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I've been thinking about why some people are terrified of Trump while others, like me, are more indifferent. I mostly tune out Trump news because I assume much of it involves scare tactics or misleading framing by his detractors. When my wife brings up concerns about his supposedly authoritarian actions, my general response is that if what he's doing is illegal, the governmental process will handle it - and if it's legal, then that's how the system is supposed to work. I have faith that our institutions have the checks and balances to deal with any presidential overreach appropriately.
This reminded me of a mirror situation during 2020-2021 with the BLM movement, where our positions were reversed. I was deeply concerned about social media mobs pressuring corporations, governments, and individuals to conform under threat of job loss, boycotts, and riots, while my wife thought these social pressures were justified and would naturally self-correct if they went too far. The key difference I see is that the government has built-in checks and balances designed to prevent abuse of power, while social movements and mob pressure operate without those same institutional restraints. It seems like we each trust different institutional mechanisms, but I can't help but think that formal governmental processes with built-in restraints are more reliable than grassroots social pressure that operates without those same safeguards. Furthermore, the media seems incentivized to amplify fear about Trump but not about grassroots social movements - Trump generates clicks and outrage regardless of which side you're on, while criticizing social movements risks alienating the platforms' own user base and advertiser-friendly demographics.
There needs to be a differentiation between the regime and then nation. The country can continue on with a new regime, the regime can't survive without the nation. Lots of countries have changed regime. The US can survive with a different form of government.
The US needs to avoid going bankrupt. It needs to avoid being over-run by migrants. The US should worry less about institutional restraints and realize that the US needs to reform radically to survive. The checks and balances arguments are like people in Russia in 1912 and France in 1785 talking about the need to respect the old ways. If France had been able to overcome people worrying about formal procedures in 1785 they could very well have avoided the revolution.
The US won't be able to solve its debt crisis if all procedures and checks and balances have to be followed.
Counter-argument to that is the U.S. has weathered a good number of major crises over the years without drastically changing its system of government, or at least, not permanently doing so. Civil War was obviously very bad, but things recovered and the nation got stronger over the next 50 years.
I'd agree that stuff like Wickard v. Filburn and the 19th Amendment were certain inflection points. Honestly, though, I don't think political crises are what will kill the current setup, it'll have to be something larger, and probably external in nature.
Perhaps the question is whether, if the crisis becomes deep enough, the appropriate people will actually decide to invoke the tools that the Constitution has built in or, as you suggest, chuck out procedures and checks and balances to save the Republic, even at the cost of the Republic.
(emphasis in the original)
Hard disagree; the Progressive era and, especially, FDR’s presidency ratcheted up the scope of federal government intervention in everyday life, with tortured readings of the Constitution (courtesy of the Supreme Court) providing only the tiniest fig leaf over what was really going on: a radical break with the Constitution as it had previously been understood, and its replacement by a qualitatively different system of government—one in which the unelected federal bureaucracy had theretofore unimaginable powers to regulate all manner of activity.
I’m not saying that this was good or bad, necessary or unnecessary, historically inevitable or historically contingent. All I’m saying is that it happened, and the Republic has never been the same since.
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