The other branches of the government need to step up and use their checks in meaningful ways. That’s the only way we’re going to claw back any sense of normality.
howimetyourcakeshop on
Like what exactly?
SDivilio on
I would argue that a lot of media has contributed to the state of the US and there are a lot of opinion pieces being presented as news; that would have to be stopped. You can reign in checks and balances for each branch of government, but if the populace is radicalized, you’ll still get radical candidates
Flamingopancake on
Almost all relationships around the world are ruined, and everybody saw it happen. You can put Mr Democrat himself as a new president, nobody is going to fully trust ever again. Let’s see in about 80 years.
ttown2011 on
The Roosevelt corollary is over a century old…
The executive rejected the constitutionality of the war powers resolution under Nixon…
Welcome to the party guys, we were wondering when yall would finally get it
EmotionalTowel1 on
Domestically? Maybe but I’m doubtful. Internationally? Not a chance. The very fabric of America’s political system means every couple of years you have absolutely no idea what direction that country is going to go and it makes it incredibly unlikely that you want to make long-term deals and strategic alliances with a system like that.
Although we had a lot of ups and downs with different political ideologies in the country we have for the most part been pretty stable up until today and that tea pot is very much broken.
Bullboah on
The US is still a democracy. The federal election wasn’t rigged in 2020 or 2025, and there’s no real indication that midterms or the 2028 election will be.
Democracy doesn’t inherently produce good or bad outcomes (although over the long run I’d still say it produces better outcomes than any alternative).
In my social circle (and I’m guessing OP’s), pre-Trump America is looked back on as a “normalcy” worth returning to. That’s not the case for most of Trump’s base. It’s obviously a lot more complex than this, but in simple terms – if you lived in a city, you most likely saw regrowth in the period between 2008 and 2016.
If you lived in a rural area, you most likely saw your town die slowly over that period. The jobs dried up, the factories closed down, your neighbors got poorer or left, etc.
Things will definitely change again, the question is just in which direction.
bosonrider on
I sense that the current US political culture is kind of like a hurtling locomotive without any functioning brakes and the bridge ahead has collapsed, or rather the bridge was sabotaged by extremist right forces who confuse violence with national pride. So they destroyed the bridge because they felt it was the right thing to do.
Climate catastrophes will be the next reckoning, after the political culture train crashes into the canyon, and I doubt much of our present global civilization will be able survive those repeating environmental challenges.
Sauermachtlustig84 on
If you look at democratic theory and empiric research, there where long signs that the USA are in trouble.
It’s whole electoral system is build in a way which promotes division and gives more power to the extreme candidates, while at the same time way too much power is concentrated in a single person, the president. Most countries wo tried out this system had bad experiences – it’s too easy for bad actors to topple this system while voting encourage extremism instead of forcing compromise by promiting mass appeal candidates.
It does not help that recent developments weakened gatekeeping (if there where no televised canidate searches, there would be no Trump) , promoted money and systematically distorted voting.
There is no awareness of these problems – so no I don’t think it can be fixed.
Unfortunately, there is also the fact that we are in a global wave of authoritarism – which makes the USA even more vulnerable.
So what will happen? Nothing good – there will be blood, lots of war and maybe 2-3 generations down the road our ancestors can pick up the pices. But maybe climate change will kill us all first.
Many_Map_3540 on
It’s in our media, our government, our schools and our businesses. The whole place has gone nuclear.
LeoMark95 on
Past the point of no return. One side needs to feel like it has won something over the other. Both sides don’t agree on anything resembling the same version of reality anymore.
It has been building for over a decade people just underestimated it labelling it a culture war when it is now obvious to anyone paying attention – much deeper than that.
