I know many of the people reading this will think I'm being hysterical. But there was a small voice in the back of my mind when the shutdown started wondering whether that version of the American government would ever reopen and that voice has started to become much louder in recent days. Specifically the combination of this, the handling of SNAP benefits, and this all happening in November just seems intentionally designed to cause unrest. Families going hungry and/or unable to fly to spend Thanksgiving together feels like a perfectly orchestrated way to cause mass civil unrest that an authoritarian could use to seize power.
The sooner things become intolerably broken in the U.S. the better off I think the rest of the world is. The U.S. kind of scares me right now. So much power, wielded by deeply incompetent, broken, and evil people. And those who aren't those things are demonstrably too weak to do anything about it. I have a sense that things will only improve once they hit an intolerable low. And the longer it takes for that to happen, the more normalized it will become for all of those people. Basically: I really hope the current regime boils the water too fast.
A major part of the plot of The Every[0] is one protagonist's belief, akin to yours, that precipitating things to their worst outcome could be the fastest way to snap public opinion back to sanity.
I don't want to spoil the suspense, but I'll say that I do see the logic in hoping that a quick fire would call everyone's attention to the fire hazard. What you're failing to ask here is "What could possibly go wrong with this plan?"
The house is already on fire. The choices are to allow it to burn down and rebuild, taking the arsonists with it, or attempting to slow them down while the fire continues to burn and their supporters cheer them on.
American Democracy appears to be the same as second generation wealth: unappreciated until gone. Make Functional Governance Great Again. I wish it were not so.
Hahahahahahahhaa the arsonists aren’t going down with it, the arsonists are on mansions in a private island watching it go down. The idea that the people in power will _lose_ power as a result of widespread unrest is bananas. The only people watching the house burn are those with an insurance policy out on it.
> the arsonists are on mansions in a private island watching it go down. The idea that the people in power will _lose_ power as a result of widespread unrest is bananas.
Islands do make easy targets, though—they’re hard to move and they’re hard to hide.
Anybody with a $200 drone and a chip on their shoulder. All I’m saying is: if there is widespread civil unrest, billionaires are going to find themselves with giant targets on their backs.
The supporters are the people who keep voting Republican while Republicans (the arsonists) are stripping them of their SNAP benefits and ACA subsidies, while also dismantling the federal government out of ideology. The wealthy might influence (they spent over $40M to influence the NYC mayor election and still lost, for example), but the voters are the root cause.
I get the reasoning and I think it’s colourable. But I can’t help but be irritated having grown up hearing nothing but “Liberty or death” rhetoric of American identity, only to find it was all a pathetic cosplay.
"Liberty or death" never meant the first resort is detonating a proverbial nuke in Manhattan if a bad guy showed up in Time's Square.
But I agree that it's always been a pathetic cosplay. Most "patriots" I've met are by far the least patriotic and actively hate their fellow countrymen.
The fact that liberty died far before Trump was part of what he used in his cards to gain power. He sold a tale of draining the swamp, and tailoring back the federal of government. Of course, he's basically expanded the more dystopian power, and pumped in more swamp water, but part of the reason why his campaign is successful was that indeed liberty has been lacking in the USA for a long time and to some of the people that actually cared, he whispered the right lies.
With a measure of time, a counterpoint -- patriotism is that essential glue which holds together a pluralistic, multi ethnic, multi religious, multi cultural society.
Can it be corrupted and do excesses poison? Absolutely.
But can such a society survive without it? I say no: there's too much tendency for groups to fragment and revert to an us-vs-them, uncompromising mentality.
That said, my American patriotism is of the 'disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' variety. Which is a different flavor than the en vogue militaristic machismo bullying.
When my brother and I argue this, that’s the position he takes: the risk is enormous. He’s the most brilliant mind I know (an immigration lawyer who has settled the Government’s hash more than once at the Supreme Court of Canada), so if I had any real say in all this, I would defer to him.
I can't deny that and maybe would even agree with that as an abstract theory, but I just can't stomach the amount of misery and death that would come along with this to ever use a word like "hope" to describe that outcome.
