This is the best piece you’ve written to date. Elegantly stated on how we let the termites in to eat our foundation and killed the fumigator on the way out.
Speaking the truth about a fatally flawed system, but few are ready to concede the strength of your argument. The mass media continue to dance around the obvious, looking in vain for appearances of "guardrails", long ago rendered asunder by this piratical, venal, stunningly corrupt, and malignantly lying regime. And, more importantly, who can or will stop this evil man from using nuclear weapons on the battlefield? That ONE person ALONE has the authority to order incineration of millions of people surely
is the singlemost failure of the evolved "unitary executive" transmogrification of constitutional government into one-man rule.
Yet, here we are, under the thumb of a less-than-serious and less-than-rational individual, with seemingly no exit.
The stag hunt model is essentially if you take aim at the king, you better not miss.
The unitary execution theory is garbage created by the radicals of the right and is totally opposite of what the Founders intended. They did not want a king by another name.
The Constitution did not state enough qualifications for president and other offices. The Founders thought elected officials would be of good character, an unwritten “norm.” But a norm is not a law; good character is in short supply and a flimsy foundation for a country. Laws themselves are worthless if the people charged with enforcing them shrug their shoulders and say, “So what.”
When Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones start sounding like emergency custodians of constitutional order, something has gone spectacularly wrong. This satire tracks the moment Trump’s rhetoric became so extreme that even the far right briefly reached for the 25th Amendment, and for once, not as performance. https://essayx.substack.com/p/even-the-maniacs-found-a-line
Bryan, I hate your analysis because it’s so frighteningly correct. One thing you didn’t mention was Nixon/Goldwater bipartisan Congressional leaders go to WH and demand the president steps down. But, again, that Stag is not coming to the rescue; in fact, they’re on Spring Break! Norms are gone…we’ll have to figure out what comes next after we get rid of this dreadful regime.
Let’s talk about Nixon, because the story we tell about him is comforting—and wrong.
The myth goes like this: Nixon was bad, the country recoiled, and principled Republicans—led by Barry Goldwater—walked into the Oval Office, told him it was over, and he dutifully exited stage left until Nixon & Frost. A morality play. Clean. Reassuring.
That’s not what happened.
Republicans defended Nixon—hard, reflexively, and for far longer than anyone now admits. The Cabinet stood by him. Most Republicans in Congress stood by him. There was no sudden outbreak of virtue. There was trench warfare.
What changed wasn’t character. It was incentives.
First came the Saturday Night Massacre. Then the tapes. Then the steady drip of evidence in Judge John Sirica’s courtroom. The picture sharpened, and it wasn’t just ugly—it was fatal.
At some point, the calculation flipped.
This stopped being about defending a president or even a party. It became about survival—political, institutional, and personal. Nixon wasn’t merely “bad” or disliked; he became radioactive. The risk wasn’t embarrassment. It was annihilation: losing Congress, losing legitimacy, losing control of the system itself.
And so Republicans, collectively, made a decision: enough.
The script didn’t change because of conscience. It changed because the cost of loyalty finally exceeded the cost of defection.
Now compare that environment to today.
Nixon didn’t threaten Barry Goldwater. Donald Trump does. Nixon didn’t sic his base—implicitly or otherwise—on members of his own party. Trump does. You didn’t have Republicans issuing death threats to Republicans as a routine feature of political life. Now you do.
You also didn’t have the Department of Justice perceived—fairly or not—as a tool for personal retribution in the way critics argue today under figures like Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche. Even at its most compromised during Watergate, there were still lines that, however strained, largely held.
Those lines are gone—or at minimum, no longer widely believed to exist.
The most important difference isn’t ideological. It’s structural.
During Watergate, there was still a shared commitment—however imperfect—to institutional preservation. Elites feared the collapse of the system more than they feared each other. That created a backstop. When Nixon became too costly, he was expendable.
Today, the incentive structure runs the other direction.
