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We're just broken. And nobody can or will fix it. (1 Viewer)

KCitons

Footballguy
The more I read discussions about gun control, tariffs, immigration, etc., I've finally come to the conclusion that we are broken as a country. We aren't broken as individuals. We help each other, we help our neighbors, and we respond in a time of crisis. But, our leaders and our government are broken. If I paid someone to fix my car and it still didn't run, I would want my money back. If I went to a doctor and he amputated my leg when it didn't need to be, I would sue. Why do we allow our politicians to rip us off by promising one thing and delivering nothing? It's time to remove the money from the equation. If you serve our country, you should do it because you believe you can make things better, not make yourself wealthier. It's time to hold people accountable. This isn't a Democrat or Republican thing. They all suck. Forget about the color of your state and start making decisions that are best for the country. While there's still a country left. 

 
The more I read discussions about gun control, tariffs, immigration, etc., I've finally come to the conclusion that we are broken as a country. We aren't broken as individuals. We help each other, we help our neighbors, and we respond in a time of crisis. But, our leaders and our government are broken. If I paid someone to fix my car and it still didn't run, I would want my money back. If I went to a doctor and he amputated my leg when it didn't need to be, I would sue. Why do we allow our politicians to rip us off by promising one thing and delivering nothing? It's time to remove the money from the equation. If you serve our country, you should do it because you believe you can make things better, not make yourself wealthier. It's time to hold people accountable. This isn't a Democrat or Republican thing. They all suck. Forget about the color of your state and start making decisions that are best for the country. While there's still a country left. 


What do you mean by "It's time to remove money from the equation?"

 
junk in junk out

Until voters take a vested interest in looking closely at the people they vote for things will not change.

I also agree that politicians should not be getting rich by serving, they should be compensated for their job, fairly, but beyond that there should be no other avenue for them to get revenue.

 
I don't think politics are any different today than they were in the 1800s or the 1900s.

The country went to war with itself. Nothing we're looking at now is anywhere near as sectionals as the 1840s-1870s. 

The country had people starve to death in the 1930s. We're not letting masses of people starve in 2019.

For all our differences, our country is closer together right now than it has been for the vast majority of the USA lifespan.

In fact, I think the country works well. The Progressives try to drag the populace to some bright new vision and others fight to preserve the status quo. The end result is we see incremental change which is too much for some and too slow for others, but works to advance all Americans without drastically shaking the system.

 
What's odd is not just the enrichment that comes with positions of power through the lobbying purse and sinecures for family on K Street and in other positions but that the public, which ostensibly hates this, is willing to pay out most of the supplemental income for congressmen and women through speaking engagement fees and book deals.

This strikes me as something strange. I guess we put a value on their experience and expertise in legislative matters, some of it earned, some unearned. 

 
Let's start with salary. Or even compensation for actual work. Then let's move to outside money that influences votes. 
Reduction of salary means that a more landed class would serve. That would influence laws in profound ways I don't think you've thought about. Or maybe you have. What is a good starting salary for various offices? 

 
Let's start with salary. Or even compensation for actual work. Then let's move to outside money that influences votes. 


I think that's a really bad idea because it basically guarantees that the only people who will run for office are rich people.

 
It never all worked perfectly, not even really close, but i remember it working and know when it changed. Used to remark about it to friends even before the internet. When the prurience of the 90s that kicked into hyperdrive with the OJ trial crossed into politics and President Clinton's misdeeds and suddenly more people knew where Monica Lewinsky bought the blue dress than anything the President was doing politically, things started to deteriorate. Cable TV got hot-buttony about everything, which hooked into where America was going personally - toward selfishness, consumerism, distraction, individualism and culminated in a willful oblivion of any need for citizenship & cooperation. Within a decade, everybody was branded, 9/11 added kneejerk to it and the Bush administration's tripling of the size & power of lobbying created the stasis by which the foxes could loot the coop. We are broken, we will crash, this nation will probably be six countries before this century is over. Disqualifying money as speech would have to be the first step to reform, but selfishness has grown to the point where the it's most likely that the apogee of the personal license which liberty-for-all has provided will be reached before we can reign it back in.

