Originally Posted by
Stavros
Your post illustrates the problem at the heart of US politics: it is not only not a game of winners and losers, the separation of powers was designed precisely to offer a diverse population a different form of politics. It was designed to create negotiation and compromise on the assumption that the broad spectrum of public opinion would shape policy rather than the interests of one man or one identifiable group -be it business, lawyers, farmers, sport, religion and so on. It can be argued that for most of its existence, the USA has survived because the participants in its democracy agreed to the rules and while they did fight and win their cause on some issues, the system itself, replicated across the States, acts to prevent dictatorship or autocratic rule -or it used to.
What has been revealed through various compromises since the end of the Civil War, is the extent to which Race has shaped American politics, and the extent to which the civil rights laws of the 1960s broke the back of a working consensus in Congress to polarise the parties and introduce conflict at an ideological level that was only sporadic before. Crucial to the Republican crisis -it is now in effect, three parties in one, divided against itself: the GOP, the TEA party faction, and the Lunatics- is a rejection not just of liberal democracy, but of the idea that America is itself a 'melting pot'. As they watch their societies change a rearguard action is being mounted to 'protect and preserve' White, Christian and Male rule over all. All this blather about 'draining the swamp' is code for 'get the Blacks and the liberals out of our government'.
America was not broken, it was growing, but it walked tall with a face of many colours and creeds. The US economy is strong because it is diverse and flexible -yes, more than 7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost to globalization and overseas production since the 1980s, but in the same period the US economy added 33 million jobs. Canada does impose steep tariffs on US imports, the US imposes tariffs on Canadian goods too, but both trade in the US dollar to the benefit of the USA so to argue the US is being stiffed by Canada is saloon bar economics you would expect from a saloon bar lush.
Yet again, consider the simple fact that this is an Administration backed by Repubicans that is taking rights away from Americans, not extending them, from banning Transgendered Americas from serving their country in the military, to the bizarre decision by the Supreme Court to allow Ohio to 'purge' its electoral register of lazy voters, crucially taking away the right to vote from Americans.
The US is not in a trade war, not yet anyway, but this looks to me increasingly like a civil war in which a Republican or Confederate movement is determined to marginalise millions of Americans from the right they have to be equal citizens, as if they were slaves in all but name. Meanwhile, the Chief Executive ransacks the wallets of Americans to make himself and his family as rich as they get off the gravy train that starts and ends in the White House.
This isn't baseball, it is organized crime.