I want to argue that W’s damage was more immediate, but I keep finding arguments against that.
W might the the president most to blame for climate change. When Dems win it tends to be with a 50% + 1 majority, or close enough to it, while including senators from places like West fucking Virginia.
Republicans at any time can do bipartisan things about climate. Dems don’t have that power.
I’d say any time between 1990 and 2010 was the time where there should have absolutely been enough consensus, and close enough to last minute to actually do something. Shut down all the coal plants in the West. Embargo countries that don’t cooperate on climate. That could have been done. (And yeah, we could have absolutely shut down every coal plant in the West if we were willing.)
Then I was going to add another caveat about reading the 9/11 report. I don’t fully blame W for that. It’s a thing that would have been possible for any president to miss. But he’s the one who missed it. I don’t fully absolve him of it, either.
W’s intentions behind the Iraq war may have been for the good of us all, but the results absolutely weren’t.
The war in Afghanistan can be shared mostly between Obama and Trump. We were there for 20 years and couldn’t manage to make a safe haven. Could have built fucking walls around Kabul, built up the government only there, and let them work on expanding that control outward for the next 50 years.
I still believe Trump’s damage will be longer term. I don’t know if he’ll be able to outdo W, and he’ll never reach Reagan levels of damage. But I don’t think we’ve seen most of Trump’s damage yet.
Trumps damage was mostly to the institutions. The GOP has spent decades slowly inching up to fascism and staging elaborate multilayered plans to steal power and undermine human rights. Then along comes Trump and just brazenly does all the shit the GOP had been tipoeing around and trying to be sneaky with and everyone just kind of stared in shock… and then nothing happened. There was a lot of hand wringing and shaking of fingers and Democrats at least tried a little bit to push back but Trump exposed the fact that if both parties aren’t behind it there’s nothing that can really be done to stop someone just straight up seizing power.
Now the GOP has realized they didn’t need to tiptoe around all their fascist dreams all these years, and with them finally locking down the supreme court there’s literally nothing outside the military or national guard stepping in that can stop them. We’re really just banking on not all the GOP being willing to go 100% traitor at this point because if they do we’re fucked.
I want to argue that W’s damage was more immediate, but I keep finding arguments against that.
W might the the president most to blame for climate change. When Dems win it tends to be with a 50% + 1 majority, or close enough to it, while including senators from places like West fucking Virginia.
Republicans at any time can do bipartisan things about climate. Dems don’t have that power.
I’d say any time between 1990 and 2010 was the time where there should have absolutely been enough consensus, and close enough to last minute to actually do something. Shut down all the coal plants in the West. Embargo countries that don’t cooperate on climate. That could have been done. (And yeah, we could have absolutely shut down every coal plant in the West if we were willing.)
Then I was going to add another caveat about reading the 9/11 report. I don’t fully blame W for that. It’s a thing that would have been possible for any president to miss. But he’s the one who missed it. I don’t fully absolve him of it, either.
W’s intentions behind the Iraq war may have been for the good of us all, but the results absolutely weren’t.
The war in Afghanistan can be shared mostly between Obama and Trump. We were there for 20 years and couldn’t manage to make a safe haven. Could have built fucking walls around Kabul, built up the government only there, and let them work on expanding that control outward for the next 50 years.
I still believe Trump’s damage will be longer term. I don’t know if he’ll be able to outdo W, and he’ll never reach Reagan levels of damage. But I don’t think we’ve seen most of Trump’s damage yet.
Trumps damage was mostly to the institutions. The GOP has spent decades slowly inching up to fascism and staging elaborate multilayered plans to steal power and undermine human rights. Then along comes Trump and just brazenly does all the shit the GOP had been tipoeing around and trying to be sneaky with and everyone just kind of stared in shock… and then nothing happened. There was a lot of hand wringing and shaking of fingers and Democrats at least tried a little bit to push back but Trump exposed the fact that if both parties aren’t behind it there’s nothing that can really be done to stop someone just straight up seizing power.
Now the GOP has realized they didn’t need to tiptoe around all their fascist dreams all these years, and with them finally locking down the supreme court there’s literally nothing outside the military or national guard stepping in that can stop them. We’re really just banking on not all the GOP being willing to go 100% traitor at this point because if they do we’re fucked.