It’s sad to realize that there never really were any “checks and balances”. It was all based on an honor system, that relied entirely on no one trying to cross any boundaries.
As soon as Trump pushed even slightly against those so-called guardrails, they simply fell over.
Caring about corruption impartially. They may care about it if it is the opposing team doing it, but are perfectly willing to ignore it if it is their own team. And with “they” I mean the Republicans.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Our government is completely populated with cowards who don’t even want the responsibility of the power of their positions. And our civics education is so poor that they know the only thing the masses pay attention to is the president. So everyone can collectively fuck off with their jobs and face no backlash.
There are no “independent branches of government”. They are all governed by people of the same party. Your assumption copies the beliefs of the original founders that some imaginary “civic duty” would overrule all partisanship, when all recorded political history going back to the earliest civilisations show us that partisanship is an inevitable phenomenon in human societies.
With Trump’s staff and cabinet choices sure, but he didn’t put Congress or the Senate together, the voters did. Unfortunately both are filled with Republicans who are all to happy to be hand over their power or Democrats who are too scared to use theirs.
Now it’s too late, Trump has his own personal paramilitary with a budget that on par with military spending. At this point Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost has a better chance of taking Trump and MAGA down then a Democrat.
Of course all that would do is put a Democrat in charge who would just slow the decline for four years.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Anyone with any sense?
This is how political parties work. And, the “founding fathers” were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.
There’s a difference between voting in a block, and literally passing/interpreting legislation to expand powers of another branch at the expense of your own.
If you vote in a block, you still have your vote. If you pass laws saying actually you can do whatever you want without a law saying you can, you just took your own vote out of the equation.
There’s a difference between voting in a block, and literally passing/interesting legislation to expand powers of another branch at the expense of your own.
Not really. As soon as people are told they have to vote for what the party wants instead of each person individually voting as they believe, then it’s just a matter of where you draw the line. If your party’s leader is president then why wouldn’t you just fall in line and pass everything he wants. If you’re a judge and your party’s president is in office, why wouldn’t you try to find legal justification for everything he wants. Why should there be party infighting between the president and the head of the house? Surely the house should just fall in line and let the President get his agenda passed.
Because parties change power? And you end up setting precedent that is used against you? Not to mention the voting part is literally part of the job they are paid and elected to do?
This is how political parties work. And, the “founding fathers” were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.
Well at least one of them tried to argue against having political parties in order to avoid this problem
The problem is that eliminating political parties is literally impossible. You can’t prevent like-minded people from working together and combining resources to achieve a common goal, and that’s all a political party is.
The problem isn’t political parties. Those are inevitable. The problem is that they structured a system that essentially only allows for two of them to be viable at any given time.
There’s a world where it would help immensely as it would prevent people from just blindly party-line voting up and down the ticket and may force people to start actually researching the people they’re voting for.
But there’s also a world where voters will continue to not care and essentially just make choices at random, causing our entire election system to become a glorified roll of the dice.
My fear is that reality would lean more towards the latter than the former.
Some systems, though, have actual mechanisms for enforcement attached to them. But apparently none of that was included in the legal framework that the entire country is built on.
“Hey! You can’t do that! That very clearly violates Constitutional law.”
Mechanisms of enforcement still need enforcers who respect the rule of law. If the enforcers stop respecting the rule of law and prefer to play power politics then the won’t help you.
Enforcers are part of the honour system. If they aren’t honourable then the system breaks down.
Except in this case…there are no enforcers. At all.
There is no mechanism in place to actually enforce a court ruling, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There is no mechanism in place to enforce legislation that’s been passed by Congress, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There aren’t even any mechanisms in place to enforce Constitutional amendments that should actively restrict the executive branch’s actions. They had a lot to say about what the executive branch should not be allowed to do…but they seemingly forgot to include any way of ensuring they would be held accountable, if they didn’t follow the rules.
There are literally NO “checks and balances” in place to enforce anything if the executive branch decides to ignore the other two branches of government. It’s like passing legislation that declares murder a crime…but not including any consequences for actually committing it.
“Hey! You can’t do that! That very clearly violates Constitutional law.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it?”
(checks Constitution) “Oh…uhhh. I guess nothing?”
Impeachment, that’s what they’d do about it. But that would require politicians who do their job and also uphold the constitution. If the question is: what happens when everyone involved breaks the law and doesn’t do their job?
The answer is one of two things: the people vote them out.
If they are voted out but refuse to cede power peacefully, we end up with violence.
Nothing about the checks and balances are broken, what’s broken is the percentage of the population that just doesn’t care their representative isn’t actually doing their job.
It’s sad to realize that there never really were any “checks and balances”. It was all based on an honor system, that relied entirely on no one trying to cross any boundaries.
As soon as Trump pushed even slightly against those so-called guardrails, they simply fell over.
It relied on voters actually caring about corruption and imposing a cost on corrupt behaviour. Unfortunately, Americans gonna American.
