this may well be like the downfall of rome. slowly but surely, the country will sink into irrelevance (ok, maybe not completely irrelevant, but certainly less than now).
i think the reason there is no pushback is that things are happening too fast at an unprecedented scale that we can't even envision the consequences, let alone predict them. we are completely unprepared for this and by the time we can figure out how to deal with it, or even stop it, it will be to late.
it is also possible that many believe that this will stop by itself with the next president, and so there is no point in trying to stop things now. in a way i actually agree with that. walking in unity but realizing your error and changing course is a better choice than risking a civil war.
civil war sounds alarmist, and maybe it is, but i fear that without consensus on what is the right course of action, worse without consensus that the current trajectory is bad, i don't see any other outcome. before anything can be done, a consensus on what that should be is simply necessary. and unfortunately, it should be obvious that there is no such consensus now. if there were, we wouldn't even have this controversy.
It took the Roman Republic less than 30 years to go from the Gracchi brothers incident (133BC) to the first consulship of Gaius Marius in 107BC, a divisive populist who was elected consul an unprecedented 7 times. From then on, we have the Social war in 91BC (effectively a civil war in Italy), Sulla's civil wars (against Marius) culminating in his dictatorship in 82BC, and ultimately Julius Caesar's civil wars culminating in his dictatorship in 49BC, which marks the end of the Republic.
An incident like the Gracchi brothers' populist power grab, which led to the first significant outbreak of political violence in Rome in centuries, was not immediately transformative but it did sow the seeds of conflict.
I personally think Trump, and especially Jan 6th, is the Gracchi brothers moment of the USA.
I think this tracks pretty well. Even if our Democracy survives this regime the future looks so much more bleak than it did a year ago. Much of the current damage will last for many years and too many norms have been broken.
All of the powerful psycopaths have seen what one aspiring dictator can get away with. Trump will keep pushing over norms and other pillars of society and the next one will be starting much further along.
My optimistic interpretation is slightly different. So far the US is still a democracy with a President wo doesn’t take the law too seriously.
On the other side every democracy looses a bit focus over time and laws to keep government clean get softened, IMHO.
But let’s say the next election happens and the opposition will be voted in (if not, god knows where this ends) , then there will be a government with a state apparatus in tatas. They have the burden but also the opportunity to rethink how things are supposed to work and can make changes that most previous governments did not even thought possible.
Maybe, I don’t know. But maybe this slightly painful time is part of a renewal process that in the end will be helpful.
And Trump of all people makes it involuntary possible.
Well my less optimistic observation is that Trump 1.0 broke a whole bunch of norms and was flagrantly incompetent, and the response was almost nothing. The opposition won a middling victory and made almost no structural changes to prevent what's currently happening.
The main response was a series of milquetoast foot-dragging prosecutions that accomplished little more than ralling the Republicans around him and giving him even more media attention.
i can pretty much agree with that. while my comment focuses on the negative "the US will be less relevant", yours focuses on the positive. but they are both possible at the same time. heck, being less relevant may even be a positive in itself.
the current events provide a wakeup call that has the potential to galvanize change. as i said, what we need is a consensus. hopefully the next government will realize that too, and work towards that. otherwise it is up to us individuals to work on that too.
i think the reason there is no pushback is that things are happening too fast at an unprecedented scale that we can't even envision the consequences, let alone predict them. we are completely unprepared for this and by the time we can figure out how to deal with it, or even stop it, it will be to late.
it is also possible that many believe that this will stop by itself with the next president, and so there is no point in trying to stop things now. in a way i actually agree with that. walking in unity but realizing your error and changing course is a better choice than risking a civil war.
civil war sounds alarmist, and maybe it is, but i fear that without consensus on what is the right course of action, worse without consensus that the current trajectory is bad, i don't see any other outcome. before anything can be done, a consensus on what that should be is simply necessary. and unfortunately, it should be obvious that there is no such consensus now. if there were, we wouldn't even have this controversy.