Bay 12 Games Forum

it is not required to be a bible-beater to be a shameless capitalist.

You can find this divide in the GOP. The former simply accept the latter as their own. The thing they have in common is shameless capitalism, not the bible beating.

You can point out shameless rent seeking is admonished HARD by the bible all you want, or how it says that rich people have a harder time getting into heaven than camels have fitting through the eyes of needles, or even point out that in revelation, the thing that the survivors praise as the 7th seal is opened is the destruction of those that were destroying the earth.  It does not matter.

Honestly, I just don't know anymore. Personally, I support Warren for the trust-busting stuff in tech, but I cannot actually envision what that presidency would look like after 4 years. I can't envision what it would look like after any one of these candidates, or even Trump, win and hold power for 4 years.

You get rhetoric from Republicans that paint Democrats as attempting to destroy democracy itself, and that their dismantling of checks and balances are necessary to safeguard the foundation of the Republic from that threat. Then you get rhetoric from Democrats saying that they need to actually respond to the threat of Republicans for once as they attempt to destroy this country's foundations by sacrificing certain checks and balances to keep Republicans from enacting their agenda. I mean, hell, how many candidates have a position on goddamn court-packing?

The worst part is that I can't even say that they're wrong in taking up that rhetoric. The whole situation is a hellish loop- both sides, accusing the other of destroying democracy and saying what parts of the system they must dispose of so that they can keep the other from accomplishing their goals of... disposing parts of the system to keep the other from doing the same. Democrats packing the Supreme Court in retaliation against Republicans packing the entire judicial system to prevent Democrats from pushing through laws that would remove Republican gerrymandering, et cetera.

It's a spiral, and I can't see the bottom. I don't even think the election matters anymore- clearly there are more than enough scapegoats in the House and Senate to vilify entire halves of the country, and checks and balances are holding up well enough that the whole country remains in deadlock rather than collapsing in either direction. However, I don't think who specifically holds the Presidency will matter; the only thing that does is whether there's enough political support for them in the House and Senate to start eroding those checks and balances in their favor, to defend themselves from the opposition doing the same the moment they can.

The whole thing is the collapse of the iterated prisoner's dilemma. At this point, the only winning option is to betray, betray, betray, because that's what the other side expects and will betray you back before you have the option to not do so. No candidate can run on cooperation because no one on the other side actually believes them, and will sink any attempts at cooperation before they can even begin just to be certain that they can keep things in deadlock long enough that they can wipe out the opposition for good. As far as things are concerned in the Capital, deadlock is better than passing anything that favors the other side, even a little. This isn't Trump's fault; this isn't Obama's fault. We've been trending in this direction for a long time, but only now is it apparent that this is no aberration. The US political system is in a full-on death spiral, and I don't see any way out beyond just hitting the bottom.

I can't see the bottom from here.