America has been flung into a constitutional crisis in the most massive and fundamental way imaginable, ruled by a regime which is not merely doing unconstitutional things but is anti-constitutional at its very core.
“Crisis” is precisely the right word. This is not mere political disruption—it is a full-blown constitutional crisis in the proper, technical sense of the term. The normal rules of the system have been thrown into untenable contradictions where something has to break. The whole mechanism is disintegrating before our eyes. We stuck a wrench into its core by putting an anti-constitutionalist into its highest office, and now the broken gears are spewing left and right. What we will be left with is a government only superficially resembling the one codified in the Constitution.
The metaphor used is of something important that once broken, can’t be mended, but I’m not really seeing that. It might take many years, but why couldn’t it be fixed? It’s no comfort for people...
The metaphor used is of something important that once broken, can’t be mended, but I’m not really seeing that. It might take many years, but why couldn’t it be fixed?
It’s no comfort for people whose lives were ruined, but it still seems plausible to me that the pendulum will swing back again. After another election, another president might end the lawlessness and undo a lot of what Trump has done. Congress passes new laws, the Supreme Court keeps making rulings, and the Trump administration fades into history.
Assuming we have another election To some degree, sure. But the problem is not Trump; rather, the problem is the Republican party that has brought us into fascism. Considering that we are in a...
After another election,
Assuming we have another election
another president might end the lawlessness
To some degree, sure. But the problem is not Trump; rather, the problem is the Republican party that has brought us into fascism. Considering that we are in a fascist oligarchy that has been rotting for three decades, while we might see some reprieve from the very worst, a party that is getting around half of the voting support in this country has gone fascist with support from most of the voters for that party, support by the oligarchs controlling our media, support from other countries like Russia working against us…
If Trump keeled over and died today, we are not much less fucked than we are right now. And in fact, mifgt be moreso because many people are realizing Trump is a problem, but not realizing that Republicans are, and so therefore would go back to their political sleep and allow the Republicans to continue further dismantling our democracy.
The pendulum requires room on either side of a central point. The Overton window, to throw that into the analogy, has moved things so far over that while we might get a swing toward the US center, we are firmly in the global right and if anything swings, will remain in the global right.
There is no level at which we have hope: Presidential, congressional, judcial, media, We the People. In all cases, fascism has taken hold and controls them.
My best hope — and it is truly bleak — is for some states with a sufficiently blue colour to decide to withdraw from the ruined democracy. Those states might then be able to overcome the oligarchal control with sufficient reforms — if they even recognize that is the root of the problem.
From the article I agree with this paragraph. I am deeply scared for our future but I am not without hope. (I do feel for and fear for the people who are already being persecuted. None of this...
From the article
The reality we face is grim, but not hopeless—yet. It will, however, be a political environment unlike any we have previously known. It will operate by different principles and mechanisms than the familiar model of a coherent system under the rule of law. The weeks, months, and years ahead will not just bring turmoil—they will challenge the basic premises holding America’s governing institutions together. Still, it will remain up to we, the people, to decide what comes next. At the end of the day, reasserting our constitutional foundations, and eventually reconstructing a stable system of law atop them, will depend on our ability to secure the imprimatur of raw popular sovereignty. America will have its say on the matter of its own undoing—though what should deeply worry us is that it is far from a given that it will choose to recover its constitutional legacy.<
I agree with this paragraph. I am deeply scared for our future but I am not without hope. (I do feel for and fear for the people who are already being persecuted. None of this will be without significant cost).
Trump built a coalition of groups hoping to use him but he is quickly alienating some members of that group and also alienating influential institutions who might have preferred to stay out of politics. I am hoping for a 'non-physical' Brutus against Julius Caesar moment where the various influential players, including but not limited to the voting public, reject the fascism that republicans are trying to implement.
I could say more if I had more time but here are some factors that give me hope in spite of the fact that Republicans have the initiative and a slim majority.
The Supreme Court has not yet signed off on the most extreme acts.
Trump has a gift for making enemies. Large law firms and Ivy League Universities did not expect to be targets, but many people affiliated with them have family who are wealthy and or movers and shakers.
Those of us who remember the fall of communism in the late 80s, were taught clear distinctions between free and unfree societies, autocrats vs constitutional order, in school and on the news. Trump acting authoritarian as he constantly does, triggers those sensibilities.
We have a significant number of citizens who have family history of parents, grandparents, great grandparents fleeing either left wing or right wing dictatorships. Again, Trump acting authoritarian is perceived as a threat by many of those people.
Trump's ICE is ignoring the former protected status and privilege of immigrant groups who supported him in the previous election. Latino citizens generally and specifically Cubans and Venezuelans thought they were safe and are not in fact protected. Their citizen relatives are experiencing Leopards eating faces moments.
I have read that Hitler exempted military veterans when he cut government workers in the 30s. Trump and Musk ignored the fact that roughly 30 percent of federal employees are veterans. Some of those workers have friends still in the military. All of them have military training which emphasizes cooperation and endurance.
At worst, I fear that Trump and MAGA take power like Cromwell or Napoleon did, but I doubt that it will be permanent. History doesn't stop. Change is inevitable.
What I hope for is that Trump and MAGA's grip on the reins of power face death by a thousand cuts.
They have, but Trump inserted himself and took over in a way that destroyed all subtlety and ambiguity. Trump brought the John Birch society wing of the party to the forefront. He also makes the...
They have, but Trump inserted himself and took over in a way that destroyed all subtlety and ambiguity.
Trump brought the John Birch society wing of the party to the forefront.
He also makes the cost and risk of authoritarian rule extremely obvious. He is capricious and vindictive and greedy and stupid. He demands flattery and bootlicking and financial tribute to him personally.
We haven't yet seen what the reaction will be to Trump 2.0 with no handlers and no guardrails.
They're still on schedule. Perhaps something else might happen, but that seems speculative. Do you think Vance is popular? It seems like he might have a hard time getting reelected. You say...
Assuming we have another election
They're still on schedule. Perhaps something else might happen, but that seems speculative.
If Trump keeled over and died today, we are not much less fucked than we are right now.
Do you think Vance is popular? It seems like he might have a hard time getting reelected.
You say "fascism" a lot, but I'm not sure what that means in concrete terms. Everyday life doesn't seem to have changed much.
…are you kidding me? I do not mean that in any offensive way, but seriously, are you kidding me? Found this: Characteristics of Fascism Authoritarianism Centralized, dictatorial control. Rejection...
Exemplary
You say "fascism" a lot, but I'm not sure what that means in concrete terms. Everyday life doesn't seem to have changed much.
…are you kidding me?
I do not mean that in any offensive way, but seriously, are you kidding me?
Found this:
Characteristics of Fascism
Authoritarianism
Centralized, dictatorial control.
