With the American empire collapsing, in a way we should consider how this opens up opportunities that hadn't existed in the past. Up until recently, whenever you proposed a fundamental restructure or even moderate reform to the American systems, the mindset was "If it works why risk breaking it?" This was especially coming from the conservative side, but also most liberals were "institutional conservatives" too. Only the left (and far-right) would talk about making fundamental changes to the system. And until Trump, both were very marginal forces. Now that the far right is in power, destroying everything, and making everything worse, this gives those of us on the left the opportunity to provide new ideas and construct new institutions. Liberals and conservatives aren't going to leverage this opportunity. They're going to call for a return to the past, but the past institutions were what got us here.
Maybe after this 21st Century Great Depression, if the U.S survives in tact, we'll have constitutional amendments to change the unitary president to a directorate (ala Switzerland)? Maybe we'll adopt multi-membered districts for the House of Representatives and ranked choice voting (or single transferable vote) for the president (or directorate) and senate? Maybe we'll have a probationary period for the president(s) in which we can have a special "recall" election if enough opposition supports it, to filter out idiots like Trump who wouldn't be able to help themselves in destroying lives during that probationary period? And if the U.S doesn't survive, but rather balkanizes, then that gives even more opportunity to restructure things.
Ursula Le Guin said,“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."
The reality of the matter is that the far-right is only about 15%-20% of the American population. If they wish to destroy things, the rest of us have the latent numeric power to decide what comes to replace it. And with things destroyed, they're forcing the apolitical, disaffected mass to be part of that process, whether they like it or not. They're also forcing conservatives and liberals to take a stance other than "much of the same as before, but tinkering at the edges."
It is clear Trump isn't going to become a Putin/Erdogan figure now. He is too dumb to play the long game of consolidating his hold on power before he destroys the political-economy. He doesn't understand the system he is trying to take over, and he is too much of a narcissist to depend on his yes-men to do the things he needs them to do to consolidate power.
Given these weaknesses, we have the opportunity to build small "d" democratic and egalitarian institutions as we shed the old system.
What triggered this was Rand Paul (a Trump apologist but not necessarily a cult member) saying today,
| "When McKinley put tariffs on in 1890, they lost 50% of their seats… When Smoot-Hawley put their tariffs In the early 1930s, we lost the House and Senate for 60 years. So not only bad economically, they are bad politically." |
Trump's obviously going to do worse than this, and we're going to have an opportunity as opponents to him and to American fascism to build new institutions. We need to be prepared for that.
