Talking with my spouse about how Democrats and "left leaning" (whatever that means) media don't seem to understand that the Trump administration's credibility crisis is actually a geopolitical credibility crisis for the United States as a whole.

[dave@alvarado.social]

@artemis Trump could have been shut down by the Republican party, except they had trained a generation of voters that a Republican in power is better than literally anything else. That backfired spectacularly when the Tea Party showed up and suddenly establishment Republicans were getting primaried from further right. Around the time of the Tea Party, the worst possible thing you could be called was a RINO.

[dave@alvarado.social]

@artemis that's what Trump stepped into--a party that was based on fanatical loyalty with a stacked SCOTUS (thanks Mitch). All Trump had to do was bring the MAGA element--the previous non-voters his populist rhetoric appealed to. That was enough to make Republicans up and down the ticket either turn MAGA or get primaried. Bam, no more checks, no more balances. One party, three branches of government, and a voting base listening to exactly one guy.

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@splonk @artemis

Californians know what he is like. Would be very surprised if he makes it very far in the Dem primary.

[dave@alvarado.social]

@artemis I don't blame Trump for destroying our system of government. I blame the filibuster. I blame refusing to hold confirmation hearings on open SCOTUS seats. I blame US Presidents going to war under entirely false pretenses to capitalize on tragedies.

Trump has done exactly nothing original. He just saw (or was taught) how the system was rigged and went full-throttle exploiting everything weakness of our government for his personal benefit.

[thetenuousorder@meow.social]

@dave @artemis having a two party presidential system at all

[lily_and_frog@mastodon.art]

@dave @artemis

Trump is just the guy who practically demonstrated how Kant's categorical imperatives work... by making the small corruption and general shithouserie a universal law.

[dalehagglund@hachyderm.io]

@artemis As a Canadian, I can confirm that for a great many of us, this is absolutely true.

Assuming that Dems win the House and Senate in the mid-terms, it is *still* entirely unclear to me that the senior Democrat leadership has the understanding of or the stomach for the changes that need to be done. And even assuming that I'm very happily proven wrong in that pessimism, it will take at a decade or more of steady progress before the US can even begin to earn back the trust it has lost.

[maddiem4@raphus.social]

@artemis I don't consider myself an accelerationist, but after watching Trump burst the bubble of the American Empire in some plausibly permanent ways... I gotta admit, maybe they had a point. There are certainly long-term silver linings to the ongoing cortisol bath of being a queer person under this administration. It's probably the most I've felt that, if we can survive this part, things will get better someday, and not in the old "at the rest of Earth's expense" way.

[pteryx@dice.camp]

@artemis @YakyuNightOwl
Eh, they remember the 1970s oil crisis. That's about it, though...

[androcat@toot.cat]

@dan_ballard

It's pretty clear that the trust was misplaced even at the best of times.

@artemis

[gkrnours@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@artemis "trust fill in drop and empty in buckets" and the US president just did the bucket challenge with the one filled with trust