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 …
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.
Our Constitution has no answer for this.
It has several:
- We vote them out of office
- Constitutional amendments
- Constitutional convention
All of them require We the People to be actively engaged in the process.
“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.
First of all, how is a site named “techdirt” always hitting the nail on the head with political commentary?
Techdirt had a back in March titled Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not) to explain their current direction.
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
from the it’s-the-only-real-story dept
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.
Thankfully, the United States is nowhere as unified as Germany was leading up to World War 2.
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.
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.
Not OP but… Huh, TIL. Would not have expected that.
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.
“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
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.
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.
Did you guys see that the SECDEF stated he wanted to use US ‘war torn’ cities as practice for going to war overseas for the military? They aren’t joking around.
Trump is the one who said that.
Wild. I’m amazed that people can see this extreme rhetoric and act like nothing is wrong, or that things will probably be okay if we don’t “overreact”.
Don’t think there are many left in the middle going about their day like nothing is wrong. Red regions like what is happening, and blue regions are torn between don’t take the bait and can’t sit around doing nothing. Those who don’t like what’s happening are kind of screwed no matter what they do. There are no good options when MAGA has seized so much power and Dems are responding so meekly.
Heaps of denial and a hope this will reverse course on its own (it won’t).
In any sane administration this would be grounds for removal via the 25th amendment. Does he literally need to be comatose before anyone there starts pushing this?
As long as he’s able to speak, even if it’s in tongues or babytalk, his sycophants and hangers-on will claim he’s firing on all cylinders.
Don’t worry, with AI he doesn’t even need to be alive to be used as a puppet.
Sure…
But this still ain’t new. Lil Bush thought he was legitimately going after WMDs, it was Cheney who knew that was all bullshit.
Similar things was going on all while Reagan was munching on Jelly Beans.
Hell. It’s a bipartisan issue at this point, you can’t tell me with a straight face Biden knew what was happening or was making decisions.
People close to him would verbally tell him something, and either he’d forget it or latch onto it for a weird amount of time.
You’re right to be pissed off, just wrong to think it’s recent.
But the auto pen was a problem.
Trans girls on high school basketball teams are the ones destroying the country.
Go after the entities that manipulate trump. He’s not a mastermind, he’s a puppet. Understand the game and understand that the nation as a whole is simply a tool for the elite players of “the game” to use for their agenda. The politics are an illusion. they can do the same manipulative things to Democrats or any other organization that holds any sort of control or power. The ideology of the image of what America used to be isn’t real, it’s a marketed brand for naive people to buy into. It isn’t a lifestyle of authentic genuine humanity.
We are watching a collapse and the extremes they are willing to go to in order to maintain control of what, in all the godliness of the natural universe and humanity, is not theirs to control or own. Their actions are the manifestation of fear and evil. Don’t let your reactions to them be based on the same fear or else it will probably lead to more evil.
re:puppet
I’ve been saying this for a while. He’s senile with dementia but also a political mastermind?
I’ve only seen right wingers saying he’s a mastermind. The left just says that he’s senile and demented or evil and lawless. He’s doing the shit in the open with minimal statecraft or political finesse.
He’s a tyrant fascist through and through, but he’s not all that smart, he’s just willing to brazenly ignore any rules that get in his way because consequences don’t apply anymore. Republicans think this makes him a skilled politician, but he’s just a bull in a china shop.
I think he is greed embodied. He does what he is paid to do. Doesn’t care if it’s fascist or anarchist. He’s an empty suit saying what he’s been told to. He is perfectly self serving and no more. He’s in this position to keep the puppeteers out of the spotlight with plausible deniability. AKA - the patsy.
Reminds me of In Shadow.
I mean yes, but we already knew that Trump is barely literate, hates reading, and just watched TV all the time in his first admin.
In that sense… yes, duh, this is nothing new at all, why do we think he literally just appointed a bunch of Fox News show hosts into his cabinet?
Last year, conservatives were complaining about the budget.
This is really expensive.
Silly goose, the budget only matters when the Dems are in.
