The problem is they like what he’s doing—destroying most of government—but not the way he’s doing it. I am so tired of people believing the govt is filled with “waste, fraud, and inefficiency.” Where do they get this idea? Oh yes, it’s been the GOP mantra amplified by the legacy media for decades now.
The problem is they like what he’s doing—destroying most of government—but not the way he’s doing it. I am so tired of people believing the govt is filled with “waste, fraud, and inefficiency.” Where do they get this idea? Oh yes, it’s been the GOP mantra amplified by the legacy media for decades now.
Anything run by humans has some form of inefficiency. But there is plenty of waste in business too, yet Americans are so blinded by the myth of CEOs and entrepreneurs to recognize this. I’d love to hear where they think all this waste is. Oh that’s right that we give so much foreign aid, which of course is downright incorrect.
So then, really, what are they all complaining about? They are getting what they say they want. The just don’t understand how wrong they are—and that what they see as being problematic is exactly what they voted for.
I’m just so disgusted by so many of my fellow Americans. These numbers don't give me hope; they remind me that even if we survive this and vote in dems, these same nitwit voters will again be unhappy and pull the lever for the same old same old GOP.
At least the excess of Park Rangers has been addressed. As the meme says "buffalo petting season is going to be wild this year". So there's that to look forward to.
MAP, I don't disagree with your premise, but let's get it straight: There is no GOP, it is the POT and will be as long as his MAGATism continues (that's Fascism with a bleached-blond comb-over). We can all hope that his, fervently to be wished for, sooner rather than later, disappearance from the US political scene will see a rapid drop-off of the zombie lemmings who have been raised to rever him, but, if polls are correct, ONLY him. No one else has displayed anything like his Svengali-like pull with that swath of anything-but-Dem voters who keep genuflecting before him as their new Golden Calf, even as he faces the other way and shits all over them, all the while telling them it is a soothing mud bath which will make them feel better when it stops.
We need to understand that most American's cannot comprehend the vastness of federal agencies, initiatives, and programs. And that would remain true if all wasteful, fraud-impacted, and obsolete activities were eliminated, including ALL safety net programs. Faced with something beyond their comprehension, the easy response is to just wish that complexity gone, with no thought whatsoever as to how elimination or dysfunction would impact them, their relatatives, or their friends. Trump knows this, at a gut level. That's what we're up against. Pointing out incompetence, failure, corruption, and individualized unfairness are the only tools we have.
Most of the people I know who voted for trump did so because of abortion. They Hate Democrats so much they will never cross the aisle. I was wondering if we need more independents to run in red states so there is a difference option....
"Americans are so blinded by the myth of CEOs and entrepreneurs to recognize this."
Hear, hear. The amount of chaff that's just baked into large corporations' budgeting might surprise some people. Obviously companies don't publicize this stuff. And why do we know about government waste, when/if it is present? BECAUSE THE GOVERNEMENT IS WAY MORE TRANSPARENT THAN A PRIVATE COMPANY.
On our shared disgust with the landscape of American popular thought, this part stood out to me:
"Fifty percent said Trump should bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States; only 28 percent said he shouldn’t."
28 percent who say, yeah leave him in the gulag, with no due process?!? Dark stuff. 28% of Americans is enough to win GOP primaries in most districts, and many statewide races. Gotta wonder if these people are negatively polarized, and/or Team Trump all the way, and so answer accordingly. Which, of course, is the cart leading the horse, but such is our age of postmodern media.
Nobody is pretending that, and what Musk is doing isn't crazy, it's just ordinary lying. Watch what he's does, not says. While he runs his mouth about how much money he's pretending to save, he's lining his pockets, and his buddies' pockets. He's awarded contracts to his own companies, installed lackeys in departments like the FAA that have blocked him, and set it up for his buddy Peter Thiel's company, Palantir, to step in, again at your expense, to hoover up all that juicy government data about you. We're being played, and we need to tell our representatives in congress to start doing their jobs. If you're in a red district, that goes double.
