politics

It’s insane how we’ve relied far too long on a sort of gentleman’s agreement around presidents and congress and all. I don’t think the founding fathers could have EVER anticipated the amount of corruption that could occur.

They did. The entire point of the structure of Congress was to ensure that the passions of the people were tempered and "cooled" through the political process. Between competition between the three branches and the structure of government, they did their best to ensure this wouldn't happen.

What they didn't anticipate was that competition would give way to collaboration among so many competing elements. From state legislatures to the federal House and Senate, across to the Supreme Court (intended to be insulated from political generally to focus on the well-being of the nation), and across again to the president. Those stars shouldn't align all that often. But anti-American authoritarians, the underhanded bastards they are, have made it so that those stars align more often than not for their political goals.

So, that's the problem. What do you do when all the elements of the government are working together? Sure, Trump absolutely abused his position, but so what? We're barely holding any of these anti-Constitutional people responsible for the damage they've done to the political process and democracy in general.

Did you know there's no law that says a dog can't be president? You'd have to get it to 35, but technically we could have an Air Bud POTUS.

The Constitution lists only three qualifications for the Presidency — the President must be at least 35 years of age, be a natural born citizen, and must have lived in the United States for at least 14 years. https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-government/the-executive-branch/#:~:text=The%20Constitution%20lists%20only%20three,for%20at%20least%2014%20years.

It's like this in many countries. In the UK we've never had to deal with people being held in contempt of parliament, but in recent years we've seen corruption and a blatant disregard for "rules" that would have made politicians sick a decade ago. It's at a point where the UK has considered a constitution to ensure that anyone caught being openly corrupt or breaking the rules can be arrested.

Many right-wing politicians have shown that the rules have been lax for a very long time, and IMO it's a sign that perhaps we as a society need to seriously look at how we stop the right (and perhaps even the left) from abusing their power without consequence.

Comrade, the USA was founded by rich businessmen, and organized primarily to defend the class interests of that group.

The nation-state has at various points hunted down runaway slaves (Fugitive Slave Act of 1850), used the national guard to put down strikes (the Ludlow Massacre, the Lattimer massacre, the breaking of the Homestead Strike, the West Virginia Coal Wars...), fought violently against peaceful protesters (Kent State shootings, pretty much every protest of the Civil Rights Movement, the DNC protests of 1968, various incidents during the Floyd protests...), arrested and murdered people for ideology rather than proof of actually committing a crime (Sacco and Vanzetti, the Haymarket Martyrs...), drugged and murdered Fred Hampton as he slept next to his pregnant fiance, funded dozens of coups against democratically elected leaders because they were left-leaning, and done countless other things. This is aided by the permanent death grip that capital has on the country.

Even if the process of getting elected was completely untied to wealth (hahaha) and lobbying didn't exist (lol), at the end of the day the economy is controlled by the capitalists and they can bring a country to its knees if it doesn't obey. Capital strikes and the threat of disinvestments and layoffs are powerful.

It's not a bug. It is a feature.

But I want to keep dehumanizing Trump.

I get it, a DUI is felony, and shit happens. However, 34 felonies, dealing with attempting to influence an election that got you the presidency, and paying off a porn star that you had sex with while your pregnant wife was at home, should ban you from the presidency. Jan 6th should have done that and put his ass up on the gallows, but here we are.

Anything requiring a background check:

https://asginvestigations.com/background_checks/5-industries-require-background-check/

Nuclear Percocet is a maybe. And also a pretty good band name.

None of those jobs should exclude ex convicts. The president is a job that should.

He'd be the guy who abandons his patients to raid the controlled substances closest, then come back to say the guy bleeding out from the clear gunshot wound is faking it and needs to "man up"