Bunk Moreland said:
You can't make sweeping reforms to government bloat without undergoing a painful period while people have to recondition themselves that it's up to them to earn money, provide shelter and safety and feed their families.
This is unfortunately the part where I'm not sure Trump has the appetite. He wants a legacy more than anything else. I hope like hell he can withstand the downside of what truly reforming this country will have to take. Because it'd make him or anyone truly willing to do it the greatest president in history.
To me this issue is at the core of one of the biggest paradoxes of American politics. America's structure was set up for long term stability by ensuring a frequent turnover and peaceful transfer of power that is flexible and responsive to the electorate.
GOOD:
Congress significantly resets every 2 years. Presidency significantly resets every 4 years. So it's harder for evil factions to permanently capture governance. (Hence the rise of the bureaucratic deep state and TLAs as the source of evil acting unilaterally outside the will of the people.)
BAD:
When serious reforms are truly needed - i.e. the bureaucratic deep state and TLAs - there is no hope for sustained momentum from Congress/POTUS because every second of their terms is now spent exclusively on strategic positioning for the next election cycle.
I have always been conflicted about term limits, because I see merit in arguments on both sides and I don't think there's a conclusive winning argument. Ultimately it always comes back to who we elect. When our servants are good we want them to stay, when they're bad we want to eject them, but the bad ones have a tendency to become entrenched so are harder to eject without some baked in limits. On the other hand, the bad ones also have an easier time defeating the good ones in an election, because elections are inherently slanted against anyone who declines to use every trick available.
In the meantime, the instant the nation as a whole starts experiencing withdrawal from the bad policies, any reform momentum stops at the next election and we recycle back.
I do not see any way that our electoral system will permit serious reform of a $7 trillion deficit-spending deep state. The tumor has infiltrated the entire economy. The founders tried to protect us from this, but their great grandchildren failed. Once government becomes enormous AND a major sector of the economy, you cannot remove the tumor without cutting out a lot of the surrounding tissue. In a nation of 350,000,000 people vying for their share of $7,000,000,000,000, there is no human surgeon who can get good margins to separate the cancerous growth from the healthy organs.
