Sure, that's a bipartisan problem.
My point being the government, regardless of party administration, will not be perfect, but the rule of law was basically intact before Trump. You can't disagree with that, surely? Since the stated intent was deconstruction, do you not think deconstruction is indeed taking place? Maybe our difference lies in you believing that everything being deconstructed should not have been constructed in the first place: civil rights laws, due process (even for undocumented persons), medical research, weather research, space research (other than SpaceX), forestry service, foreign aid, emoluments clauses, intelligence operations, medicare, and on and on?
But if it started crumbling way back then, what do you blame the start of the crumbling on Trump?
The history of his first term is well known. He blew through laws and traditions regarding distancing himself from his moneymaking ventures and indeed made money off his office in a way previous presidents did not - they put their holdings in trusts (Jimmy Carter's peanut farm, for example), to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Trump actually made money off the rooms and golf carts his secret service used every time they were on a Trump property (which was/is far more often than past presidents).
His transparency record was abysmal, not showing who visited the White House, and destroying papers which were supposed to be kept for the archives. They actually had staff who were responsible for taping papers back together for the archives - except when he insisted on talking to Putin, when he took his interpreter's notes, which was highly unusual. In his first term, he chafed at - and often fired - the officials, generals, staff who tried to keep him inside the rule of law, whether written or understood by tradition. It was the weak link in our government history - the expectation that presidents would respect the spirit of the law, even if it wasn't explicitly spelled out. He - or those around him - exploited that flaw and used it to his advantage in the first term, and went on to rip it wide open in the second term.
Then, of course, there was the 2020 election, his attempt to coerce Raffensburger into finding him 11,780 votes: " All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have... Fellas, I need 11,000 votes, give me a break." The fake electors. The attack on the Capitol. The pretense that it was "just tourists." Both sides of the aisle know better.
Are you really saying nothing Trump has done is good? Do you think it's ok for him to help cities clean out pockets of crime, for example? Is DC better for his seemingly successful efforts to lower crime? Is it madness to try?
It's not okay for him to send in the National Guard to L.A. without being asked by the mayor or governor. He can get away with it in DC because it's not a state, but even then, it's limited. I hope you'll admit you know it was political posturing, DC's crime rate is lower than it has been in decades, meanwhile there are many red state cities with higher crime rates. It's the blue cities he wants to do this in, and there are laws about when a president can call in the national guard, but we all know what Trump thinks about laws. Now the national guard are picking up trash and working on "beautification projects) because there was no reason for them to be called in in the first place. It was a stunt, Trump knows it, MAGA knows it, but it worked for a news cycle, now on to the next chaos, because Trump is a chaos agent if he's anything. You play whack-a-mole trying to keep up, because that's the plan, to "flood the zone with [redacted]."
So no, DC isn't better, or the national guard wouldn't be wandering around picking up trash. And if it's true
the national guard is being deployed in 29-day deployments to avoid paying them more, their predicament looks even worse.
If it is an essential part of securing the rest of the country, why is that crazy?
It's not an essential part of securing the rest of the country.
It's a story they tell, because ultimately, they want martial law.
Do you remember how freaked out conservatives were by Jade Helm, which turned out to be nothing? Why were they freaked out by Jade Helm, but not by the current national guard being armed against our own citizens? What happened to conservatives in the past ten years? Power corrupts.
I'm not saying it is, but if Canada cozies up to China, for instance, it seems like a natural thing to annex Canada to protect our northern border. And Greenland to protect us on the northeast. Isnt that what America was doing when we added territories in the west? Was that really madness?
It's not a "natural thing" to annex another country unwillingly. We don't live in colonial times anymore. That you don't think it's a crazy idea is disturbing, but not surprising.
Some probably are. But the leader there said they would rather not be part of Denmark, either.
Only 6% of Greenlanders are interested. That's a rather underwhelming vote of confidence, don't you think?
We don't need these countries for security. We already have a base (bases?) on Greenland. Trump just wants mineral rights.
We have to be better than Russia (Ukraine) and China (Taiwan). We can't change our history of colonialism and manifest destiny, but that doesn't give us permission to do it today, let alone go to war for it. How would you justify that declaration of war to the country who would have to send sons (I'd say and daughters, but with Hegseth who knows) to fight in it?
I don't know what you mean.
Yes, but now having taken that step, are you willing to reconsider? I'm asking, because you sound a lot like my sister. She swallowed much of the echo-chamber noise about covid, and now she is eating her words.
In the MAGA era? Not likely. The conservatives of the past are gone. They've all folded.
Remember how Trump's minions used to talk? J.D. Vance compared Trump to Hitler, Ted Cruz called him “utterly amoral," Marco Rubio called him a "con artist," and yet now they sit around the table fawning over him, because to do otherwise will get them primaried and publicly humiliated, and they know it, and Trump knows it.
Is there a decent conservative left out there? I would've said someone like Adam Kinzinger, but he's no longer in office, and not in my state, so a vote for him is a moot point anyway.
This doesn't mean I agree with all things Democratic Party either, there's a reason I'm an independent. But to be GOP in congress is to be MAGA now, and until that changes, I will vote against them because the country they want is one that veers away from the Constitution. Crazy now that to be a strict Constitutionalist is no longer a conservative ideal.
