Again, nobody predicted that these mandates would lead to these sort of political staredowns. I certainly didn't predict that either. I've merely said that the US is in a textbook pre-revolutionary situation, i.e. a situation where small things can trigger these showdowns.
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Biden is obviously not in any shape to plan ahead or call any shots as it stands, and I think the people who claim that this is by design and that there's some shadowy powerbroker pulling the strings are just completely deluded.
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Realistically, the federal government is at this point locked into a late oligarchical dynamic where there's a surfeit of veto power but almost no capacity for positive action. There's no-one at whose table the buck ever truly stops. The plane is running on a faulty autopilot.
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If there was a guy in overall control of the situation around (but again, there most likely isn't!), the most pressing concern right now would probably just to walk back these mandates as quickly as possible. Losing face in the face of popular resistance is bad, sure.
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But right now the US is at a point where even small things like this can realistically lead to dueling claims of political legitimacy, and that is the "threat level midnight" scenario for any conniving Prince. Abbot shouldn't be allowed to score these wins.
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And the only realistic way to prevent Abbot or DeSantis or whatever from trying to - wittingly or unwittingly - usurp an already threatened federal legitimacy is to make sure there's no reason for them to do so. Once this bug bites, you've in fact already lost the patient.
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Punishing the states, censuring the responsible politicians, trying to take away state prerogatives in the middle of a staredown like this is just going to make the situation worse. But honestly? There's nobody around to pull on the brakes. The autopilot will keep going.
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The fact that these mandates will be forgotten in five years makes this situation seem deceptively less serious than it actually is. US colonial complaints against the crowns had to do with things like tariffs. The calling of the estates had to do with raising new taxes.
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Revolutions don't ever happen because of "the issues", but because the underlying state is too weak to handle these issues without seizing up. It is *state weakness*, that is the deciding factor, not the fervor or coffeehouse revolutionaries.
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I think a realistic assessment of where the US is today has it that this current period of polarization, unrest and political breakdown will continue until the end of the decade at least. So seeing these very classical signs of state weakness this early on is not a good omen.
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excellent excellent thread followed
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