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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

How resilient is a nation state? This is a question I keep asking myself. I was kind of surprised how the USA bounced back from Trump I. But I really wonder if there is going to be a similar recovery this time around. The amount of outright destruction is overwhelming. So, you raid the Hyundai facility. And then in a few years time you wonder why foreign companies no longer want to invest into factories on US soil. The knock on effect of all of this stuff is enormous and the consequences are going to be many years in the coming. And yet, it all just happens, there is no meaningful pushback against any of this.

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this may well be like the downfall of rome. slowly but surely, the country will sink into irrelevance (ok, maybe not completely irrelevant, but certainly less than now).

i think the reason there is no pushback is that things are happening too fast at an unprecedented scale that we can't even envision the consequences, let alone predict them. we are completely unprepared for this and by the time we can figure out how to deal with it, or even stop it, it will be to late.

it is also possible that many believe that this will stop by itself with the next president, and so there is no point in trying to stop things now. in a way i actually agree with that. walking in unity but realizing your error and changing course is a better choice than risking a civil war.

civil war sounds alarmist, and maybe it is, but i fear that without consensus on what is the right course of action, worse without consensus that the current trajectory is bad, i don't see any other outcome. before anything can be done, a consensus on what that should be is simply necessary. and unfortunately, it should be obvious that there is no such consensus now. if there were, we wouldn't even have this controversy.

It took the Roman Republic less than 30 years to go from the Gracchi brothers incident (133BC) to the first consulship of Gaius Marius in 107BC, a divisive populist who was elected consul an unprecedented 7 times. From then on, we have the Social war in 91BC (effectively a civil war in Italy), Sulla's civil wars (against Marius) culminating in his dictatorship in 82BC, and ultimately Julius Caesar's civil wars culminating in his dictatorship in 49BC, which marks the end of the Republic.

An incident like the Gracchi brothers' populist power grab, which led to the first significant outbreak of political violence in Rome in centuries, was not immediately transformative but it did sow the seeds of conflict.

I personally think Trump, and especially Jan 6th, is the Gracchi brothers moment of the USA.

I think this tracks pretty well. Even if our Democracy survives this regime the future looks so much more bleak than it did a year ago. Much of the current damage will last for many years and too many norms have been broken.

All of the powerful psycopaths have seen what one aspiring dictator can get away with. Trump will keep pushing over norms and other pillars of society and the next one will be starting much further along.

My optimistic interpretation is slightly different. So far the US is still a democracy with a President wo doesn’t take the law too seriously.

On the other side every democracy looses a bit focus over time and laws to keep government clean get softened, IMHO.

But let’s say the next election happens and the opposition will be voted in (if not, god knows where this ends) , then there will be a government with a state apparatus in tatas. They have the burden but also the opportunity to rethink how things are supposed to work and can make changes that most previous governments did not even thought possible.

Maybe, I don’t know. But maybe this slightly painful time is part of a renewal process that in the end will be helpful. And Trump of all people makes it involuntary possible.

Well my less optimistic observation is that Trump 1.0 broke a whole bunch of norms and was flagrantly incompetent, and the response was almost nothing. The opposition won a middling victory and made almost no structural changes to prevent what's currently happening.

The main response was a series of milquetoast foot-dragging prosecutions that accomplished little more than ralling the Republicans around him and giving him even more media attention.

> The opposition won a middling victory and made almost no structural changes to prevent what's currently happening.

Prevent people voting ?

lame bait.

ensuring the executive can't silence the other two powers and put a violent personal army on the streets of the USA. duh.

i can pretty much agree with that. while my comment focuses on the negative "the US will be less relevant", yours focuses on the positive. but they are both possible at the same time. heck, being less relevant may even be a positive in itself.

the current events provide a wakeup call that has the potential to galvanize change. as i said, what we need is a consensus. hopefully the next government will realize that too, and work towards that. otherwise it is up to us individuals to work on that too.

The US nuked Japan in the 1940s and only a short few years later were close allies.

