This is not what functioning bureaucracy in a functioning democracy looks like.
A presidential candidate should be able to campaign on "normal foreign relations", "independent authorities", "functioning government", "decorum in politics", "balanced budget", etc. shouldn't they? Maybe 10 years ago that would seem like obvious things you wouldn't mention. But now you should be able to win an election on _only_ that.
The voters apparently wanted more of this per the Nov 2024 elections, when we still had a credible election process.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/p...
>More than 89 percent of counties in the United States shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to a New York Times analysis of election results.
I find it likelier that people’s preferences simply changed.
All 7 swing states went to Republicans due to fraud, and it just so happens that everywhere else also went more Republican.
Or all 7 swing states went to Republicans because voters voted more Republican throughout the country?
Note that not voting is the same as voting for the winning party.
Democrat leaders did not promulgate memes that there was something fishy about the Nov 2024 election results.
Land doesn't vote. People vote. What percentage of the population live in those 89% of counties?
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voter-turnou...
The extremeification of American politics by the right has totally crippled the state. Business can sometimes come in an extract wins for itself, but everyone else loses. The political gamesmanship begat by Hastert rule, where wins must never be bipartisan wins, has decayed the government, betrayed the nation.
I'm so so tired of such loud utterly decoupled unhinged sedition, against the state against reality.
My favorite recurring threads these days is a simple one: society that wants to keep functioning has to disincentivize baldfaced lying, especially by authorities
The right is pretty uniquely anti government, is enraptured by conspiracy theories and madness. Reagan strongly dismantled belief in the government. More recently we've had mass movements like the Tea Party. It was overwhelmingly people from the right who threatened, dozed, and otherwise scared the living shit out of FEMA agents trying to provide help after Helene and Milton.
It's good to criticiE the government, to want and demand better. But that's not what we are seeing from both sides. We're seeing the wholesale hegemonic suicide, the destruction of the advanced economy that has so far distinguished and given America it's power and respect, by a party that has been cheering on anti government & decoupled unhinged conspiracies and which has stoked anger and destruction for decades.
It can go two ways! But the whataboutism doesn't impress me in the least. There is overwhelming lopsidedness, of those who care and are empathetic and want better, stacked against negative creeps draining this land.
Complaints about "the whataboutism" is a strawman, to distract and deflect.
Sure there's some violent the other way too, some Chinese Robber Fallacy. But it's vanishingly small, it's not systematic, it's not the nature of the non-right at all, unlike what the right how the right has been agitating itself, pushing itself towards stochastic terrorism. There's a whole delusional crafted reality telling America my god Antifa is raging through the streets, wanton violence everywhere, you are under attack! But crime stats are way down, and from here in DC and from what Chicago tells me, it's all pure fabricated nonsense, deranged madness, terror-mongering.
I don't see both sides resorting to political violence. It's absolutely core to look at the character of the parties. Dems have tried again and again for bipartisanship, to be inclusive of of both parties. Lawful respectful hopeful charcacter abound, respect for civility & wanting good for all. Those basic traits are so vanishingly rare on the right, who has been terror-mongering & trying to shock their gullible marks into never realizing they are being preyed upon by their party, that their party is getting their interests again and again and doing everything it can to benefit the ultra-wealthy.
Lets be clear - the election was won on inflation. While a lot was said about 47th's previous record it was often brushed aside with - Sure, this was said last time too and he didn't do any of this. Its the same thing all over again, people crying wolf etc. There was even consternation about Project 2025 and many well minded people didn't believe it would be enacted.
Now the approval rating on handling of economy continues to fall day by day. Immigration was the strongest suit at +10 is now under water at -4.5.
That means while voters might have wanted something to be done about immigration but they might not wanted more of this. This will become clear only during the midterm elections. With all the efforts being made to gerrymander and gain as many seats as possible, it is good guess to say GOP also realize that people didn't want more of this - and the only way now is to hold on to power by any means necessary.
So, that it allows others to say - This government was elected in Nov 2024 and if they are doing this terrible thing then surely people have voted for this.
They saw a man (and party) make baseless accusations to overturn an election, openly support a terrorist attack on the government, and campaign on freeing those terrorists and punishing those who went after the terrorists.
And they decided this man was better than a woman, especially a black woman. Because he was a man. I’ve been told this even by a few older women, that a woman leader didn’t sit right with them. And they were non white immigrants!
This is all ignoring the myriad sex crimes, fraud, and general lack of integrity of the man.
Like them or not, Republicans have done an excellent job of nominating and running an electable candidate even if he was not embraced by the establishment. Democrats had a chance at this in 2016 and went with Hillary and the rest is of course history.