Defection carries immediate personal risk—political ruin, social ostracism, even credible threats to physical safety. Loyalty, by contrast, is rewarded in real time. The base is activated, not restrained. Signals from the top are amplified, not filtered. And ambiguity—“I didn’t say it directly”—functions as a feature, not a bug.
Take someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene. One shift in tone from Trump—one suggestion that she’s no longer “faithful”—and the ecosystem turns on her. Not metaphorically. Literally.
That’s not politics as usual. That’s a different game.
So when people reach for Nixon as a precedent—“eventually, the system corrects”—they’re importing assumptions that no longer hold. They’re assuming the same incentive landscape, the same guardrails, the same risk calculations.
Those conditions don’t exist anymore.
What we’re dealing with now is more polarized, more personal, and far more dangerous. The cost of acting is higher. The cost of not acting is deferred. And the mechanisms that once forced a reckoning have either weakened or inverted.
Nixon fell when the system decided it had to protect itself.
The open question now is whether the system still knows how.
Let's talk about Julius Caesar. Nixon surrendered because he was relatively smart. This one isn't. It wouldn't be the first time in America such an awful choice was made for the sake of the nation. There was never, ever such an obvious way to end a bad turn in history. Just get it over with.
Bryan, it seems to me that the military is the only cohesive and proudly “unpolitical” institution still standing. Not the cabinet; not the GOP Congress; certainly not the USSC. But there would need to be a trigger for the soldiers to act - arguably, if Trump had reached for the nuclear button, that would be it. But if the generals DO decide to arrest their own C-in-C, is there ANY constitutional justification and anyway, what then?
You answered some of my questions above. But it doesn’t explain how otherwise rational people could follow and defend Trump and his ignorance, greed, and corruption.
I think we may have fallen too far to be saved short of a revolutionary housecleaning. As long as we now have an oligarchy, we as individual citizens have little power to correct this mess. I see no Profiles in Courage here.
Any system is only as good as people using it. And no system is so fool proof as to withstand 77 million of fools acting together and many more fools standing by and letting them.
Very rational, logical, and pragmatic explanation. But I disagree completely. There is ALWAYS someone(s) who can act with selflessness and courage, and history is replete with examples. Members of Congress need to be marching into the Oval Office en masse and forcing him and his team to stand down. "It isn't done! It's too risky! What if I'm the only one?" Each person has to decide for themselves whether their career goals trump their integrity and morality. I'm so tired of Congress responding according to norms and protocols while a rogue Executive breaks every norm, rule, and law with IMPUNITY. You don't consult the operating manual when the house is on fire; you rush in with buckets of water and a hose and PUT OUT THE FIRE. I am incensed over this failure of courage and morality from every member of our government--those in power and those not.
Much of what is written here makes sense. The part about no one being able to act because no one will have their back does not. There is nothing stopping certain leaders from agreeing on the required actions via private conversations. The coordination it will require is complex but not impossible nor even unlikely.
You’re right that private coordination is possible. That’s not the constraint.
The constraint is credible commitment under exposure.
Yes, leaders can talk. They can count votes. They can sketch out a plan over dinner or on a secure line. None of that is especially hard.
What’s hard is this: turning a private agreement into a public act where everyone moves at once—and no one defects when the cost becomes real.
Because the moment you move from conversation to action, the game changes.
Now there are leaks. Now there are signals. Now there is time—however short—between intent and execution. And in that window, every participant has to ask the same question:
“Am I still confident everyone else is going through with this once the blowback starts?”
That’s where these things fail.
Not because people can’t coordinate in theory, but because coordination in this context isn’t about agreement—it’s about synchronized risk acceptance under conditions where defection becomes more attractive the closer you get to acting.
You don’t need unlikely levels of coordination. You need perfect coordination, executed in near real-time, among actors who all know that if they’re wrong—even slightly—they absorb the full cost individually.
That’s a very different bar.
And there’s a second problem you’re underweighting: enforcement.
Even if ten people privately agree, what mechanism forces the eleventh to follow through once it’s live? What prevents hesitation, delay, or quiet withdrawal at the exact moment commitment matters most?
Nothing.
Which means every participant has to price in the risk that someone else blinks.