If you look at our history, this is not surprising. People were fine with slavery and Jim Crow because there is no way the white population would be treated that way. This is a swing back in that direction: cruelty is fine as long as it doesn’t affect me and is good if it seems to benefit me which has always been with us. It’s just that the rule of law helped protect us from the tyranny of the majority in a significant way. And this happened because of activists like abolitionists civil rights movement etc who worked against what seemed impossible to change. Loss of hope is in service of injustice.
I wonder how many women Republicans (Trump voters) will lose their jobs as result of eliminating DEI. How will they vote next election, providing there is one and women will be allowed to vote?
The numbers give me hope that the Dems can win the House and we can avert the loss of the Constitution. That's good enough for me, for now. What happens after that with the non-MAGA Trump supporters is unknowable at this point.
Thr GOP has, as you noted, been running against the IDEA of a competent federal government for decades.
The number of federal government employees has barely budged upward and the payroll accounts for 2% of the federal budget.
I spent over 30 years as a federal employee and experienced a couple of furloughs as well as budget feeezes. The budget freezes had more last impact as the workload never decreased. It became a matter of more work being done by fewer people.
I think that most people l would like to see an efficient federal government that uses tax dollars efficiently and provides services mandated by Congress.
Trump fired Inspectors General and DOGE is doing their malevolent, inept best at gutting those offices that deal with...guess what?...waste, fraud and abuse, especially whrn those offices has oversight of contracts to private companies such as SpaceX.
Exactly. Plus rescind Citizens United to put the kill-switch on buying elections like Musk, oligarchs and corporate CEO’s. Brakes on the advance of all the corruption flowing into the WH….
Will never EVER happen until we have a filibuster proof Dem majority in the Senate and a Dem majority in the House, and a Dem in the WH who manages to pack SCOTUS with the approval of Congress—though I'm not sure it would make it past the legal challenges that will go all the way up to the Supremes.
With the current SCOTUS, reform is a pipe dream. I wish more people would acknowledge this fact instead of talking about it like it's a real possibility. It's disingenuous and only adds to the cynicism of voters when it doesn't happen.
Although your logic is probably correct, I’m not so sure voters vote on that. They are focused on the less serious cultural social fog.
I also think the chaos on all fronts agenda is not popular. And, I need the hope that all the incompetencey will slow us down from total fascist state.
bitchy - Thank you foryour dedication over 30 years! My family includes generations of us who, in various careers, worked for our neighbors & communities at whatever governmental level. I joke that we sucked at the public teat. In more serious moods I know we each in our small way built, maintained, and advanced our country. I was discouraged from using the term “pride” for anything I accomplished. But I know what I know
…and to see that spirit of service & contribution demeaned? I get a little bitchy me own self 😉
In my agency, every time there was a change in the administration, the question was how much damage would the new appointee in charge cost the agency and the people working there. Doesn't seem to matter if it's a D or R (though POS is in a category of his own). The biggest (and most expensive) mess came when Clinton's appointee had a brilliant idea to change the names of parts of it and centralize parts of it. I bet the name change alone to letterheads, forms, publications, etc. cost a lot more than leaving it as it was.
The same is true in state government. I'm in IT. Every change of administration, we switch from being embedded with agencies so we can be SMEs with their needs, to being consolidated centrally to be more efficient.
Either method has a rationale; switching them every 4 years does not.
As a taxpayer my favorite is replacing signs with the new governor’s name on all highways at state boundaries. Cuz travelers NEED to know that as they whiz on past 🙄. Petty issue, I admit, but symbolic of spending for zero public benefit
Except . . . here's the thing. How many times have Obama and Biden been pilloried for not being "smart like Trump" and putting their names all over everything? Possible that they know how much of a waste of taxpayer dollars this actually is?
This is just one of the many, many inconsistencies among voters—and many of the people who contribute here—that make me want to scream till my lungs bleed.
Excellent. I too have no faith trump voters will ever do the right thing. They are as stupid as trump and his acolytes and will find a reason to back him, just as Dem voters will find a reason (Gaza, trans-women athletes, too much catering to the working class, not enough catering to the working class,...) not to back this or that candidate.
