…Yet it seems safe to say that the world no longer trusts U.S. promises, and perhaps no longer fears U.S. threats, the way it used to. The problem, however, isn’t Biden; it’s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.
Right now America is a superpower without a fully functioning government. Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can’t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies. The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party. At this point it’s hard to see how anyone can become speaker without Democratic votes — but even less extreme Republicans refuse to reach across the aisle.
And even if Republicans do somehow manage to elect a speaker, it seems all too likely that whoever gets the job will have to promise the hard right that he will betray Ukraine.
Given this political reality, how much can any nation trust U.S. assurances of support? How can we expect foreign enemies of democracy to fear America when they know that there are powerful forces here that share their disdain?
To be fair, a lot of countries started scrutinizing the US after the Bush election in 2000.
The Iraq war, intelligence about Guantanamo, the whole thing with PRISM and Snowden, and the entire Trump administration has made the US look increasingly unstable internationally.
The Iraq war, intelligence about Guantanamo, the whole thing with PRISM and Snowden, and the entire Trump administration has made the US look increasingly unstable internationally.
It looks that way because that’s what we’ve become. The question is how much damage are we going to do to ourselves and the rest of the world as we scrabble to keep the influence that we’re losing.
I don’t care how much you damage yourselves, just stop interfering around and role playing world police.
But then Republicans couldn’t play out their favorite fantasy of authoritarian strong man.
Hmm, I wonder why the world is feeling worse and worse about an American-controlled world where the powers that be in America have a history of reaching across oceans to assassinate democratically elected politicians, install fascist governments friendly to American business interests, make life worse off for people in developing nations, and allow foreign governments to reign untold destruction onto innocent civilians with American-made weapons without recourse. What a fucking mystery.
I think the mystery is, what took them so long to notice?
I don’t think the problem is noticing. People all over have hated this USA influence for ages. The thing is: who could do something about it? It took decades for China’s economy to get where it is today. People aren’t dumb. The skinny kid will usually not get into a fight with the buffed bully if there is not much chance of winning. With the US tripping itself more and more lately, it’s just opportunity presenting itself.
That makes sense.
Yes
From a British perspective I know there was always a huge political obsession with maintaining the ‘Special Relationship’ with the US up until Trump came in and Brexit happened basically simultaneously making us more irrelevant.
It’s still there in a half hearted transactional way when it comes to intelligence sharing, day to day stuff etc. But in terms of the PM sucking up to the President photo opportunities to get some media attention - that aspect seems to have died pretty quickly.
It strikes me there are a lot of similarities with our politics right now though - lack of faith from the voters, rampant cronyism, lawbreaking heads of state FFS, culture war obsessions dominating the discourse when the average person is more worried about affording their rent/mortgage at the end of the month. I’d say our government is dysfunctional on the same level but the difference is we stopped being a superpower way back when.
I’m rambling way off topic, sorry. Reading that just reminded me of when our politicians used to be all over the American ones as being the glamorous ones to suck up to (whether the public agreed or not) but things have definitely changed.
Pax Americana is such an absurd concept. We JUST got out of a pair of twenty year wars. What fucking pax? This is just nonsense
The term was around before this war, and doesn’t even refer to peace as much as it refers to protected trade routes, with America doing the protecting. The idea is that America enables global trade by ensuring that trade isn’t plundered or threatened by neighboring countries, unstable regimes, or pirates by patrolling those trade routes with massive aircraft carriers to make sure everyone’s following international rules. It also sometimes refers to trade effectively being brokered globally through American channels (effectively the case regardless of agreement so long as the American dollar is also the exchange currency, as it used to be the near-exclusive reserve currency for the IMF), which massively, disproportionately benefits America, but also benefits global trade. Before the Pax Americana was the Pax Brittanica, largely in the same way and for the same reasons. The original term (what the Pax Brittanica referred to, before the sun started setting on the British Empire) was the Pax Romana.
Pax [Latinized empire name] doesn’t mean there’s no wars. It just means there’s no wars that [Latinized empire name] doesn’t want.
More properly, as the person above you said, it means no wars that disrupt commerce. The Romans were fighting wars throughout the entire history of the Empire, but during the Pax Romana, you could travel throughout much of Europe and know you were likely safe from being harmed.
International prices of sunflower and wheat caused by Ukrainian conflict wants a word with you
Because Ukraine was a country when Ancient Rome existed?
