"Famed"? Lol
It can only work if the government wasn't partisan. Kinda impressive it took this long for the facade to fall off.
Supreme court, July 2024: "the president is the god king, and cannot be beholden to laws of mere mortals"
The Guardian, July 2025: "i don't know guys, checks and balances seem to be failing, don't you think?"
checks and balances were already fucked but whatever was there was finally shot dead and thrown in a ditch like a Noem family pet a year ago, dickheads, what the fuck are you talking about
The AskHistorians podcast called it, in the aftermath of January 6 riots. They did not explicitly compare January 6 with the fall of Roman republic, but explained why the republic fell. The institutions got too corrupt in spite of checks and balances. The concept worked many times and was threatened before, until the breaking point had been reached. Brutus proclaimed he saved democracy after assassinating Caesar, but the crowd booed and heckled him because Caesar was popular and could actually get the job done, unlike corrupt politicians who typically make excuses not to do what the people want, because the elites would not want to ruffle their feathers of their patrons and their own interests.
People are not dumb. If politicians are doing what the people want, populism would never be a thing.
If politicians are doing what the people want, populism would never be a thing.
Populism works to get politicians elected because it is nothing more than politicians telling the people what the people want to hear.
Populism has nothing to do with actually doing what is in the best interests of the people, it's about making the people believe that their interests are going to be served.
Populism is getting a bad rap, but more often than not, it is triggered when people feel under pressure from worsening cost and standards of living. If we follow Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the base requirement of security of food and shelter has to be addressed first, before more conceptual self-realisation needs and other abstract ideas are thought of. If you are constantly worried about how to put food on the table, or how to pay the rent, you would not have sufficient time to think more abstract ideas like exploring the nebula, algebra, democracy, rule of law, checks and balances, etc.
Demagogues rile up populism to get into power, because there is genuine frustration among the people on not having their basic needs being met. Needless to say, populism is still democracy. Here in Europe (or in anywhere really), experts have already repeated numerous times that in order to prevent the further rise of far right, just build more houses. But of course politicians don't want that, because they themselves are landlords or have financial stakes in keeping property and rent prices high. Unfortunately, demagogues twist the genuine concerns and frustrations, and exploit the desperate situation people are in to gain power.
Checks-and-balances rely on:
Voter interest in civic participation
Careerist politicians and bureaucrats
If voters have no civic interest and prefer masturbatory prejudices to serious consideration of civic duty, and if 'careerist' politicians are given immense power and wealth for stepping aside (either by retirement or by simple non-action when in office) thus rendering self-castration of their office personally meaningless to their career path/personal fortunes, checks and balances don't mean shit.
All systems are reliant on a population's willingness to obey and enforce their rules. We in the US, apparently, have very little appetite for that anymore.
Say it with me, kids. "We're fucked!"
The Guardian. When news breaks, you can guarantee they'll say something about it in five to fifteen years.
Better late than never?
I spent the first 3/4 of my adult life listening to all politicians and deciding who I thought had better ideas for the issues that concerned me. The last 12 years have taught me that there are simply to many fucking republicans. That wouldn't be a problem but every single last one of them are worthless pieces of shit, more interested in cruelty than accomplishing anything decent.
The last 12 years have taught me that there are simply to many fucking republicans.
So many that they've been bleeding into the Democratic Party.
Felt like I was taking crazy pills when Kamala Harris spent the back half of October leaving her very popular VP candidate on the side of the road while doing a whirlwind tour with... Liz fucking Cheney. Between that, importing all of Keir Starmer's UK campaign staffers, and letting Michael Bloomberg manager her social media, it's a wonder she didn't do worse.
That wouldn’t be a problem but every single last one of them are worthless pieces of shit
Waking up every day and saying the Pledge of Allegiance on a pile of Ayn Rand novels will do that to you.
I honestly think that she should've won but the repubos cheated, as they do every time. There's no way Trump swept every single swing state. All the polls showed it's be a tight race but for Kamala to lose so utterly? Now, I've made fun of election deniers in the past, I see the irony. But its suspect.
BlueAnon
*failed
*has failed.
