Rather than hear sober, reasoned jawboning like every prior President, some of us would like radical action. We are totally disgusted by what our government has devolved to and we want a total reboot.
I didn’t even vote for the guy, but I have never been so optimistic about a politician as I have about Trump this first month. I am sure he will break things along the way, but as much as I regret this, I would much rather that he goes too fast than too slow.
"By that I mean — I am frequently in the position of arguing in the context of a particular lawsuit, “I’m sorry that happened to you, but you can’t sue for that. Even if what you said is true, the government still wins.” The government wins because you filed your suit too late. Or too early. Or you didn’t fill out the form right. Or there’s an exception to the rule that applies here. Or, or, or. Sorry. You’re out of luck. It’s not fair, but it’s what is. Doing this kind of work day-in, day-out makes one an institutionalist in the strongest possible sense. My job is to defend the institution of government, and I believe in that institution and I want it to succeed."
You wrote that, yet you still don't understand that we peons are fed up to here with federal bureaucracy? Everything you said is why I'm glad Trump is taking a weedwhacker to the DC bureaucracy.
I don't think it's any surprise that many people are fed up with federal bureaucracy. There are good reasons to be fed up. But indiscriminately savaging that bureaucracy (with a weedwhacker, as you put it) isn't going to fix the problem and will only compound it.
My point in the passage above was that institutions can be cruel and seemingly arbitrary. And yet, we still have to *defend* them because the weedwhacker approach is chaos. It leads to NO institution, rather than just a bad one. There are myriad areas in which the federal government needs reform. But you're not even going to find out what those areas are if you're so hell bent on indiscriminately firing people and taking big, dramatic swings.
What he's arguing about there isn't bureaucracy, its the rule of law. Its the system that evolves out of people endlessly suing the government, every single day, for the last 50 years. Because we should be able to sue the government (something Trump doesn't seem to believe), but the government has to have a system that allows it to process all of the lawsuits and still function as opposed to being perpetually frozen. I'm sorry you don't like it, *nobody* likes it, but part of being an adult is supposed to be recognizing that you can't just flip the table because you don't like the rules.
"Rule of law" gets way more respect than it deserves. Remember, Hitler, Stalin and Mao all relied on "the rule of law" to advance their ideologies.
Laws are worse than nothing unless they are written and administered by rational, fair-minded, compassionate people. Should I presume that is the case in DC? Why? Because we all want to believe it is so? That just ain't gonna cut it for me. I've been around too long and seen too much to believe that.
The very fact that we have two political parties, NEITHER of which has any governmental authority, making laws based on their own 'vision' should give everyone a clue as to how illegitimate our 'rule of law' really is. One other thing to remember, the federal government is supposed to be severely restrained by the constitution. The states created the federal government, and their intent was to maintain full control of it, not the other way around. Trump seems to be the first president in a century who acknowledges that.
Herer's something I wrote a while back, that you might find informative.
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao don't have a huge swath of things in common ideologically, but one thing they do have is that they came to power by co-opting populist sentiment and crushing all opposition to having indiscriminate authority. Did you ever hear of any jews suing Hitler? That's the difference. There are times in this country where the courts have not served to check the executive branch, but those times are generally associated with some of the darkest, worst moments of our history, which is a pretty a good argument for why we should generally respect the system even if it seems slow and unresponsive. When you say political parties don't have the authority to make laws, I assume you have some different interpretation of the part where the constitution gives people elected to congress that power than most of us do.
I think you are patently delusional if you think Trump has any interest, or even understanding of federalism. He's going to let the states decide many things out of a complete disinterest in taking any responsibility for unifying standards across the country, but that's laziness, not ideology. I guarantee you the first time a state defies him he's going to use every mechanism possible to punish them for it. We already saw that in the first administration with the way he did everything he could think of to deny funding and supplies to New York and CA during COVID.
You were off to a good start, and then you blew it.
"There are times in this country where the courts have not served to check the executive branch, but those times are generally associated with some of the darkest, worst moments of our history..."
If you can not see that one of those times was the perpetual persecution of Trump by Biden and his fellow totalitarian thugs, then YOU are the problem.
And if you think that the two parties legitimately, constitutionally, and ethically maintain control over every government in America, you are an even BIGGER problem. The truth is, Americans generally hold both parties and all of DC in utter contempt. Why do you think Trump is so popular?
Do yourself a favor and climb outside of your bubble and look around. You'll be amazed at what you see.