A good example of this is that the Crimean war happened right in the middle of what is generally considered the Pax Britannica
There is the chaos that Republicans are causing in Congress, but potentially the revelation that Russia isn’t quite the threat the world thought they were and the emergence of China and others as world powers have probably helped to blunt our influence somewhat too. It’s not really a bipolar world anymore, there’s a range of players on the field now, moreso than during most of the latter 20th century. But given how effective our weapons have been in Ukraine, shows that we at least have our massive military budget going for us. We’re not dependable, but if push comes to shove , we’ve got a big stick we can walk in with… assuming our hyper-short attention span can maintain focus long enough.
Russia has switched tactics though. They are buying foreign politicians and using hybrid cyber warfare now, quit successfully too, at least until 2021.
There was no “Pax” in Pax Americana. There were continuous wars: Korean War, Vietnam War, various drug wars in South America, Israel-Arab wars, Gulf War I, Gulf War 2 Boogaloo, Ukraine. It is more accurate to call it Pax Nucleai.
US proved to destabilizing democracy for a long time now, see Wikipedia on Iran and south America, and not respecting sovereignity of Cuba. No trust there.
it’s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.
personally it’s the fuckload of tremendous bullshit usa still tries to shove down people throats. I could be wrong though, eh
Nah, you right.
it’s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.
No it isn’t, atleast not the root problem. Root problem is the core rules etc of USA democracy and governing, which allows such dysfunctional situation to arise in the first place. The two party system, the bicameral setup leading to endless feuds and inability to pass legislation, the weird rules accepted in existence by internal procedural rules like the filibuster.
For that both parties are guilty, since I have heard neither of them go “we have a constitutional ruleset problem, we should update the constitution. The rules might have been good for 1700s and much smaller USA. This is 2000s and way bigger and different USA”.
one doesn’t get to claim “I’m surprised the the Leopard ate my face”, if one has been feeding and raising a leopard cub for decades and hasn’t decided “maybe we should send the Leopard to a zoo, maybe we should make a rule private home is not right place for Leopard to live in”.
Neither party wants to change the system, since it keeps them as number 1 or number 2. You don’t get to claim “we have nothing to do with the systemic dysfunctions”, if one keeps propping up a dysfunctional system. Doesn’t matter who specifically manifests the symptoms. Systemic dysfunctions is systemic.
Political parties are not mentioned in the constitution.
That document does need an amendment however.
The issue comes from First Past the Post voting.
There’s math that shows that over a series of elections, FPtP naturally forces the creation of a two party system.
Every ordinal voting system falls prey to this issue to a greater or lesser extent, but there are cardinal voting systems that are completely immune.
My current favorite is STAR, it’s dead simple. You rate each candidate on a scale of zero to five stars. Zero being the worst, five being the best.
To count the votes, you just add up the star count for each candidate. You don’t need to average the count, but I’m sure that news media would.
The spectate is you take the two candidates with the highest star count and put them into an automatic runoff. You look at each ballot cast, and if either of the two candidates is preferred on that ballot (higher star rating) then the ballot goes to them. If there is no preference between the two, the vote is counted as No Preference and reported in the final tally.
Doesn’t matter that parties aren’t mentioned. Political parties are inevitable predictable outcome of the ruleset.
Also actually one of the biggest fixes USA could have is getting rid of single winner elections districts. Well President has to be single winner (though again why the heck electors should be single winner or even better why have electors in first place). However there is no reason to have single winner legislative body elections, since there is large number of members anyway. Only reason it is that way is, because Congress decided to make law about it.
Since one key truth is: there is only so much one can do with the ruleset to make things fairer while having just single winner. All the other votes get wasted by default, except the winner. The only amount of power one can win is 100% or 0%.
To have better proportionality one has to use multiple winners (or mixed member proportional, which is still multiple winners just indirectly via the party quotients). Since it allows dividing political power in more granular amounts than 0% and 100%. Like say 33%, 25% or 20%.
After that one can start talking, we’ll how should we allocate the winner of each for example 25% share of power in the district.
This would also increase political activity, since previously apathetic voters would know “my candidate doesn’t have to carry the whole district, we are just aiming to get 1 of the 5 seats. That is much more achievable. Yeah the big two probably grab say 2 each, but hey with good luck there is realistic change we get that 1/5”.
Where as there was snowballs chance smaller player could take a single winner district as whole.
I honestly look at parliamentary systems and don’t see them doing much better. Their coalitions are becoming increasingly fragile as everyone seems to become more polarized and less accepting of democracy and compromise.
I think the only workable option is sortition.
