It's hard for me to see this as anything more than "they resisted Trump, that pissed him off and now he's further retaliating."
Side question I've been wrestling with to whoever feels like commenting:
At what point would you look at our current US situation and say "yep, we're now in a dictatorship"
the usa is seeing the state employ that monopoly right now:
- against opposing members of the legislative branch (lamonica mciver)
- against opposing members of the judicial branch (hannah dugan)
- against opposing members of the executive branch (ras baraka, andrew cuomo)
- against opposing private organizations (harvard, institute for peace)
- against opposing private individuals (chris krebs)
- against defenders of opponents (multiple lawfirms)
- not to mention rewarding private individuals who employed private violence against political enemies -- we saw this during duterte (ashli babbitt, the rest of the insurrectionists)
if there is no monopoly on violence in the usa, who else exactly is the monopolist permitting to use it?
The proletariat has the capacity to violently resist (See: Butler,PA), but the Venn overlap among those with the most firepower and those who actually support the oppressors is two concentric circles.
Agreed, dictatorship is a gross exaggeration. Sliding toward fascism? Sure. Would Tump like to do away with election? He’s said he does, that they won’t be necessary.
In the bill that has recently been passed, the republicans have inserted a clause that means no administration official can be found guilty of criminal contempt by the federal courts.
This will mean that the courts are literally powerless against the administration's malfeasance. The executive will be able to do what they like, and even if this bill doesn't pass the senate, SCOTUS will likely strike down as unconstitutional any appointment by the courts of a private attorney to prosecute criminal contempt because it has been stuffed with useful idiots.
This isn't sliding towards fascism, this is speed running 30's Germany.
An election only puts a few people in an office. If those people try to exert their will through force (which, I wouldn’t classify cutting Harvard off as using force, just being a jerk) and there can be severe physical consequences done to the state for that action, then I wouldn’t call it a dictatorship at that point.
Most of my money is not in my wallet and I'm only wearing one of my many pairs of pants, but if someone stabs my wallet with a knife and puts a hole in my pants pocket, they are using force.
There are no consequences. The president has immunity and the courts are about to have the option of criminal contempt prosecutions removed. Cletus and his stockpile of ammunition are going to have little or no impact and he will be hunted down by law enforcement who are very much toeing the line.
The US regulatory system is intertwined with enough of the country that dictatorship can be wrought through its abuse.
E.g. if the US court system were more MAGA, Trump would be ignoring the Constitution today (habeas corpus), instead of toeing around the line
E.g. Trump silencing media speech by abusing FCC spectrum transfer authority
Institutions and the Constitution are what prevent the US from being a dictatorship, and ultimately both of those things rest on elected (indirectly or directly) officials, and therefore free and fair elections.
I would read the constitution and come to terms with the fact that the executive authority is vested in a president. It’s not quite a king, because it’s not passed down by inheritance and they can’t enact laws by fiat… but the president is supremely powerful during their term.
And that’s good. There’s no denying that the executive branch (its agencies, officers, regulators, etc) is supremely powerful. The only question is whether the public have any democratic control over the exercise of that authority.
Side question I've been wrestling with to whoever feels like commenting: At what point would you look at our current US situation and say "yep, we're now in a dictatorship"