You're on a soapbox talking past me, man. I'm not the problem anymore than you are. Trump is, and hopefully we can agree on that before it is too late. You're right that there is a lot of hatred and contempt of both political parties in this country, I'm sure we would ascribe different reasons to that, but I don't think it matters at this point. Plenty of nonpartisans, including a lot of lawyers, historians, and people familiar with foreign dictatorships are looking at the steps Trump is taking and saying that they are absolutely out of line with any kind of normative process of governing. Trump is trying to rule us, instead of working with the congress, which is controlled by his same party, to accomplish anything in the way our constitution intended. You don't have to be some liberal coastal elite to be concerned about this stuff, and don't assume that everyone who is lives in a bubble, where we just don't understand other people's frustrations with the way the government has ossified. But the time for treating this like a partisan issue or trading blows over how we got here and who pushed the envelope first is way, way past. Unless you believe the United States should be some kind of soft dictatorship you should be opposed to Trump's actions.
If you think the result, or even intention, of any of this is to have government function more responsively to the needs of the people, then you're giving more charity to the weed-whackers than they're even willing to take. The whole purpose is to ensure government says "tough shit, your problem not ours" to MORE things.
Which if you are member of the general public who is constantly screwed by the establishment whilst being robbed by the establishment to pay for services we never asked for and could likely afford ourselves if we uhhh were not being ROBBED sounds like a dream come true. Because the reality is the government already says "tough shit" to everyday people. When you have to shut down the entire country bc our government funded a level 4 lab in Wuhan china and somehow a deadly super contagious pathogen escaped: our government said "tough shit not our problem and don't ask questions about where it came from." When you pump a couple of trillion dollars into the economy only to watch the price of everything skyrocket the government said: "tough shit not our problem." When the largest transfer of wealth occurs right before everyone's eyes as a result our government said: "tough shit not our problem." When special needs kids are struggling to cope with online schooling for TWO YEARS the government said "tough shit not our problem." When women and are raped or killed by people who should have never been allowed to cross our borders the government said "tough shit not our problem." The only difference is we won't be paying nearly as much $$.
You're right about all of this... Except that while Congress should be in the driver's seat for workforce reduction, Congress has proven it can't do anything. Therefore, the executive branch must -- and they are very constrained in how they can do it.
You can say that this administration has no mandate to accomplish workforce reduction, or any other thing, but our government is $35 trillion in debt. Someone has to do something. Unfortunately, workforce reduction is an insignificant contribution. But every little bit helps.
Rather than hear sober, reasoned jawboning like every prior President, some of us would like radical action. We are totally disgusted by what our government has devolved to and we want a total reboot.
I didn’t even vote for the guy, but I have never been so optimistic about a politician as I have about Trump this first month. I am sure he will break things along the way, but as much as I regret this, I would much rather that he goes too fast than too slow.
"By that I mean — I am frequently in the position of arguing in the context of a particular lawsuit, “I’m sorry that happened to you, but you can’t sue for that. Even if what you said is true, the government still wins.” The government wins because you filed your suit too late. Or too early. Or you didn’t fill out the form right. Or there’s an exception to the rule that applies here. Or, or, or. Sorry. You’re out of luck. It’s not fair, but it’s what is. Doing this kind of work day-in, day-out makes one an institutionalist in the strongest possible sense. My job is to defend the institution of government, and I believe in that institution and I want it to succeed."
You wrote that, yet you still don't understand that we peons are fed up to here with federal bureaucracy? Everything you said is why I'm glad Trump is taking a weedwhacker to the DC bureaucracy.
I don't think it's any surprise that many people are fed up with federal bureaucracy. There are good reasons to be fed up. But indiscriminately savaging that bureaucracy (with a weedwhacker, as you put it) isn't going to fix the problem and will only compound it.
My point in the passage above was that institutions can be cruel and seemingly arbitrary. And yet, we still have to *defend* them because the weedwhacker approach is chaos. It leads to NO institution, rather than just a bad one. There are myriad areas in which the federal government needs reform. But you're not even going to find out what those areas are if you're so hell bent on indiscriminately firing people and taking big, dramatic swings.
What he's arguing about there isn't bureaucracy, its the rule of law. Its the system that evolves out of people endlessly suing the government, every single day, for the last 50 years. Because we should be able to sue the government (something Trump doesn't seem to believe), but the government has to have a system that allows it to process all of the lawsuits and still function as opposed to being perpetually frozen. I'm sorry you don't like it, *nobody* likes it, but part of being an adult is supposed to be recognizing that you can't just flip the table because you don't like the rules.
"Rule of law" gets way more respect than it deserves. Remember, Hitler, Stalin and Mao all relied on "the rule of law" to advance their ideologies.
Laws are worse than nothing unless they are written and administered by rational, fair-minded, compassionate people. Should I presume that is the case in DC? Why? Because we all want to believe it is so? That just ain't gonna cut it for me. I've been around too long and seen too much to believe that.