 
Reduction of salary means that a more landed class would serve. That would influence laws in profound ways I don't think you've thought about. Or maybe you have. What is a good starting salary for various offices? 
Diversity is suddenly bad? It reminds me the movie Leap of Faith with Steve Martin . "if you want to give up womanizing, who you gonna talk to? Some pale skinned virgin priest?" How many of your representatives in DC really understand the people they represent?

I think that's a really bad idea because it basically guarantees that the only people who will run for office are rich people.
Why? Who do we have serving on juries? Is writing a law really that difficult? I'm sure that 90% of it is the same procedure from one law to the next. (perhaps I'm wrong) Are we paying them for the ideas? Are we paying them for added pork? 

Are they really doing what you and I expect? If the answer isn't a resounding "yes". Then we have a problem. 

 
It never all worked perfectly, not even really close, but i remember it working and know when it changed. Used to remark about it to friends even before the internet. When the prurience of the 90s that kicked into hyperdrive with the OJ trial crossed into politics and President Clinton's misdeeds and suddenly more people knew where Monica Lewinsky bought the blue dress than anything the President was doing politically, things started to deteriorate. Cable TV got hot-buttony about everything, which hooked into where America was going personally - toward selfishness, consumerism, distraction, individualism and culminated in a willful oblivion of any need for citizenship & cooperation. Within a decade, everybody was branded, 9/11 added kneejerk to it and the Bush administration's tripling of the size & power of lobbying created the stasis by which the foxes could loot the coop. We are broken, we will crash, this nation will probably be six countries before this century is over. Disqualifying money as speech would have to be the first step to reform, but selfishness has grown to the point where the it's most likely that the apogee of the personal license which liberty-for-all has provided will be reached before we can reign it back in.
I can't give this enough likes. 

 
It never all worked perfectly, not even really close, but i remember it working and know when it changed. Used to remark about it to friends even before the internet. When the prurience of the 90s that kicked into hyperdrive with the OJ trial crossed into politics and President Clinton's misdeeds and suddenly more people knew where Monica Lewinsky bought the blue dress than anything the President was doing politically, things started to deteriorate. Cable TV got hot-buttony about everything, which hooked into where America was going personally - toward selfishness, consumerism, distraction, individualism and culminated in a willful oblivion of any need for citizenship & cooperation. Within a decade, everybody was branded, 9/11 added kneejerk to it and the Bush administration's tripling of the size & power of lobbying created the stasis by which the foxes could loot the coop. We are broken, we will crash, this nation will probably be six countries before this century is over. Disqualifying money as speech would have to be the first step to reform, but selfishness has grown to the point where the it's most likely that the apogee of the personal license which liberty-for-all has provided will be reached before we can reign it back in.
:goodposting:

I think another dark age is a possibility, ironically partially facilitated by rapid technological advances outstripping most humans' ability to deal with them psychologically, emotionally, etc.

 
Diversity is suddenly bad? It reminds me the movie Leap of Faith with Steve Martin . "if you want to give up womanizing, who you gonna talk to? Some pale skinned virgin priest?" How many of your representatives in DC really understand the people they represent?
I think it would bring less diversity. The people I considered the landed class have either the financial, professional, or social connections to more easily pave their paths to election. Not only will you have more inherited money; you'll have more a dynamic that is more politically dynastic (a trait we do indeed have); and you'll have luminaries, celebrities, academicians, experts and those otherwise connected to media outlets having easier paths to election than they have now.

The incentive to run will be decreased for those in the middle and lower classes and increased to those seeking landed power and influence.

I hardly see this as an anti-diversity argument, to the contrary, the salary being higher actually keeps the ledger weighted towards more diversity. 