You’ve swallowed the propaganda narrative. Which elected Democrats are pushing trans athletes? DEI? Virtually none. This is a right wing propaganda narrative. The solution? Ignore it and launch an all out all hands on deck counter propaganda narrative to negatively impact the trump/gop brand. ITS THAT SIMPLE! Politics and polemics not policies. And stop apologizing!
POT/GOP tosses it out—and they and the RW propaganda machine start churning—then the legacy media, WAPO, NYT, etc—join in and take it as fact that the far left positions are what the party and mainstream dems are spouting. Then it becomes “common wisdom” because of course everyone “knows” that’s what dems support. Unless you are actively attacking women, or trans, or gays, or immigrants you are “anti real Americans.” And when dems push back against this they are called phoney, liars, and DINOs.
There are two kinds of Trump voters, MAGA and non-MAGA. The former are baked in and will never not support him. So we ignore them.
The latter are swing voters in swing states who are Independents and educated, suburban Rs. In 2020, they swung for Biden. They are not MAGA. And the 10% of Dems who stayed home? Had they not, he wouldn't have won a trifecta. These are the Trump supporters we pay attention to.
As Will says, "To break Trump’s coalition and reclaim our government, we need to talk not just about the administration’s corruption and its abuse of power, but about its pervasive incompetence." THAT IS THE GAME, to BREAK his coalition (non-MAGA voters and the lackluster Dems) by hammering away at his incompetence which is only going to get worse as time goes on. We will know it is breaking when his approval gets below 40. Stay tuned.
This is why I think a national divorce is in the cards. We are too polarized not just politically, but with our morals and ethics. The fact that so many people can be fine with the horrific acts of this administration show me that America is a very sick nation. I refuse to visit red states if I can help it to not give their local economy a dime of my hard earned money. I am boycotting parts of my own country because I find them morally reprehensible. Unless there is a tectonic shift in their beliefs, I won't be changing my stance and I can't imagine I'm the only one. I don't see unity sprouting from these seeds.
A national divorce would prove disastrous. As Lincoln pointed out about secession, once a section claims a “right” to secede, it will establish precedent for subsections to secede. The Federalist Papers detail how easily that process can turn into a perpetual state of war due to jealousies and insecurities and ambitions among the disunited. Unity-- the Union that is the United States of America under the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, balancing autonomous state authority with Federal central authority is the only way to ensure long-term freedom and relative peace for the majority of Americans. As many have pointed out, however, democracy and unity require a commitment from each generation. Author Norman Mailer cautioned Americans that there is no free ride, no guarantee of freedom and democracy: “We, so great a democracy, have demonstrated already that we have little real comprehension of democracy itself…. If you are not willing to die for your democracy (or the unity and integrity of your country), then you are not going to have one… But democracy is not an antibiotic to be injected into a polluted foreign body. It is not a magical serum. Rather, democracy is a Grace.” [ from “A Mysterious Country: The Grace and Fragility of American Democracy”, 2023]
And may I add, that--like freedom and unity-- it is a Grace that needs to be treasured for its rarity and preciousness.
As long as RW media continues to pollute our discourse, things cannot and will not change. And the complacency and complicity of the legacy media as well.
Too many swallow the lies and embrace the conspiracy theories because they have been primed to, not only by lying politicians, pundits, and media outlets, but even by the entertainment industry: novels, movies, television series in which the government and feds are portrayed as dark threats, driven by secret cabals, conspiracies, and corruption, or as incompetent boobs. It's one of the reasons people think "politicians all the same" when they definitely are not. Many voters do not understand how the government actually works—how change happens and why it can be so slow (hint, because that's the way the founders set it up).
"things cannot and will not change"? they are already changing, as Will shows in his newsletter. He's losing approval, the market and almost all federal judges, including SCOTUS for now.
That's true, the series was entertainment. It might be an example of how popular culture might subtly influence people who are suseptible to fringe ideas. Just a thought
I am more direct . I pray to read t***p's obit . Best thing ever would be a plane crash brought on by an air traffic control mistake by an overworked white guy , preferably a MAGAt that took down t***p & Mike Johnson, but no one else , single plane crash . In my fantasy life the plane hits Stephen Miller leaving him dead or disabled and dependent on govt benefits .
