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| Home Front: Politix |
| The New Post-Trump Constitution |
| 2020-01-17 |
| h/t Instapundit It's VDH [National Review] - The Left sees Donald Trump’s comportment, rallies, and tweets as a new low in presidential behavior that justifies extraordinary countermeasures. But Trump’s personal characteristics are idiosyncratic and may or may not become institutionalized by subsequent presidents. And it is not as if liberal icons such as FDR, LBJ, JFK, and Bill Clinton suddenly became saintly in office. What is far scarier is the reaction to Trump, in both the constitutional and political sense. What follows are likely the new norms for the next generation of presidents, and they will probably be equally applied to Democrats who implemented them in the Trump era. 1) Private presidential phone calls with foreign leaders will be leaked and printed in the major media. The point will be not so much to air breaking news as to embarrass the president or to use such disclosures to stymie his foreign policy. Those who leak such information will be canonized as part of a "resistance." Prominent officials in government will publish anonymous op-eds in the New York Times bragging about how they are daily undermining a new president’s administration. 2) Impeachment is now a casual affair. It requires no report of illegal or unethical behavior by a special counsel or special prosecutor. It will not be bipartisan but solely the action of the opposition party in the House when it is in the majority. Public support will not matter. Much less will it be needed. Impeachment will be applied equally to a first- or second-term presidency. And it will become useful in a reelection year to help drive down an incumbent’s popularity. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #3 Usually, I love reading VDH. This is way too dark to finish. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2020-01-17 18:10 |
| #2 IOW, like Hamilton or Cats, The Shitshow is here to stay and will likely have a multi-decade run. Several other implications not mentioned by VDH: 1. Americans will lose whatever faith they still have in the superiority of US political institutions. The Shitshow is not compatible with - stands in direct opposition to - the rule of law, due process, and other constitutional rights. 2. Because of #1, popular support for spreading democracy abroad will collapse. Both varieties of globalism - neoconservatism and Islam-appeasing apologetic Zero/Thunberg-ism - will disappear from our main parties' platforms, to be replaced by either Jacksonianism or a left-wing, pro-Castro and -Madura, Bernie Bro variant of isolationism. 3. Also related to #1 but specific to its devastating effects on free speech, American political discourse will go underground, . The media will largely be ignored, as it was in the communist regimes of postwar Eastern Europe ("there's no news in Pravda; no truth in Izvestia"). Americans will be forced to develop two personas similar to what East German or Soviet citizens developed: the 'official,' safe PC face shown to colleagues, neighbors and Party officials, and the real face shown only behind closed doors or under the online cloak of anonymity. 4. Related to #3, American culture and society will solidify around tribes defined mainly by residential living - dense urban vs exurban / rural - and family structure. The white male-hating culture of Hollywood, the media, and the academic and public school complex will be offset by a strengthened, vigorous Jacksonian-leaning "Resistance" culture with its own information sources, school curriculum and cultural influences. What's not clear is where these groups will go, politically and culturally speaking: - Asians and other immigrants (from Cuba, Venezuela, the USSR etc) and their descendants who remember communism's horrors but who are outside of and not fully appreciative of the Jacksonian culture - white suburban families with school-aged boys whose politics are liberal but who know the schools are a joke and the Woke culture are BS Whoever captures the sympathies and votes of those groups will dominate IS politics for a generation at least. Here endeth the rant. His haec hoc. |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-01-17 08:55 |
| #1 That's the problem with making monsters. Sure, you made it, good job! But once it gets out, it's not yours anymore. |
| Posted by: Beau 2020-01-17 06:43 |