“D. is a very weak-minded fellow I am afraid, and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on him!”
- Douglass Haig, about a different “D”
As I mentioned, in both mathematics and physics, a vector is a quantity that has both magnitude and direction.
I think most of us have agreed on direction. The open question was of magnitude.
We have some guidance here:
Hundreds of scholars say U.S. is swiftly heading toward authoritarianism [NPR]
Now, historians could end up being equivalent to economists, who have famously “accurately predicted 12 of the last eight recessions …”
Or … y’know … not.
Now they are arresting judges. Nothing to see here.
I am sure our resident head-in-sanders will insist this is no big deal.
First they started deporting undocumented immigrants, but I did not speak up because I was not an undocumented immigrant.
Then they started arresting judges, but I did not speak up because I was not a judge.
Then they started shipping citizens who had committed crimes to foreign prisons, but I did not speak up because I have never committed a crime.
Then they started arresting old white males who had dared to criticize Trump, but there was no one left to speak up for me.
People? Relax! They’re only arresting the judges that are trying to stop Trump from doing whatever he wants…
FYI …
Yet another poster who misunderstands the OP. The authoritarian moves by his orangeness are dangeous, real and anything but boring, and I have never suggested otherwise. A discussion of what he will try, what he will be able to get away with and why, and what can be done to ameliorate the damage, is not boring. However, a discussion of say “How would Trump try to justify and implement a ban on birthright citizenship?” With the response that “He won’t need to, since the Supreme Court will do whatever he says and therefore birthright citizenship is dead”, even if accurate, leaves no room for discussion and so is boring.
Checked the OP again and that seems a bit of a shift.
The OP asks several loaded questions that assert that things like the 14th amendment and need for senate approval will be a brake on trump’s power.
And then a hypothetical second person that is just handwaving all this by saying trump has absolute power.
Well it hasn’t aged well. To stay in the brakes metaphor, there have been a lot of car crashes already, and other situations where the brakes have been applied but we’ve yet to see if they can stop the car. Plus countless other events that we didn’t even consider were in the range of possibilities for what a president might do.
The hypothetical responder, despite being glib, has been pretty much on the money.
You left out the babies. The US citizen babies with cancer:
Although it’s not explicitly stated in the article, I have the impression that while the children were born in the US and therefore (at least under current constitutional law) US citizens, the parents may or may not be US-born or naturalized citizens. This is probably the justification used by ICE to deport them.
I’m waiting for word of a judge ordering that the deportation be reversed, and the subsequent arrest of the judge for daring to suggest that the rules be followed.
Yes as it turns out Trump has received less resistance to his agenda than than some scenarios. Trumps nominees sailed through, but that doesn’t mean that back in December there was no point in discussing what might come up at the hearings that could make their nomination challenging. I found such discussions interesting, even if in the end they the answer was that they didn’t work.I was annoyed by the blanket dead end repetitive statements that effectively argued that any discussion was pointless.
Honestly this thread was really only intended to be a quick vent, that I expected would garner a couple of dozen posts at most. That it is far and away my most popular OP despite a near complete misunderstanding of its contents, seems ironic to me.
I realize I should just give up, and let everyone think that I was arguing that Trump presidency would be boring. Boy was I dumb. I never conceived that he could be dictatorial. That creative bon mot “are you bored now” really put me in my place. I shall hide my head in shame.
I wonder if this is getting used to push this to the Supreme Court so Trump can revoke citizenship from children born from immigrants.
@Buck_Godot
Well pobody’s nerfect. The first (and last) time I put significant money on a bet was for Harris to win the election.
And if you had asked me what Trump would “accomplish” in his first 100 days, my predictions would have been as restrained as the next man’s. I mean, no single thing that Trump has done surprises me, but all of them in parallel has been astonishing.
(In hindsight, it should have been obvious because I didn’t think there were any significant guardrails remaining).
But anyway, I am not trying to engage in any kind of pile-on. Just disagreeing on some points.
The OP really did turn into some kind of Rorschach Test.
Well, yes, this is obviously the explanation for why they were deported. But I would not call it justification.
Note that I did not say that it was a justification for what ICE did. Just that ICE will try to use it as a justification for what they did.
Just as they’ll use any excuse to seize and deport people without giving them due process.
I don’t have to take that. I got a note from Epstein’s Mom.
Barron? (my bolding)
I expect you’ll agree: it’s SO annoying when a strawman gets up from his designed-to-be-prone position, and starts hitting back!
Speaking of which:
Haven’t seen this argument advanced here. At all.