Caring about corruption impartially. They may care about it if it is the opposing team doing it, but are perfectly willing to ignore it if it is their own team. And with “they” I mean the Republicans.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Our government is completely populated with cowards who don’t even want the responsibility of the power of their positions. And our civics education is so poor that they know the only thing the masses pay attention to is the president. So everyone can collectively fuck off with their jobs and face no backlash.
There are no “independent branches of government”. They are all governed by people of the same party. Your assumption copies the beliefs of the original founders that some imaginary “civic duty” would overrule all partisanship, when all recorded political history going back to the earliest civilisations show us that partisanship is an inevitable phenomenon in human societies.
When the person in charge puts people in those positions to hand the power to him. It’s not willfully ceding at that point, it’s a concerted effort.
With Trump’s staff and cabinet choices sure, but he didn’t put Congress or the Senate together, the voters did. Unfortunately both are filled with Republicans who are all to happy to be hand over their power or Democrats who are too scared to use theirs.
Now it’s too late, Trump has his own personal paramilitary with a budget that on par with military spending. At this point Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost has a better chance of taking Trump and MAGA down then a Democrat.
Of course all that would do is put a Democrat in charge who would just slow the decline for four years.
He didn’t put the House and Senate there. They’re the ones ceding power.
Anyone with any sense?
This is how political parties work. And, the “founding fathers” were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.
There’s a difference between voting in a block, and literally passing/interpreting legislation to expand powers of another branch at the expense of your own.
If you vote in a block, you still have your vote. If you pass laws saying actually you can do whatever you want without a law saying you can, you just took your own vote out of the equation.
Not really. As soon as people are told they have to vote for what the party wants instead of each person individually voting as they believe, then it’s just a matter of where you draw the line. If your party’s leader is president then why wouldn’t you just fall in line and pass everything he wants. If you’re a judge and your party’s president is in office, why wouldn’t you try to find legal justification for everything he wants. Why should there be party infighting between the president and the head of the house? Surely the house should just fall in line and let the President get his agenda passed.
Because parties change power? And you end up setting precedent that is used against you? Not to mention the voting part is literally part of the job they are paid and elected to do?
So what? You can wait until the next election and undo whatever they did. Or you can use your power to adjust the system so your opponents can’t win.
Well at least one of them tried to argue against having political parties in order to avoid this problem
The problem is that eliminating political parties is literally impossible. You can’t prevent like-minded people from working together and combining resources to achieve a common goal, and that’s all a political party is.
The problem isn’t political parties. Those are inevitable. The problem is that they structured a system that essentially only allows for two of them to be viable at any given time.
While you can’t actually get rid of parties themselves, I really think taking them off the ballots would help immensly
Maybe, maybe not.
There’s a world where it would help immensely as it would prevent people from just blindly party-line voting up and down the ticket and may force people to start actually researching the people they’re voting for.
But there’s also a world where voters will continue to not care and essentially just make choices at random, causing our entire election system to become a glorified roll of the dice.
My fear is that reality would lean more towards the latter than the former.
I think the latter would still be an improvement, though not as much of one as I’d like
It would lead to too much instability. It would also lead to good politicians getting ousted because they randomly lost re-election.
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All systems are honour systems at their core. If no one respects the rule of law then laws don’t matter.
Some systems, though, have actual mechanisms for enforcement attached to them. But apparently none of that was included in the legal framework that the entire country is built on.
“Hey! You can’t do that! That very clearly violates Constitutional law.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it?”
(checks Constitution) “Oh…uhhh. I guess nothing?”
Mechanisms of enforcement still need enforcers who respect the rule of law. If the enforcers stop respecting the rule of law and prefer to play power politics then the won’t help you.
Enforcers are part of the honour system. If they aren’t honourable then the system breaks down.
Except in this case…there are no enforcers. At all.
There is no mechanism in place to actually enforce a court ruling, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There is no mechanism in place to enforce legislation that’s been passed by Congress, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There aren’t even any mechanisms in place to enforce Constitutional amendments that should actively restrict the executive branch’s actions. They had a lot to say about what the executive branch should not be allowed to do…but they seemingly forgot to include any way of ensuring they would be held accountable, if they didn’t follow the rules.
There are literally NO “checks and balances” in place to enforce anything if the executive branch decides to ignore the other two branches of government. It’s like passing legislation that declares murder a crime…but not including any consequences for actually committing it.
Impeachment, that’s what they’d do about it. But that would require politicians who do their job and also uphold the constitution. If the question is: what happens when everyone involved breaks the law and doesn’t do their job?
The answer is one of two things: the people vote them out.
If they are voted out but refuse to cede power peacefully, we end up with violence.
Nothing about the checks and balances are broken, what’s broken is the percentage of the population that just doesn’t care their representative isn’t actually doing their job.
Every country which went into dictatorship had checks and balances. US checks and balances were not unique.