And once you price that in, the expected value of acting collapses again.
So yes—coordination is complex, but not impossible.
What’s missing is not the ability to coordinate. It’s the ability to guarantee follow-through under pressure in a system where the penalty for being early—or wrong—is catastrophic.
I don't understand this. What is catastrophic? Losing one's position in Congress? Trying and failing? Or not trying at all? What's really catastrophic is the prospect of thousands of innocent people dying tonight at Trump's whim. Are you saying it's not worth trying to stop this? Or are you just explaining why weak and unpricipled people aren't even considering it? Did the soldiers at Omaha beach hesitate before rushing to shore, debating internally the risk if others didn't follow behind or offer cover? No, they just acted.
You can say they're all spineless, and I won't disagree. I am explaining why people act in their own interests even when they know the consequences for others could be devastating.
So true. Take Israel. Israelis are largely silent and complaisant about the genocide against the Gazans or the 2000 deaths and millions displaced in Lebanon - all this is happening to “the other”. Americans are no different. Iranian deaths are theoretical and over there…
Okay, I understand that. The explanation makes sense. But we need leadership right now. Leadership to inspire beyond what “makes sense” and toward what is right; leadership to encourage all of us to act beyond our own interests. You can be that leader. I can be that leader. We must stop explaining and start acting. Explanations have a purpose, but they can also encourage complacency and a sense of inevitability. That is not what is needed in this moment. Let’s all do more.
I would say that as a politician it would be more dignified and honest to make a move and risk it all than to go down with this ship. Because down it WILL go. They will have a day of reckoning. I’d rather be Marjorie Taylor Green on that day!
Yes, one would think that would be the case, but the fact that the U.S. has reached this point and those individuals can still only whimper and whine, leads me to believe that the author is correct ... they are all too beholden to someone and don't really care. Otherwise, given how egregious some of the White House acts have already been, they would have moved. But they went on spring break instead. Pathetic.
Nice questions, now go the fuck out on the street and ask everyone else to follow! I wouldn't know if I would end up alone at the gates of the WH or if I would go up in a mob of a million others, but I wouldn't want to look back on me thinking for hours if it's a proportional reaction to a possible nuclear genocide in my name.
Well crafted piece which leaves no viable alternatives, other than despair (mostly for USians, but for the whole world too). If, as you say, an external event will be the match that lights the fuse, what is the outcome? It could lead to a quick resolution or a long-drawn out nightmare. Whichever way it goes, the U.S. has a giant problem, which you've identified: a political, economic and legal system that has failed massively. This then would require a reconstitution of the federation, which given the entrenched polarity with the country, is highly improbable in the short to mid-term. So that translates to long-term chaos with no end in sight.
Remember that 70+ million eligible voters chose this (you can't realistically say you didn't see this coming ... they told you what they were going to do) and another 90+ million eligible voters either could not or would not bring themselves to perform their civic duty and vote in the last election. That's 2/3 of the eligible voting population. The U.S. seems quite willing to go along with this despite the 30% that detest what is happening. And even with the mid-terms coming, the 30% is banking on that changing things for the better. Those numbers will have to change in a hurry for that to be realistic. I call it ''whistling past the graveyard'', because even if the mid-terms produce the desired outcome, that doesn't mean guardrails on the White House; restraints maybe but . . . the society has shown its true colours, and you may patch it up it for 4 years but another demagogue can come along and half the population will again be bamboozled (what kind of education are you providing?). You'll be right back where all this started.
The rest of the world sees this and knows that the U.S. is broken, is currently a rogue state and wants to get as far away as possible from this madness. Given your viewpoint, which I think is quite astute, what's left but the ultimate diminishment of the country, to the point of pain and suffering for all but the wealthy? Just as they want it.
This was always the plan of the wealthy, the culmination of a long game they have been playing for more than fifty years, trump was the piece they were missing, when the opportunity arose, it was taken. One man, amoral enough to end the system, with a following stupid enough to believe his every word, and follow him right over the cliff.