Just my opinion ig.
mr_greedee on
nah we are way past that. also we now have states doing their own thing like Texas.. just obeying their own bar laws
ReturnOfBigChungus on
Part of what Trump has proven is that many of the guardrails in the current system were held in place by norms rather than actual codified laws or rules. Given the level of dysfunction in the legislative branch it seems highly unlikely to make progress there in the foreseeable future, but one thing that would actually help solidify the system would be formally codifying norms into laws. It hasn’t been as necessary in the past because most people have simply respected and operated within the norms for the most part, but what we can see clearly now is that someone who does not mind violating norms can, in practice, get away with a lot more than we would like.
That said, even laws don’t seem to phase Trump, but I would like to hope that at least in large part that is an idiosyncratic element of the individual rather than a trend that will continue with future leaders. There’s also a concerning element around escalation of norm violation where, for the most part, once a norm is broken neither side is going to respect it so I do think some of the damage is more or less permanent.
SmokingPuffin on
The US remains a democracy. Trump was elected with a majority of the popular vote. His legislative agenda is significantly constrained by the present but narrow Republican majority. The Supreme Court functions as designed; he’s getting favorable treatment there because Congress confirmed his preferred nominees. This is all in keeping with the Constitution.
Old “normal” was more of a communication style thing than a substantive difference. Most postwar presidents intervened in Latin America. HW Bush ordered almost the same operation as Trump did. It’s just that past presidents framed their actions as in service of the international rules based order, while Trump frames his actions as naked American/self interest.
Glory4cod on
Trump won the election by both popular votes and electoral votes in 2024. It should be very democratic. You cannot love voting elections only when they satisfy your expectations.
That is not problem of democratic system, but maybe you should give a thought that it could be: American people wants a certain kind of ideology and then elects Trump as the representative of thst ideology.
diffidentblockhead on
Simply nailing down 3 or so close swing states could have blocked Trump. This shouldn’t be hard; it just wasn’t prioritized. No Democrats, or pro-stability Republicans even talked about moving to those states to vote; incredibly, there was only lots of talk about abandoning those states for one’s personal comfort.
ReturnOfBigChungus on
I don’t think we’re ever going back to the “normal” of the post-cold war era, that was likely an anomaly historically speaking. Things are moving back towards a more multi-polar world which will just have much more complex dynamics than the uni-polar US led order.
The US is also in the middle of a major political realignment, which has happened several times throughout US history, but the democrat/republican divide of 10-20 years from now will be all but unrecognizable from the divide of 10-20 years ago, both in terms of policies and voting blocks and political coalitions. There are SO many moving pieces in both of these puzzles, and many interact with each other, so there’s no real way to make any kind of meaningful predictions, except that we’re not going back to the way things were before.
Kosmonaut_198vi on
No. There is no way you will revert back to your previous iteration.
Trump is a symptom.
But what are you guys gonna do with the electoral base? They are not gonna disappear after him.
I honestly don’t see any path for the US which is not going through authoritarianism and violent civil conflict (if not war).
It’s a deeply disfunctional society, and political system. Either you change both, or you’ll have more of this shit, until the system breaks in violence at some point.
The problem is that the same system could breaks violently even if you try to adjust society and political system.
So damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
janethefish on
Our position as de facto leader of the free world is gone. It died when we elected 47. It took close to a hundred years even after two world wars. Civilization will not survive a third world war.
That’s okay. We can be just can be just another country! The real issue is if we can staunch the bleeding. We need to reestablish our democratic norms and rule of law which will be a struggle by itself. We need a constitutional amendment to undo SCOTUS’s antics. Especially giving Trump immunity. Probably another to change our elections to something more stable.
We also need to solve the foreign propaganda issue without losing free speech.
Then we need decades to rebuild our democratic traditions.
Swing_On_A_Spiral on
Moderation. For decades the Democratic party leadership has gotten more and more conservative while the base tugs more and more to the left. On the other side, Republicans have gone so far right that they’ve ran the country and their base off a cliff. We need more moderate parties. The Republican leadership has to find a way to retake the reigns from the extremists with their party and the Democrats need to retake their base support.
