I pose this as a question, despite the fact that legal professor Jonathan Turley presents the issue in the indicative. In other words, he appears to believe reform of the political system is a real possibility, a doable thing: “You Say You Want A Revolution”: How To Reform Our Political System
My two cents on this: There's a lot of talk about a social credit system, where the people in charge get to look at everything you do, say and think. What if we designed systems to watch THEM that way? Start with every single financial transaction being immediately publicly available, and real time tracking of wealth accumulation, and its source. I think that might put 'we the people' back in charge, don't you?
Sorry I'm kinda late to the party, but.... vis-a-vis the Electoral College, I saw a post once upon a time by the Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives. Short and to the point. It's titled "Why an Electoral College?" Subtitle is "The Electoral College - Ameica's original Anti-Bully program". rmblackconservatives.com/flash_post/why-an-electoral-college/
You and Turley are wrapped around the axel. Get back to the basics on the best way for the will of the people to manifest and avoid corruption by a few.
Steve Chabot, OH Rep, used a system years ago. He returned the right to vote on congressional bills to his constituents. For example, his computer/phone system called thousands of registered voters before important votes. Answer your phone and a message succinctly briefed the issue. It then prompted a vote. Press "1" for yea, "2" for Nay, etc. Within minutes Steve would come on the phone and announce totals, the will of the people. He then entered the Congress and voted on behalf of his constituents. I shall never forget the drama in 2008, as he asked how to vote the Wall Street bailout.
He proved direct voting works. We don't need representatives. You vote. I vote. It is impossible for big money to corrupt all of us.
Speaking of which, we would do well to remember that any government that thinks of itself as ruling over the people, as opposed to serving the people, is not doing what it was ordained by God to do. There will be Hell to pay.
I often struggle to articulate my thoughts - residual effect of college football and too many grenade simulators thrown into concrete rooms but, well.. I loved every minute of it so... :)
I am thoroughly convinced that the horse has left the barn when it comes to reform at the scale required. The left has this nation in a tightening grip - like a python and the teacher education colleges are part of that snake.
Colonists came here to escape various things and set up the systems they thought best for people to retain individual freedom and a civil society. An extraordinary group of well-educated men gathered and tried to write a document that enshrined their thoughts on government and what it took to keep liberty alive. The quote from Franklin regarding what they had wrought and whether we could keep it are apropos. As hard as some people have tried, we haven't "kept it."
I'm on record from years ago--comments on the interwebs--that perhaps the single most irresponsible SCOTUS decision since Dred Scott was overturning the line item veto. Well, there's competition for that title, but ... with Dobbs and Bruen the SCOTUS shows it knows the way forward.
Going back some two and a half centuries an extraordinary group of people crafted a form of government that could be referred to by Lincoln as "of the people, by the people and for the people." Amazingly, it worked. Why doesn't it work now? For a system of laws to work, it has to be applied consistently and impartially. We no longer do that. We don't even pretend. So now Turley and a bunch of you want to change the rules, and in a short period of time there will be infractions, so we'll just change the rules again. Why bother?
1. Jungle Primaries have not worked in CA. A better solution is end open primaries.
2. Redistricting the Democrats gamed beautifully in CA, and what happened is districts were made that Gerrymandered to help incumbents.
3. Ban election money from outside states. I have no idea if this is constitutional. Or what other problems it may cause.
4. End disparate impact. This results in racial gerrymandering that creates safe minority districts, that go far left. It distorts whom is elected. Cast Down Griggs Vs. Duke Power.
5. School vouchers in every day. Stop the indoctrination factories that are Public K-12, and Universities.
6. Severely restrict student loans. It's just feeding the leftist machine.
7. End Absolute immunity. Make it so the FBI, IRS have some individual liability.
8. End unionization of government workers.
9. Bring back the spoils system, or at a minimum reduce the civil service protection.
10. Re-organize the FBI, and create a separate counter terrorist organization.
11. Make the Internet Giants so they are publishers. Make it so they can't censor everything they don't like. This is having a huge impact on the culture.
