Former President Donald Trump's United States of America

[kEiThZ]

They are fighting so hard precisely because the alternative is the slammer should they lose power. Leavenworth's calling. Ensuring the integrity of the electoral system (which is laughably atrocious for a nation of US' stature) and rooting out adverbial influence (from social media to finance and political figures) should be a Biden priority.

AoD

I genuinely fear what happens if Trump wins. It's the end of rule of law in America. Imagine the world's sole superpower run like a South American banana republic.

 

[Richard White]

I genuinely fear what happens if Trump wins. It's the end of rule of law in America. Imagine the world's sole superpower run like a South American banana republic.

If history tells us anything... it is that it is not about how powerful the politician is, it is about the unknown. The moment JFK, RFK or JFK Jr were in power or tried to return to power they disappeared and no doubt this was related to how tight of a grip they had on power. When Iran-Contra was starting up which Reagan was caught up in, he got shot. Lincoln freed the slaves and caused an uproar in the US, he was then shot.

My point is that if Trump gets too crazy and tries to go full dictator I have full confidence that it will be handled accordingly. The US tends to correct itself.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I genuinely fear what happens if Trump wins. It's the end of rule of law in America. Imagine the world's sole superpower run like a South American banana republic.

In a way, the current quagmire signaled that for all their good intentions and foresight, their founding fathers did not manage to create a system that is immune to authoritarianism.

AoD

 

[Richard White]

In a way, the current quagmire signaled that for all their good intentions and foresight, their founding fathers did not manage to create a system that is immune to authoritarianism.

AoD

I have always disliked the reliance on the constitution and system of government in the US. It is over 244 years since the constitution and US were created but unlike a parliamentary system it was designed to be a response to aggression and includes references that are no longer valid.

The US needs to modernize things if they are to survive. The fact that the 2nd amendment was intended to arm the masses in the event wanted to retake the colonies goes to show how out of touch they are with modern society.

The wording of the constitution, the idea of the founding fathers.. it is all very much out of date and times have changed. The US should too.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I genuinely fear what happens if Trump wins. It's the end of rule of law in America. Imagine the world's sole superpower run like a South American banana republic.

Barr, et al. are far more dangerous and should be made an example of.

AoD

 

[kEiThZ]

In a way, the current quagmire signaled that for all their good intentions and foresight, their founding fathers did not manage to create a system that is immune to authoritarianism.

AoD

It's a system that relies on norms and good faith. What happens when one party only cares about "owning the libs" instead of governing?

Joe Biden opposed court packing as recently as the primary debates. He's a traditionalist who believes in compromise, institutions and norms. But I think even he is coming around after watching how craven the GOP has been with this seat.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

It's a system that relies on norms and good faith. What happens when one party only cares about "owning the libs" instead of governing?

Joe Biden opposed court packing as recently as the primary debates. He's a traditionalist who believes in compromise, institutions and norms. But I think even he is coming around after watching how craven the GOP has been with this seat.

That's still a failure of sorts - reasonableness and good faith in politics is a rare thing, not the norm. The Biden mission should be to recreate the climate of compromise, institutions and norms - even if it meant not practicing them to get there (said that not without a heavy dose of irony and regret).

AoD

 

[ShonTron]

I have always disliked the reliance on the constitution and system of government in the US. It is over 244 years since the constitution and US were created but unlike a parliamentary system it was designed to be a response to aggression and includes references that are no longer valid.

The US needs to modernize things if they are to survive. The fact that the 2nd amendment was intended to arm the masses in the event wanted to retake the colonies goes to show how out of touch they are with modern society.

The wording of the constitution, the idea of the founding fathers.. it is all very much out of date and times have changed. The US should too.

The 2nd Amendment was a "States' Rights" amendment. Each state had a "well regulated" militia controlled by the state, separate from the central US army, made up of largely of landowning citizens, rather than professional soldiers. In the south, they put down slave revolts and John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. The southern state's militias formed the core of the Confederate Army.

It is in this context that "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed." When militias were made up of landowning citizens. Today, the National Guard takes the place of state militias, so arguably, there's no constitutional reason for private gun owners to have unfettered access to firearms. But conservative judges and lawmakers (despite their reverence for the founders and their ideals) sadly don't care for that contextual interpretation.

 

[lenaitch]

The topic of 2A could be a topic for its own thread but likely of little point for a bunch of outsiders passing judgement on it.

Consider that the US system of governance was born or revolution and established in matter of a few years, and many of its citizens hold its founding principles as dear and still relevant. Contrast that with the Westminster parliamentary system which evolved over several centuries.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

The 2nd Amendment was a "States' Rights" amendment. Each state had a "well regulated" militia controlled by the state, separate from the central US army, made up of largely of landowning citizens, rather than professional soldiers. In the south, they put down slave revolts and John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. The southern state's militias formed the core of the Confederate Army.

It is in this context that "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed." When militias were made up of landowning citizens. Today, the National Guard takes the place of state militias, so arguably, there's no constitutional reason for private gun owners to have unfettered access to firearms. But conservative judges and lawmakers (despite their reverence for the founders and their ideals) sadly don't care for that contextual interpretation.

What I find interesting with a good portion of the 2A crowd (especially the younger ones) is how their notion of masculinity is grounded around guns. And not just any guns - but the most "badass" autos and semis. And anecdotally - I have also noticed quite a bit of alignment with an obviously Russian take on this type of masculinization (to an extent that I find some of these so called patriots openly look up to their Russian counterparts as the "ideal").

AoD

 

[W. K. Lis]

From link.

Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment?

Every mass shooting, like the most recent at Santa Fe High School in Texas that left 10 people dead, reignites a passionate debate over the Second Amendment. For many Americans, if there is an image that comes to mind when they think about that amendment, it is the musket in the hands of minutemen at Lexington and Concord.

