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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   30260 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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Trump v. United States, the presidential immunity opinion, dropped this morning. In broad strokes it goes like this:

1. For those acts that are pursuant to the President's "conclusive and preclusive" authority there is absolute immunity.

2. For those acts which are official acts by the President but not covered by (1) there is a presumption of immunity that can only be overcome by showing the prosecution would pose no "dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch."

3. For those acts which are unofficial there is no immunity.

4. Those acts for which the President has immunity cannot be used as evidence to demonstrate any element of a crime for which the President would not have immunity.

I think it's just incredible that the six justices in the majority looked at the Navy-SEALs-assassinate-a-rival hypothetical and went "yep, sounds right, no liability." Roberts' majority opinion even mentions the President's orders to the armed forces as one of the things that falls under (1).

I think the way is clear. Biden orders Trump, the six justices in the majority, and let's say the next 2-3 top Republican candidates whacked (just for safety). He probably gets impeached and removed but can't go to jail (thanks SCOTUS!) Harris takes over as President and I think it's unlikely she would also get impeached. Dems don't want to hand the presidency to Mike Johnson. That gives Harris plenty of time to stack the court. Republican convention in disarray due to the deaths of their prominent candidates. Biden obviously out, he'd be ineligible anyway if impeached and removed. Dems probably dump Harris to create a clean break with Biden admin, clearing the way for Whitmer/Newsom/Pritzker/whoever.

The above is fan fiction, of course.

This ruling is obviously correct. This is why impeachment and elections exist. If Biden ordered Trump whacked, the Democrats would face electoral ruin. If people continued to vote for Biden after… that’s democracy.

Why stop there? Just order the guy after Trump whacked, then the next guy after that… Does it even matter if a large number of people refrain from voting Biden afterwards if he’s the only option left?

I think that after the first few murders Biden's own House and Senate Democrats would join with the Republicans and vote to impeach him. Whatever you think about the Democrats, most of them would be extremely uncomfortable living in a dictatorship ruled by fear and tyranny.

Whatever you think about the Democrats, most of them would be extremely uncomfortable living in a dictatorship ruled by fear and tyranny.

I think that's definitely true. But I also think that if someone were to become dictator, they wouldn't exercise power against their enemies quite so nakedly. Any dictator worth his salt is going to harp on how the people he killed were exceptional threats to the Republic, who undermine the foundations of our democracy, etc. And I think people (of either side) would eat it right up, given the current political climate.

There's a limit to how many people you can brand as enemies of the Republic. If you don't get rid of every single Republican candidate in every single competitive state then your supporters are going to lose their re-election campaigns in the face of the backlash from your massively unpopular campaign of state-sanctioned murder. Either you kill too many and your supporters turn on you for going too far or you don't kill enough and your supporters turn on you for fucking over their re-election campaigns.

There's a reason that the standard practice is to abolish free elections and purge political opponents simultaneously. If you don't do both at the same time then you get kicked out in short order. And I don't think this one Supreme Court ruling all by itself is enough to overthrow the whole American democracy.

There's a limit to how many people you can brand as enemies of the Republic.

Indeed there is. Robespierre found that limit. Unfortunately, it's much higher than zero.

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