The very fact that we have two political parties, NEITHER of which has any governmental authority, making laws based on their own 'vision' should give everyone a clue as to how illegitimate our 'rule of law' really is. One other thing to remember, the federal government is supposed to be severely restrained by the constitution. The states created the federal government, and their intent was to maintain full control of it, not the other way around. Trump seems to be the first president in a century who acknowledges that.
Herer's something I wrote a while back, that you might find informative.
https://individualistsunite.substack.com/p/who-judges-the-judges?r=z324w
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao don't have a huge swath of things in common ideologically, but one thing they do have is that they came to power by co-opting populist sentiment and crushing all opposition to having indiscriminate authority. Did you ever hear of any jews suing Hitler? That's the difference. There are times in this country where the courts have not served to check the executive branch, but those times are generally associated with some of the darkest, worst moments of our history, which is a pretty a good argument for why we should generally respect the system even if it seems slow and unresponsive. When you say political parties don't have the authority to make laws, I assume you have some different interpretation of the part where the constitution gives people elected to congress that power than most of us do.
I think you are patently delusional if you think Trump has any interest, or even understanding of federalism. He's going to let the states decide many things out of a complete disinterest in taking any responsibility for unifying standards across the country, but that's laziness, not ideology. I guarantee you the first time a state defies him he's going to use every mechanism possible to punish them for it. We already saw that in the first administration with the way he did everything he could think of to deny funding and supplies to New York and CA during COVID.
You were off to a good start, and then you blew it.
"There are times in this country where the courts have not served to check the executive branch, but those times are generally associated with some of the darkest, worst moments of our history..."
If you can not see that one of those times was the perpetual persecution of Trump by Biden and his fellow totalitarian thugs, then YOU are the problem.
And if you think that the two parties legitimately, constitutionally, and ethically maintain control over every government in America, you are an even BIGGER problem. The truth is, Americans generally hold both parties and all of DC in utter contempt. Why do you think Trump is so popular?
Do yourself a favor and climb outside of your bubble and look around. You'll be amazed at what you see.
You're on a soapbox talking past me, man. I'm not the problem anymore than you are. Trump is, and hopefully we can agree on that before it is too late. You're right that there is a lot of hatred and contempt of both political parties in this country, I'm sure we would ascribe different reasons to that, but I don't think it matters at this point. Plenty of nonpartisans, including a lot of lawyers, historians, and people familiar with foreign dictatorships are looking at the steps Trump is taking and saying that they are absolutely out of line with any kind of normative process of governing. Trump is trying to rule us, instead of working with the congress, which is controlled by his same party, to accomplish anything in the way our constitution intended. You don't have to be some liberal coastal elite to be concerned about this stuff, and don't assume that everyone who is lives in a bubble, where we just don't understand other people's frustrations with the way the government has ossified. But the time for treating this like a partisan issue or trading blows over how we got here and who pushed the envelope first is way, way past. Unless you believe the United States should be some kind of soft dictatorship you should be opposed to Trump's actions.
If you think the result, or even intention, of any of this is to have government function more responsively to the needs of the people, then you're giving more charity to the weed-whackers than they're even willing to take. The whole purpose is to ensure government says "tough shit, your problem not ours" to MORE things.
Which if you are member of the general public who is constantly screwed by the establishment whilst being robbed by the establishment to pay for services we never asked for and could likely afford ourselves if we uhhh were not being ROBBED sounds like a dream come true. Because the reality is the government already says "tough shit" to everyday people. When you have to shut down the entire country bc our government funded a level 4 lab in Wuhan china and somehow a deadly super contagious pathogen escaped: our government said "tough shit not our problem and don't ask questions about where it came from." When you pump a couple of trillion dollars into the economy only to watch the price of everything skyrocket the government said: "tough shit not our problem." When the largest transfer of wealth occurs right before everyone's eyes as a result our government said: "tough shit not our problem." When special needs kids are struggling to cope with online schooling for TWO YEARS the government said "tough shit not our problem." When women and are raped or killed by people who should have never been allowed to cross our borders the government said "tough shit not our problem." The only difference is we won't be paying nearly as much $$.
You're right about all of this... Except that while Congress should be in the driver's seat for workforce reduction, Congress has proven it can't do anything. Therefore, the executive branch must -- and they are very constrained in how they can do it.
You can say that this administration has no mandate to accomplish workforce reduction, or any other thing, but our government is $35 trillion in debt. Someone has to do something. Unfortunately, workforce reduction is an insignificant contribution. But every little bit helps.