But none of this works if both their bases don’t have at the very least the same opportunities of upward mobility, health and economic guarantees, and a clean place to live as past generations, otherwise there will always be a resentment ready for the next wave of populists, nativists, racists, and fascists to exploit.
Rbkelley1 on
It’s still democratic if you don’t like the outcome. And upwards of 80% of the commenters here will be from troll farms to sow division so I wouldn’t ask reddit questions like this.
Spend_Agitated on
What is apparent is that there is a large constituency in the US of MAGA-style isolationism/America-first-ism/great power hegemonism. Even if in 2028 an Obama-style internationalist/Atlanticist is elected president and proceeds to repair some of the damages inflicted by Trump, it will remain a very real possibility for the foreseeable future that MAGA will make a comeback, just as Trump made a comeback in 2024. Some degree of international cooperation will resume, but the kind of unspoken reliance on the US to be a reasonable partner will be gone for good.
M0therN4ture on
Nuremberg style prosecution of everyone violating the constitution. It would basically mean the dissolvement of the entirety of the Republican party and thereby the two party system.
Routine-Opinion1471 on
[ Removed by Reddit ]
chiaboy on
No. Regardless of what happens “after” there’s no plausible way we go back to “normal”. Even assuming the best possible outcomes it will look markedly different than the world was like for those of us who grew up in the Francis Fukuyama days.
egyto on
The old system is dead. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle. Welcome to open class warfare.
dssx on
It’d take a massive grassroots effort push to bring back unity and civic-mindedness. The entire establishment is geared to prevent any sort of unity among the general population of the US. It’s why they push identity politics non-stop and act like the red or blue team are the enemy.
no_cigar_tx on
As someone that’s lived through the “good times”, this phenomenon is 100% caused by the media. There once was a time when the news wasn’t biased or opinionated or catered to one set of ideologies over another. I can almost pinpoint when it started because most of it came after 9/11. There was dissent and opinions flying around all over the place about GWOT, Patriot Act, right on down to the vernacular Bush used during his speeches. Media seized that opportunity to cajole people into sectarian groups. It worked both ways because one would watch the other just to see how crazy the other side was.
No doubt , this nation can and will right itself and it won’t be at some protest or some armchair basement dwelling rebellion or insurrection – it will be as it always has. At the ballot box.
28 Comments
The other branches of the government need to step up and use their checks in meaningful ways. That’s the only way we’re going to claw back any sense of normality.
Like what exactly?
I would argue that a lot of media has contributed to the state of the US and there are a lot of opinion pieces being presented as news; that would have to be stopped. You can reign in checks and balances for each branch of government, but if the populace is radicalized, you’ll still get radical candidates
Almost all relationships around the world are ruined, and everybody saw it happen. You can put Mr Democrat himself as a new president, nobody is going to fully trust ever again. Let’s see in about 80 years.
The Roosevelt corollary is over a century old…
The executive rejected the constitutionality of the war powers resolution under Nixon…
Welcome to the party guys, we were wondering when yall would finally get it
Domestically? Maybe but I’m doubtful. Internationally? Not a chance. The very fabric of America’s political system means every couple of years you have absolutely no idea what direction that country is going to go and it makes it incredibly unlikely that you want to make long-term deals and strategic alliances with a system like that.
Although we had a lot of ups and downs with different political ideologies in the country we have for the most part been pretty stable up until today and that tea pot is very much broken.
The US is still a democracy. The federal election wasn’t rigged in 2020 or 2025, and there’s no real indication that midterms or the 2028 election will be.
Democracy doesn’t inherently produce good or bad outcomes (although over the long run I’d still say it produces better outcomes than any alternative).
In my social circle (and I’m guessing OP’s), pre-Trump America is looked back on as a “normalcy” worth returning to. That’s not the case for most of Trump’s base. It’s obviously a lot more complex than this, but in simple terms – if you lived in a city, you most likely saw regrowth in the period between 2008 and 2016.
