As ever:
We like to think we have rule of law, but in practice that is a fairly flimsy concept that ultimately depends on how many people in power are willing to adhere to it. Something could be against the law, the Supreme Court could rule that it’s against the law, (although with all the right wingers they stacked the court with, even that’s not gonna happen often.) the legislature could object, but at the end of the day, if the executive instructs the government workers to do something and they’re willing to do it, well… they can do it. So the politics of those government workers ultimately determines what can and can’t be done. And since those workers are downstream of appointments made by the executive… they’re likely to agree with them. And we see that bear out especially in the military and law enforcement agencies. The culture of these institutions is fairly right wing and the people in them have demonstrated a willingness to follow illegal orders and commit some truly heinous acts, even if they rationalize it as “just following orders.”
It’s not just under Trump either. The government has been acting in ways that violate our own laws for a long time. Every war we’ve been in since WWII has been an illegal act since they were never formally declared as wars and many of the things done in them have violated various international humanitarian laws. Police have straight up killed people without trial and were protected by their fellow officers and the government. And of course now we see ICE agents be more than willing to commit crimes to pursue this anti-immigrant agenda, whether they are just following along or they’re also ideologically committed to this.
So yeah. The answer can be anything as long as he find enough amoral right wingers or pushovers to staff the administration.
This is disgusting myself to even write out, so I’m spoilering it but I’m not joking:
spoiler
At this point I seriously think Fox News could have a live feed of Trump raping a child on the White House front lawn with everyone mic’d up so you hear everything, and nothing would change.
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure you’re right. I remember seeing an interview some years ago where a collection of Trump supporters were being asked some questions, including ones in the vein of ‘if he did x’ and one of them was ‘If Trump shot a man in the street and killed him, would you stop support him?’ and the answer was ‘That depends, did he deserve it?’. That one opened my eyes to the sort of people we’re dealing when it comes to Trump supporters. The fact that he got in again since that only killed more of the little bit of faith I had in humanity.
He got away with more murders on the American people than the 9/11 hijackers, at least 120 fold. All because he mishandled, deliberately, an active pandemic. 350,000 lives lost.
And he disregarded advice and the playbook by people like Obama but he didn’t want that because he believed that Obama was inferior to him.
Depends who you ask.
While most of us are asking how he can get away with these things, his followers are celebrating his victories.
Why are they celebrating? Because they have decided to join his “side” and every time Trump does anything, they consider it a victory for the team, even if it causes them additional hardship in their life.
To them, it’s worth a little suffering as long as the “other team” doesn’t get a win.
To them, it’s worth a little suffering as long as the “other team” doesn’t get a win.
It’s not that it’s worth suffering. It’s that it must be done despite any suffering. There’s the lovely saying that a MAGAt will gleefully eat a shit sandwich if they think a liberal will have to smell their breath. They see a win as only possible if liberals are somehow losing. Even if both sides would benefit, even if their side would benefit more from some action, they must not let liberals have a “win”. It’s a psychotic depth to their zero sum game.
Well so far he has committed sexual assault, fraud, corruption, collusion with hostile foreign nations, soliciting election fraud, promoting violent insurrection, promoted murder of political opponents, sexual assault of a minor, bribery, misappropriation of tax payer money, contempt, interference of criminal investigations, war crimes, and lied every day through his miserable goddamn face every goddamn day for the past 10 years, and most of these things he doesn’t just admit to, he brags about.
And most of those things were known before and during his first term. Seems to me he can literally get away with literally anything because American institutions and corporations are complicit in the corruption and madness that permeates in the American political and social sphere, and there is not a shred of integrity in the justice system.
The only thing that will stop him is the American people and so far they have not. It sucks but standing up to fascism when it has gotten this far is a lot of work and takes a lot of organization and sacrifice, so far regular people have not undertaken that difficulty. I believe most of the world is hoping they will.
You could say voting is one way to change things… But voters were the ones who chose Trump… AGAIN. Voting is important of course but it is only one factor in maintaining democracy and American media, culture, education, and many many things have made a LOT of Americans stupid and dangerous. And let’s be real, the Democrats are spineless capitalists who were happy with the system that led to a president like Trump.
Trump famously said he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and he would still win. ICE has already literally murdered American citizens and nothing has happened. Trump has sent Americans to torture prisons outside of the country. Trump has raped children and you have media defending him, he has stolen so much money and caused so many problems for so many people and hundreds of millions of people all over the world defend and worship him.
Its madness. Its all madness and from all the obvious bullshit and lies and just plain assholery and I’ll never understand the appeal of Trump or modern conservativism. It’s all grift and hate and misery for other people and its so obvious and I will just never understand that. And why should he ever stop taking and taking? No one had stopped him so far, he has only gained more power and control the more evil shit he does.
It only ends when good people find the courage to stand up and stop him.
End rant
And there are apparently a lot less good people in the government than everyone thought. Checks and balances aren’t checking and balancing much.
LMFAO no offense but isn’t that what normal people do with a checkbook and are to inept to apply critical thinking elsewheeerE???
