US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4477

I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.

I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.

Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”

But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.

War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.