What should the White House "quiet resisters" do?

[Novelty_Bobble]

@wonky

You may not give a good goddamn about process, but process is the only thing that makes laws and democracy work. If you want to head off this president, then do something legal, not extra-legal. If you want some presidents to have these powers but not the presidents you dislike, you don’t actually believe in democracy.

I personally don’t think any president should have the power that their every idea is to be implemented without question.

It seems strange for a nominal “subject” of a hereditary monarch to be saying this to a citizen of your republic but…I think giving unquestioned executive power to any single head of state is not healthy.
You may be surprised to know that yours is not the only way to implement democratic government. It is one way and this situation seems to be laying bare some of it’s limitations.

[CarnalK]

@Merneith

I don’t think Donald’s election is, taken in isolation, an indictment of our democratic process. That is, I don’t think it was accomplished by anything inherent in our democratic process. I think it was accomplished by foreign interference.

One might make the argument that any system capable of foreign interference is a failure, but I’m not sure that I’d agree, given that I think it’s probably impossible to design a system that has no potential for interference.

You can’t blame it all on Russia. What a cop out.

[wonky]

@Novelty_Bobble

I personally don’t think any president should have the power that their every idea is to be implemented without question.

It seems strange for a nominal “subject” of a hereditary monarch to be saying this to a citizen of your republic but…I think giving unquestioned executive power to any single head of state is not healthy.
You may be surprised to know that yours is not the only way to implement democratic government. It is one way and this situation seems to be laying bare some of it’s limitations.

I agree with you. Does the law in the US agree with us? I bet the opiner doesn’t.

[wonky]

@Merneith

I don’t think Donald’s election is, taken in isolation, an indictment of our democratic process. That is, I don’t think it was accomplished by anything inherent in our democratic process. I think it was accomplished by foreign interference.

I think it’s an indictment of the process to the extent that the flaw/weakness in democracy will always be the people.

[RitterSport]

@Novelty_Bobble

My question was absolutely about process. He wanted to kill Assad. Should the process be that
A) President wants something to happen
B) It happens

I sincerely hope that isn’t the process and that sensible people stand in the way of stupid ideas.

If you’re Mattis, for example, and you think the command is so bad (or even illegal!) that you can’t carry it out, you refuse the order to the president if you think it’s illegal. If he insists, then you resign, and maybe even inform a Senate committee that the president is off his rocker.

What you don’t do is say, Yes, Sir, and then just ignore him. Or, remove the order before he signs it and hope he forgets about it.

The president is commander in chief – what if he orders you to invade Iraq? Iran? Grenada? What if he orders you to send a drone strike against an American citizen in Iraq? What if he orders you to rescue the Iranian hostages? What if he orders you to do a risky mission in Pakistan to kill Bin Laden? What about a risky one in the Sudan?

Which orders should you follow and which do you ignore?

[xenophon41]

@Novelty_Bobble

I personally don’t think any president should have the power that their every idea is to be implemented without question.

None of them have actually had that power, and I’m not just suggesting the separation of powers into three branches of government, I’m saying Presidential preferences and desires are subject to physical and legal restrictions. Executive Orders have faced challenges in federal courts. Executive actions have been thwarted by Congress or made impotent by the realities of logistics or the capabilities of the agents and entities who try to enforce them. There is no presidential cadre of unquestioning and invincible androids which springs into action at the utterance of the Executive.

[Novelty_Bobble]

@xenophon41

The fact that Mattis apparently decided persuasion and consultation was a losing proposition and he must instead ignore the orders of POTUS and substitute his own should scare the hell out us. The fact that he did it (if the claim is true) so blithely should scare us even more.

I think the scary part of that is that he felt that persuasion and consultation were a losing proposition. The upshot of this (and yes…if true) is that those hand-picked group around him do not trust him with the execution of his duties.

These actions are clearly the actions of people who do not think the President is open to rational, reasonable discussion, that’s the real worry.

This is all unprecedented because the scattergun batshittery of your President is unprecedented.

[CarnalK]

@wonky

I think it’s an indictment of the process to the extent that the flaw/weakness in democracy will always be the people.

Trump’s election can easily be described as an indictment of your two party system, your primary system and your Electoral College system rather than a democracy weakness.

[Novelty_Bobble]

@xenophon41

None of them have actually had that power, and I’m not just suggesting the separation of powers into three branches of government, I’m saying Presidential preferences and desires are subject to physical and legal restrictions. Executive Orders have faced challenges in federal courts. Executive actions have been thwarted by Congress or made impotent by the realities of logistics or the capabilities of the agents and entities who try to enforce them. There is no presidential cadre of unquestioning and invincible androids which springs into action at the utterance of the Executive.