 
:goodposting:

I think another dark age is a possibility, ironically partially facilitated by rapid technological advances outstripping most humans' ability to deal with them psychologically, emotionally, etc.
i'm getting tired of citing my old unfinished projects so i can only imagine how y'all must feel but, early in 2016, i found an old friend who wanted to be the arranger for my musical projects and, since it had been well over 40 years since we had collaborated, my visits down to his studio consisted of him smoking prodigious amounts of ganj and us getting used to each other again before getting down to business. He seemed more interested on collaborating on new stuff than doing what i wanted and, early on, i fed that. Since the project he would be arranging would be a movie musical, i let him in on an idea i had for a stage musical and offered to let him co-write it.

KILL THE SUN,the musical was called - an idea i'd had the summer before but had only played around with a little bit. The concept was that solar flares had knocked out the electro-magnetic grid around Earth and communication was almost completely down. This caused angry citizens without entertainments nor distractions to storm our capitals. In a fit of pique, the reactionary president, Reginald Rathwig (a character & name i came up w before Trump even announced, btw) had sent a missile to destroy the sun in revenge. We immediately sent a space mission to chase the missile down, but the rest of the world presumed we had but weeks to live. Part of the world reacted violently, part prepared for the Rapture, part of the world decided to party and the musical numbers came from those three scenarios and the mission to destroy the sun-destroying missile. It was fun. My collaborator loved it and we knocked out some funny Frank-Zappa-meets-B52s end-of-the-world dance party songs until i caught him selling some of my work as his own and the partnership ended.

The silly thing about that is that the world has kinda been acting like the cast of KILL THE SUN, ever since i conceived it, which has grossly fueled my end-of-world-as-we-know-it speculations.

 
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I think it would bring less diversity. The people I considered the landed class have either the financial, professional, or social connections to more easily pave their paths to election. Not only will you have more inherited money; you'll have more a dynamic that is more politically dynastic (a trait we do indeed have); and you'll have luminaries, celebrities, academicians, experts and those otherwise connected to media outlets having easier paths to election than they have now.

The incentive to run will be decreased for those in the middle and lower classes and increased to those seeking landed power and influence.

I hardly see this as an anti-diversity argument, to the contrary, the salary being higher actually keeps the ledger weighted towards more diversity. 
I was approaching it from the standpoint of jury duty. You have a percentage of people that want to run for office as a career. They would be capped with a salary and campaign contributions. Anyone wishing to donate to the campaign would do so anonymously and without future consideration. The other percentage of people would be "drafted" to represent their state. Now, we wouldn't just take anyone, the same way the military doesn't take just anyone. There would need to be a desire and an ability. Imagine someone working minimum wage that could now become a Congresswoman. She would receive 5-10x the pay and have health care for the remainder of her life. In return she keeps the crooks in line and concentrating on what needs to be done to make the country better. All finances will be tracked. She can't suddenly have $3 million in a bank account. Would you let the government pay you a 6 figure salary for 4 years and cover your health care costs for the benefit of personal financial transparency? I would.

 
Lots of possible responses to this but my general reply is I don't agree with the premise of the OP.  We aren't broken - we have flaws but most of them can be fixed, some of them rather easily with the right people in place.  Some of the flaws are extremely difficult to solve and will take generations to fix.

 
i'm getting tired of citing my old unfinished projects so i can only imagine how y'all must feel but, early in 2016, i found an old friend who wanted to be the arranger for my musical projects and, since it had been well over 40 years since we had collaborated, my visits down to his studio consisted of him smoking prodigious amounts of ganj and us getting used to each other again before getting down to business. He seemed more interested on collaborating on new stuff than doing what i wanted and, early on, i fed that. Since the project he would be arranging would be a movie musical, i let him in on an idea i had for a stage musical and offered to let him co-write it.