Similarly, Germany was the de facto enemy of the Ally aligned world in the 40s and only a few short decades later best friends with most.

You can identify countless similar atrocities in US history after which relations stabilized within a few years.

Most in life are short term oriented and it's rare that these things produce lasting effects on perception.

Does anyone care or even remotely think about what Bush did as president 20 years ago? Some politically oriented and historically minded folks yes, 99% no.

They really have to be long lasting and persistent transgressions to produce generational distrust e.g. Japan invading China/Korea many times over the last few hundred years.

However the new gen seems far less concerned about this too.

Given Trump's larger than life character/ego/presence, it's more likely that anything he does will be attributed to him instead of the country as a whole. Which makes his actions perhaps even less impactful than a more neutral presenting president doing the same.

> The US nuked Japan in the 1940s and only a short few years later were close allies.

I don't think that's a great example. A few years after the bombs, Douglas MacArthur was ruling Japan. They didn't have much of a choice. Japan was occupied for almost 7 years, had their constitution rewritten to make them essentially reliant on the US for security.

I'm talking about the sentiment of the populace toward the US, not which legislators or leaders were in charge.

It's undeniable that by and large Japanese sentiment towards the US bounced back quickly, despite a traumatic and expansive war

That goodwill is almost entirely due to the US' need to rebuild the Japanese economy rapidly to counter threats from China, North Korea and the Soviet Union. That happened through favourable trade deals and mass outsourcing of automotive and electronics jobs and diverting capital away from domestic military as per the US-written constitution of Japan.

Western and Japanese companies alike started moving production outside Japan once wages started eating into profit margins. Today, underemployment is common in Japan and the low birth rate is one of several symptoms of the economic stagnation that began in the early '90s. Populist governments won't be far behind.

I don't think Japan after WW2 is the right comparison here.

My understanding is that generally they expected a MUCH more severe set of penalties and occupation after losing - especially given the unconditional surrender, and instead got a stable and functional provisional government for the next 7 years.

---

Basically - Japanese sentiment is not a parallel to this. That time:

1. Japan started hostilities with a surprise attack

2. Lost, complete with unconditional surrender

3. Was then occupied by a government that was more stable, left much of the existing civilian infrastructure in place, and forgave many key figures (not the least of which was the emperor)

4. Then that government helped them roll out "new deal" style social reforms.

That is absolutely, utterly at odds with the current situation. There - the Allied powers were relatively graceful, culturally aware, and interested in a stable, functional government.

Here - We're insulting our friends, from a position where there's no moral high ground to stand on. Personally, I don't think they'll forget so quickly, and I think things will get much worse if the US continues down this path.

Can we rebuild those relationships? Sure, seems likely on a long enough timespan, but it takes a hell of a lot more effort to get it back than it does to throw away.

Those two examples relied on heavy investment over many years by the worlds sole superpower to bounce back. See the Marshall Plan and MacArthur’s reconstruction of Japan. These things do not happen automatically, and unlike those examples, there doesn’t seem to be a rich, well-run superpower waiting in the wings to lift anyone back up. I’m sure some relations will normalize post-47 but economic might and attractiveness to the world may not.

The US military physically occupied and restructured the governments of Japan and Germany. A better example might be Vietnam, which has become a US partner but it took a couple generations.

It took about 50 years before India started to trust that relations with America could be positive. Then it took a lot of trust and concessions on both sides to strengthen that over the next 20 years under Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden - all of whom went out of their way to court India as an ally and a counterweight to China.

Then Trump decided his shitty Nobel Prize mattered more and threw 20 years of hard work in the dump.

The consensus in India is that America is perfidious. You claim that countries have goldfish memories, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Indo-American relations. It was immensely hard to build this relationship and easy to burn it.

But who knows? Maybe you have an insight into how Indian people think.

I think it's important to note that they were friends after a regime change.

Like the US presidential elections every four years?

Going from an empire/reich to a democracy ain't quite the same thing as a presidential election. The USA will have a hard time recovering from institutional damage being done to it right now.

