[electrondood]

No, Trump's administration is straight up criminal.

The guy has made ~3500 stock trades in the last 3 months, and there's a pattern of him publicly pumping stock by mentioning a company in a tweet or public statement.

The problem is, the framers of the Constitution believed the American people would never elect someone so criminal and unfit, so the President is exempt from many criminal laws, including those that would stop this.

[technothrasher]

> the framers of the Constitution believed the American people would never elect someone so criminal and unfit

The framers of the Constitution were looking at a different world, where there was not the instant communication and sense of one "America" that we have. They figured that, while attempts at corruption were inevitable, the different states would protect themselves by not allowing representatives from another state to succeed at any self-serving corruption. But the rise of national party instead of state as primary political identity (which Washington warned about), and the huge propaganda pipe that is the internet, have destroyed the (supposed) protection of many individual state identities.

[yardie]

The framers separated the branches so the legislative, executive, and judicial balance one another. What they didn't account for was all 3 being corrupted at the same time. I've been telling friends we really don't have a defense from this. Even if we held another election the powers that be can run the same playbook again. I'm convinced the US will cease to exist as a democracy in the next 10-15 years.

[krapp]

The intended defense is that we all march on Washington armed to the teeth and shoot dead every last politician standing and start over.

Of course that made a lot more sense in the 18th century than it does in the 21st, we tend to view states that routinely engage in violent coups as failures, and the man who famously said of Shay's Rebellion that "the tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots" ran from Monticello like a coward when the British showed up and left its defense to his slaves.

But the last line of defense is supposed to be "we just kill them all." What the founders didn't anticipate was that the militias would side with the tyrants, or that society and its morals would advance to the point where political violence was no longer seen as a noble act except by extremists.

[jfengel]

The framers also proceeded to separate the legislative branch into two pieces, substantially hamstringing its ability to serve as a check on the other two branches.

They may not have been able to foresee the sheer levels of corruption we have today, but they should have been able to see that in trying to keep Congress from becoming too powerful, they made it too weak to do its job. The fact that Congress has hundreds of members, plus the veto in the executive branch, plus the Supreme Court being able to overturn legislation, was plenty to keep it in line.

It was inevitable that the executive branch would end up taking over a lot of their functions.

[amanaplanacanal]

There was also the assumption that Congress would do something.

Nixon resigned when he was told that he would likely be impeached. Unfortunately the current Republicans in Congress are completely spineless.

[throw0101c]

> There was also the assumption that Congress would do something.

“Checks and balances.”

More like cheques and (bank) balances.

[jimt1234]

My Boomer mother tells me about the Nixon years. Crazy, but it sounds like some sort of Fantasy World. She says that, originally, Republicans defended Nixon, mostly through attempts to deflect. However, the tapes is what forced Republicans to turn on Nixon. She said it was a combination of doing what's right and self-preservation. She said that back in the Fantasy World days, prosecutors and the courts weren't bound by Party loyalty, and there was chatter of prosecutors going after other Republicans, so they basically just laid it all on Nixon and played dumb.

[arvid-lind]

they're not really spineless, they're fully on board with this. This is how they hammer through everything they've been working for, the rest of us be damned.

[amanaplanacanal]

I think it depends on the individual. There are plenty who earlier warned about how terrible Trump was, then once he was elected jumped on the bandwagon.

[bigbadfeline]

> I think it depends on the individual... plenty who earlier warned about how terrible Trump was, then... jumped on the bandwagon.

That kind of says the opposite - for the vast majority of individuals, incentives matter more than their innate convictions (and we're losing those at a fast rate, thanks to modern education and entertainment...)