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Donald Trump and the aftermath of his presidency

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TwoYellas

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That was good wasn't it? As prescient documentaries go, anyway.
Yes - it was a classic in that sense.

If you've not already listened to The Coming Storm on BBC Sounds then I suggest doing so. Good approximation of how US politics reached its current state of extreme polarisation. You may finish the series feeling slightly unsettled.. that's a good thing imo, the entire planet should be concerned.

The Coming Storm - BBC Sounds

Cheers - heard this advertised on radio as
well and look forward to listening to it.
 

RailWonderer

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Climate change denial is rife in the Republican Party. This lot will step up the race to the precipice - no matter which of them is leader.
The USA was born on excessive consumption and prosperity, it overproduces food and Petrol and keeps both very cheap. No one wants to believe climate change because many Americans don’t want to give up everything their country stands for. Consciously using less of anything is un American. That’s why I think climate denial is bigger than Trump, Biden won’t be able to do anything drastic because Obama wasn’t allowed to.

In Feb 2016 his climate change policy was blocked. Big oil and gas lobbies are too large in the USA and Republicans preach the need for affordable energy and prosperity.
 

TwoYellas

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T

The USA was born on excessive consumption and prosperity, it overproduces food and Petrol and keeps both very cheap. No one wants to believe climate change because many Americans don’t want to give up everything their country stands for. Consciously using less of anything is un American. That’s why I think climate denial is bigger than Trump, Biden won’t be able to do anything drastic because Obama wasn’t allowed to.

In Feb 2016 his climate change policy was blocked. Big oil and gas lobbies are too large in the USA and Republicans preach the need for affordable energy and prosperity.
Agreed - human beans are messing it all up. I suppose the natural world will carry on once we've passed the point of when we can do anything about it for our species.
 

najaB

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States run elections. The states certified their results. End of story.
and Trump challenged them about 5000 times and lost every time.
Specifically, to quote the Constitution:

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1: (Role of the State in Federal Elections)

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
Article II, Clause 2: (The choosing of electors)
  • Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
It is clearly up to each State to conduct their election in whatever manner they choose, and any challenge to either the election of senators/representatives or choosing of electors must be done at the State level. Once the State certifies their result the Federal government is bound to accept that result.

As an aside, it's interesting that the party which is so heavily invested in the revisionist history project to make "States' rights" the cause of the Civil War is also trying to use the machinery of the Federal Government to override the election results in states where they lost.
 

brad465

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Trump won't stand in 2024. He'll be purposely vague to his base to make them think he will, and continue to fund raise keeping the grift alive for as long as he can. I am sure he'll seek to support someone else in his family, but depending on possible legal cases, he may well just back someone else as long as he can get in on a grift there too.

All signs are that Trump is gradually losing his grip, not helped by defending the vaccine, and the cultists will latch on to someone else between the mid terms and 2024. The question is who is crazy enough; but there seem to be a fair few candidates.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is someone I'm keeping an eye on; whether he stands or not I don't know, but I expect him at a minimum to challenge the primaries and/or be selected as the Republican candidate's running mate.
 

DelW

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I'm still unsure - whether Trump is so deluded that he actually believes his line about the election being stolen, despite his inability to find any evidence anywhere to back that up - or whether he knows full well that he lost, but just wants to keep the money-making machine that MAGA became running for as long as possible, for his personal enrichment. Neither option is any credit to him, of course, nor bodes well for the future.
 

najaB

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I'm still unsure - whether Trump is so deluded that he actually believes his line about the election being stolen, despite his inability to find any evidence anywhere to back that up - or whether he knows full well that he lost, but just wants to keep the money-making machine that MAGA became running for as long as possible, for his personal enrichment. Neither option is any credit to him, of course, nor bodes well for the future.
Definitely option B. He has been, is, and always will be a grifter. Nothing about him is genuine and he cares about nobody except himself - with the possible exclusion of Ivanka.
 

nlogax

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I'm still unsure - whether Trump is so deluded that he actually believes his line about the election being stolen, despite his inability to find any evidence anywhere to back that up - or whether he knows full well that he lost, but just wants to keep the money-making machine that MAGA became running for as long as possible, for his personal enrichment. Neither option is any credit to him, of course, nor bodes well for the future.

He's desperate to stay in the limelight in spite of him knowing full well he lost. It still astonishes me how thin his orange skin is, how his ego is unable to fathom that people may vote against him in massive numbers, how needy he's become over the last few years.
 

SteveM70

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Definitely option B. He has been, is, and always will be a grifter. Nothing about him is genuine and he cares about nobody except himself - with the possible exclusion of Ivanka.