It's irrelevant whether change in policy is due to losing a war, revolution, or democratic election.

If the numbers swing 5%, the US may suddenly have a radical change in foreign policy and governorship.

Seen as recently as the 2024 election.

Regardless, I'm discussing the opinion of the populace, not the political leadership.

You can't endear a country's people to you by installing a puppet government

There's a regime change like "the second TV debate was a clown show, most swing states saw +5% move away from the incumbent, with the usual stronghold states still holding their established positions, and the latest poll listed inflation as voters' top concern."

...and then there's a regime change like "your capital city and every industrial center is firebombed to oblivion, kindergarteners are begging on streets, soldiers are coming back from POW camps to find their home burnt to ground and their whole family dead, and the occupying forces are executing high ranking officers of the previous regime for war crimes, just to drive the point home that their ideology will never be tolerated ever again."

> Does anyone care or even remotely think about what Bush did as president 20 years ago?

If they don't they are idiots. To name a few things: 9/11, the foreign policy disaster and money pit of the Iraq War/GWOT, the easily-avoidable GFC.

Those were both significant events in their own right and fundamental causes of the Trump presidencies.

No, uncertainty and stability matter in business, a lot. Not that Trump is the reason we lack political stability. It’s the two party system Washington warned us about, boaz and jachin. But that lack of stability is arguably pretty stable itself. American dynamism has pros and cons. Much of today’s context goes back to political and trade decisions made back in the 90s.

> I was kind of surprised how the USA bounced back from Trump I. But I really wonder if there is going to be a similar recovery this time around. The amount of outright destruction is overwhelming.

It is as resilient as the people (in power?) want it to be:

> To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

* James Madison, Papers 11:163, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-11-02-010...

Why is it that every high-brow discussion of US politics soon ends up quoting one of the founding fathers? As an outsider, I think the fundamental issue in the US political system is that there doesn't seem to have been any new ideas since the eighteenth century. It's just a bunch of rhetoricians quoting the same ancient texts, as though the US faces exactly the same problems it was facing two and a half centuries ago.

> Why is it that every high-brow discussion of US politics soon ends up quoting one of the founding fathers? As an outsider […]

I, the GP, am Canadian, so have my own system to worry about.[0]

But if you're going to talk about the pros and cons of a country's system, it is useful to a certain extent to look at what the architects were thinking. And in this particular case they did have some insight into the weaknesses of what they thought up.

Another that I heard in a recent podcast[1] was the fact that the existence / creation of political parties was not put in anywhere in the US system (even though they had existed in the UK already), and so you can get into tribalism/clans, which we are now seeing the effects of.

[0] https://sutherlandhousebooks.com/product/the-crisis-of-canad...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZBLpzcYx4&t=50m50s

There have been new ideas, and even a "second founding"[1]. But unfortunately, some of the ideas from the second founding era and beyond are still controversial.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Founding

First mover disadvantage. The US was among the pioneers of modern democratic system, and arguably the most successful one, which paradoxically trapped its descendants into thinking there must have been something magical about how it was initially set up and it should never get updated.

Many other latecomer nations didn't enjoy that kind of success - in fact many of them started with their first few presidents being brutal dictators, so they're under no illusion that their own "founding fathers" were infallible angels.

All of the ideas the founding fathers discussed arose in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the 1600s. If you're familiar with that conflict, particularly that between the Parliament of England and Charles I, a lot of the US founding fathers' particular obsessions (the word tyranny, for instance) make more sense. The real magic in the American Revolution was how spectacularly unambitious it was; all of the most important parts were already in place in Britain, and only denied to the colonies through sheer bloody-mindedness.

The US is not the first modern democracy; it's just the best at self-aggrandisement.

> The real magic in the American Revolution was how spectacularly unambitious it was; all of the most important parts were already in place in Britain, and only denied to the colonies through sheer bloody-mindedness.

I think the main 'innovation' was the splitting up of the Crown / Executive.