The qualifying factor being that the candidate was a man.
I do think that no one would accept this kind of mismanagement if it were to affect them.
Let's say by executive order they make tax day Feb 1st on January 30th. And everyone who's late will pay a hefty fine. See how that would go....
This is no way to make policy, no matter the form of government
A non-functioning democracy would be if the people voted this way and mass deportations didn’t happen. Like how immigration went up in the UK after Brexit.
That’s a fine position to have. But be candid that you’re arguing for anti-democratic institutions. It’s the same reasoning why, at the time of the founding, states restricted the franchise to property owners.
One reason we are in the current situation is because we have discarded these checks and balances, allowing for the president to behave more like an autocratic monarch. If the other branches of government were performing their constitutional function, and if the executive observed the norms it's supposed to that's when you would have a democracy not just in letter but in spirit.
(Ironically I myself am an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, yet I find I know more about American civics than most US-born.)
Look, it’s hardly settled that “democracy” is a good thing. The founders didn’t think it was—they restricted the franchise to property owners, and provided for indirect election of the president and appointment of senators by stage legislatures. Just be candid about what you’re arguing, because these distinctions matter. Jacksonian Democracy has a theory of how decisions are legitimized—by the support of the masses. If you believe that the government should sometimes do something different than what the masses want, then you need to articulate a theory for who should make those decisions and what confers legitimacy on those decisions.
canada is a monarchy and a democracy.
usa is a union of republics and a democracy
they are different dimensions
> No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner.
The senate is exactly the sheep. That the senate is now controlled by the sheep is also wild. The senate is what gives a person in Wyoming has 4x the voting power of someone in California. The senate was designed so that the less populous states (the sheep) don't get rolled. That the senate is majority minority is wild.
The Senate is orthogonal to our discussion. It implements the federalist structure of our government, representing the states themselves. That’s why the state legislatures originally appointed Senators. We have muddled up the system through direct election of senators and should probably repeal the 17th amendment.
The senate is explicitly created to give more power to minorities.
It is not orthogonal. The senate is EXACTLY the mechanism to ensure majoritarian rule is not at the expense of the minority.
The direct election vs not is not consequential. The consequential part is that states get two senators regardless of population.
Democracy is a governmental system where political power is vested in the people. It is characterized by competitive elections and the safeguarding of human rights[1].
It is by definition undemocratic for two wolves and a sheep to vote for who to eat for dinner. It is undemocratic to have gerrymandering. It is undemocratic to have uncompetitive primary elections. It is undemocratic for the police to quell protests. It is undemocratic to have state-backed propaganda, censorship, and misinformation.
Maintaining a democracy necessitates maintaining its institutions. An authoritarian one-party state does not magically become democratic just because it has an election or manufactures support for its project. Elections are an insufficient condition for democracy.
Other than that, yeah.
How do you think the people on the other side have felt till now?
The checks and balances only acted as a way to hide the true nature of government.
QE should have caught that bug before it went into production
It sounds like a contradiction, but it's not, because the critique of a democratic society doesn't have to be limited to a decision process that leads to certain behavior, but both to the problem that triggered it and the solution that the system had produced.
Over democracy: no danger for it to swing into fascism or autocracy.
Over autocracy: bad governments can be replaced.
Additionally, in practice, it should feel the same that we were having for ages when liberal parties were on power. (Proof?)
Probably this is the mythical "better than democracy" form of government that we are all waiting for?
Thoughts?
I hate to break it to you, but fascism is not the only form of autocracy.
While dramatic change to H1b wasn’t specifically on Trump’s platform, unlike mass deportations, which was second, it’s within the spirit of the dramatic change Trump promised: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform.
We rely on things other than democracy to protect minorities. Institutions, laws, restraints on power; things the committed democrat believes are unjust constraints on the Will of the People.
Lots of bad decisions were made over the last few decades, now we are living in the result.
This is another Bernie Sanders policy. Bernie is also a populist.
The differences between them are mostly "two-sides of the same coin"
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/op-eds/h1-b-visas-hurt-one-ty...
I didn't see that on Bernie's website.
The Republican party had been farming this hate in its talk radio cage, and only extracting its energy to support the status quo. Social media came along and opened the door to the cage, while Trump led it out with open arms. The spiral of harmful policy <-> more blind anger is now moving faster and faster.
