[BrenBarn]

> The law is unfortunately very vague and thus open to interpretation (which is ultimately subject to the commander in chief, the current clown)

That is it exactly. The US legal/governmental system is a house of cards that has been running for at least 150 years on a bunch of wink-wink-nudge-nudge assumptions that both sides were too scared to test or even acknowledge. An ounce of prevention might have been worth a pound of cure, but now we'll need the cure, and it's probably going to be painful.

[tootie]

This isn't unique to modern American history. Literally all of human civilization meets this criteria. It's all based on a collective acceptance of rules, titles, borders, property. All of which are completely imaginary.

[MPSFounder]

The truth is much of it could have been prevented (court packing was one idea that might have been unpopular, but there are many other ideas that could have been acted upon). We live with consequences of failures of the Democratic party for the last decade. Had Ruth Ginsberg been pressured to retire after her numerous health issues, Roe v Wade would never have been overturned (it was a 1 vote swing). Had primaries occurred, I believe the current guy (a felon) would have lost. There were many mistakes, which had they been addressed through any action (literally anything), could most certainly have been prevented. And this time around, it seems actual executive orders are shaping a very different America (that will require generations to undo). Early this week, a college program I am involved in (for STEM high school students over the summer) was cut. It was heartbreaking getting an email inquiring on why it is no longer on our website. Also it is the same song (the guy had travel bans his first admin, and is doing it again in different forms and to a wider range of individuals. We had four years to make these things difficult, but we did nothing). Holding paddles at state of unions seems to be widely believed among Democratic leadership to be effective, and there lies the issue.

[atmavatar]

> We live with consequences of failures of the Democratic party for the last decade.

While that's not completely wrong, I find it fascinating that everyone seems to treat the Republican party as having no culpability. We have a Republican party that's had a policy goal of blowing up the government for a half century with varying levels of how far they were willing to take it, but it's the Democratic party's fault for not saving us from them and the voters that support them.

[OccamsMirror]

Well if the adults don't put up a toddler gate, who's fault is it when the toddler falls down the stairs?

[watwut]

Republicans are not toddlers. If an alcoholic adult falls on stairs, itnis not fault of his wife.

[OccamsMirror]

'Twas just a tongue in cheek explanation.

[BrenBarn]

I mean, I think most people who say this do think the Republicans are more to blame. It's just that they also think the Republicans are beyond hope so there's no point attempting to make them feel guilty.

Also we as humans tend to assign a different flavor of blame to people who do bad things than to people who claim to be preventing them while not actually doing so. If a criminal is holding a victim at gunpoint and then they drop their gun and a bystander picks it up and hands it back to the thug, we tend to view that as wrong act even though it's dependent on the criminal's earlier wrong act.

Likewise when Republicans do bad things over and over and then Democrats argue that they'll do better but they just hand the same system back over to the Republicans, people are going to be dissatisfied with that. Added to this is the perception that Democratic politicians do this to protect their own political position and preserve what power they individually have, which makes Democratic inaction even more irritating.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>It's just that they also think the Republicans are beyond hope so there's no point attempting to make them feel guilty.

How could one ever hope to make them feel guilty about wanting different things than Democratic voters? They do not want to be your friends, or your neighbors, or any other relationship where they should feel guilty for their voting interests. You might as well ask yourself why you don't feel guilty for leaning Democrat.

[dboreham]

Freedom and justice should not depend on these kind of game show tactics. The system should be more resilient. Unfortunately it isn't due to the culture and social norms of the country.

[vkou]

There isn't a system in the universe that can be resilient against a compromised executive, legislature, and judiciary. Of the three, the judiciary is the least compromised, and it is currently the only one pushing back, but it can only do so much.

At the end of the day, you have to not keep voting in criminals.

[watwut]

I love how your analysis does not blame the perpetrators. And I think this is pervasive and one of root problems - Republicans and conservatives are not blamed for own lies nor plans nor decisions.

Instead, democrats are blamed for what Republicans do.

Yes, democrats should have been harder on republicans. But again, the same double standards would cause them to be blamed for "gaming the system".

[BrenBarn]

I absolutely would not blame Democrats for gaming the system (as long as they did it in the service of the right goals). At this point it's really just a choice between gaming the system or destroying it.