One failing was not taking political parties into account. It's not like they were unknown at the time:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party#18th_century

maybe for some of the same reasons that discussion of computer science likes to quote Knuth? or big-O notation?

The political theories/philosophies developed by the founding fathers remain foundational for reasons.

> high-brow discussion of US politics

lol, implying you'll find that on HN

James Madison has been dead for a while. The supreme court has so far failed to check Trump's power and congress and the senate are in his pocket. If there ever was a time that those institutions should have acted in the interest of the nation rather than in the interest of the parties then a while ago would have been fine. Now it is late, if not too late. For all that its worth Madison's writings are irrelevant, what matters is acts and there are very few of those.

Hopefully foreign companies understand the nuance that Trump is a perfect storm of having been a reality show celebrity for several decades, born into money, bad upbringing, personality type that's immune to shame.

Others trying to be him have not been able to replicate his success electorally. Lowest common denominator celebrity is key to his success.

Theres a good case to be made that he's an aberration and there won't be another demagogue after him to so effectively capture his audience and survive the corruption and incompetence that follows.

He has potential heirs that are smarter and more disciplined than him, but ironically that path doesn't lead you to a life of pop culture/paparazzi/TV celebrity.

Thats not to say we don't deserve to have lost significant trust and respect. But if you take the long view, it's not an extrapolation of this.

That would all be acceptable if the checks and balances would work as advertised. The fact that they do not - I think that is safe to conclude now - makes this a completely different level issue.

The long view is that it's clear that the voters can be trusted to vote someone like him in twice, and the Republican party can be trusted to completely emasculate itself to maintain a petty fraud's cult of personality.

Neither is encouraging for the future.

I get it but also he lost the popular vote 2/3 times, has never defeated a man in the general election, and is a minus 7.6 million in 3 popular votes. He lost the popular vote to a very unpopular and polarizing Hillary Clinton, and that was with help from Cambridge Analytica and James Comey.

The same media mechanisms which made Hillary 'very unpopular and polarizing' instead of just a milquetoast dem will make the next dem candidate 'very unpopular and polarizing'.

And they weren't playing for the popular vote.

I think the flip side is that whilst Trump's personal quirks and appeal might be unique, half the American polity unquestioningly does his bidding and endorses his insanity and it's not like his positions on the rest of the world are particularly unpopular or institutional trust and credible business-friendly conservatives are going to magically appear out of the ether when he's gone. The long view might not look like "Trump's boot trying to stomp on you forever", but it doesn't look like "America is a trustworthy ally, especially in business" either. It isn't going to stop the world from suckling on the US money teat, but it is going to make them a lot more selective about if and when they do so.

In a bizarre plot twist, the US is gradually easing into the very same role of a cult-personality, unreliable, non free trade State that they've been bitching about for almost a century now.

> I was kind of surprised how the USA bounced back from Trump I.

what'd we bounce into? what did we bounce back from? what effects are you talking about specifically.

I work in aerospace and the sentiment was exactly opposite. People cheered both Trump elections and were dead terrified of a blue win ruining contracts and business.

I don't ask because I am overtly political, I ask because I think it's fascinating that both sides seem to think we're a stone's throw from the apocalypse.. which very much seems to be projected onto the voter base on purpose..

If there's a dichotomy that I can't really reconcile politically, it's the fundamental idea that people coming here is bad. That we cannot allow anyone else in. We can't even allow things from other countries to come here.

The effects of this insular isolationism can only be explained by simplicity that doesn't hold up in reality: things will be more prosperous for us if we keep what we have to ourselves. But in truth growth is growth. To build prosperity, we need more production, which means more people. Perhaps your share gets bigger, but the pot gets smaller.

> But in truth growth is growth.

You are thinking of a tide that lifts all boats.

The people supporting these policies don't want all boats to be lifted - they want prosperity for themselves and subjugation for anyone else.