Rejection of democracy and political pluralism.
Power is often concentrated in a single leader or party.
Ultranationalism
Glorification of the nation or race, often to the exclusion or oppression of others.
Belief in national rebirth, sometimes framed as a return to a mythical past.
Xenophobia and racism are common, including the scapegoating of minorities.
Militarism and Violence
Emphasis on military strength and the use of violence to achieve political ends.
War is often glorified as a means to unify the nation or assert dominance.
Anti-Communism and Anti-Liberalism
Strong opposition to socialism, communism, and Marxism.
Rejection of liberal values like individual rights, freedom of expression, and equality.
Controlled or State-Aligned Economy
Often supports a capitalist economy but with heavy state intervention.
Corporatism: coordination between the state, businesses, and labor under state control.
Suppression of independent unions and workers’ rights.
Cult of Personality
Elevation of a charismatic leader who embodies the will of the nation.
Use of propaganda and media control to build a near-religious devotion.
Suppression of Dissent
Censorship of the press and persecution of political opponents.
Use of secret police, surveillance, and imprisonment to maintain control.
Mass Mobilization and Propaganda
Use of mass rallies, symbols (like uniforms and salutes), and slogans.
Constant propaganda to create a unified and obedient populace.
Mythic Past and Cultural Revival
Promotion of traditional cultural values and roles (especially patriarchal norms).
Often includes rewriting history to suit the regime’s narrative.
Anti-Intellectualism
Distrust of academics and experts.
Promotion of simple, emotional appeals over reasoned debate or evidence-based policy.
I'd love to know which of those points you do NOT currently see in the US right now, because I see every single one of them, to the point where I really feel like I do not need to link to news articles from this past week or month to back up the claims.
I don’t mean that it’s wrong to describe Trump as a fascist. I think Bret Devereaux made a good case for this. Describing fascism is an unstoppable, impersonal force that has taken over everything...
I don’t mean that it’s wrong to describe Trump as a fascist. I think Bret Devereaux made a good case for this.
Describing fascism is an unstoppable, impersonal force that has taken over everything and doomed us all is what I object to. In particular:
There is no level at which we have hope: Presidential, congressional, judcial, media, We the People. In all cases, fascism has taken hold and controls them.
This doesn’t seem accurate, for reasons I went into here. It’s not accurate to say the Supreme Court or the Senate are controlled by Trumpists (there are Republican Senators who vote against him), so there is some hope there.
Also, despite all the people watching Fox News or worse, the media is certainly not controlled by Trumpists. For example, Washington Post reporters are doing their job every day, reporting on all the terrible things the Trump administration is doing. They seem to be doing a fine job of it, and apparently Bezos hasn’t interfered with that, like he did on the editorial side. So it hardly seems hopeless?
But I’m worried about the declining influence of newspapers, not whether they do their job. All this terrible stuff that’s reported is making Trump unpopular, but not as much as it should.
Everything will be fine until you are led into the gas chamber and discover that all the thinking that everything was fine while everyone else was led to the gas chamber would not affect you. And...
Everything will be fine until you are led into the gas chamber and discover that all the thinking that everything was fine while everyone else was led to the gas chamber would not affect you. And then it will be rather too late.
You cannot convince some people about danger until they are in the middle of it themselves, when it is too late.
Alas, that is a good part of the problem: Those who refuse to see the serious nature of the problems, or those who don't even care to educate themselves.
This is pretty hyperbolic. There's a lot of difference between thinking the Trump administration is a serious problem (yes, it's a serious problem!) and thinking we're all doomed. We could discuss...
This is pretty hyperbolic. There's a lot of difference between thinking the Trump administration is a serious problem (yes, it's a serious problem!) and thinking we're all doomed.
We could discuss disaster preparations if you want. What are you suggesting? Passport is current, but I have no current plans to leave the country. How about you?
It's hyperbolic when you aren't one of the people who's affected. I'm sure the average German gentile would've thought the gas chambers were hyperbole too. When my trans friends (many of whom,...
It's hyperbolic when you aren't one of the people who's affected. I'm sure the average German gentile would've thought the gas chambers were hyperbole too. When my trans friends (many of whom, unlike you, can't renew their passports because they'll be confiscated) start getting forced off their HRT and imprisoned, I'm sure your daily life will remain about as affected as it is today. And I'm sure you'll find some excuse why that means it isn't that bad.
Everyday life doesn't change for the people not targeted by fascist tides, that's a key factor in the dynamics of the phenomenon. The ingroup is to be preserved and protected from harm, and, in...
Everyday life doesn't change for the people not targeted by fascist tides, that's a key factor in the dynamics of the phenomenon. The ingroup is to be preserved and protected from harm, and, in order to do so, the outgroups are picked (by convenience) to isolate the damage of the unsustainable need for the fascist party to convince itself it is doing good. "Line goes up [points to economy], except for the bad lines, which are naturally bad, we're just not catering to the waylaid sentiments of bleeding hearts and the cowardly lies from the bad people."
If you felt like things were getting worse, you might feel like you owe it to yourself to try and change things. You are normal, and normal means typical, right? So if things seem normal to you, a normal person, they must be within the bounds of okay!
Fascism is a slow decay that we in the US have been acclimatizing to since the 60s, at least. Please, I am asking you, as someone who always values your contributions here, to read into antifascist research and theory. A lot of time has been put into mapping these systems, and this comment comes across not-unlike someone arguing that they took econ 101, of course they know better than the Federal Reserve chair.
This is once again where I point out that your everyday life perhaps hasn't changed. In our previous conversation on this you acknowledged life hadn't changed for you and you assumed you weren't...
This is once again where I point out that your everyday life perhaps hasn't changed. In our previous conversation on this you acknowledged life hadn't changed for you and you assumed you weren't alone in that. As discussed then, this is literally the definition of privilege. You could disagree if we are in or headed towards facism but you keep insisting that daily life isn't impacted.
We keep telling you it is. We have multiple US citizens being held by ICE, with the agency claiming those people "admitted" to being here illegally. We have people sent to death camps abroad for false reasons. We have people deported to foreign countries they hold no relationship to. The daily lives of people who are being targeted, have been changed - looking over your shoulder, carrying your papers, writing your lawyer's phone number on your arm in sharpie, just in case something happens, all of it is exhausting.
And what about the fear that it isn't really ICE and it's just a lynching in modern form? There are people pretending to be ICE harassing and assaulting immigrants.
Have you had real conversations with immigrants about this? Because we literally had to make a plan for if ICE showed up to come for our students or to come for our coworkers.
