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What’s the likelihood that this just ALL flops back in 4 years?
Just one giant omnibus EO that every flipping presidential party signs which renames the gulf of America, Mount McKinley, Fort Bragg, re-establishes affirmative action, cancels the keystone XL/Stargate/Moonbase etc?
I’m kind of in shock that for the first time in my life a politician actually seems to be looking out for me, but I’m still cynical. We have about 1200 days to run as hard and as fast as we possibly can, but after that then what?
You are describing a switch being flipped left, then right, then left. This is typically the way people talk about these things, because it is an orderly model of the sort assembled by orderly people living orderly lives. Or to put it another way, this view is constructed by people who have gone beyond taking orderliness for granted, and have moved to assuming that orderliness is axiomatic.
Our political system is not a switch, but rather a post in the ground. It is not "flopping" one way and then the other. It is being wrenched, back and then forth, and each motion travels further as the earth's hold on the post loosens. This "flip" is burning norms and systems that had stood for centuries. Those norms don't come back on the next wrench, or indeed at all. They are gone for good, and the next wrench will do more damage still, as the escalation spiral continues. Soon or sooner, the post comes out of the ground completely, and then we'll see what we see.
Alternatively, the culture war peters out. Maybe the Blues will give up! Certainly the Reds don't seem inclined to do so. The most likely positive outcome is that Federal authority decreases precipitously and permanently, and we have a go at actually leaving each other alone.
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I believe the likelihood is quite high. In my opinion, the second election of Trump is a cultural-because-of-generational backlash by "the Boomers" and "Gen X" against changes in the culture brought about by "the Millennials", who I believe have a radical split from previous generations inspired by changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect. I suspect in the next decade in the "after that", then "then what" will be that American culture will take a hard and final turn against social conservatism. I like to say the wheel of progress is dismally slow, but it is inspirationally grinding.
I form this opinion off of my own anecdotal experiences in observing the microcosm of my family. My socially conservative members grow less and less able to relate to my non-socially conservative members and, as a result, the beliefs "dry out", so to say. I've observed that although the socially conservative do have more children, the families tend to splinter and fall into poverty and miss the window to be relevant to the culture, so the ecosystem of beliefs is constrained to niche branches of the family.
Among under-30s, Harris and Trump were within a few percentage points overall, white men voted for Trump, white women split down the middle, black and Latino men voted for Trump in record numbers, and the biggest issue for young voters was the economy and jobs. While I agree that Millennials are more progressive than Boomers and Gen X, it seems abundantly clear that the zoomers are not as reliably Democratic as Millennials (though certainly more progressive than Gen X). In fact, the only age group where there wasn't a swing to Trump was older voters, i.e. the Boomers.
This was a referrendum on Biden's governance and the state of the economy, with cultural issues, even abortion, playing a much more minor role in people's voting decisions. We don't need to delve into anecdotal experiences of particular families; we have data on how various groups of people said they voted in the election and the reasons they said were most important to them.
I will, however, note that Millennials and Zoomers -- the purported beneficiaries of the changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect -- have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses, and research suggests they cope much worse than older generations when faced with major crises like the pandemic. What younger generations perceive as "childhood emotional neglect" may well have been a more natural and healthy way to raise independent, strong children who can stand on their own to face the challenges of life, though I would argue that the last generation to raise their children in the best possible way was the Silent Generation, not Gen X.
I am a zoomer, and this accords with my own experience of friends and peers, going far beyond any sort of change in diagnostic standards or treatment-seeking that could otherwise explain the change. You've talked in the past about your experiences with mental health challenges, and I relate to this -- but I would note gently that such longstanding struggles with mental illness might suggest a genetic component (as it does for me), which perhaps makes your biological family less representative of the emotional and social stability of the average person at various points on the political spectrum.
Or, in other words: it's the economy, stupid.
