Yep. I don't know if anyone is interested in anecdotes, but looking from Europe, I will do my best to avoid any kind of US dependency until US has a) overhauled the legal system starting from the Supreme Court and b) gotten rid of the de facto two-party system. (No, one-party system does not count.)
Is that the extent of your requirements (for now, at least) ?
As an American I keep trying to surmise what we're going to need to do to start repairing the damage from this massive self-own. It's kind of hard because we don't know where the bottom will be, but we at least need to start having these discussions on what constructive approaches might even look like - we can't have our milquetoast opposition party phoning it in yet again with entitlement as the less-bad option.
External context is key - one of the main goals of this hybrid warfare attack on the western world has been to disrupt our relationships with our allies, and also because other countries have developed Democracies that function way better than ours. So please know that at least some of us are listening.
> Is that the extent of your requirements (for now, at least) ?
Well, if you ask my other wishes, once Europe has gotten its act straight and decides to tax/tariff/regulate/whatever (american) big tech to hell and back, I kind of would expect that any decent person on that side of the pond would just humbly nod their head and note that, yes, we/they deserved it.
I think domestically we need some analog of the EU's GDPR, as table stakes for preventing the surveillance industry ("big tech") from amassing so much power over the People that they're inclined to try for another coup.
We also need some kind of antitrust enforcement against the forced bundling of products from the distinct categories of hardware devices, network services, and client software.
Those should leave us with a similar environment to the EU. Beyond that, sure tax away, whatever. If we've done our job right domestically, these services should be a lot easier to value in terms of subscription fees rather than nebulous values siphoned away from surveillance subjects.
The two-party system is fine. We have to be honest about the fact that parliamentary systems can give massive power to a tiny fraction of the population when that small party becomes the deciding vote.
The problems with the USA political system are: electoral college, senate being 2 votes per state, and the supreme court being 7 people for life. But nothing can be done about the last two now. Especially now that the Supreme Court made a decision limiting how amendments can be ratified.
The efficacy of US democracy has eroded over time, and it's clear we're going to need reforms to preserve democratic governance for future generations.
Every branch of the federal government has experienced a decline in democratic accountability.
The House is so gerrymandered that only 10% of seats are remotely competitive each year, and it hasn't kept up with population growth.
The Senate is permanently gerrymandered, with state population differences that are far more disproportionate than what was originally designed for and intended when the Constitution was written.
This combined with hyper-partisanship prevents the US from accepting new states like Washington DC (population 700,000+) and Puerto Rico (population 3.2 million), depriving millions of US citizens from Congressional representation (no, non-voting representatives don't count).
The Supreme Court has become hyperpartisan, and appointments are a high stake circus that rely on arbitrary retirements and deaths. They need to be elected at this point to preserve democratic legitimacy.
As for the Presidency... the Electoral College has resulted in the election of the loser of a popular vote twice in 25 years.
I don't know how reform will happen, or if we'll ever see it in my lifetime but we desperately need it. The US government needs to be accountable to the people again.
Democracy is precious, and it's so tragic to see how much it's declined.
States with a total of 270 electoral votes agree to award their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The effort appears to be stalled, but there are 209 votes from states who've already passed the law (which is in effect only once 270+ electoral votes are reached).
The Supreme Court's composition can be changed with a law, and the most popular option appears to be 18 year terms, staggered so that there are two appointments for each presidential term. The court can also be expanded, and should be to 13 (one for each circuit).
Gerrymandering is a serious problem, and would properly be solved by coming up with some algorithmic way of drawing districts. But for practical purposes this unlikely to ever happen. But I'm hopeful because of the effort of Democratic states to recognize the gerrymandering and turning it into a standoff of sorts. To date, there's been no reason not to gerrymander if you can do it, and Republicans have seriously overreached.
> We have to be honest about the fact that parliamentary systems can give massive power to a tiny fraction of the population when that small party becomes the deciding vote.
The American two-party system gave massive power to a tiny fraction of the population, which the large Republican party then retconned into most of their members as their party platform. Now they're a large fraction of the population. I'd choose the approach where the small faction remains its own small faction, even if they occasionally get to pull the levers of power.
Is it? Many western countries are having more or less prominent populist right wing movements, and the two countries I can think of where that movement has gotten its hand in power on really significant issues during the last decade or so are UK and US. Both strongly two party systems at the time of the "interesting" developments. And I do not think a two party system is typical, I am sure there are some countries happily trodding along with their two political parties, but they are not the rule.