12. Reduce the amount of laws / simplify them. The average person I have read commits 3 felonies a day. The over reach on laws is horrible. It's amazing Trump has survived legally so far.
13. Make losers who sue and lose, pay legal fees. Not my area of expertise, but something to reduce the amount of lawfare, as well as sue and settle, that is done. There are people going after Trump, elected, and there are NO CONSEQUENCES!!! Lois Lerner after what she did retired with a nice pension.
14. Bring back paper ballots. Same day voting with ID required, except in VERY RARE OCCASIONS. Make the elections in the US so they can be trusted. Require all districts to report at the same time, to end one district waiting till the count is done everywhere else, to see how many votes they need to manufacture. Create some steep penalties, especially for those hiding or stopping poll watchers. Right now they can put up barriers, and nothing happens.
15. Make Dr. individual owners again, instead of employees.
16. Reduce the amount of certification needed. This is a huge source of government power.
17. Allow people to be individual contractors.
18. Require all businesses to do e-verify. And put in place consequences. This would dry up a bunch of illegal jobs right away.
19. Build the wall.
20. Somehow have public financial reports on congress and top admin people on their family. Hunter Biden, Kerry's step son, Pelosi's son, etc. are all milking their connections.
21. End the Espionage Act? It seems to be mis-used. Some how reduce the power of the surveillance state that was created by Bush after 9-11.
22. Allow churches to be political. Right now the Left is allowed to be, but not anyone conservative. The separation of Church and State, was supposed to be there is no state religion. It was not about banning religion from anything to do with government.
23. Make colleges have some skin in the game on student loans. If there graduates can't pay, let the people declare bankruptcy after so many years.
24. End Critical Race Theory in Government, as well as education.
25. Make it so anyone can easily be in a job, and not have to be unionized.
26. Force unions to report to their members, all the political expenses in a very easy to read report.
27. Make it easy if union leaders are not backing up their workers, they are easily liable. Right now it's possible, but requires a lot of legal work to happen.
The problem with schemes of reform, such as Turley's, is people = common culture. All the clever schemes in the world will come to naught without a broad societal consensus and mutual trust, and that is exactly what has fallen apart.
“Broad societal consensus” currently follows a “narrative” that gets widely disseminated by someone that has the power and ability to remain in the public eye. Of course, that could mean a presidential “bully pulpit”, a blog, or media. Having said that, in a rare moment, Morning Joe bespoke the truth on air :
To your point, I would submit that there is no longer even societal consensus on what the role and purposes of our government should be. An easy way to discern that is to look at the disparate ways people now view the Constitution, the court system, and the law. THAT is the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed prior to making structural or procedural changes willy-nilly.
Without that basic agreement on the proper role and functions of government, there is nothing to guide proposed structural changes other than factionalism and self-interest and nothing to restrict or limit such changes other than the vicissitudes of power. Any proposed changes will just become points of contention between self-interested parties.
Something I wd like to see is congress critters serving & spending the majority of their time in office in their own districts. There is no need to spend almost the entire yr every yr in DC supposedly legislating. What do those scads of laws, rules & regs do to serve real people? Spend 9mos in your own district reviewing all the millions of pages of lawful nonsense & figure out what does & doesn't serve them. Take your top nonsense laws, regs & acts back to DC for 3mos & convince your colleagues what's nonsense & eliminate them. Stop viewing your job as one for making up new laws & instead place your emphasis on meaningfully & substantively serving your citizens!
At what point do you have enough laws? I'd say we're there already.
As a corollary to this, employees of federal agencies should be posted all around the country. There should only be a sliver of the total staff in & around DC. Make all those supposedly impartial civil servants get out of DC and actually live among the people they claim to serve. 9 out of 10, maybe 19 out of 20 or 99 out of 100, federal employees should be living anywhere but the DC area. Then they just might get a sense of how that leviathan impacts the common man.
