this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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You'd think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it's key ideology.

Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?

I'd never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

So, giving the public a means of dealing with tyrannical leadership, either through intimidation or something more, is literally and unironically one of the intended use cases for the second amendment. That's not to say you won't face prosecution, but there it is.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Lol its called the 2nd amendment we just gotta wait for the new Luigi to drop

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 17 hours ago (6 children)

We’re ignoring the constitution already.

14th Amendment. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The man is an adjudicated insurrectionist. Congress just ignored their duty.

So yes, there “are” protections. Said protections are simply being ignored.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The problem with 14th amendment is that the people who wrote that never specified an enforment mechanism. So we don't know how to properly invoke it. Any attempts to invoke it would just result in the supreme court spontaneously "invent" a method of enforcement. They could say that the supreme court get to decide if someone is ineligible, then rule that trump is eligible because the supreme court doesn't have enough evidence to prove trump was involved in Jan 6, or just declare Jan 6 to be a "protest" not insurrection.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I mean "No man shall hold office who committed insurrection" seems like a mechanism in and of itself. Dude just can't run/be on a ballot. We just have two branches of government bought and paid for by the insurrectionist and America's richest and most fanatical scum who refuse to follow the law.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

I mean “No man shall hold office who committed insurrection” seems like a mechanism in and of itself.

Who decides who is an insurrectionist?

Simple majority in Congress? Well then Congress can just outlaw the minority party

Supermajority in Congress? Well look at the senate vote for the second impeachment. That doesn't work either.

Courts? They have a 6-3 supreme court.

States? Then we end up with red states blocking democrats from the ballot by falsely declaring them to be insurrectionists.

Public Opinion? How do you even measure that? Voting? Well look at November 5th.

Criminal conviction of insurrection? Well trump never got convicted of anything involving insurrection.

So here we are...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago

Who decides who is an insurrectionist?

The legal system, which decided to take its fucking time.

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

The mechanism was the election.

I mean, sure, impeachment and whatnot, but it's not like people didn't know who this guy was. I can give other institutions a whole bunch of crap for not getting rid of the guy the first time, but when you've given him a Supreme Court supermajority, both chambers of Congress and the presidency AFTER he attempted a coup I'm gonna say that's on you, guys.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

The mechanism was the election.

That's making the very bold assumption that there was no interference in said election. In fact, we know for a fact that there was, we just don't know the extent of the interference and whether it changed the outcome. The reason we don't know is because it wasn't investigated (or if it was, it wasn't publicized), so I'm going to take the stance that it's very possibly on the outgoing administration, actually, for not making a bigger stink about it.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

we just don’t know the extent of the interference and whether it changed the outcome.

We do.

There was close to zero in the polls. (Democratic and Independent poll watchers would've reported that, and I'm not seeing any of such reports)

The real interference was the far-right propaganda funded by unrestricted spendings thanks to Citizens United ruling.

We've always had interference, its just that now its getting more and more extreme, especially after Citizens United, exacerbated by modern technology (like social media that people use almost 24/7).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 14 hours ago

There was also rampant disenfranchisement prior to the election, whatever Trump's comments about Elon were referring to, and the bomb threats on election day, just to name a few. Maybe it all amounted to literal nothing, maybe it changed the outcome, but I don't think we'll ever know. Trump did a fantastic job of priming the country for 8 years to consider claims of election interference to be wild conspiracy theories and made the democratic party unwilling or unable to question anything without sounding like loons, so here we are.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

See, you think that doesn't make it sound like desperate deflection after having handed the country to the nazis, but it does. I was here during the campaign, I saw how that went.

Nah, man, there is no amount of interference that justifies Trump having a fart's chance in hell of not losing every single state in a country unwilling to hand the keys to these guys 1932-style. Beds were made, sleeping in them is to happen.

It just sucks that the rest of us are under the covers getting dutch ovened as well.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 14 hours ago

we have systems for putting people like him in jail but we just didn't want to do it

[–] [email protected] 18 points 13 hours ago

I'm told three marked bullets work wonders.

[–] [email protected] 129 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Impeachment, but that starts with a 218 vote in the House and the House is on his side.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 19 hours ago (6 children)

So you actually need majority to PREVENT the collapse of democracy, and if you don't have it, you're fucked? How the fuck did this country even manage not to succumb into dictatorship for such a long time?

[–] [email protected] 86 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Worse... The House makes the impeachment charge, that's a 50% majority vote.

THEN it goes to the Senate for conviction where you need a 2/3rds majority to remove them. 67/100.

That's the body which can't do anything because they're blocked by a 60 vote super majority to over-ride a filibuster.

So you get 218 in the House, goes to the Senate, needs 60 votes to end debate and proceed with charges, then 67 votes to convict and remove.

Trump's first impeachment got 48 and 47 votes.
His second was 57 votes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_trial_of_Donald_Trump

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump

If he had been convicted, he would have been inelligible to run in '24.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

If enough people in a democracy decide that they want a dictatorship instead, then there is no stopping it, because rules don't matter at this point. The trick is to not let it get this far. Tough shit for the US, though.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

If people democratically voted to end democracy, what are we suppose to do?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

People democratically sat on their asses and didn't bother to fucking vote. More people abstained from voting than actually voted for either candidate. The real winner of the election was apathy. We deserve whatever fucked up outcome we get.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 18 hours ago (6 children)

I mean imagine if you could impeach the president without a majority. That would be the death of democracy. Just to put things in perspective: The GOP democratically won both houses of Congress and the presidency and because of DNC incompetence also has the Supreme Court. Them being able to do whatever the fuck they want is, in a way, democracy working as intended. It'd be weirder (and much more undemocratic) if there was a way to remove a sitting president without the Supreme Court or Congress.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Not really.

In some countries, they have this idea of Defensive Democracy which would allow the government (via court ruling) to ban political parties that are deemed to be a threat to democracy.

In post WW2 Germany, the nazi party was banned, and later a "far-left" (aka: Marxist-Leninist) political party was banned during the cold war, because they meet Germany's definition of being anti-democratic.

Unfortunately, the US constitution does not have this concept of Defensive Democracy.

I mean we do have impeachment... but we all know how that is (doesn't work at all).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

You say "unfortunately" but do you really trust the GOP with this kind of power?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 14 hours ago (6 children)

Had the defensive democracy been in place after the civil war, we could have banned Confederate symbolism, the Dixiecrats and the then Democrat party.

A new conservative party would probably have been created.

The problem with any government system is that it's still operated by humans. It would have become corrupted but hopefully with a system in place to overturn the corruption.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

We have the second amendment, but I don't know how bear arms will help.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 14 hours ago

ARM THE BEARS!

BEAR FLAG REPUBLIC!

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 18 hours ago

I believe this is where the second amendment comes into play. Luigi was on to something.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 19 hours ago

The mechanism is impeachment. It's broken because of polarization.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

100 years? We very nearly reached 250.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 19 hours ago (14 children)

But who will wield these instruments? It'd be more relevant if he made an effort to hide his nature before the election.

Right now the majority voted fascism with open eyes.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The USA has had a literal Nazi party since the 50's. If they let George Lincoln Rockwell run for president while calling himself a nazi why would they do anything?

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