My hot take is that the two-party system isn't anywhere near as bad as people think it is. In countries with multi-party systems, parties often have to form coalitions in order to govern. In countries with two-party systems, parties have to do most of that coalition forming before the election. That's why we see far-left and center-left politicians in the Democratic party instead of having viable left wing parties.
One way or another, we get a coalition government. Is it better for those coalitions to be formed before the election or after? If it happens before the election, the electorate can see the results in time to change their decision. If it happens after the election, the fringe parties' arguments probably get discussed more, but there's no guarantee those parties will be part of the governing coalition.
What I should have said, is that as an outsider: I see lots of interviews with people who state that they are going to vote for trump (at time of interview), and they all seem to pick and choose from the things that trump says, some they take at face value, and others they consider to be just "the way he talk", campaign speech, or something along those lines.
Now, I don't know, maybe the majority of the people that voted for him actually want to dismantle institutions, maybe they don't and just saw it as an exaggerated way of saying that there should be some cutbacks. I don't know, I just don't think that it is an obvious conclusion from the result.
Exactly. This is really obvious but no one seems to acknowledge it. I even think the coalition dynamic can become a huge distraction from governance on its own. Could we think of tweaks to the process to make things better? Sure. But a wholesale rethink or uncritical mimicry is unlikely to produce something better.
Angela Merkel was great at that — even when she had a majority anyway, she'd take care to act in such a fashion that ~half of the opposition voters approved.
A lot of people who weren't paying attention are going to be saying "I didn't know", "How could've I known", "Why didn't anyone tell me", in the coming months and years.
It's unfortunate so many will suffer at the hands of the disengaged and the misinformed / poorly informed voters of this country.
I'd like to think they'll pay attention after this, but I thought the same thing last time around.
several of the authors have already received / been earmarked for appointments.
if someone says "i'm going to blow up a building", and then starts buying a ton of dynamite, it's pretty reasonable to assume they're gonna blow up that building.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2024-republican-pa...
Trump also mentioned it frequently in his speeches: " 'I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,' he said in September during a rally in Wisconsin. "
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/politics/department-of-educat...
That's puzzling because every time in the past few years that anyone in Congress has tried to take up addressing the projected insolvency of the Social Security trust fund in ~2033 Republicans have rejected any approach other than raising the retirement age.
“Deleting entire agencies” was not part of Donald trumps campaign afaict, his platform page is still live: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform
>>Has that changed?
'that' 'reason' for any government is to ensure its own survival till eternity. Though eternity might not be possible. Its really more on the lines that governments exist to ensure their own survival, and the survival of their interests. Its often a misunderstanding that Government work for the people, they just work for themselves. To that extent, unless the government is going down due to this very reason, Im guessing it doesn't make any sense to chop departments whole sale this way.
Another factor is budgets just don't work the way these people imagine, its not that budgets would reduce or that they would return some money back to the treasury. These sort of actions just mean that budgeting just goes on as is, the money that now is saved will be used up by the other departments. Im guessing the armed forces.
I think they know very well that the fences of democracy are in their way. That's why they want to dismantle the guardrails.
The danger in this situation is that the DOGE will dismantle the safety mechanisms of the state, some of which depend on the state inertia, i.e. it's much harder to execute a coup when there are 4 agencies with overlapping duties.
Time will tell, but it is an end of something for sure IMHO.
The agencies were democratically put in place for a reason. Removing them with no public discussion of the original reasoning is deeply undemocratic. At the very least, someone thought that the cost of having them in place was less than the cost to society of not having them there. Has that changed?