[opinion] I find it ridiculous Trump is still in power
16 replies, posted
Like really, you would think, from the start, from the pussy grabbing tape that was leaked, he'll be disqualified from running, the multiple allegations regarding paying women for sex, his blatant disregard for human rights and obvious racism, his connections with current members of the Russian government, that he would had long been suspended, kicked out, locked up, disqualified and anything that would prevent him from being the goddamn president, and yet here we are today, almost 2 years later, with him still in power.
I find it really strange since the whole world pretty much look up to America as this shining beacon of democracy(which the world still does, to some extend, due to them being the World superpower for the longest time). Sure, there had been investigations going on for a long time, but hell, why isn't he treated like your regular investigation, where the suspect is either locked up or suspended (seems like most cases with Cops shootings) from his work and with the investigations allowed to continue until it's done. Hell, in plenty of other countries, he would had been suspended a long time ago, no doubt, but in this case he's still the president. I may not be well verse with American laws, but it really does boggles my mind.
And that aside, I have doubts that the numerous calls from people on this forum and elsewhere for 'Americans to take to the streets' to take place anytime soon, if at all. Its clear that he isn't bothered by protests, clearly from the past protests and demonstrations that a large number of Americans had put up. If people were to take to the streets, it should had happened a long time ago, and yet, all we see are posts but not really much action from people actually 'taking to the street' (depending if your definition of taking to the street meant a protest or an actual armed revolt against the current government)
The fact of the matter, or at least in my opinion, is that while many Americans may be angry enough at the administration, there isn't enough manpower or motivation to 'take to the streets'. People need money and they need to work, and I think many people are just too practical to see themselves camping outside the White House to protest, like the Yellow Umbrella protest in Hong Kong, or even the Tiananmen protest. Plus, if a government is simply not willing to bulge even with rioting, protesters will start feeling tired of sitting out and not getting any money.
America haven't had a civil war or anything on such a scale for the longest time, and peace had been around for a long time, so I feel that it may be another factor why people don't want any massive disruption, like what you see going on in Paris with the Yellow Vest Protesters. Besides, demonstrations seems largely peaceful, which aside from a few hooligans smashing cars, it always seems easy enough for the law enforcement to contain.
Plus, even in the case where the president is indeed impeached, what will be stopping the vice president or subsequent president from pardoning him if he were to be found guilty? I always thought such a concept to be ridiculous, Nixon was forced to resign, but he was later pardoned for his crimes related to the watergate scandal. Again, in many other countries like in South Korea, they have no problems with throwing their past president into jail if they are found guilty.
Perhaps with all the news ongoing and investigation which seems to be narrowing down, there is a possibility of impeachment, after all these years. But until then, it still seems absolutely ridiculous that he's in power, given all the past allegations. Really, I just think American laws and how it functions to be really strange.
Note: I do not have a complete understanding of the American system, laws, policies and politics, and its just my observation as a foreigner that had been keeping up with some of the news regarding Trump, so if I have made any mistakes about it, please correct me.
There are a few things at work here. The first is the GOP being the GOP and propping him up to fulfill their agenda.
The second is this sort of deification of the office of president. American presidents are viewed with sort of a reverence that even the lousy ones are held in high regard. When Nixon was pardoned, it robbed the American people of the opportunity to dispell thst notion.
Not really true? Besides Reagan who was shit but was deified because of Fox News the other bad ones are still remembered badly, like Hoover and Harding, and Buchanan.
Part of it has to do with how byzantine the american laws can sometimes be to begin with. For instance, Trump only won that election because of the electoral college. He's the only head of state to be elected as such, in a legitimate election process, as far as I know, with a margin of over -3 million votes. In theory the electoral college was supposed to act as a check on cities having too much say in the voting process, and to keep tyrants out of office. The bizarre thing is that it's completely failed at that now because nobody anticipated Trump was going to win in the first place, even if 538 did say that 25% chance of winning is not a 0% chance of winning. Blame Clinton and the Democrats for not running an effective campaign and turning out the more likable primary candidate into the cold because he was offensive to their corporate lords. At the same time this also caused a number, if not a significant number, of people to turn to trump out of desperation that he might "drain the swamp."
