USA What do you think about the current "Hands Off!" protests?

[Lucian Hodoboc]

From what I've read, these are the biggest protests against any US president in the past century. Is this true? What are your views on the current protests?

 

[Lamb]

These are people who no longer have control and are trying to gain some back in any way they know how. As long as the protests are peaceful, then let them complain.

 

[Lucian Hodoboc]

Do you think it's normal for such a large portion of a country's population to no longer have control because of the president's decisions? Isn't that the foundation of a dictatorship? Shouldn't a president, regardless of the political party he is from, accommodate the needs of all the people, or at least try to listen to the requests of all the people and find common ground through compromise?

 

[tango]

Do you think it's normal for such a large portion of a country's population to no longer have control because of the president's decisions? Isn't that the foundation of a dictatorship? Shouldn't a president, regardless of the political party he is from, accommodate the needs of all the people, or at least try to listen to the requests of all the people and find common ground through compromise?

It's a tricky balancing act.

Where the government is concerned, the government is supposed to serve the people. If government departments cost a lot of money and achieve very little it's entirely appropriate to shrink or dismantle them. The question is how to measure what the department is achieving and determining what level of service should be retained as a backstop. We might measure the success of an educational system by the academic achievement of the children (even if that invites all sorts of discussion about how to measure it and how to handle children who are very smart in one area and utterly useless in another) but measuring the productivity of something like a fire department is much harder. In an ideal world there would be no fires and therefore no need for the fire department, but I'd rather keep them around just in case even if for most of the time they are little more than dead costs for me.

There's also the question of what it means for people to have control. When control means control over their own lives it's a bad thing for people to lose control. When control means control over someone else's life then it's good for them to lose control however much they hate it.

It's interesting that when federal employees were terminated for not wanting the COVID shot there were no protests.

 

[psalms 91]

When one facet of the government ignores the other such as the president versus the courts then we are in dangerous territory and moving closer to a dictatorship. Combine that with an unelected official taking an axe to the different departments such as social security andmilitary and the va then I think we are already halfway there

 

[tango]

When one facet of the government ignores the other such as the president versus the courts then we are in dangerous territory and moving closer to a dictatorship. Combine that with an unelected official taking an axe to the different departments such as social security andmilitary and the va then I think we are already halfway there

Musk might not be elected but I don't remember anyone voting for Tony Fauci either.

Anyone unelected can be troublesome when the people have no way of removing them from office, although the freedom to remove anyone from office is of little value when people on both sides simply vote a straight party ticket regardless of whose name is on the ballot.