The system to accomplish it was built long ago out of groups like The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Mercatus Center, Judicial Watch, and DOZENS more, each dismantling democracy bit by bit, for decades. A slow "revolution" whose ultimate goal was to end the ability of the people to act collectively to affect change, permanently, ultimately to free them from their tax burden. This is the "bloodless revolution" Kevin Roberts was alluding to in the runup to 24, looking back over the last 50 years, the pattern in hindsight, seems pretty clear.
The brainchild of an economist by the name of James Buchanan, and written about in a book by Nancy MacLean released in 2017 called "Democracy in Chains", it explains a lot of what's happening here. At any rate, they intend for this to be permanent, personally I suspect the only solution would be kinetic, but don't see much appetite for that, either way, the future's looking dark.
Bryan, Being the first to move may be a career ending decision, or worse, but it’s not suicidal (probably), but it IS cowardly not to. They are all cowards or sociopaths or both.
“And so no one moves. Not because they are cowards. Because they are not suicidal.”
Anyone, anybody just interested in what T was, and is: the readily available internet and ie google would have provided tgat information, in a time and age where even the not so well of have a mobile phone.
With that being said, they were either too lazy, to dumb or did not realky care, that T is a
Con "man"
pedophile
mentally-deranged
dementia-increase-pushing
delusion-of-grandeur-exhibiting
5-time-bankrotteur (casinos, by all means!)
4-time-draft-dodger
3-time married and proven wife cheater on all of them
self-proclaimed-genius, including economy knowledge
narcissistic racist sociopathic lifetime career criminal with a proven track record (sic!, ie St. Jude Hospital, T University, etc.))
whose fathers donations to the university permitted an unintelligent son to get a degree - to at least have half a chance of being accepted by his “peers”.
Anyone, anybody just interested in what T was, and is: the readily available internet and ie google would have provided that information, in a time and age where even the not so well of have a mobile phone. And forever shame on the Rep party permitting and actively supporting him to run as potus in the first place.
With that being said, his voters were either too lazy, to dumb or did not really care, which in itself speaks for itself
that T is a
Con "man"
pedophile
mentally-deranged
dementia-increase-pushing
delusion-of-grandeur-exhibiting
5-time-bankrotteur (casinos, by all means!)
4-time-draft-dodger
3-time married and proven wife cheater on all of them
self-proclaimed-genius, including economy knowledge
narcissistic racist sociopathic lifetime career criminal with a proven track record (sic!, ie St. Jude Hospital, T University, etc.))
whose fathers donations to the university permitted an unintelligent son to get a degree - to at least have half a chance of being accepted by his “peers”.
I've said it for over a year -- shut everything down. There is only one solution, and it will never be a solution that is part of the norm. There will be no November elections -- everyone who's been paying attention knows that. We've known that for over a year now. In six more months, everyone else will know.
So ‘career-ending’ risk is enough to prevent someone from trying to stop the destruction of our republic and stop the murder of untold thousands or millions? These are our ‘public servants’, our ‘best and brightest’, our ‘leaders’? Pathetic
Yes, pathetic they are, but also fucking GREEDY, this is what comes to a nation whose sole interest, in everything, is money. NONE of them care a whit about people, the only thing that matters to any of them is money, it is the Alpha and the Omega, their "consituents" are just numbers on a spreadsheet.
This is the best piece you’ve written to date. Elegantly stated on how we let the termites in to eat our foundation and killed the fumigator on the way out.
Your analysis is bloodless and true. What is lacking is a love of freedom great enough to risk our comfort.
It's ChatGPT.
lol
Bloodless indeed…
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Speaking the truth about a fatally flawed system, but few are ready to concede the strength of your argument. The mass media continue to dance around the obvious, looking in vain for appearances of "guardrails", long ago rendered asunder by this piratical, venal, stunningly corrupt, and malignantly lying regime. And, more importantly, who can or will stop this evil man from using nuclear weapons on the battlefield? That ONE person ALONE has the authority to order incineration of millions of people surely
is the singlemost failure of the evolved "unitary executive" transmogrification of constitutional government into one-man rule.