KILL THE SUN,the musical was called - an idea i'd had the summer before but had only played around with a little bit. The concept was that solar flares had knocked out the electro-magnetic grid around Earth and communication was almost completely down. This caused angry citizens without entertainments nor distractions to storm our capitals. In a fit of pique, the reactionary president, Reginald Rathwig (a character & name i came up w before Trump even announced, btw) had sent a missile to destroy the sun in revenge. We immediately sent a space mission to chase the missile down, but the rest of the world presumed we had a week to live. Part of the world reacted violently, part prepared for the Rapture, part of the world decided to party and the musical numbers came from those three scenarios and the mission to destroy the sun-destroying missile. It was fun. My collaborator loved it and we knocked out some funny Frank-Zappa-meets-B52s end-of-the-world dance party songs until i caught him selling some of my work as his own and the partnership ended.

The silly thing about that is that the world has kinda been acting like the cast of KILL THE SUN, ever since i conceived it, which has grossly fueled my end-of-word-as-we-know-it speculations.
You've one upped me - going straight to the permanent dark age.

You have identified core issues that are becoming critical problems - complete commitment to self interest, greed, consumption. The Trumpian appeal is a prism that focuses all things on benefit to the self - my 401k, my religion, my guns, my ability to obtain property cheaply, my indoctrinated culture, etc.

 
This thread and this sub-forum spends most of it's time looking at things through the prism of politics.  I think we assume too much when we think most people do that.  We also spend time in here arguing and focusing on our differences and the negatives.  There's a lot of good that goes on IRL - we see glimpses of it in the FFA when one of our own is hurting or in need of help.  And we are mostly strangers to each other.  In the real world people are even more kind and generous to the people they know - their neighbors, their co-workers - including people from the other side of the aisle politically.  Most of us are flawed, but most of us do a lot of good - our political system may be "broken" but our country most certainly isn't despite how things look in the moment.

 
You've one upped me - going straight to the permanent dark age.

You have identified core issues that are becoming critical problems - complete commitment to self interest, greed, consumption. The Trumpian appeal is a prism that focuses all things on benefit to the self - my 401k, my religion, my guns, my ability to obtain property cheaply, my indoctrinated culture, etc.
The most important part is that not only does no one delay gratification (the quality that anthropolgists and evolutionary neurologists & psychologists will tell you is the distinguishing characteristic of humanity) any longer but most people don't even know that's a thing. They plug in, bypass their neuro-pathways with distractions and, when their social dysfunction causes problems, they take a pill and/or have "mastery" moments of cultural conquer like spending the amount an African village could feed itself for a week on on peasant-tear-marinated porkbelly skewers with artisan mead. That and trading in old participation standards for public behavior & cooperation for "passing the pain" has us on a regression track not seen since the Fall or Rome and far more potentialized in its momentum.

 
This thread and this sub-forum spends most of it's time looking at things through the prism of politics.  I think we assume too much when we think most people do that.  We also spend time in here arguing and focusing on our differences and the negatives.  There's a lot of good that goes on IRL - we see glimpses of it in the FFA when one of our own is hurting or in need of help.  And we are mostly strangers to each other.  In the real world people are even more kind and generous to the people they know - their neighbors, their co-workers - including people from the other side of the aisle politically.  Most of us are flawed, but most of us do a lot of good - our political system may be "broken" but our country most certainly isn't despite how things look in the moment.


The more I read discussions about gun control, tariffs, immigration, etc., I've finally come to the conclusion that we are broken as a country. We aren't broken as individuals. We help each other, we help our neighbors, and we respond in a time of crisis. But, our leaders and our government are broken. If I paid someone to fix my car and it still didn't run, I would want my money back. If I went to a doctor and he amputated my leg when it didn't need to be, I would sue. Why do we allow our politicians to rip us off by promising one thing and delivering nothing? It's time to remove the money from the equation. If you serve our country, you should do it because you believe you can make things better, not make yourself wealthier. It's time to hold people accountable. This isn't a Democrat or Republican thing. They all suck. Forget about the color of your state and start making decisions that are best for the country. While there's still a country left. 


