darthelmet

I have less hope for two reasons:

1. These are still capitalist countries and thus the incentive for fascism still remains even if it gets delayed a bit.

2. The US is the largest, most dangerous military superpower the world has ever seen and it has shown time and time again that it’s willing to use that might to bully other nations into economic submission. No country is really safe if it decides to start going after them. The US hasn’t always won these wars, but even when it fails like in Vietnam or Korea, it does enough damage on the way out to cause massive destruction and suffering which has long lasting consequences. I seriously doubt the rest of the world is just gonna get to sit this one out and watch America self destruct.

Maybe we don’t want to do that again… people have some really short memories.

Trump, may I remind you, installed a number of those judges.

Right, after a lot of opportunities by Democrats to do things to stop him. The Republicans were willing to fight dirty and the Democrats kind of just rolled over and let it happen. That's not even considering the world where they didn't choose to run 2 deeply unpopular presidents on nothing platforms in multiple critical elections.

Those things have nothing to do with the subject at hand however. Let's keep it in between the lines.

Is the subject at hand not "Why have we gotten into this situation?" The comic certainly seems to be about that in the most reductive way possible. All of this is relevant in trying to explain how we both have the president we have and why he's able to do the bad things that are hurting people.

So you believe they should be allowed to install a sock puppet? I believe that was what we were talking about about, was it not?

I just don't think that a country that hasn't be relevant in 30 years can have more influence over our politics than the richest people in the world regularly pouring their money into the system. Trying to pin our problems on some external enemy is just missing the point. The Republicans don't need foreign encouragement to strip the country for parts and sell it to the rich.

Sorry I figured someone familiar with our system could interpret that as checks and balances. Something trump is currently trying to break. In what language should I provide your native translation?

You wrote a sentence that didn't have the information you were talking about in a comment that didn't talk about what you say the "it" was referring to in a thread with several points of discussion. No reasonable person could just divine what you meant there. It's just not worth having this conversation if you're going to be this aggressive about pointless stuff.

It's not about this being the same. It's about what has contributed to allow this moment. Regular failures of institutions and vast wealth inequality that has been left undressed by the political system has made for a lot of angry people. Concentration of ownership in media has guided that frustration away from its true causes for the benefit of the rich and powerful. The electoral system is set up to favor conservative results and to squarely shut out left leaning candidates. The various expansions of presidential power and the tools needed to exercise that power has made it easier for someone like Trump to get away with things he theoretically shouldn't. The courts being slowly corrupted. Etc.

What Russia is doing is besides the point. The US has plenty of it's own oligarchs to mess with our elections already and we're definitely messing around in other countries. If they weren't touching anything, do you think we'd suddenly get some great elections that represent the people?

however; it is a feature of our system that has allowed us to retain some semblance of humanity and good will - despite the rot.

What is a feature of our system? You didn't specify. As to us maintaining our humanity: We do terrible things regularly, but most people are so disconnected from those actions that they can't really conceptualize the horror of it enough to care and do something about it. There's always some excuse that helps them rationalize it. I don't think most people WANT all the bad stuff. But in the absence of better education and media, it's really easy to trick people into thinking all of this is actually good or at least not bad enough to do something about it.

Legally the president doesn't have the power to unilaterally go to war, but that hasn't stopped them from doing it for the last 70+ years.

Basically ever modern president has grabbed more power for the executive branch without being properly checked by congress or the courts. Combine that with an ever expanding military and surveillance apparatus and it turns out you can do some pretty bad stuff, regardless of the legality.

As for the rest of it, idk man. Clearly you have your rosy view of history where the US was a super great place before the scary Russians came in to corrupt democracy. All I can say is you have more reading to do.

idk. If western governments had any ability to learn or care, WWII surely would have been that moment. But after beating the endpoint of imperialism, they without irony or self awareness, just kept doing imperialism. I'm not holding my breath.

Oh I must have been confused. I forgot that history doesn't exist. Everything started with whatever was last on TV. Donald Trump is just randomly the president for no reason. There must not be any reason he has the power to do the things he's doing. Nope. It's a mystery. Carry on.

Even if it would, how would it ever get passed when the people who would need to pass it are the ones who are only in office because the system works the way it currently does?

This is just a recurring theme I've found when talking with liberals. They like to think about and suggest all sorts of policy ideas as though all we're missing are some smart ideas nobody has thought of. It's one thing to say we should have this, but it's another to have any idea of how it'd be possible to do. Since they have no actual analysis of the system, they'll just turn around and tell you to vote or call your representative. "We should get money out of politics!" "Yeah, well we checked with the people giving us money and they said no. So..."

Page 3:

“Oh no. It’s coming for me literally as I’m writing thi… aaahhhggggggg!!!!!”

We’ve had the same microwave in my house my entire life. That might have something to do with it.

What's missing from your analysis is the material backing of the parties. The Democrats and Republicans, with the backing of their corporate donors, both represent the interests of the capitalist class. They have their differences in some areas, but neither is interested in disrupting the fundamental relationship between classes and the means of production, which is what grants capitalists their power. So winning or losing elections is less important to them than winning while compromising on that core class interest.

One could choose to reverse your reasoning to say that the Republicans are free to become more and more progressive without being punished

Two things: Why would they? If they want to serve capitalists and they can get away with doing so, they're gonna do it. Second, in a superficial rhetorical way, they have made appeals to progressives. They use some of the language of economic populism talking about elites controlling you, or the economy giving you a hard time, corporate censorship of media, failures of institutions, and the way we spend money on awful foreign adventurism instead of on helping people at home.

Of course this is all for show and for the things they don't just straight up lie about, they subtly twist the messaging to play to the same feelings while turning the attention to things that aren't the problem. Failings of institutions becomes anti-intellectualism. Economic worries get directed to competition with immigrants and foreigners instead of the capitalists exploiting all of them. Corporate censorship gets turned away from the influence corporations have over our communications to just being about crazy woke people who "don't understand how things work" and can't handle people "telling it like it is." Isolationist isn't about being anti-war or anti-multinational corporations, it's about how wars don't benefit Americans enough and how outside influences from scary foreigners is corrupting the country.

Post Clinton and Obama, the Democrats became the party of "everything is fine except for those dumb dumb bigots." And after Bush, the Republicans pivoted to the counter-narrative of that while still maintaining their priority towards the interests of the capitalist class. So neither party is really addressing your concerns, but one seems to be at least acknowledging the problems you have and telling you you're a super special person and the other party seems to be ignoring your pain and kicking you while you're down.

And of course with Republicans in power, I'd expect these roles to flip again. Once Trump does enough of his bullshit he's gonna say everything is great except for those whinny wokes and the Democrats are playing opposition to that, even against policies they supported while in power like deportation, but only go so far as saying that things were better before Trump ruined everything. If we could just go back to before that everything would be fine. Even more specifically, post Trump there has been an effort to pin things all on specific people rather than any structural critique or even going to far as to broaden it to the party as a whole. "There are good, honest Republicans I might disagree with, but respect, but Trump is pure evil and everything bad that's happening is specifically because of him" or some other rotating cast of figureheads like Musk, Desantis, etc. even though all of these policies are things Republicans have been working towards for decades, sometimes with the help of Democrats.

So no, I don't think the stances of the political parties ever really ebbs left based on who wins elections. We had 8 years of "Hope and Change" Obama and the party completely balked at Bernie for actually wanting to follow through on the empty rhetoric of Obama.