Yet, here we are, under the thumb of a less-than-serious and less-than-rational individual, with seemingly no exit.
The stag hunt model is essentially if you take aim at the king, you better not miss.
The unitary execution theory is garbage created by the radicals of the right and is totally opposite of what the Founders intended. They did not want a king by another name.
The Constitution did not state enough qualifications for president and other offices. The Founders thought elected officials would be of good character, an unwritten “norm.” But a norm is not a law; good character is in short supply and a flimsy foundation for a country. Laws themselves are worthless if the people charged with enforcing them shrug their shoulders and say, “So what.”
We, the American people are the ultimate exit.
When Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones start sounding like emergency custodians of constitutional order, something has gone spectacularly wrong. This satire tracks the moment Trump’s rhetoric became so extreme that even the far right briefly reached for the 25th Amendment, and for once, not as performance. https://essayx.substack.com/p/even-the-maniacs-found-a-line
Bryan, I hate your analysis because it’s so frighteningly correct. One thing you didn’t mention was Nixon/Goldwater bipartisan Congressional leaders go to WH and demand the president steps down. But, again, that Stag is not coming to the rescue; in fact, they’re on Spring Break! Norms are gone…we’ll have to figure out what comes next after we get rid of this dreadful regime.
Let’s talk about Nixon, because the story we tell about him is comforting—and wrong.
The myth goes like this: Nixon was bad, the country recoiled, and principled Republicans—led by Barry Goldwater—walked into the Oval Office, told him it was over, and he dutifully exited stage left until Nixon & Frost. A morality play. Clean. Reassuring.
That’s not what happened.
Republicans defended Nixon—hard, reflexively, and for far longer than anyone now admits. The Cabinet stood by him. Most Republicans in Congress stood by him. There was no sudden outbreak of virtue. There was trench warfare.
What changed wasn’t character. It was incentives.
First came the Saturday Night Massacre. Then the tapes. Then the steady drip of evidence in Judge John Sirica’s courtroom. The picture sharpened, and it wasn’t just ugly—it was fatal.
At some point, the calculation flipped.
This stopped being about defending a president or even a party. It became about survival—political, institutional, and personal. Nixon wasn’t merely “bad” or disliked; he became radioactive. The risk wasn’t embarrassment. It was annihilation: losing Congress, losing legitimacy, losing control of the system itself.
And so Republicans, collectively, made a decision: enough.
The script didn’t change because of conscience. It changed because the cost of loyalty finally exceeded the cost of defection.
Now compare that environment to today.
Nixon didn’t threaten Barry Goldwater. Donald Trump does. Nixon didn’t sic his base—implicitly or otherwise—on members of his own party. Trump does. You didn’t have Republicans issuing death threats to Republicans as a routine feature of political life. Now you do.
You also didn’t have the Department of Justice perceived—fairly or not—as a tool for personal retribution in the way critics argue today under figures like Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche. Even at its most compromised during Watergate, there were still lines that, however strained, largely held.
Those lines are gone—or at minimum, no longer widely believed to exist.
The most important difference isn’t ideological. It’s structural.
During Watergate, there was still a shared commitment—however imperfect—to institutional preservation. Elites feared the collapse of the system more than they feared each other. That created a backstop. When Nixon became too costly, he was expendable.
Today, the incentive structure runs the other direction.
Defection carries immediate personal risk—political ruin, social ostracism, even credible threats to physical safety. Loyalty, by contrast, is rewarded in real time. The base is activated, not restrained. Signals from the top are amplified, not filtered. And ambiguity—“I didn’t say it directly”—functions as a feature, not a bug.
Take someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene. One shift in tone from Trump—one suggestion that she’s no longer “faithful”—and the ecosystem turns on her. Not metaphorically. Literally.
That’s not politics as usual. That’s a different game.
So when people reach for Nixon as a precedent—“eventually, the system corrects”—they’re importing assumptions that no longer hold. They’re assuming the same incentive landscape, the same guardrails, the same risk calculations.
Those conditions don’t exist anymore.
