Treating allied countries badly, promising tariffs here and there, reducing legal immigration, exiting international treaties and organizations and so on

Why are you including the military?

I don't think I'm right wing at all. I think right wingers would think I'm a left wingnut.

And, while we are on it, Biden isn't left wing at all.

I don't want to vote third party because we just can't allow this incompetent conman to be president again.

How can he threaten democracy (in actual, real , non democratic ways) if the militaries refuse to follow unconstitutional orders? afaik there has never been any autocratic who didn't have the militaries on his side, maybe i am limited but i don't see any actual physical way in which you can suspend elections or mass remove human rights from citizens if the militaries disagree and don't enforce your choices.

The worst autocratic decision in american history as per the above definition (mass violation of constitutional rights) was FDR internment of japanese-americans (by a very large margin), that could never have happened if the militaries had refused to enact it.

walk me through an anti-democratic (an actual one, not some poltiical outcome the left dislikes but which is technically legal under the current constitution, so completly democratic) scenario without military involvement please, maybe i am missing something.

Maybe i use words differently from others, for me the "destruction of democracy" must include unsactioned massive violations of the constitution, whatever the constitution allows to happen (ie doesn't explicitly forbids) no matter how bad it can be for someone, isn't antidemocratic.

Ok so walk me through why you didn't vote Obama in 2012 then, maybe i got something wrong.

I believed in what I thought were basic conservative principles back then. Mostly fiscal responsibility, but also against excessive government overreach and regulations. I also supported law enforcement (which I still do). I don't know, Admittedly it was as much anti-progressive mind think as anything.

Then Trump came around. I thought that there had to be something fundamentally broken with a party that believes such a horrible and incompetent human should represent us as the most powerful man on the planet. That made me re-think basically everything the right believes in, and I came to the conclusion that the basic premise of the right is to never move forward, never fix problems, and basically don't do anything about anything. Then throw in the post-trump thinking that if you can't come up with a valid argument on any position, just lie about it.

Hmm ok so you are actually just a leftwing person today, on basic principles (role of government, taxation).

No. It doesn't mean that at all. You can do tremendous harm by undermining faith in elections and by constantly forcing courts to act as the last line of defense, regardless of how the courts rule and regardless of whether you can convince the military to keep you in power in the moment.

This is a huge blind spot for you.

I think the government has a place. No other entity can wield the big stick on things like unbridled capitalism. And, no other entity can tackle an issue like climate change, which imo is hugely important. There are just some things only the government can tackle.

I would certainly agree that big government is quite often overreaching, silly, and pretty wasteful. I've come to overlook a lot of that because I firmly believe we, as a society and country, should always strive to get better and move forward and I'm willing to accept the cost of that.

If that's leftwing, so be it.

Like an immunitary system learning to beat pathogens, I rather think that a country institutionally becomes stronger if it defeats attempts to undermine it's core fundational pillars.

Italy (after WW2) had attempted coups and government sponsored terrorism, and foreign sponsored terrorism, and mafia terrorism to undermine the state, we survived and nothing of the sort is threatening us anymore right now for example.

You survived presidential assassinations! More than one...

You're describing the GOP. The right is different and encompasses both political parties in the US

I think this is a completely ass backwards analogy and a terrible way of thinking about government. I would sooner analogize to a guy shooting a high powered rifle at a dam. You may be seduced into believing that each individual shot does minimal damage to the dam. But little by little, the dam weakens. If you fire enough shots, eventually the dam will fail. Rebuilding the dam is a fraught activity, and even if you can rebuild, that is cold comfort to the people who were harmed when the dam failed. That's why it is better to avoid firing rounds at the dam like it is some kind of game.

The US is the 2nd largest exporter of goods in the world, 1st in goods imported, 1st in services exported and 1st in services imported. I know we have a large population, but doing this much trade says a lot about how un-isolated we are.

Don't get me wrong I am against tariffs (and the one exception that I am not a fan, but am okay with is with China). I think we have to reduce legal immigration until we can get a handle on illegal immigration - once that occurs I think we can drastically increase legal immigration.

So it was Biden's choice to call the press conference

All we need is an angry senior citizen in the white house that throws temper tantrums if you insult him . Oh wait that kind of describes the other guy as well

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/polit...2f95fb08d&ei=9

I am curious does that apply to the DNC as well that is trying to use the courts to block RFK and the No Labels party from appearing on the presidential ballot . Would that not also be undermining the democratic system through the courts ?

I always give Lozen a hard time for his whataboutisms; need to give credit for his tongue-in-cheek reverse whataboutism here. And yeah, sadly this applies somewhat to both candidates - Trump more angry, Biden more senior.

No question it's a ****ed up system, and both parties are more than happy to keep it a closed club unless there's a third-party candidate that will help one party more than the other. Not sure if there's any legitimacy to the DNC's current complaints, but given the past history, I default to it being mostly self-interest. And of course both can be true.

That said, this isn't remotely comparable to the nonsense Trump and his sycophants have dragged the US through for the last several years. Seems like we're back to the usual whataboutisms.

Perhaps you find this odd, but some people have higher standards than 'well sure that's really terrible behaviour, but if it gets bad enough to threaten democracy, the courts and military will stop it, so it's all good'.

I think Dubya/Cheney pushed you out on the ledge and Trump just finished the job.

U know Center exist too .
It isn’t just right or left and the US has massive amount of centerish people while the majority of republicans isn’t centerish at all .

+1

If you can't see the difference between what Trump did, and litigation around whether third parties have done the necessary to get on the ballot, I can't help you.

The former was sui generis. The latter has been around forever.

Do they? Because both democrats and republicans routinely do clearly unconstitutional things, just for the courts to stop them (bu they gain political points with their base).

From the left you can think of the horribly written "Muslim ban".

Maybe you forgot the obscene illegal OSHA vaccine mandate democrats tried, which courts spit upon.

Those are both deep violations of constitutional rights.

Except the democrats violate citizens rights which in my mind is objectively immensely worse

I like your way of writing more than I should probably.

You evidently look like an exceptionally intelligent person (no matter if I can disagree with you on this or that).

So I feel compelled more than usual to answer any take of yours, I hope you excuse me for that.

I don't believe western society is built upon frail pillars though. I think the core essence is extremely resilient, and the USA has the most resilient system in the west (yes I am biased).

I think more often than not, people describe events they don't like, trends they don't like, as violation of their idea of democracy. I think they are mostly wrong: they simply dislike the developments politically, but they lose no threat to actual democracy.

I understand very intelligent people consider Trump a threat to democracy. I don't but I am ready to listen to proper descriptions of what exactly, is being threatened.

But even if I buy the idea Trump actually is a threat, I think he is a toothless one because the american military isn't even close to agree with him about any constitutional violation

Untill he puts one of his pawns in that place like he did in the SC .
(giving 3 judges in 1 term was excessively bad )

I think both are disgusting and yet as a partisan your not