Yeah, people would prefer to "coast it up" rather than doing something substantial. The weekend protests are literally self own, because you are protesting in the only "free time" that you can have.
The action alternative to that is massive numbers of calls to representatives, attendance of town halls, and large-scale protests to attempt to limit political maneuvering. People in America aren't rich and can't afford to take time off work to protest, so protesting off hours is more convenient... seems kind of insulting and elitist for you to dismiss civic participation.
And then there's the people who shout "impeach" or other absurdities, or criticize others taking actions while doing nothing themselves.
Many of the GOP Senators are holdovers from that discredited prior regime. They cower in front of Trump because the base trusts Trump far more than it trusts the party establishment. And that’s not because Trump has magic powers, but because the Bush/Cheney era was utterly disastrous and about half the GOP has turned hard against libertarianism in trade and immigration.
The fact that Senators are afraid to cross Trump is a good thing. It means they are being responsive to their voters. If it wasn’t for that, they’d already be talking about TPP 2.0 and amnesty again.
In that case, why didn't they switch sides and become Democrats?
> about half the GOP has turned hard against libertarianism in trade and immigration
Oh, that's why--at least to some degree. But it's an incomplete explanation. Any GOP leader could have run on a more restrictive trade and immigration platform.
Then the question becomes, why does the base trust Trump so much? How much of it is because they're actually hurting (and in a way that can actually be cured by him); how much is because they are being lied to; how much is because they're easily manipulable; how much is because they are delusional; and how much is because they are morally bereft? Whatever it is, it cannot be explained by competence.
Because they’re republicans. The GOP historically was skeptical of engaging with the rest of the world—tariffs were a foundational plank of Lincoln’s party. The Reagan-era globalism was a temporary response to the soviet union—which threatened to spread atheism and socialism around the world—that brought liberal internationalists and neoconservatives into the coalition. Bush-era foreign intervention revealed that approach to be obsolete post-soviet union. So the party reverted to something more like it has been.
The minority of the coalition for whom bombing middle eastern countries and exporting jobs to China was the whole point did become democrats. Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol are cheering for abortion now as partisan democrats.
> Any GOP leader could have run on a more restrictive trade and immigration platform.
But they didn’t, because the party leadership was overrun by globalists and neocons.
> Then the question becomes, why does the base trust Trump so much?
Because he overthrew the globalists and neocons and has proven in office that he’s neither. Other republicans can’t be trusted. Mitch McConnell would vote for amnesty in a heartbeat if it was in exchange for going to war with Iran.
The USA’s global influence and entanglements go all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine and grew substantially after WWII as we sought to help reconstruct the world thereafter (Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods, etc.). And the fact that we could produce goods while the rest of the world was practically shut down, given all the destruction that resulted from the war, boosted our economy into the stratosphere. There was practically zero competition for complicated and technologically advanced goods for 30-40 years. Many people forget (or simply weren’t taught) that the USA was not an economic powerhouse until after WWI. Until then, it was Britain, France, and the Netherlands.
Some of the adverse consequences of globalization started to appear domestically during the Reagan administration, though, as imported Japanese automobiles and electronics began to impact American sales, which in turn led to factory closures and pink slips.
Many of those impacted did get other jobs, but the echoes of anger reverberate. They reverberate even longer when they believe foreigners, who they have no power over, are to blame.
> Because he overthrew the globalists and neocons and has proven in office that he’s neither.
It still doesn’t explain how he won the GOP primary the first time and continues to maintain a cult-like following. If the poll numbers are to be believed, isolationists and nationalists never made up more than a slim percentage of the American electorate until very recently.
Even if they all voted for and support Trump based on this alone, it’s a losing battle. The 1940s-1970s were a unique period where American economic victory was practically assured because everyone else was nearly out of business. We’re not going to return to that situation by raising both trade and immigration barriers. Unless we’re willing to bomb the world to line our pockets again (which I’m not sure we have either the stomach or the practical capability to do), globalization is the most rational path to take. It’s a shame we all must suffer until they come to see the light themselves.
The U.S. had virtually no engagement with the world outside the western hemisphere between the GOP’s formation in 1854 and World War I. Between Lincoln’s election in 1861 to World War I tariff rates exceeded 40%: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_Tariff_Rates...