We have a woman dead on life support because the law wouldn't let them save her lest they abort a fetus, and now despite the inevitable death of the fetus they won't let the woman die now either. Approximately 3 million people are pregnant at any given time. You don't think there's any impact on their life from the draconian laws that have been passed? From the fear of dying by order of the state if they get sick? From the stress and cost of having to travel hundreds of miles to get an abortion? Have you talked to women in your life about this? It doesn't impact everyone equally, but I don't know any who look at Adriana Smith and think she should have died and left her son without his mother to prevent risk to the fetus.
And coming down the pipe? . Medicaid cuts could literally kill my partner and many others. Cuts to disability or higher ed could leave us homeless as will higher bills for many. Trans folks will be at risk of dying with the loss of funding for transition care. The continued stressors of all of that are actively pushing people to hopelessness and suicidality. And our health care and mental health care professionals are still burnt out from COVID, they can only bear so much more death. Theyre advocating for the removal of habeus corpus. If these don't affect you, it's because you're lucky, not because your experience is universal.
I swear, if you have ever promised yourself you would speak up and step in if you saw this sort of thing happening - this is still the time. How many more steps down this road will it take before things are bad enough for you?
You're using this as an opportunity to accuse me of being personally callous again, which is quite tiresome and off-topic, and I wish you'd stop. When I said the everyday life goes on, I also...
You're using this as an opportunity to accuse me of being personally callous again, which is quite tiresome and off-topic, and I wish you'd stop.
When I said the everyday life goes on, I also didn't acknowledge that 600,000 Americans die of cancer every year. But that's not a contradiction - however tragic it is for the people involved, death is part of everyday life.
Yes, there are so many new terrible things going on, or threatened, that it can be hard to keep track. But the article is not about that. It's alleging some kind of large-scale unrecoverable political change, and that's a really high bar.
Presidential elections have happened on schedule for over 200 years, despite events like the Civil War and World War II. The US put 120,000 Japanese in internment camps, which was a terrible injustice, but not the end of democracy. For a more recent event, over a million Americans died in the Pandemic. Perhaps you knew someone who died? And yet, despite all that tragedy, for the survivors, which is most of us, life went on.
Suspending habeas corpus would be a terrible injustice, but isn't going to end democracy either. Did you know that Lincoln and FDR actually did it?
No I'm begging you to stop minimizing what is happening in your discussions here and to take action in the real world. I am hoping you will do so. If I accuse you of callousness it will not be...
No I'm begging you to stop minimizing what is happening in your discussions here and to take action in the real world. I am hoping you will do so. If I accuse you of callousness it will not be indirectly through pleas for you to see what is happening and stop questioning whether it is. I promise I'd be explicit.
And yes I'm aware habeus corpus was suspended, during times of Invasion or Rebellion as outlined in the constitution, and always with complaint and with the supreme court getting involved. It wasn't even revoked on the mainland when we put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. If the executive branch is no longer listening to the court as they keep arguing they don't have to, them how will an unconstitutional suspension of the writ end? (Those weren't the only times it's been revoked either. Just the two most notable.) I'd have been begging people to speak up then too.
The only way it compares to the pandemic is that at least at the beginning of COVID we all acted to attempt to address it rather than arguing it wasn't real. (Or at least those who argued as such then, were looked down on for it. That changed over time) We supported the healthcare workers and, in my case, outreached to students in quarantine and remaining on campus because they had no where to go and monitor their physical and mental health. We, collectively, acted. And we're still scarred by it as a population, medically and mental health-wise.
If the topic were cancer and someone was acting like it was not a threat to public health, I'd be providing them with examples and begging them to listen to experts too.
I'm asking for and advocating for the same now. Action. Before a million people die of this particular cancer.
Once again I'm not calling you callous, I'm asking you to use your privilege to help rather than minimize what is happening in the face of multiple people explaining why it is.
ETA: I do think it's telling that the only post you replied to was the one you felt you could complain about it being mean and ignored all the rest. I wasn't the first or last response to you. I don't know whether you don't want to engage with it or something else, but given that you seem to respond I'll keep asking you to act.
It means Trump chucked the Newark mayor in jail over trumped-up charges, and the rule of law is a less-useful predictor of the executive's actions than an understanding of politics. Hell, we...
You say "fascism" a lot, but I'm not sure what that means in concrete terms. Everyday life doesn't seem to have changed much.
It means Trump chucked the Newark mayor in jail over trumped-up charges, and the rule of law is a less-useful predictor of the executive's actions than an understanding of politics. Hell, we aren't even discussing when Trump ruled that anyone who took a Biden climate grant is now guilty of fraud (another example of blatantly legally incorrect methods of jailing political enemies).
Compare this to Alexei Navalny: jailed on trumped-up bullshit and everyone knows it. It didn't affect most Russians' day-to-day lives, because of course it wouldn't - disrupting peoples' lives over politics is politically dangerous.
And FWIW, Putin also hosts elections. They're rigged and everyone knows it, but it's not clear entirely how rigged they are (and part of the legitimacy of the govt is that everyone knows/thinks "well the election wasn't that rigged, and Putin would have won anyway!). The US 2024 election was also rigged (note that I'm not saying Trump would have lost if the election wasn't rigged), it's not that hard to leap from a US-2024 system to the Russian system.
And then they released the mayor when it was shown clearly he was invited in (proving it was bullshit intimidation from jump) and charged a New Jersey Congresswoman with assault instead. Rinse,...
And then they released the mayor when it was shown clearly he was invited in (proving it was bullshit intimidation from jump) and charged a New Jersey Congresswoman with assault instead.
There are important differences. Ras Baraka, the Newark mayor, was arrested for trespassing because he chose that. (They told him that they would arrest him, and he chose to stay.) He was released...
There are important differences. Ras Baraka, the Newark mayor, was arrested for trespassing because he chose that. (They told him that they would arrest him, and he chose to stay.) He was released a few days later after charges were dropped and a judge dismissed them with prejudice. This is part of a tradition of civil disobedience. The arrest was wrong, but the justice system worked in the end.
Alexei Navalny was poisoned and later died in jail.
Your comparison with Russia is a false equivalence.
I think what you've been saying is that nothing will convince you of the situation we're claiming, short of your personal everyday life changing. No further argument is needed. I'm not accusing...
I think what you've been saying is that nothing will convince you of the situation we're claiming, short of your personal everyday life changing. No further argument is needed. I'm not accusing you of lacking empathy, but your circle of care is eclipsed by a need to be correct. Godspeed.
It’s been broken for a good while now, it just took this long for the cracks to spread through the foundation. Sure it could be “fixed” but the “fix” would need to be a pretty dramatic change to...
but why couldn’t it be fixed?