If you lived in a rural area, you most likely saw your town die slowly over that period. The jobs dried up, the factories closed down, your neighbors got poorer or left, etc.
Things will definitely change again, the question is just in which direction.
I sense that the current US political culture is kind of like a hurtling locomotive without any functioning brakes and the bridge ahead has collapsed, or rather the bridge was sabotaged by extremist right forces who confuse violence with national pride. So they destroyed the bridge because they felt it was the right thing to do.
Climate catastrophes will be the next reckoning, after the political culture train crashes into the canyon, and I doubt much of our present global civilization will be able survive those repeating environmental challenges.
If you look at democratic theory and empiric research, there where long signs that the USA are in trouble.
It’s whole electoral system is build in a way which promotes division and gives more power to the extreme candidates, while at the same time way too much power is concentrated in a single person, the president. Most countries wo tried out this system had bad experiences – it’s too easy for bad actors to topple this system while voting encourage extremism instead of forcing compromise by promiting mass appeal candidates.
It does not help that recent developments weakened gatekeeping (if there where no televised canidate searches, there would be no Trump) , promoted money and systematically distorted voting.
There is no awareness of these problems – so no I don’t think it can be fixed.
Unfortunately, there is also the fact that we are in a global wave of authoritarism – which makes the USA even more vulnerable.
So what will happen? Nothing good – there will be blood, lots of war and maybe 2-3 generations down the road our ancestors can pick up the pices. But maybe climate change will kill us all first.
It’s in our media, our government, our schools and our businesses. The whole place has gone nuclear.
Past the point of no return. One side needs to feel like it has won something over the other. Both sides don’t agree on anything resembling the same version of reality anymore.
It has been building for over a decade people just underestimated it labelling it a culture war when it is now obvious to anyone paying attention – much deeper than that.
Just my opinion ig.
nah we are way past that. also we now have states doing their own thing like Texas.. just obeying their own bar laws
Part of what Trump has proven is that many of the guardrails in the current system were held in place by norms rather than actual codified laws or rules. Given the level of dysfunction in the legislative branch it seems highly unlikely to make progress there in the foreseeable future, but one thing that would actually help solidify the system would be formally codifying norms into laws. It hasn’t been as necessary in the past because most people have simply respected and operated within the norms for the most part, but what we can see clearly now is that someone who does not mind violating norms can, in practice, get away with a lot more than we would like.
That said, even laws don’t seem to phase Trump, but I would like to hope that at least in large part that is an idiosyncratic element of the individual rather than a trend that will continue with future leaders. There’s also a concerning element around escalation of norm violation where, for the most part, once a norm is broken neither side is going to respect it so I do think some of the damage is more or less permanent.
The US remains a democracy. Trump was elected with a majority of the popular vote. His legislative agenda is significantly constrained by the present but narrow Republican majority. The Supreme Court functions as designed; he’s getting favorable treatment there because Congress confirmed his preferred nominees. This is all in keeping with the Constitution.
Old “normal” was more of a communication style thing than a substantive difference. Most postwar presidents intervened in Latin America. HW Bush ordered almost the same operation as Trump did. It’s just that past presidents framed their actions as in service of the international rules based order, while Trump frames his actions as naked American/self interest.
Trump won the election by both popular votes and electoral votes in 2024. It should be very democratic. You cannot love voting elections only when they satisfy your expectations.
That is not problem of democratic system, but maybe you should give a thought that it could be: American people wants a certain kind of ideology and then elects Trump as the representative of thst ideology.
Simply nailing down 3 or so close swing states could have blocked Trump. This shouldn’t be hard; it just wasn’t prioritized. No Democrats, or pro-stability Republicans even talked about moving to those states to vote; incredibly, there was only lots of talk about abandoning those states for one’s personal comfort.
