The Trump Presidency

Discussion in 'Politics' started by joepistole, Jan 17, 2017.

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  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Question...Why the bloody hell doesn't the US elect their President when he is elected, and not wait two bloody months when the Idiot Trump could still cause damage and/or strife for the incoming administration?
    I'm not aware of any other country that does it.
     
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  3. foghorn Valued Senior Member

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    Are you trying to take the bread out of those poor lawyers mouths? $$
    It's the American way$$
     
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  5. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    because the constitution says so
     
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    OK I accept that. But why? Why wait more then 2 months before any new administration can take power? Sounds crazy to me.
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The handover of power is complicated, and real. Two months to verify the election (of the Senators etc as well) and set up the new administration is already a fairly short time - lots of long days and chaotic adjusting.

    Having to pile in the new folks cold - how much notice would you want to quit your job and move across country to a different house? - may be necessary, if we can't get rid of the current Republican Party and its vandalism, but it would be damaging (yet more damage from that source).
     
  9. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    A smooth and timely transition from one administration to another.....when the game is played according to the rules.
     
  10. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Still sounds crazy to me, and leaves the door wide open for malpractise by the outgoing administration.
    Is the USA simply too proud to change to a system that establishes the new administration right away, after counting has been finalised of course.
    Reminds me somewhat of the world [including Australia and New Zealand], accepting the cgs system of weights and measures, many years ago, except for the US...
    And they also lost a Martian probe due to some confusion with regards to that.

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  11. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    less about pride and more about difficulty. we'd have to amend the constitution and in this day in age for something like this it be a nonstarter
     
  12. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    When the constitution was composed and instituted the internet was extremely slow

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    . 2 months or so to inform people around the nation and get ready for transition in those days would have seemed way too quick I guess...horse, walking, pigeon.... etc communications would have been the go at the time.
     
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  13. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    We've never had such a mentally unbalanced president. Shades of King George III !

    But it is part of the Constitutional "checks and balances"
    https://www.britannica.com/topic/checks-and-balances
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2020
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Nobody's proud of bureaucratic hassles.
    More likely: inertia, incompetence, ignorance, etc.
    Especially ignorance. It's almost impossible to underestimate the knowledge base of the typical American citizen in any arena involving history, economics, or politics - it may even be negative: more misinformed than informed.

    The extraordinary efforts at organized, competent, intentional corruption of history and memory that have been aimed at Americans since WWII (or since the invention of television, if you prefer) have had great effect. So has the expansion of wage-paid work and the dissipation of "leisure" time over the past fifty years or so. And barriers to fascism that appeared in the wake of the personal experiences of American citizens overseas during and immediately after WWII have eroded with the deaths of those Americans.

    That is: This system of government was set up to be run by a citizenry significantly different in several ways from the citizenry running it now. Here's a quote from the type of leader commonly chosen by the Trump demographic to represent them in government when the current American system of government was being set up, 250 years ago:

    "Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve rational argument"
    (Ethan Allen, via Carl Sagan in "The Demon Haunted World")

    Or consider: the authors of the Federalist Papers were writing for a general readership, as part of a public discussion of immediate political issues - they published on newsprint, and distributed on the street.
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2020
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    As a German, I have not learned Russian history in a Russian school, but German history (communist version) in a German school. If you want some deportation which can be classified as genocide look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide The Russian version presents a quite different picture https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Черкесское_мухаджирство (just in case somebody else, of course not you, is interested in hearing both sides).
    Fine that you have got my point about the Romanovs. I judge historical things based on the morals valid at that time.
    As you will be able to guess, I see this same problem but on your side. But it is obviously not helpful to argue in such a primitive way.
    Both guesses are wrong. As a libertarian, I prefer states which care less about what I do. This excludes states with too large incarceration rates. The rate of Russia (338/100000), even if declining and much less than that of the US Gulag (655/100000), is far too large yet. Ok, that's only a very rough criterion, a large number of imprisoned people may also be caused by a very criminal population, and if the large prison population is, say, caused by insane drug laws and you don't use drugs, you may not care that much about this. Nonetheless, as a rough estimate for your risk of ending in prison in some country it remains useful. And if the large incarceration rate is really caused by high crime, and not by government going insane, that's also not a good idea to live there. China would be fine following this criterion, but there is too much surveillance. In general, I do not expect much freedom in the poles - they have to be large and centralized. The gain in freedom of a multipolar world will be in those many different countries around them. For myself, I have found a nice Third World country where everything is cheap so that I can live for my money without having to take a job.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    As a rightwing authoritarian, however, you don't worry much about capitalist corporate entities "caring" about you or abusing your neighbors.
    Whose?
    Are you grateful for the support (and tactics) of the powers that made and kept and keep that country "nice" and "cheap" both?
    Or is this a case of importing some valid morals from a more cooperative historical and political situation?
     