[foogazi]

> We live with consequences of failures of the Democratic party for the last decade.

Yeah, why would the Democrats do this ? /s

Please let’s blame the actor

This is the same as blaming the people that don’t vote or the people that vote for that matter

The buck stops at the Resolute desk

[jmye]

> both sides were too scared to test or even acknowledge

I think that’s harsh. I think the folks in government generally believed that the opposition was there in good faith and with the intent of strengthening the nation, even if they disagreed on how.

I don’t think that’s the case any longer and institutions based on good faith don’t work when the group in power is willing to light everything on fire.

[BrenBarn]

To an extent that's true, but those good-faith assumptions are sort of what I mean by wink-wink-nudge-nudge. It's like a bunch of people working in an office with a bunch of high explosives lying around. Having "good faith" that no one will set them off is another way of saying you'd rather not actually acknowledge or fix the problem.

Also, it's harder to believe it was all good faith unless you ignore some quite egregious earlier situations that pretty clearly showed that festering issues were being swept under the rug.

Most obviously, after the Civil War the South was placed under military occupation. In 1877 it was ended as part of a political bargain, whereupon the South resumed the racist policies it had previously had in place, and which had been supposedly banned by the reconstruction amendments and laws. It should have been obvious to people at the time that many people in the South had not learned their lesson, and perhaps military occupation and strict enforcement of reconstruction would have been necessary for decades more.

The willingness of both parties to condone outrageous gerrymanders over decades also indicates a shared desire to look the other way rather than face the dangerous implications head-on.

[riffraff]

I recall McCain in 2008 telling a republican supporter that Obama was a decent person and they shouldn't be afraid if he won.

Things have escalated quickly and recently.

[dragonwriter]

2008 was a long time ago, and it was notable at the time because it was already contrary to the overall trend of partisan polarization, which had been consistently escalating since the end of the long period of overlapping realignments that started in the 1930s and settled out in the 1990s. (Political polarization had been high in much of that realignment period, but because the major parties weren't coherently aligned around the high-salience issues that divided the public, that polarization was not strongly partisan.)

[em-bee]

i think this is a key point, and this is why this problem will remain until we make some drastic changes.

to look at a completely different example: the internet was designed on good faith. year after year more things have been put into place to protect against those not operating in good faith. proof of work against AI bots is just the latest example.

what is really needed is a change in education. we need to teach the next generation that operating in good faith is absolutely essential for the future of mankind. we can no longer assume that good faith is the default. it isn't any more.

[BrenBarn]

I tend to think that, unfortunately, it's the other way around. What we need to teach the next generation is that good faith, while still to be treasured, cannot be relied on, and we must be prepared to unflinchingly root out bad actors and forcibly prevent them from making things worse for people.

[em-bee]

rooting out bad actors is most effectively done by proper education to keep them from becoming bad actors in the first place. any other approach in rooting out bad actors risks judgement errors and should only be applied in the most egregious of cases. and even there the approach should be: "look, you may mean well, but your actions hurt to many people, and therefore we must reject your approach and tell you to stop"

[BrenBarn]

> rooting out bad actors is most effectively done by proper education to keep them from becoming bad actors in the first place.

But that's not rooting out bad actors, it's preventing bad actors. The problem with betting the farm on education is that bad actors who already exist will sabotage your efforts in order to lock in their gains. There has to be some plan for actually neutralizing the people who have already become bad actors and can't be "fixed" with education.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>what is really needed is a change in education. we need to teach the next generation that operating in good faith is absolutely essential for the future of mankind.

How can mankind have any future at all, when education is one of the tools used to indoctrinate children into not wanting children of their own someday? The first priority of any society/civilization must always be that of making the next generation of people... or else that society/civilization will soon cease to exist. And we no longer hold that as a priority. Whatever the solution might be, I do not think that it can use the education system, in whole or in part, without serious reform of the sort that would frighten those who most want to use it.

Furthermore, it may be the case that our particular nation is composed of two distinct groups who no longer have enough common values that we can effectively remain a singular nation. At least not without one coming to dominate the other decisively. Which is unfortunate given that there are many foreign powers that would take advantage of any possible divorce, amicable or hostile.