I don’t think we’re ever going back to the “normal” of the post-cold war era, that was likely an anomaly historically speaking. Things are moving back towards a more multi-polar world which will just have much more complex dynamics than the uni-polar US led order.
The US is also in the middle of a major political realignment, which has happened several times throughout US history, but the democrat/republican divide of 10-20 years from now will be all but unrecognizable from the divide of 10-20 years ago, both in terms of policies and voting blocks and political coalitions. There are SO many moving pieces in both of these puzzles, and many interact with each other, so there’s no real way to make any kind of meaningful predictions, except that we’re not going back to the way things were before.
No. There is no way you will revert back to your previous iteration.
Trump is a symptom.
But what are you guys gonna do with the electoral base? They are not gonna disappear after him.
I honestly don’t see any path for the US which is not going through authoritarianism and violent civil conflict (if not war).
It’s a deeply disfunctional society, and political system. Either you change both, or you’ll have more of this shit, until the system breaks in violence at some point.
The problem is that the same system could breaks violently even if you try to adjust society and political system.
So damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Our position as de facto leader of the free world is gone. It died when we elected 47. It took close to a hundred years even after two world wars. Civilization will not survive a third world war.
That’s okay. We can be just can be just another country! The real issue is if we can staunch the bleeding. We need to reestablish our democratic norms and rule of law which will be a struggle by itself. We need a constitutional amendment to undo SCOTUS’s antics. Especially giving Trump immunity. Probably another to change our elections to something more stable.
We also need to solve the foreign propaganda issue without losing free speech.
Then we need decades to rebuild our democratic traditions.
Moderation. For decades the Democratic party leadership has gotten more and more conservative while the base tugs more and more to the left. On the other side, Republicans have gone so far right that they’ve ran the country and their base off a cliff. We need more moderate parties. The Republican leadership has to find a way to retake the reigns from the extremists with their party and the Democrats need to retake their base support.
But none of this works if both their bases don’t have at the very least the same opportunities of upward mobility, health and economic guarantees, and a clean place to live as past generations, otherwise there will always be a resentment ready for the next wave of populists, nativists, racists, and fascists to exploit.
It’s still democratic if you don’t like the outcome. And upwards of 80% of the commenters here will be from troll farms to sow division so I wouldn’t ask reddit questions like this.
What is apparent is that there is a large constituency in the US of MAGA-style isolationism/America-first-ism/great power hegemonism. Even if in 2028 an Obama-style internationalist/Atlanticist is elected president and proceeds to repair some of the damages inflicted by Trump, it will remain a very real possibility for the foreseeable future that MAGA will make a comeback, just as Trump made a comeback in 2024. Some degree of international cooperation will resume, but the kind of unspoken reliance on the US to be a reasonable partner will be gone for good.
Nuremberg style prosecution of everyone violating the constitution. It would basically mean the dissolvement of the entirety of the Republican party and thereby the two party system.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
No. Regardless of what happens “after” there’s no plausible way we go back to “normal”. Even assuming the best possible outcomes it will look markedly different than the world was like for those of us who grew up in the Francis Fukuyama days.
The old system is dead. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle. Welcome to open class warfare.
It’d take a massive grassroots effort push to bring back unity and civic-mindedness. The entire establishment is geared to prevent any sort of unity among the general population of the US. It’s why they push identity politics non-stop and act like the red or blue team are the enemy.
As someone that’s lived through the “good times”, this phenomenon is 100% caused by the media. There once was a time when the news wasn’t biased or opinionated or catered to one set of ideologies over another. I can almost pinpoint when it started because most of it came after 9/11. There was dissent and opinions flying around all over the place about GWOT, Patriot Act, right on down to the vernacular Bush used during his speeches. Media seized that opportunity to cajole people into sectarian groups. It worked both ways because one would watch the other just to see how crazy the other side was.
No doubt , this nation can and will right itself and it won’t be at some protest or some armchair basement dwelling rebellion or insurrection – it will be as it always has. At the ballot box.