Concern over the Mental State of the POTUS

[Dill]

(07-24-2019, 01:44 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: If the Germans can go from Hitler and the Nazi Party to leading the EU, why would you have any doubts? That is literally the biggest jump from one extreme to the other. 

People like to throw around "Hitler" and "concentration camp" terms in hyperbole about Trump, but we're talking about actual literal Hitler and concentration camps... and now the country he led is leading the second largest economy in the world (if you count the EU as one economy) by everyone else's willingness to allow them to. People like to pretend that all thing happening here and now are historic and will go down in the books but in the end very little of it honestly matters or will make a lasting impact on a country's story.

Less than a week ago, the NYT ran an article about how the Soviets "won the space race for equality", ignoring the millions of people who died in gulags and the millions more killed in famines (some intentional famine). They sent a lady into space first, though, so now in 2019 that is apparently the more important thing. In 2030, 2040, there's a solid chance that nobody will give a damn about what a shitty President tweeted 12-22 years ago.

At the end of the day, we're still the most powerful, most influential, and most free nation in the world. Your country of Australia (  ) didn't legalize gay marriage until December 2017, 13 years after the US first started legalizing it. When the next US President comes into power in 1.5-5.5 years, Trump will be gone and the US will still be here, just as powerful and free, and all of this that seemed so important and so outraging will begin drifting away from memory to make space for the new "important" and "outraging" stuff of the future.

Germans didn't go from Hitler to leading the EU in 2.5 years. And they needed some outside help to "go from" Hitler and the Nazi party in the first place. 

Regarding the NYT article, they can't mention Gulags EVERY TIME they report on the former Soviet Union. That's the sort of thing Pravda did, reminding their readership constantly of the millions of slaves and native Americans killed in the conquest of North America, continuing segregation, bombing of Cambodia, etc. 

The main reason I am responding to your post, though, is that I cannot share your assumption we'll all be ok when Trump finally leaves office. He has done a lot of damage to government and foreign policy.

Had FDR lost the '44 election, it is not clear at all that today Japan and Germany would be rebuilt and among our strongest allies in a world system dominated by liberal democracies, where exchange rates are pegged to the US dollar, and the US heads the most powerful alliance in history.

If Gore had won in 2000, some 4,500 American families would not still be mourning the loss of loved ones in an unnecessary war, even though the US is still "powerful and free." Everyone wasn't ok when Bush left office. And I like to count the suffering beyond US borders caused by his policies as well.

20 years from now people could very well be thinking about Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement, his roll back of EPA regulations, and a hostile nuclear Iran following from the broken Iran deal, not to mention a formidable adversary in China, which expands into the power vacuums created by Trump policy, finally in position to be an existential threat. This could very well be the "outraging stuff of the future." And it will not be disconnected from Trump today.

How things MAY look 20 years from now should not be an argument for inaction today.  We should be looking to understand how what we do causes or prevents future "outraging stuff." That means defeating or impeaching Trump and correcting his damage as quickly as possible.