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.
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.
How 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.
> 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.
There'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.
For 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)_/¯
"some mechanism to not reode existing equity" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. 65% of the households are homeowners, who financially might easily be convinced they have nothing to gain and much to loose by building more housing.
Which also shows that lack of home ownership cannot be the driver of this situation. It might be one of the lies of the left, their "trans" story. Where I'm from the left is also pushing this housing narrative but it's not pulling in the votes, its impossible to solve, and i dont know if its the problem enough people have.
In 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.)
Evidently 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.
He 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
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.
That 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.
This 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.
Mass 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.
I 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.
Every racist that has ever existed also drank water. So what?
To me it sounds like you are insinuating that wanting to preseve your culture is racist - I don't see any other point to your comment. Correct me if I'm wrong.
No, however WHY you want to preserve your culture and HOW you intend to do it is what determines if it's racist.
A lot of people want to preserve their culture because they view it as superior. Historically, they view other cultures as lower-level, that of savages. They think themselves civilized. This is, obviously, racism.
And in regards to the how, what is the methodology? Do we perhaps build camps to put people of a certain brown complexion in? Do we round them up in the streets? How do you even tell who is who - by their skin tone? As you can see, there's a lot of potential for racism there.
People want to preserve their culture for the same reasons, because it is their culture, it is their identity. How? Simple. Stop bringing in people that do not share your culture inside your country in large numbers.
Historically, they thought other cultures to be not as civilized/savages because often those cultures were not as developed, or as civilized, and often contained human sacrifice rituals. Regardless, forcing their culture on them was wrong just like it is now.
The first step is stop mass immigration. Then revoke all non-highly-skilled labour visas etc. Then add a $50k/yr additional tax to all work related visas, paid by the employee.
Also, not talking about US since they made their bed by bringing in through slavery, but talking about majority of Europe.
It feels like you are so scared of being seen as racist that you will sacrifice your culture just so you don't get called a racist.
> Also, not talking about US since they made their bed by bringing in through slavery, but talking about majority of Europe.
The majority of Europe is composed of formally colonialist nations. I am sorry, but to quote you, "they have made their bed".
> It feels like you are so scared of being seen as racist that you will sacrifice your culture just so you don't get called a racist.
I don't have a strong tie to my culture because I don't care much. My culture is lame, mostly. I already left my culture behind when I entered the melting pot. And, there is no American culture. We are a mixed and varied people.
You're proposed a lot of ideas here and, well, they're kind of shit. You're forgetting one teensy little detail - why are they good? Who does this help, and how? Okay, we revoke a bunch of work visas and make a bunch of people's lives worse... and then what? How does that bring economic and social prosperity to your nation?
See, you can't speak about mass immigration being a problem like that's a foregone conclusion. The US has had immigration on a level most European nations couldn't even fathom, and yet, economically we run laps around them.
Don't worry, we have our own anti-immigration people here. And yes, they're just as stupid and short-sighted. Trump is so anti-immigration he's willing to destroy our economy for a goal he cannot even articulate.
> The majority of Europe is composed of formally colonialist nations. I am sorry, but to quote you, "they have made their bed".
Colonized, but majority did not bring people over like US did with slavery. Colonizing a country in the past does not mean that country can now invade you. Anyone that was brought over during colonization time can stay, but that number is tiny.
> And, there is no American culture. We are a mixed and varied people.
Not anymore. Used to be a Christian nation with a mix of European culture - that's what it was founded on. This started to change after 1965 Immigration Act.
> why are they good? Who does this help
They are good because they preserve the nation's people. They help the nation.
> How does that bring economic and social prosperity to your nation?
Regarding social prosperity, take a look at London, Paris, NY, SF, Brussels, Berlin vs Warsaw, Prague, Helsinki. See which one is safer, see which one people are happier in, see which one is more socially prosperous.
Economic prosperity at the cost of your nation is not worth it. We don't need cheap food delivery.
> The US has had immigration on a level most European nations couldn't even fathom, and yet, economically we run laps around them.
And what has this economical prosperity brought you? Rampant crime, homelessness, zombie cities, healthcare accessible only to the wealthy, one of the biggest wealth inequality in the developed world.
Is it worth, sacrificing your country's identity so that the banker numbers go up? So that wall street makes more money?
> Not anymore. Used to be a Christian nation with a mix of European culture - that's what it was founded on. This started to change after 1965 Immigration Act.
1. America was never a Christian nation. That's a far-right populist rewriting of history.
2. 1965 was quite a while ago! But even before then, European culture is extremely varied. Not to mention Chinese and Japanese immigrants before. It was a melting pot even then.
> They are good because they preserve the nation's people. They help the nation.
This means nothing, by the way. This is the problem with populist messaging. It's populist because it sounds good, but it also has to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
There's no substance, no logic, no reasoning. Just promises, built on appealing to emotions. A sense of national pride, of sovereignty. Past that, the details are TBD.
> Economic prosperity at the cost of your nation is not worth it. We don't need cheap food delivery.
Once again, this means nothing. "At the cost of your nation" is just a populist message, something a bit Hitler-y. But it's not an actual argument. What, specifically, is being lost?
> And what has this economical prosperity brought you? Rampant crime, homelessness, zombie cities, healthcare accessible only to the wealthy, one of the biggest wealth inequality in the developed world.
On the topic of crime because far-right populists just can't help but lie - crime in the US is down and has been trending down for decades. People like Trump will claim the opposite, because they are liars and in order to form a populist message you have to appeal to emotions (see above).
It's easy to convince people something needs to be done when you cater to their sense of survival. Of course, it's just not true, blatantly. It's not misinformation or disinformation - it is dishonesty. The same is true for many European nations. You're free to look at crime statistics. But, more importantly than being dishonest, the horse begets the carriage. Why does removing brown people fix crime? What's the mechanism for that? Is it because you propose, by their blood, they are more susceptible to crime? Ah, and there comes the racism I mentioned earlier. With far-right populist ideology, it always comes, if you just give it a squeeze. I have no doubt now you will say no, that's not the reason why, but I don't really care.
And, on some other topics:
1. Healthcare is the most accessible it's ever been in the US takes to the ACA. The far-right wants to dismantle this. This isn't a matter up for debate either, so please don't bother.
2. Wealth inequality is high because of the far-right repeatedly failing to tax the rich and letting them engage in anti-competitive behavior. Under populist far-right leaders like Trump, the wealth inequality will only increase.
True, because if Democrats had an anti-American POTUS hell-bent on destroying the country they would be helping the impeachment process, not defending them
I 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.
If 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.
From 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
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.