Soft secession?

[Paleophyte]

This is an extreme idea but then again, so is having a felonious, Hitler-like dictator wannabe as President.

Little if anything should be off the table when it comes to getting rid of him.

The difficulty is that, as abhorrent as the orange stain in America's underwear is, Trump is the symptom, not the problem.

[AFTT47]

This is an extreme idea but then again, so is having a felonious, Hitler-like dictator wannabe as President.

Little if anything should be off the table when it comes to getting rid of him.

The difficulty is that, as abhorrent as the orange stain in America's underwear is, Trump is the symptom, not the problem.

That is true but there is no symptom like him. There are many more shit stains who are just as malevolent but no other has the Jedi-like power to blind and manipulate the weak-minded MAGAts the way he does.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is an extreme idea but then again, so is having a felonious, Hitler-like dictator wannabe as President.

Little if anything should be off the table when it comes to getting rid of him.

The difficulty is that, as abhorrent as the orange stain in America's underwear is, Trump is the symptom, not the problem.

When I have a cold, I take steps to relieve the symptoms. Eventually, the cold goes away and I suffer less during the process.

Boru

[Paleophyte]

I'm not say that I'll be sorry to see him bleach himself out, quite the opposite. I'm saying that if you don't treat the underlying problem, then America will just keep crapping its collective pants. I don't think anybody wants to see what the Americans can scrape up that's worse than President Shartstain.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm not say that I'll be sorry to see him bleach himself out, quite the opposite. I'm saying that if you don't treat the underlying problem, then America will just keep crapping its collective pants. I don't think anybody wants to see what the Americans can scrape up that's worse than President Shartstain.

Right. Treating the symptoms helps, but reaching a cure requires removing the base cause. In a nation of 330+ million people, that's a big ask, because the base cause is that tens of millions of people believe this shit.

That's a lot of minds to change, and to be frank, a lot of rigid minds. America is in the midst of a historical paroxysm, one which will ramify through decades going forward -- precisely because treating the symptoms doesn't treat the cause, and treating the cause is such a monumental task that it will require decades to recover ... if we indeed do.

Still address the symptoms, but don't think for a moment the job is done. This is a historical motif that arises somewhat regularly in American history -- "Know-Nothings", Bryan's populism, American isolationism in the 30s (infused with an appreciation of the fascism of the times), McCarthy's persecutions, and now this. Address the symptoms, but understand that like any illness, if you seem to be cured and then relapse, very often the relapse is worse. You finish your antibiotic prescription for exactly the same reason, while you take some Aleve or Dayquil.

[AFTT47]

^ Yeah, we have two different problems.

One is an economic imbalance that has reached a critical point. People have reached the point of desperation where they are open to radical changes they would not normally be willing to consider. That leads them to drop their critical thinking to the point to where they can be blinded and manipulated by a supreme shitstain like Trump.

The second problem is the supreme shitstain himself. He is a danger to fuck up the system beyond the point of recoverability - much like the Empire in the Star Wars universe where the only possible fix is armed rebellion.

I would have preferred to have fixed the problem before we got to this point but that ship seems to have sailed. Now, we are in a very bad place. We need to neutralize Trump first, then deal with the root problem which led to his installation as Emperor in the first place.

[Thumpalumpacus]

^ Yeah, we have two different problems.

One is an economic imbalance that has reached a critical point. People have reached the point of desperation where they are open to radical changes they would not normally be willing to consider. That leads them to drop their critical thinking to the point to where they can be blinded and manipulated by a supreme shitstain like Trump.

The second problem is the supreme shitstain himself. He is a danger to fuck up the system beyond the point of recoverability - much like the Empire in the Star Wars universe where the only possible fix is armed rebellion.

I would have preferred to have fixed the problem before we got to this point but that ship seems to have sailed. Now, we are in a very bad place. We need to neutralize Trump first, then deal with the root problem which led to his installation as Emperor in the first place.

Yes. Trump is the proximate threat, but the tides and currents that floated him topside, those problems are much deeper-seated.

[Angrboda]

In history, few nations last more than a few hundred years. I don't know whether that's true anymore. Instead of collapsing like the Roman empire, they just degrade and fade away. Look at the once mighty nations of Europe and Asia. More and more of them are falling into populism and fascism. I think for better or worse, America has just run its course. When the Constitution was new, it was an effective form of government. But like all things, over time, people find its weaknesses and holes and learn to exploit them. As a basically static document, it is ill-equipped to deal effectively with such forces. It's not all one thing, either, in terms of what is leading to the apparent dissolution of the U.S. In any capitalist system, there are winners and losers, in industry, and in government. But the losers aren't going to go away silently. They rebel. They resist their ultimate defeat, as anyone does an existential threat. There are so many strands. Authoritarianism, cult behavior, the differences between left and right -- but they all seem pointed in the same direction.

[Deesse23]

"Nation states" as we preceive them do only exist for a few hundred years, at best. Before them, people didnt think in terms of "nation".For most of history we had kingdoms, empires, commonwealths, mostly run by a single person/rulre or a very small group. They considered their realm to be "theirs". The population was just an asset.

The "collapse", of the (western) Roman Empire lasted.....100y or 200y, at best. When you look at current events, they might seem to be spanning long times, mostly because one perceive their own lifetimes as "long". The truth is, back then empires both faded away slowly, and suddenly collapsed. In a wider historical context, few "modern" countries last particularly long and "collapsed" quite quickly. We are living in very turbulent times in general. In this context the USA is at the beginning of being more than just a blink in history. Truth be told, matters also depend a bit on the impact a nation or empire has had. The mongols and Alexander for example were extremely short lived* bu thad impact due to the sudden, "worldwide" and decisive impact they had. The Roman and Byzantine Empire were extremely long lived and only gradually grew and faded.

Weakness of the US constitution:
It is not weaker or stronger than many other constitutions. No constitution can be "fool proof". Thats not the issue. I have said it many times: The problem of the US constitution is twofold:
Significant parts of the institutions that hold legally, and de facto, power have conspired to undermine work against the constitution.
A significant part of the population either is ok with it, does not care or is operating under the delusion that in four years everything will be "back to normal" (the second and third group may overlap).

Role of capitalism:
We may witness the unfolding of historical proof that capitalist economies, based on a minimum of regulation, on a maximum of "freedom" (and thus influence by the rich and powerful) actually have less of a halftime (= less stable) than pluralist nations with a social security, because in the long run, people of the latter are more likely to identify with their country and oppose to what has happened in the US before it can happen. The future will tell.

*even if you include the successor states!

[Thumpalumpacus]

Role of capitalism:
We may witness the unfolding of historical proof that capitalist economies, based on a minimum of regulation, on a maximum of "freedom" (and thus influence by the rich and powerful) actually have less of a halftime (= less stable) than pluralist nations with a social security, because in the long run, people of the latter are more likely to identify with their country and oppose to what has happened in the US before it can happen. The future will tell.

*even if you include the successor states!

Related to this is the problem of income disparity. We may say that the instability of a society or nation is in direct proportion to the concentration of wealth.