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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.
I know a lot of people — including plenty on the Right — who would deny it, because they'd argue that the United States is its form of government. "Proposition nation" and all that. America is the Constitution; America is the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Wherever those ideals exist, there is America. Whoever believes in those ideals, they are the American People. If maintaining "all procedures and checks and balances" means economic collapse, so be it. If it means entire replacing the "legacy" population with a newly imported one, so be it. If the system of government is at odds with the people living under it, then too bad for the people. The Constitution cannot fail, it can only be failed. "America" the ideal is perfect (some even argue the Founders were divinely-inspired when they wrote the Constitution).
Whether you think "America is the Constitution" or not, that the US is the Constitution is obvious - the United States of America is literally a legal person created by the Constitution, and the natural persons who act in its name are required to swear oaths to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. If the land between Mexico and Canada has a sufficiently different form of government in 2030, it will still be America as a geographical fact, but it won't meaningfully be the USA.
If the change in government is a MAGA autogolpe, is more likely than not that the new government will use the legal identity (including the name, symbols, and paper Constitution) of the USA as a skinsuit in the same way that the Principiate used the Roman Republic as a skinsuit, or the current non-executive ceremonial Head of State of the UK uses the title, formal powers, and regalia of Charles II as a skinsuit. But the people who call it the USA will be lying.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
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