You’re forgetting something: laws and constitutions don’t matter unless those in charge of enforcing it agree with it.
Enforcing laws, the Constitution, judgements from judges - all that is done by the executive.
When there’s a fascist corrupt executive function, you get selective enforcement and convenient ignoring of parts of the law, serving the double effect of 1) keeping the corrupt executive in power and in control and 2) discrediting the institutions, furthering the corruption.
And at some point, you will also get civil war. It’s one thing for Trump to use legal slight-of-hand to look for loopholes in the Constitution…but it’s another thing entirely for him to simply violate it.
There is nothing in the legal framework of the United States that allows any president to simply overrule a Constitutional amendment. The 2nd amendment exists to protect the others from an autocratic tyrant.
Or you get a descent into a dictatorship that it’s almost impossible to organize against. Civil war is not inevitable, and I don’t see Americans being particularly eager to fight one. And the further the country slides down the dictatorship slope, the less likely it is that you can raise any kind of effective resistance.
If that’s the case, then things will eventually lead to another world war. A country as powerful as the US deciding to go full-fascist, will not be tolerated by other world powers for long.
Seems to me that the Western countries are busy trying to appease the fascists, when they’re not heading full tilt towards fascism themselves. What happens when we have a fascist USA, a fascist Russia, an authoritarian China, a fascist India, and a Europe that’s in large part fascist with residual packets of neoliberalism? Will Brazil and some African countries fight them all? Or will the next war be between the fascist world and the world that’s controlled by China?
I think you are mistaking “conflict avoidance” with “appeasement”. The rest of the western world is trying to avoid open conflict with those countries…the US included. If the US, Russia or China were to attack any of them, though…there would be war. And the so-called “fascist world” are not capable of remaining functionally united. They’ll stab each other in the back as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
You’re forgetting something: laws and constitutions don’t matter unless those in charge of enforcing it agree with it.
Enforcing laws, the Constitution, judgements from judges - all that is done by the executive.
When there’s a fascist corrupt executive function, you get selective enforcement and convenient ignoring of parts of the law, serving the double effect of 1) keeping the corrupt executive in power and in control and 2) discrediting the institutions, furthering the corruption.
Yay.
And at some point, you will also get civil war. It’s one thing for Trump to use legal slight-of-hand to look for loopholes in the Constitution…but it’s another thing entirely for him to simply violate it.
There is nothing in the legal framework of the United States that allows any president to simply overrule a Constitutional amendment. The 2nd amendment exists to protect the others from an autocratic tyrant.
Is it? The American people have to actually stand up and defend their democracy. I’m not sure that’ll ever happen.
Americans have been saying that for centuries, but I don’t see them taking any action.
Or you get a descent into a dictatorship that it’s almost impossible to organize against. Civil war is not inevitable, and I don’t see Americans being particularly eager to fight one. And the further the country slides down the dictatorship slope, the less likely it is that you can raise any kind of effective resistance.
If that’s the case, then things will eventually lead to another world war. A country as powerful as the US deciding to go full-fascist, will not be tolerated by other world powers for long.
Seems to me that the Western countries are busy trying to appease the fascists, when they’re not heading full tilt towards fascism themselves. What happens when we have a fascist USA, a fascist Russia, an authoritarian China, a fascist India, and a Europe that’s in large part fascist with residual packets of neoliberalism? Will Brazil and some African countries fight them all? Or will the next war be between the fascist world and the world that’s controlled by China?
I think you are mistaking “conflict avoidance” with “appeasement”. The rest of the western world is trying to avoid open conflict with those countries…the US included. If the US, Russia or China were to attack any of them, though…there would be war. And the so-called “fascist world” are not capable of remaining functionally united. They’ll stab each other in the back as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
So who’s gonna fight the civil war?