It’s been broken for a good while now, it just took this long for the cracks to spread through the foundation. Sure it could be “fixed” but the “fix” would need to be a pretty dramatic change to some pretty fundamental structural elements. Primarily the rural malapportionment problem we have makes it basically impossible to pursue needed economic or political reforms. And we have an approach to “freedom of speech” that permits absurdities like unlimited anonymous money on political campaigns and unregulated fire hoses of lies, slander, and disinformation counting as “protected speech.”
Because the system broken wasn't written laws, it was unwritten laws and norms. Those norms only existed essentially due to mutual agreement not to use them, and the lack of realization that you...
It might take many years, but why couldn’t it be fixed?
Because the system broken wasn't written laws, it was unwritten laws and norms. Those norms only existed essentially due to mutual agreement not to use them, and the lack of realization that you could just break them and there's nothing anyone could do. In essence, the meta has changed.
It's like how in CSGO the codguns were overpowered for 5+ years but the pros didn't use them because they thought they were underpowered, and when Valve buffed the codguns everyone started considering the codguns overpowered and it wasn't enough to just revert the buff, because the buff didn't cause the overpoweredness, it only revealed it. And thus Valve had to outright nerf codguns after reverting the buff.
We can't go back to the (2000s?) because nobody will forget the current political meta of calling media partisan if they criticize you, because casual observers can't tell if it's the media bullshitting or the politician bullshitting. We can try to patch it, but that's just building a new meta and the new rules will result in new exploits and potentially damage old tactics.
Every unwritten rule will need to be written, and every writing of a new rule will change the meta.
And god forbid anyone try to fix old problems with the constitution while they're at it.
I like your video game analogy for describing how norms have changed. Some norms are actually written down, but they also can be changed easily. An example would be Senate rules, which don’t...
I like your video game analogy for describing how norms have changed.
Some norms are actually written down, but they also can be changed easily. An example would be Senate rules, which don’t change that often, but could be changed if the party in control of the Senate chose.
One example of how the meta has changed is the increased use of sweeping executive orders, justified by creative legal arguments. It’s something that both parties have been doing since at least the Obama administration, until now under Trump’s second term, the legal justification is just a fig leaf that looks really dubious in court.
But the blog post that kicked this all off goes further, claiming that laws don’t matter anymore:
Presidents, legislators, and courts have at times stretched, manipulated, and even disregarded constitutional rules, but they have nearly always recognizably operated within the Constitution’s basic structures. Even at the height of the Civil War or during World War II, Congress continued to function, elections continued to be held, the courts continued to issue rulings. This governing framework, and the fragile cohesion it supplied, is no longer intact—and in its place is a model of governance where conflicts are resolved not by reference to the law, but the threat of force by those who wield power.
It uses federal charges against the mayor of Newark as an example justifying this sweeping statement. As I wrote elsewhere, I don’t think that works. That dispute was settled lawfully, in a courtroom.
It’s true that Trump administration’s actions are often illegal (or arguably so). But, for example, Trump’s strong condemnation of court rulings he doesn’t like shows he cares about that legal fig leaf.
The courts can still rule executive orders illegal, starting with nationwide injunctions. The Supreme Court has a case before it where they’re talking about whether to change that rule.
This process is likely to convert unwritten norms into increasingly explicit court rulings about things nobody disputed before.
The point of the article is that whatever we had is lost forever. Someday things may be better than they are now, but never the same.
The point of the article is that whatever we had is lost forever. Someday things may be better than they are now, but never the same.
In the long run, Americans will face a choice about what kind of government they wish to create from the wreckage of the old. Whichever path emerges, it will require an understanding of political legitimacy that transcends partisan battles. Future generations will not return to the old constitutional framework, but they may yet build a new foundation that upholds the spirit of democracy, fundamental rights, and liberal principles.
Well, sure, no more than after other big changes like 9/11, the 2008 recession, or the pandemic. The past is a different country. But that's always true. It's not the same thing the "US...
Well, sure, no more than after other big changes like 9/11, the 2008 recession, or the pandemic. The past is a different country. But that's always true.
It's not the same thing the "US constitutional order" being unfixable. I don't know what that even means, but it sounds pretty dramatic.
I agree that, without context, the phrase is vague enough that it's dangerously close to meaninglessness (though what isn't meaningless without context?). But I think that these sentences from the...
It's not the same thing the "US constitutional order" being unfixable. I don't know what that even means, but it sounds pretty dramatic.
I agree that, without context, the phrase is vague enough that it's dangerously close to meaninglessness (though what isn't meaningless without context?). But I think that these sentences from the first section are enough to give the phrase some kind of sense.
And the big picture is we now have a federal executive, the most powerful official on the planet, acting on the firm belief that he is not constrained by the rule of law and determined to run roughshod over the other two branches of government.
At the end of the day, reasserting our constitutional foundations, and eventually reconstructing a stable system of law atop them, will depend on our ability to secure the imprimatur of raw popular sovereignty.
The "US constitutional order" here really means the rule of law. It's the basic principle that the government generally, and the Executive branch specifically, is constrained by laws that derive their legitimacy from we, the people. "The constitutional order is breaking down": in other words, the Executive branch is no longer constrained by the law or by the Constitution.
In reality, of course, they were never constrained by such things except insofar as they feared that there would be consequences for violating them. But voters have shown themselves unwilling to punish Presidents who fail to preserve, protect, and defend and defend the Constitution; and the Supreme Court has neutered any possibility of criminal prosecution after the fact; so they are right to not fear consequences. And we've passed a tipping point where, due to reduced fear of consequences, they can take steps to reduce the likelihood of consequences even further; e.g., targeted attacks on institutions that disseminate messages unfavorable to them (media, universities, government agencies) and destroying sources of income for their political opponents (universities, government agencies, law firms).
The worst-case scenario is that this results in a permanent shift in the status quo toward "competitive authoritarianism". The most likely outcome there is not a third Trump term, but rather the Presidency becoming a "Trump franchise", with a succession of Presidents blessed by Trump and by other Trump franchisees.
Even if we don't end up there, after this administration, it will be common knowledge that the President is not shackled the way he used to be. And given the chance to wield power, what politician who's managed to climb their way to the Presidency will say "no"?
I'm sure he'd take a third term if he thought he could get away with it. But the legal and normative hurdles to that are pretty substantial. Even the median voter knows that a third Presidential...
I'm sure he'd take a third term if he thought he could get away with it. But the legal and normative hurdles to that are pretty substantial. Even the median voter knows that a third Presidential term is flat-out illegal. And there's simply no legitimate way the Republicans could pass a Constitutional amendment to change that fact.
I've thought about ways that Trump could try to grab a third term, but nearly all of them involve a more-or-less complete breakdown of the legitimate political process, well beyond what we're currently experiencing. The prerequisites for it are bad enough that we should be worrying about them, not what comes after. (Also, the easiest paths to a third Trump term all involve Republicans winning in 2028, so we should be focused on that.)