Today all the DC swamp critters just view the rest of the country as "out there".
I'm old enough to remember when Trump proposed that w/an agency or two. Oh, the angst! Many bureaucrats threatened to quit in their whine fest on twitter. Perfect. 😂
If I may be allowed to plagerize, in order for any of these things to work, “first, we would have to kill all the politicians!”. And apologies to Charleton Heston, “ you’ll have to pry the power from the cold, dead hands of our current crop of “public servants”.
I think Turley completely misses the level of corruption that has brought us to this state of affairs. Did he miss the “Covid Fiasco”?
Did he miss the Lois Lerner Show at the IRS?
Did he miss the Maralago Raid of 2022? Did he miss the weaponization of the FBI and the Dept. of Justice? Did he miss the imposition of “rules based order” over “the rule of law”.
Everyone here knows the list by heart, so I won’t dwell on the obvious.
Yeh, I think it’s possible that things could change, but not until we get to the part that you described as “dicey” Mark. The impetus for real change, as opposed to what has always been offered as change -remember the forklift with all the rules and regulations stacked up on a pallet?-“The era of big government is over!”-Bill Clinton is still just as full of crap now as when he made that statement, that impetus will have to be real and relentless to affect the kind of change that it will take to right the ship of state.
DJT was the only person to come along that might bring the needed impetus, but that didn’t go over very well.
So put me down as, “hopeful, but not holding my breath”.
To address gerrymandering, just leave the current process in place, but have a statutory limit on the ratio of perimeter squared to area. That won't eliminate it, but will curb abuses, while not having the problems of giving it to an "independent" (ie, deep state) agency.
I would really like to see term limits. I’ve seen suggestions of two terms for senators and six terms for representatives for a total in either chamber of twelve w/ a possible twenty four if a politician served in both chambers. I lean more towards a total of twelve years w/ flexibility in what that looks like (any combination of twelve years of service in either or both chambers). I like the electoral college design and think it better protects state’s rights. If it were abolished, I worry that elections would be decided by a few dense urban areas whose needs/priorities are very different than rural areas.
It's been tried and failed. In 2016 Trump defeated the GOP Establishment to get the nomination for president. His voters were the effective third party. This was the only chance we'd ever get. But Trump/Kushner decided instead to join the GOP Establishment, invited Karl Rove back in, etc. Trump nullified his own election and congress joined in. In August 2017 House and Senate voted nearly unanimously to remove all Russia decisions from Trump and assign them to the Senate. The US is a military dictatorship. The entire political class is fine with that.
I would caution--look at the J6 aftermath. When the Imperial City on the Potomac was under military occupation for several months. The question is, Who was actually calling the shots? Was it the military that decided when to end the occupation, or was is the political establishment. I may be wrong, but I believe it was the political establishment.
Another consideration. Who drives the wokening of the military? Is it the career military types who are pushing for it, or are those career military types simply responding to incentives from the political class? I believe the latter.
And of course there are other aspects--corporatists, etc.
I was thinking more in terms of the conduct by the Elites of the foreign policy behind the Endless War. I'm not sure it matters whether the ultimate power behind the Endless War are generals, politicians, lawfare denizens or think tankers...or corporatists. It seems to me that it is a 'dictatorship' where the People have very little say.
I can buy into that overall concept. My point is that calling it a "military dictatorship" is conceptually distracting. In the modern world of large government all authority ultimately rests on power--the police power, whether civilian or military. To term it "military dictatorship" conjures up images that may distract from the actual ruling class and may lead to dismissal as conspiracy theory. Better to use terms like corporatist or managerialist or ruling elite, which are closer to our everyday experience.
That has always been my biggest disappointment with DJT, he seems to make horrible choices of personnel. People who were not only opposed to many of the policies that he championed, but who would actively sabotage his efforts as President to implement those policies.
