Heard back from a friend of mine whose advice I regard pretty highly. He's in Canada now.
I asked, back in November just after the election, what kind of "learnings" can we absorb from this election, and what does it mean about 'operating' in a democracy? And I sent him a little song-and-dance presentation, said, tell me what you think.
He said, as long as the most powerful man in the country can impose his will over the courts, there isn't rule of law anymore:
"As for your attached materials, my fundamental problem is that I do not believe that the United States federal government operates under the rule of law, if you define the rule of law as the opposite of the rule of man. The key definitional distinction is whether, when the most powerful man breaks the law, it is the man or the law that bends. In the case of America today, it is very clear. In light of that, I do not see a peaceful path to the transfer of power. Many current Trump officials are criminals, and the peaceful transfer of power is a personal threat to them. If that, in turn, is the case, then this thing gets pear-shaped pretty fast. In other words, I do not see how elections matter anymore if one side has been extremely clear that they will not accept any election result that they do not win, and now they have ample legal and kinetic power to enforce that. "
I've been thinking about that a lot today especially since the Wisconsin Supreme Court election results got announced.
I don't know that he's wrong because of one election result.
I recall, in fact, that Musk's million-dollar giveaway still happened, just under very slightly different wording, and he still hasn't been punished for either that or his previous pay-to-vote scheme back in the 2024 campaign season.
And Trump announced two days ago that he thinks he can run for a third term; given the Trump administration's open defiance of the courts, it is entirely possible that he'll just ignore the law and do it.
Maybe it's just more complex than all that, I don't know.
And between my friend and Tim Snyder now both leaving the country it's sort of got me thinking about a lot.
Trump running for a third term is just his latest troll talking point, one that'll drive his critics crazy for months.
It's projection as always as when do the courts dictate MILITARY matters or subjects exclusively under the executive. The courts shouldn't have interfered and because they have, we could be looking at the first impeachment proceedings of a judge since the era of the founding fathers.
Yea I didn’t bother to look it up. Assumed it was media hysteria
For Trump to run again, either an amendment repealing the 22nd would have to be rammed through in record time, or an Article V convention would have to be held. Neither is going to happen.
Right. However, it is worth mentioning that I did see a video thumbnail on youtube from what I could easily surmise was a lefty channel saying that America might not recover from Trump, so even if he leaves gracefully come the end of his term (which I think is what will likely happen), I can see him being scapegoated for a lot of things that happen during his successor's term even if the pendulum swings back in the blue court's favor.
Exactly.
I'm going to assume lefty friends have current lefty opinions.
If they support gender ideology and 'trans children', then their opinion on anything of substance is irrelevant, and I'd see them exiled or executed before listening to anything else. I would literally choose dictatorship over a democracy that sterilizes its own children.
I'm glad they self deported. I hope more do.
And they have access to Canadian Healthcare if they go to Canada, too...
No, just ones you cheat at. Ones where you don't have to show ID to vote, ones where the voter rolls are filled with corpses, ones where you barricade the polling stations to block legal observers, ones where the voter distributions are so skewed it looks like the literal textbook definition of how to statistically spot fraud.
Those are the ones we don't accept.
Your problem is that by committing those things, the left has become an illegitimate participant in the political process. They are a mafia, not a political party. They should, and God willing will be eradicated, and hopefully replaced with nothing.
Starting off with the most weak and pathetic appeal to authority I've ever seen. It's just such a weird way to couch things.
What a bunch of flowery, pretentious nonsense.
It's also just wrong, definitionally, but for the sake of argument I'm going to ignore that and just accept those terms.
*gag* We've heard of punchable faces and punchable voices...this is a great example of punchable prose.
Also, by that definition, there can never be rule of law, or at least incredibly rarely. It's always overseen by man, so man can always bend or break it. No matter the system, the most powerful man cannot be held to account, almost by definition.
One of the only prominent cases I can think of is the famous A Man for All Seasons speech. And he was declared a traitor and executed for trying to uphold the law.
Not saying it's good, but the "most powerful man" gets final say. Just how it works.
It also just shows the constant warped liberal viewing of reality. Obama and Biden did things they should have been held to account for too. Not only were they not held to account, because they were the most powerful men (not Biden, he was a puppet, of course), but they had the courts and media on their side, so no one but "fringe weirdos" (and RACISTS, if you went against Obama) cared.
People are outraged because they've been told to be outrated. People are outraged because, well, Orange Man Bad.
It's also why war crimes aren't real, just a fancy humiliation ritual against the losers.
I think he's got it backwards.
The administration isn't imposing it's will on the courts.
Some judges of the courts have decided that executive orders are like Magic the gathering counterspell cards and they can just snap a decision away.
If the sitting president can't have an executive order without having some judge meddle with it, then what exactly is the point of an executive order.
You'll notice this never happens when an executive order comes from the D camp. Just the R camp gets blocked in this way.
"Sorry, the EO already resolved, the plane is no longer in US jurisdiction, the stack is empty." - Trump.
"Judge!" - The judge.
Propaganda combined with smug self-superiority make a powerful drug.
Your friend is a whiny pretentious gay and this screed reverses cause and effect, and fundamentally fails to understand the nature of government. The only rule of law belongs to the dead - the constitution, which has been flagrantly violated by the courts for decades. Their attempted subversion of the separation of powers, goblinoid foreign "judges" trying to usurp executive authority - that is rule of corrupt men.
It's not my friend. There are people who post long rants and n Facebook, and lefty friends share those.
You really ought to start using block-quotes for these, and adding some of your own commentary at the end.
You called him your friend in the OP tho
That's part of the quote.
Oh, my bad I thought you were quoting a friend who had moved to Canada.
You should actually
it because that's confused more than a few people from the look of it.
My apologies. That would have taken forever though. Perhaps a line?
Then a comment?
You just have to press > before each paragraph. It's not that hard.
3-4 is fine, 30-40 takes a while. That's why I don't do it with my lists.
some pissant faggot judge DOES NOT rank the same as the president.
Were these the elections that were happening recently?
I saw Jeremy Hambly / The Quartering in shorts outdoors doing promo videos with Scott Pressler recently. Videos about going canvassing.
I was confused what they were doorknocking for, but it seemed Wisconsin-specific.
He got away with it twice because he was literally just copying Dem playbooks. If they took him to task over it they would have to explain why they've been doing the exact same thing for decades.