• OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    In the US you get two options and both are completely uninterested in “firming up the laws” and reining in the power of the executive. Trump can do basically whatever he wants, because after 9/11, Democrats fully supported measures like the Patriot Act that vastly expanded executive power, and when Obama came in after Bush he did nothing to hold him accountable for war crimes and torture, while continuing to use the same tools for largely the same purposes. No president wants to prosecute a former president for illegal activity because that would open the door for being prosecuted for their own illegal activities, which they all perform.

    It doesn’t really matter if the average American cares about guns or about something else. We’ve never been given an opportunity to vote on the power of the executive just like we’ve never been given an opportunity to vote on Venezuela or Palestine or Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen. The powers that be decide these things, all the voters do is choose which face they want doing it, which aesthetics and justifications will be used for decisions that have already been made.