Root problem is the core rules etc of USA democracy and governing, which allows such dysfunctional situation to arise in the first place. The two party system, the bicameral setup leading to endless feuds and inability to pass legislation, the weird rules accepted in existence by internal procedural rules like the filibuster.
The dysfunction of our the current political system is certainly to blame for a lot of the trust that America has lost. Regarding the two party system, I’m a big advocate for supporting the Forward party as a potential way out of our mess. One of its main policy positions is pushing ranked choice voting. This hopefully allows people to break out of the myth that any vote not for a major party is a wasted vote.
They are starting by focusing locally on the state level as that is where the election laws are decided. It’s certainly not a perfect organization but it makes more sense than expecting the parties to fix the flawed system they benefit from.
Fun fact, under First Past the Post voting, supporting a third party is the absolute worst thing you can do.
It’s called the spoiler effect, and it often results in the absolute worst candidate winning an election.
If you support a third party that is loosely aligned with one of the major parties, you can end up in a situation where candidate A gets 40%, and your third party candidate, whose platform is closest to A, gets an astounding 15%, and they both lose to Candidate B, the most hated of both A voters and Third Party voters because B got 45%.
The classic example is the 1992 presidential election, where Clinton won with 43% of the vote.
The 2000 election is another example where Bush won* with 307 votes, far less than the 97488 votes that Ralph Nader got,
*the recount was stopped early so that Bush would win.
The point being, you cannot have a third party until you change the voting system to actually support third parties. And that means a cardinal voting system, such as STAR (my current favorite)
The point being, you cannot have a third party until you change the voting system to actually support third parties
Sorry, but that is simply false. There are 50+ third parties that have run candidates under their name in recent years Wikipedia. Ultimately who succeeds is up to who people vote for and when you categorically state you can’t have third parties you are trying to tell others who they should vote for. Support who you want to support. By all means if you want the status quo to never change continue doing what everyone else does. But by supporting alternative voting systems you are already saying you think our system needs to change.
It is pretty naive to think that the existing parties will change the existing FPTP voting system that explicitly benefits them. It’s like expecting a company to advocate for more paying more taxes. It’s pretty unlikely to happen on a wide scale.
I am aware of how the current system, which is why I advocate for supporting a party and people who are actually advocating for changing the existing system. As my above comment mentioned, they are starting by focusing locally on the state level as that is where the election laws are decide. Just like STAR voting did in Eugene OR.
If people want to vote for a third party they can. It helps no one for you to attack people for expressing their rights in the way they choose. It is not their fault the system is rigged against third parties. By supporting a third party like Forward, they are at least expressing support for changing how the system is rigged instead of tacitly accepting that the system is rigged.
Ultimately, STAR is just another of way of reforming the FPTP system that can work if it is supported locally. That is same goal as the policy positions of Forward which includes a similar way via Ranked Choice Voting. If you support one, you should be supportive of the other since they are very similar ways of achieving the same goal. Quibbling over the details is largely counterproductive. Perfect is the enemy of good in this case. Both are good improvements to the current system.
Okay, you’re not understanding the simple fact that third parties are actually harmful under First Past the Post.
You are giving people bad advice.
This is an older video that explains it quite well.
The concept talked about is Duverger’s Law
Here’s a scholarly article about it.
As to passing voting reform, it does happen. RCV is gaining (and losing) ground, and Approval has been used in a few elections now. STAR is just better. It’s newer, so doesn’t have as much of a push behind it, but there are plenty of advocates. Want to make a real difference? Advocate for voting reform.
Okay, you’re not understanding the simple fact that third parties are actually harmful under First Past the Post.
Who do they harm?
You are giving people bad advice.
Please specify
I understand the concepts but reject the idea that existing leaders will support something that will harm their party.
Want to make a real difference? Advocate for voting reform.
I am. The average American (wrongly) thinks of politics as a team sport. I am advocating for a team that supports voter reform.
Who do they harm?
In a FPTP voting system, a vote for a third party will dilute the vote of the party closest-aligned to the preferences of the voter casting it- an effect that implicitly aids the party farthest-away from the voter’s preference. This means the winner doesn’t need a majority, they just need divided opponents.
In a ranked-choice system, by contrast, the voter can signal their top preference without creating the spoiler-effect described above.
The existence of this spoiler effect in FPTP requires voters to vote based on how they bet other voters will vote, instead of signaling their actual preferences, in order to avoid dividing their support and throwing the election to the opposing side. This prevents the parties from knowing what voters really want, while giving donors and insiders massive leverage by way of giving them the ability to influence which candidates voters will bet ‘can win’. It’s harmful to democracy, to the voters, and to the public interest, but it’s fantastic for party insiders and donors that want things the public doesn’t want.