Agreed. The issue is the relentless propaganda from the right. If you watch Fox, the least malevolent of the lot, you will believe that owning the libs is our only hope as a country.
I agree it is maddening. I also don't see any of that changing - what is the incentive for all of those groups to change what they are selling? The only thing that changes people, is going to be a literal loss of the America they know. States becoming sovereign countries or merging with Canada or Mexico.
Republicans are attacking the foundation of the house, I don't know why we expect the house to keep standing after that. Musk went around the basement with a sledge hammer and repeatedly attacked the infrastructure. While that is happening, 47 is using everyone's savings as his personal line of credit, to gamble with tariffs. Only now have we started to slow down new damage, but the old damage is there. At some point, we are repairing a lost cause and the only way out is to demolish and rebuild.
As a resident of Austin, Texas, I would like to inform you that every major metropolitan area in this state, except for one,is run by Democrats. It’s just a suggestion, but you might want to rethink your generalization. And yes, I have been politically active in my state. Please save any lectures you may have about voting and organizing. I’ve done all of it.
I don't disagree, but unfortunately it's not just the South. The big divide seems to be rural versus urban/suburban culture. Most large cities in the South are predominantly Democratic and progressive; rural areas of New England and the Midwest are largely Republican and MAGA (no way am I calling them "conservative"). So a divided country will split along geographic lines but it will involve a lot of migrations from one region to another.
It was Abraham Lincoln's greatest political blunder. I know hindsight is 20/20 and Lincoln thought he was doing the right thing, but we all make mistakes and he made a big one.
If he had let the southern states secede and just cut them off economically from the North (embargoes, boycotts, what we now call 'sanctions'), 750,000 civilian and military lives would have been saved. And think how much better off we would be today.
With the North and the rest of the world allied against the South in the late 19th century, slavery would have eventually died a welcome death anyway. But here we are, and the blue states need to decide: do we really want to share a country with backward, authoritarian wannabes?
Personally, instead of trying to convince tens of millions of uninformed, careless voters to stop voting for fascism, I would rather write a new constitution that fixes our current one (diminished executive powers, no gerrymandering, no 2nd amendment, no electoral college, etc.) and invite ANY state who agrees to secede to join us.
If that doesn't work, perhaps we could secede and become Canada's 11th province. Canada probably wouldn't mind adding blue state economies to their GDP.
What would the red states do? Fight to keep us in the Union? Hell, they would be happy to be rid of us ... until our tax money stops flowing their direction.
I think of this alternate history often. MAGA is the same people as the Confederacy. But the union of the people, by the people and for the people would not have been preserved. That was his overriding goal.
Yes, the Civil War was less than a hundred years after the formation of the United States, and Lincoln thought it was his duty to preserve the Union. I'm just saying -- with the benefit of more than a century of 20/20 hindsight -- that was a mistake.
It was the intention of the southern plantocracy to expand slavery into the western territories that catalyzed the eventual war. Succession alone wouldn’t have resolved that impasse, and it’s not a solution today either, as the Balkan Wars of the 1990s showed the world.
The problem is they like what he’s doing—destroying most of government—but not the way he’s doing it. I am so tired of people believing the govt is filled with “waste, fraud, and inefficiency.” Where do they get this idea? Oh yes, it’s been the GOP mantra amplified by the legacy media for decades now.
Anything run by humans has some form of inefficiency. But there is plenty of waste in business too, yet Americans are so blinded by the myth of CEOs and entrepreneurs to recognize this. I’d love to hear where they think all this waste is. Oh that’s right that we give so much foreign aid, which of course is downright incorrect.
So then, really, what are they all complaining about? They are getting what they say they want. The just don’t understand how wrong they are—and that what they see as being problematic is exactly what they voted for.