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not an authoritarian. Nonetheless, I don't worry much about capitalist firms. Given that without the support of a corporatist state their power would be much less, I think it is more important to worry about the state. That your state is essentially owned by the big firms is your bad luck.
    Of the participants.
    You think I have to be grateful for such things? If I live in some country for my own money, I create income for the people there, similar to tourists. That their own cultural values fit sufficiently nicely with my personal values is what makes it attractive to live there for me. That it is cheap enough is what makes it possible. I don't care about the powers here, except if necessary because of the visa bureaucracy and so on.
    Don't understand this. My own morals I don't have to import. I follow my own ethical theory, which is based on contributions from many countries, a lot of them from German or Austrian origin, but that origin does not matter given that the base, Aufklärung, was an international movement. Local moral rules I simply accept if I want to live there. The morals of the people here are also not imported, they are of local origin with a lot of mainly Buddhist influence.
     
  18. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    Enough already! Trump will be gone in a few weeks and we can try to get back to normal.
     
  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    We hope. This farce isn't over yet. The final act may bring a surprise ending.
    Think of what's at stake (literally) for Trump without the presidential shield.
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2021
  20. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Not only Trump. Me thinks..
     
  21. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    To those representatives who claim a legal right to protest the results of the fair and verified election, let them remember that the people who did the electing have the legal right to be counted.

    Your legal rights and freedoms stop when they infringe on the legal rights and freedoms of others.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2021
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Only if you want to claim morals etc.
    Living and learning about fascism.
    - - -
    We never left normal.
    Trump is mainstream Republican, just as Reagan and Bush and W&Cheney were. Trump represents the US Republican Party's normality of more than forty years standing.
    The US. fascist movement's control of the Republican Party, and through that Party predominant influence on US governance both State and Federal, is not going anywhere without a fight - and it has a lot of power to fight with, including a dominant influence on the major corporate news media, growing power over the Federal Judiciary to go with its likely control of the Senate and "bipartisan" influence on the House, and plurality control of a majority of the State governments, judiciaries, chartered corporate interests, etc.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2021
  23. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Let's see: "Are you grateful for the support (and tactics) of the powers that made and kept and keep that country "nice" and "cheap" both?"

    The powers that made and keep that country nice are mainly the powers of Nature. Sun, winds, rain and so on. The plants living here making it green. The birds creating nice sounds. As far as being grateful to them is morally relevant I'm grateful. Add the laws of economy which regulate the market prices. Here I doubt any moral obligation for gratefulness. Then, of course, the powers of the people living here, especially those living in my street, the owner of the flat I rent, the friends I have found here. If they would, instead, hate me, that place would not be nice to live.

    But I think you have in mind the government? They allow me to live here - they could simply close the country for foreigners. They allow foreigners to visit because this helps them, by paying visa fees and generating income for the tourism industry. That's business, and business does not require much gratefulness. Moreover, I could given them hints to double the income from visa fees from me but making the country nonetheless more attractive for me because it would become effectively cheaper. Simply by simplifying bureaucracy so that I could get the visa extensions myself via web. This is something I count as stupidity, and I don't think one has to be grateful for stupidity which harms both sides. So, I have some gratefulness for them being not completely stupid to ban foreigners completely.
    Quite accurate. While Trump was less warmongering than usual, not starting a new war, the deep state was strong enough to prevent almost everything toward a more peaceful US, like stopping US participation in those wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen. So, the number of wars was left unchanged.

    There was also a number of regime change operations. That the consequences were less harmful than during Obama time is nothing which can be attributed positively to Trump, it was the result of weakening US power and the increasing ability of the attacked governments to resist. So, in Hong Kong they have shown to be ready to start civil war like violence, in Belarus they have tried almost identically the same as Obama in the Ukraine where it ended in civil war, and even with a more aggressive tactic (violent protests from the start, without a month of "peaceful" preparation, and return to peaceful protests only after the obvious failure of those violent attempts). What has been tried but failed in Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela and Iraq was simply an attempt to start civil war, same for Bolivia where the civil war was prevented by the government giving up - and then reverting the regime change by winning the elections a year later. The other successful regime change, in Armenia, will be reverted in the next elections too, given that the US guy Pashinyan has lost the Karabach war.

    On the other hand, no - you have left the normal a lot. The old normal was Dems and Reps nicely cooperating except for propaganda shows in election years which were forgotten as a "that's because of elections" after this and didn't prevent any cooperation. This normal crumbled with time. Some attribute the starting point of this to the Dems starting to support civil rights movement, some to identity politics, some to the neocons, to the tea party, or to Reagan or W. Whatever, the impeachment from the start - Russiagate confrontation was something new, and the Reps will now answer with a similar permanent propaganda war based on the stolen elections. One can expect even legal persecutions against Trump, which would be a completely new level of confrontation. But I think this will start only if the Dems will be able to secure that the Reps will never again win elections, because they would obviously retaliate and send the Dem president to prison too. (That's why Hillary has not been imprisoned - Trump did not want to risk retaliation.) So, if they imprison Trump, this will be a sure sign that the Dems think the Reps will never be able to win elections again, with sufficient certainty on the side of the president that he is even ready to risk own imprisonment.

    So, think twice about wishing to see Trump behind bars. That would be the transformation of the US into a one party "democracy".
     
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