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Former Trump lawyer: ‘The Constitution is not adequate to deal with a president as evil as Trump’ (www.ms.now)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/trump_watch@lemmy.world
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[–] 49 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (14 children)

The founding fathers couldn't fathom the utter deplorable evil that Trump and his crew of crazy conservatives became, but neither did we.

Like if you told me the host of the apprentice was going to form a modern reincarnation of the Nazi party, I would have asked what drugs you were on so I could take them and could understand your insane idea.

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  • [–] 42 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    I think the founding fathers couldn't fathom how cowardly elected officials would be faced with such a corrupt president.

    Trump should have been found guilty the two times he was impeached during his first term.

    And the founding fathers also probably couldn't fathom how stupid the American people would be to vote twice for the same corrupt man who was impeached twice!!!!!

    Like shit... I don't think anyone in the world believed it when Trump won again. Like I still can't believe Americans voted for him again...

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  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Part of what they talked about was how essential it was to have good education, good communication, and a vigorous free press. Just having people vote doesn't do shit. Even back then, they understood that. The people have to know what they're doing. Things like Trump and the poorly educated who vote for him in large numbers were a known failure mode of democratic systems, even back then. They actually tried to design in features to make sure that only "educated" "responsible" people could vote as a check against it, although, that had its own problems.

    They also were somewhat terrified of political parties and the opportunities for corruption and self-interest they created. A lot of the sadness of the system they set up is that it tended to collapse into a binary system with each "team" operated by a party, because good modern voting technology was something they were not yet aware of. Sadly. Read George Washington's writing on political parties sometime, it seems incredibly prescient if you look at the rot of the late 20th century that set the stage for Trump.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I wouldn't call them features designed to have "educated" or "responsible" or responsible people vote.

    It was a system designed to allow male land owners to have all the say. To keep the wealthy in charge. In many states it was limited to wealthy white land owners.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Yeah, pretty much.

    "Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

    (Barbarous ancestors meaning Jefferson and his friends)

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    I don't completely believe in George Carlin's mindset of just turning a blind eye from the system, but he was right that you get exactly what you put into it. Voter apathy is more than just not showing up to vote, it's voting but then not paying attention to what the representatives are doing, and not telling them you don't like it (or you like it, positive feedback is good too). A representative government won't work if you don't stay involved except for a single day in two or four years.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    The founding fathers couldn’t fathom the utter deplorable evil that Trump and his crew of crazy conservatives became, but neither did we.

    On the contrary, they designed the constitution with exactly the kind of person like Trump in mind. They just finished fighting a revolution against a king from across the ocean and wanted be as sure as they could that their government did not function the same way. The reason they failed is because they thought Americans would be much more civically engaged than they actually are. And also because the legislative branch is terribly designed.

    And don't forget that the world of the 1700s was a much darker place than it is today. There were monarchies and brutal regimes all over the place and in very recent memory from earlier centuries as well which probably gave them all kinds of inspiration of what they wanted to prevent.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The founding fathers owned people. They were just as evil as Trump. What makes them special is not their morality.

    Leftists have been pointing out the authoritarian and vicious racism in the GOP since the 1980s.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    The founding fathers were well aware.

    People have this impression that the founding fathers wanted to put strict limits on what government was "allowed" to do, so that everyone in government would follow the rules and we wouldn't get Trump. That is adjacent to what they thought, but it's not what they thought. What they thought was, more or less, that the natural state of government is something akin to Trump, and if it gets that bad, it's your job as a citizen to get organized and fucking get rid of it. That's what they did. They just also tried to set up a balanced system for the people who came next, and explained why they were doing it in a lot of detail so people could understand and get behind it. And, they thought, if you don't do that, then you get what you get.

    (And also you will deserve it, but that's not the important part. It's more about the reality than the "deserve." And the reality is, change things or they won't be changed. No one "deserves" something like Trump, but that's not the question at issue.)

    (They would be surprised and saddened by Trump, I think, but I think more so about the population who let things get so bad that he came to power than about the surprise that there were very bad people doing very bad things with government. Like I said, they were completely aware of things like ICE and how those things operate. That's why they fought the war.)

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Didnt read past "founding fathers".

    Are you in a cult or are you 12? They were slave owners who wanted to make themselves and their friends rich. The current administration is just the reflection of their vision.

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