Never understood why he let the foxes talk him into guarding the hen house.
Having said that however, as has been pointed out here many times, it’s amazing how much he was able to get done under those circumstances.
It wasn't about his personnel choices in Aug. 2017 when nearly 100% of US House and Senate (500+ people) voted to remove all Russia decisions from Trump and assign them to the Senate. In 2016 Trump had received many votes for advocating normalization of relations with Russia, but now our votes were officially nullified for all the world to see. 70+ years of using "Russia scare" to enslave US taxpayers to the weapons industry would continue. It proved that US voters were meaningless and that the war industry controlled the US. It humiliated and weakened Trump in front of the whole world, but he'd sold out his voters on day one. He'd immediately sent tanks to the Estonia-Russia border "to reassure NATO." He'd promised 2016 voters he'd pull back US military intervention, but 7 wks. after inauguration he bombed Syria for no reason, a week later bombed Afghan. He turned out to be a more vicious neocon than McCain. He got absolutely nothing done that 2016 voters thought they'd be getting (except the embassy). I knew it was all over before he was inaugurated, before he made Soros business partner Jared Kushner de facto president.
The Senate 98-2, with Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dissenting.
However, susan, while I'm not a fan of the arms industries, I do wonder whether there was more to it than that. Obviously Neocon support was a major part, but the globalist vision is not simply of war but of endless wealth. And globalist support would have been key. Certainly wealth flows from the arms industries, but it's a means to a larger end for globalists.
Re: August 2017: Aug. 6, 2017, "Playing Politics with the World’s Future," Consortium News, Alastaire Crooke
"The strategy of neutering President Trump in his dealings with Russia – and his administration’s own ignorance about complex Mideast issues – are combining to create grave dangers, writes ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke."
Finally … the U.S. Congress has produced a piece of legislation. And it passed with quasi-unanimous, bi-partisan support. Only its substance is not so much a deep reflection on the foreign policy interests of America, but rather, the desire to hurt, and incapacitate the U.S. President in any future dealings with Russia. (And never mind the worrying impulse towards conflict with Russia this entails, or its collateral damage on others).
The aim has been to see President Trump hog-tied, and “tarred and feathered” for his “risky behavior” on Russia. This aim simply has overpowered any other considerations – such as likelihood that the outside world will conclude that America’s ability to pursue or even to have a foreign policy is non-existent in the face of its internal civil war. It is a key juncture. For an overwhelming majority of Democratic and Republican Senators and Congressmen, bringing down “The Donald” is all – and the devil take the consequences for America, in the world.".....https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/06/playing-politics-with-the-worlds-future/
Wow. I, too, had forgotten these events and this chronology.
This re-affirms my belief that the U.S. had simply burned *all* bridges with Russia by the time it commenced its 'special military operation' in Ukraine.
Did Putin really have any choice?
(Crooke's recounting of Trump's missteps is also very painful to read. I have defended Trump repeatedly here, but I must acknowledge that not infrequently he simply shot himself in his own foot. He is certainly our imperfect Messiah and, if he runs again, I certainly hope he has learned from his mistakes.)
I am not sure he had much choice, unless he was ready to face down the shrieks of “Dictator!” if he forcefully and willfully went around the Interagency/Deep State and did the right thing. The pump had already been primed with the lies of alleged collusion; from there the step to false (but influential) accusations outright “treason” would have been short.
He has to expose once and for all the actual insurrection, as Mark says, perpetuated against Trump and our country.
One of many. I remember the angst that was created when DJT moved the Embassy to Jerusalem. “You just can’t do this! He’s gonna start a war! He’s just too ignorant to be allowed any say in foreign policy!” And on ad infintum.
My two cents on this: There's a lot of talk about a social credit system, where the people in charge get to look at everything you do, say and think. What if we designed systems to watch THEM that way? Start with every single financial transaction being immediately publicly available, and real time tracking of wealth accumulation, and its source. I think that might put 'we the people' back in charge, don't you?
