[coffeemug]

What is the evidence that America is falling apart? From all my reading of American history, America has _always_ been this way. With a wide lens it appears as healthy as it's ever been. This is a genuine question-- I've read a lot of American history, but I'm still a dilettante. It's extremely difficult to tell if there are genuinely new conditions, or if we're engaging in a vigorous political process as we always did.

[pdpi]

We live in a world where the sitting president calls January 6 a day of love, and has pardoned the rioters, and then says that people protesting ICE are "domestic terrorists". We live in a world where federal prosecutors are choosing to quit rather than following his orders.

Remember John McCain defending Obama[0]? Do you genuinely believe that the people heading the Republican Party today would ever do that? Contrast McCain's humility and grace in his concession speech[1] with Trump's constant refusal to accept that he lost 2020, and his insistence on exacting revenge on the people who "wronged" him.

No, this is not a "vigorous political process" in action. It's something else entirely.

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Mba8ncBso

[coffeemug]

In the 1800 election republicans thought the federalists will turn America into a tyrannical monarchy, and the federalists thought the republicans will plunge America into mob rule like the French Revolution. They would have never defended each other.

Things look bad if you have a twenty year time horizon, but they look pretty normal if you zoom out to encompass all of American history.

Re Trump exacting revenge on political opponents, that conduct has endless precedent in American history. (Refusing to concede the election does not; but he was forced out of office nonetheless, which I read as a sign the republic is healthy.)

EDIT: I just remembered about the Aaron Burr conspiracy. Aaron Burr lost the 1800 election to Jefferson by one elector (after over a month of gridlock). He then tried to raise a private army to either march on Washington, or to form his own country and secede from the union. In 1805 Jefferson ordered his arrest and Burr was tried for treason (and acquitted!)

[johnnyanmac]

>Things look bad if you have a twenty year time horizon

50 year horizon, US erupted into a Civil War. Gotta expand out a bit, but maybe the republicans of 1800 had a point (who we'd call liberal today, but history has a strange way with language).

And yes, Trump has already done decades of damage to the US's soft power. countries are now trying to slowly cut out the middleman of the US and even pulling out of the dollar. the 20 year horizon here is awful.