Elections have consequences.
The best thing for the States to do at this point would be to hold a Constitutional Convention and dissolve the government of the United States as unfit for any purpose, after which their citizens can decide how they wish to proceed.
Going back to the drawing board after watching some major issues break the country is how we got this constitution in the first (second) place. The founders clearly suggested this as an intentional pressure valve to avoid the terrible catastrophe that is civil war or the dissolution of the union.
When values diverge in such extreme ways (values, not politics or preferences) it is very hard to continue to see each other as fellow citizens working toward some shared future. Mix in severe inequality and a broken, corrupt justice system and there is a very real sense of impending escalation. With the failure of the judicial and legislative branches to control corruption, we might be risking everything by NOT trying to find new middle ground.
There was a pew research poll in March [0] showing half of Americans think people in the opposing political party are morally bad people, not just people with different views or priorities. People openly tell each other they are "ruining the country" over things like "should the US spend tax money helping illegal immigrants in any way" or "should trans people have the same rights as they were born with" or "should the government protect known pedophiles from consequences" or "should women have to put their life on the line carrying a rape pregnancy to full term" or "should there be investigations when protesters are shot and killed by immigration agents" or "should the president be above the law". Both sides think their take on these questions is the only reasonable one and anyone on the other side is either delusional or downright evil.
Last time values diverged until the breaking point was because a huge chunk of people were willing to die in order to keep owning other people and another huge chunk of people were willing to die to prevent it. The resulting war caused more American deaths than all the others combined. Despite this, plenty of people still proudly fly the rebel flag today.
Another continental Congress to reauthor (renegotiate?) the Union is a monumental undertaking that is extremely dangerous for the stability of the country so it shouldn't be considered lightly. Civil war is far worse though so hopefully we can collectively navigate our way back to calmer waters.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/05/in-25-countr...
I agree that we likely need a few Constitutional amendments, but that is a far cry from dissolution.
The amendments I believe we need:
1. Ranked Pairs voting to break out of this lesser of two evils race to the bottom. Get rid of the Electoral College merely because it's straightforward rather than quibbling about out how it could work with non-plurality voting.
2. Independent executive agencies chartered by Congress. Heads of which are independent executives elected just like the President.
3. Triple the number of senators (reducing this effect of moribund "senior" senators that benfit their state due to pull). National elections run every year (we shouldn't have to wait until "midterms" to course correct, and would also diminish the stark divide between "election promises" and "results")
4. Repudiation of Citizens United, and this general nonsense that corpos possess the natural rights of individuals. (something similar might happen at the state level, as states are actually the governments that charter corpos to exist/operate in the first place)
5. Repudiation of Wickard v Filburn and followup decisions that have allowed the federal government to characterize everything as interstate commerce. The federal government should only be able to get involved when states have a disagreement.
The first two are the critical foundation. Note that the overall effect is for an individual's vote to be more than a single bit of information. The last three might not be strictly necessary, but relieve the pressure from the path dependence of where we're at.
It sounds like the point here is "all we need is an honest and earnest legislative branch" and, yes, I agree that would help us get on the right track. Similarly, a judicial branch change of heart in the same way would really help relieve the anger and hopelessness people are feeling.
If you have ideas for how to actually make either of those happen they would be worth sharing and pushing forward.
The same problem applies to picking drafters/representatives/etc for any Constitutional amendments. But I'd hope with the utter breakdown we're facing, there might be enough political will, plus amendments have to be short, plus making the issues meta enough that entrenched interests can't straightforwardly lobby loopholes into them, that maybe the barriers could be overcome.
My point is that we don't need to be talking about a wholesale dissolution of the government and rewrite of the Constitution when we can focus on some powerful meta-issues that have led us to this place. In fact I'd expect such a process to be much more beholden to the sway of corpo lobbyists as making a new system from whole cloth would have much more complexity for such things to hide.
Honestly, the worst case scenario I see is Grump becomes a lame duck after midterms, leaves office in Jan 2029, and then the entrenched Democrats go back to uninspired milquetoast business as usual.
People openly tell each other they are "ruining the country" over things like "should the US import millions of illegal immigrants and provide for them over it's own citizens" or "should I be forced to deny biological realities around trans people" or "should the government protect known criminal illegals from consequences" or "should men have to put their life on the line for a country that hates them" or "should there be investigations when protesters are violently disrupting ICE operations" or "should we ignore SCOTUS rulings we don't like". Both sides think their take on these questions is the only reasonable one and anyone on the other side is either delusional or downright evil.
But what I am questioning is if, and if so, why, you think that a reboot would somehow produce an outcome that is closer to the values you seem to align with?
I really don't think that a "New Constitution" is going to come back and be kinder in the ways you are thinking. Most of the issues you touch on are things that have benefited from a liberal minority having an outsized representation in government. The majority of the US doesn't really share your views and the people that DO care about those issues are more politically active. Assuming something as major as a new constitution would get more people involved I just don't think it would go the way you are hoping.
