes. His chief of staff was chairman of the Republican party. His cabinet have a combined net worth of $6 billion. If anyone represents the powers-that-be, he does. If anyone has a glib marketing campaign, it's the Trump presidency in claiming to be 'outsiders'.

And if you think the political system is broken, well, you haven't seen nothing yet.

> how hard the mainstream media is bent on pulling him down

Maybe the media is criticizing him because, you know, he does things that deserve criticism.

[mattmanser]

Just because you're part of one club (business leaders) doesn't make you part of another club (political elite).

America is a very odd place, there's cheerful talk about being the most democratic place in the world, but you have all these really bizarre ruling families who keep winning powerful positions.

It's not normal to have two Bushes, let alone 3 in power in the space of a couple of decades. Or Clintons. Or Kennedys. How can you not look at your own politics and wonder, with 300 odd million, how do the same families keep winning? That the whole thing's not a stacked deck?

It's really weird. To outsiders, there's obviously something deeply corrupt in America where a tiny ruling dynasty keep getting themselves elected. There's a 'queue' and Hilary was at the top because of her connections. SNL even joked before the election that if she wasn't elected, she'd be back next time as it was still her 'turn' to be president.

Trump is not part of that club, that's what he's talking about.

By supporting that corrupt status quo the democrats helped a monster like Trump be elected.

[hueving]

>He's a billionaire who inherited around $750 million

He didn't inherit it with a bunch of strings attached from lobbyists. The Clintons have been pulling money into their foundation leveraging political connections built up over decades. People don't care that he's rich with daddy's money, they care that it's not "decades of political speeches and political fundraising money".

>He didn't pay his taxes

He would be a moron if he didn't pay the legally required amount. The fact that people think taking a loss write-off is some kind of black mark shows how stupid many people really are.

>And if you think the political system is broken, well, you haven't seen nothing yet

You may be right, but many people were voting in a massive change to the system. "drain the swap" was the slogan

[espadrine]

> He didn't inherit it

That is not the point.

Why is Clinton owing the wealthy for their donations a problem? Because it makes her more likely to yield to their demands. Corruption creates a pay-to-win game.

But putting the wealthy in power cuts the middle man, worsening the situation: now they don't even need to provide donations, they are either on the President's cabinet, or are the President himself!

> "drain the swap" was the slogan

Populism at work; there was no need for it to be honest. It is a true issue, but someone that points it out does not automatically become an outsider of the system. He was very much part of the system, and was open about it, bragging about his political donations.

[eli_gottlieb]

>You may be right, but many people were voting in a massive change to the system. "drain the swap" was the slogan

You know who first said, "Drain the swamp"? Benito Mussolini. You know how that turned out?

[vacri]

> People don't care that he's rich with daddy's money, they care that it's not "decades of political speeches and political fundraising money".

They don't care about either of those things. His supporters backed him because he said things they wanted to hear, no matter how outrageous they were.

[belorn]

To take a note from popular culture, I recall how the primary plot of House of cards - season 2, was the difference between power and money. Power is describe as created by favor and influence, while money mostly creates more money.

[rtpg]

"Both parties are the same" is such a tired meme considering what has happened the past 8 days.

Do you think President Clinton would be defunding planned parenthood? Planning a repeal of a healthcare law without a replacement, making 20 million people lose their health insurance immediately? Appoint a brain surgeon to HUD?

Do you think Democrats would set up this muslim ban? Not a 6-month refugee ban, but a ban from people who were already legal permanent residents?

Both parties might share a similar vein of imperialism, that deserved to be fought. But it ends there.

One party wanted to carpet bomb Iran, another wanted to make peace.

And, of course, Trump is the most extreme of this. How do you think someone who advocates nuclear first strike is less imperialistic than the other guys?

[AnthonyMouse]

It isn't that both parties are the same on all issues, it's that there are important issues that no viable candidate would actually address.

Do you think President Clinton would end NSA mass surveillance? Reduce copyright terms? Meaningfully reform Wall St? Meaningfully reform the tax code or social spending?

Republicans won't either. That's the problem.

You get enough people frustrated enough and they vote for whoever they think will shake things up, even at the risk of burning it all down.

