by Daniel Barge
Back in high school, we were always assured that the American system of government was the most stable and enduring because of its wonderful system of "checks and balances" and its, ahem, "separation of powers."
The executive was held in check by the legislature and the judiciary, and vice versa between the three. In fact, the sheer, mechanical brilliance (and teachability) of this system was used to justify the sordid act of rebellion by which the original 13 colonies turned on their mother country in the middle of a global struggle with France, Spain, and Holland, kicked of by a paltry and quite justifiable tax on tea.
The US Constitution was part system for running the new sprawling federal state and part justification for the gross act of ingratitude against the Mother Country, which had spilled copious amounts of blood and treasure to stop its children being strangled in their cradle by the French Empire and its Indian allies.
In short, the US Constitution was supposed to be so utterly fantastic that, hey, why wouldn't you have a little treachery or revolution to bring about such a shining light of rational democracy?
However, it increasingly looks like the whole thing was a fraud and a mirage all along, now that the latest occupier of the "executive branch" Donald Trump has figured out how easy it is to intimidate and bully the individual members of the other two branches and to join up the "separation of powers."
Sure, Donald Trump will have his moment in the sun and then, one way or another, be ejected from the stage, but his legacy will live on.
This will be the very clear realisation that the judiciary can be easily cajoled and intimidated, or rigged by appointing more judges, and that the President's own party can whipped into slavish obedience in the legislature through "primarying" the hollow and vacuous careerists who make up the Senate and Congress.
All the President really needs to do in order to have supreme, kingly power is to be elected by millions of easily manipulated low-information voters, and, really, in America, what that simply boils down to is getting the biggest donations from the people who matter, namely the oligarchs.
Not every future President will have the sheer arrogance and ruthlessness to pull this off like the "punished" Donald Trump is doing now, but it will only take one or two more with the gutter morals of a Trump or an Orban before the opposition is reduced, as it is in Russia, to a clown show to legitimise the dictator.
The only real solution for this would be to greatly reduce the powers of the executive branch, or to make the executive branch more of a collective instead of a single corrupting and ruthless individual.
However, it increasingly looks like the whole thing was a fraud and a mirage all along, now that the latest occupier of the "executive branch" Donald Trump has figured out how easy it is to intimidate and bully the individual members of the other two branches and to join up the "separation of powers."
Sure, Donald Trump will have his moment in the sun and then, one way or another, be ejected from the stage, but his legacy will live on.
This will be the very clear realisation that the judiciary can be easily cajoled and intimidated, or rigged by appointing more judges, and that the President's own party can whipped into slavish obedience in the legislature through "primarying" the hollow and vacuous careerists who make up the Senate and Congress.
All the President really needs to do in order to have supreme, kingly power is to be elected by millions of easily manipulated low-information voters, and, really, in America, what that simply boils down to is getting the biggest donations from the people who matter, namely the oligarchs.
Not every future President will have the sheer arrogance and ruthlessness to pull this off like the "punished" Donald Trump is doing now, but it will only take one or two more with the gutter morals of a Trump or an Orban before the opposition is reduced, as it is in Russia, to a clown show to legitimise the dictator.
The only real solution for this would be to greatly reduce the powers of the executive branch, or to make the executive branch more of a collective instead of a single corrupting and ruthless individual.
A "Praesidium of the United States", rather than a President. The Swiss system works perfectly well, but that's in large part due to the Swiss themselves. Americans are too dysgenic to form a functional republic.
ReplyDeleteThe US should go back to its original 13 states while keeping a largely wasp population. The rest can form the "Confederate Hillybillies of MAGA".