> It still doesn’t explain how he won the GOP primary the first time and continues to maintain a cult-like following.
He won the primary because he curb-stomped Jeb Bush on live TV and called for immigration bans when Rubio was proposing amnesty. https://youtu.be/H4ThZcq1oJQ?si=DCUKC_kDG0JpaREn.
He maintains a cult-like following because he’s the first republican in recent memory to actually deliver conservative victories instead of blowing all their political capital on wars. Since he took office in 2016, conservatives have ended affirmative action, overturned Roe, cut border crossings nearly to zero, established a legal framework for prosecuting DEI under the civil rights laws, ended disparate impact, shut down entire federal agencies, raised tariffs for the first time since the 1960s. We might get a $45 billion budget for ICE! I’m not even covering everything in the EOs, which have gone under the radar because everyone is flipping out over tariffs. Trump makes clear that Bush/Cheney republicans weren’t even trying.
> If the poll numbers are to be believed, isolationists and nationalists never made up more than a slim percentage of the American electorate until very recently.
Those are abstract labels that don’t mean anything to people. For decades, the de facto policy has been more and more immigration, something that has never garnered more than 34% support among the whole country: https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i.... The percentage of people who want immigration decreased has far exceeded the percentage who want it increased since 1965 except for a brief period around 2020.
The New York Times of all places did a great piece on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi....
Most republicans aren’t “isolationists” in the sense they’d oppose intervention in a situation like World War II. But for example only 20% of people in 2022 favored boots on the ground in Ukraine: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/new-americans-oppose.... That is de facto isolationism because you’re not going to get a stronger test case for liberal internationalism absent Russia invading a country like Germany.
That’s not true. For example, there’s the Treaty of Wanghia (1844), the Treaty of Kanagawa (1854), the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (1858) the annexation of Hawaii (1898), the Open Door Policy (1899), and the Philippine-American War followed by our nearly 50-year possession of it.
> Between Lincoln’s election in 1861 to World War I tariff rates exceeded 40%
Until the Sixteenth Amendment which permitted the collection of income taxes, tariffs were the primary means of funding the Federal government. Also, protectionism was the global standard before WWII, so we were in good company. But, like the gold standard and mercantilism, it still wasn’t an economically efficient thing. We get rid of antiquated ideas for good reason and to make the world better and more prosperous.
You can yell “economic efficiency” until you’re blue in the face, but most of the country isn’t buying that. You may well be right but the only way to know is to try change and see what happens.
Did you mean unhappy? That's always true of a democratic system. Making everyone happy is impossible, so we strive for something that tries to make everyone equally unhappy (if not in kind, then at least in degree).
> You may well be right but the only way to know is to try change and see what happens.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Logical people can follow the math. And if people can look past their own biases and limited horizons (which I know is not always possible), they will also clearly see that the world as a whole is much better off, and that even if they feel poorer, they themselves are objectively better off from a quality of life perspective, especially when compared to previous generations. I realize it's a difficult sell, but it is true.
The downside risk of erecting barriers is much worse than the upside risk. For those of us approaching retirement without a guaranteed pension to look forward to, the prospect of having our savings significantly diminished is incredibly scary. And poor people should be frightened, too, because maintaining their existing standard of living (which, BTW, is much better than it ever was, historically) is about to become much more difficult.
I've never seen a cogent and defensible theory of a nation that's economically and socially better off for most as a result of putting up higher barriers to trade and immigration. ISTM anyone who wants to eliminate free trade is cutting off their nose to spite their face.
That suggests you’ve just got a simplistic worldview that ignores variables. Do a thought experiment: say you replaced 200 million americans with Bangladeshis overnight. Would the country be better off or worse off? Obviously worse off. The things Bangladeshis think and believe and do that make the country the way it is—everything from corruption to littering to overthrowing the government—won’t change just because they step foot on american soil. They’d immediately vote to turn America into an officially Muslim socialist country, like back home.
Now, if you agree that 200 million Bangladeshis overnight would be bad, but say 100,000 Bangladeshis a year would be fine, you’re applying unstated assumptions about the rate and quality of assimilation. Which you likely have no empirical basis for assuming.
