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You're going to have to reconstruct America. [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-19
The USA wasn’t created in a day — but most of what we consider institutions now were established fairly quickly, in a historical sense. We just don’t remember creating big things in our lifetimes.
And that’s the organization condition Trump’s actions are putting us back into, needing to recreate big things from scratch.
He’s both deconstructing big institutions, and soiling them in corruption. Salting the earth as much as he can with his team of intentional trolls and anarchists. Transparently, to give power to the wealthy and make them functionally owners of all, like in Russia.
You can’t just pick up the pieces like a normal administrative switch and strategically rehire or fire folks to make things work out. The foundations won’t be there, and will fully resist any fixes.
In a huge swath of cases, you will literally have to create a working system from scratch — starting over as if you were creating them again.
Especially since Musk is quite likely going to destroy most of the archived information or corrupt the data in the meanwhile as their power wanes.
Personally, I don’t consider this a horrible outcome — it means you can draw inspiration from the world again, and create systems that serve people better than the endless series of corrupted rules put in place, like the Postal Service’s retirement funding process, our health insurance systems, our absurd welfare rules, and so many captured and corrupted rule sets messed up by Reagan and other Republicans.
It also means you can make big plans again — actually impress the public with offers that can improve their lives in large ways, rather than small alterations. Not just a New Deal, but a newly established set of deals to work better for everyone.
But the real big issue is scaling up the construction of these systems to recreate a modern nation in a matter of a few years to establish, and decades to fully flesh out.
In many ways, this is like the aftermath of a large war or severe brain-draining revolution that has to be planned for well ahead of time to work.
We also have to plan for the actual process of ending the Trump takeover — but that’s a process that’s very likely going to be beyond just laws and following rules, but in itself going to be a large set of disasters overtipping power at unprecedented scales, including the fall of large institutions like the Supreme Court who have shown how flawed they can function.
But having a set of plans to repair after whatever happens and help people is a basic responsibility that will help regardless.
Election reform and public education are some of the big ones that will absolutely be needed to prevent future horrors like what we’re going to hopefully live through.
No future slips towards fascism should be a simple lazy possibility, nor should anything like Fox news be seen as some ‘neutral’ balancing of scales.
The whole concept of conservatism needs to be drastically scaled back, in favor of public good being seen as a necessary virtue for a shared national self-worth. Nationalism is utter foolishness, and invites fascism, so we need a public ethos we can actually work towards together.
None of these are fantasy outcomes — most modern nations have a sense of sanity and stability like this as the ‘normal’ state of things, outside of active war or revolution, like we’re considering a twisted ‘common sense’ at the moment.
But you do have to plan ahead for that ‘normal’ to exist in the future.
They look like big plans now — but it’s just a matter of copy/pasting from a mix of other nations (just like we did to start with), while throwing away corruption, and adapting what we have to best serve people in that light. Plenty of nations have had to do that, and we can do it too.
The big thing you keep is the debts owed by those committing crimes now. Then you fiercely and consistently cash in those debts to stabilize the nation, and create a positive outcome that fixes more. You can do this because you’re re-establishing the rules after a period of super-corruption, and you get to set those rules after such a massive overturn. Billionaires, for instance, should not exist as a force is one good basic idea from our own history, if you look at tax rates at least. Just lose the tax loopholes, and you’re getting there quick.
The forced ideal of centrism has to take a seat for a while though — there’s no forgiving what’s happening now in the name of ‘balance’ until the damage is fixed. Conservatism took off its gloves and will be killing lots of people — it doesn’t get a seat at the table for a while. None of this is ‘progress’ that needs to be balanced — it’s fixing what was damaged with something, anything that works. There’s no sense “balancing” that with what is absolutely proven corruption now. We’re all in the same boat until the huge gaping leaks are at least fixed.
Balance can come back later once there’s enough to recreate it again. Until then, we must create what we need to have an actual future that helps us all, and excludes those that would harm us all.
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