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It took decades to build this regime. It can be undone in a matter of days. The taste of victory is sweet and success begets success. You can just do things. We can win. So are you going to fight? Are you going to fight for the future you want? It's not something that just happens once every four years. It's a choice you make.
People are never going back. Whatever the future looks like is different now. The future belongs to people inspired by Trump
No, it can't. Not with legal mechanisms, anyway.
No, you can't. Because you need people able and willing to carry things out. Only one side has that.
No, we probably can't.
No, I can't imagine people actually doing so. They'll do a lot of pointless stuff that feels like fighting — and winning — in the moment, but doesn't actually amount to anything. (See Yarvin here and here).
Of course they are. They have every time before; if only because they'll be forced to.
Every executive agency has dismantled its DEI program overnight. Every DEI program employee is on leave pending termination. Remember the FAA hiring scandal from a while ago? Every [edit]critical[/edit] FAA employee will be subject to a mandatory performance review. At least one Biden/Harris appointee who attempted to hide herself in the "non-political appointees" pool was exposed and fired.
ICE arrested 583 people and issued almost 400 requests for detention in one day. This represents a near-doubling of the average daily arrests from September last year which stand at 282 arrests per day, the last month we have data for. The Remain in Mexico policy has been officially reinstated, and the Department of Justice has officially prioritized immigration enforcement. Deportation flights have already begun. Mexico is preparing to receive waves of deportees. Many people with dubious immigrant status are already choosing to self-deport. I say dubious because I have seen reports that people who were here legally are also choosing to leave.
It has been four days.
Edit:
And on the fourth day, ICE made 593 arrests with 449 detainment requests made. Again, average arrests made per day under Biden were under 300.
*Every FAA employee in a critical safety position (presumably including every air traffic controller)
Whoops, good catch.
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Loser mindset. You've decided it's impossible to win. We haven't! That's why we're winning
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That realization was the most striking aspect of Trump’s first term. It hit me when he moved the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Bush had talked about doing it for years but somehow it never happened, just like he somehow never got us Supreme Court Justices that would overturn Roe, or a hundred other things. Then Trump comes along and just does it. It could have been done all along. You can just do things.
Thanks for reminding me that Dobbs happened. Everyone predicted it would be a disaster for the GOP Then they still won. Amazing
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Alito, author of Dobbs, was a bush appointee.
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We'll see. The birthright citizenship order and the stop-energy-efficiency order run up against statutes (and in the former case, the Constitution), so this Trump train will likely derail the way the Obamacare repeal did.
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The big asset price crash we’ve been putting off since 2018, some fiery class-first rhetoric from the Dems, and all this comes crashing down very quickly. Once they’re back in power, the decolonize-the-establishment types reassume their positions in all key cultural functions (even if the class warriors don’t care for them) and so on and so on.
We very desperately need the global big asset price crash, preferably applied to housing more than stocks (but American stocks also need a good hammering, less so other countries' stocks).
Is there a reason other than “number too big”? I thought the same as well. Ten years ago I bought into this thinking and observed that half the world’s market cap was outside the US, so I went 50% into an international index fund with my equities allocation. And my net worth is a good deal lower than it would have been if I stuck with the US!
India has been on the cusp of a breakout for decades. It somehow never happens. South America looks like it will remain chronically economically retarded. China is a power strip plugged into itself, subsidizing current industries using taxes on past and future industry. And Europe?
I think @jeroboam said it best that your adoptive continent has been sitting in a cafe, idly increasing pension benefits. They dream up extractive fines on American industries while they watch their villages turn into open-air museums and their cities turn into jumbo international airports.
In America we have armies of people vocationally dedicated to making my retirement account balances increase.
American stocks are more and more overvalued relative to earnings. This can change is AI boom actually materializes into….something. But it hasn’t, except allowing more efficient coding monkeys and cheating on college essays
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Hopefully, they do well enough that we can elect Vance or another Republican.
It'll have to end eventually, but maybe the overton window will have shifted by then.
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