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This man's absurdity never ceases to amaze me. How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos? Moreover, from the outside (European here), it lo
by me2too 1y ago
This man's absurdity never ceases to amaze me. How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos?
Moreover, from the outside (European here), it looks like the US president can literally do whatever he wants without being subject to regulations or facing any consequences - pretty much like a dictatorship. No discussion, no parliament, no opposition taken into account. Crazy.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoEvidently Congress gave the presidency emergency powers to do what he wants with tariffs, all he has to do is declare an emergency. Just one more example of how Congress is completely broken.
- me2too 1y agoHe literally created the emergency himself. What the hell. I can't understand how one of the most powerful countries in the world doesn't have a system in place to prevent the president to act like a dictator
- consp 1y ago> He literally created the emergency himself. Classic right wing playbook. Here they defunded immigration services and then called for a crisis because there was not enough space to put all asylum seekers and there was too great a backlog to get it all processed in time.
- vel0city 1y agoThat power is only supposed to last for some number of days before review by Congress. But Congress decided a day isn't a day anymore, at least for the rest of the year.
- moogly 1y agoDid he even declare an emergency for the latest near world-wide tariffs? Are they even pretending anymore? If so I missed it.
- ativzzz 1y agoThe US currently has 49 ongoing national emergencies, that are renewed every year by the president The last 8 or so were created by Trump. Like you said, he's just doing what is already allowed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
- krapp 1y agoOnly Republican Presidents get that kind of carte blanche. They would already be impeaching if it was a Democrat.
- myko 1y agoTrue, because if Democrats had an anti-American POTUS hell-bent on destroying the country they would be helping the impeachment process, not defending them
- blasphemers 1y agoThe democrats just allowed a dementia patient to run the country for four years
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoI have no idea how Republicans still make that claim with a straight face. We literally have someone who doesn't know what groceries are running the country right now.
- peterfirefly 1y agoCuz it's true? Mind you, the dementia patient did a better job.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoIf you put Joe Biden and Trump side by side, and asked a random person who didn't know either who was the most likely to have dementia, they would pick Trump. I'm not sure I've ever heard him say something that didn't sound like word salad.
- userbinator 1y agoDid you watch the debate between them last year?
- deleted 1y ago
- pavlov 1y agoIt now feels quaint that, not long ago, people used to speculate what Gödel's loophole was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_Loophole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_Loophole We're witnessing that there doesn't need to be any single clever actively exploited loophole. A two-party presidential system can become a dictatorship if one party holds just enough power across all branches of government to not resist what their leader wants.
- me2too 1y agoHey, thanks for the link - I added it to my reading list. From the introduction, it seems to fit the current situation (and that's not good).
- marcosdumay 1y agoTurns out you only need majority in 4 different contests that are all constantly fluctuating around 50%. Even if they weren't strongly correlated, you would still be able to do a coup every 200 years or so.
- kylehotchkiss 1y ago> How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos A lot of people in USA felt they were entitled to their slice of the American dream, did not achieve it because we stopped building houses therefore you can't buy one on a high school education like our parents and grandparents did. Add in what appears to be somewhat of a collapse in people starting relationships/families and you suddenly have a massive segment of the population with little to lose. I presume many on the HN community are insulated from this reality of life in USA.
- orangecat 1y agoThere's some truth to that, but then the solution is to build more housing, not impose tariffs which only make houses and everything else less affordable.
- bluGill 1y agoNobody was offering that option though.
- kylehotchkiss 1y agoFor real, what would an election look like if one party was proposing building 5 million housing units, overriding local zoning when it's in the way, making preferential deals for bulk construction materials, training a workforce, and some mechanism to not erode existing equity ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- bluGill 1y agoIn the US the problems are at a state level, and the federal government mostly doesn't have the direct constitutional power to do anything. Though details like what color your house is arguably are first amendment protected speech and so the federal government could do something (but out likely go to the supreme court - in turn depending on the justices not the election results.)
- navane 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- DFHippie 1y agoThis is also how it looks from the inside. It's baffling. Apparently all our vaunted checks and balances are useless if one vindictive and incompetent political party controls all three branches of the government.
- some_random 1y ago[flagged]
- me2too 1y agoFrom the outside, it looks like he's doing whatever he wants without control. He starts to tell that everyone is maintained by the US - lol what? He starts blaming Europe for being a parasite (thanks!) and treating Zelensky like everyone has seen live. No one is telling him that his actions will have consequences for the US in their international credibility (gone) and relationships with partners (ruined)? One day, he does a totally broken linear regression and applies no sense tariffs to every country in the world (no Russia - weird enough). It's well known that tariffs are not a way to attract investment in your country - there's a lot of theory and historical examples that demonstrate that. Moreover, it's just absurd to think that these kinds of actions are going to make American (!) corporations, now producing elsewhere, back in the US. No supply chain ready, lack of resources, ... I don't know - it looks like a single man has too much power and no one around him is helping him make better decisions (for the country) in the long term. On the contrary, it looks like all the decisions are pretty much market manipulations in order to make some "friend" get some money. But again, this is what it looks like from the outside - and it's quite worrying
- orangecat 1y agoHow can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos? "Burn it all down" is popular on both the far right and far left. it looks like the US president can literally do whatever he wants without being subject to regulations or facing any consequences Yes, presidents have been given far too much power to do whatever they want by declaring a fake "emergency". It's inexcusable that Congress hasn't put a stop to this.
- 8note 1y agoits reality TV. his supporters are generally insulated from the consequences, but even when affected, get the excitement of participating.
- arandomusername 1y ago> No discussion, no parliament, no opposition taken into account. Crazy. Is it that much different from EU? Where was the discussion before mass immigration? Where was the opposition taken into account there?
- mixologist 1y agoMass immigration in EU is a result of US wars in middle east. It was not some kind of a plan by EU. It was just a reaction to shit that is happening. They were put in this position because they had too much faith in US.
- arandomusername 1y agoDidn't know that Indians, Algerians and Nigerians are at war in the middle east. It's interesting how it's mostly men that flee as well.
- mixologist 1y agoI can see that you are just focused on racist talking points about immigration and any discussion here will be very unproductive and just a wast of our bandwidth.
- arandomusername 1y agoIt's racist now to not wanting the indigenous people be replaced by foreigners? Racist for wanting to preserve my culture?
- const_cast 1y ago> Racist for wanting to preserve my culture? I mean, I'm not saying that mentality is racist. But I am saying that every racist who has ever existed has had that exact mentality.