As for the other major reason, you already hit on it - people have lives and need to work for a living, more often than not very hard for a very slender living. Wages arent keeping pace with inflation at all and even worse most people in power, and several who aren't, aren't accepting that they need to because of various moronic reasons such as "small business will go broke", "communism", and "bootstraps." Big woop, a livable wage is extremely important especially when you can hardly afford healthcare or education.
If somebody like McConnell the Turtle King existed in India, for instance, he would find himself at risk of being thrashed in broad daylight by other members of parliament on the floor during a session, if he tried to push things too far, or a motion would end up being eventually overwhelmingly carried to bring him into censure for not carrying out his lawful duties. India may be a shithole but the rule of law does tend to be eventually observed, even if the wheels turn too slowly for my taste. No lawmaker who's deliberately caused trouble for the lawmaking apparatus to function as needed here has lasted as one for very long.
We have lines of presidential portraits and the Hall of Presidents. There is absolutely a deification among the general public.
What are we supposed to do strike them from the records? Letting people know they exist isn't deification.
He is in power because of the laws and political system. Many of our politicians could end this shit, they have a good amount of power. They just don't use it.
What he does doesn't affect them, it affects normal people. Our politicians have not gave a shit about the people in decades. Yeah we have a few grass root politicians, but other then that it doesn't mean shit when the gov't is paid for by lobbyist.
I agree that the majority of politicians don't care about the rest of us. Our Constitution gives Congress the capability to oust Trump if they really want to (and end the shutdown with veto override) but even ignoring political favor/games, there hasn't been a precedent for successfully impeaching and removing a President from office. Nixon resigned before everything was done, Clinton finished his terms. Trump being ousted would be the first of its kind and set the standard/metric for future cases... and also raise the question of why wasn't it done earlier in his presidency.
Beyond making the Republican party look worse than it already is by ousting their own president, it could also admit they folded their values/interest in the country for the interest of power during the 2016-2018 Republican supermajority. I'm guessing some Republicans are waiting for Trump to hit his absolute minimum in office before they turn on him so they can try to bury this fact from public view.
frankly there's not a whole lot that people can do once he's elected. Congress has unfortunately deligated a lot of its responsibilities because successive congresses haven't been able to come together and do their collective job. Look at how the republicans abdicated their oversight role when trump came to office, the minority party and any objections or concerns from them were met with cries of poppycock!, they knew that cohen was lying to them, they just didn't care until it was out in official legal documents and even then they did not get to it.
Honestly, I have come to realize that there really isnt anything that preposterous about Trump being in power. I think the sooner one realizes that, the quicker the world start to make sense and seem less weird or like a madhouse.
That doesn't mean you have to like or support Trump (I don't), but the whole narrative about him being "the breaking point of the US democracy" or anything like that is very emotional and not quite founded in reality.
Consider the following fact: aside from his very informal conduct, there is little inherently unusual about Trump as a US president. There have already been a good bunch of bad ones.
Truth is, politicians are expected to be scummy people. There have been plenty of cases where a leading politician has been accused of sexual misconduct - even a US president. And the charges against Bill Clinton were a lot more severe then a sexist remark recorded on a tape, mind you. Some US presidents were literal slave owners.
Likewise, despite there being a popular impression of him being a demented lunatic (especially in this section of this forum), you cant really build a case for him being a failed politician either. In the two years of his presidency he has:
Nominated republicans to the supreme court, which is something that his side of the fence has been trying to do for a looong time
Dismantled both Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and EPA by appointing to run it people who have vehemently opposed the existence of said agencies
Signed the big tax cut (major victory for republicans)
Dealt a huge blow to Obamacare
Made life significantly harder for illegal immigrants (a sure way to make republicans happy)
You could argue how much of that was on him and how much by his crew, but you could say that about any president ever. The truth is, republicans have little reason to see the "Trump administration" as a disaster - in fact it has been quite a victory for them on most fronts.