Lots of possible responses to this but my general reply is I don't agree with the premise of the OP.  We aren't broken - we have flaws but most of them can be fixed, some of them rather easily with the right people in place.  Some of the flaws are extremely difficult to solve and will take generations to fix.
I think you do. You just have you're own way of saying it.  :hifive:

 
I think you do. You just have you're own way of saying it.  :hifive:
Country <> political system.  Maybe we are talking past each other but just because our politicians can't get anything done doesn't mean we as a country are broken.  But maybe these are just semantics and to be fair you did start this in the political forum so maybe I misunderstood your point.

 
The most important part is that not only does no one delay gratification (the quality that anthropolgists and evolutionary neurologists & psychologists will tell you is the distinguishing characteristic of humanity) any longer but most people don't even know that's a thing. They plug in, bypass their neuro-pathways with distractions and, when their social dysfunction causes problems, they take a pill and/or have "mastery" moments of cultural conquer like spending the amount an African village could feed itself for a week on on peasant-tear-marinated porkbelly skewers with artisan mead. That and trading in old participation standards for public behavior & cooperation for "passing the pain" has us on a regression track not seen since the Fall or Rome and far more potentialized in its momentum.
Dear God, you sound more and more like the conservative fire-and-brimstone communitarians of the nineties than any other group I can see you locked into. 

I thought my old peeps had left me. Turns out they were card-carrying members of the CPUSA once. Oh wait, you mean Irving Kristol and those guys actually were back in the thirties??

Uh huh. 

;)

 
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For what it's worth, our government was for many years the envy of and model for the entire planet when it comes to ethics and accountability. We love to complain about government as a scapegoat, and sensationalize its failings, and of course it is important that those failings be highlighted and eradicated. But on the whole, until recently we have done an excellent job minimizing self-dealing and corruption at the federal level and creating accountability, relatively speaking. Even talk of politicians being "bought and paid for" referred only to campaign donations rather than actual bribes in virtually every instance. Scandals that generated front page news here would have been met with a shrug abroad. This was largely a function of a robust free press supported by a populace that fought for and defended it and laws that empowered it, a detailed set of laws and regulations regarding ethics and accountability for federal service, and a constitutional system whereby lawmakers merely sketch out broad policies and then defer to non-partisan career civil servants with relevant expertise to work out the details free from political considerations.

Our government wasn't perfect by any means, but in terms of ethics and accountability it was as good at it gets, across both Democratic and Republican administrations. To paraphrase Churchill, our federal government was the least ethical and accountable national government in the world, except for all the other ones. 

This is no longer the case, to say the least. And if we are unwilling to discuss the elephant in the room as to why that is no longer the case because we don't want to appear "partisan" or point fingers, it will never be the case again.

 
What's odd is not just the enrichment that comes with positions of power through the lobbying purse and sinecures for family on K Street and in other positions but that the public, which ostensibly hates this, is willing to pay out most of the supplemental income for congressmen and women through speaking engagement fees and book deals.

This strikes me as something strange. I guess we put a value on their experience and expertise in legislative matters, some of it earned, some unearned. 
Agreed, mostly.  

I don’t have an issue with the speaking/corporate/book deal gigs as long as they are done after they are out of the job.  The enrichment that goes on while in office though these type of things as well as the lobbying is disgusting.  

 
Dear God, you sound more and more like the conservative fire-and-brimstone communitarians of the nineties than any other group I can see you locked into. 

I thought my old peeps had left me. Turns out they were card-carrying members of the CPUSA once. Oh wait, you mean Irving Kristol and those guys actually were back in the thirties??

Uh huh. 

;)
you've compared me to the communitarians before. if you're right - altho i see myself at great variance from the wiki capsule definition - i come by it honestly because i have very little formal knowledge of political philosophy 

 
you've compared me to the communitarians before. if you're right - altho i see myself at great variance from the wiki capsule definition - i come by it honestly because i have very little formal knowledge of political philosophy 
I am not well-versed enough either in communitarian specifics, from epistemology to prescription of social behavior (and the importance of, relatively) for the individual, to suss out exactly what it posits and where it differs from you. All I have are yours and their anecdotal abstracts.