The power imbalance is the point. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

This comment explains so much. Thank you. Some of the interaction on HN in the last weeks made no sense to me at all but you have actually provided an explanation that matches where I could find none so far.

Well it's easy to reconcile when you don't oversimplify the concerns.

> it's the fundamental idea that people coming here is bad

Too many people coming here that don't integrate and don't assimilate is bad. A nation cannot thrive with too many conflicting demographics. Multiculturalism working to the degree people want it to these days is a total fantasy. People coming here and extracting value from the economy to send home is also a problem.

> We can't even allow things from other countries to come here.

We don't want to be reliant on other nations. So we incentivize internal production, and disincentivize importing. You can argue that the way that the administration went about it was ineffective at accomplishing that, and that'd be another conversation.

> To build prosperity, we need more production, which means more people.

So incentivize the native population to have more kids. Incentivize technological innovation that doesn't require mass importation of foreigners.

> A nation cannot thrive with too many conflicting demographics. Multiculturalism working to the degree people want it to these days is a total fantasy.

Absolute howler.

It's a (pretty white supremacist-coded) fantasy to say that immigrants don't assimilate. They typically assimilate better than native-born citizens! Meanwhile the most economically dominant states are extremely ethnically diverse, and have been for the past century.

> People coming here and extracting value from the economy to send home is also a problem.

Another example of what would be a knee-slapper if it were a joke, but it is actually white supremacist dog whistle. Immigrants are an absolute boon. For example, per the Congressional Budget Office[1]:

> CBO estimates that the immigration surge will add $1.2 trillion in federal revenues over the 2024–2034 period.

This nativist dreck that has infected the country through algorithmic social media is going to wreck the future of the country, and the sad part is that the declining fortunes it causes will still be wrongfully blamed on immigrants.

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60569

This preening moralizing is precisely the problem. When you tell people they are "white supremacist-coded" they simply do not care. You are like an evangelical Christian telling me that if I don't accept Jesus I will go to hell. I just...don't care. I'm not mad. If anything I feel bad for you; I look at you and wonder how someone could devote so much of their mental hardware to this. Your statements do not make me feel guilty and like I need to change my ways. I am trying to convey to you that I do not share your moral worldview, and that your moralizing is completely ineffective. If you think that makes me a bad person, and you don't want to associate with me, that's fine. I don't care, in the same way that I would not care if a devoted vegan decided that he could not associate with people who use animal products. Why would I want to associate with someone who thinks I'm a bad person?

Trump got a higher percentage of the Black vote than any Republican since Gerald Ford. He nearly won an outright majority of Latino voters. How did a white supremacist candidate manage to do that? False consciousness? Marc Maron: "Progressives have really got to figure out how to deal with this buzzkill problem. You do realize we annoyed the average American into fascism."

> I am trying to convey to you that I do not share your moral worldview, and that your moralizing is completely ineffective.

I...wasn't replying to you?

Anyway I wasn't trying to change anyone's mind. I'm just pointing out facts, not trying to make a conversion from what's obviously someone's religion.

> When you tell people they are "white supremacist-coded" they simply do not care.

Although I know that being politically correct is not in vogue at the moment, I do care and empathize, and try to be accommodating with my language.

What is the preferred way to refer to people who support the transition of the USA into a fascist christian ethnostate?

You can refer to those people has he/him and she/her.

> A nation cannot thrive with too many conflicting demographics.

Our most prosperous times came in the wake of great immigration waves. I think the expectation is that "assimilation" is:

- a one-way street and - immediate

Neither is true, of course. German assimilation from the mid 19th century took several generations. Same with Italian assimilation in the late 19th/early 20th century.

> People coming here and extracting value from the economy to send home is also a problem.

What about the American rich extracting wealth overseas? Vacations, real estate, yachts constructed in foreign countries, investing in companies in other countries, etc.

I think you're asserting more money leaves the US economy because an average person comes to the US (legally or illegally) and sends a portion of their paycheck back home, but I'd bet American born citizens spend/send far more money out of the country...

This is all xenophobic nonsense

Excellent counterpoint.