Finally, you can make an argument that Trump is a criminal who colluded with russians and hence is a traitor who should be locked up and removed from office for that alone. While that would probably work, keep in mind that can't be done when there is no conclusive evidence of any of that yet. There was proof of financial mismanagement in the election campaign, but that is not an impeachment-worthy offence (and quite a common one at that). Muller is working to potentially change that, but most republicans think Trump is innocent and nothing will come out of this investigation. Our legal system works on guilty until proven innocent, so you cant throw a president out on just rumors.
TL;DR: There is no good, bipartisan reason to kick Trump (yet). He is functionally not much different from what any other republican president would have been. Despite what the media are telling you (and assuming the investigation wont be fruitful), he is just another president who will serve his term, and then go away to be replaced by another one. Any "damage" he will do is just a result of normal partisan american politics (maybe except the ranting at Twitter tradition thing, I hope it wont stick tbh).
In this case, familiarity with laws isn’t too much of a factor and you’ve pretty much got it spot on. Everything is fuckshit stupid and nothing makes sense right now.
If I had to guess though, I think there’s a few large barriers holding people back from going full on lynch mob.
Many people can’t afford to protest on the same level as France. We can’t afford to miss work, we can’t afford to pay for any injuries sustained during protests, we can’t afford to risk getting fired as a result of assholes doxxing protestors over social media.
A very large portion of the population would rather tolerate the terrible status quo than risk civil unrest like we had during the race riots.
Mass surveillance and coercion tactics like COINTELPRO are a huge concern which are still relevant today.
Republicans think his tendency for cutting the country off from the rest of the world is a victory but it is unquestionably an economic, cultural, and political disaster according to anyone who knows how the state actually works. The boosts to the economy that many republicans credit him for is currently being undone by his shutdown and his useless trade wars.
This is the thing, even for people who think that identity politics and national self-image are unimportant, even for people who are willing to dispose of moral values to get what they want, even for people who are in it just for money, they're getting what they want now so they won't pay attention to their future being dismantled in plain sight
What Trump is doing and has been doing is bad for everyone on all sides, some of them just don't know it yet.
Well, pushback against globalization and strong sentiment towards isolationism aren't exclusive to Trump (or even republicans actually). Its a trend that has been growing for more then a decade now. You can see bits of it even in Cortez and Bernie, although perhaps accented differently. I don't really understand what you mean here by national self-image, but politics don't really have much to do with moral values directly anyway. Again, I think they has been many contenders for a title of less moral president then Trump.
Well, that is something any party can argue about anything. This very statement could have been said by any political fraction about their opponents in any society the past 3,000 years. After all, we ultimately all want the same things, we just have vastly different ideas of how to achieve them. The adversarial system in democracy exist to sort that kind of things out. I don't think there is anything particularity unique about our current situation in that regard. Maybe except the urgency of global warming is an exception, but even then it doesn't seem like there is a focused message about it coming out among all the anti-trump noise. If anything, all the emotionalism involved in it is kinda obfuscating it an making it harder to stand out.
Just one comment, America is not and has not been a "shining beacon of democracy" for a really damn long time, and most of the world considers America, rightfully, to be one of the most dangerous countries to world peace.
What you described in the first paragraph covers the majority of politicians.
In reality there isn't any substantial evidence that he did any heinous crimes. If anything he is just acting like an immoral politician; it is nothing too unusual. Besides we go by "innocent until proven guilty" because "Guilty until proven innocent" has the possibility to screw over people.
Protesting has, historically, done nothing. If the american people want change they must do it through the legal system via litigation. That is how blacks got rights during the civil rights movement.
Impeachment isn't really that big of a thing. All it is is when the house brings charges on the president or Supreme court Justice that they broke the law. It then goes to the (Republican controlled) senate, with the chief justice, to follow through in finding him guilty or not.
Not that I'm ignoring the rest of your post, WhyNott, but:
No, pretty sure it's the other way around. Otherwise,
Yes, we could.
Yes, your'e right, that was a messup on my part
I will edit and fix that. Thanks.
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