Sorry I'm kinda late to the party, but.... vis-a-vis the Electoral College, I saw a post once upon a time by the Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives. Short and to the point. It's titled "Why an Electoral College?" Subtitle is "The Electoral College - Ameica's original Anti-Bully program". rmblackconservatives.com/flash_post/why-an-electoral-college/
You and Turley are wrapped around the axel. Get back to the basics on the best way for the will of the people to manifest and avoid corruption by a few.
Steve Chabot, OH Rep, used a system years ago. He returned the right to vote on congressional bills to his constituents. For example, his computer/phone system called thousands of registered voters before important votes. Answer your phone and a message succinctly briefed the issue. It then prompted a vote. Press "1" for yea, "2" for Nay, etc. Within minutes Steve would come on the phone and announce totals, the will of the people. He then entered the Congress and voted on behalf of his constituents. I shall never forget the drama in 2008, as he asked how to vote the Wall Street bailout.
He proved direct voting works. We don't need representatives. You vote. I vote. It is impossible for big money to corrupt all of us.
Does anybody besides me think that this is a phenomenal idea? My God.
Speaking of which, we would do well to remember that any government that thinks of itself as ruling over the people, as opposed to serving the people, is not doing what it was ordained by God to do. There will be Hell to pay.
I often struggle to articulate my thoughts - residual effect of college football and too many grenade simulators thrown into concrete rooms but, well.. I loved every minute of it so... :)
I am thoroughly convinced that the horse has left the barn when it comes to reform at the scale required. The left has this nation in a tightening grip - like a python and the teacher education colleges are part of that snake.
Colonists came here to escape various things and set up the systems they thought best for people to retain individual freedom and a civil society. An extraordinary group of well-educated men gathered and tried to write a document that enshrined their thoughts on government and what it took to keep liberty alive. The quote from Franklin regarding what they had wrought and whether we could keep it are apropos. As hard as some people have tried, we haven't "kept it."
I'm on record from years ago--comments on the interwebs--that perhaps the single most irresponsible SCOTUS decision since Dred Scott was overturning the line item veto. Well, there's competition for that title, but ... with Dobbs and Bruen the SCOTUS shows it knows the way forward.
A line item veto would, IMO, be the simplest and most effective way to break the Establishment grip on power.
What about term limits. Bust up the entrenched power in house and senate.
Going back some two and a half centuries an extraordinary group of people crafted a form of government that could be referred to by Lincoln as "of the people, by the people and for the people." Amazingly, it worked. Why doesn't it work now? For a system of laws to work, it has to be applied consistently and impartially. We no longer do that. We don't even pretend. So now Turley and a bunch of you want to change the rules, and in a short period of time there will be infractions, so we'll just change the rules again. Why bother?
My 2 Cents...
1. Jungle Primaries have not worked in CA. A better solution is end open primaries.
2. Redistricting the Democrats gamed beautifully in CA, and what happened is districts were made that Gerrymandered to help incumbents.
3. Ban election money from outside states. I have no idea if this is constitutional. Or what other problems it may cause.
4. End disparate impact. This results in racial gerrymandering that creates safe minority districts, that go far left. It distorts whom is elected. Cast Down Griggs Vs. Duke Power.
5. School vouchers in every day. Stop the indoctrination factories that are Public K-12, and Universities.
6. Severely restrict student loans. It's just feeding the leftist machine.
7. End Absolute immunity. Make it so the FBI, IRS have some individual liability.
8. End unionization of government workers.
9. Bring back the spoils system, or at a minimum reduce the civil service protection.
10. Re-organize the FBI, and create a separate counter terrorist organization.
11. Make the Internet Giants so they are publishers. Make it so they can't censor everything they don't like. This is having a huge impact on the culture.
12. Reduce the amount of laws / simplify them. The average person I have read commits 3 felonies a day. The over reach on laws is horrible. It's amazing Trump has survived legally so far.