[grey-area]

Actually no, none of your stated problems are important to trump supporters or reasons for him to be elected. America first appeals to them, in spite of, or sometimes because of, all the nasty implications of it and the racial and social revolution it requires.

Trump will not stop NSA surveillance, reduce copyright terms, meaningfully reform Wall St (he hired Goldman Sachs alumni), meaningfully reform the tax code or social spending. He is a nationalist not a globalist, that's his agenda not the points you raised.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-22/goldman-i...

[AnthonyMouse]

America First and protectionism is how Trump won Michigan, not how he won the Republican primary (and thus Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, etc.)

He got nominated by being the candidate most resembling a middle finger to the establishment.

The existing system has been systematically destroying the middle class, and the people see it happening but don't understand why or how to fix it, but they know that voting for establishment candidates from either party hasn't fixed it.

Therefore Trump. Make America Great Again. Exactly what people want to hear. Actual method unspecified.

[grey-area]

I honestly don't think he has promised anything to address the points you raised, or has any intention to.

[AnthonyMouse]

They're not examples of things Trump would do, they're examples of things neither of the major parties give you a choice over.

Nobody knows what Trump will do. Make America Great Again could mean anything. Compare "Hope and Change" -- Obama was the first attempt at this when he defeated Clinton. Change didn't happen so people chose an even more radical option.

It isn't that voting for the protest candidate is especially effective, it's that frustrated people don't know what else to do. They weren't given any good option so they picked the wildcard bad option over the known bad option.

[sfifs]

None of these problems you state are why Trump seems to have won actually - which seems to symptomize the problem in the US. To people like me on the outside, it appears that a majority of the population is losing hope of bettering their life... and they voted for the person who promised to change the system that made them lose hope.

We had a chief minister in India once like this... darling of the educated classes, highly progressive, deploying technology in eGovernance, attracting Microsoft and Google to open campuses in his state. He lost by a landslide in the next election because during his term, the monsoons failed and farmers fell deep into debt and started committing suicide while he was deploying his middle class focused efforts.

[eeZah7Ux]

> "Both parties are the same" is such a tired meme considering what has happened the past 8 days.

"Both parties are the same" is not meant literally, and usually people mean "both parties are bad". It's about the illusion of choice.

[m_fayer]

The idea that the political system was "deeply broken" before Trump is a popular meme these days, one that IMO is utopian, ahistorical, and increasingly destructive.

Rule of law and representative democracy, as we know them today, are quite young, and the modern take on basic human rights is even younger. When did black people win full equality in the US, even in the legal sense? When did Western colonialism in the middle east and India end? When was the last time Western countries opted for total war and incinerated civilians, en masse? These are all things that are today unthinkable that have actually happened within the lifetime of someone who could plausibly be alive today.

Building a just state and society is a slow, delicate, multi-generational project, and we are just at the beginning. We're just now getting to a place where we're moving past barbaric mass violence and mass racist persecution. And you expect us to have a good handle on subtle, systemic problems like inequality and imbalance between state and private power? Have a little perspective and patience!

It's like people look around, notice that we're not in fact in some enlightened Star Trek like utopia, declare that the whole edifice rotten, and decide that the best response is nihilistic glee - why not burn it all down? Get a grip.

[mdemare]

Exactly. People look at their government and give it 1/5 stars, then vote for anyone promising change, because they think they have nothing to lose. But the range doesn't start at 1 star. It goes down to minus infinity.

[barking]

Trump is not doing anything he didn't say he'd do.

I don't suppose there was ever a possibility of Jeff or all the people currently protesting, voting for Trump in the first place.

So, aren't we just seeing the same people who were anti-Trump before the election, protesting now?

The election of Trump came as a shock even during the count because the Trump voters tended to be quieter and/or ignored.

But they won the election and now what they voted for is being enacted.

[thedudemabry]

This is a fair point. I don't agree with your conclusion, though.

I have felt outrage against specific policies in the past. The news media has expressed outrage against specific policies in the past. But political inertia, for better and worse, was a thing that we could rely upon to temper the public whims of any particular commander-in-chief. It meant that meaningful change required constant attention and guidance. But it also meant that the actions of any individual were unlikely to crater our democracy.

