Comment by appleappleapple
3 days ago
And this lost trust will not suddenly reappear when he leaves office. He has damaged our reputation for a generation
3 days ago
And this lost trust will not suddenly reappear when he leaves office. He has damaged our reputation for a generation
No it's not simple to call "he" did this. WH people, half? of the country supporting him for 2nd time, and wealthy people that donated so much too, it's never "he". Nothing big like that is one persons responsibility. Actions have cons. ?
All elected and supported, especially AFTER how he and his supports lead the so many extra deaths in covid. I know your media does not bring facts but truth is out there.
Not half the country. Almost half of the people who voted.
IMO if you don't vote, you're tacitly agreeing with whoever gets voted into office.
(Although US voter suppression weakens this argument)
10 replies →
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Totally valid correction, thanks !
This! I get frustrated when i hear folks in the US claim Trump has failed them. You failed yourselves. The system is falling apart and barely half of people turn up to participate in elections? What are the rest of us expected to take away from this? Apathy is what I take away from it, and that does not earn my trust.
The legend about the sole man in charge has been carefully crafted and cultivated for ages, but it's never the puppet and always puppet masters in this clown show.
Sadly, the way people vote is more complicated than you might believe. Trump is the symptom of malfunctioning system that doesn't give people good options in the ballot box.
I'll say something controversial: Clinton and Harris were both better options than the guy who started his campaign mocking a reporter's disability. If voters had any sense it should've ended right there.
The rationalizing, the "corrupt DNC" arguments and everything else is a cop-out.
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That explains how he got almost half the votes on election night, but it does not explain the 1/3 that still to this day support him 100%. There is a pretty substantial underlying problem in play and Trump is the symptom, but the problem is deeper than a malfunctioning political system.
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yes! we need ranked choice voting everywhere!
Are you saying there was a worse option than Trump?
Really?
Because unless the alternative option was a diminutive Austrian with a dodgy 'tache, I find that rather hard to believe.
The reality is America voted for Trump (TWICE!) because they wanted him. The rest of the world knows this, and is now acting accordingly.
EDIT: Downvotes coming from the brainwashed MAGA crowd!
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I am not sure why you are being downvoted, because IMHO you are correct.
If Trump was an isolated incident, sure, but he is not. In Europe the far-right and far-left parties are rising in many countries and the traditional parties are crumbling.
I think there is a serious lack of trust in the institutions and in the politicians that is spreading around the world at a quick pace and many people are just fed up with the status-quo that has been in place since the fall of the USSR.
People want change, not small marginal tinkering on the edges, they want to see that things move decisively in one way or the other and they are not afraid to flip the table and see what happens.
Voters cannot be held accountable for all the specific things the person they elected do.
That much should be self-evident.
He’s doing exactly what he said he would do when he ran. People who voted for him can very much be held accountable.
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If you vote for a man that thinks he can "grab women by the pussy" because he's famous, and then you vote for him AGAIN, you should be held accountable for everything he does. It's patently obvious he's an absolutely awful person and completely untrustworthy.
That’s the definition of democracy. Of course voting is significant and has consequences.
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Anyone can be held accountable for things they are responsible for, the question is how they'll react to being held thusly.
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You might have a better point if the elected person hadn't made such a big show of following "mandates" from the voters. You can't have it both ways.
If they could have known or suspected those things, then yes, they bear the responsibility. And Trump's intentions were there for all to see.
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Voters can be held accountable; he demonstrated exactly what he was the first time in office and then people voted for him again.
What if they knew what they were voting for?
Trust in the US started to decline dating back in the Obama era when they listened to Merkel's phone etc. Trump has finally eroded what was left of it. Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe are still trying to keep a good relationship with thd US regardless, because they don't want to lose US support due to Trump's whims… err transactional diplomacy.
The weapons of mass destruction happened much before Obama
And I'd argue that it should.
He opened the door, and I find it very, very unlikely that either side will close it after this. Dems and Reps will both use this to take control in ways that would have been unthinkable prior to Trump's first election. The only way to restore any measure of that trust would be to pass laws that prevent this kind of abuse, and there's no way that politicians will give up power they've gained.
They had the laws to stop him but since congress stopped legislating, it gave the supreme courts wide discretion to approve executive actions. Strong executive isn’t a flaw of the system, it’s the inevitable consequence of years of media illiteracy and vast sums of money in politics enabled by citizens united.
Passed laws don't seem very constraining. Between simple disregard and disregard plus eventual compliance after lengthy court review, there's a lot of time spent under unlawful orders and regulations. There's no personal liability for (most?) of these unlawful actions and Trump doesn't seem to care about continuity of government or having a legacy of doing unlawful things.
Impeachment could be a check on his power, but impeachment is a kangaroo court with a political jury, so he would need to piss off a lot more Republican senators than he has.
A few presidental impeachments over unlawful acts ending in conviction would change future behavior. But it seems unlikely that we'll get there.
The ideal would be that a new president is elected who uses current powers to reverse/rebuild what Trump has torn down and have their "one big bill" that Congress seems to pull off per president be a reforms package that locks in additional checks and legislative powers against the Executive. The Unitary Executive theory is the most dangerous attack on our Constitution in a long time.
On the other hand, a right-wing Supreme Court may try to block any reforms that check the Executive. The Legislature's ultimate oversight power of the Exec is impeachment, and they have decided that no amount of corruption or crime or destruction should be checked as long as it "feels right".
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