On a side note, I think that it will be psychologically easier for Trump to let go of the Presidency if it's not because he lost, but simply because he got his turn, and now it's someone else's turn. (Though it is kind of sickening that this is the sort of thing we're hanging our hopes on.)
A lot of what has happened so far relied on the exploitation of flaws in the system by (these) bad faith actors, right? You can fix it if that means rebuilding without these flaws, but you could...
A lot of what has happened so far relied on the exploitation of flaws in the system by (these) bad faith actors, right? You can fix it if that means rebuilding without these flaws, but you could argue that such a system just won't be the same anymore. You must design it so it's not vulnerable to a repeat.
Possibly but in a very "Survivorship Bias" kind of way, a lot of the flaws aren't necessarily the problem. (Don't look for the holes, look for the planes that didn't survive to have holes to fix.)...
Possibly but in a very "Survivorship Bias" kind of way, a lot of the flaws aren't necessarily the problem. (Don't look for the holes, look for the planes that didn't survive to have holes to fix.)
Sure it might be a flaw that newly appointed directors of agencies that share a political bent with the Chief Executive might just put Executive Orders into immediate action and work fast so the inevitable legal challenges and injunctions happen there is already a fait accompli.
But the problem there is the entire political movement that spawned that mindset with the fervor to relentlessly pursue those goals. Which is significantly harder to design against.
Ok. The government was built in the premise that power corrupts. To counter that, three different branches were created, and the branches have the power to limit the actions of the others. This is...
Ok.
The government was built in the premise that power corrupts. To counter that, three different branches were created, and the branches have the power to limit the actions of the others. This is checks and balances.
The checks and balances don't work when there is collusion between corrupt members across branches to impede the checks and balances. The republican party is now a criminal organization that controls all three branches. It obtained the control in various corrupt ways and was not countered properly by the other major party even though many people saw it happen in slow motion.
The founders knew about political parties and warned against them, but didn't prohibit them. So a new system would need to deal with this. The founders probably didn't expect such wide ranging corruption or such a disinformed populace. So maybe something could be done about that. The founders probably didn't expect a slow decay of ethics over decades, with a congress captured by money. The founders probably didn't expect that elderly people would be elected over and over again until they die in office just before an important vote.
So maybe there could be some tweaks to deal with these and the many other things I haven't thought about.
We can't go back to this system that relies too much on honor and doesn't properly counter slow decay of the checks and balances.
Republican control over Congress is very tentative and they’re having trouble getting things done due to internal divisions. They can still do a lot of damage, though. (Is the Senate going to pass...
Republican control over Congress is very tentative and they’re having trouble getting things done due to internal divisions. They can still do a lot of damage, though. (Is the Senate going to pass a budget bill? Failure still seems possible.)
The Supreme Court is conservative but that doesn’t mean Trumpist. Even Supreme Court justices that Trump appointed rule against the administration sometimes. Too many 5-4 votes and bad decisions, though.
Changes to the Constitution are unlikely. Taking back power is going to have to be done the old-fashioned way, by winning elections. Trumpists will resist through various means, but some of Trump’s policies are unpopular enough that it seems doable.
After Trump is gone, hopefully more safeguards can be put in place, but that will be after the crisis is over. They aren’t inevitable, so I don’t see how your hopes for more security against the Trumpists add up to “we can’t go back.” Muddling through with the Constitution we have still seems like the most likely scenario.
Suppose you are playing Monopoly. Time and time again, your friend wins by stealing money from the bank. Let's also assume that you have no way to prevent that from happening -- your friend is too...
Suppose you are playing Monopoly. Time and time again, your friend wins by stealing money from the bank. Let's also assume that you have no way to prevent that from happening -- your friend is too powerful. His allies turn a blind eye, and his opponents are scared of retribution. After losing so many times, you may think that now it is your turn to win. You deserve it. But you can't win because your friend is cheating so much. The game is rigged. Perhaps you should cheat, too.
I read this thoughtful take (archive link) on the then-current situation, circa 2022. I don't think it's outdated, and it makes the point that the Constitution itself isn't the problem. [Added yet...
The U.S. has had oligarchic capture problems before. We need to change the way we're thinking about politics, as if they're somehow distinct from the economy. Reviews of the book here and here of the book explore the authors' thesis that democratic, egalitarian interpretation of Constitutional rights has been validated in history, far more than placing all the veto power in an unelected, conservative judiciary.
Ways to actualize the thesis are not discussed, but the flaws in our system aren't just from loopholes in the Constitution. Imbalances of power in the U.S. have been successfully (if incompletely) redressed before, and not just through fundamental changes in the founding document.
Archive: https://archive.is/bWXPM
The metaphor used is of something important that once broken, can’t be mended, but I’m not really seeing that. It might take many years, but why couldn’t it be fixed?
It’s no comfort for people whose lives were ruined, but it still seems plausible to me that the pendulum will swing back again. After another election, another president might end the lawlessness and undo a lot of what Trump has done. Congress passes new laws, the Supreme Court keeps making rulings, and the Trump administration fades into history.
Assuming we have another election
To some degree, sure. But the problem is not Trump; rather, the problem is the Republican party that has brought us into fascism. Considering that we are in a fascist oligarchy that has been rotting for three decades, while we might see some reprieve from the very worst, a party that is getting around half of the voting support in this country has gone fascist with support from most of the voters for that party, support by the oligarchs controlling our media, support from other countries like Russia working against us…
If Trump keeled over and died today, we are not much less fucked than we are right now. And in fact, mifgt be moreso because many people are realizing Trump is a problem, but not realizing that Republicans are, and so therefore would go back to their political sleep and allow the Republicans to continue further dismantling our democracy.
The pendulum requires room on either side of a central point. The Overton window, to throw that into the analogy, has moved things so far over that while we might get a swing toward the US center, we are firmly in the global right and if anything swings, will remain in the global right.
There is no level at which we have hope: Presidential, congressional, judcial, media, We the People. In all cases, fascism has taken hold and controls them.
My best hope — and it is truly bleak — is for some states with a sufficiently blue colour to decide to withdraw from the ruined democracy. Those states might then be able to overcome the oligarchal control with sufficient reforms — if they even recognize that is the root of the problem.
From the article
I agree with this paragraph. I am deeply scared for our future but I am not without hope. (I do feel for and fear for the people who are already being persecuted. None of this will be without significant cost).
Trump built a coalition of groups hoping to use him but he is quickly alienating some members of that group and also alienating influential institutions who might have preferred to stay out of politics. I am hoping for a 'non-physical' Brutus against Julius Caesar moment where the various influential players, including but not limited to the voting public, reject the fascism that republicans are trying to implement.
I could say more if I had more time but here are some factors that give me hope in spite of the fact that Republicans have the initiative and a slim majority.