You just agreed with my point. Third parties harms the existing parties by adding the possibility of voters having more choice than either of the two dominant parties. Therefore it is naive to think party insiders would implement this change willingly. Hence supporting the Forward party which has committed to changing the FPTP via RCV.
In a FPTP voting system, a vote for a third party will dilute the vote of the party closest-aligned to the preferences of the voter casting it- an effect that implicitly aids the party farthest-away from the voter’s preference. This means the winner doesn’t need a majority, they just need divided opponents.
In what way does addition to a third sum dilute the first two sums?
If Candidate A has one vote, Candidate B has one vote, and Candidate C has one vote, does adding one to Candidate C’s sum somehow detract from Candidate A’s sum?
Does it somehow give Candidate A an advantage over Candidate B, who still have equal and unchanged sums?
Of course not. That would violate basic math.
It’s interesting, however, that you highlight a basic need for divided opponents as the con to a third party… yet it applies better to the current duopolistic nature where either party is increasingly dependent on nothing more than the polarized and divided voterbase. Look no further than continued blue no matter who etc. and ongoing painting of entire parties in a given light to the neglect of the actual candidates.
The existence of this spoiler effect in FPTP requires voters to vote based on how they bet other voters will vote, instead of signaling their actual preferences, in order to avoid dividing their support and throwing the election to the opposing side.
FPTP places no such requirement on voters - the only presence of such is your absurd insistence such a requirement exists.
Do you see this requirement in place in some form of legislation you must adhere to? No?
Ironically, if a voter signaled their actual preferences - to the disregard of blue no matter who and similar nonsense - it’s likely third parties would be faring far better. Unfortunately, you and others here seem to be dead-set on vote shaming outside the duopoly.
This prevents the parties from knowing what voters really want
Oh? Canvassing has ceased to exist? The results of other elections - especially those in primaries where the primary differences are policy choices and messaging (to those policies) - can’t serve as any form of indicator?
Interesting.
while giving donors and insiders massive leverage by way of giving them the ability to influence which candidates voters will bet ‘can win’
You once-more describe the current state of things while attempting to describe some other state of things.
It’s harmful to democracy, to the voters, and to the public interest, but it’s fantastic for party insiders and donors that want things the public doesn’t want.
The only harm here is your insistence a voter should vote how you believe they should vote to the neglect of their actual preferences - a thing that actually damages democracy.
I’ve explained the spoiler effect of Durvurger’s Law and linked to great resources, but again, under First Past the Post, a vote for a third party is almost indistinguishable from a vote for the ideologically opposite main party candidate.
In 1992, Ross Perot ran the single most successful third party campaign in US history. If he had not run, George H. W. Bush would have likely been reelected.
In 2000, Ralph Nader ran an average performing campaign and scored just over 1% of the vote in Florida, and that alone made sure that George W. Bush was elected.
Because under First Past the Post, a vote for a third party candidate is a not just a wasted vote, it actually helps your least liked candidate win. Because if you had held your nose and voted for the lesser of two evils, the lesser would have won.
Again, if you want actual change, it’s only possible through electoral reform. Hell, even the stupid Forward Party that you linked to is pushing for electoral reform, because that’s the only chance Yang has of being elected to anything outside of maybe a mayoral race.
I personally recommend this group. The Equal Vote Coalition.
Their site explains the spoiler effect in pictures. (calling it vote-splitting)
You answered none of the clarifications I asked for. You just repeated the same things you already said. Since your answer doesn’t address the questions I asked you in a clear way, I will.
Who do they harm?
Third parties and Voting Reform both harm the existing parties by promoting more competition. That is good for the American people and democracy.
You are trying to claim third parties are bad because they split the vote. Splitting the vote is otherwise known as people voting for what they believe in. That is in no way a bad thing. It is how democracy is supposed to work. No party or person is entitled to your vote they have to earn it. It is not bad advice to support a political party or candidates that supports changing the FPTP system. In fact it is exactly what you are arguing for doing.
Third parties on a presidential scale is entirely beside the point to both changing the voting system and the Forward party. If you read through my replies you would see that Forward is starting by focusing locally on the state level so the anecdotes about third party presidential candidates are irrelevant.
There are hundreds of thousands of elected positions in the US and the majority are uncontested. That is what is bad for America. Restricting peoples choices down to at most 2 viewpoints is the problem. And the solution is electing politicians who will work to prioritize voting reform like Forward candidates.