I don’t know if it’s reasonable or not to wish that, as an analogy, the German people had started a true civil war with the Nazis when they seized power. I can see how folks would wonder though.
I don't think this line of thinking has any merit. Genocides have happened before and yet modern genocides still make me sad for humanity and I wish we did a better job preventing them.
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>people like you post and talk about it but take no real action.
Jumping to this type of insult based purely on your own fabricated narrative about me does nothing but further justify my last comment calling out your worldview.
I completely agree. It's a good thing we're in a multipolar world now. The US (and its vassal states) have ruled terribly and the world suffered much over it. Sadly, there is still a lot of propaganda that needs to go away.
A great world leader would spread genuine peace. Not corrupt other countries, start wars and shed blood. The USA has failed to even keep its own citizens safe and secure. All I worry about is that they will drag a lot of other countries with them while they are falling.
So how can you completely agree if even you worry?
I worry more. I am certain, for all bad things the US did, the multipolar world will be much much worse. You think the other power players are better? No way.
Less and less likely they’ll drag others down, the first trump presidency was a warning, it’s gonna suck in the rest of the western world but we’ll survive.
The US hasn't been perfect, but you can hardly say we've ruled the world terribly. Because who has ever ruled it better?
We helped Europe and Asia rebuild after WWII instead of conquering them. To the extent that our previous enemies in Germany and Japan now have some of the strongest economies in the world.
There have certainly been wars, often with dubious justification or horrific results, but good luck finding any superpower in history that hasn't gotten into bad wars. Unlike the US, most of the time those other superpowers used war for territorial expansion, like Russia is doing in Ukraine today.
You can dream of your utopian world order all you want, but at some point you have to judge the US against the alternative instead of the almighty.
I love the DS9 reference. But it also reminds me of Hamilton:
You'll be back, time will tell
You'll remember that I served you well
Oceans rise, empires fall
We have seen each other through it all
And when push comes to shove
I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!
The idea that the world was better off under American rule is so deeply ironic that my brain is breaking.
The hope is presumably that the water boils fast enough to prompt electoral action before this regime eliminates voting rights and inevitably embroils itself in war to distract from its failings at home.
That this is happening is an indication that power has been seized already.
What do you think their goals with the power are? To make your life miserable? No, clearly, all they care about is the wealth and it's profits. Which they're already swallowing whole.
One side abhors "the government" and actively took an axe to the agencies and programs that the other side cared about. The result is that neither party have any sort of active investment in the current status quo.
For me, I wonder if Congress will ever reopen. I wonder if the trench warfare in Congress has gone so far that it will destroy itself rather than compromise.
But having 10%+ of all Americans panicking after missing a few meals is also enough to topple a country. There’s not a whole lot that can unify the different political factions of the US, but going hungry gets people focused on necessity and to deprioritize the shallow / vapid aspects of politics.
Arguably it’s China’s governing body’s biggest single fear.
I currently think this government shutdown is unlikely to do that to the US because politicians have had lots of practice making each shutdown less impactful for most Americans, but the longer we go, the more likely we are to find some high value thing the US government does that Americans don’t want to live without.
I can't see any rational politician letting this go beyond another two weeks. I can't imagine keeping people away from their families over Thanksgiving is gonna work out well for anyone.
I argue that politicians are absolutely rational. I frequently argue that even the dictator of N Korea acts rationally, only by very different rules than we are used to thinking about. Generally I reserve “irrational” to people who are functionally/mentally disabled, severely traumatized, or acting under the influence of mind altering substances (eg. RFK’s drugs history + trauma of 2 men in his life being assassinated during his formative years).
They are acting according to the expected responses to the stimuli they create. The problem is that the culture, society, previous legislation/jurisprudence, and the parliamentary rules they voted in all make the calculus of predicting what is rational for them uncertain.
China is the world’s most populous country with an autonomous governing body that doesn’t always respond to the voice of the people. And their leadership knows that multiple previous Chinese governments were toppled after the people were famished.
