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Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

It needs to be far more focused than the last one.

We can come back from this, but some people need to spend a significant amount of their lives in prison.

As a non American, I don't think you can get back from this unless you get rid of the 2-parties system. Identity politics is a big component to what compelled individuals to operate against their own interests and those of their country. Good luck, though.

I am not an American either, but there is a great deal of work on this subject, and the two-party system is actually one of the most resistant to single-individual or single-party takeover. The reason is that multi-party systems are vulnerable to having a party in power 'promoting diversity' (or something similar), in order to disempower all their opponents, while making it look like they're allowing for more views. Examples of this include quotas for minority representation, and (strategically designed) multi-member voting districts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Political_Surviva...

I have that book and am a big fan of it, but I think it needs some expansion in the light of the last few decades - not just in the US, but considering Brexit and both major parties subsequently burning through strings of short-lived leaders, coalition politics in places like Europe and Japan etc.

well this book was written in 2003 and current day events in USA clearly contradict this statement : "two-party system is actually one of the most resistant to single-individual or single-party takeover."

With lots of examples of contrary , where multi party system has not devolved in one man shit show.

North Korea, China, Russia, Uganda, etc. are examples of one party taking over; the USA is just a country that has one party (you don't seem to like) with most (but not all) of the political power at the moment.

Japan occupied Korea from 1910 until 1945, at which point administration of the country was split between the USA in the South and the USSR in the north. Following an indecisive war lasted from 1950-53, the Korean peninsula ended up witht he situation we see today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Korea

China's history is more complicated, but is also the product of military conflict following colonial imposition by Japan. To suggest that either country's political system is the outcome of inherent structural weaknesses in multi-party democracy is absurd.

I didn’t say that either of those two were the result of multi-party democracy; I was trying to give the GP a variety of examples of single-party government, with different origins.

Please note that the comment I replied to has been substantially modified since I posted.

I'm sure I'm missing something from the GGP being edited, but when you said 'are examples of one party taking over' it's hard to read that outside of a parliamentary/electoral context.

In multi-party systems, the parties focus more on weakening their opponents and horse trading, as voters are divided and winning elections is dependent on an already razor-thin voting share. Look what's going on in India, for instance.

Parliamentary systems of other countries usually have the advantages of lessons learned since the American revolution. The necessary feature of the American system is countervailing powers, but as a uniparty for corporations or one weakened, it ceases to function and cannot be easily reformed or competed against with a new party. These are flaws addressed to some degree by parliamentary systems where new party(ies) can challenge incumbents more easily.

There are plenty of examples of democracies which began after the American Revolution, and subsequently devolved to single-party states.

Secondary to the extreme corruption. Corruption is the issue that must be resolved before everything else. The fashions of political parties or their structures are superficial by comparison.

Two-parties system naturally evolve.

Get rid of money, punish lying, decrease the power of the Executive branch…

Lots to do, but getting rid of the two party system is a pipe dream.

> naturally

It's not nature, it's the strategic actions of members of those parties to create and protect that system. For example, look at laws in states that make it very difficult for 3rd parties to get on ballots, participate in debates, and then the expensive lawfare against them if they show any signs of life.

> getting rid of the two party system is a pipe dream

It certainly won't happen tomorrow, but the best time to start such things is today.

The U.S. has a Green Party, a Libertarian Party. If they ever had a chance to take any serious votes from the other two, one of the two major parties would co-opt enough of their platform to make the threat go away.

As we seem to be seeing, the Democratic Party in the U.S. is in fact, internally, two parties. As populations age out, we'll likely see the party itself evolve.

They naturally evolve because we put them in an enviroment where they thrive. Changing voting systems to proportional representation instead of winner-takes-all would be a huge start.

Eh. People have come back from worse. You can walk over the border between France and Germany.

Sure, and all it took was a systematic dismantling and building anew the whole government and a bunch of institutions, not exactly a "oh, the other party will figure something out over the course of the next term"

Very true. Daily reminder that by 1950 Germany was allowed an army again. Just don't mention the war.

You have Jared Kushner pulling a lot of strings on one side, and you have his brother, Josh Kushner, giving enormous amounts of money to the other side. They’re both incredibly evil. And it’s obvious that both sides completely disdain their civilian constituents, because their real constituents are corporations and oligarchs.

It’s not just the two party system. You have to get the money out out of politics before anything else can positively move back toward democracy.

>but some people need to spend a significant amount of their lives in prison.

Short of rewriting the constitution, that just isn't going to happen. The president is immune to prosecution for any crime committed in office and has unlimited power to pardon anyone else of any federal crimes.

And if the Democrats even attempt to do anything of the sort, people will just consider it a partisan witchhunt. It will be litigated all the way to a SCOTUS that's stacked with Trumpist ideologues.