>Last time values diverged until the breaking point was because a huge chunk of people were willing to die in order to keep owning other people and another huge chunk of people were willing to die to prevent it. The resulting war caused more American deaths than all the others combined. Despite this, plenty of people still proudly fly the rebel flag today.
This is also a wildly uninformed mischaracterization. The huge majority of the people that died, did not do so willingly, and had no interest in either maintaining or the abolition of slavery. Most people in the South had no slaves and most people in the North were not opposed to slavery in the South.
Do you assume the average soldier in the Vietnam war had a preseeded disdain for the NVA before being told to head off into the jungle?
The anti democratic and heavily corrup republicam goverment is product of right wing bubble. It has little to do with left.
They try a little more maybe, but are still completely insulated from and out of touch with average citizens. But they don't care because they have money and most US problems are only problems for people without money to spare.
The American left is not center. Open borders, DEI/wokeism, etc. is not a center party platform. Do you have any study that states otherwise?
But in countries where participation is mandatory, at least you can say that most of the (national) negatively affected people got what they voted for.
For improper "democratic" countries where elections are rigged or participation is biased towards some population sectors in a way or another, they are not really elections by the population.
Germany seems to have recovered quite a lot of trust following World War 2, to provide an extreme example of bad foreign policy.
> Do you think there will be a deep national reckoning about what happened?
About half of the people I know who voted for Trump this past election have deep regrets.
Trump's second term should be the end of the Republican party. But if Bush II is an indication, the pattern was that while people gradually came around to seeing what a bad idea the Iraq War was and whatnot, they merely cooled off for a few years but then were right back at it getting fooled again a slightly different way. How much of the support for Trump was basically recycled criticism of the Iraq War (ie of the Republican establishment) ? And yet here we are now, with a nice shiny new quagmire (assuming it isn't an outright loss).
fwiw I'm a libertarian so while I actually agree with much of the criticism, it galls me even more how people can start with very individual-liberty-centric criticisms, but then somehow gleefully jump behind supporting authoritarianism when it can be their turn at the trough.
Innocent people, including children, are dead. Republicans have done irreparable harm to this country on every imaginable level: civil liberties, trade, global power, economics. Open and naked corruption is so off the charts it can only be described with comparisons to the post-Soviet era.
"Regret" is, quite frankly, insulting.
L-fucking-O-L
What did they expect?
Or do they just regret that they were fooled by this guy, specifically? That he's not accomplishing his stated goals, whether or not he is taking his promised actions? If it's this one, then it's only a matter of time before another charlatan does the same thing better.
The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) was staffed by many ex SS officers.
Nuremberg Trails are continuously trotted out as an example of a system that works, but 200k people are estimated to have participated in crimes against humanity, of which only around 6700 were convicted, or 3.3%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_Saevecke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dickopf
https://www.waz.de/politik/article4512500/die-braunen-jahre-...
https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/history-research-third-reich-...
https://www.jvl.levit.dev/the-prosecution-of-war-criminals
https://us.cnn.com/2018/12/14/europe/germany-nazi-war-trials...
I think it is deeper, that these actions were taken at the top and a sizable amount of the people sided with them, that sends the message that the US cannot be trusted long term, it has become cultural. I get that it isnt a majority of people but it is big enough that it cannot be ignored.
Not trusting the Americans was a French thing ever since De Gaulle. It just took the rest of the Europeans 50 years after his death to pick up on it.
He might not have the best domestic moves but when it comes to Geopolitics, he is all over it.
You're assuming that 1) the elections will actually occur on Nov 6, 2) the elections will be fair, and 3) that the winners of said elections would take action and actually enforce the rule of law.
I'm not confident in any of those.
Hopefully a lot of the fears don't pan out but we won't know until it gets closer.
I'm not saying that there aren't better options but both major parties are complicit in how the system is organised. The US electoral system gets ever more distorted with every minor adjustment in the hopes of swinging various seats in their favour and now it just looks ridiculous.
It took two generations and a new constitution for Germans to regain trust again.
You cannot trust the current generation of U.S. Americans, and the U.S. Constitution certainly does not alleviate that concern. They elect a god-king like president who seemingly has unlimited authority. Why would you trust such a country for more than four years?
Edit:
> but after, I'm not even sure what exactly
Killing people outside the USA left and right without due process? Starting a war and thinking that it is fun while the whole world is suffering because of that war? Kidnapping a head of state? Cosying up to the enemy of your allies during a war? Threatening allies? Declaring parts of an allied country as your own? Supporting Nazis in allied countries? Supporting separatism in a province of your neighbor (and until recently your closest ally)? Proudly telling the world what country the USA will assault next? ...
This story is that of Netflix' Chaos Monkey attacking the state most rhetorically aligned/proud of The Rule Of Law and showing in myriad ways how absolutely hollow that pride was and how vulnerable The Law is.
Are these bugs that get fixed or...if that was The Last Election, maybe not.
Well, most people, obviously.