If I can shine some light on my specific qualms, it's these:

> Too many people coming here that don't integrate and don't assimilate is bad.

But ... why? This is stated as a matter of fact without any real qualification. Why is different "bad." We have far too many examples in our very own country of different - sometimes dissonant - cultures in the same space and still enjoying success as a society and a nation.

> A nation cannot thrive with too many conflicting demographics.

Again ... why not? NYC is our prime example of this working and the city succeeding despite some very, very different cultures side-by-side. There are also monoculture countries that have fallen far behind us to use as counterexamples.

> People coming here and extracting value from the economy to send home is also a problem.

This is my biggest issue. If you work here, you're producing something for this country. What you do with your money is frankly, your business. In either event, you're also spending money on housing, food, etc. You're both producing in this country and contributing to our economy. If you want to send the rest back to Mexico, why is that my business? Why does that hurt me?

In theory, communities thrive according to established social norms. When someone else comes in and exploits the social norms to the detriment of the pre-existing community members, those pre-existing community members will want the newcomers to go away. The dynamic applies regardless of whether the newcomer is an undocumented immigrant, a documented immigrant, or a citizen; poor, middle-class, or rich; dumb or smart; good or bad. If you believe your community was good already, then the notion of change increases the risk of something bad happening.

The ability to reject someone before they come in, or force them to go away, is usually never an option you have control over - except for immigration policy in a democratic republic. If we weaken the ability to enforce immigration laws, then we're losing one of the strongest tools for maintaining a cohesive community.

If allowing diversity in your community is so great, then why is the blue city Austin, Texas seeing a simultaneous rise in homelessness and drop in property prices?

If allowing immigrants in without any control is so great, then why would rich metropolises like New York and Chicago react so badly to the busses of immigrants sent to them from Texas during the Biden regime?

If your political party refuses to acknowledge that there are immigrants who believe their first loyalty is Sharia Law, the Chinese Communist Party, or whatever else, then why would law-abiding U.S. citizens take your position seriously?

If your vision of the future presents a better world for non-citizens vs. the citizens who have a right to be here, then why would you expect fascism to loose the next election?

Additionally...

If lecturing the largest bloc of US citizens about why they're inherently privileged and guilty is so great, then why did the political party pushing this loose the presidency in 2016 and 2020?

>So incentivize the native population to have more kids.

That is an idea. Although we murdered 9/10 of them and relegated the rest to stinking refugee camps (oh, sorry, "reservations") for eight or nine generations. And even today we have a huge problem with murder/kidnapping/disappearance of young women of those groups, which we're apparently unwilling to address.

Any other bright ideas?

> A nation cannot thrive with too many conflicting demographics.

What are the conflicting demographics ?

US is so big and diverse from its founding - it seems to have worked out pretty well

> If there's a dichotomy that I can't really reconcile politically, it's the fundamental idea that people coming here is bad. That we cannot allow anyone else in. We can't even allow things from other countries to come here.

"People coming here" is not inherently good or bad. Some people would be good for the country, and some people would be bad. I'm speaking of individuals here, not groups. The issue is that the electorate at large feels like it has been given a choice between two extremes: "Effectively allow ANYONE to come here and stay as long as they want" and "Don't let ANYONE come here". If you give a people a choice of two extremes, don't be surprised if they choose the extremism you don't like.

Reconceptualize MAGA as voting AGAINST what the Democrats are offering, instead of FOR what Trump is offering, and it might make more sense.

In what world were the dems advertising allowing anyone in though? Did I daydream Harris saying "do not come" a few years ago?

I want to make it clear that we're not having an object-level discussion about this. This is not about "the actual stated policy" of the Democratic party. This is also not about "are those policies good or bad". It is not about my own views on those topics. So when I tell you my perception of other people's perception, please don't come back and say the equivalent "that's not actually what they said" or "yeah but that's a good policy." You might think that my perception of the electorate at large is inaccurate, and that's fine - it's purely based on vibes and anecdotal conversations with people.