Well yes. And his care for Ivanka sometimes seems a little unhealthy
 

Busaholic

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Could it happen? Yes. Is it likely to happen? I'm less sure about it now than I was a month or two ago. The fact that Trump has been booed several times by his "faithful" and the infighting that's starting to happen in the MAGA crowd gives me a little bit of confidence.
We can hope that Trump meets his maker (if anyone will own up to it :D) before then. Every morning I turn my radio on for the 6 o'clock news hoping that will be the lead item.
 

southern442

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Could it happen? Yes. Is it likely to happen? I'm less sure about it now than I was a month or two ago. The fact that Trump has been booed several times by his "faithful" and the infighting that's starting to happen in the MAGA crowd gives me a little bit of confidence.
There are other rising stars like Governor DeSantis who generally have what are in my opinion equally repugnant politics, but are less ego-maniacal demagogues and have less of a cult of personality around them. And honestly at this stage I'd happily take 4 more years of awful politics if they didn't then try and instill martial law at the end of their term!
 

Peter Sarf

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We can hope that Trump meets his maker (if anyone will own up to it :D) before then. Every morning I turn my radio on for the 6 o'clock news hoping that will be the lead item.
I fear it is not as simple as that. Trump has awakened a section of society that do not see democracy as relevant. That is even if they do not know it themselves. The lid is off Pandora's box and someone else will fill the space he leaves. It really takes the republican party to wise up to the path they are sleep walking down in an attempt to gain more popularity.
 

DerekC

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I fear it is not as simple as that. Trump has awakened a section of society that do not see democracy as relevant. That is even if they do not know it themselves. The lid is off Pandora's box and someone else will fill the space he leaves. It really takes the republican party to wise up to the path they are sleep walking down in an attempt to gain more popularity.
I think that's right. A considerable slice of people want somebody at the head of their country that (they think) shares their values and who promises them easy, comfortable answers to problems (like "Climate Change isn't real"). That's how populism works - and by the time the truth is inescapable it's too late, the rules have been changed to keep the autocrat in place permanently.
 

D6130

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I think that's right. A considerable slice of people want somebody at the head of their country that (they think) shares their values and who promises them easy, comfortable answers to problems (like "Climate Change isn't real"). That's how populism works - and by the time the truth is inescapable it's too late, the rules have been changed to keep the autocrat in place permanently.
This also sounds horribly familiar here in the UK as well!
 

Peter Sarf

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I think that's right. A considerable slice of people want somebody at the head of their country that (they think) shares their values and who promises them easy, comfortable answers to problems (like "Climate Change isn't real"). That's how populism works - and by the time the truth is inescapable it's too late, the rules have been changed to keep the autocrat in place permanently.
The nasty fact is you are describing the early stages of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

As soon as heard that Donald Trump believed he could pardon himself I knew any mechanism for accountability would be dismantled. Thus paving the way for a dictatorship.
 

Busaholic

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I fear it is not as simple as that. Trump has awakened a section of society that do not see democracy as relevant. That is even if they do not know it themselves. The lid is off Pandora's box and someone else will fill the space he leaves. It really takes the republican party to wise up to the path they are sleep walking down in an attempt to gain more popularity.
I fear that too, very much in fact, but I also feared when Osama Bin Laden was assassinated that the jihadists would seek vengeance in rage, but it never happened. Now, if he'd been taken captive I think all hell would have broken loose. Certainly if Trump were assassinated bloodbaths would follow in many locations, but to die in his sleep might see significant number of Republican politicians beginning to turn their backs on his tyranny. Of course, his death might well produce outrageous lies about the nature of it, some of them emanating from Moscow. Anyway, regardless, I would be so delighted, however momentarily, if and when it happens.
 

jon0844

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I saw a programme that showed a Republican saying she didn't believe in democracy but did believe in a republic. I am not sure I fully understand the difference, but I have noticed others seemingly trying to associate democracy as being a 'Democrat' thing and presumably that means a socialist, communist thing in their eyes.

So that's a good first step towards convincing the public the democracy is bad, and that the only solution is the republican party that can deliver a different type of governance.

When you see how divisive Brexit was here, I am sure there are many people who would give up our form of Government in favour of someone like Nigel Farage taking over and imposing strict rules on immigration etc - without realising that once he's finished with them, he'll come after you.
 

JamesT

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I saw a programme that showed a Republican saying she didn't believe in democracy but did believe in a republic. I am not sure I fully understand the difference, but I have noticed others seemingly trying to associate democracy as being a 'Democrat' thing and presumably that means a socialist, communist thing in their eyes.

So that's a good first step towards convincing the public the democracy is bad, and that the only solution is the republican party that can deliver a different type of governance.

When you see how divisive Brexit was here, I am sure there are many people who would give up our form of Government in favour of someone like Nigel Farage taking over and imposing strict rules on immigration etc - without realising that once he's finished with them, he'll come after you.

My understanding of the difference is that democracy at its heart is rule by the majority. Whereas a republic is a more constrained type of government where there are checks and balances to prevent minority groups being oppressed.

You could take as an example of this the Electoral College used to elect the President. Many argue this should be a simple matter of the popular vote, get the most votes and you win. That skews electoral strategy towards wooing the highly populated cities on the coasts and ignoring the rest. The College system requires winning states, which in theory needs a broader spectrum of support.