At worst, I fear that Trump and MAGA take power like Cromwell or Napoleon did, but I doubt that it will be permanent. History doesn't stop. Change is inevitable.
What I hope for is that Trump and MAGA's grip on the reins of power face death by a thousand cuts.
The Republicans have been pushing us towards fascism for 45+ years.
They have, but Trump inserted himself and took over in a way that destroyed all subtlety and ambiguity.
Trump brought the John Birch society wing of the party to the forefront.
He also makes the cost and risk of authoritarian rule extremely obvious. He is capricious and vindictive and greedy and stupid. He demands flattery and bootlicking and financial tribute to him personally.
We haven't yet seen what the reaction will be to Trump 2.0 with no handlers and no guardrails.
They're still on schedule. Perhaps something else might happen, but that seems speculative.
Do you think Vance is popular? It seems like he might have a hard time getting reelected.
You say "fascism" a lot, but I'm not sure what that means in concrete terms. Everyday life doesn't seem to have changed much.
…are you kidding me?
I do not mean that in any offensive way, but seriously, are you kidding me?
Found this:
Characteristics of Fascism
Authoritarianism
Ultranationalism
Militarism and Violence
Anti-Communism and Anti-Liberalism
Controlled or State-Aligned Economy
Cult of Personality
Suppression of Dissent
Mass Mobilization and Propaganda
Mythic Past and Cultural Revival
Anti-Intellectualism
I'd love to know which of those points you do NOT currently see in the US right now, because I see every single one of them, to the point where I really feel like I do not need to link to news articles from this past week or month to back up the claims.
I don’t mean that it’s wrong to describe Trump as a fascist. I think Bret Devereaux made a good case for this.
Describing fascism is an unstoppable, impersonal force that has taken over everything and doomed us all is what I object to. In particular:
This doesn’t seem accurate, for reasons I went into here. It’s not accurate to say the Supreme Court or the Senate are controlled by Trumpists (there are Republican Senators who vote against him), so there is some hope there.
Also, despite all the people watching Fox News or worse, the media is certainly not controlled by Trumpists. For example, Washington Post reporters are doing their job every day, reporting on all the terrible things the Trump administration is doing. They seem to be doing a fine job of it, and apparently Bezos hasn’t interfered with that, like he did on the editorial side. So it hardly seems hopeless?
But I’m worried about the declining influence of newspapers, not whether they do their job. All this terrible stuff that’s reported is making Trump unpopular, but not as much as it should.
Everything will be fine until you are led into the gas chamber and discover that all the thinking that everything was fine while everyone else was led to the gas chamber would not affect you. And then it will be rather too late.
You cannot convince some people about danger until they are in the middle of it themselves, when it is too late.
Alas, that is a good part of the problem: Those who refuse to see the serious nature of the problems, or those who don't even care to educate themselves.
This is pretty hyperbolic. There's a lot of difference between thinking the Trump administration is a serious problem (yes, it's a serious problem!) and thinking we're all doomed.
We could discuss disaster preparations if you want. What are you suggesting? Passport is current, but I have no current plans to leave the country. How about you?
It's.
Not.
Just.
The.
Trump.
Administration.
It's hyperbolic when you aren't one of the people who's affected. I'm sure the average German gentile would've thought the gas chambers were hyperbole too. When my trans friends (many of whom, unlike you, can't renew their passports because they'll be confiscated) start getting forced off their HRT and imprisoned, I'm sure your daily life will remain about as affected as it is today. And I'm sure you'll find some excuse why that means it isn't that bad.
No, I didn’t say that and don’t believe it. Don’t make up positions about trans people and attribute them to me.
Everyday life doesn't change for the people not targeted by fascist tides, that's a key factor in the dynamics of the phenomenon. The ingroup is to be preserved and protected from harm, and, in order to do so, the outgroups are picked (by convenience) to isolate the damage of the unsustainable need for the fascist party to convince itself it is doing good. "Line goes up [points to economy], except for the bad lines, which are naturally bad, we're just not catering to the waylaid sentiments of bleeding hearts and the cowardly lies from the bad people."
If you felt like things were getting worse, you might feel like you owe it to yourself to try and change things. You are normal, and normal means typical, right? So if things seem normal to you, a normal person, they must be within the bounds of okay!
Fascism is a slow decay that we in the US have been acclimatizing to since the 60s, at least. Please, I am asking you, as someone who always values your contributions here, to read into antifascist research and theory. A lot of time has been put into mapping these systems, and this comment comes across not-unlike someone arguing that they took econ 101, of course they know better than the Federal Reserve chair.
This is once again where I point out that your everyday life perhaps hasn't changed. In our previous conversation on this you acknowledged life hadn't changed for you and you assumed you weren't alone in that. As discussed then, this is literally the definition of privilege. You could disagree if we are in or headed towards facism but you keep insisting that daily life isn't impacted.
We keep telling you it is. We have multiple US citizens being held by ICE, with the agency claiming those people "admitted" to being here illegally. We have people sent to death camps abroad for false reasons. We have people deported to foreign countries they hold no relationship to. The daily lives of people who are being targeted, have been changed - looking over your shoulder, carrying your papers, writing your lawyer's phone number on your arm in sharpie, just in case something happens, all of it is exhausting.
And what about the fear that it isn't really ICE and it's just a lynching in modern form? There are people pretending to be ICE harassing and assaulting immigrants.
Have you had real conversations with immigrants about this? Because we literally had to make a plan for if ICE showed up to come for our students or to come for our coworkers.
We have a woman dead on life support because the law wouldn't let them save her lest they abort a fetus, and now despite the inevitable death of the fetus they won't let the woman die now either. Approximately 3 million people are pregnant at any given time. You don't think there's any impact on their life from the draconian laws that have been passed? From the fear of dying by order of the state if they get sick? From the stress and cost of having to travel hundreds of miles to get an abortion? Have you talked to women in your life about this? It doesn't impact everyone equally, but I don't know any who look at Adriana Smith and think she should have died and left her son without his mother to prevent risk to the fetus.
And coming down the pipe? . Medicaid cuts could literally kill my partner and many others. Cuts to disability or higher ed could leave us homeless as will higher bills for many. Trans folks will be at risk of dying with the loss of funding for transition care. The continued stressors of all of that are actively pushing people to hopelessness and suicidality. And our health care and mental health care professionals are still burnt out from COVID, they can only bear so much more death. Theyre advocating for the removal of habeus corpus. If these don't affect you, it's because you're lucky, not because your experience is universal.
I swear, if you have ever promised yourself you would speak up and step in if you saw this sort of thing happening - this is still the time. How many more steps down this road will it take before things are bad enough for you?
