It's mostly Trump though. Trump is responsible for his actions.
Eh, kinda sorta. Trump is responsible for his actions, but the people who created the conditions for him are responsible too. There are a lot of leaders are very interested in having the buck to stop with him because it lets them off the hook.
IMHO, Trump's tariff policies were poorly thought through, and that's something that's all on him. But reshoring manufacturing is going to be costly, and those costs will land on people who aren't yet used to bearing them, and that's also on his predecessors who allowed the offshoring in the first place. If they'd never done that, there'd be no Trump and no pain of reshoring.
It's just a truism though isn't it? Everything in the past is responsible for what is the current state of things. You can say it but it has next to no meaning and is not interesting.
But using plain English and the plain meanings of words: Trump is responsible. You can blame Biden for not dropping out soon enough or whatever, but ultimately: what is happening now is on Trump.
What would perhaps be interesting is to discuss this objective failure of the American system. Far from the "greatest democracy in the world", the constitution is clearly quite, quite a shit one if it allows this to happen.
Personally I think it's a mix, but inequality is a big factor. Quoting Roosevelt:
"But I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, then Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength in our land."
Fashion.
Not exactly. Being so blunt and simplistic is politics, pure and simple. The D's don't like the R's, so their analysis always stops once they can blame an R (and vice-versa).
I think it's a much more interesting and fruitful question to ask "Who is responsible for Trump," rather than "What is Trump responsible for."
IMHO, the Trump phenomenon is in large part the expression of rejection of neoliberalism, which the pre-Trump political structure made unexpressable. The result is a seriously flawed man gaining power, and causing way more damage than was necessary.
> What would perhaps be interesting is to discuss this objective failure of the American system. Far from the "greatest democracy in the world", the constitution is clearly quite, quite a shit one if it allows this to happen.
That's closer to what I'm getting at. However, what exactly is "this," though? Does it include deviation from a Wall Street-friendly stasis? Neoliberalism 'till death do us part?
>That's closer to what I'm getting at. However, what exactly is "this," though? Does it include deviation from a Wall Street-friendly stasis? Neoliberalism 'till death do us part?
Neoliberalism is much newer than the constitution and the country. Have a sense of scope when talking about the history of your country, it's new, but it's not that new.
The country is completely fucked—that we can all agree on. It's imploding and its position in the world is frankly becoming increasingly pathetic. America's friends pity it at best and detest it for its betrayal of Western civilisation at worst. America's enemies are laughing. If there are people to blame, then I'm afraid it's the American people. Americans are not worthy of the country that they have inherited. Americans are an undignified people, that's a bit part of the problem.
The playing politics part is (among other things) selectively focusing only "on the things Trump is doing."
Trump isn't responsible for creating the conditions that allowed him to get elected. A lot of the people who are really interested in focusing only "on the things Trump is doing" are the ones responsible for those conditions in the first place.
I mean, how bad do you have to be that people would rather vote for a sociopathic clown than you, when given the choice? But you know, thinking about that will make you uncomfortable, lets avoid it and focus on the clown!
Here's a thought: if you don't want to be ruled by a Trump, figure out how to avoid creating the conditions where someone like him could win. Strongly advocating for reasonable policies to create those conditions would also be better politics against Trump, right now than the incessant outrage about how terrible Trump is.
>I mean, how bad do you have to be that people would rather vote for a sociopathic clown than you, when given the choice? But you know, thinking about that will make you uncomfortable, lets avoid it and focus on the clown!
The people aren't always right. Just because Trump is a sociopath and actively destroying the country right now, that doesn't mean the opposition actually is worse. That's extremely flawed thinking to put it mildly. You'd really have to be a dyed in the wool member of the Trump cult to still believe that the electorate made the right choice in rejecting Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024.
>Here's a thought: if you don't want to be ruled by a Trump, figure out how to avoid creating the conditions where someone like him could win. Strongly advocating for reasonable policies to create those conditions would also be better politics against Trump, right now than the incessant outrage about how terrible Trump is.