Since the democrats are not the ones in power at the moment, don't they have the bigger obligation towards the position of the people who voted for them.
Which would be exactly the demand they are making right now.
The party who is running the country does in theory have an obligation to all Americans, the opposition has an obligation to their own block.
Democrats refuse to vote the budget because the GOP removed almost all healthcare funding from it and won't compromise on that. If this budget passes as is, millions will die of preventable diseases. How is it on democrats?
Yes it’s true that those provisions expired, the Republicans are not changing or removing anything, and it’s the Democrats that are demanding additional funding to replace the Covid era funding that is expiring.
The rules of the game have changed. The President has declared that it doesn’t matter what is in the bill - he won’t spend on anything in it he doesn’t like.
The Republicans set the agenda and the rules in both the House and the Senate. They knew, before the shutdown started, that the bills they crafted would have to get 60 votes in the Senate to be enacted. And they also knew, before it started, what would need to be in the bills for them to get to 60 votes.
And yet they chose to pass a bill which would fail to get 60 votes. And when that vote failed to get 60 votes, they chose not to enter into any discussions to alter the bill to get it to win more votes, but rather to try to pass the same bill again and again to get 60 votes. Indeed, some have even called for passing a larger bill that includes Democrats' aims and simply ignoring the enacted law, for adherence to the rule of the law is already absent in this administration.
To blame this situation on the party with the least power at the moment is pure lunacy.
At some point it won't even matter if they have a plan. I'm comparing it to throwing a stone off a mountain. You might not achieve much, or you might start an avalanche and good luck trying to control that once it gets going. Then it's just gravity and mass and until that has run it's course you're along for the ride.
The plan is to make the midterms a Republican offer you can’t refuse, so to speak. One thing on the menu or the count, at least. Or something to similar effect. Why swear in any democrat in the house at all?
Well, there's one critical flaw which is that Trump is also fucking up with the military. A lot of military members are going unpaid, and many more are going unpaid and their family isn't receiving snap benefits. An authoritarian trying to seize power without the backing of the military is bound to lead to failure, and even though money is being funneled into ICE enmasse they're an untrained legion of goons with little access or ability to use actual military equipment.
If push comes to shove we're not going to get an authoritarian takeover, we're going to get a military coup. Unless they wake up and realize they need the guys with the hardware to do their whole fascist takeover thing.
People who support the guy aren't rational. He could personally take their every cent, say they're lucky that's all he did, and he wouldn't lose a single supporter. If the military went unpaid for half a year, all his supporters in the military would shift the blame to someone else.
ICE is effectively just a government-paid gang designed to harass immigrants and any citizen they think is a bit too uppity. They don't have any actual power to do things like holding down a city or enforcing martial law without the aid of the actual military or national guard. They have guns but not THE guns.
Didn’t they illegally take funds from the CIA to pay the military and ICE?
It seems to me like this is ideal for them. They break the law to pay for the stuff they want, let everything else rot. Why the Democrats have allowed this is beyond me.
Democrats should be counter-messaging every hours of every day, on all media, to create actual dissent within the electorate. They're acting like they can't do anything but watch idly. It's insane that with all that happened, Trump still sits at ~40% popularity. Americans won't realize how shitty the situation is until you tell them, and make sure to blame Trump and the GOP every step of the process.
Insurance premiums on the rise? Thank Trump for that. No planes for Thanksgiving? Blame Vance. Etc.
Democratic representatives are speaking out almost daily. Voters are protesting in force at least monthly.
Yet too many live in filter bubbles and take the talking points they're given. My conservative parents sound very reasonable when they react to unfiltered news, at least in the moment. But then the talking points arrive and they down play or change their outlook completely. It's like a Borg mind which sometimes has high latency.
And I can relate. I lived with that mindset. Teaching myself to twist information to fit the worldview and compartmentalize to dodge the dissonance. Visiting only the safe outlets who would reinforce the comfortable and familiar perspective. Thankfully public schools, the Internet, patient coworkers, and curiosity popped my bubble.