The issue is trust. Why should voters trust that Kamala Harris will implement immigration policies they want? Why should they expect her not to yield to the most extreme elements in her party, which believe that borders are a fiction and should not exist? Look at Barack Obama's "evolution" on gay marriage over the course of his political career. Now take an issue that is far more important than gay marriage - how is she going to stop unlimited unskilled immigration? How is she going to stop fraudulent claims of refugee status? How is the whole immigration problem itself going to be solved, if you posit that every one of the 10 million "unauthorized immigrants", and every one of the refugee claimants, needs multiple appearances in court to resolve their situation?

I mean, doing what they do in the UK, where you need to provide proof of your right to work on day one of your job would help a lot.

It seems to me that many US people want their cake and also eat it. Cheap workers are good, but also illegal immigration is bad. You kinda need to pick one.

>I mean, doing what they do in the UK, where you need to provide proof of your right to work on day one of your job would help a lot.

Every job (as an employee) I've ever had has required me to submit IRS form W-9[0] on my first day of employment (or before). It's a standard part of the on-boarding process. To clarify, the W-9 form is to provide your "Taxpayer Identification number" (TIN) to those who will be handling payroll/tax withholding (that is, your employer).

If you cannot provide a TIN, you are not allowed to begin working. If you don't have a TIN, presumably you don't have the right to work. Or is there something about the UK's processes I'm missing?

[0] https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-w-9

What the Dems say doesn't matter, what matters is the consensus opinion of their position. E.g. If Harris said 'I don't want to pass gun control' I probably wouldn't believe her because that's a singular drop in a river of pro gun control rhetoric and action by her party.

People apparently feel that the Dems are pro 'letting everyone in' -- an understanding created not just by what the Dems say and do on the topic (and others) but what their opponents say too.

If they don't want people to think they aren't pro-immigration then the Dems have dropped the ball on their messaging and actions.

For a similar and reasonably concrete example, the 'Harris is for they/them' ads and their impact is a worthy case study.

> dead terrified of a blue win ruining contracts and business

This is expected behavior, but not to be taken seriously as a moral argument. Preserving liberty and rule of law vs preserving money, so hard to choose...

The belief that the voter base is easily manipulated and does not have earnest opinions is an overtly political belief.

It’s also a topic of scientific study with a century or more of literature.

It’s a little more complicated than what you wrote, but basically: yes.

[edit] Example study construction: pick some issue where there’s been a heavy propaganda push against it from one party, but a law they opposed passed anyway. Ideally, something like a tax increase, that can directly affect voters in a way they might reasonably be expected to understand and know about. Observe that the (say) tax hike affects not more than 2% of the population you’re studying. Survey. Observe that 35% or 40% of people say the new tax law increased their taxes, and very nearly all of them favor the party that opposed the hike and was claiming or implying it would affect more people than it did.

Repeat similar studies over a period of decades, always with familiar outcomes. Draw conclusions.

Separately, you can probe basic understanding of how our government & various policies or laws work. You’ll find half of everyone not knowing how marginal income tax rates work, that almost all the people who think our foreign aid spending is way too high believe it’s 10x, 20x, 30x higher than it actually is, et c. Generally speaking, voters hardly know how anything works, so of course they buy lies about it. That’s not me being shitty, it’s what the evidence overwhelmingly says is true. And this is far from an exhaustive treatment of alarming traits & behaviors of the electorate.

"was exactly opposite"? What is it currently?

> I think it's fascinating that both sides seem to think we're a stone's throw from the apocalypse.. which very much seems to be projected onto the voter base on purpose..

Projected by whom, by what means, and to what end?

Consider that both sides may have legitimate reasons to be concerned with this term that didn't apply to Trump's first term, and that what you see isn't simply some form of mass-manipulation or "projection onto the voter base."

Indeed, the 2nd term is a radical departure from the first, which was more muted than most would have expected given the campaign.