13. Make losers who sue and lose, pay legal fees. Not my area of expertise, but something to reduce the amount of lawfare, as well as sue and settle, that is done. There are people going after Trump, elected, and there are NO CONSEQUENCES!!! Lois Lerner after what she did retired with a nice pension.
14. Bring back paper ballots. Same day voting with ID required, except in VERY RARE OCCASIONS. Make the elections in the US so they can be trusted. Require all districts to report at the same time, to end one district waiting till the count is done everywhere else, to see how many votes they need to manufacture. Create some steep penalties, especially for those hiding or stopping poll watchers. Right now they can put up barriers, and nothing happens.
15. Make Dr. individual owners again, instead of employees.
16. Reduce the amount of certification needed. This is a huge source of government power.
17. Allow people to be individual contractors.
18. Require all businesses to do e-verify. And put in place consequences. This would dry up a bunch of illegal jobs right away.
19. Build the wall.
20. Somehow have public financial reports on congress and top admin people on their family. Hunter Biden, Kerry's step son, Pelosi's son, etc. are all milking their connections.
21. End the Espionage Act? It seems to be mis-used. Some how reduce the power of the surveillance state that was created by Bush after 9-11.
22. Allow churches to be political. Right now the Left is allowed to be, but not anyone conservative. The separation of Church and State, was supposed to be there is no state religion. It was not about banning religion from anything to do with government.
23. Make colleges have some skin in the game on student loans. If there graduates can't pay, let the people declare bankruptcy after so many years.
24. End Critical Race Theory in Government, as well as education.
25. Make it so anyone can easily be in a job, and not have to be unionized.
26. Force unions to report to their members, all the political expenses in a very easy to read report.
27. Make it easy if union leaders are not backing up their workers, they are easily liable. Right now it's possible, but requires a lot of legal work to happen.
The problem with schemes of reform, such as Turley's, is people = common culture. All the clever schemes in the world will come to naught without a broad societal consensus and mutual trust, and that is exactly what has fallen apart.
“Broad societal consensus” currently follows a “narrative” that gets widely disseminated by someone that has the power and ability to remain in the public eye. Of course, that could mean a presidential “bully pulpit”, a blog, or media. Having said that, in a rare moment, Morning Joe bespoke the truth on air :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quU_Tbv96Wk
To your point, I would submit that there is no longer even societal consensus on what the role and purposes of our government should be. An easy way to discern that is to look at the disparate ways people now view the Constitution, the court system, and the law. THAT is the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed prior to making structural or procedural changes willy-nilly.
Without that basic agreement on the proper role and functions of government, there is nothing to guide proposed structural changes other than factionalism and self-interest and nothing to restrict or limit such changes other than the vicissitudes of power. Any proposed changes will just become points of contention between self-interested parties.
Something I wd like to see is congress critters serving & spending the majority of their time in office in their own districts. There is no need to spend almost the entire yr every yr in DC supposedly legislating. What do those scads of laws, rules & regs do to serve real people? Spend 9mos in your own district reviewing all the millions of pages of lawful nonsense & figure out what does & doesn't serve them. Take your top nonsense laws, regs & acts back to DC for 3mos & convince your colleagues what's nonsense & eliminate them. Stop viewing your job as one for making up new laws & instead place your emphasis on meaningfully & substantively serving your citizens!
At what point do you have enough laws? I'd say we're there already.
Turley has it mostly, if not all wrong, imo.
As a corollary to this, employees of federal agencies should be posted all around the country. There should only be a sliver of the total staff in & around DC. Make all those supposedly impartial civil servants get out of DC and actually live among the people they claim to serve. 9 out of 10, maybe 19 out of 20 or 99 out of 100, federal employees should be living anywhere but the DC area. Then they just might get a sense of how that leviathan impacts the common man.
Today all the DC swamp critters just view the rest of the country as "out there".
