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763 points tartoran | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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mikeyouse ◴[] No.45682307[source]
> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law".

We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive branch departments, and the President can fire them all without consequence or oversight, then it turns out there is no law.

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skizm ◴[] No.45682511[source]
> it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch

There are plenty of laws being ignored. Tariffs being the most obvious.

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selectodude ◴[] No.45682818[source]
Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!
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cheema33 ◴[] No.45682889[source]
> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then!

I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

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lotsofpulp ◴[] No.45682981{3}[source]
How do you mitigate when 2/3rd of voters support, at least tacitly, the lawlessness?
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1. PaulRobinson ◴[] No.45683374{4}[source]
This is easy.

Most people just don't care. They just want to live their lives. Their lives are not good, but they're not awful, they're aware there are a lot of people are worse off than them, and they know if they rock the boat too much they might get singled out and their life gets worse.

The powers in charge recognise this, and just accept that absolute monarchy in their image is fine, and they can do what they want, and so do so. And life in "the court" is particularly fine, and everybody eats and drinks well, and nobody does or says much. The occasional opposition pops up, but they can be charged with treason, and imprisoned, or even better, executed. Problem solved.

I often summarise this as saying that Putin is not the problem, Putinism is - there's vested interests in keeping him, and his ideology, just where it is. Trumpism is real, Thatcherism still has a hold in the UK, it's all these political systems with ardent supporters holding onto a name because they define their own safety and economic well being with the ideas most closely associated with them. It can take decades (perhaps centuries), for the "court" around such people to break free.

Then, at some point a minority who does not have it good in this system decides to do something about it. A charismatic leader makes some speeches, rallies people into action, an insurrection, revolution or civil war takes place.

Most people just don't care. Until the civil war arrives at their doorstep and they have to choose a side, which they do, often quite grudgingly.

The old guard sometimes wins, and doubles down on the way things were. Sometimes they are toppled. In the old days the losers were killed to make sure there was no going back, but these days they tend to get to stick around and get real bitter. South Africa might be the only example in history where they tempered this stage a little through incredible experiments in public justice, but even there, there are problems.

An attempt is then made to fix the wrongs of the past: more accountability, more democracy, or even less democracy, whatever the thing is that caused those kings and queens and their courts (even if they were in fact constitutionally not actual kings or queens, just behaving like ones), to have that power, it's all shaken up. New dice are rolled.

Most people just don't care. But there's an optimism for a while, perhaps.

And a new system takes hold. Sometimes for a few years, sometimes for a few centuries. And then the cycle repeats.

This is crudely how the United States was mostly born. And the United Kingdom (after multiple cycles in England, Wales and Scotland). There is no country in Europe that hasn't seen this cycle many times. It's the recent history of almost all of South America, Asia and Africa, except in many cases they also had to deal with foreign kings and queens having a will enforced by foreign armies or - worse still - the CIA getting involved, because, why not?

The Middle East has had its run-ins in places with this cycle, but making sure most people born in your country feel rich sure has helped a lot in recent decades, as does being able to punish (or eliminate), people who raise their hand and begin "Wait, I have a question..."

Yes, I'm cynical, yes, I'm sad about it, no I don't think there's much that can be done.

I sincerely hope this isn't a story that has a near future in the US (or indeed anywhere else), but... it's not looking or feeling great.

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2. vladms ◴[] No.45683910[source]
True that most people don't care about who rules, but people do care of not living "much worse" than "before". That triggered a lot of revolutions before.

It does not look great, but I find risks mostly economical (not only in USA, everywhere) - if the situation will deteriorate even more abruptly (considering it already did a bit due to the pandemic "shock") then we will have a mess.