No, its not, as anyone who has paid even a slight amount of attention to the study of comparative government among modern nominal representative democracies would recognize.
> We have to be honest about the fact that parliamentary systems can give massive power to a tiny fraction of the population when that small party becomes the deciding vote.
Parliamentary systems can be two-party and multiparty systems do not need to parliamentary, so you are starting with a false dichotomy. And the problem you describe is less often a problem with multiparty systems (parliamentary or otherwise) than two-party systems, because the reliance on ad hoc coalitions means that there is much more likely to be the option of replacing a faction that is leveraging its marginal role in creating a majority to wag a coalition that is a small part of, whereas a small faction within a major party in a two party system that is crucial to maintaining a partisan majority cannot practically be defied without the rest of the party surrendering its majority, giving it much more power than a minor coalition partner in a multiparty system.
(Parliamentary or semi-presidential systems are also generally better than presidential systems, but that's a whole different issue from the multiparty vs. two-party issue.)
> The problems with the USA political system are: electoral college, senate being 2 votes per state, and the supreme court being 7 people for life.
The first two of those are also problems (though actually being a Presidential system is a bigger problem, and a problem without which the electoral college would be moot.) The third is simply inaccurate.
> But nothing can be done about the last two now. Especially now that the Supreme Court made a decision limiting how amendments can be ratified.
The Supreme Court decision on how amendments can be ratified (basically, however Congress decides) does not substantially limit what amendments can be passed. And it is the first two are set in the Constitution, the third (even using the correct current number of 9) is not, and can be changed (that the Supreme Court exists and that federal judges have lifetime tenure as federal judges are set in the Constitution, the number of seats on the Supreme Court, whether that number is fixed or floating over time, and the tenure of judges on the Supreme Court separate from their tenure as federal juddges is not; all of those can be changed by statute. If Congress wanted to make Supreme Court justices appointed for a fixed term of years from among the set of lifetime federal judges, that would be possible. If Congress kept lifetime tenure for justices, decided to have one appointed every 2 years regardless of the current size of the court, and have the Chief Justice appointed for 4 year terms from among the sitting justices, that would work too.)
No, the US, through its government (which is not just the executive branch) as chosen (in theory, via election) and, in practice, tolerated by its population at large.
It's not just Trump. If the US decided not to follow him he would have no power.
This is a point in time for the US and there are institutional paths to change. The comparisons to China forget that China does not have the same mechanisms for change. China is an immutable state outside of revolution or the administration just deciding to transfer power.
If they are successful in destroying democracy, I will reevaluate my view. We don't know what's going to happen in the midterms or 2028.
> If they are successful in destroying democracy, I will reevaluate my view. We don't know what's going to happen in the midterms or 2028.
But again, and I say that as a European, we don't really care: what we see is the position of the US no matter if it is coming from your congress, president, secretary or whatever.
For the rest of the world, this number is a complete irrelevance. The purpose of a system is what it does - and the system in question today is the US electoral system. That's what "Other countries only see that the US elected Trump" means.
Yeah. Also not an edge case where an unpopular candidate sneaks in by virtue of deadlocked opponents and quirks of electoral math, or a case where voters thought they were getting a moderate who then pivoted in a different direction. Trump's been open about his belief that trade is a zero sum game he's going to win by crushing other economies with tariffs, his contempt for Western democracies and his admiration for Putin for several years, the corruption isn't exactly hidden and even the Greenland nonsense isn't new. It won him a plurality of votes because most of his base was enthusiastic about his approach and the rest didn't mind.
In the second Trump term, the rest of the world is justified in viewing the US as the kind of country which will, for the foreseeable future, periodically elect this kind of kakistocratic leadership.
The lesson is finally sinking in, in ways that it did not during the first Trump term. People wanted to believe that is was a one-off. During the first Trump term the argument could be made that it wasn't, but it was debatable. But during the second Trump term it's simply an observable fact that it's not a one-off.
Not wrong, but "right wing populist" are your words. I did not use them. What I described above is not specifically "right wing populist", just kakistocratic. And the rational response from EU and others is the same regardless of who is and who isn't "right wing populist", EU members included.
Being "right wing populist" won't change that response. The caveat is that populists are not very rational.