This is the part of Wiki and the movement I'm thinking of:

Ideological communitarianism is characterized as a radical centrist ideology that is sometimes marked by leftism on economic issues and conservatism or centrism on social issues. This usage was coined recently. When the term is capitalized, it usually refers to the Responsive Communitarian movement of Amitai Etzioni and other philosophers.

More from Wiki, and directly from Etzioni:

One major way the communitarian position differs from the social conservative one is that although communitarianism's ideal "good society" "reaches into the private realm, it seeks to cultivate only a limited set of core virtues through an organically developed set of values rather than having an expansive or holistically normative agenda given by the state. For example, American society favors being religious over being atheist, but is rather neutral with regard to which particular religion a person should follow. There are no state-prescribed dress codes, "correct" number of children to have, or places one is expected to live, etc. In short, a key defining characteristic of the ideal communitarian society is that in contrast to a liberal state, it creates shared formulations of the good, but the scope of this good is much smaller than that advanced by authoritarian societies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism#cite_note-25

 
Lots of possible responses to this but my general reply is I don't agree with the premise of the OP.  We aren't broken - we have flaws but most of them can be fixed, some of them rather easily with the right people in place.  Some of the flaws are extremely difficult to solve and will take generations to fix.


To this end, I'm really curious to see what happens Post-Trump. Have we reached the bottom or is it just going to get worse?

 
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I am not well-versed enough either in communitarian specifics, from epistemology to prescription of social behavior (and the importance of, relatively) for the individual, to suss out exactly what it posits and where it differs from you. All I have are yours and their anecdotal abstracts.

This is the part of Wiki and the movement I'm thinking of:

Ideological communitarianism is characterized as a radical centrist ideology that is sometimes marked by leftism on economic issues and conservatism or centrism on social issues. This usage was coined recently. When the term is capitalized, it usually refers to the Responsive Communitarian movement of Amitai Etzioni and other philosophers.

More from Wiki, and directly from Etzioni:

One major way the communitarian position differs from the social conservative one is that although communitarianism's ideal "good society" "reaches into the private realm, it seeks to cultivate only a limited set of core virtues through an organically developed set of values rather than having an expansive or holistically normative agenda given by the state. For example, American society favors being religious over being atheist, but is rather neutral with regard to which particular religion a person should follow. There are no state-prescribed dress codes, "correct" number of children to have, or places one is expected to live, etc. In short, a key defining characteristic of the ideal communitarian society is that in contrast to a liberal state, it creates shared formulations of the good, but the scope of this good is much smaller than that advanced by authoritarian societies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism#cite_note-25
hmmm.

were i to label myself, i think i would call myself a perfectabilist, along the lines of the Romantic sentiments of the post-Revolutionary poets & philsophers.. with no fear of God, all evidence impresses me that improvement is the mandate of life. try to sprout something that improves everything for all - failing that, leave your corner of the world better than you found it. the tone was set to my satisfaction by two 1st-century guys - Jesus Christ and slave-turned-stoic-philsopher Epictetus.

my major problem with conservatism & classical liberalism is that it always & still fails to factor in the ultimate dictate of perfectability - liberty for all. unless a political philosophy ultimately provides that all members of a society have a reasonable chance to determine the outcome of their lives, it is failed. markets may have provided for a lot of that liberty, no matter how begrudgingly, but the greed of its practitioners has disqualified its eminence.

the point is moot now, except possibly for wondering how to deal with societies that don't believe in liberty. the cat is out of the bag. some cats are still more likely to have to feed on garbage than others, but they're all out in the streets, alleys, fields. unfortunately, the people who least appreciate how exceptional that is are on extreme opposites of the political spectrum and media is manipulating that to keep the govt in stasis (optimum lootability). i am of a mind we be a little more patient & forceful in our cat-herding, but herding everyone into the fewest possible amenable corrals will be the next job of society.

