Who’s running the country? That question became terrifyingly urgent this weekend when the President of the United States admitted he was preparing to send US military forces into an American …

Who’s running the country? That question became terrifyingly urgent this weekend when the President of the United States admitted he was preparing to send US military forces into an American …

  • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
    981·
    11 hours ago

    First of all, how is a site named “techdirt” always hitting the nail on the head with political commentary?

    Should the United States survive this, there is going to need to be a serious reckoning over how we fix our institutions to protect against such horrifying abuses.

    The problem is that our government was designed to put ambitious people in competing roles. Certain powers are controlled by Congress, others by the President, and still others by the Judiciary. Each branch has checks against the power of the other, and two of the branches ultimately have to answer to the people in elections. They assumed that each branch would seek to make sure that the other branches stayed in line, to preserve their own power.

    But what happens when one movement co-opts all three branches, and now the branches refuse to rein each other in? Our Constitution has no answer for this. If any other President has pulled what Trump pulled today with his generals, he would have gotten impeached on the spot. Trump gets away with it, because the Congress and the Courts let him.

    • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 hours ago

      Our Constitution has no answer for this.

      It has several:

      1. We vote them out of office
      2. Constitutional amendments
      3. Constitutional convention

      All of them require We the People to be actively engaged in the process.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
      5·
      5 hours ago

      “First of all, how is a site named “techdirt” always hitting the nail on the head with political commentary?”

      One of my favourite things I’ve read this year was Mike Masnick’s “Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)” . Even before things went to shit in the US, so much of tech journalism was trash because it refused to acknowledge that it doesn’t make sense to talk about technology as if it somehow separate from society. The article I linked shows that Techdirt (or at the very least, Masnick) understands this.

      You’re right though, that it is gross how ostensibly politics journalism so often fails to make any meaningful political commentary. I appreciate techdirt, but I wish that we had more places doing political commentary like this.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
        3·
        5 hours ago

        Haha, I just posted a reply with a link to the same article; I should have checked downthread first to see if anyone else had posted it. This piece is one of my favourite things I’ve read this year. I remember finding it so refreshing when it came out. Previously, I had read bits and bobs of good journalism from techdirt, but this sealed my respect for techdirt (and Mike Masnick).

        Y

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      11 hours ago

      First of all, how is a site named “techdirt” always hitting the nail on the head with political commentary?

      Because at nearly 30 years old it’s literally one of the oldest news sites on the Internet…

      And they expanded from just tech news decades ago?

      Like, their CEO (who wrote this article) is the one that coined the term “Streisand Effect”…

      They’re kind of a big deal outside of just tech and have been for a long time.

    • someguy3@lemmy.world
      25·
      10 hours ago

      I never understood how Hitler got such power until Trump came along. Then I realized it wasn’t Hitler giving orders, it was that the people in the system wanted it. They wanted to give him their power.

        • bufalo1973@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          Don’t get it wrong. The “unity” in Germany was the result of “first they came for…”. Hitler didn’t win any fair election. Only after jailing all the opposing parties he won.

    • whereyaaat@lemmings.world
      9·
      9 hours ago

      But what happens when one movement co-opts all three branches, and now the branches refuse to rein each other in?

      Luigi learns the shadow-clone jutsu.

    • samus12345@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      19·
      10 hours ago

      “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

      - George Washington

    • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
      4·
      10 hours ago

      But what happens when one movement co-opts all three branches, and now the branches refuse to rein each other in? Our Constitution has no answer for this

      I think it does.

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        10 hours ago

        No, the Constitution doesn’t, but this does

        But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.