I'm old enough to remember when Trump proposed that w/an agency or two. Oh, the angst! Many bureaucrats threatened to quit in their whine fest on twitter. Perfect. 😂
If I may be allowed to plagerize, in order for any of these things to work, “first, we would have to kill all the politicians!”. And apologies to Charleton Heston, “ you’ll have to pry the power from the cold, dead hands of our current crop of “public servants”.
I think Turley completely misses the level of corruption that has brought us to this state of affairs. Did he miss the “Covid Fiasco”?
Did he miss the Lois Lerner Show at the IRS?
Did he miss the Maralago Raid of 2022? Did he miss the weaponization of the FBI and the Dept. of Justice? Did he miss the imposition of “rules based order” over “the rule of law”.
Everyone here knows the list by heart, so I won’t dwell on the obvious.
Yeh, I think it’s possible that things could change, but not until we get to the part that you described as “dicey” Mark. The impetus for real change, as opposed to what has always been offered as change -remember the forklift with all the rules and regulations stacked up on a pallet?-“The era of big government is over!”-Bill Clinton is still just as full of crap now as when he made that statement, that impetus will have to be real and relentless to affect the kind of change that it will take to right the ship of state.
DJT was the only person to come along that might bring the needed impetus, but that didn’t go over very well.
So put me down as, “hopeful, but not holding my breath”.
To address gerrymandering, just leave the current process in place, but have a statutory limit on the ratio of perimeter squared to area. That won't eliminate it, but will curb abuses, while not having the problems of giving it to an "independent" (ie, deep state) agency.
I would really like to see term limits. I’ve seen suggestions of two terms for senators and six terms for representatives for a total in either chamber of twelve w/ a possible twenty four if a politician served in both chambers. I lean more towards a total of twelve years w/ flexibility in what that looks like (any combination of twelve years of service in either or both chambers). I like the electoral college design and think it better protects state’s rights. If it were abolished, I worry that elections would be decided by a few dense urban areas whose needs/priorities are very different than rural areas.
It's been tried and failed. In 2016 Trump defeated the GOP Establishment to get the nomination for president. His voters were the effective third party. This was the only chance we'd ever get. But Trump/Kushner decided instead to join the GOP Establishment, invited Karl Rove back in, etc. Trump nullified his own election and congress joined in. In August 2017 House and Senate voted nearly unanimously to remove all Russia decisions from Trump and assign them to the Senate. The US is a military dictatorship. The entire political class is fine with that.
@susan
"The US is a military dictatorship. The entire political class is fine with that."
You may well be right. Explains a lot.
I would caution--look at the J6 aftermath. When the Imperial City on the Potomac was under military occupation for several months. The question is, Who was actually calling the shots? Was it the military that decided when to end the occupation, or was is the political establishment. I may be wrong, but I believe it was the political establishment.
Another consideration. Who drives the wokening of the military? Is it the career military types who are pushing for it, or are those career military types simply responding to incentives from the political class? I believe the latter.
And of course there are other aspects--corporatists, etc.
It's what you could call symbiotic.
I was thinking more in terms of the conduct by the Elites of the foreign policy behind the Endless War. I'm not sure it matters whether the ultimate power behind the Endless War are generals, politicians, lawfare denizens or think tankers...or corporatists. It seems to me that it is a 'dictatorship' where the People have very little say.
I can buy into that overall concept. My point is that calling it a "military dictatorship" is conceptually distracting. In the modern world of large government all authority ultimately rests on power--the police power, whether civilian or military. To term it "military dictatorship" conjures up images that may distract from the actual ruling class and may lead to dismissal as conspiracy theory. Better to use terms like corporatist or managerialist or ruling elite, which are closer to our everyday experience.
That has always been my biggest disappointment with DJT, he seems to make horrible choices of personnel. People who were not only opposed to many of the policies that he championed, but who would actively sabotage his efforts as President to implement those policies.
Never understood why he let the foxes talk him into guarding the hen house.