I’m no expert on the workings of the US government but I do know that those checks and balances exist. What then does it say about Trump that those closest to him do not trust those checks and balances to act as buffer to catastrophically bad Presidential courses of actions?

[wonky]

@Novelty_Bobble

I’m no expert on the workings of the US government but I do know that those checks and balances exist. What then does it say about Trump that those closest to him do not trust those checks and balances to act as buffer to catastrophically bad Presidential courses of actions?

It says to me that our checks and balances may need to be bolstered or that these people are fucking idiots.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@kayaker

Call themselves The Quiet Ohms.

golf clap

@Jonathan_Chance

But an internal coup against a duly elected official is dangerous as all hell. Establish the precedent that there actually IS a ‘deep state’ that disregards the will of the people - as established by the election - and both the legitimacy of the government is undermined AND the odds of a nationalistic dictator is made much higher. It’s fairly predictable that a response to the opinion piece will be for the more authoritarian of our fellow citizens will begin to move that power should be held with one person and not distributed because clearly the people can’t trust the rest of them to get the job done.

Agreed. Short of stopping an unprovoked nuclear launch order or some other genocidal action that cannot be reversed, the executive staff has no business countermanding executive orders or removing documents from presidential review. To invoke this kind of implicit authority through subversion is to set the precident for a “Cardinal Richelieu” scenario where authorities lies outside any checks and balances.

Trump was elected by the legitimate electoral process, and even if this was due to outside social manipulation and indicative of a obsolescent and broken process the solution is to fix the problem by electoral manipulation and executive overreach rather than aggrevate it by subverting the legitimate process of checks and balances. Yes, the trade war is a horrible idea that will likely have long-lasting economic consequences, trying to kill Assad is a stupid and pointless response which even if successful would have just created an evenlarger power vacuum, and stacking the Supreme Court with conservative justices may impact judicial decisons for a generation, but none of this is as bad as completely undermining the basic principles of Constitutional law.

As for goading Trump into professing his contempt, bigotry, and incompetence, or embarassing him into resigning, he does the former every time he opens his mouth and will not resign just because hesaid or made a gaff that would make a normal person retreat into isolation. Until he does something impeachment worthy or so blatantly displays a lack of mental competence that the 25th Amendment can be invoked (and the Republicans who do and will control the Senate through at least 2020 are motivated to apply) he’s going to be in office, and the insiders who are morally and ethically opposed to his loathsome agenda should speak out publically and resign as a demonstration of opposition.

Stranger

[Novelty_Bobble]

@RitterSport

If you’re Mattis, for example, and you think the command is so bad (or even illegal!) that you can’t carry it out, you refuse the order to the president if you think it’s illegal. If he insists, then you resign, and maybe even inform a Senate committee that the president is off his rocker.

What you don’t do is say, Yes, Sir, and then just ignore him. Or, remove the order before he signs it and hope he forgets about it.

The wheels of due process grind slowly, If the former action sees you replaced in the meantime with someone happy to carry out the illegal orders to the detriment of the country…apart from the moral warm glow of following procedure what have you or the country gained?

I’m not suggesting that such an action is perfect, nor preferable to a solid formal procedure that you outline but I think we are in strange and dangerous times and everyone in Trump HQ is running a calculus to decide if the ends do justify the means.

The president is commander in chief – what if he orders you to invade Iraq? Iran? Grenada? What if he orders you to send a drone strike against an American citizen in Iraq? What if he orders you to rescue the Iranian hostages? What if he orders you to do a risky mission in Pakistan to kill Bin Laden? What about a risky one in the Sudan?

Which orders should you follow and which do you ignore?

Well isn’t that the dilemma of every military individual who ever donned khaki? History is littered with disobeyed orders that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.

[CarnalK]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

golf clap

Agreed. Short of stopping an unprovoked nuclear launch order or some other genocidal action that cannot be reversed, the executive staff has no business countermanding executive orders or removing documents from presidential review.

What gives them the right to stop a nuclear launch? What if that happened during WWII?