You're using this as an opportunity to accuse me of being personally callous again, which is quite tiresome and off-topic, and I wish you'd stop.
When I said the everyday life goes on, I also didn't acknowledge that 600,000 Americans die of cancer every year. But that's not a contradiction - however tragic it is for the people involved, death is part of everyday life.
Yes, there are so many new terrible things going on, or threatened, that it can be hard to keep track. But the article is not about that. It's alleging some kind of large-scale unrecoverable political change, and that's a really high bar.
Presidential elections have happened on schedule for over 200 years, despite events like the Civil War and World War II. The US put 120,000 Japanese in internment camps, which was a terrible injustice, but not the end of democracy. For a more recent event, over a million Americans died in the Pandemic. Perhaps you knew someone who died? And yet, despite all that tragedy, for the survivors, which is most of us, life went on.
Suspending habeas corpus would be a terrible injustice, but isn't going to end democracy either. Did you know that Lincoln and FDR actually did it?
No I'm begging you to stop minimizing what is happening in your discussions here and to take action in the real world. I am hoping you will do so. If I accuse you of callousness it will not be indirectly through pleas for you to see what is happening and stop questioning whether it is. I promise I'd be explicit.
And yes I'm aware habeus corpus was suspended, during times of Invasion or Rebellion as outlined in the constitution, and always with complaint and with the supreme court getting involved. It wasn't even revoked on the mainland when we put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. If the executive branch is no longer listening to the court as they keep arguing they don't have to, them how will an unconstitutional suspension of the writ end? (Those weren't the only times it's been revoked either. Just the two most notable.) I'd have been begging people to speak up then too.
The only way it compares to the pandemic is that at least at the beginning of COVID we all acted to attempt to address it rather than arguing it wasn't real. (Or at least those who argued as such then, were looked down on for it. That changed over time) We supported the healthcare workers and, in my case, outreached to students in quarantine and remaining on campus because they had no where to go and monitor their physical and mental health. We, collectively, acted. And we're still scarred by it as a population, medically and mental health-wise.
If the topic were cancer and someone was acting like it was not a threat to public health, I'd be providing them with examples and begging them to listen to experts too.
I'm asking for and advocating for the same now. Action. Before a million people die of this particular cancer.
Once again I'm not calling you callous, I'm asking you to use your privilege to help rather than minimize what is happening in the face of multiple people explaining why it is.
ETA: I do think it's telling that the only post you replied to was the one you felt you could complain about it being mean and ignored all the rest. I wasn't the first or last response to you. I don't know whether you don't want to engage with it or something else, but given that you seem to respond I'll keep asking you to act.
It was the first one I saw and I went to bed. There’s a lot more here than I can adequately reply to.
It means Trump chucked the Newark mayor in jail over trumped-up charges, and the rule of law is a less-useful predictor of the executive's actions than an understanding of politics. Hell, we aren't even discussing when Trump ruled that anyone who took a Biden climate grant is now guilty of fraud (another example of blatantly legally incorrect methods of jailing political enemies).
Compare this to Alexei Navalny: jailed on trumped-up bullshit and everyone knows it. It didn't affect most Russians' day-to-day lives, because of course it wouldn't - disrupting peoples' lives over politics is politically dangerous.
And FWIW, Putin also hosts elections. They're rigged and everyone knows it, but it's not clear entirely how rigged they are (and part of the legitimacy of the govt is that everyone knows/thinks "well the election wasn't that rigged, and Putin would have won anyway!). The US 2024 election was also rigged (note that I'm not saying Trump would have lost if the election wasn't rigged), it's not that hard to leap from a US-2024 system to the Russian system.
And then they released the mayor when it was shown clearly he was invited in (proving it was bullshit intimidation from jump) and charged a New Jersey Congresswoman with assault instead.
Rinse, repeat.
There are important differences. Ras Baraka, the Newark mayor, was arrested for trespassing because he chose that. (They told him that they would arrest him, and he chose to stay.) He was released a few days later after charges were dropped and a judge dismissed them with prejudice. This is part of a tradition of civil disobedience. The arrest was wrong, but the justice system worked in the end.
Alexei Navalny was poisoned and later died in jail.
Your comparison with Russia is a false equivalence.
I think what you've been saying is that nothing will convince you of the situation we're claiming, short of your personal everyday life changing. No further argument is needed. I'm not accusing you of lacking empathy, but your circle of care is eclipsed by a need to be correct. Godspeed.
It’s been broken for a good while now, it just took this long for the cracks to spread through the foundation. Sure it could be “fixed” but the “fix” would need to be a pretty dramatic change to some pretty fundamental structural elements. Primarily the rural malapportionment problem we have makes it basically impossible to pursue needed economic or political reforms. And we have an approach to “freedom of speech” that permits absurdities like unlimited anonymous money on political campaigns and unregulated fire hoses of lies, slander, and disinformation counting as “protected speech.”
Because the system broken wasn't written laws, it was unwritten laws and norms. Those norms only existed essentially due to mutual agreement not to use them, and the lack of realization that you could just break them and there's nothing anyone could do. In essence, the meta has changed.
It's like how in CSGO the codguns were overpowered for 5+ years but the pros didn't use them because they thought they were underpowered, and when Valve buffed the codguns everyone started considering the codguns overpowered and it wasn't enough to just revert the buff, because the buff didn't cause the overpoweredness, it only revealed it. And thus Valve had to outright nerf codguns after reverting the buff.
We can't go back to the (2000s?) because nobody will forget the current political meta of calling media partisan if they criticize you, because casual observers can't tell if it's the media bullshitting or the politician bullshitting. We can try to patch it, but that's just building a new meta and the new rules will result in new exploits and potentially damage old tactics.
Every unwritten rule will need to be written, and every writing of a new rule will change the meta.
And god forbid anyone try to fix old problems with the constitution while they're at it.
I like your video game analogy for describing how norms have changed.
Some norms are actually written down, but they also can be changed easily. An example would be Senate rules, which don’t change that often, but could be changed if the party in control of the Senate chose.
One example of how the meta has changed is the increased use of sweeping executive orders, justified by creative legal arguments. It’s something that both parties have been doing since at least the Obama administration, until now under Trump’s second term, the legal justification is just a fig leaf that looks really dubious in court.
But the blog post that kicked this all off goes further, claiming that laws don’t matter anymore:
It uses federal charges against the mayor of Newark as an example justifying this sweeping statement. As I wrote elsewhere, I don’t think that works. That dispute was settled lawfully, in a courtroom.
It’s true that Trump administration’s actions are often illegal (or arguably so). But, for example, Trump’s strong condemnation of court rulings he doesn’t like shows he cares about that legal fig leaf.
The courts can still rule executive orders illegal, starting with nationwide injunctions. The Supreme Court has a case before it where they’re talking about whether to change that rule.
