“American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties,” J Michael Luttig told CNN on Wednesday. “So today, in my view, there is no Republican party to counter the Democratic party in the country.
“And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.”
I think the real reason is that the people in power keep touting this idea of only two distinct parties. Having only two parties means you have only two directions to go. Which is destined for extremism.
Actually, it's destined for a centrist corrupt government. The recent "extremism" is a reaction to how upset people are at the corruption, corporate welfare and blatant monopolies that run our country.
When things get bad people look towards the extremes. That's what we're seeing now. Things aren't good, they haven't been for a while. Populism and fascism rise during bad times. Look at what happened during the great depression and lead up to WW2. America could of easily slipped into a fascist Nazi style state. Thankfully we got the greatest president the country has ever seen instead.
You need a multi party system like a lot of countries round the world. No clear winner = who can quickly form the larges coalition. It usually boils down to two main parties with a lot of also-ran's.
Over here we even have The Monster Raving Loony pary!
Both the democratic and republican party are several smaller parties tied together into two disgusting rat king. If one of them disappear today there will be an instant split of the surviving party into two new rat kings. The collapse isn't what they fear. They fear that the Overton window would move left.
Yes, but the framing of it reads like the Democratic party being too powerful is the worst possible outcome, rather than the Republican party destroying society.
I don't remember hearing this grief when it was the Democratic party in disarray (mainly during Dubya's time in office). As always with republicans, something isn't a problem until it directly affects them.
Bullshit. Institutionalized racism, misogyny, homophobia, and white Christian separatism as party platform. No matter how "conservative" Republicans claimed to be, The Southern Strategy was the core value and singular driving force for the past 60 years. MAGA isn't a symptom, it's result
Yup, he isn't original he's just a immoral guy who wants Daddy to be proud, ironically he wouldn't be done he worked very hard to remove the stain of pimping and racism from their fortune only to have dumb dumb here make the trump name an international joke.
As an old guy, I'd have to agree, though as a leftist turned anarchist, I don't give much of a fuck.
I think back though on the Republicans of my youth, and it really was a notably different party.
It's sort of weird to phrase it like this, but they were assholes with principles. I mean - they were shallow, bigoted assholes then too, but it was more common then for them to still be like the old '50s All-American cliche - patriotic, proud, moral, hard-working, honest... conservative in the old sense of the word. I didn't agree with them at all but at least they had a relatively coherent, if shallow and ignorant, ideology that they generally actually lived by.
Somehow though, especially over the last 20 years or so, they've morphed into this bizarre and startlingly toxic mix of psychopaths, hypocrites and grifters. They have no principles at all really - just things and people that they hate - and it's not even vaguely about trying to accomplish things that they sincerely (if mistakenly) think will make the world a better place, but just about fucking over everyone else. And even themselves, if they can colorably believe that by doing so they'll manage to fuck someone else over even more.
I sincerely believe it's a sort of collective mental illness, and truth be told, I think it can only lead to the collapse of western civilization, and the US in particular. There's nothing really that can stop it. It's effectively a closed loop in which greedy psychopaths fuck things up for their own profit and privilege, ignorant psychopaths look for someone to blame for the fact that things are fucked up, power-hungry psychopaths point them at some vulnerable fringe group and tell them that it's all their fault, then while everyone's distracted, the greedy psychopaths fuck things up even more. And 'round and 'round it goes, like a turd circling a toilet bowl. And there's only one way that can end.
Fatalism that makes the good people who outnumber the bad not show up to vote
It’s the same as the “all politicians are the same” moan.
No, they’re not. It’s the crooked ones that want you to believe that they’re all the same, because that’s what keeps the crooked ones from being voted out.
It should be noted that the last three of those things require the exercise of authority to enact, and that authority is vested in people and institutions that flatly will not exercise it in pursuit of things that will in any way undermine their privilege or that of their wealthy cronies and patrons, and all of those things would do just that.
This is where it becomes relevant that the Democrats are only relatively less corrupt than the Republicans. They feed at the same corporate trough as the Republicans - they just have to, and do, play a somewhat different game to stay in office and maintain their privilege.
The Democrats have already demonstrated that when they have uncontested power - the presidency and congressional majorities - they will still find a way to fail to actually deliver. That's not just supposition - it's established fact. It's what they've already done. There's certainly no reason to believe that they're going to do any differently in the future.
Now that's not to say or imply that I disagree with you fundamentally. The first half of your list would at least slow the decline and putting Democrats in office would be broadly better than putting Republicans in office.
But the Democrat establishment, and the DNC in particular, is too corrupt and too compromised to provide more than token opposition to the oligarchy.
Elsewhere in this thread, a poster wrote of the possibility of the Republicans self-destructing snd the Democrats fragmenting. I don't think that's particularly likely, but it is attractive, since it would serve not only to eliminate the most overtly corrupt and destructive party but to provide a rallying point for those who call for genuine reform - the handful of actually decent politicians of the AOC/Sanders type could potentially have some real influence instead of just being lone voices made ineffectual by their subservience to a well-established and thoroughly corrupt party hierarchy.
