I don’t think a discussion on the Patriot Act can not not be political. What people don’t realize is that Trump’s transparency of character didn’t allow him to snake through bills like the Bush administration (I’m oddly suggesting the man was too honest to succeed in politics long term). A competent Trump could have orchestrated messaging similar to what the neocons did. Just look at the name of this thing, ‘Patriot Act’, whereas Trump’s initiatives failed so hard at messaging that things got called ‘The Muslim Ban’, which many could argue the Patriot Act might as well have been called initially. We lucked out that this guy was more into his own schtick than actually being part of deliberate cohort with an agenda.
If someone on the right-wing gets the messaging right, intermixed with competent political infrastructure, we could easily see more bills like the Patriot Act in the future, especially since Trump showed there is a massive appetite for some of the toxic rhetoric in this country. Anyone that can package those ideas in a palatable way can snake in nasty bills named ‘Totally not nasty and very good Act’.
I guess I was wrong in structuring the sentence like that. Rhetorically it made sense to me, mostly to preemptively ward off the notion that a thread should not turn political.
Edgy empty points are easy to score. I think this site tends towards more reasoned arguments. Can you please articulate in what ways you see Obama (or Clinton) as having had a presidency that was worse for America as compared with Bush or Trump’s legacies. Clinton maybe fucked up the free trade agreement a bit and hurt some important constituencies within the Democratic Party that were pretty important? Sure. Is that bad for the Democratic Party? Sure. Was it bad for America overall, long term? I don’t know. Obama misspoke (or potentially even lied) a few times about the implications of the bill? Sure. Is America better off with the ACA? By all accounts very much so. Was Obama more of a war hawk with drones than I might have liked? Sure. Was he as measured as he could have been? Maybe not. You ask others they’ll say he was too measured. Pretty difficult spot to navigate.
Trump and Bush? Two major wars, 1 recession, 1 near major depression. And that’s just what Bush accomplished.
I think if we’re keeping score, we have to strictly count the stuff that had lasting impact. Case in point, the Patriot Act was up for renewal just this year (20 years later). We still have not unequivocally withdrawn from the Mideast (almost 20 years later). Free trade, well, it changed the world totally (for better or worse), and should not be understated as an aside of the Clinton administration. ACA had a lasting impact (one of the few positives). Trump was unable to pass any lasting legislation (taxes can go up and down if we try to count that).
In a sense, Biden could be a very consequential President as he will operate similar to Clinton/Bush/Obama, and I sense the country has forgotten how a determined executive branch can have you talking about stuff they quietly championed 20 years later (as we are doing now).
Drone attacks on wedding parties are what I use to differentiate Trump from Obama (and Bush and Clinton). I think the issue in your framing is lumping trump with bush when in reality, obama and bush are more alike (whether it is the merciless killing of people expressing sovereignty against an invading army or bailouts of wall street and wall street alone to the tune of trillions of dollars). Contrast that to Trump (who I am not a fan of) with zero wars started (despite ample opportunity in yemen) and a covid bailout that directly went to the people.
Again, I did not vote for the man but facts matter, please don't get fooled by the same agenda even if executed by two (or three) different administrations with technically opposing parties.
You are aware that Trump dramatically expanded the drone wars and loosened targeting criteria on those same drones resulting in far more strikes with far more civilian casualties?[1] The only reason it’s not in the news (besides the constant chaos in the White House sucking up news cycles) is because he also signed an executive order removing the requirement that we report all civilian deaths.[2]
Pretending that Donald “Take out the Terrorists’ families” Trump is a some kind of dove is a new one, especially when he’s still trying to attack Iran during his final lame duck days in office.
Thank you for calling this out. Too often people parrot the same stupid line about Obama and drone strikes without the context here. No, trump is not some dove who cares about minimizing suffering. He did more drone strikes, with more flimsy justifications, resulting in more deaths and destruction than any president in history including Obama.
Yeah, and trump has not started any additional wars. That is true. However, the constant saber rattling vs iran as well as the "bloody nose" option vs north korea (a premptive nuclear strike) were openly floated by Trump and his administration. Trump would go for war if he believed it would be good for him.
Honestly, trump may still be president if he had attacked iran... Trump's own miscalculations are ironically what kept him being so "dovish". Republicans talk a good game about being doves but they want a hawk. They might not admit it openly because dear leader didn't attack iran yet - but if he had - trump's base would claim that iran should have been invaded forever ago...
Oddly enough I think the fact that I see comments like yours so frequently is the biggest possible endorsement of his no-reporting policy. The amount of praise Trump receives for being 'anti-war', despite ample evidence to the contrary, is a good lesson for future establishments on the negative effect of transparency in such matters.
Obama classified military aged men (>= 16) as non civilians when killed by drones so those numbers are abslutaly skewed.
He also had signature strikes, the disposition matrix, expanded/initiated drone/bombing campaigns to an absurd and terrible degree.
Obama is a great example where partisanship makes people defend anything he did even where he was worse than Bush (And Trump has been criticized even more than Bush For less than Bush/Obama).
Trying to rewrite history to align party lines or "Orangemanbad" narratives doesn't really work.
Finally, it's disingenuous calling Obama's administration transparent when it was anything but. Even the ACLU said so and he was absolutely at war with whistleblowers.
Trump’s foreign policy has been hand’s down better than Obama’s and W.’s. Obama had some good rhetoric, but got sucked into the neo-con precepts that America needs to police every minor scuffle worldwide.
If someone on the right-wing gets the messaging right, intermixed with competent political infrastructure, we could easily see more bills like the Patriot Act in the future, especially since Trump showed there is a massive appetite for some of the toxic rhetoric in this country. Anyone that can package those ideas in a palatable way can snake in nasty bills named ‘Totally not nasty and very good Act’.