This process is likely to convert unwritten norms into increasingly explicit court rulings about things nobody disputed before.
The point of the article is that whatever we had is lost forever. Someday things may be better than they are now, but never the same.
Yes, he's asserting that, but why should that be the case?
Why not?
Panta rhei. Change is the general way of things, and once something is gone, it never comes back, at least not exactly the way it was.
Well, sure, no more than after other big changes like 9/11, the 2008 recession, or the pandemic. The past is a different country. But that's always true.
It's not the same thing the "US constitutional order" being unfixable. I don't know what that even means, but it sounds pretty dramatic.
I agree that, without context, the phrase is vague enough that it's dangerously close to meaninglessness (though what isn't meaningless without context?). But I think that these sentences from the first section are enough to give the phrase some kind of sense.
The "US constitutional order" here really means the rule of law. It's the basic principle that the government generally, and the Executive branch specifically, is constrained by laws that derive their legitimacy from we, the people. "The constitutional order is breaking down": in other words, the Executive branch is no longer constrained by the law or by the Constitution.
In reality, of course, they were never constrained by such things except insofar as they feared that there would be consequences for violating them. But voters have shown themselves unwilling to punish Presidents who fail to preserve, protect, and defend and defend the Constitution; and the Supreme Court has neutered any possibility of criminal prosecution after the fact; so they are right to not fear consequences. And we've passed a tipping point where, due to reduced fear of consequences, they can take steps to reduce the likelihood of consequences even further; e.g., targeted attacks on institutions that disseminate messages unfavorable to them (media, universities, government agencies) and destroying sources of income for their political opponents (universities, government agencies, law firms).
The worst-case scenario is that this results in a permanent shift in the status quo toward "competitive authoritarianism". The most likely outcome there is not a third Trump term, but rather the Presidency becoming a "Trump franchise", with a succession of Presidents blessed by Trump and by other Trump franchisees.
Even if we don't end up there, after this administration, it will be common knowledge that the President is not shackled the way he used to be. And given the chance to wield power, what politician who's managed to climb their way to the Presidency will say "no"?
Do you really think it's in Trump's character to step back in favor of a successor before he dies?
I'm sure he'd take a third term if he thought he could get away with it. But the legal and normative hurdles to that are pretty substantial. Even the median voter knows that a third Presidential term is flat-out illegal. And there's simply no legitimate way the Republicans could pass a Constitutional amendment to change that fact.
I've thought about ways that Trump could try to grab a third term, but nearly all of them involve a more-or-less complete breakdown of the legitimate political process, well beyond what we're currently experiencing. The prerequisites for it are bad enough that we should be worrying about them, not what comes after. (Also, the easiest paths to a third Trump term all involve Republicans winning in 2028, so we should be focused on that.)
On a side note, I think that it will be psychologically easier for Trump to let go of the Presidency if it's not because he lost, but simply because he got his turn, and now it's someone else's turn. (Though it is kind of sickening that this is the sort of thing we're hanging our hopes on.)
A lot of what has happened so far relied on the exploitation of flaws in the system by (these) bad faith actors, right? You can fix it if that means rebuilding without these flaws, but you could argue that such a system just won't be the same anymore. You must design it so it's not vulnerable to a repeat.
Possibly but in a very "Survivorship Bias" kind of way, a lot of the flaws aren't necessarily the problem. (Don't look for the holes, look for the planes that didn't survive to have holes to fix.)
Sure it might be a flaw that newly appointed directors of agencies that share a political bent with the Chief Executive might just put Executive Orders into immediate action and work fast so the inevitable legal challenges and injunctions happen there is already a fait accompli.
But the problem there is the entire political movement that spawned that mindset with the fervor to relentlessly pursue those goals. Which is significantly harder to design against.
Ideally, but I don't think it's strictly necessary for muddling through? Maybe it would be clearer if there were a specific example.
Ok.
The government was built in the premise that power corrupts. To counter that, three different branches were created, and the branches have the power to limit the actions of the others. This is checks and balances.
The checks and balances don't work when there is collusion between corrupt members across branches to impede the checks and balances. The republican party is now a criminal organization that controls all three branches. It obtained the control in various corrupt ways and was not countered properly by the other major party even though many people saw it happen in slow motion.
The founders knew about political parties and warned against them, but didn't prohibit them. So a new system would need to deal with this. The founders probably didn't expect such wide ranging corruption or such a disinformed populace. So maybe something could be done about that. The founders probably didn't expect a slow decay of ethics over decades, with a congress captured by money. The founders probably didn't expect that elderly people would be elected over and over again until they die in office just before an important vote.
So maybe there could be some tweaks to deal with these and the many other things I haven't thought about.
We can't go back to this system that relies too much on honor and doesn't properly counter slow decay of the checks and balances.
Republican control over Congress is very tentative and they’re having trouble getting things done due to internal divisions. They can still do a lot of damage, though. (Is the Senate going to pass a budget bill? Failure still seems possible.)
The Supreme Court is conservative but that doesn’t mean Trumpist. Even Supreme Court justices that Trump appointed rule against the administration sometimes. Too many 5-4 votes and bad decisions, though.
Changes to the Constitution are unlikely. Taking back power is going to have to be done the old-fashioned way, by winning elections. Trumpists will resist through various means, but some of Trump’s policies are unpopular enough that it seems doable.
After Trump is gone, hopefully more safeguards can be put in place, but that will be after the crisis is over. They aren’t inevitable, so I don’t see how your hopes for more security against the Trumpists add up to “we can’t go back.” Muddling through with the Constitution we have still seems like the most likely scenario.
Suppose you are playing Monopoly. Time and time again, your friend wins by stealing money from the bank. Let's also assume that you have no way to prevent that from happening -- your friend is too powerful. His allies turn a blind eye, and his opponents are scared of retribution. After losing so many times, you may think that now it is your turn to win. You deserve it. But you can't win because your friend is cheating so much. The game is rigged. Perhaps you should cheat, too.
I read this thoughtful take (archive link) on the then-current situation, circa 2022. I don't think it's outdated, and it makes the point that the Constitution itself isn't the problem. [Added yet another book to Reading Mountain - the basis for this article, The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution:
Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy.]
The U.S. has had oligarchic capture problems before. We need to change the way we're thinking about politics, as if they're somehow distinct from the economy. Reviews of the book here and here of the book explore the authors' thesis that democratic, egalitarian interpretation of Constitutional rights has been validated in history, far more than placing all the veto power in an unelected, conservative judiciary.
Ways to actualize the thesis are not discussed, but the flaws in our system aren't just from loopholes in the Constitution. Imbalances of power in the U.S. have been successfully (if incompletely) redressed before, and not just through fundamental changes in the founding document.