What we’re dealing with now is more polarized, more personal, and far more dangerous. The cost of acting is higher. The cost of not acting is deferred. And the mechanisms that once forced a reckoning have either weakened or inverted.
Nixon fell when the system decided it had to protect itself.
The open question now is whether the system still knows how.
Let's talk about Julius Caesar. Nixon surrendered because he was relatively smart. This one isn't. It wouldn't be the first time in America such an awful choice was made for the sake of the nation. There was never, ever such an obvious way to end a bad turn in history. Just get it over with.
Bryan, it seems to me that the military is the only cohesive and proudly “unpolitical” institution still standing. Not the cabinet; not the GOP Congress; certainly not the USSC. But there would need to be a trigger for the soldiers to act - arguably, if Trump had reached for the nuclear button, that would be it. But if the generals DO decide to arrest their own C-in-C, is there ANY constitutional justification and anyway, what then?
Even better analysis, Bryan. We are truly Post Watergate performs and more
You answered some of my questions above. But it doesn’t explain how otherwise rational people could follow and defend Trump and his ignorance, greed, and corruption.
I think we may have fallen too far to be saved short of a revolutionary housecleaning. As long as we now have an oligarchy, we as individual citizens have little power to correct this mess. I see no Profiles in Courage here.
Any system is only as good as people using it. And no system is so fool proof as to withstand 77 million of fools acting together and many more fools standing by and letting them.
Very rational, logical, and pragmatic explanation. But I disagree completely. There is ALWAYS someone(s) who can act with selflessness and courage, and history is replete with examples. Members of Congress need to be marching into the Oval Office en masse and forcing him and his team to stand down. "It isn't done! It's too risky! What if I'm the only one?" Each person has to decide for themselves whether their career goals trump their integrity and morality. I'm so tired of Congress responding according to norms and protocols while a rogue Executive breaks every norm, rule, and law with IMPUNITY. You don't consult the operating manual when the house is on fire; you rush in with buckets of water and a hose and PUT OUT THE FIRE. I am incensed over this failure of courage and morality from every member of our government--those in power and those not.
Best written material available anywhere.
Much of what is written here makes sense. The part about no one being able to act because no one will have their back does not. There is nothing stopping certain leaders from agreeing on the required actions via private conversations. The coordination it will require is complex but not impossible nor even unlikely.
You’re right that private coordination is possible. That’s not the constraint.
The constraint is credible commitment under exposure.
Yes, leaders can talk. They can count votes. They can sketch out a plan over dinner or on a secure line. None of that is especially hard.
What’s hard is this: turning a private agreement into a public act where everyone moves at once—and no one defects when the cost becomes real.
Because the moment you move from conversation to action, the game changes.
Now there are leaks. Now there are signals. Now there is time—however short—between intent and execution. And in that window, every participant has to ask the same question:
“Am I still confident everyone else is going through with this once the blowback starts?”
That’s where these things fail.
Not because people can’t coordinate in theory, but because coordination in this context isn’t about agreement—it’s about synchronized risk acceptance under conditions where defection becomes more attractive the closer you get to acting.
You don’t need unlikely levels of coordination. You need perfect coordination, executed in near real-time, among actors who all know that if they’re wrong—even slightly—they absorb the full cost individually.
That’s a very different bar.
And there’s a second problem you’re underweighting: enforcement.
Even if ten people privately agree, what mechanism forces the eleventh to follow through once it’s live? What prevents hesitation, delay, or quiet withdrawal at the exact moment commitment matters most?
Nothing.
Which means every participant has to price in the risk that someone else blinks.
And once you price that in, the expected value of acting collapses again.
So yes—coordination is complex, but not impossible.
What’s missing is not the ability to coordinate. It’s the ability to guarantee follow-through under pressure in a system where the penalty for being early—or wrong—is catastrophic.
That’s the trap.