I’m just so disgusted by so many of my fellow Americans. These numbers don't give me hope; they remind me that even if we survive this and vote in dems, these same nitwit voters will again be unhappy and pull the lever for the same old same old GOP.
At least the excess of Park Rangers has been addressed. As the meme says "buffalo petting season is going to be wild this year". So there's that to look forward to.
MAP, I don't disagree with your premise, but let's get it straight: There is no GOP, it is the POT and will be as long as his MAGATism continues (that's Fascism with a bleached-blond comb-over). We can all hope that his, fervently to be wished for, sooner rather than later, disappearance from the US political scene will see a rapid drop-off of the zombie lemmings who have been raised to rever him, but, if polls are correct, ONLY him. No one else has displayed anything like his Svengali-like pull with that swath of anything-but-Dem voters who keep genuflecting before him as their new Golden Calf, even as he faces the other way and shits all over them, all the while telling them it is a soothing mud bath which will make them feel better when it stops.
We need to understand that most American's cannot comprehend the vastness of federal agencies, initiatives, and programs. And that would remain true if all wasteful, fraud-impacted, and obsolete activities were eliminated, including ALL safety net programs. Faced with something beyond their comprehension, the easy response is to just wish that complexity gone, with no thought whatsoever as to how elimination or dysfunction would impact them, their relatatives, or their friends. Trump knows this, at a gut level. That's what we're up against. Pointing out incompetence, failure, corruption, and individualized unfairness are the only tools we have.
Most of the people I know who voted for trump did so because of abortion. They Hate Democrats so much they will never cross the aisle. I was wondering if we need more independents to run in red states so there is a difference option....
"Americans are so blinded by the myth of CEOs and entrepreneurs to recognize this."
Hear, hear. The amount of chaff that's just baked into large corporations' budgeting might surprise some people. Obviously companies don't publicize this stuff. And why do we know about government waste, when/if it is present? BECAUSE THE GOVERNEMENT IS WAY MORE TRANSPARENT THAN A PRIVATE COMPANY.
On our shared disgust with the landscape of American popular thought, this part stood out to me:
"Fifty percent said Trump should bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States; only 28 percent said he shouldn’t."
28 percent who say, yeah leave him in the gulag, with no due process?!? Dark stuff. 28% of Americans is enough to win GOP primaries in most districts, and many statewide races. Gotta wonder if these people are negatively polarized, and/or Team Trump all the way, and so answer accordingly. Which, of course, is the cart leading the horse, but such is our age of postmodern media.
Just reading Tim Miller’s book- highly recommend-sure seems like the cart is now leading the horse!
Given that possibility, that we are being led by the base, we gotta communicate- and the base must get some information- we gotta try!
100% MAP! I am so sick of all the complaining about government waste and inefficiency
Like there isn't any?
Don't get me wrong, what Trump is doing is crazy, but rpetending the federal governemnt is perfect asn it is is stupid.
Nobody is pretending that, and what Musk is doing isn't crazy, it's just ordinary lying. Watch what he's does, not says. While he runs his mouth about how much money he's pretending to save, he's lining his pockets, and his buddies' pockets. He's awarded contracts to his own companies, installed lackeys in departments like the FAA that have blocked him, and set it up for his buddy Peter Thiel's company, Palantir, to step in, again at your expense, to hoover up all that juicy government data about you. We're being played, and we need to tell our representatives in congress to start doing their jobs. If you're in a red district, that goes double.
If you look at our history, this is not surprising. People were fine with slavery and Jim Crow because there is no way the white population would be treated that way. This is a swing back in that direction: cruelty is fine as long as it doesn’t affect me and is good if it seems to benefit me which has always been with us. It’s just that the rule of law helped protect us from the tyranny of the majority in a significant way. And this happened because of activists like abolitionists civil rights movement etc who worked against what seemed impossible to change. Loss of hope is in service of injustice.
I wonder how many women Republicans (Trump voters) will lose their jobs as result of eliminating DEI. How will they vote next election, providing there is one and women will be allowed to vote?
The numbers give me hope that the Dems can win the House and we can avert the loss of the Constitution. That's good enough for me, for now. What happens after that with the non-MAGA Trump supporters is unknowable at this point.
