Archive for the ‘US exceptionalism’ Category
revisiting US ‘exceptionalism’, Trumpism and justice delayed
Canto: We’ve been watching US politics with a kind of painful obsessiveness, I suppose because it’s more colourful, but not in a particularly good way, than anything we experience in Australia. The Presidential system is largely a shocker, and should be best jettisoned altogether, IMHO, but that’ll never happen. The USA is exceptional only in its jingoism and its religiosity, as I’ve said many times and oft, and that is best seen in its attitude to its political system and its Dear Leader…
Jacinta: Well the thing is, before the advent of Trump we paid scant attention to the details of the US political system, but since the election of someone so obviously incapable of running a public toilet let alone a barely inhabited country, to the position of President of the most militarily and economically powerful nation on the planet, we’ve set ourselves on a steep learning curve.
Canto: Or we’re just watching like ghouls at a smouldering train wreck. By the way, I should point out that Russia has slightly more nuclear warheads than the USA (though as to the comparative cumulative power of those sets of warheads I’m not sure), though doubtless their non-nuclear materiel and personnel are far superior. And as for their economy, yes they have the world’s largest GDP, collectively (though I’m sure that’s an over-simplifying measure), but Ireland’s per capita GDP is quite a bit higher!
Jacinta: Yes I think per capita GDP is a better measure of economic success, but then you’d have to realise that’s just total GDP divided by population – doesn’t tell us about how the wealth is distributed. But it’s interesting to compare the USA with Australia, which has a similar land mass, especially if you exclude Alaska. The population of the USA is about 14 times that of Australia, and it’s not because the superiority of the USA’s ingenious people and political system has made it a magnet for immigrants. Most of Australia has infamously poor soil and climate for agriculture, as white colonists soon discovered, and it’s much further from Europe than the so-called New World is. We call ourselves ‘the lucky country’, dog knows why – presumably because every nation has to find or invent something positive to sing about itself, aka nationalism, but the fact is that Europeans found it very difficult to establish themselves here. We don’t have any records about the Aboriginal population that arrived here some 50,000 years ago, but my guess is that it was a slow, painstaking learning process, even if the climate was very different then.
Canto: So getting back to that steep learning curve, what the advent of Trump taught us was that, indeed, anyone can become the USA’s Dear Leader, even a tantrumming man-child who’s likely never read a book in his life and has spent the last fifty-odd years grifting, bullshitting and fucking people around. And what does that say about the USA?
Jacinta: And can it happen here? The reason that it’s unlikely to happen in Westminster-style countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and of course Britain is that a political leader first has to win his own local seat, then has to win over her political colleagues with her abilities – her understanding of policy, her articulacy, her charisma or je ne sais quoi, and so forth – which isn’t to say that a bunch of reasonably sophisticated pollies can’t be taken in by a pig-ignorant narcissist posing as one of their own – it’s just a lot less likely.
Canto: Yes, your point is that we don’t have a system where a wannabe demagogue can go straight to the people, bypassing parties, policies and local elections in an effort to be king for a few years. And we certainly don’t have a system which gives that demagogue/king massive pardoning powers, wholesale immunity, a White Palace to live in, and hand-picked courtiers in charge of foreign affairs, federal law, the treasury, the defence of the realm and dog knows what else.
Jacinta: And yet… with all the leeway given to Trump, I’m still amazed that someone so obviously a charlatan to us could have fooled so many into thinking he, of all people, would make a good leader, would somehow improve their lives, make their country ‘great’ in some vague way. Admittedly those people were never in the majority, he has never won an election on the numbers alone, but still a very substantial number were taken in by him. And still are.
Jacinta: There were probably some who thought him a useful idiot for their purposes – for example, libertarians who saw him as the sort of wrecker of government they were looking for – but their numbers wouldn’t have been that great. It’s a worry, but again it’s the US political system that’s largely at fault. As I said, the reason it’s unlikely to happen here isn’t because our population is smarter or less easily swayed by demagogues – it’s because of the checks and balances of our system. A Trump-like figure would have to persuade his political peers long before he tried to persuade the people. And if he couldn’t do that, he wouldn’t be in a position to go ‘to the people’. And of course we don’t do political rallies like United Staters do.
Canto: In any case, the Trump saga is becoming increasingly entertaining for us here in the peanut gallery, with a number of indictments converging upon him. Let me see – there’s the hush payments that Cohen was sentenced to three years’ jail for, and ‘individual one’, Trump, was regularly mentioned in the paperwork. It was obvious that Cohen only did it for Trump, so Trump should’ve gotten a much stiffer sentence than three years – at the time. Immunity for political leaders is total shite, and justice delayed is justice denied. I mean, duh!!!
Jacinta: Okay, calme-toi, better late than never. So that’s a biggie, and pretty much an open-and-shut case. Then there’s the classified docs case, which also looks straightforward, and looks even worse for him after recent revelations that he was personally involved in obstructing those trying to recover the documents. Again this is a jailable offence even without the obstruction, and Jack Smith, the DoJ’s Special Counsel, has himself handled lesser cases involving this crime, which have resulted in prison sentences. He’s also faced with a rape case brought against him by E Jean Carroll – in fact, now two cases involving rape and defamation, as the presiding judge refused to put them under one umbrella. You’ll be pleased to know that the defamation matter seems to hinge on whether the Dear Leader had immunity about what he said while holding office.
Canto: Yeah, despicable. So we’ve mentioned three, and there are at least two more – or no, three. There’s the investigation into Trump.org, which he can hardly be said to be innocent of. And then there’s the Fulton County case of election interference, which again looks open-and-shut, and of course the whole January 6 insurrection, resulting in well over 1000 people being charged thus far. And how involved was he in the fake electors scheme? It all makes me feel quite dizzy, in a pleasant way.
Jacinta: Meanwhile, there seems to be no appetite for diluting Presidential power or changing their system, or any realisation that it’s the screamingly obvious problem that outsiders see it as being.
Canto: And most of the current Republican leadership seem to be supporting Trump! How can that nation ever recover from this disaster? My view has long been that Biden (now 80 years old) should have declared himself a one-term President ages ago. They need renewal, to get over all this…
Jacinta: Yes, age limits might be a good idea. But I don’t want to be ageist – Biden has a lot of experience, and he’s surrounded himself with a very competent team, to be fair. Still, limiting all Presidential terms to four years would be an excellent reform, methinks.
Canto: The good thing, re Trump, is that they’re much more prepared now against his shenanigans. Let the court cases begin! The next year or so will be most memorable for Trumpworld.
References
https://www.worlddata.info/largest-economies.php
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/02/trump-mar-a-lago-obstruction-classified/