I don't understand this. What is catastrophic? Losing one's position in Congress? Trying and failing? Or not trying at all? What's really catastrophic is the prospect of thousands of innocent people dying tonight at Trump's whim. Are you saying it's not worth trying to stop this? Or are you just explaining why weak and unpricipled people aren't even considering it? Did the soldiers at Omaha beach hesitate before rushing to shore, debating internally the risk if others didn't follow behind or offer cover? No, they just acted.
Risk is relative. Rewards are relative.
You can say they're all spineless, and I won't disagree. I am explaining why people act in their own interests even when they know the consequences for others could be devastating.
So true. Take Israel. Israelis are largely silent and complaisant about the genocide against the Gazans or the 2000 deaths and millions displaced in Lebanon - all this is happening to “the other”. Americans are no different. Iranian deaths are theoretical and over there…
Okay, I understand that. The explanation makes sense. But we need leadership right now. Leadership to inspire beyond what “makes sense” and toward what is right; leadership to encourage all of us to act beyond our own interests. You can be that leader. I can be that leader. We must stop explaining and start acting. Explanations have a purpose, but they can also encourage complacency and a sense of inevitability. That is not what is needed in this moment. Let’s all do more.
I would say that as a politician it would be more dignified and honest to make a move and risk it all than to go down with this ship. Because down it WILL go. They will have a day of reckoning. I’d rather be Marjorie Taylor Green on that day!
Yes, one would think that would be the case, but the fact that the U.S. has reached this point and those individuals can still only whimper and whine, leads me to believe that the author is correct ... they are all too beholden to someone and don't really care. Otherwise, given how egregious some of the White House acts have already been, they would have moved. But they went on spring break instead. Pathetic.
We saw Republicans get politically crucified after simply agreeing to be on a Trump impeachment.
There is a price to pay. But we haven’t figured out to to make Trump pay. When that day comes, we might get back to a semblance of normality.
Nice questions, now go the fuck out on the street and ask everyone else to follow! I wouldn't know if I would end up alone at the gates of the WH or if I would go up in a mob of a million others, but I wouldn't want to look back on me thinking for hours if it's a proportional reaction to a possible nuclear genocide in my name.
Well crafted piece which leaves no viable alternatives, other than despair (mostly for USians, but for the whole world too). If, as you say, an external event will be the match that lights the fuse, what is the outcome? It could lead to a quick resolution or a long-drawn out nightmare. Whichever way it goes, the U.S. has a giant problem, which you've identified: a political, economic and legal system that has failed massively. This then would require a reconstitution of the federation, which given the entrenched polarity with the country, is highly improbable in the short to mid-term. So that translates to long-term chaos with no end in sight.
Remember that 70+ million eligible voters chose this (you can't realistically say you didn't see this coming ... they told you what they were going to do) and another 90+ million eligible voters either could not or would not bring themselves to perform their civic duty and vote in the last election. That's 2/3 of the eligible voting population. The U.S. seems quite willing to go along with this despite the 30% that detest what is happening. And even with the mid-terms coming, the 30% is banking on that changing things for the better. Those numbers will have to change in a hurry for that to be realistic. I call it ''whistling past the graveyard'', because even if the mid-terms produce the desired outcome, that doesn't mean guardrails on the White House; restraints maybe but . . . the society has shown its true colours, and you may patch it up it for 4 years but another demagogue can come along and half the population will again be bamboozled (what kind of education are you providing?). You'll be right back where all this started.
The rest of the world sees this and knows that the U.S. is broken, is currently a rogue state and wants to get as far away as possible from this madness. Given your viewpoint, which I think is quite astute, what's left but the ultimate diminishment of the country, to the point of pain and suffering for all but the wealthy? Just as they want it.
This was always the plan of the wealthy, the culmination of a long game they have been playing for more than fifty years, trump was the piece they were missing, when the opportunity arose, it was taken. One man, amoral enough to end the system, with a following stupid enough to believe his every word, and follow him right over the cliff.
The system to accomplish it was built long ago out of groups like The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Mercatus Center, Judicial Watch, and DOZENS more, each dismantling democracy bit by bit, for decades. A slow "revolution" whose ultimate goal was to end the ability of the people to act collectively to affect change, permanently, ultimately to free them from their tax burden. This is the "bloodless revolution" Kevin Roberts was alluding to in the runup to 24, looking back over the last 50 years, the pattern in hindsight, seems pretty clear.
