Thanks for your input.
In other news, Trump is now essentially referring to himself as a king:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/trump-sparks-outrage-quoting-emerson-refer-himself-king.amp
Right on cue.
A comment came to mind when I read this, but …
… I was Ninja’ed.
Black people in America have lived under a dictatorship for most of their time here. Slavery, then Jim Crow. Even after those things they had to do with police brutality and disenfranchisement.
Also we had laws against free speech in WW1, people were getting very long prison sentences for speaking out against the war.
Have you a link that’s HTML and not AMP? No need giving Google the entire internet yet.
Here is the content of both Trump tweets on the subject:
“Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to foresee the lesson of the Senate Impeachment Trial of President Trump. ‘When you strike at the King, Emerson famously said, “you must kill him.’ Mr. Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down. A triumphant Mr.Trump emerges from the…"
“…biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration, and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail.” Peter Baker@nytimes
The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!”
Second what Aspenglow said (Aspenglow’s summary was pretty accurate,too).
It’s the gradual erosion of the separation of powers that constitutes the current crisis, and it’s hard to think of a time in which the legislative has encouraged the president to abuse and expand his powers and privileges the way we’ve witnessed these last few years. The way the Constitution was designed, the powers essentially competed with each other - that’s the fundamental assumption that makes separation of powers function successfully or at least function as the Framers envisioned.
McConnell and the GOP had a 2-year head start on Pelosi’s House, which can only slow down the machine at this point. Meanwhile, Trump and McConnell are rapidly transforming the federal judiciary, filling vacancies with ideologues who are long on right wing dogma and quite short on qualifications to be jurists. It’s the judiciary that is the linchpin of the conservative strategy.
A combination of a legislative that forgives transgressions of executive power is signaling that there are absolutely no consequences for anything he chooses to do. And over time, an ideologically-driven judiciary sanctions it all under the cloak of judicial impartiality and the rule of law. That’s how self-governance unravels.
Lincoln and FDR come to mind.
But they arent controversial enough and everybody likes them so it’s ok
I’ll admit I’m not as knowledgeable about Lincoln as I could be. Was he a proven liar, did he illegally silence his accusers and did he abuse executive power?
My personal opinion is that if Trump tried to cancel the next election he would be impeached so fast it would make your head swim. And the Senate would ratify he impeachment the next day.
If he fears his treasons will be exposed, expect declarations of national emergency and martial law. Enemies of the state aka Democrats will be detained “for their own safety” so no further impeachment(s) will be possible. Approved candidates not in detention will adorn simplified single-choice ballots which, being cast, will be examined for irregularities like failing to vote for the approved candidates. The GOP will win with a 99%+ margin!
Sure, something like an election will occur, just as something like a trial happened. Please convince me I’m overly pessimistic. Do so before we’re incarcerated.
Extraordinary times and circumstances were in play but Abe Lincoln suspended habeus corpus and declared martial law in Kentucky.
And his election platform sparked a civil war. So that was a degree of division a just a tad above what you are seeing now within the body politic.
and I’ll defer to running coache’s cite.
“If Trump does (fill in the blank) he will be impeached so fast your head will swim”-How many times have we heard this or somethin damn close to it over the last three years?
As we get closer to the election and the numbers don’t look good for Donald, I expect him to float a trial balloon or two. And after not lifting a finger to prevent it, I fully expect Republicans to raise a stink should there be even the slightest allegations of election chicanery. There should be no doubt left in anyone’s mind by now that the 21st century GOP believes in power more than it believes in democracy. And that has to be a little worrisome for all of us.
That’s the part I can’t quite wrap my head around. I keep thinking that had the Russians tried to interfere in our elections and got caught in say… 1965, that would have been considered an act of war, and would have made the Cuban Missile Crisis look like a mild disagreement.
But now, we have it happening, and we have the party in power shrugging their shoulders and going “Meh.” and even more baffling, it’s the self-identified party of “American” values, patriotism, home, hearth and all that stuff. The very party that should be absolutely losing their shit about it. What’s even more baffling is that the Republican base- the rural, hyper-conservative (reactionary even?) super-traditional sorts seem to be fine with it. Or if they’re not fine with it, it’s because they’ve been completely gulled by “fake news” or something along those lines.
I think that last part is the real threat to democracy in the US; the polarization of the news media. We can’t go around only reading Fox News or Daily Kos in a vacuum; the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But millions of people do just that every day; they read their own propaganda outlets and take it as God’s own truth.
Republicans aren’t going ‘Meh’. Trump was actively involved in getting Russian help.
The closest was the Civil War. In terms of modern times, however, this is the closest. The shit pulled by Bush Jr. and even Nixon isn’t even close. To use a sports analogy, what Bush did was like what the Astros did with their sign stealing or what the Patriots did in deflategate. What Trump is doing is more like bribing the commissioner of the league and the officials so that his team starts with two extra runs or up a touchdown at the beginning of the game, or that his side gets four strikes rather than three. The difference between Trump and Nixon is that Trump is succeeding where Nixon failed. So yes, this is the closest we’ve come in modern times.
Yabbut, Susan Collins will likely be concerned…
Sen. Collins forgets that she’s a Senator from Maine and not a Senator from a Stephen King novel…