So because the democrats have no power except to make things worse, that’s what they should do?
They have publicly said that the only thing they are negotiating for is one more year of health care subsidies. That’s a noble goal, but the country voted, and they don’t want affordable healthcare. If the Democrats ever have power again, then they can make policy again as well.
> ...the country voted, and they don’t want affordable healthcare.
Can we say those voting for Trump in 2024 were saying they don't want affordable healthcare? There were many issues on the table and it wasn't a landslide.
Repealing Obamacare has been a _very explicit_ policy position of the Republican party for over a decade. They spent the entire last election telling anyone who would listen exactly what they would do, and now they are doing it. Yes, elections matter, and they have consequences. The midterm elections are in one year. That's the next chance the electorate has to change their mind.
The thing is, the last time the Republicans shut down the government for whatever pet project it was they wanted, I was furious. They lost the last election, yet they were trying to jam their agenda into law anyway through, essentially, blackmail. I'm not so hypocritical that I would be okay with it now because it's "my side". My side is functioning democracy at this point, and that's what the Democrats are risking with this shutdown.
> My side is functioning democracy at this point, and that's what the Democrats are risking with this shutdown.
Which side is yours? Hopefully not the side fighting in n court to take back SNAP benefits already distributed to needy families.
How are the Democrats putting democracy at risk when they cannot control any branch of government? And all their attempts to appease Republicans end up with Republicans pushing further anyway?
Turn on the news. The party agrees with me. I’ve been saying it since this folly was started, but they finally realized that you can’t negotiate with someone when your threat is their ideal outcome.
They want flights cancelled. They want people to starve. They want the FDA and the CDC shut down. They want chaos. More chaos is more excuse to take more control. It’s the classic fascist playbook. See : Reichstag fire.
Two weeks ago, the German state funded publisher Deutsche Welle published a video making a case about the possibility of Donald Trump actually being a Russian asset: https://youtu.be/JmEtx-EmYtc
I would be speechless if a conspiracy theory comes true, and the American state is actually captured by the Russians. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish it, but as a fan of the series The Americans, it will be epic..
Nah, he's swung back and forth on Ukraine at least 4 times now. Russia certainly did help Trump get the White House, what with the propaganda and all, as they correctly foresaw how terrible he would be for the American Empire. But he does not receive his orders from Putin, that's ridiculous. He's just cruel and stupid.
Agreed, but bluntly: what's the effective difference for Russia? They can't give direct orders, but they also don't have the rest of the world calling foul [about an illegitimate American leader, as we ignore Ukraine for a moment].
I'd say Trump not being an explicit asset gets them 90% of what they're after, with almost no downsides
The process of repealing a president (impeachment) is a political process. Republicans could do it at any moment, so every day they don't is an endorsement of what the president has done, continues to do, and even what he threatens to do.
This country is founded on the principle of being able to spot the pretexts (tariffs, terror-driven deportation, selective refugee status of whites fleeing black majorities, dissolving of social nets, rampant corruption) to monarchy-authoritarian leadership.
The current DNC is waaay too weak and uninterested in pushing back against Trump for this to realistically happen. They are complete enablers of this slow fascist takeover. Your only hope now is for the democrats to experience a "tea party" of their own, and have actual leftists take the reins before 2028. Seems highly unlikely now.
At a certain point this is like saying that you can prevent a rape by consenting. If the end result is the authoritarian seizing more power, the opposing party has no obligation to willfully participate in that.
I'm perfectly fine if the Democrats want to make this the last stand for American democracy, because if I'm right and this is truly the end goal of all this, it won't be the last attempt.
There is a reason I started my first comment the way I did. For Trump's entire time in politics, there have been people trying to communicate the type of person he is and the plans he has for the US and there have been people like you who have said we're overreacting.
It doesn't matter what actually happens. I could probably list dozens of examples, from the overturning of Roe v Wade to the violence of ICE, of times we have been told that our predictions were detached from reality until they eventually became reality. At this point if you can't recognize that the lines of acceptable political behavior have constantly been pushed under Trump's control, then I doubt you will ever admit it.
