It’s quite interesting how American’s have always been about their government’s “checks and balances” to prevent tyranny, but all it took was one person who was fine with saying, “fuck your checks and balances” to effectively create a dictatorship, and the whole government is left blabbering, “you can’t do that” with no mechanism to actually do anything meaningful to remove the tyrant.
Like, I’m sure there were “checks and balances” in place for employing directors of these various governments offices, so it’s almost comical that a President can just fire anyone who doesn’t agree with him. I suppose it’s not surprising for a country with very little worker protections, though.
While there are certainly flaws in the American system of government, this is not the result of one man simply being above the law. There are plenty of existing ways to stop this from happening but half of the government is actively supporting his efforts. There is no system of government that can survive when the people who are charged with enforcing the rules collectively decide not to enforce them. At that point the specifics don’t matter.
It’s all social contracts. When those break down, a lot of shit breaks.
Also when one party refuses to do jack shit about the approaching storm, hoping for the status quo and retaining their little bits of power. That doesn’t help either.
It’s quite interesting how American’s have always been about their government’s “checks and balances”
Hahaha, that’s a good one.
The US has always been about slave owners on stolen land to be in power with all its perks but without any of its responsibilities by putting as much wool over everyone’s eyes as much as they can.
Every supposed check and balance the US has is to keep these oligarchs in power.
And they’re all laughably theatrical like putting in enormous importance into term limits, like it’s some kind of pinnacle of democracy.
As if dictators will stop dictating because there’s a clock involved.
All it does is stop the public from choosing the one leader that isn’t corrupted by monied interests over and over again.
It does not stop a leader from speedrunning into doing whatever he wants.
Given we have millions who actively voted for this shit and millions more who didn’t bother to vote against this shit, nothing surprising (that’s even without counting in the fact those millions are not directly voting for heads of departments etc)
What I find hilarious is that around half a year before I used to see the sentiment that “no such thing as good Russians, see what they are allowing to happen”. Well, kudos for those they-are-so-evil-we-are-not people (sarcasm, of course), how are you doing against a delusional tyrant put in place of power by rich fucking idiots? (question is rhetorical, my piece is done)
If America as it is known survives this, massive reforms will have to take place.
Random things like:
The absolutely useless “impeachment” process will have to be replaced with something closer to Parliamentary “vote of no confidence” - no “trial” to be held by one section of one branch of government. It is nothing more than a sham process. If business boards of directors have figured out how to oust CEOs, the government should have a similar mechanism.
President can’t have God-mode powers nor sign executive orders anymore. The President’s power should be severely limited. No one person should be a king. Not sure how we managed to do that one thing completely wrong. The position should be nothing more than a communications filter between government branches, nations, states, people, to push policy and steer governance.
President could be allowed emergency declarations for 15 days, but their action is limited to deploying aid and resources and nothing more. Congress must then convene in 7 of those 15 days to decide how to proceed, in- or out-of-session. They can get off their lazy butts and work for once.
President should be allowed to be jailed, and no member of government should ever be above the very laws they control.
Presidential position could also be restructured. Pres and VP are just pres and pres. They both have to agree for any action to be taken. Why having one person with the final decision was ever a good idea when trying to remove kings makes no sense.
Supreme Court ideally should be disbanded as it was only created to appease the rich, but in lieu of that, it should be completely refreshed. Possibly size expanded to 20 or some arbitrary number that helps break a focused pile of power by a few. All justices removed, replaced with non-partisan justices. If any justice seems to show partisan decision-making, they are audited by (some auditing body) that is probably not the other justices, like how an FAA flight crash incident is audited by a board of retired pilots. Justices will be term-limited. Justices should also be age-limited. Again, borrowing from FAA, if ATC controllers have to retire at 56, we can age-limit every governmental position. This gerontocracy has to stop. Old rarely means wise. Mental fitness should also be a factor, if you’re a Reagan or a Mango or a Feinstein where you don’t even know where you are half the time, you’re out.
All government positions are term- and/or age-limited, but a staggering rule has to be initiated so there isn’t possibility of a 100% turnover in any given period of years. (Boards already have this concept.)
Some mechanism should be put in place that makes it more commonplace for states to weigh in when the Federal government is doing something wrong. And one for individual citizens. Voting processes should be standardized and modernized to make every citizen’s vote more powerful.
