We are having the wrong discussions. I hoped this community could be a place to have the better ones.
First, I didn't vote for Tump, and am not a fan. I also am not a fan of Clinton.
The brief versions of the points are as follows.
- The executive branch has aggregated too much power, and not enough people are talking about the amount of chaos one person can do to the country.
- Trump has gone to war with the media, and the media is fighting back by making everything "the worst thing ever". This is going to lead to crisis fatigue.
- The country, a significant portion of it, has wanted to break up the calcification that has formed in our government. Due to the machinations of our two party system, Trump was the only option to vote for that on election day.
Longer Form:
There has been a conversation in this country that the government has ceased listening to, or being concerned with the population at large. There was a study that hit the front page here at least once. There is also a feeling in a significant portion of the population that the country is going the wrong direction.
The duopoly that has strangled our elections needs to be broken up. Both parties have ways to try and nudge certain types of candidates through their primaries. Not for conspiratorial reasons, but to try and have the best chance to win the elections. In both parties there were dark horse candidates that broke through, gathering their strength from disenfranchised people who wanted something other than the status quo. If Sanders was president, the right would be losing their minds as bad or worse than the left is. They accused President Obama of being a socialist who wanted to make America the next "insert country that tried socialism and wound up with an autocrat". Sanders is a self proclaimed Democratic Socialist with the outspoken goal of pushing the country to the left.
Two parties cannot represent the spectrum of beliefs and preferences that exist within the country, and the things that the two parties agree on (spying, war, trade, giving a pass to wall street) has made the majority of the country feel that they have lost their voice.
On election day there were only two choices to pick from. The status quo, and Donald Trump. I know a lot of people who didn't like trump, but voted for him anyway. Trump was a rock they could throw at the government.
The best thing I can hope for from the Trump Presidency is that the republican party splits, and the Democrats follow suit.
Trump believes in bullying his way through things, and holding nothing back. He's going to use every power that congress has ceded to the executive office to get his way.
Trump is the first president in my lifetime who is systematically going through his campaign promises, and doing what he can to force them to fruition.
The executive office has far too much power, and needs to be brought into check. We are supposed to have 3 branches of government with checks and balances. The branch that's supposed to pass the laws has two house so that the people's representative's have the most power, as well as an internal check system.
Congress gave the executive office the ability to spy on Americans, if those Americans were communicating with foreign targets of interest.
President Bush signed an order making it okay to spy on all Americans. The excuse was it wasn't being looked at, or used for domestic issues.
President Obama signed in order allowing that data collected without cause or warrant to be passed to all of the other domestic agencies (FBI, DEA, IRS, etc.)
This is far too much power for a single person to have. These types of laws need to be discussed and voted upon by our representatives before being put into action. The president is not a King, his word is not law.
My opinion is that the media has a bone to pick with Trump, and is highlighting everything he does in the extreme negative. If a democrat had won the media leaning right would be doing the same. We no longer get any context with the our news. We get headlines and highlights, but never any backing information on how things got to that point. The media has been reduced to supporting one side or the other and as a result there is no longer any room to say "I was wrong", "They other side has a good idea", "Let's here the facts and opinions of experts and debate the issue".
My concern is our country is too entrenched in the us vs them mentality that the duopoly has caused. We will not be able to make adjustments to fix the issue and our nation will barrel into the same wall that so many nations throughout history have crashed into.
How can we break up the political parties to allow for more options during an election?
How can rein in the overreaching powers of the executive office?
How can we drive more intellectual debate that provides some context on the current issues into the news organizations?
Thanks for reading