The new president has now shown in both tone and action that he intends to directly manifest some of the most extreme positions promised to his supporters. This, in the face of overwhelming ethical arguments, public opinion, and systemic protections that oppose them.

This is not a threat to the local status quo, one which our political system has grown to evolve slowly but meaningfully over election cycles. It is a threat to the maximal status quo, in which we can proudly identify ourselves as Americans because we believe that we aren't perfect, but we're working towards that ideal.

[EdSharkey]

Yes, the unsustainable, burned-out status quo. The last administration could create conflict, but couldn't eke out even modest support for a new ground war in Syria.

The elderly Democratic party has no bench and the same old message. The Republican party has a massive spending problem and too many hawks. Even with a system rigged for the status quo, Trump was able to win. That's what I mean by unsustainable - people chose the deeply flawed naysayer over the alternatives.

[test1235]

"Better the devil you know" vs "Out of the frying pan into the fire"

Maybe change was needed, but this is so much worse than before.

[selllikesybok]

The status quo, such as it was, in 2016, was worse than... what?

I'm just not seeing how my life, or my neighbors lives, are improved by anything that's come so far. Or that is on the promised list of things to come.

It is actually already worse for some of us than it was 11 days ago.

[chimprich]

> There's a lot not to like about Donald Trump, but for one thing he is an outsider to the established system

Or from another perspective a billionaire managed to get elected through spending enormous amounts of cash on a huge publicity machine that imprinted a simplistic and repetitive message of being an outsider on large numbers of people as if that in itself is a positive quality. /Serial killers/ are outsiders.

[zimpenfish]

To be fair, he didn't spend an enormous amount of cash -relative to other political campaigns-. Didn't need to because he got a lot of free advertising from the media (eg. his fake-birther/really-his-hotel announcement that got wide coverage.)

[aniforprez]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...

A billion dollars. Less than what Hillary spent sure but it's not as if he coasted into Presidency by spending a few nickels. Even relative to Hillary's ENORMOUS sum this is no small amount

[hueving]

He spent less than Clinton, no?

[otikik]

> You know what a lot of people consider worse than Donald Trump? The status quo.

Well I hope those people like surprises.

[JohnBooty]

    imperialist militaristic foreign policies abroad,

This didn't exactly happen in a vacuum. A country can't be a major power without trying to gain influence throughout the world; all of the other major powers are doing it too.

Of course, it's also possible to renounce the game of global influence entirely. But be careful what you wish for.

Because that's what we've chosen with Trump: building literal and figurative walls around the country. Apparently we are planning to... isolate ourselves back to greatness?

Perhaps in some ideal world we could be "noble isolationists" and close our borders, eyes, and ears to the world without a populist thirst for xenophobia and racism, secure in the knowledge that other global powers will shape the world (or perhaps become noble isolationists themselves?) for the better in our absence.

I wish I shared that fantasy; it's a particularly nice one.

The United States' meddling in world affairs has ranged from "helpful" to "disastrous." But it's absolute madness to think that others will not attempt to assert control in the power vacuum we're leaving behind. Do you really think Russia will be better for the world than us? Maybe you should ask Ukraine about that one.

    There's a lot not to like about Donald Trump, but for one thing he 
    is an outsider to the established system (I believe in this because 
    of how hard the mainstream media is bent on pulling him down). It 
    is hard for me to see that as anything but an improvement.

A literal billionaire with a cabinet of millionaires and billionaires is now an "outsider." What is wrong with you?

I understand that they are "outsiders" in the sense that they have no experience running any form of government whatsoever.

But these people are not outsiders to the system. They have profited from the system to a degree the average American cannot fathom. They literally are the system.

[eli_gottlieb]

>The political system has been deeply broken for decades, with the same unjust policies being pursued regardless of which public face was on it - imperialist militaristic foreign policies abroad, economic inequality at home.

Trump ran on making all of these things worse.

[rimantas]

One of the sad and amusing at the same time things is watching people not satisfied how things are bravely go and make them worse.