Outrage is fine when he's destroying the country. Tone policing is not OK in this situation, because there's 4 more years of this and proposing new policies now changes literally nothing. The damage is already done. It's too late. The US will probably be OK in the end but the rot is much deeper than can be solved by your beloved "new policies" (which actually the Democrats proposed plenty of, but Americans just wanted Trump anyway), the US needs constitutional change at this point.
He'd have to be a force of nature to be responsible for his own election. The problem with what you're saying is that it's a one-sided perspective, and that's about ego protection ("the problem can't be with me any my side, we're all good, someone else is responsible for all the bad") not solving the actual problem.
Trump is a symptom.
> The people aren't always right. Just because Trump is a sociopath and actively destroying the country right now, that doesn't mean the opposition actually is worse. That's extremely flawed thinking to put it mildly. You'd really have to be a dyed in the wool member of the Trump cult to still believe that the electorate made the right choice in rejecting Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024.
Sorry, it's your thinking that is flawed. You can yell that Clinton and Harris should have won until you're blue in the face, but it won't change the fact that they lost to Trump and the Democratic party was so uncompelling that people decided to take a chance on him.
It's not that the electorate was stupid, it's that the Democratic party either undermined itself and/or failed to offer solutions to problems people were actually having. That's the problem.
> Outrage is fine when he's destroying the country. Tone policing is not OK in this situation, because there's 4 more years of this and proposing new policies now changes literally nothing.
Oh come on. Proposing policies for 4 years establishes credibility. Being outraged accomplishes nothing except a temporary catharsis. It might even be worse than nothing if it allows a squeaker win that prevents real reform to address the issues (see the 2022 midterms).
> The US will probably be OK in the end but the rot is much deeper than can be solved by your beloved "new policies" (which actually the Democrats proposed plenty of, but Americans just wanted Trump anyway), the US needs constitutional change at this point.
Except the Democrats' proposals were timid and weak, and they plugged their ears and ignored a lot of stuff (e.g. immigration: ignored until a last-minute executive order, trade/re-shoring: pretty weak, and mainly focused on protecting existing industries, no risk-taking like Trump's tariffs).
> Michael Scott: We are here because there is something wrong with society.
> Jim: See, you're always saying there's something wrong with society, but maybe there's something's wrong with you.
> Michael Scott: If it's me, then society made me that way.
That probably works as limited context joke, playing off of the saying "if you think everyone else is always the problem, then maybe you’re actually the problem," but it's not really something that generalizes. The relationship between individuals is a lot different than the relationship of society to the individual.
I don't think anyone can seriously claim that society doesn't have major problems, so any issues are actually individual ones. The people who claim that (and they exist), often are just gaslighting to deny a problem they don't want solved.
So like what the Biden admin was doing?
I'm sorry, but "a moron steps in and runs a wrecking ball through the global economy" is not something you look at and say, "wow, his predecessors really messed this one up". No, they did not create the conditions for this needless harm. The answer is, plainly, that Trump is a disastrous moron.
I took the OP to mean the predecessors like McConnell who were evil self-serving sociopaths and normalized a kind of politics to win at all costs, even if the cost is a detriment to the country.
(Yes, you may deem some things are of strategic value - then you put predictable and long term tariffs on a _limited_ number of items, ramped up slowly, matched with incentives to build up capacity in that sector.)
In the past, the tradeoff appeared to be that public school was offered to everyone, and that was enough to make a living. And now?
Harris's message: "Biden is doing fine and things are going great"*
Trump's message: "You're hurting right now, and I'm going to fix it for you"
Very similar to 2016 (in which Bernie's message was also closer to that of Trump)
Exercise for the reader: how might this framework explain Andrew Tate and the like?
* "The US economy is the envy of the world" (accurate though it may be) probably doesn't resonate when you can see your purchasing power slipping through your fingers (as highlighted by certain media outlets) and you can't buy a house