I wonder how / if it is possible to convince the public that laws and oversight are necessary for good government.
The public learns the lesson that X is necessary when they see the consequence of not-X. Hopefully there is a gap between total lawlessness and the public realising that some laws are good and not just "red tape".
An alternate response to "Things aren't bad enough for people to change their ways," is to revise our predictions of the likelihood of catastrophe, and eventually decide that perhaps things aren't quite as doomed as we think.
For things like climate change, where we have scientific evidence of the necessity of change, it seems like it needs to get worse before the change will happen, though I still don't hope for things to get worse. But for something as subjective as civic values, it seems especially wrong to me to hope for disaster just for the sake of shaking things up. After all, there's no guarantee that a disaster under Trump would move civic values in the right direction anyway.
So my fear would be that everyone continues on in complacency, and one day we wake up and realize we live in an authoritarian state, where mass catastrophies can occur and no one can do anything about it.
I don't want people to get hurt or die, but I also don't want power to be quietly seized by the few.
- Richard Nixon
The attitude is not a new phenomenon at all.
- DJT
His recent statements about the emoluments clause.
The list goes on.
That's not someone looking into strange random laws as part of an effort to improve government, that is questioning things purely to further his personal goals / enrich himself personally.
The problem here is not that the people in power want to "question" the laws, they're literally ignoring them and breaking them, in secret, without the consent of the people.
It's only when this stuff is uncovered that these perpetrators shift to "questioning"-- as though it's a open debate, it's not.
The spying was equally supported by the Democrats as well as Republicans. They further try to restrict freedom on the net by their newest attempt with the CASE law. It is one of the most consistent pattern of established parties.
Trump didn't win because it would be helpful for his base. It is to evict people that failed to bring forth sensible policies.
It is reactionary, but perfectly understandable. If everyone ignores the rules, we will do that too.
I am no American, but that is what it looks like.
>It is to evict people that failed to bring forth sensible policies.
What policies? Doesn't every new politician claim exactly that?
Because he has a pretty clean alibi for not implementing mass surveillance.
I'm not sure why I would have to explain that to understand what you're saying.
>Because he has a pretty clean alibi for not implementing mass surveillance.
I have no idea what that means in relation to the first sentence. Are you saying he wasn't a part of government during the establishment of some surveillance and that means something now? and/or Do you feel voters cared about that?
Which laws did Trump break by the way?
It starts with some empty taglines and talking points and then lots of questions like:
>What is your explanation for the success of Trump?
or
>Which laws did Trump break by the way?
That don't seem related to anything I said.
It just feels like pushing talking points or a push poll, by constantly asking someone to prove random things in order to provide some support to some weird concepts like because some user can't explain something... that means something or other...