To toss the Libertarians a bone, states rights. The power distribution has to be restructured. Things like “state pays Fed x money, so state can receive y money” goes away. The state sends some money to the Federal government and keeps more internally so they can self-manage. The economies of each state would need balance as there are many welfare states that need the money in the Federal government to survive. Regardless, each state’s economy should be structured so that the Federal government is more of an afterthought. Federal government standardizes processes, roads, specifications, etc. so that interstate trade travel and movement is made easier. Basically though, to limit the scope of power the Federal government has. Not to demolish or disband it, just to make it so even if somehow, in the new system, someone tries to play king, they’re but king of very little, and can’t threaten states to bend the knee by trying to cut off their precious money. (Which alone should be made illegal.)
All the obvious money in elections and money in politics and political donation stuff all has to die, for good. Codified into the constitution. Each candidate is given y amount of timeslots on various media, and z amount of campaigns, funded by taxpayers equally. No other money can be used. (Funded by the taxpayers so it’s all an even ground and some CEO can’t come sail in on his space yacht and run a fancier campaign.)
And at the end of it, governance should be made boring again. One shouldn’t get into the job to be Lauren Boobert the reality TV trash soundbite handjob star. It should be a paper pushing position that keeps the country and its “economy” going.
Probably some other stuff this ramble forgot to add.
It’s weird how business, boards, even HOAs seem to have a better set of checks and balances than the US Federal government.
It’s quite interesting how American’s have always been about their government’s “checks and balances” to prevent tyranny, but all it took was one person who was fine with saying, “fuck your checks and balances” to effectively create a dictatorship, and the whole government is left blabbering, “you can’t do that” with no mechanism to actually do anything meaningful to remove the tyrant.
Like, I’m sure there were “checks and balances” in place for employing directors of these various governments offices, so it’s almost comical that a President can just fire anyone who doesn’t agree with him. I suppose it’s not surprising for a country with very little worker protections, though.
While there are certainly flaws in the American system of government, this is not the result of one man simply being above the law. There are plenty of existing ways to stop this from happening but half of the government is actively supporting his efforts. There is no system of government that can survive when the people who are charged with enforcing the rules collectively decide not to enforce them. At that point the specifics don’t matter.
That’s a great point. Doesn’t much matter if there are methods in place if many are complicit in the tyranny.
It’s all social contracts. When those break down, a lot of shit breaks.
Also when one party refuses to do jack shit about the approaching storm, hoping for the status quo and retaining their little bits of power. That doesn’t help either.
Hahaha, that’s a good one.
The US has always been about slave owners on stolen land to be in power with all its perks but without any of its responsibilities by putting as much wool over everyone’s eyes as much as they can.
Every supposed check and balance the US has is to keep these oligarchs in power.
And they’re all laughably theatrical like putting in enormous importance into term limits, like it’s some kind of pinnacle of democracy.
As if dictators will stop dictating because there’s a clock involved.
All it does is stop the public from choosing the one leader that isn’t corrupted by monied interests over and over again.
It does not stop a leader from speedrunning into doing whatever he wants.
Given we have millions who actively voted for this shit and millions more who didn’t bother to vote against this shit, nothing surprising (that’s even without counting in the fact those millions are not directly voting for heads of departments etc)
What I find hilarious is that around half a year before I used to see the sentiment that “no such thing as good Russians, see what they are allowing to happen”. Well, kudos for those they-are-so-evil-we-are-not people (sarcasm, of course), how are you doing against a delusional tyrant put in place of power by rich fucking idiots? (question is rhetorical, my piece is done)
There are a lot of people working with Trump. It’s not just him that’s the problem.
If America as it is known survives this, massive reforms will have to take place.
Random things like:
And at the end of it, governance should be made boring again. One shouldn’t get into the job to be Lauren Boobert the reality TV trash soundbite handjob star. It should be a paper pushing position that keeps the country and its “economy” going.
Probably some other stuff this ramble forgot to add.
It’s weird how business, boards, even HOAs seem to have a better set of checks and balances than the US Federal government.
http://web.archive.org/web/20230520080201/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
Not that it actually matters, but Qualified Immunity is also against the actual laws that were passed.