Thr GOP has, as you noted, been running against the IDEA of a competent federal government for decades.
The number of federal government employees has barely budged upward and the payroll accounts for 2% of the federal budget.
I spent over 30 years as a federal employee and experienced a couple of furloughs as well as budget feeezes. The budget freezes had more last impact as the workload never decreased. It became a matter of more work being done by fewer people.
I think that most people l would like to see an efficient federal government that uses tax dollars efficiently and provides services mandated by Congress.
Trump fired Inspectors General and DOGE is doing their malevolent, inept best at gutting those offices that deal with...guess what?...waste, fraud and abuse, especially whrn those offices has oversight of contracts to private companies such as SpaceX.
Exactly. Plus rescind Citizens United to put the kill-switch on buying elections like Musk, oligarchs and corporate CEO’s. Brakes on the advance of all the corruption flowing into the WH….
Will never EVER happen until we have a filibuster proof Dem majority in the Senate and a Dem majority in the House, and a Dem in the WH who manages to pack SCOTUS with the approval of Congress—though I'm not sure it would make it past the legal challenges that will go all the way up to the Supremes.
With the current SCOTUS, reform is a pipe dream. I wish more people would acknowledge this fact instead of talking about it like it's a real possibility. It's disingenuous and only adds to the cynicism of voters when it doesn't happen.
Although your logic is probably correct, I’m not so sure voters vote on that. They are focused on the less serious cultural social fog.
I also think the chaos on all fronts agenda is not popular. And, I need the hope that all the incompetencey will slow us down from total fascist state.
All well said, Bitchy.
bitchy - Thank you foryour dedication over 30 years! My family includes generations of us who, in various careers, worked for our neighbors & communities at whatever governmental level. I joke that we sucked at the public teat. In more serious moods I know we each in our small way built, maintained, and advanced our country. I was discouraged from using the term “pride” for anything I accomplished. But I know what I know
…and to see that spirit of service & contribution demeaned? I get a little bitchy me own self 😉
In my agency, every time there was a change in the administration, the question was how much damage would the new appointee in charge cost the agency and the people working there. Doesn't seem to matter if it's a D or R (though POS is in a category of his own). The biggest (and most expensive) mess came when Clinton's appointee had a brilliant idea to change the names of parts of it and centralize parts of it. I bet the name change alone to letterheads, forms, publications, etc. cost a lot more than leaving it as it was.
The same is true in state government. I'm in IT. Every change of administration, we switch from being embedded with agencies so we can be SMEs with their needs, to being consolidated centrally to be more efficient.
Either method has a rationale; switching them every 4 years does not.
As a taxpayer my favorite is replacing signs with the new governor’s name on all highways at state boundaries. Cuz travelers NEED to know that as they whiz on past 🙄. Petty issue, I admit, but symbolic of spending for zero public benefit
Except . . . here's the thing. How many times have Obama and Biden been pilloried for not being "smart like Trump" and putting their names all over everything? Possible that they know how much of a waste of taxpayer dollars this actually is?
This is just one of the many, many inconsistencies among voters—and many of the people who contribute here—that make me want to scream till my lungs bleed.
Excellent. I too have no faith trump voters will ever do the right thing. They are as stupid as trump and his acolytes and will find a reason to back him, just as Dem voters will find a reason (Gaza, trans-women athletes, too much catering to the working class, not enough catering to the working class,...) not to back this or that candidate.
Please see my comments about Trump voters: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/its-the-stupid-stupid-team-trump-mistakes-errors-bumbling-stumbling-colossal-screwups-galore/comment/111508723
You’ve swallowed the propaganda narrative. Which elected Democrats are pushing trans athletes? DEI? Virtually none. This is a right wing propaganda narrative. The solution? Ignore it and launch an all out all hands on deck counter propaganda narrative to negatively impact the trump/gop brand. ITS THAT SIMPLE! Politics and polemics not policies. And stop apologizing!