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I can't work out what this comment means. I.e., is someone using information about you from elsewhere on the web to attack you on HN? If so, that's bad, but we need details/evidence, which is why it's best to email us.
At some point the opponents of authoritarianism have to draw a line in the sand. If the American government is going to fall, this is as good of a line as any. Because simply conceding here would just empower the aspiring authoritarian to push harder next time.
I'm a Democrat (well, nominally at least) but they clearly need some people from both parties to fund the government. Democrats won't vote for a "clean" bill and Republicans won't negotiate. The crazy thing is people predicted the shutdown in the spring and the government still drove the boat straight into this iceberg.
> The crazy thing is people predicted the shutdown in the spring and the government still drove the boat straight into this iceberg.
The Democrats also had ample opportunity to extend the bonus Covid era subsidies when they controlled all branches of government. They could have included in the overall reconciliation funding bill that bypassed the filibuster. Not doing so was deliberate.
There were a variety of things they didn't predict, including the fact that the executive branch would believe that they have the right to not spend the money congress appropriated to do things. This is the real crux of the shutdown: Negotiations where you demand some spending in exchange for votes are unlikely when the other side can refuse to spend the money, so ultimately there is no credible basis on which to even begin negotiating.
You'd think that after more than half a year of outright destruction of your country you'd stop digging. Indeed, elections have consequences, so why are you so upset with the democrats? Aren't you going to fix things now? This is your finest hour, and it will be remembered for a long time, how you acted and what drove you to keep on digging that hole when it was abundantly clear that the path chosen wasn't working at all.
Just one thing: don't tell me afterwards that you didn't know.
> Indeed, elections have consequences, so why are you so upset with the democrats? Aren't you going to fix things now?
The destruction I see is being done by the unreasonable Democrat Senators holding hostage hungry children and Federal workforce.
> This is your finest hour, and it will be remembered for a long time, how you acted and what drove you to keep on digging that hole when it was abundantly clear that the path chosen wasn't working at all.
The intransigence of the Democrats is what will be remembered here. They will eventually cave, their old guard that did so will be booted in the next primary, and their replacements will have their clocks cleaned in the next general elections.
Republicans could end filibuster, true. That would probably be bad. Republicans dont have a filibuster proof majority, they need to negotiate. Democrats are dying on this one hill which is not a good idea that has little benefit https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/news...
It is true that democrats are not in the majority. However, it is factually true that 7 more democrats must vote for S.3019 (for a total of 60 votes) for the government to re-open.
Yes, that’s the nature of how the Senate has worked at least the last 50 years. If you want a bill to pass, you need to propose one that’s going to get 60 votes. And it’s up the majority party to propose that bill, since the majority leader by and large controls what bills make it to the floor.
Bringing a budget bill that doesn’t have 60 votes and then refusing to negotiate isn’t members of the minority party failing to come to the table, that’s the majority party failing to govern.
The majority gets to block any bill they want by not bringing it to the floor. The minority can only block bills by not allowing them to get to 60 votes.
Budgets are a little different, since you kind of have to pass one to have a functioning government — so you need to build a 60 vote coalition, and since the majority proposes the bill it’s up to them to offer a budget that builds that coalition.
Has the leading party made any efforts to convince any 7 of the other party? Were there reasonable concessions? If you don’t have the majority you have to negotiate, otherwise dissolve government and let the people vote again.
I’m not sure if you’re being tongue in cheek or not but the US government doesn’t really function like a parliamentary one. Elections can’t just be called, governments can’t just be dissolved, and any sort of coalition is within different factions of the two major parties.
Republicans hold a majority in the Senate (which is akin to the upper house, House of Lords, or whatever else) but in order to forcefully end a filibuster (cloture), you must get 3/5 of the senate to vote for it (60 votes since there are 100 senators)
The filibuster used to actually involve senators standing and speaking since the senate generally does not limit the amount of time that a senator may speak. Today it’s just a threat of filibuster. It’s controversial but neither party really wants to get rid of it.