The UK is closer to a democracy, Parliament is relatively unconstrained in its powers. But in the US their setup actually makes it very hard for someone like Trump to do any lasting damage.
 

najaB

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But in the US their setup actually makes it very hard for someone like Trump to do any lasting damage.
Should. Because their system is supposed to work on the principle of checks and balances between the three branches of government. However, if the GOP win control of the House and/or Senate then two of the three will be pretty Trumpian.
 

jon0844

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And they're trying very hard to make it harder for people to vote OR to actively work to put some sections of the community off voting. Look at the work done to spread false information that targeted black areas, trying to make them not vote for one party over another - but simply not vote because both sides were racist. Clearly the Republicans knew that most would vote Democrat.

I find it crazy that while Trump and others voted by post, the US is trying so hard to make out that postal voting is so dodgy. I've voted in every UK election (general and local) by post since I first got the opportunity. It's SO much more convenient.
 

WatcherZero

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The Conservatives are trying to do the same here, challenging polling lists and setting out a new legal requirement for photo ID to vote despite no evidence of it ever being an issue in the UK.
 

DerekC

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The Conservatives are trying to do the same here, challenging polling lists and setting out a new legal requirement for photo ID to vote despite no evidence of it ever being an issue in the UK.
What the Tories would really like to do is go back to the pre-1928 situation where there were property qualifications on the right to vote, and probably the likes of Rees-Mogg would go back even further to pre-1832 where many constituencies (boroughs in those days) were under the control of the local landed gentry. And no doubt the Republicans would have something similar in mind. Here's a couple of useful definitions from Britannica.com which might help the discussion:

Republic - form of government in which a state is ruled by representatives of the citizen body. ... Because citizens do not govern the state themselves but through representatives, republics may be distinguished from direct democracy, though modern representative democracies are by and large republics

In a republic, a constitution or charter of rights protects certain inalienable rights that cannot be taken away by the government, even if it has been elected by a majority of voters. ... In a "pure democracy," the majority is not restrained in this way and can impose its will on the minority.
 

DynamicSpirit

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The Conservatives are trying to do the same here, challenging polling lists and setting out a new legal requirement for photo ID to vote despite no evidence of it ever being an issue in the UK.

To be fair, what the Conservatives are doing here - although erring in slightly the same direction, is on a massively smaller scale. I don't really agree with the photo-ID requirement because, as you say, it seems a massive piece of bureaucracy in response to what's largely a non-problem. But that's not really comparable with the stuff the Republicans are doing, where they are obviously telling lies about and trying to damage confidence in US democracy, as well as trying to bring in overt political interference in counting votes. As far as I'm aware no-one in the UK, for example, is questioning the impartiality of returning officers or trying to interfere with mechanics of how votes are counted and scrutinized for party political gain.

What the Tories would really like to do is go back to the pre-1928 situation where there were property qualifications on the right to vote,

Whaaaat? Can you please provide some evidence for that assertion. A mainstream Conservative blog that argues for going back to the pre-1928 situation would do nicely as evidence for example.

But I'm betting you can't provide any evidence because you've just completely made that up. I urge you to consider that, just because the Republicans in the US routinely make up complete falsehoods does not provide justification for you or anyone else to do likewise.
 

brad465

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George Monbiot made a Twitter thread yesterday talking about the Cold War legacy, in which two blocs existed with very extreme ideologies that were both doomed to fail: extreme collectivism (USSR) vs extreme individualism (US and allies). The fall of the Soviet Union gave the false impression that the US' ideology was vindicated, but what actually happened was the other ideology fell first. He believes we are now starting to see the fall of the US' ideology, and given it's true supporters are almost impossible to negotiate with, chaos, conflict and collapse are now possible.
 

DynamicSpirit

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Meet my friend the wedge. Nice and thin, isn't it?

It is, but on the other hand, pretty much everything any Government ever does could be seen as a slippery slope to something horrible, if you mentally extrapolate it in ways that the Government actually are not suggesting.

George Monbiot made a Twitter thread yesterday talking about the Cold War legacy, in which two blocs existed with very extreme ideologies that were both doomed to fail: extreme collectivism (USSR) vs extreme individualism (US and allies).

Presumably by 'extreme individualism', what you mean is simply, 'support for democracy, human rights, and free speech'? Yes?
 
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brad465

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Presumably by 'extreme individualism', what you mean is simply, 'support for democracy, human rights, and free speech'? Yes?
In his words he means "everyone can have everything, regardless of the interests of anyone else" to describe extreme individualism. If infinite resources existed this wouldn't be such a bad thing, but we live in a finite world so this ideology is physically unsustainable. He also warns of the US heading towards fascism, civil war or both; warning of these things is not something you'd hear from someone opposed to "democracy, human rights and free speech".
 

najaB

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It is, but on the other hand, pretty much everything any Government ever does could be seen as a slippery slope to something horrible, if you mentally extrapolate it in ways that the Government actually are not suggesting.
Which is why we (the people) need to keep a close eye on not just what they say they're doing but more importantly on what they are actually doing.
 

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