Having said that however, as has been pointed out here many times, it’s amazing how much he was able to get done under those circumstances.
It wasn't about his personnel choices in Aug. 2017 when nearly 100% of US House and Senate (500+ people) voted to remove all Russia decisions from Trump and assign them to the Senate. In 2016 Trump had received many votes for advocating normalization of relations with Russia, but now our votes were officially nullified for all the world to see. 70+ years of using "Russia scare" to enslave US taxpayers to the weapons industry would continue. It proved that US voters were meaningless and that the war industry controlled the US. It humiliated and weakened Trump in front of the whole world, but he'd sold out his voters on day one. He'd immediately sent tanks to the Estonia-Russia border "to reassure NATO." He'd promised 2016 voters he'd pull back US military intervention, but 7 wks. after inauguration he bombed Syria for no reason, a week later bombed Afghan. He turned out to be a more vicious neocon than McCain. He got absolutely nothing done that 2016 voters thought they'd be getting (except the embassy). I knew it was all over before he was inaugurated, before he made Soros business partner Jared Kushner de facto president.
The House vote was lopsided: 419-3.
The Senate 98-2, with Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dissenting.
However, susan, while I'm not a fan of the arms industries, I do wonder whether there was more to it than that. Obviously Neocon support was a major part, but the globalist vision is not simply of war but of endless wealth. And globalist support would have been key. Certainly wealth flows from the arms industries, but it's a means to a larger end for globalists.
Susan, can you provide particulars re August 2017? I'm interested.
Re: August 2017: Aug. 6, 2017, "Playing Politics with the World’s Future," Consortium News, Alastaire Crooke
"The strategy of neutering President Trump in his dealings with Russia – and his administration’s own ignorance about complex Mideast issues – are combining to create grave dangers, writes ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke."
Finally … the U.S. Congress has produced a piece of legislation. And it passed with quasi-unanimous, bi-partisan support. Only its substance is not so much a deep reflection on the foreign policy interests of America, but rather, the desire to hurt, and incapacitate the U.S. President in any future dealings with Russia. (And never mind the worrying impulse towards conflict with Russia this entails, or its collateral damage on others).
The aim has been to see President Trump hog-tied, and “tarred and feathered” for his “risky behavior” on Russia. This aim simply has overpowered any other considerations – such as likelihood that the outside world will conclude that America’s ability to pursue or even to have a foreign policy is non-existent in the face of its internal civil war. It is a key juncture. For an overwhelming majority of Democratic and Republican Senators and Congressmen, bringing down “The Donald” is all – and the devil take the consequences for America, in the world.".....https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/06/playing-politics-with-the-worlds-future/
Thanks. I'd forgotten all about this. A true insurrection on the part of the Deep State.
@susan
@Mark
Wow. I, too, had forgotten these events and this chronology.
This re-affirms my belief that the U.S. had simply burned *all* bridges with Russia by the time it commenced its 'special military operation' in Ukraine.
Did Putin really have any choice?
(Crooke's recounting of Trump's missteps is also very painful to read. I have defended Trump repeatedly here, but I must acknowledge that not infrequently he simply shot himself in his own foot. He is certainly our imperfect Messiah and, if he runs again, I certainly hope he has learned from his mistakes.)
I am not sure he had much choice, unless he was ready to face down the shrieks of “Dictator!” if he forcefully and willfully went around the Interagency/Deep State and did the right thing. The pump had already been primed with the lies of alleged collusion; from there the step to false (but influential) accusations outright “treason” would have been short.
He has to expose once and for all the actual insurrection, as Mark says, perpetuated against Trump and our country.
@July
Yes. Trump.
One of many. I remember the angst that was created when DJT moved the Embassy to Jerusalem. “You just can’t do this! He’s gonna start a war! He’s just too ignorant to be allowed any say in foreign policy!” And on ad infintum.
Yes to all of these.
Good points. I was hoping for some good feedback.