[Anny_Middon]

@Jophiel

Yeah, but when the train is headed for the busted bridge, the engineer is gleeful about it and the assistant engineer is unwilling to do anything about it, the porter might see himself left with a few options: (a) file a grievance and wait 18 months for a reply, (b) hope that magic angels carry them safely over, (c) yell “I quit!” and see how that helps or (d) try and slow the train using some other means. Even if the official Train Porter Handbook says the correct course of action is (a)

Again, I’m not really defending it and I’m not comfortable with it but I see where it’s coming from and have to give an eye-roll to people acting as though the Constitutional options are actually options. Realistically it’s not “Quit in protest and work for impeachment/removal” but “Quit in protest and just sort of hope we’re not irredeemably fucked in another couple of years”

So the porter slows the train down, and the train backs up and takes another track. Again, up ahead is a busted bridge, and again the porter slows the train down. At what point should the porter file the grievance?

IOW, yes, maybe people should take the unlawful action if that’s all that will prevent disaster, but then they should take whatever lawful actions are at their disposal to help ensure that no one else has to make that difficult decision in the future.

[xenophon41]

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside King Lear’s Court

Nicely highlights the absurdity.

[Jophiel]

@Anny_Middon

So the porter slows the train down, and the train backs up and takes another track. Again, up ahead is a busted bridge, and again the porter slows the train down. At what point should the porter file the grievance?

Hopefully sometime between averted disasters.

[Baker]

I despise Trump more than any other politician I’ve every been aware of. He’s an embarassment and a danger to this country, a spoiled child who has grown up tantrums. If he dropped dead of a heart attack I’d dance on his grave.

But I also despise folks who hide behind anonymous op-eds. It’s a rule in my local paper that not editorial letter goes to print without the real name of the author. If that letter is real, and not a compostion of the NYT, then the author is a spineless coward.

[Merneith]

@CarnalK

You can’t blame it all on Russia. What a cop out.

Donald only won by a few thousand votes in a very few important districts. Kind of like how GWB beat Al Gore and John Kerry, as a matter of fact. I don’t think we have even a shadow of the full story on Republican treason, yet.

Did you catch that Mueller just subpoenaed Jeromi Corsi, who was at the heart of the Swiftboating and Birther movements? Turns out he was a longtime Fried of Roger Stone, who has been Rotten & Republican since Nixon’s days.

Hillary was a lousy campaigner, sure. It should never have been close. But it was the Russian thumb on the scale that gave Donald just enough weight.

[wonky]

So, it turns out that Woodward has receipts:

Ryan Lizza

[Textual_Innuendo]

@wonky

I think it’s an indictment of the process to the extent that the flaw/weakness in democracy will always be the people.

I don’t think the primary problem with our “democracy” is the people. Sure, there are some awful people in political power on both sides, with a lot more on the R side. And some of those awful people have recently been elected by awful voter-people for saying awful things that appeal to their baser instincts.

But even if all that went away tomorrow, we would STILL not have a real democracy, and our most serious problems would still not go away, and that’s because of the way our broader systems are set up.

When you go to vote for any national-level politician at the Senate / President / Congress level, your choices are literally:

Candidate 1. Somebody who is a millionaire and needs to raise tens of thousand of dollars every week, and whose policies are going to favor big corporations and the 1% while hurting the middle class, and is pro-huge military
vs
Candidate 2. Somebody who is a millionaire and and needs to raise tens of thousand of dollars every week, and whose policies are going to favor big corporations and the 1% while hurting the middle class, and is pro-huge military

So all actually serious public policy problems we have in this country such as soaring productivity coupled with stagnant wages over the last 40 years, job insecurity, a disaster of a healthcare system, nondischargable student loans, stratospheric college costs, shitty k-12 education systems, housing becoming more and more unaffordable, wealth inequality, literally unbelievable “defense” expenditures every year, us being a literal police state and imprisoning more than anyone else…none of these are on the table for real change.

Instead, our “choice” boils down to some window-dressing along the lines of:

Candidate 1 - I believe gay people are okay, and gun control can be considered, and immigration should be expanded. Also, abortions should be a woman’s choice.

Candidate 2 - Guns are the foundation of our society and we will fight to the bitter death any and all attempts to control them, gay people and abortions are NOT okay, and we need to tighten up our borders.

Just because lately Candidate 2 has added “we hate brown people and muslims and are fueled by the tears of libtards and will bring back a bunch of manufacturing jobs to factories that no longer exist!” doesn’t actually change much, besides making that choice a particularly reprehensible one.

But the thing is, none of the SERIOUS broad societal problems we have as a nation are on the table to be solved, because both candidates are millionaires in the pockets of corporations and the 1%. And that’s not going to change, barring revolution or unrealistically huge systemic changes to campaign finance, first-past-the-post, and the electoral college.

The people can only vote between the two choices given, and neither of those two choices are going to help address the serious problems we face. The real problem is the system that gives us only those two choices.