T. Greg Doucette: I see all these posts being mad that Rs on the Supreme Court imbued the R ex-President with the divine right of kings But no one talks about how *courteous* John Roberts is: we all now get to experience living under a god-emperor, and didn't even have to relocate for the privilege Courteous af

I see all these posts being mad that Rs on the Supreme Court imbued the R ex-President with the divine right of kings But no one talks about how *courteous* John Roberts is: we all now get to experience living under a god-emperor, and didn't even have to relocate for the privilege Courteous af

Really neat that our democracy worked to prevent dictators up until we came into contact with one.

Well, we did manage to avoid Huey Long, right around the time when dictators were very fashionable in industrialized/industrializing countries

To be fair we didn’t avoid him so much as he didn’t avoid a few bullets.

Whatever it takes. Maybe someone had a single-use time machine and had a choice among Hitler, Stalin, and Long. That they chose Huey shows just how awful he was in the timeline we didn't experience. I will not be entertaining criticism of my reasoning.

Just keep your fireworks factory safe by never hiring any smokers. No further safety measures needed.

"I want to live in Europe" /monkey's paw finger curls

So how long until we see Seal Team 6 create some opening for new justices?

Not soon enough

It really feels like a pandoras box was opened.

Agreed. There's very little *legally* preventing an outright dictatorship at this point

I mean, there is the impeachment clau--AHAHAHA sorry, had to try and get that out with a straight face, I'm better now

Is it even relevant? I can't think of any dictatorship in history - when the dictator had proper support - which was prevented by legal means.

I think it matters from a friction standpoint When you have laws / precedent / norms constraining executive action, it delays full dictatorship juuust enough that pro-democratic forces can re-assert control. That acts as a deterrent, since would-be enablers of dictators could end up in prison 1/

When you remove those impediments, everything moves faster And being able to get to dictatorship quickly reduces risks to enablers, making them numerically more likely and thus more helpful to cement autocracy That's what we're getting in 2025+ 2/2

I respectfully disagree; Hitler is a good example here. He tried once - and ended up in prison - then he learned and changed the strategy - and succeeded. His success was not caused by changes in legal landscape, just changed strategy.

Exactly, and with these precedents I suspect it wouldn’t take long to have a Night of the Long Knives situation.

Many attempts are deterred by the fact of its illegality. The fact that a coup becomes an all or nothing moment. If it’s not illegal, there’s no risk in trying. Maybe it takes 3 bites at the apple, but if no one puts you down after the first bite, that’s fine

A dictatorship is almost never a "moment", its a slow but sure power consolidation. Again, Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Xi etc.

Doesn't that also give the current Pres the right of kings as well? So in consultation with his AG, cannot guarantee November elections will be free and fair, as Trump points out, so lets delay them another 4 years. Immunity!!

The thing about having a Supreme Court that treats everything as Calvinball is that they'd just change the rules in that case

what if they were the first targets

.... and Trump already has a golden throne.

A foreign god-emperor? Not on my watch!

I chuckle at the "Biden could Seal Team 6 TFG LOL" takes, because *if* that would happen, the courts (any and all of them) would be jumping at the change to be like "not like that".

Not if they value their health.

Clean and well spoken, too.

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