Election reform that doesn't give outsized power to rural states
I completely agree with you about voter apathy, but this one in particular I don't know how you get past. You need 2/3rds just to get an amendment for it up for a vote that you then need 3/4 of each state to pass. As long as a quarter or more of states are rural we're kind of screwed on that one. I don't see it happening in my lifetime at least.
The rest are spot on. Also, Jack Fucking Smith. It's not just the news that needs consequences.
Well… maybe so. This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government,” is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end?
-Hunter Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72"
I think it's the way a lot of empires end. Everything gets easy, and without the survival element to keep people honest, over generations the people just lose touch with reality. They think migrant caravans are coming. They think all they need to do is half-ass their way through college and they deserve to get out make six figures still half-assing it. they think Trump is a genius, they think their adult kids are off the pills. The adult kids don't really grasp what the pills are really going to do to them and everyone around them, because everything's been mostly fine so far. Et cetera.
Speaking as another old guy, I wish I could disagree with you on your conclusion. 🥲
Yeah - it is more or less the way that old and previously healthy civilizations generally die. The details differ, but the overall dynsmic is fairly consistent.
As a civilization ages, the broad focus shifts from working to contribute to its well-being to living comfortably off of its established well-being to scrambling to grab as much of its diminishing well-being as possible as quickly as possible. And the US is well into that last phase.
There are only a few ways it can play out from there. The common people can force the civilization into a sort of reset, as the French did in the late 18th century, or the civilization can just go into a long, slow decline like Egypt did or it can collapse under some combination of rebellion from within and attack from without, as Rome did.
The third scenario is far and away the most likely for the US.
I love the saying : “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” because it is true.
I have a theory that societies can go into a circular loop and pivot into 3 different states, any which can serve as the starting point.
At one point you have a society that collectively take care of the issues, and being selfish is frowned upon. In this environment everyone sort of make small sacrifices for the greater good, and everyone is better for it. The problem though, is that the more honest everyone is, and the more you can gain by being devious and two-faced. Eventually some assholes will game the honest system, and more assholes will follow.
This lead to being dishonest and selfish being the norm, as if you're not you will simply have nothing since people will be taking advantage of you. The meta is changed and society is now two-faced.
This lead to the last possible state, where the mask has completely fallen off and people are being genuine dick to each others. There is no honour and everything you can get away with openly, you do. Being two-faced is shunned and seen as weak, you also don't have to worry about the appearance so you can go full selfish mode. This lead to a miserable existence for everyone, and suddenly people might wonder what's the point.
To close the loop, people starts to realize what they have lost. Some people will make themselves vulnerable and show integrity, to try and make things better. Nobody trusts.nobody anymore, and making yourself vulnerable is the only way to gain influence, since nothing else can be trusted. After the big era of con men, selflessness is trending and respectable again, and those without are shunned.
To put in simply, in 1 state being honourable get you further in life, in another one being two-faced gets you farther, and in the last one being openly selfish and hostile will get your farther.
I think we might be somewhere in the peak(hopefully) of the openly hostile state, where you're better off min/maxing society without pretending to be a good person. I think it might turn as the younger generation gets older and people get tired of the division and realize they can have a lot of success by doing what is right.
Anyway, this is just a theory. To me it make sense in game theory sort of way.
It absolutely makes sense and yes - game theory specifically addresses it and explains it.
At this point, the American political and corporate systems are effectively rewarding and thus selecting for psychopathy. The gloves are off, and success goes to those who are willing and able to do absolutely whatever it takes to succeed, no matter how much harm it does. Those who are constrained by morals, principles and empathy are at a disadvantage.
Trump and Musk and DeSantis and the like aren't aberrations - they're simply the leading edge of a broad dynamic - the most obvious extreme examples of the personality most suited to success in this corrupted era.
A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America.
Remember when the Republican party simply didn't put out a party platform running up to the 2020 election? They released a one page document that just said "We stand for whatever Donald Trump wants." That was weird, huh?
That was the point where the Republicans ceased even pretending to be a normal political party and embraced their new identity as a fascist death cult. They don’t even have a platform. They literally stand for nothing.
American democracy has by most measures been in grave peril since 6 January 2021, the day Pence, as vice-president, took Luttig’s advice and refused to attempt to block congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win.
Trump, 77, pleaded not guilty, as he has to 74 other criminal counts, in New York over hush-money payments to a porn star and federally regarding his retention of classified information.
In New York this week, regarding a civil suit in which Trump was found liable for defamation and sexual assault, a judge said it was not defamatory to call the former president a rapist.
Nonetheless, Trump leads Ron DeSantis of Florida, Pence and the rest of the field by more than 30 points, firmly on course to face Biden again.
Luttig told CNN: “A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America.
A respected conservative judge who was considered for the supreme court under George W Bush, Luttig made a tremendous impact with his January 6 testimony.