Who broke America

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

This is serious, America is now a basket case politically. This is what happens when you let marketing men become and control the power base. Truth is completely out the window and it is a battle of lies and exaggeration. Do you know DQ in many ways is right *I think* Marx foretold this, though he expected the workers to be the mechanism of change not the marketing men.

Big danger, who gains most out of this - Putin.

[Fretless]

Truth is completely out the window and it is a battle of lies and exaggeration.

Seems to mirror what happened in the Brexit campaign.

People in the US are now becoming scared to say who they will be voting for and there are fears for violence afterwards - irrespective of who wins.

Whoever wins will have to do a massive amount of 'damage control' and conciliation before anything will settle down. Trump might even make use of the instability to impose emergency laws and set himself up as some sort of dictator, probably the only way he will want to operate anyway.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

You are looking at the results not the reason.

[savvypaul]

Left or right, power mongers have always used false logic.

Those who perceive themselves (rightly or wrongly, it doesn't matter) as the losers from globalisation /migration / cultural change...are a vacuum that opportunists like Trump and Farage are able to exploit.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Again results, are you going to look at the reasons. A clue is it started with Thomas Jefferson and his view of American politics. If he had been listened to back then this wouldn't be happening and capitalist democracy would be a far more stable phenomenon.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Another clue, political conflict was considered to be the way to achieve balance, Jefferson said this was wrong and he was right. The proof, balance is no longer an aim, all that is important is the conflict. We caught the disease here from them. It is not realised how much influence the new democracies and republican thought was having on the British Parliamentary system.

We don't suffer so much from it as we don't have an every four years election for a new Queen.

[savvypaul]

Another clue, political conflict was considered to be the way to achieve balance, Jefferson said this was wrong and he was right. The proof, balance is no longer an aim, all that is important is the conflict. We caught the disease here from them. It is not realised how much influence the new democracies and republican thought was having on the British Parliamentary system.

We don't suffer so much from it as we don't have an every four years election for a new Queen.

Democrat president vs Republican senate...or vice versa. Interesting theory. I don't respect any Government, so my natural preference is for it to be the least effective (and therefore least harmful) as possible. But I will accept that my dislike could spring from the nature of the reality of government rather than the principle of democracy.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Jefferson late in life observing the conflict and division that had beome the US political system said he had done it wrong. There needed to be a way of creating consensus and not just division. The checks and balances were supposed to be because of the two houses of law but all that happened was when they were divided they stopped each other and when together they created a totalitarian situation. The justice dept had the potential of being that force but it became politically appointed.

Believe it or not in the UK not being a republic we have a safer system. The checks and balances being the independence of the judiciary and the press. The latter has been polluted somewhat by crooked press barons like Murdoch, but gains most by having a non political head of state.

Though I must say I lean to us getting a bill of rights and not just relying on common law.

A good comparison is the US today compared with Canada, which is the more sensible system, I think anyone with any brains would say Canada.

[Copperblue]

Canada's PM is a great example of a modern, balanced party leader that has centre-left politics well covered - which we sadly don't in the UK

America's problem is fundamentally social and cultural - where they are today is probably the ultimate expression of the @AmericanDream# ..........everyone in it for themselves, driver = money and endless consumerism

[jammy395]

Im not sure who broke America.

But there's a bloke coming soon to fix it.