you did nail, however, that i am a radical centrist. i believe there is no decency without tolerance nor tolerance without decency. i believe the possession of killing tools should be met with severe punishment until they are erased from the land. i believe that free markets do provide the best answers but that only proper governance can keep them free. i believe that each person should be able to choose their path, but that the duty of each free person is help & cooperation. i believe in both freedom from tyranny and that all good societal answers bring a measure of tyranny. i believe the productive human being is conservative until his own are taken care of, then liberal as she can afford to be. nufced

 
To this end, I'm really curious to see what happens Post-Trump. Have we reached the bottom or is it just going to get worse?
I've wondered this myself - my opinion without much to base it on is Trump is truly an anomaly.  The combination of tweeting plus lack of experience plus incompetence plus lack of tact and going against the norm plus deliberately pitting us against each other - all of that combined I don't think gets replicated any time soon.  People will be too averse to it.  But as others have said - if a smarter version of Trump or a smarter version of a leftist Trump comes along then they could take advantage of the current climate and make things worse.  My best guess is Trump loses and we go back to our "normal" divide - it's just a guess though. 

 
For what it's worth, our government was for many years the envy of and model for the entire planet when it comes to ethics and accountability. We love to complain about government as a scapegoat, and sensationalize its failings, and of course it is important that those failings be highlighted and eradicated. But on the whole, until recently we have done an excellent job minimizing self-dealing and corruption at the federal level and creating accountability, relatively speaking. Even talk of politicians being "bought and paid for" referred only to campaign donations rather than actual bribes in virtually every instance. Scandals that generated front page news here would have been met with a shrug abroad. This was largely a function of a robust free press supported by a populace that fought for and defended it and laws that empowered it, a detailed set of laws and regulations regarding ethics and accountability for federal service, and a constitutional system whereby lawmakers merely sketch out broad policies and then defer to non-partisan career civil servants with relevant expertise to work out the details free from political considerations.

Our government wasn't perfect by any means, but in terms of ethics and accountability it was as good at it gets, across both Democratic and Republican administrations. To paraphrase Churchill, our federal government was the least ethical and accountable national government in the world, except for all the other ones. 

This is no longer the case, to say the least. And if we are unwilling to discuss the elephant in the room as to why that is no longer the case because we don't want to appear "partisan" or point fingers, it will never be the case again.
Along these lines, unfortunately I think we've passed a point that we won't be able to return from regarding the free press. I think that's been the greatest damage that's been committed.

When Dr. Wakefield published an article years ago of pure garbage linking vaccines to autism, I don't think anyone had any idea of the future ramifications of those lies. Now, countless injuries and deaths have resulted due to a contrived mistrust in a community that was trying to do good.  That ONE article has created a sweeping movement decades later that still can't be undone.

I fear we are going to see the same thing with the press moving forward. "Fake news" is the new "Vaccines cause autism". When a substantial percentage of the population feels they can't trust independent news sources, then we are in real trouble. That horse is out of the barn and I don't think we'll ever get it back in any time soon. 

It was said early on here by many that one of the pillars of our democracy, the free press, was being struck down piece by piece. It won't easily be rebuilt. And that will have lasting repercussions for a democracy like ours.

 
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For what it's worth, our government was for many years the envy of and model for the entire planet when it comes to ethics and accountability. We love to complain about government as a scapegoat, and sensationalize its failings, and of course it is important that those failings be highlighted and eradicated. But on the whole, until recently we have done an excellent job minimizing self-dealing and corruption at the federal level and creating accountability, relatively speaking. Even talk of politicians being "bought and paid for" referred only to campaign donations rather than actual bribes in virtually every instance. Scandals that generated front page news here would have been met with a shrug abroad. This was largely a function of a robust free press supported by a populace that fought for and defended it and laws that empowered it, a detailed set of laws and regulations regarding ethics and accountability for federal service, and a constitutional system whereby lawmakers merely sketch out broad policies and then defer to non-partisan career civil servants with relevant expertise to work out the details free from political considerations.

