US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4148

On February 19 2024 00:10 FriedrichNietzsche wrote:
The dumber (more senile to an extent) the president/s get the more I think we have to come to the conclusion their importance is very very small compared to bascially so many other things/institutions/entities/(even) individuals..

I cant really come to any better conclusion..

On February 19 2024 00:46 KwarK wrote:

That is not the right conclusion.

On February 19 2024 01:37 FriedrichNietzsche wrote:



What is yours?

On February 19 2024 01:54 farvacola wrote:

Legislative term limits were opposed by the likes of Hamilton based in large part on the notion that working the legislative process takes a lot of highly specialized knowledge, knowledge that would be especially scarce if legislators were routinely termed out. That notion puts a bit too much faith in both the feedback effect of voting and the willingness of elder statesmen to observe norms that informally keep power in check. That said, Hamilton’s concern has plenty of merit that one can observe today, a shade of which concerns how term limits further empower lobbyists by ensuring they’re effectively the only long term players in the game of writing and passing legislation. In states with legislative term limits, like Michigan for example, there has been a clear trend towards straight lobbyist drafted bills. That’s not to say that term limits are necessarily inherently broken, only that they need to come alongside other significant reform.

It's been a long-accepted truth in Washington that lobbyists write the actual laws

On February 19 2024 03:20 KwarK wrote:

That the most powerful individual in an organization wields power. Trump wielded his ineptly but he still managed to fuck SCOTUS for a generation, crush American soft power abroad, and do untold damage to the economy.

The institutions that prevented him from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO and closing all US military bases abroad mostly stopped him by requiring that he perform more paperwork than he had the attention span to perform. A more competent malicious president could have accomplished much more. It’s not that the office has no power, it’s that the same issues that make Trump malicious also make him incompetent.

On February 19 2024 04:16 farvacola wrote:
Yes, lobbyists wield far too much influence even with respect to legislatures that don’t have term limits. No dispute there. The question is rather one of degree; how much worse could it get?

On February 19 2024 04:28 FriedrichNietzsche wrote:



Well so far you have written that the POTUS has power. I never doubted that for one moment.

I am not saying that I am a genius in terms of history knowledge but the stuff I looked into almost always lead to the same pattern:

IF certain institutions and entities want certain things to happen (especially "war" & "operations") they just happen. And the POTUS basically just more or less accepts it.

Do you completely disagree with this?

On February 19 2024 05:56 Sadist wrote:
On one hand POTUS can unilaterally launch nuclear weapons which makes it arguably the most powerful position. On the other hand, since using Nuclear weapons is unthinkable you could argue POTUS is significantly weaker than the legislative branch. Depends on how you want to think about it.

On February 19 2024 05:48 FriedrichNietzsche wrote:
That analogy is very far off from reality..

USA as an entity and the POTUS is not remotely the same as a company and a CEO. IF you think that fits.. you dont have the slightest idea how many different powers exist..

Actually the system that leads to wars & operations is so unbound from individuals.. is such a obvious observation to make when you simply look at the recent history of the USA (lets say a couple of decades)..

I honestly feel like we are living in different worlds. Actually I had this conversation with someone iRL. About "systems" and "individuals".

What do you think happens if a CEO from a company (Im not saying your analogy makes much sense.. just using it in a different way here) feels the things his company is doing is ethically wrong and he quits? Does this stop things from happening? Of fucking course not. A new CEO will be installed and almost precisely the same things will keep on happening. Rinse and repeat.


Didn't we all wonder how Obama got the peace nobel prize whilst drone strikes were ever increasing? Didnt Obama have the nimbus of a more peacefully minded Potus? I mean.. am I saying a POTUS has no power in deciding things what so ever? Of course not.

But you guys cant truly think that when the different entities are set for certain goals/plans the POTUS can stop these things. Like just look at the history.

Even the presidents who actively tried to stop certain things (JFK and Vietnam comes to mind) simply failed in the grand scheme of things.. or were unfortunately replaced by a new potus who was willing to do what the industrial military complex and whatever other entities wanted.

I can't possibly be alone in thinking that system/s > individual/s

On February 19 2024 06:22 Acrofales wrote:


I don't think JFK tried very hard to leave Vietnam... seeing as in the 3 years he was president, the troops (sorry, military advisors) escalated massively from a few hundred to over 10k. Sure, he was no doubt pressured by generals, and ambassadors, and other long-term civil servants to do so, but if he was dedicated to peace, he could have just said "fuck it, let the commies have it" and refused to sign any EOs that expanded the military presence there. In JFK's case it was particularly up to him, because Congress did not get involved until 1964, when JFK had already been assassinated!

Similarly, pointing to JFK as an impotent president seems incredibly idiotic given his involvement in (1) ramping up the space race, and (2) his role in the Cuban missile crisis. It's worth noting that trying to cast JFK as a peacenik seems deluded seeing as he was also the president during the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. He may have talked a big talk about peace, but he was far from peaceful. And I really don't think it was because the gears of war ground on and he couldn't get off.

Similarly for Obama. He won the Nobel prize for peace before he was even president. It wasn't despite his policy of droning the crap out of the Middle East, it was because it was a deluded "hope" that he wouldn't do so after 8 years of Dubya. Obama was in that sense similar to Kennedy: an extremely eloquent statesman, but definitely not afraid to get his hands dirty. He took both of Dubya's failing military operations and doubled down on them.

I don't think either of these examples show that the POTUS has no power, but rather that the POTUS doesn't have the power to shape reality to his every desire. Unsurprisingly, the POTUS only has direct power over the US side. He can't just decide that the Vietcong or Taliban will behave themselves right now. And when confronted with a failing mission, they can either pull out and accept the loss, or follow the generals' advice on how to turn it into a win. Neither JFK nor Obama were willing to inherit the mission and take the loss.

E: oh, and with all that I forgot to answer your actual question. A CEO thinking his company is doing something unethical and quitting over it, would be idiotic. It's his job to change that. If the shareholders don't want the unethical thing to stop, they can then remove the CEO, but if the CEO thinks his company is doing something unethical, his respons would only be "fuck it, I quit" if he were a terrible CEO. His response should be: "okay, quit doing this!" If the response is "we can't do that without going bankrupt", then the response should be "okay, give me a plan by which we can stop doing this without going bankrupt within N years".

And similarly it is an unerasable blemish on Obama's record as president that despite 8 years he was unable to shut down Guantanamo.

On February 19 2024 06:24 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Could you specify some examples of "things" or "individuals" that the president's importance is comparatively "very very small" to? The president creates executive orders, is the commander-in-chief, appoints Supreme Court justices, and forms a Cabinet that leads important federal departments. The president and the executive branch are, of course, checked and balanced by the legislative and judicial branches of government, but I'm interpreting your post to mean that the president has very little impact on the country, which is usually not true. All the recent presidents (Biden, Trump, Obama, GWB) were extremely influential.

If the past teaches us anything, it is that trying to hold on to systems and policies that refuse to appropriately adapt and respond to changing circumstances — like climate change or growing unrest among a population – usually end in disaster. Those with the means and opportunity to enact change must do so, or at least to not stand in the way when reform is needed.

This last lesson is a particularly hard one to learn. Unfortunately, there are many signs around the world today that the mistakes of the past are being repeated, especially by our political leaders and those aspiring to hold power.