People will correctly consider it a partisan witchhunt, but that is ultimately the only way back to "normal". Pack the court and start the prosecutions. Look at Hungary and Poland.

(The UK has the opportunity to do this before the fash get into power, but we can watch it being fumbled in real time)

> Short of rewriting the constitution, that just isn't going to happen

then a new constitution it is!

Realistically this is what the Constitutional convention mechanism is for, but for the last several decades the Democrats have viewed any suggestion of employing it as a Republican plot and have opted instead for not having a plan and trying to prop up a creaky status quo.

no this is false and a superficial search confirms it. No need to make extensive citations because this level of talk does not warrant it.

provide one citation, then.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

> The president is immune to prosecution for any crime committed in office

That's a misreading of the SC decision. If he walks down the street and murders someone, unless he can make a case that it was an official act, then he wouldn't have immunity. He'd need to demonstrate that he has the Constitutional authority to murder people on the street, and he doesn't, so it wouldn't be an official act and he wouldn't have any immunity.

ok, so we managed to get a decision that the president wan't immune from having to pay out in a civil suit related to the molestation of a woman from before he even became a politician. but part of the problem here is the blurring of the personal and the official. should the president be liable for overtly violating the constitution 'while performing official acts'. Is interfering in the state's right to hold their own elections an official act? is instructing the military to order someone in cold blood an official act? does pursuing a series of novel legal interpretations imply that he was violating the law or not? is accepting money in exchange for a presidential pardon an official act?

whether or not you believe this is a pass from the Supreme Court, it opens up a whole new unexplored space of lack of culpability.

How about not on the street, but in a boat in international waters? Or, how about on the street, but they were believed to be carrying drugs?

But the state can manufacture any excuse to formulate an "official act"

The point is that the state needs to flip enough that Trump would not be in a position to control what the state (the court actually) views as an official act.

If Trump continues to have enough influence in the SCOTUS after he's done being president, then yes, you could imagine they contort any action into an official act. But that'd be a failure of the next government to first establish a less biased SCOTUS (either by packing it or removing existing justices).

The next governement can't by itself make anything unofficial, if the SC would just deem it unconstitutional.

Right, which is why I mentioned that the first step is impeach justices or pack it.

“Aye, scallywag, yer SCOTUS rulings reading ain’t fit for kindergarten; read the chart again: official acts may be immune, but private crimes still face prosecution.”

For a king, and one that presumes themselves king, every act is official. The theory is that Congress can always impeach but we have seen and still see that they have no interest in doing so for any reason, no matter how egregious.

> a SCOTUS that's stacked with Trumpist ideologues.

It's majority conservative, but that's not the same thing as what you're claiming here.

It has 3 members appointed by Trump, but even that doesn't make them Trumpist ideologues.

I really can't find any other possible interpretation of their wall to wall decisions on anything election related. They are a knowing and enthusiastic participant in the coup.

Thomas is a born and bred loser, but otherwise they're afraid of being assassinated. Judges are under massive, massive amounts of threat whenever they think to hold Trump to literally any scrutiny whatsoever.

Not a conspiracy theory, this is an open discussion topic among federal judges within their own conferences.

Ah yes, rule of law is when judges get their decisions overruled by invisible terrorists.

Yeah it's awful

I don't believe for a second that Trump, being the narcissist that he is, would appoint anyone but ideologues.

Probably more loyalists than ideologues. It’s the Project 2025 influence that has the ideologues. And the Thiel/Vance sector has the traditional influence-focused corruption, while the Trump family is more low-trust-society personal enrichment grift.

Quite a perfect storm.

And doing so risks societal fractions against the idea of lawfare. It’s a lose lose situation.

That may be, but the consequences for not taking these bad actors to task would have worse and longer lasting consequences. The portion of society that will fracture the most loudly has already attempted to storm the seat of government after a national election. We've seen what they're capable of and I'm much less afraid of that than permanently mafiatizing basically every level of the Federal government.

Yes, but expect those prison sentences will be more popular than you might expect. The current admin expends an insane amount of energy pumping the size of their supposed fanbase.

Forgiving the south after the civil war led to Jim Crow. Forgiving most of the nazis after WW2 seems to be the reason nazis are rising again so quickly. Forgiveness has been given enough chances already. I think we should try giving the full punishment a try.

The British attempted “full punishment” against the American colonies and look where that got them. There are no easy solutions.

The British lacking the military strength and will is different from how the tactic would have been had it been executed fully. Ignoring one's views about the founding of America, suppose Britain had executed this war with complete merciless brutality and fielded its entire Imperial might and militarily crushed the rebels thoroughly. Do you think America would have existed then?

Not really. They'll get over it. Just gotta make the hole the perpetrators are in deep enough.

> Just gotta make the hole the perpetrators are in deep enough.

Oubliette [1^]: The dungeon you throw people in that you want to forget.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dungeon#/media/Fi...

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