I’m not in the US, but it seems to me that the Republicans keep breaking norms and procedures, including politicising impeachment and ignoring illegal, immoral and plain bad conduct.
They also seem to be fine with not applying the same standard across the isle.
On the other hand, either Democrats follow new precedent, with even more devolving, or they keep the old decorum and get their asses kicked by Republican foul play.
What ways out of this spiral are there?
Just wait it out for a few more years and things will settle down. This isn’t anything new… the US has gone through a very similar period of political upheaval and realigning of parties every two or three generations since it was founded. This one isn’t even the worst we’ve had.
All federal employees have been reclassified to political employees instead of nonpartisan civil servants, meaning they are closer to at will employees.
This has never happened before.
All federal employees now serve at the will of the party in power. There will be loyalty tests. There will be entire departments defunded and dismantled.
They are reviewing social media posts as we speak to decide who to keep. That’s right, that includes folks at the CDC, FDA, EPA… every paperwork jockey, no matter how minor their position, is now subject to the whims at the party in power in a way they were not before.
All these firings will be contested. They’ll go to the courts. Say… Who owns the courts right now?
You have no idea what is happening. The purges begin 90 days from now.
I was talking with some kids the other month (Berkeley grads, so “kids”=mid 20s), and they really believed this current shit show is no big deal because they were taught about “checks and balances” in HS. It blows my mind that anyone thinks Fuckhead and the current GOP is just a normal swaying of the political pendulum.
Back in high school, my history teacher was lecturing about political instability in Europe during WWII. She called out a girl next to me for not paying attention. When asked why she wasn’t paying attention, the girl responded, “Oh, that can never happen here.”
That’s not at all how this works.
It is. Yeah, we’ve had a civil war. We have not had creeping fascism, new rules that allow a president to be entirely lawless, a corrupt supreme court, a woefully misinformed populace, Nazis in the White House, and oligarchs buying legislation and creating insane wealth disparity all happening at the same time.
This isn’t a realigning of the parties. It’s fascism taking hold.