| Tico said: The real issue is that we do not trust the underlying governmental system that ALLOWED a madman like him into power with no checks and balances. |
| Zkuq said: I suppose it's hard to plan for all the checks and balances failing despite existing. Of course it's hard to imagine the situation getting this bad during Trump's first term, simply hecause his power wasn't as deeply rooted. He didn't have such a powerful position in his party back then, as far as I know, and the supreme court also wasn't filled by people favourable to him. Popular support for such extreme measures might not have existed back then either. All this is a result of his longstanding strong position, which in turn, I would guess, is the result of the country suffering from a disease that goes deep. Of course I'm no expert on US politics or the political system over there, but to an outsider like me it certainly looks this way. |
Yeah, the checks and balances were there, but they're only as good as their enforcement mechanisms and the people willing to enforce them. We never had someone so willing to flagrantly break every rule or a Congress this corrupt and spineless to let him. Possibly the biggest failure cascade was letting Republicans get a stranglehold on the courts. The conservative supermajority SCOTUS ignoring the plain text of the Constitution and inventing presidential powers out of whole cloth should be remembered as the greatest disgrace in the history of the American judicial system. In a just country the six of them would be impeached and shamed for eternity.