Our government wasn't perfect by any means, but in terms of ethics and accountability it was as good at it gets, across both Democratic and Republican administrations. To paraphrase Churchill, our federal government was the least ethical and accountable national government in the world, except for all the other ones. 

This is no longer the case, to say the least. And if we are unwilling to discuss the elephant in the room as to why that is no longer the case because we don't want to appear "partisan" or point fingers, it will never be the case again.
Ugh. So you long to return to the days of local party papers and yellow journalism?

There's still garbage journalism, but the American journalistic profession has the highest degree of nonpartisanship possible in certain circles. Sure folks are locked into Fox and CNBC (not to mention TYT or OAN), but Reuters, NPR and thousands of individual journalists are producing high-quality content on a daily basis. There was a time not too long ago information was unavailable to the general public. That time is passed. You can blame the individual consumer for what news is consumed by each person, but not the profession.

That high degree of journalistic integrity has allowed for more and more of the "pay to play" to come to light. The scams and frauds that we see today existed almost from the beginning of the American republic. Look at the Judiciary Act of 1801 for, perhaps, a more partisan bill than we have seen over the past 3 years. Harding and Grant would rebut the presumption that our current administration is the most corrupt ever and illustrates that the US government's exposure to graft is nothing new.

 
Ugh. So you long to return to the days of local party papers and yellow journalism?

There's still garbage journalism, but the American journalistic profession has the highest degree of nonpartisanship possible in certain circles. Sure folks are locked into Fox and CNBC (not to mention TYT or OAN), but Reuters, NPR and thousands of individual journalists are producing high-quality content on a daily basis. There was a time not too long ago information was unavailable to the general public. That time is passed. You can blame the individual consumer for what news is consumed by each person, but not the profession.

That high degree of journalistic integrity has allowed for more and more of the "pay to play" to come to light. The scams and frauds that we see today existed almost from the beginning of the American republic. Look at the Judiciary Act of 1801 for, perhaps, a more partisan bill than we have seen over the past 3 years. Harding and Grant would rebut the presumption that our current administration is the most corrupt ever and illustrates that the US government's exposure to graft is nothing new.
I thought I was pretty clear that things were never perfect; they were simply better than everyone else and better than most Americans would give credit for. Obviously the political press and everything else related to ethics and accountability has always had problems. And my intent was not to blame the profession- my issue is more with how the government and the people are misusing and undermining the profession. I think we're in agreement on that.

As for corruption- Harding is the perfect counter-example. The most famous and arguably biggest scandal of his administration was Teapot Dome, in which a federal agency under his purview improperly allocated resources that belonged to the American people to a private interest who had enriched members of his administration in what appeared to be a quid pro quo. This happens in the Trump administration on a monthly basis, if not more often.  Corporations and foreign governments with business before the US government throw piles of money at the Trump Organization and related businesses on a daily basis and nobody bats an eye, and are often rewarded with preferential treatment. Trump himself funnels taxpayer money back into his for-profit businesses regularly and shamelessly. If Teapot Dome happened in 2019 and was exposed in a single day it might not even make the front page.  Harding does not rebut the claim that this administration is the most corrupt ever and that we are on the verge of losing something we can't recover. On the contrary, comparing the two reinforces it.

 
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Have head many anecdotes how it used to be when u were overseas and said you were from the U.S. their was a degree of excitement.  Like, what is it like?  A bit of envy and curiousity.

Not like that anymore.

The ramifications are huge.  When u act like a pig it is hard to tell other countries to do things like not pursue nuclear weapons.

I wouldnt trust our country at this time.

 
Democracy is about more than elections. It's about decisions being made with the voice of the people being part of the decision. When presidents of either party do things by executive action on important substantive matters, that's undemocratic. When presidents do things by national emergency despite actual Congress decision making which instructs the opposite, that's authoritarianism.

 

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