I don’t understand the filibuster thing and how it plays into this.
I’m seeing the vote for the government budget or something being voted on over and over. If there is a certain majority required to pass something then it is implied that there are negotiations. If the opposition party was just expected to vote yes then why vote at all?
That’s why I’m asking, has the content of what was voted on changed significantly? Maybe taking away healthcare from people has to be done a different way. Make a bill that opens the government, then take healthcare away.
> I don’t understand the filibuster thing and how it plays into this.
Senators are allowed to debate bills. A motion to end debate and move to vote can't happen until debate ends. A senator does not generally have a time limit on the amount of time they can debate, so unless they yield the floor, the process can't move forward.
Cloture is a process to force a closure of debate to force a vote (which has its own separate rules). This requires 3/5 of the senate to vote in favor of ending debate. In practice, senators are not speaking for hours on end anymore; it is simply the "threat" of filibuster which eventually stops the bill in its tracks. In this state it cannot progress to a vote nor does it go back to the House of Representatives. In order for it to proceed, they must pass it (and send it to the president) or amend it (and it goes back to the house of representatives).
> I’m seeing the vote for the government budget or something being voted on over and over. If there is a certain majority required to pass something then it is implied that there are negotiations. If the opposition party was just expected to vote yes then why vote at all?
There is negotiation. Senators may try to convince each other to vote a certain way so they can gather enough votes to force cloture. This isn't a formal debate on the senate floor, but done behind the scenes. This may result in them finding enough votes to force the vote or it may result in an amended bill. If a bill is amended by the senate, it must go back to the house of representatives to be voted on. If it passes there, it moves on to the president. If it is amended, it goes back to the senate. Once both houses pass without amendments, it moves on to the president.
> If the opposition party was just expected to vote yes then why vote at all?
Currently they need 6 or 7 votes to pass. They have a few Democrats voting with the Republican majority and Rand Paul, a Republican, is voting against the Republican majority. In order to get the supermajority for cloture, they need to convince several more Democrats. It can happen, though without real amendments, it's unlikely.
> That’s why I’m asking, has the content of what was voted on changed significantly? Maybe taking away healthcare from people has to be done a different way. Make a bill that opens the government, then take healthcare away.
The reason why the Democrats are holding as of right now is because of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. If the bill opens the government without an extension, then it is taking that healthcare away, as you say. They are using the shutdown and the increased pressure on the government to reopen as leverage to extend these subsidies. The short term pain is dwarfed by the perceived benefit of ensuring that the funding for these subsidies is secured.
For the Republicans it is essentially the opposite. Extending these subsidies leaves it open to being a wedge point again down the road and midterm elections are coming up next year. They are using the shutdown to try to convince voters that Democrats don't care about government employees or other people because they won't fund the government (i.e not paying US service members, Air Traffic Controllers, Federal workers, etc.). Extending Affordable Care Act subsidies goes against their stated interest in aggressively reducing budgetary deficits over the next ten years.
Plus Trump's fighting in court to keep from having to release (as very fucking clearly required by law) SNAP funds that are already allocated by congress for exactly this kind of situation. Whatever your opinion on the rest of this, that part's certainly, 100%, on him personally.
1. The budget doesn't include some insane, unvotable measure. I don't hold any sympathy for either of the parties, but as an external it seems that the majority and the president have been voted on top of repealing the affordable care act and the opposition is weaponizing the budget on topics that voters have already expressed themselves against.
2. Being unable to spend or spend vacations with family are not things that historically lead to unrests.
So imho, no, Occam's razor suggests me this is simply business as usual, but with the usual increasing polarization and extremism we're seeing all around the world.
>voted on top of repealing the affordable care act
Its much more stupid than this. People voted MAGA to get rid of Obamacare, but same dont even realize it IS the ACA. Jimmy Kimmel Live did whole bit around that in 2017 and it still holds true today.
