With Trump as President, the World Is Spiraling Into Chaos

[Zorro]

Earlier this week, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, visited The New York Times editorial board, and I asked him about the threat of armed conflict between his country and India over Kashmir. India and Pakistan have already fought two wars over the Himalayan territory, which both countries claim, and which is mostly divided between them. India recently revoked the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the part of Kashmir it controls and put nearly seven million people there under virtual house arrest. Pakistan’s prime minister compared India’s leaders to Nazis and warned that they’ll target Pakistan next. It seems like there’s potential for humanitarian and geopolitical horror.

Khan’s answer was not comforting. “We are two big countries with very large militaries with nuclear capability and a history of conflict,” he said. “So I would not like to burden your imagination on that one, but obviously if things get worse, then things get worse.”

All over the world, things are getting worse. China appears to be weighing a Tiananmen Square-like crackdown in Hong Kong. After I spoke to Khan, hostilities between India and Pakistan ratcheted up further; on Thursday, fighting across the border in Kashmir left three Pakistani soldiers dead. (Pakistan also claimed that five Indian soldiers were killed, but India denied it.) Turkey is threatening to invade Northeast Syria to go after America’s Kurdish allies there, and it’s not clear if an American agreement meant to prevent such an incursion will hold.

North Korea’s nuclear program and ballistic missile testing continue apace. The prospect of a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine is more remote than it’s been in decades. Tensions between America and Iran keep escalating. Relations between Japan and South Korea have broken down. A Pentagon report warns that ISIS is “re-surging” in Syria. The U.K. could see food shortages if the country’s Trumpish prime minister, Boris Johnson, follows through on his promise to crash out of the European Union without an agreement in place for the aftermath. Oh, and the globe may be lurching towards recession.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/opinion/hong-kong-kashmir-trump.html

[Iliyah]

1. Shithole has help . . .

The current GOP could ring him in, but NOOOOOOOOOOOO. Greed, hatred, racism and insanity is very profitable.

Conflicts, battles, wars and prisons are very profitable.

Then you have the insane evangelists who see "end days".

Right now, GOD must be shaking his or her head.

[FirstLight]

2. ...not just the GOP

but how about some UN style humanitarian intervention... what's happening with the people in cages at the southern border should warrant some kind of International Response....but crickets.


The world is only on the precipice of true madness... give it another decade, when climate change ends up coming 10x faster than the "models" and the shit is really gonna get squirrely...

I hate to agree with the evangelicals, but there's some scary shit happening on our planet these days, and only half of it is political and human actions...nature is turning against us too, IMHO

[Iliyah]

3. . . . nature is turning against us too . . .

Maybe GOD is fed up.

[FirstLight]

5. right?

The part that I feel like I am watching a slow trainwreck (that is, Humanity)... Climate change is on the feedback loop now, the "models" are all about 2100...what happens when TSHTF by 2030?

we are literally the frog in the boiling water, and can't figure our it's too late to jump...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Yup. The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.

These guys saw it coming 50 years ago.

[Texin]

6. He's more a symptom than the cause. He rose out of this dystopian miasma.

It's a complex mix of cascading issues, including perpetual entrenched poverty in under-developed countries some of which is exacerbated by global climate creating famine and resultant mass migrations, culturual racism throughout the world, xenophobia, nationalism, and on and on, including gross income inequality in which the people who work are devalued and their corporate heads are attaining grossly disproportionate wealth creating vast numbers of wage slaves.

[Initech]

7. Actually this is all a direct result of Putin and his weaponization of social media.

Putin's Internet Research Agency and the disinformation that they've been spreading on social media for the last 10 years has done more damage to the world than any number of terrorist organizations could ever do. Trump is just a symptom of the overall world problem. Everywhere you look - every country that's flipped to the far right (Brazil, Philippines, India, Australia, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the UK, the US, and so on) - has had the same symptoms crop up. Rise in racism, rise in fear, rise in people getting meaner and nastier to each other. Not to mention a rise in hate crimes and a tendency to prefer murderous dictators to freedom and progress.

If the Dems get back in power next year they need to condemn Putin and all the madness and horror that he's caused.

[defacto7]

8. For some, this has been the plan all along.

A controlled implosion.

[LudwigPastorius]

9. Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

The nightmare scenario is another high-profile terror attack that kills a lot of Americans.
Imagine if Trump was in the White House during 9/11.

It would be nice to think that America is protected from the worst excesses of Trump’s impulses by its democratic laws and institutions. After all, Trump can do only so much without bumping up against the limits set by the Constitution and Congress and enforced by the courts. Those who see Trump as a threat to democracy comfort themselves with the belief that these limits will hold him in check.


But will they? Unknown to most Americans, a parallel legal regime allows the president to sidestep many of the constraints that normally apply. The moment the president declares a “national emergency”—a decision that is entirely within his discretion—more than 100 special provisions become available to him. While many of these tee up reasonable responses to genuine emergencies, some appear dangerously suited to a leader bent on amassing or retaining power. For instance, the president can, with the flick of his pen, activate laws allowing him to shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze Americans’ bank accounts. Other powers are available even without a declaration of emergency, including laws that allow the president to deploy troops inside the country to subdue domestic unrest.

This edifice of extraordinary powers has historically rested on the assumption that the president will act in the country’s best interest when using them. With a handful of noteworthy exceptions, this assumption has held up. But what if a president, backed into a corner and facing electoral defeat or impeachment, were to declare an emergency for the sake of holding on to power? In that scenario, our laws and institutions might not save us from a presidential power grab. They might be what takes us down.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-powers/576418/