The Constitution assumes the people through the ballot box or through protest would clean up any issues like that
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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It has impeachment. The list of reasons for impeachment are (quite possibly intentionally) vague. But it has to be done through Congress.
And when the nazi controls Congress you know how far that'll go.
You mean for the guy who was already impeached twice... And still voted for to be president?
The problem is he won the election.
The vote is the final check and balance.
Voters are either sympatico or stupid.
And that's the problem with the US election system. In basically any other developed democracy, there are ways to call a new special election. The four years are often the max between elections, not the minimum.
If a new leader proves unpopular, you toss them out and install a new one.
The problem is also that the Republican party is a fascist party, so the other check, impeachment, is thoroughly useless.
We really only have the Second Amendment. I am now on a list.
Yeah, with every other cool person.
Only losers use guns.
Okay buddy degen account, when the Bureau of Moral Certitude comes for you throw a dildo at them at see how that works out.
Degen is a village in Switzerland and I've never been.
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile
Ignore the political system and look at the economic system. The US is capitalist and as it turns out- capitalism is not mutually exclusive with fascism.
If a human being lives long enough, he will eventually develop cancer. It's simply a natural physical consequence of repeated cell division. Eventually there's some mutation that leads to a chain reaction. The cancer spreads enough and there's no going back. Capitalism, similarly, will always inevitably embrace fascism.
Marx got it wrong. He believed that the workers, realizing their position as class consciousness increases, would inevitably revolt against the power structure. The reality is more depressing.
Capitalism has cycles of crisis. Sometimes the economy is doing good which leaves the workers content. Sometimes the economy is doing bad. The problem is when the economy is doing bad coincides with some other set of crisis, the combination of events radicalizes the workers. This part Marx predicted. However he was mistaken about human nature.
Really, our problem started back in 2008. The global economy never fully recovered. Interest rates were kept low in a desperate attempt to increase spending to keep the boat from tipping. Then COVID pumped up inflation to historic levels- supply chain shortages wrecked chaos. After that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up inflation even higher. Prices go up but wages lag behind.
Workers, naturally, become more radicalized- as Marx predicted. The issue is Marx was too optimistic about human nature. Humans as a whole are fearful herd animals. They need a shepherd to point somewhere. And eventually, inevitably, some megalomaniac with a vision will take advantage of a vulnerable system and point somewhere. In the 1930s it was to the Jews and the communists. Today, it's the illegals and "wokeism".
All this to say that this shouldn't be surprising. Left wing voices have been warning about this for a long time.
Hitler didn't take power democratically. Neither did Mussolini or Franco. They each found cracks in how liberal democracy worked in their respective countries. Those cracks were usually the places where the system was decidedly undemocratic, which in those three cases, was generally something where the old nobles still had some power and they lined up behind fascists to save them from leftists.
America never had nobles, but it does have plenty of cracks in its liberal democracy to be exploited by fascists.
So to answer your question simply, no, there are no instruments to fix this. Congress can potentially either reign Trump in with legislation, or even impeach him, but I don't expect either one to happen. If the GOP can be swept out of Congress in 2026, then we can maybe start to fix some things without resorting to extralegal methods. Even that is only a starting point.
I do know for sure that we can't go back to the old trajectory as if Trump was just an outlier.
America's vaunted "checks and balances" are, in the end, just smoke and mirrors to lie to the population and hide the fact that American institutions give way too much power to the president and there are no institutional controls to make the president behave.
not true. congress could definitely remove the president… they just won’t do it because they’re too fascist themselves….
Second amendment
a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players
Your proof of this is... what?
For real. US history is replete with supporting dictators, military coups, and so on.
Upkeeping our own democracy. For a certain value of "Dem"
It's funny that Germany has safeguards against nazis in power in it's constitution which was designed ~~by~~ in cooperation with the USA, France and GB, yet afaik all three don't have similar mechanics in their own constitutions because they never belived to have to deal with the next hitler themselfs.
Germany has a modern constitution created in response to nazis.
USA has extremely outdated constitution created by proto-nazis.
Those same safeguards that banned AfD years ago, thank god they exist!
Lets take out the politica for a moment, and just look at railroads
This is what I call the "Old Railroad Theory":
The US build the railroad/subways so long ago, that most of it is now in decay and as far as I know, none of the US has any Platform Safety Barriers, and people could just fall on the tracks (see NYC)
In constrast, in China (PRC), because most subways are only recently built, they are much more modern, air-conditioned, and have Platform Safety Barriers, preventing any "fall on tracks" incidents. (I've seen first hand the subway in GuangZhou, they look much nicer than NYC, when I first got to NYC, the tracks were terrifying for me, I alwats have intrusive thoughts about falling in)
Its because once you build a system, its unlikely to get replaced even when better technology comes along. Too much cost to replace, politicians don't care.
Same thing with Constitutions.
It was written do long ago, now its too late to add new ideas like Defensive Democracy. 3/4 of US legislature means its almost impossible to add it as an amendment.
(Btw, Germany has a AfD problem, that they still haven't banned yet... 👀)
PS.: With the current trend we will find out in about the next decade if the safeguards work ...
Decade? More like 3 months. He's already doing wildly unconstitutional things. If the Supreme Court refuses to take on challenges to it or outright approves it, well, they didn't work.
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If you really believe that the USA has "100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players" you are in delusion.
LOL give me a break. This (undemocratic) state was literally founded by slavemasters, the original proto-nazis, so they could violently maintain their racist privilege. Ofc there's no law against it.
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