The 2nd term is making fundamental changes to our economy that carry a promise of bearing fruit. Not only are those promises generally contested by economic experts, the short-term results have been unsurprisingly poor.

I dont understand why you are downvoted. It seems like people have a real knee-jerk reaction to anything contrary to their world view which is exactly what you are commenting on.

All most all the replies to your comment have nothing to do with the substance of what you said. The reality is that the us system is predominantly run by bureaucrats which make sweeping changes hard. This is a feature of the system.

This means that whatever party is in charge will have a harder time enacting the crazy.

I never understood the “my side”/“us vs them” from people. There is only one side and we are all on it.

Things Red Team worries about:

1. If a democrat is elected, they will take all their guns (their campaign rhetoric keeps saying this will happen, but it continues being no part of democratic presidential campaign messaging, and hasn’t happened the times they warned it definitely would—this one’s fake)

2. Election security. But republicans keep getting into positions to investigate this and either not doing it (because they know it’s BS) or doing it and finding only a handful of mostly-accidental cases that don’t favor either party. Also fake.

3. Leftward shift around acceptance of non-standard sexual and social norms. This one’s real. Whether it’s a problem or just… fine and not worth worrying about? That’s another matter.

4. A bunch of totally wacky shit like litter boxes in classrooms. Fake.

5. Healthcare prices. Real! Democrats also worry about this.

6. Socialism. LOL we’re not remotely near it, very nearly nobody elected in the Democratic Party is left of center-right in most of the rest of our peer states, on economic issues and social safety nets and such. Fake issue.

7. Illegal immigrants increasing the crime rate (fake) and taking our jobs or driving down wages (true, with an asterisk that the effects are complicated, but sure, true) and bringing in drugs (you want citizen drug mules, they cross the border easier, or to just use shipping containers or cargo trucks entering the ordinary way with some greased palms as you can do crazy volume that way, this is fake)

8. Crime being out of control. Broadly, fake. (“But police stats could be…” yeah we have victimization surveys too, people study this and already thought of your objection. Again, fake)

9. Colleges being too liberal. Look at all that “fake” stuff above. Yeah gee I wonder why, dude. Real, but wholly self-inflicted.

10. Rampant fraud in social programs, by the people receiving the aid. This is extremely well-studied. Fake.

11. The budget deficit. Except Republicans are even worse for the budget than democrats, over the last 40 years. By, like, quite a bit. Mostly because they think tax cuts magically pay for themselves, plus Bush’s wars. They mocked the shit out of Gore for talking sense on this topic, and elected cut-taxes-and-spend Dubya. So. Real issue but they are extremely confused about who to vote for to improve it.

There are more but you get the idea. Yes, Fox News and Mark Levin and all them have convinced republicans the world is going to end if democrats win elections. But it’s largely based on completely made-up shit.

Left as an exercise for the reader to make a list for Democrats’ side. Nb how much of its worry about Republicans causing harm by trying to address the fake issues above. Probably most of it. And that’s a real thing that happens, to be worried about.

>1. If a democrat is elected, they will take all their guns (their campaign rhetoric keeps saying this will happen, but it continues being no part of democratic presidential campaign messaging, and hasn’t happened the times they warned it definitely would—this one’s fake)

The key missing piece here is the guns will be taken from law abiding citizens while criminals will be undeterred. Add to this a concern over team blue's rhetoric about replacing police with social workers and mental health advocates.

> 1. If a democrat is elected, they will take all their guns (their campaign rhetoric keeps saying this will happen, but it continues being no part of democratic presidential campaign messaging, and hasn’t happened the times they warned it definitely would—this one’s fake)

It was a part of a few Democrat presidential campaigns, like Beto O'Rourke.

> 2. Election security. But republicans keep getting into positions to investigate this and either not doing it (because they know it’s BS) or doing it and finding only a handful of mostly-accidental cases that don’t favor either party. Also fake.

Due to a consent decree from the 80s, Republicans weren't allowed to do anything in this area until a judge finally refused to renew it in the late 2010s.

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