POT/GOP tosses it out—and they and the RW propaganda machine start churning—then the legacy media, WAPO, NYT, etc—join in and take it as fact that the far left positions are what the party and mainstream dems are spouting. Then it becomes “common wisdom” because of course everyone “knows” that’s what dems support. Unless you are actively attacking women, or trans, or gays, or immigrants you are “anti real Americans.” And when dems push back against this they are called phoney, liars, and DINOs.
I disagree, Christopher. Here is my reasoning:
There are two kinds of Trump voters, MAGA and non-MAGA. The former are baked in and will never not support him. So we ignore them.
The latter are swing voters in swing states who are Independents and educated, suburban Rs. In 2020, they swung for Biden. They are not MAGA. And the 10% of Dems who stayed home? Had they not, he wouldn't have won a trifecta. These are the Trump supporters we pay attention to.
As Will says, "To break Trump’s coalition and reclaim our government, we need to talk not just about the administration’s corruption and its abuse of power, but about its pervasive incompetence." THAT IS THE GAME, to BREAK his coalition (non-MAGA voters and the lackluster Dems) by hammering away at his incompetence which is only going to get worse as time goes on. We will know it is breaking when his approval gets below 40. Stay tuned.
This is why I think a national divorce is in the cards. We are too polarized not just politically, but with our morals and ethics. The fact that so many people can be fine with the horrific acts of this administration show me that America is a very sick nation. I refuse to visit red states if I can help it to not give their local economy a dime of my hard earned money. I am boycotting parts of my own country because I find them morally reprehensible. Unless there is a tectonic shift in their beliefs, I won't be changing my stance and I can't imagine I'm the only one. I don't see unity sprouting from these seeds.
A national divorce would prove disastrous. As Lincoln pointed out about secession, once a section claims a “right” to secede, it will establish precedent for subsections to secede. The Federalist Papers detail how easily that process can turn into a perpetual state of war due to jealousies and insecurities and ambitions among the disunited. Unity-- the Union that is the United States of America under the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, balancing autonomous state authority with Federal central authority is the only way to ensure long-term freedom and relative peace for the majority of Americans. As many have pointed out, however, democracy and unity require a commitment from each generation. Author Norman Mailer cautioned Americans that there is no free ride, no guarantee of freedom and democracy: “We, so great a democracy, have demonstrated already that we have little real comprehension of democracy itself…. If you are not willing to die for your democracy (or the unity and integrity of your country), then you are not going to have one… But democracy is not an antibiotic to be injected into a polluted foreign body. It is not a magical serum. Rather, democracy is a Grace.” [ from “A Mysterious Country: The Grace and Fragility of American Democracy”, 2023]
And may I add, that--like freedom and unity-- it is a Grace that needs to be treasured for its rarity and preciousness.
As long as RW media continues to pollute our discourse, things cannot and will not change. And the complacency and complicity of the legacy media as well.
Too many swallow the lies and embrace the conspiracy theories because they have been primed to, not only by lying politicians, pundits, and media outlets, but even by the entertainment industry: novels, movies, television series in which the government and feds are portrayed as dark threats, driven by secret cabals, conspiracies, and corruption, or as incompetent boobs. It's one of the reasons people think "politicians all the same" when they definitely are not. Many voters do not understand how the government actually works—how change happens and why it can be so slow (hint, because that's the way the founders set it up).
It's maddening.
I tend to agree. I just can't envision how this would happen, as it's mostly an urban / rural split.
Yeah, the divide is not geogrpahically simple like it was in the 1860's. I can't see the US breaking up like it did in 1860.
You’re 100% right. Somehow this is a fringe view. “It’s the propaganda, stupid!”
"things cannot and will not change"? they are already changing, as Will shows in his newsletter. He's losing approval, the market and almost all federal judges, including SCOTUS for now.
The whole thing cannot and will not change bit plays right into the hands of Trump and Maga.
What it amounts to is people who are upse that not neverybody is as far ot the left as they are. Sort of a BIzarro version of MAGA.
How do you know this?
You say it will not change, and I say it's already changing, and I cited my reasons. I have no idea what you're saying in your second sentence.