**completely and totally
***repeatedly
Oft mentioned is different from famed.
No shit Sherlock.
Someone just noticed this?
We ain’t had “checks and balances” since Allen Dulles and Curtis Lemay had JFK and RFK killed. We’ve been feeding off the husk of America like spider crabs.
We ain’t had “checks and balances” since Allen Dulles and Curtis Lemay had JFK and RFK killed.
I mean, the Truman-Era Red Scare / Eisenhower-Era "Operation Wetback" / "Operation Eagle Eye" weren't exactly America's finest hours, either.
And you only have to thumb through a few chapters from Hoover back to McKinley to notice a certain historical weight of Fascist tendency baked into the American bureaucracy post-Reconstruction Era.
Honestly, the more notable moments in US History are when "Checks and Balances" actually work. Like, Nixon actually leaving office before the Senate could impeach him was something of a high water mark for the country, precisely because it suggested these institutions functioned as advertised (eventually). Even Comey threatening to prosecute Hillary was something of a moment for the country, as it suggested a President's Wife Turned Senator Turned Mega-Bundler Turned Presidential Nominee wasn't impervious to the consequences of her shitty stupid decisions.
But then Ford pardons Nixon and Trump fires Comey and you have to come back down to Earth to reconsider whether this game is rigged from the start.
Oh you mean the checks and balances that kept us honest with all the Native American treaties!? We were always dogshit, there is no good time to look back on.
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.
Every country which went into dictatorship had checks and balances. US checks and balances were not unique.
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?"
“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.
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.
It broke the minute Trump exposed the fact that the Constitution says exactly nothing about what to do if anyone chooses to violate it, and the answer to the question of "What are you gonna do about it?" was essentially "Nothing."
It's really been a broken system since Marbury v. Madison (1803). The lesser known finding of that case was that SCOTUS can declare something to be illegal or a violation of the law but can't do shit beyond that. It took over 200 years for a President to fully understand SCOTUS has no real teeth. If you control the enforcers of the law, you ARE the law.
It's not that it took 200 years for a President to understand that, it's just that all Presidents since then and until trump weren't demented sociopath rapists who couldn't be arsed to think of the good of anyone else.
Using the law enforcement arm to specifically commit national crimes against citizens was more often than not considered what it was; treason.
Every president in some way or form pushed those boundaries without any consequences. Even the lightly better ones, like the shade of grey only lightly different than black.
Trump is the culmination of every president taking its way with the constitution without even a slap on the wrist.
There were definitely a couple literal demented sociopath rapists in the mix. What changed wasn't the law, but the political context and institutions.
It took decades for the GOP to systematically destroy faith in institutions.
It took years of Trump presidency followed by a strong reaffirmation of popular support in the last election.
It took Obama and Biden abdicating their duty to their electorate by respectively refusing to nominate a new Justice and refusing to prosecute Trump for sedition.
It took the media failing their duty to inform voters of Trump's past, intentions, and state of mind.
It took decades of slow work by the right to reframe the media landscape to be less truthful and more obedient.
It took social media and their algorithms to galvanize fascism.
It took an entire cold war and war on terror to normalize an absolutely abnormal and near insurmountable militarization of domestic law enforcement.
The US constitution is not to blame. That's a cop-out answer, a lame scapegoat. America wouldn't be saved by passing amendments alone. The rot goes far deeper than that. Just like the 13th amendment didn't do much to fix the system of racial injustice the US was built on. If it was just a matter of wording, a silly loophole, it wouldn't have worked. It worked because the vast majority of Americans abdicated their allegiance to the Bill of Rights, to Human Rights, and to Democracy.
It took Obama and Biden abdicating their duty to their electorate by respectively refusing to nominate a new Justice and refusing to prosecute Trump for sedition.
? Obama was stuffed by McConnell on Garland, and Biden oversaw the appointment of Jack Smith to investigate Jan6 as well as the top secret stolen files.
Andrew Jackson already did that, but we acted like checks and balances still worked because Jackson defying the supreme court only resulted in the Trail of Tears.
Someone writes the checks to tip the balance.
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