I would say your assertions about free trade are similar. You’re looking at a simplified model of the world that leaves out important variables and then declaring that free trade has no downsides.
I think it's time to close this discussion.
I used Bangladesh as an example because I’m from there. My entire family on both sides going back to time immemorial is from there. Yet half my family left Bangladesh for the west. We didn’t leave because we were desperate—like most skilled immigrants, we were affluent back home. We left because we didn’t want to raise our kids in a society run by Bangladeshis.
Bangladeshis, in the aggregate, are very different from Americans on numerous cultural dimensions. You seem to think either we’re not (self-evidently false), that those differences disappear when we set foot in America (false), or that those differences are superficial and don’t alter the society around us (more debatable, but based on my experience and analysis, false).
You cannot form a cogent view of immigration policy without delving into the link between culture and societal outcomes, and the stickiness of cultural attitudes in immigrants. Otherwise you’re like a hippy complaining about nuclear power even though you don’t know anything about it.
Good materials:
https://paulbacon.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/z...
https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...
https://docs.iza.org/dp17569 (Dutch study about net contribution of immigrants; look at p. 39, showing how immigrants from different cultures have different contribution levels even adjusted for education)
Nevertheless, modern immigration doesn't change a place that dramatically and for the worse, especially when it's controlled. If you read your history, you'd know that every wave of immigrants to this country has been met with fear, contempt, and opposition (including my family's, as starving Jews escaping the Third Reich). Yet, in the long term, the feared outcomes--similar to the ones you describe--never came to pass. America doesn't look like Italy. It doesn't look like Ireland. It doesn't look like Israel. It doesn't look like Mexico. It doesn't look like Vietnam. It doesn't look like India. Maybe certain neighborhoods do for a while, but that's actually one of the nice things about America: that you can go spend some time and enjoy the fruits of a different culture without leaving home. Yet they're still subject to American laws, regulations, and supervision.
And immigrants don't get to vote, so they don't have much political influence for a long while, even locally. Remember, too, that it takes a supermajority to amend the Constitution, so for immigrant culture to have a serious impact on the USA itself would take generations, to the extent it ever does.
I never suggested that immigration should be entirely unregulated and that people and cultures are fungible. That's a straw man you created. And the fact that you are assuming that's the situation people want and the inevitable outcome that will result reveals who you are, and yeah, I'm going to fucking moralize on it. Racists and fearmongerers are evil, even those who hate their own kind. Your own argument supposes that morals are a part of transplantable culture, and let me tell you: Racism, fear, absolutism, and contempt for outsiders are not American values. Perhaps you need to work better on assimilation, yourself.
Bizarre to blame “the Right” for not voting to change a system democrats created 91 years ago.
That said, how is it bizarre to blame the Right for failing to take back Congressional authority, delegated for 'emergencies', when the President is abusing that delegated authority? This is like a basic concept the 'Right' has pushed very hard, now taken to the biggest extreme by a President that it ever has. Or are we getting too much fent from that Penguin Island and it's a real emergency that requires tariffs on them to stop?
The 'right' are showing themselves for nothing but hypocrites and liars, that beleive in nothing. Not even party over country. One man's zero thought out tariff scheme from the last century over EVERYTHING.
https://www.financialexpress.com/trending/trump-tariffs-vira...
That said, what’s the correct answer is only weakly relevant. One side vigorously defends the existence of executive-branch agencies that are supposedly “independent” of the President but somehow can make regulations with the force of law like Congress. The GOP would be committing political malpractice if they listened to those people’s quibbles about non-delegation doctrine.
Your charge of hypocrisy is misplaced. A charge of hypocrisy has persuasive force only insofar as the argument is “your rule isn’t a good one because you can’t even follow it yourself.” You can’t invoke it to insist that your opponents adhere to rules that you don’t even accept as valid. Constitutional norms are a two-way street. If you think “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law, then I’m under no obligation to apply a different standard from that.
We shouldn't be gatekeeping the ability of the average person to publicly petition their government for a redress of grievances. That's kind of a core function of an engaged populace.
While I can think of examples that I personally think are a bit silly, I'd agree it's not really a useful contribution.
This speaks volumes