We can leave it there.
"X Files". A prime example of conspiracy theories.
Except the makers of X FIles di dnot mean for them to be taken seriously.
That's true, the series was entertainment. It might be an example of how popular culture might subtly influence people who are suseptible to fringe ideas. Just a thought
I scan the news for Rupert's obit every morning. Only then will things start to change. If it's before 2030.
I am more direct . I pray to read t***p's obit . Best thing ever would be a plane crash brought on by an air traffic control mistake by an overworked white guy , preferably a MAGAt that took down t***p & Mike Johnson, but no one else , single plane crash . In my fantasy life the plane hits Stephen Miller leaving him dead or disabled and dependent on govt benefits .
Agreed. The issue is the relentless propaganda from the right. If you watch Fox, the least malevolent of the lot, you will believe that owning the libs is our only hope as a country.
I agree it is maddening. I also don't see any of that changing - what is the incentive for all of those groups to change what they are selling? The only thing that changes people, is going to be a literal loss of the America they know. States becoming sovereign countries or merging with Canada or Mexico.
Republicans are attacking the foundation of the house, I don't know why we expect the house to keep standing after that. Musk went around the basement with a sledge hammer and repeatedly attacked the infrastructure. While that is happening, 47 is using everyone's savings as his personal line of credit, to gamble with tariffs. Only now have we started to slow down new damage, but the old damage is there. At some point, we are repairing a lost cause and the only way out is to demolish and rebuild.
Well said. We should have cut the South loose in 1860.
As a resident of Austin, Texas, I would like to inform you that every major metropolitan area in this state, except for one,is run by Democrats. It’s just a suggestion, but you might want to rethink your generalization. And yes, I have been politically active in my state. Please save any lectures you may have about voting and organizing. I’ve done all of it.
I don't disagree, but unfortunately it's not just the South. The big divide seems to be rural versus urban/suburban culture. Most large cities in the South are predominantly Democratic and progressive; rural areas of New England and the Midwest are largely Republican and MAGA (no way am I calling them "conservative"). So a divided country will split along geographic lines but it will involve a lot of migrations from one region to another.
"We should have cut the South loose in 1860"
It was Abraham Lincoln's greatest political blunder. I know hindsight is 20/20 and Lincoln thought he was doing the right thing, but we all make mistakes and he made a big one.
If he had let the southern states secede and just cut them off economically from the North (embargoes, boycotts, what we now call 'sanctions'), 750,000 civilian and military lives would have been saved. And think how much better off we would be today.
With the North and the rest of the world allied against the South in the late 19th century, slavery would have eventually died a welcome death anyway. But here we are, and the blue states need to decide: do we really want to share a country with backward, authoritarian wannabes?
Personally, instead of trying to convince tens of millions of uninformed, careless voters to stop voting for fascism, I would rather write a new constitution that fixes our current one (diminished executive powers, no gerrymandering, no 2nd amendment, no electoral college, etc.) and invite ANY state who agrees to secede to join us.
If that doesn't work, perhaps we could secede and become Canada's 11th province. Canada probably wouldn't mind adding blue state economies to their GDP.
What would the red states do? Fight to keep us in the Union? Hell, they would be happy to be rid of us ... until our tax money stops flowing their direction.
I think of this alternate history often. MAGA is the same people as the Confederacy. But the union of the people, by the people and for the people would not have been preserved. That was his overriding goal.
Yes, the Civil War was less than a hundred years after the formation of the United States, and Lincoln thought it was his duty to preserve the Union. I'm just saying -- with the benefit of more than a century of 20/20 hindsight -- that was a mistake.
Understood. But that’s the thing about alternative history. We really have no idea where we’d be today had the two sections parted ways.
It was the intention of the southern plantocracy to expand slavery into the western territories that catalyzed the eventual war. Succession alone wouldn’t have resolved that impasse, and it’s not a solution today either, as the Balkan Wars of the 1990s showed the world.
Sorry, but I cannot buy that the breaking up of the United Statesis a good idea. People are going to the other extreme now.