The brainchild of an economist by the name of James Buchanan, and written about in a book by Nancy MacLean released in 2017 called "Democracy in Chains", it explains a lot of what's happening here. At any rate, they intend for this to be permanent, personally I suspect the only solution would be kinetic, but don't see much appetite for that, either way, the future's looking dark.
The lazy ass officials can be primaried in Nov. but it needs lots of work & probably no one is up for it.
Bryan, Being the first to move may be a career ending decision, or worse, but it’s not suicidal (probably), but it IS cowardly not to. They are all cowards or sociopaths or both.
“And so no one moves. Not because they are cowards. Because they are not suicidal.”
I read it as career suicide first, with the threat of mob violence looming next.
Either way, cowardice is involved.
The country didn’t elect Nixon knowing he was a convicted felon. How does one right a ship after purposely blowing a hole in it?
Anyone, anybody just interested in what T was, and is: the readily available internet and ie google would have provided tgat information, in a time and age where even the not so well of have a mobile phone.
With that being said, they were either too lazy, to dumb or did not realky care, that T is a
Con "man"
pedophile
mentally-deranged
dementia-increase-pushing
delusion-of-grandeur-exhibiting
5-time-bankrotteur (casinos, by all means!)
4-time-draft-dodger
3-time married and proven wife cheater on all of them
self-proclaimed-genius, including economy knowledge
narcissistic racist sociopathic lifetime career criminal with a proven track record (sic!, ie St. Jude Hospital, T University, etc.))
whose fathers donations to the university permitted an unintelligent son to get a degree - to at least have half a chance of being accepted by his “peers”.
Anyone, anybody just interested in what T was, and is: the readily available internet and ie google would have provided that information, in a time and age where even the not so well of have a mobile phone. And forever shame on the Rep party permitting and actively supporting him to run as potus in the first place.
With that being said, his voters were either too lazy, to dumb or did not really care, which in itself speaks for itself
that T is a
Con "man"
pedophile
mentally-deranged
dementia-increase-pushing
delusion-of-grandeur-exhibiting
5-time-bankrotteur (casinos, by all means!)
4-time-draft-dodger
3-time married and proven wife cheater on all of them
self-proclaimed-genius, including economy knowledge
narcissistic racist sociopathic lifetime career criminal with a proven track record (sic!, ie St. Jude Hospital, T University, etc.))
whose fathers donations to the university permitted an unintelligent son to get a degree - to at least have half a chance of being accepted by his “peers”.
Why no one acts ?
Most of the military loves Trump and wants to destroy Iran.
30-40% of the public wants the same (though most of them think Iran is next to Nebraska on the map).
The Cabinet worships its Great Hero.
90% of the Republican Party agrees.
Most of Congress agrees and even when members dont agree they gave been paid or intimidated to shut up.
« Even Jesus wont forgive what you do »
Clearly, the American political system has failed.
America is now a failed democracy. The rest of the world sees this clearly.
Russia and China are celebrating.
The 25 true democracies are walking away, and recalibrating to separate from the USA.
The American Empire is destroying itself.
I've said it for over a year -- shut everything down. There is only one solution, and it will never be a solution that is part of the norm. There will be no November elections -- everyone who's been paying attention knows that. We've known that for over a year now. In six more months, everyone else will know.
Same, it's the only way this ends, it damn sure ain't with an election.
So ‘career-ending’ risk is enough to prevent someone from trying to stop the destruction of our republic and stop the murder of untold thousands or millions? These are our ‘public servants’, our ‘best and brightest’, our ‘leaders’? Pathetic
Yes, pathetic they are, but also fucking GREEDY, this is what comes to a nation whose sole interest, in everything, is money. NONE of them care a whit about people, the only thing that matters to any of them is money, it is the Alpha and the Omega, their "consituents" are just numbers on a spreadsheet.