[piva00]

> How can mankind have any future at all, when education is one of the tools used to indoctrinate children into not wanting children of their own someday? The first priority of any society/civilization must always be that of making the next generation of people... or else that society/civilization will soon cease to exist. And we no longer hold that as a priority. Whatever the solution might be, I do not think that it can use the education system, in whole or in part, without serious reform of the sort that would frighten those who most want to use it.

Education is in no way indoctrinating children into not wanting children.

You are conflating education with the current economical system, which uses education to have a trained workforce to generate value for companies. It's this system that is pushing people to not want kids, when kids are expensive in terms of time and money, where people work under a system that attempts to extract as much time as possible for production, it's just natural people won't be feeling any higher drive to have kids of their own.

You are blaming education while the issue is much more pervasive and systemic, we live in a world of abundant goods but precarious labour, we produce a lot but don't feel safe nor relaxed enough to tackle one of the most stressful events in someone's life.

Just look at workaholic societies like South Korea and Japan, societal pressures around earning money to support a family, showing status about your job, keeping a career as a mom, etc. eventually completely remove any desire to start families.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>Just look at workaholic societies like South Korea and Japan, societal pressures around earning money to support a family,

So, if we check the unemployed in Japan, they will be baby daddies to six or seven children? It's not workaholism.

>Education is in no way indoctrinating children into not wanting children.

You understand that this sounds like a lie not because I watch Fox News, but rather because I've had the kids come home telling me about how they were taught that the most important thing that they could do to lower their carbon footprint was to not have children, but that "adoption was just as good"? Granted, I'd agree that it's almost certainly not some official written policy somewhere, but the indoctrination is real and personally witnessed. And it's not just that, there are other examples.

>You are conflating education with the current economical system, which uses education to have a trained workforce to

If that were ever true, it hasn't been so since your grandparent's time. We don't need a workforce, not enough industry left to require it. Should I just ignore the fallacy where "education system" means whatever is most convenient for your argument rather than the government bureaucracy and social institution that always tends to have "education" either in the agency's name itself or in its official purpose?

[em-bee]

I've had the kids come home telling me about how they were taught that the most important thing that they could do to lower their carbon footprint was to not have children

ugh. i understand that this sentiment is going around. but i don't think it is coming from the school or the curriculum. it is more likely a teacher sharing their personal, misguided, opinion.

We don't need a workforce, not enough industry left to require it

that doesn't change the fact that companies demand trained employees. it's not just industry. every sector demands that employees are handed to them full of experience in their trade. companies don't want to invest into training themselves.

likewise parents demand that children finish school ready to get hired into well paid jobs.

[em-bee]

absolutely. i just saw a documentary about that. south korea has a birthrate of 0.72. in a few generations the country will be full of elders in poverty because the pension funds have run out of money and there are not enough workers to replenish the funds.

https://youtu.be/Ufmu1WD2TSk

[_DeadFred_]

Dude I live in a hyper red state. The majority of people I know have basically the same common values as friends in Santa Cruz. Now switch to talk in 'propagandized' terms and it switches to extreme, but remove that and just talk and there isn't much difference.

They want immigrants gone, but every immigrant they know is hardworking good people and THEY should be allowed to stay.

They want crime tougher but their friend who fell out of the world because of fent/mexis they wish could get help not prison.

They want capitalism but love their communal national forests and depend on it's deer/elk meat as a huge (normally the majority) source of their protein.

They want smaller government/less government services. But their mom is dependant on government services, and their cousin with a disabled kid wouldn't survive without government help/the school specialized help so that is needed/valued, and when they were kids were dependant at points on government food programs so those are needed.

But one party talks down to them, says they live in flyover country, and promotes people like Jon Stewart unfairly skewering people they see as like them as it's 'entertainment', while the other party pretends it thinks they have value. So they choose the party, eat up the propaganda, that treats them like people/with at least some dignity.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>They want immigrants gone, but every immigrant they know is hardworking good people

Immigrants are, in large part, hard-working and decent people. I'd laugh my ass off at the suggestion that I could outwork any day laborer I've seen as I drive past Home Depot. Some drink and get a little rowdy, but not to a degree that would bother me if a citizen did so. That doesn't mean that I'm happy for them to be here, though. Our costs go up as they need to rent and make purchases too. Just because I don't want to pick apples for a living doesn't mean that their presence doesn't mean fewer jobs for Americans in general. Our culture changes in ways that can't be managed. None of these side effects are the sort that can be mitigated without drastically reducing immigration, both of the legal and illegal sort.

