[me2too]

This man's absurdity never ceases to amaze me. How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos?

Moreover, from the outside (European here), it looks like the US president can literally do whatever he wants without being subject to regulations or facing any consequences - pretty much like a dictatorship. No discussion, no parliament, no opposition taken into account. Crazy.

[pavlov]

It now feels quaint that, not long ago, people used to speculate what Gödel's loophole was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_Loophole

We're witnessing that there doesn't need to be any single clever actively exploited loophole. A two-party presidential system can become a dictatorship if one party holds just enough power across all branches of government to not resist what their leader wants.

[marcosdumay]

Turns out you only need majority in 4 different contests that are all constantly fluctuating around 50%.

Even if they weren't strongly correlated, you would still be able to do a coup every 200 years or so.

[me2too]

Hey, thanks for the link - I added it to my reading list. From the introduction, it seems to fit the current situation (and that's not good).

[orangecat]

How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos?

"Burn it all down" is popular on both the far right and far left.

it looks like the US president can literally do whatever he wants without being subject to regulations or facing any consequences

Yes, presidents have been given far too much power to do whatever they want by declaring a fake "emergency". It's inexcusable that Congress hasn't put a stop to this.

[8note]

its reality TV. his supporters are generally insulated from the consequences, but even when affected, get the excitement of participating.

[kylehotchkiss]

> How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos

A lot of people in USA felt they were entitled to their slice of the American dream, did not achieve it because we stopped building houses therefore you can't buy one on a high school education like our parents and grandparents did. Add in what appears to be somewhat of a collapse in people starting relationships/families and you suddenly have a massive segment of the population with little to lose.

I presume many on the HN community are insulated from this reality of life in USA.

[orangecat]

There's some truth to that, but then the solution is to build more housing, not impose tariffs which only make houses and everything else less affordable.

[bluGill]

Nobody was offering that option though.

[kylehotchkiss]

For real, what would an election look like if one party was proposing building 5 million housing units, overriding local zoning when it's in the way, making preferential deals for bulk construction materials, training a workforce, and some mechanism to not erode existing equity ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[navane]

"some mechanism to not reode existing equity" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. 65% of the households are homeowners, who financially might easily be convinced they have nothing to gain and much to loose by building more housing.

Which also shows that lack of home ownership cannot be the driver of this situation. It might be one of the lies of the left, their "trans" story. Where I'm from the left is also pushing this housing narrative but it's not pulling in the votes, its impossible to solve, and i dont know if its the problem enough people have.

[bluGill]

In the US the problems are at a state level, and the federal government mostly doesn't have the direct constitutional power to do anything.

Though details like what color your house is arguably are first amendment protected speech and so the federal government could do something (but out likely go to the supreme court - in turn depending on the justices not the election results.)

[Vegenoid]

Why the poor look at the people sitting on giant piles of money, and believe them when they say that China took the money, is another story.

[moogly]

That explains one part of his base, but not the part that lives in McMansion suburbs.

[amanaplanacanal]

Evidently Congress gave the presidency emergency powers to do what he wants with tariffs, all he has to do is declare an emergency. Just one more example of how Congress is completely broken.

[me2too]

He literally created the emergency himself. What the hell. I can't understand how one of the most powerful countries in the world doesn't have a system in place to prevent the president to act like a dictator

[consp]

> He literally created the emergency himself.

Classic right wing playbook. Here they defunded immigration services and then called for a crisis because there was not enough space to put all asylum seekers and there was too great a backlog to get it all processed in time.

[vel0city]

That power is only supposed to last for some number of days before review by Congress. But Congress decided a day isn't a day anymore, at least for the rest of the year.

[moogly]

Did he even declare an emergency for the latest near world-wide tariffs? Are they even pretending anymore? If so I missed it.

[ativzzz]

The US currently has 49 ongoing national emergencies, that are renewed every year by the president

The last 8 or so were created by Trump. Like you said, he's just doing what is already allowed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...

[DFHippie]

This is also how it looks from the inside. It's baffling. Apparently all our vaunted checks and balances are useless if one vindictive and incompetent political party controls all three branches of the government.

[arandomusername]

> No discussion, no parliament, no opposition taken into account. Crazy.

Is it that much different from EU? Where was the discussion before mass immigration? Where was the opposition taken into account there?

[mixologist]

Mass immigration in EU is a result of US wars in middle east. It was not some kind of a plan by EU. It was just a reaction to shit that is happening. They were put in this position because they had too much faith in US.

[arandomusername]

Didn't know that Indians, Algerians and Nigerians are at war in the middle east.

It's interesting how it's mostly men that flee as well.

[mixologist]

I can see that you are just focused on racist talking points about immigration and any discussion here will be very unproductive and just a wast of our bandwidth.

[arandomusername]

It's racist now to not wanting the indigenous people be replaced by foreigners? Racist for wanting to preserve my culture?

[const_cast]

> Racist for wanting to preserve my culture?

I mean, I'm not saying that mentality is racist. But I am saying that every racist who has ever existed has had that exact mentality.

[krapp]

Only Republican Presidents get that kind of carte blanche.

They would already be impeaching if it was a Democrat.

[myko]

True, because if Democrats had an anti-American POTUS hell-bent on destroying the country they would be helping the impeachment process, not defending them

[blasphemers]

The democrats just allowed a dementia patient to run the country for four years

[seanmcdirmid]

I have no idea how Republicans still make that claim with a straight face. We literally have someone who doesn't know what groceries are running the country right now.

[peterfirefly]

Cuz it's true? Mind you, the dementia patient did a better job.

[seanmcdirmid]

If you put Joe Biden and Trump side by side, and asked a random person who didn't know either who was the most likely to have dementia, they would pick Trump. I'm not sure I've ever heard him say something that didn't sound like word salad.

[userbinator]

Did you watch the debate between them last year?