Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Nice While It Lasted! Our Allies Won't Trust Trump's America (w/ Michael Weiss) | Bulwark Podcast" video.

Another Aussie here. I went to college in America on a sports scholarship (late 80s) and fell in love with America and its people. Its pain full to watch this debacle happen and my warning to Australia is be careful because ANY COUNTRY can do this to itself. Look what Britain did with Brexit. Look what France is doing to itself right now. Look what South Korea just did to itself. ANY COUNTRY no matter how well advanced its institutions are can rapidly devolve if it gets lax. In college I did engineering but a bunch of my friends we pre-law and they used to dreg me into their discussions. So I had an unusual education into how America is SUPPOSED to function. Because I had studied Orwell ()1984 & Animal farm) in High School I used to argue that ANY country could devolve into a totalitarian dictatorship because that was Orwell's message. They used to argue back that America could NOT devolve because of the way the American system of "Checks & Balances" worked. I am now convinced that the Founding Fathers were amazing and created one of humanities greatest achievements the US Constitution. But as an engineer I liken it to a magnificent car designed by great engineers AND THAT IT NEEDS TO BE PROPERLY MAINTAINED. And this (I think) is going to be America's great lesson. Its not enough to have a great constitution, surrounded by great institutions with a well thought out maintenance program (regular elections, checks & balances,....) IF YOU THEN CHEAPEN OUT ON THE MAINTENANCE. In engineering you'd think we'd have learnt that lesson, but sadly "NO, we have not!" There's always somebody who thinks that maintenance is for clowns and it costs too much UNTIL something breaks and it ends in tears. Sadly America right now is a badly maintained system and BOTH SIDES ARE TOO BLAME. The only question is will somebody step up before it crashes like a Boeing Max-8 or sinks like the Titanic.
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Another Aussie here. I went to college in America on a sports scholarship (late 80s) and fell in love with America and its people. Its pain full to watch this debacle happen and my warning to Australia is be careful because ANY COUNTRY can do this to itself. Look what Britain did with Brexit. Look what France is doing to itself right now. Look what South Korea just did to itself. ANY COUNTRY no matter how well advanced its institutions are can rapidly devolve if it gets lax. In college I did engineering but a bunch of my friends we pre-law and they used to dreg me into their discussions. So I had an unusual education into how America is SUPPOSED to function. Because I had studied Orwell ()1984 & Animal farm) in High School I used to argue that ANY country could devolve into a totalitarian dictatorship because that was Orwell's message. They used to argue back that America could NOT devolve because of the way the American system of "Checks & Balances" worked. I am now convinced that the Founding Fathers were amazing and created one of humanities greatest achievements the US Constitution. But as an engineer I liken it to a magnificent car designed by great engineers AND THAT IT NEEDS TO BE PROPERLY MAINTAINED. And this (I think) is going to be America's great lesson. Its not enough to have a great constitution, surrounded by great institutions with a well thought out maintenance program (regular elections, checks & balances,....) IF YOU THEN CHEAPEN OUT ON THE MAINTENANCE. In engineering you'd think we'd have learnt that lesson, but sadly "NO, we have not!" There's always somebody who thinks that maintenance is for clowns and it costs too much UNTIL something breaks and it ends in tears. Sadly America right now is a badly maintained system and BOTH SIDES ARE TOO BLAME. The only question is will somebody step up before it crashes like a Boeing Max-8 or sinks like the Titanic.
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