• radio@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    We were always told the framers of the Constitution were old timey genius’s, but they couldn’t foresee a corrupt piece of shit selling pardons? It’s ridiculous and should never have been a presidential power. They fucked up.

    • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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      24 hours ago

      To be fair, this didn’t happen before Trump. I don’t think they could ever have seen the extent of bullshit we’re going through right now.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      They expected that voters/citizens and other branches of govt wouldn’t stand for it.

      Instead they’re either in on it or too cowardly to do anything.

    • themaninblack@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Exactly. Many were historians and Christians.

      They already had the previous example of the sale of indulgences within the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Even American colonial revolutionaries were offered pardons by King George III to stop fighting.

      Commenter below cites the fact that the expectation was that the congress would step in if popular sentiment was outraged by this sort of thing, but this state of affairs was foreseeable.

      They ended up with a powerful executive even though they believed previous kings had too much power. e.g. “His Excellency” George Washington refused the title of King.

      Also of note is that there were relatively few voters and they were privileged and generally well educated and informed members of the public. White men with land.

  • lennybird@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Easier to take bribes with crypto. I still stand by this being a huge factor in reduced accountability and accelerating corruption.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      My conspiracy theory is that BTC took off because Russia used as a tool to avoid sanctions. If you look at a chart the timeline matches up and they have had sizeable crypto holdings.

      • ssladam@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Not a hypothetical. I spend a lot of time in Asian factories as they’re bringing up more capacity to avoid Chinese tariffs. The vast majority fund their out-of-China-operations with BTC because they can move it around without interference from the Chinese government. I saw more than a few Russian groups touring these new factories.

      • lennybird@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Oh 100% agreed. Also no surprise that the likes of Musk and Russia have heavily promoted, defended, and relied upon encrypted communications like Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, etc.

        My conspiracy theory is Rand Paul hand-delivered a key to Putin when he flew to Moscow.

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      I still stand by this being a huge factor in reduced accountability and accelerating corruption innovation of capitalism.

      Corruption succeeds within a corrupt system.

      • lennybird@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Personally I’m partial to believing that capitalism is like a nuclear reactor; can be good, can be bad. Needs sophisticated control rods to maintain stability and prevent it from getting out of control.

        Nordic model nations in a nutshell who are realized not idealized models for some of the happiest and most stable nations on the world.

  • VeryVito@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    This can be easily explained: Trump is a two-bit fraudster, and low-level gang members such as himself are expected to look out for their organizations’ leaders.

  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    At first I thought “wow Trump has a friend’s back” then I remembered Trump doesn’t have any friends, hmmm why he do this?

    • Madison420@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      They never recover all the funds fraudsters come out of prison with laundered money in hard to track accounts so I’ll give you three guesses and I’ll be real disappointed if you need more than one.

  • DylanMc6 [any, any]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    At this point, some hacker (even one with thigh-high striped socks) is gonna take one for the team and leak the declassified Epstein Files, and as well as post every piece of information about the ICE agents. Seriously!