I don't really want the Chinese setting up secret police stations in my country, or blackmailing every immigrant (even those naturalized as our own citizens) to perform espionage on their behalf. Russians do this shit too. Do you?

All the rest of your concerns I suspect I'm more in agreement with you, but the immigration thing isn't good for anyone. These countries are being brain-drained by those who could fix things at home. Who could stop wars and other large-scale abuses. Who could be building the businesses that would life their people out of poverty. But they're over here trying to make a buck.

[_DeadFred_]

" Our costs go up as they need to rent and make purchases too." Would you support planned population control when it comes to births as well? 2 child policies? Are you pro-abortion because it means less competition for housing/jobs?

Are you for government controlled population resettlement of American citizens within the United States to level out where housing demand is high versus low?

My family all spoke German and lived in a german speaking town in Iowa (a state that 'their people' flooded with their immigration without asking the American's that lived there) up until WW2, they are American and American culture, but your proposal would have deported them because they didn't speak English/were changing the culture in ways that can't be managed and banned them from moving there. My mom a descendant of 'non-assimulatable Germans corrupting culture in America' was a controller at multiple software companies in the Bay Area. Sun-bleached blond blue eyed me played high school football (a sport of immigrant kids arguing over rules of the british sports it ended up springing from), surfed (why are Americans importing polynesian culture and ruining America?), restored muscle cars (America is polluting it's culture popularizing the GTO, it doesn't even have an English language name), and wrote software in Santa Cruz (Bay Area software owes hugely to immigrants).

The amount of AMAZING people, the ginormous amount of talent capital the Bay Area gained when Tiananmen happened causing a huge portion of the Chinese students in the US to want to/be allowed to stay makes me call BS on whatever fear mongering you are putting in your China argument that you think can't be addressed by standard laws. I love chinese people. Heck I love China, have you been there? Yeah there are differences that need to be addressed, but how about we address them instead of using those issues/differences to delegitimize an entire population of people?

Immigration is HUGELY beneficials to the US. Do you care about money? It costs minimum $250,000 to the parents to have a child. Another $10-20,000 per year in schooling costs to the government Added insurance cost to businesses when children are born/added to the plan. Instead of more housing like you would like, families tend to prefer larger, more suburban homes, reducing housing density and therefor reducing supply and raising costs. To get a wholy formed new worker for free is a huge boost to the country.

There is a town in Santa Cruz called Watsonville. I'm pretty sure it would meet your culture whatever BS because it is heavily latino so wrongculture. Guess what, before that when you probably would have given it a pass in your 'culture' test, it was Polish. And guess what, it didn't meet the THEN culture America First test of being American because it was filled with eastern Europeans poles.

[mlinhares]

not to be harsh but let me tell you, this is bullshit, there's only rule of law if most people accept it. its all ink in paper, the moment someone tries to subvert or pretend it doesn't exist and there are no consequences the "law" is irrelevant.

the laws only exist to the extent that the people that "control" it are willing to exert it. for instance, at any other point in time, everyone involved in the signal-gate scandal would have been fired (and i bet if you were an actual army officer you would still be fired) but the people that enforce the rules can just pretend this isn't a problem and move on.

there is no crime if no one is interested in sending you to jail.

[em-bee]

but this is the problem. we lost good faith. but we can't continue down this road. it will end in a bureaucratic nightmare.

laws can only cover the excesses. if you make laws to detailed then the enforcement of those laws will become to expensive and that will make them even less likely to be enforced. one example are social benefits. it has been argued (i don't know in which country) that being less strict in who gets benefits would save more money than the loss caused by those who should not receive them.

NIMBYism is also an outgrowth of that. another example, in germany large scale projects are taking decades and cost 10 times as much as planned because people are not acting in good faith. the US is not far behind in some areas. (the high speed rail project in california comes to mind)

yes, you can't rely on people acting in good faith. but there was a time when you could. and we need to get back to that.