Notice how these policies are focused on making pain for the individual visa holders, not the companies employing them. This $100k/H1B thing was the very first bit I've seen from this Trump term that I thought sounded halfway reasonable. But then rather than an announcement ahead of time with a clear implementation date, allowances for current H1B residents to either find amenable companies or prepare to leave, etc - it's just pure immediate pain for the individuals. Including making them more indentured as I'm sure many employers will tell employees that they're not going to pay the $100k fee so their employment effectively ends if they leave the country for any reason. (and also at this point who doesn't expect the policy to be relaxed in 3-12 months for politically-favored bigcos?)
It's just like the LG factory raid - attacking the individual workers in a show of performative cruelty, rather than focusing on the company. Trump has already been talking about creating programs to allow illegal labor to continue in "critical" industries such as landscaping, construction, farming, etc. Because when the rubber meets the road those are his own interests, even if his primary business has moved on to taking bribes in shitcoins.
He did not represent American interests. He hollowed out this country and sold us up the river.
Again, the resources I found in a quick search state about 5M slaves in Rome, and buying freedom was uncommon.
Worth reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour, it's not just the practice of chattel slavery, and various forms are still legal in the US.
How did we get to a point where people casually call H1B tech workers often earning $120K or more “slave labor”?
Or give me your definition of slavery.
But you dilute the meaning of the term 'slavery' when you apply it to someone who has a 100% legally protected right to leave their place of employment and country at any time, without having to pay anything but the cost of a ticket. If an H1B employer holds a worker's passport and makes them work in slavery-like conditions, then that's illegal. If an employer treats an H1B like an indentured servant and makes them pay off the cost of their hiring and immigration, then that's illegal. It does happen in the US, which is bad. It happens far more often to immigrants in places like Dubai, whose conditions often are slavery.
Slavery is really fucking terrible. There is a reason we react so strongly against it. By saying H1B === slavery, you're being intellectually dishonest or using black-and-white thinking.
Dead wrong. Pay many years of one's and one's family life.
What is your point? Do you want to continue to debate the wisdom of diluting the meaning of the word 'slavery'?
This creates an incentive for H-1B workers to tolerate working conditions that American workers wouldn't.
And while yes, if have an ongoing green card process which takes 12-18 months, you may have an incentive to stick around to see it to completion, anyone who has their I-140, does not actually “lose their place” in the green card process. They can file for a new I140 and retain their place in the queue by retaining the priority date from the previous application.
If you think US citizens don’t stick around for a bit in a shitty job for a variety of reasons, then you’d be lying. People (including US citizens) don’t just quit jobs whenever they want without a plan like you’re making it sound. At least not ones that carry a reasonable wage, health insurance and other benefits. Again, all with the caveat of me not talking about consulting firms, which obviously don’t exactly have the best workplace environments.
That’s doing a lot of heavy lifting, which is what I meant by depending on where they are in the process.
You have 2 employees at the same company in a bad job market.
If employee A gets laid off or fired, he has enough savings for a 2 year job search and can pay for COBRA for 18 months.
If employee B gets fired or laid off, he has 60 days to find a job and make it through the hiring process.
There’s been 1 round of layoffs and there are rumors there might be another. The boss asks both of them to put in extra hours, which one is more likely to say no?
And FYI, you have 60 days to search for jobs but you can convert to B visas and continue your job search for another year. USCIS has clarified that, so H1Bs are also not that constrained as you’re making it out to be.
A large percentage of American workers have a spouse who also works full time whose health insurance they can switch too. If a company fires an H-1B employee they can also withdraw their I-40, which means their spouse will lose their work authorization.
>Paying COBRA for 18 months is wildly expensive
It's $400-$700 a month on average for an individual. More expensive for people with families, but as I discussed above in the majority of families, both parents work.
Someone here on a visitor visa also doesn't qualify for any ACA subsidies that an American scraping by on contract work while job searching would qualify for.
At a population level, if you divide people into 2 groups. And you add significant extra consequences to being fired to group B, group B will work harder to avoid being fired all else being equal.
The stress level related to immigration status, whether or not it was worth risking a change, etc, was way higher.
Lets agree - some H1B was exploited by sweat shop consultancies who pay less than Americans. And this might be incredible for Americans looking for work.
But in what world does this kind of policy implementation is justified? How is this a functioning bureaucracy in a functioning democracy where people can suffer like this?
No, it won’t, jobs (especially local jobs) aren’t a fixed commodity that are going to get filled. This will kill jobs overall, and result in more of the jobs (including jobs that didn't take H-1Bs to fill but were associated with businesses that had such positions) that remain being outside of the US as a direct result, and those direct US job losses will knock-on effects that will kill even more US jobs.