I have no idea why you are calling a group that is pushing for the similar policies you are stupid. Seems pretty counterintuitive to me.
Okay, you’re not understanding the simple fact that third parties are actually harmful under First Past the Post.
What utter nonsense.
I believe you aren’t understanding that third parties are necessary to bring about significant change in a duopolistic system.
The concept talked about is Duverger’s Law
Ahhh… the “law” that theorizes not that “third parties are actually harmful”, but rather that “plurality would act to delay the emergence of new political forces and would accelerate the elimination of weakening ones, whereas proportional representation would have the opposite effect”.
Here’s a scholarly article about it.
An attempt to provide evidence for a “law” after-the-fact? Interesting order of operations, there.
Did you have any citation from that article, or was this just an attempt to drop a pay-walled article and move on?
Want to make a real difference? Advocate for voting reform.
No form of voting reform will be allowed by either establishment party; the only way this will come about is through introduction of a third party - any third party - which can be used to force the establishment parties away from simply maintaining power.
Fun fact, under First Past the Post voting, supporting a third party is the absolute worst thing you can do.
Oh?
It’s called the spoiler effect, and it often results in the absolute worst candidate winning an election.
If you support a third party that is loosely aligned with one of the major parties, you can end up in a situation where candidate A gets 40%, and your third party candidate, whose platform is closest to A, gets an astounding 15%, and they both lose to Candidate B, the most hated of both A voters and Third Party voters because B got 45%.
I note you predicate this theory on the flawed assumption that a third party … is loosely aligned with one of the major parties.
Which third parties in the United States would you say are loosely aligned with either the Democrats or the Republicans? Beyond the DSA, there’s… nada, and even the DSA is a stretch.
The classic example is the 1992 presidential election, where Clinton won with 43% of the vote.
The 2000 election is another example where Bush won* with 307 votes, far less than the 97488 votes that Ralph Nader got,
Oh? So the fault of this is on the voter for choosing to support a candidate in alignment with their values - one who represents their interests - in an honest use of the vote, rather than the candidate failing to win over the voters?
Do you believe there’s nothing a given candidate could do to, say, win over a given set of voters? No reflection and analysis to be done on why voters are voting a specific way - say, what policies are repelling them, what policies might attract them, etc? The voter is the only one able to act differently?
You seem to entirely invert responsibility.
The point being, you cannot have a third party until you change the voting system to actually support third parties. And that means a cardinal voting system, such as STAR (my current favorite)
This is an outright lie; a third party can be supported by simply attaining votes. There is no real mechanism or barrier beyond the lies and propaganda you’re sharing here which discourages people from voting honestly.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
You might be tempted to engage in economic determinism, saying that the United States has lost influence because it doesn’t dominate the world economy the way it once did.
Indeed, our strong recovery from the Covid recession, combined with the stumbles of some geopolitical rivals, makes U.S. economic dominance look more durable than it has for a long time.
In the latest crisis, Israelis, including Benjamin Netanyahu, have praised Biden for his prompt support, which probably explains why Trump has lashed out at a former political ally.
Where Trump huffed and puffed ineffectually against Chinese trade surpluses (which were never the problem), Biden has imposed sanctions that the Center for Strategic and International Studies calls a “policy of actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry — strangling with an intent to kill.”
Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can’t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies.
The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party.
The original article contains 865 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
An opinion article which lambasts a party while pretending another is pristine? Surely there’s no agenda to such balanced persuasion…
Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Krugman knows he’s never going to describe the Democrats as anything like “pristine.” But pretending “both sides are the same” is insanely dishonest.
Is that more, less, or about the same intentional dishonesty as portraying one side as pristine and flawless and the other as the exact opposite?
That thing you accuse him of, but he didn’t do?
Back under your bridge, now. We’re done here.
Guys, guys… I see the reports on both sides. Nothing here (so far) is actionable from a mod perspective. Take a break. Cool it down. Agree to disagree. Krugman definitely has a bias, this is why it’s an opinion piece. It’s cool. Opinions are allowed.
The thing he quite demonstrably did as shown by the article in question?
Call someone a troll when it isn’t hypocrisy.
Edit: My god, self-important smug trollbait is literally all you post
If you look at someone’s post history you’ve lost
Guys, guys… I see the reports on both sides. Nothing here (so far) is actionable from a mod perspective. Take a break. Cool it down. Agree to disagree. Krugman definitely has a bias, this is why it’s an opinion piece. It’s cool. Opinions are allowed.
I just reported you to you.
The report of your report has been noted.