A dramatic but little-known story reveals that a more accurate image may be the musket in the hands of slave owners. It explains why, when he entered Congress and wrote a Bill of Rights, James Madison included a right to bear arms, and why it included the clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …”

The story begins in June of 1788. Virginia was holding a convention in Richmond to decide whether to ratify the Constitution the founders had drafted in Independence Hall the previous year. Eight states out of the nine necessary to adopt the Constitution had already ratified, but Rhode Island, North Carolina, New Hampshire and New York looked unlikely to ratify. All hope for the ninth hung on Virginia.

The Virginia convention featured a dramatic debate between federalists, who favored ratification, and antifederalists, who opposed it. The debate pitted James Madison, a federalist and the principal drafter of the Constitution, against George Mason, the intellectual leader of the antifederalists, and Patrick Henry, Virginia’s governor and a renowned orator.


Mason and Henry raised many arguments against ratification. One concerned the militia. To appreciate their arguments, we must bear three things in mind about the time and place of the debate.

First, the majority population in eastern Virginia were enslaved blacks. Whites lived in constant fear of slave insurrection. Everyone knew about the 1739 slave rebellion in Stono, S.C., when blacks broke into a store, decapitated the shopkeepers, seized guns and powder, and marched with flying banners, beating drums and cries of “Liberty!” Up to 100 joined the rebellion before being engaged by a contingent of armed, mounted militiamen. Scores died in the ensuing battle.

Second, the principal instrument for slave control was the militia. In the main, the South had refused to commit her militias to the war against the British during the American Revolution out of fear that, if the militias departed, slaves would revolt. But while the militias were effective at slave control, they had proved themselves unequal to the task of fighting a professional army. Bunker Hill was the last militia victory during the Revolution. The Continental Army (aided by the French Navy) won the war.

Third, previously the militias were creatures of state governments. The new Constitution changed that. It divided authority over militias between the national and state governments, but gave the lion’s share of authority — including the power to organize, arm and discipline the militias — to Congress.

During the debate in Richmond, Mason and Henry suggested that the new Constitution gave Congress the power to subvert the slave system by disarming the militias. “Slavery is detested,” Henry reminded the audience. “The majority of Congress is to the North, and the slaves are to the South,” he said.

Henry and Mason argued that because the Constitution gave the federal government the power to arm the militias, only the federal government could do so. “If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither — this power being exclusively given to Congress,” Henry declared.

“The power is concurrent, and not exclusive,” Madison replied. That was a blunder. The Constitution expressly parceled out different powers over the militia to Congress or the states. Henry ridiculed Madison for suggesting a state could exercise a power given to the federal government, or vice versa. “To admit this mutual concurrence of powers will carry you into endless absurdity — that Congress has nothing exclusive on the one hand, nor the states on the other,” Henry said.

The vote was close, but Virginia ratified. Unexpectedly, and unbeknown to Virginia, New Hampshire had done so as well. The Constitution was adopted.

In the fall, Madison ran for Congress. His opponent, the rising young politician (and future president) James Monroe, lambasted Madison for not including a bill of rights in the Constitution. Because he believed rights were best protected by the structure of government, Madison previously opposed a bill of rights. Now he was fighting for his political life in a congressional district where a bill of rights was popular. Madison changed his position and promised voters that, if elected, he would write one.

As we know, he included a right to bear arms. Only four of the 13 state Constitutions had such a provision. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by none other than George Mason in 1776 when states controlled the militias, did not have one. Following its debate and decision to ratify, the Virginia convention proposed Congress consider a declaration of 20 rights, including a right to bear arms, and 20 constitutional amendments, including one giving states the power to arm their militias if Congress did not.

I believe it likely that Madison sought to correct the problem Henry and Mason had railed against in Richmond. Madison was determined that nothing in the Bill of Rights contradict anything in the main body of the Constitution; and the states had traditionally armed their militias simply by requiring that members bring their own guns with them when called to duty.

Consider, against this background, the language of Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Today, the Second Amendment is often extolled as a “safeguard against tyranny.” Even the Supreme Court used that phrase in 2008 when, for the first time, it held that the amendment grants a right unrelated to the militia.

Would we think differently about the amendment if we realized that its genesis was, at least in part, a concern with preserving a form of governmental tyranny?

 

[Northern Light]

US Dept. of Justice has designated NYC. Portland, and Seattle, 'Anarchist Jurisdictions'.

DOJ Designates New York City as an ‘Anarchist Jurisdiction'

New York City is one of three places that “have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities,” leading to its designation as an “anarchist jurisdiction,” the Justice Department said Monday. Rather...

www.nbcnewyork.com

From the article:

New York City is one of three places that "have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities," leading to its designation as an "anarchist jurisdiction,"

and

Designated cities could lose their federal funding.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

US Dept. of Justice has designated NYC. Portland, and Seattle, 'Anarchist Jurisdictions'.

DOJ Designates New York City as an ‘Anarchist Jurisdiction'

New York City is one of three places that “have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities,” leading to its designation as an “anarchist jurisdiction,” the Justice Department said Monday. Rather...

www.nbcnewyork.com

From the article:

New York City is one of three places that "have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities," leading to its designation as an "anarchist jurisdiction,"

and

Designated cities could lose their federal funding.

Now, are they going to collect tax revenues from said 3 "anarchist jurisdictions"?

AoD

 

[adma]

What I find interesting with a good portion of the 2A crowd (especially the younger ones) is how their notion of masculinity is grounded around guns. And not just any guns - but the most "badass" autos and semis. And anecdotally - I have also noticed quite a bit of alignment with an obviously Russian take on this type of masculinization (to an extent that I find some of these so called patriots openly look up to their Russian counterparts as the "ideal").

AoD

It makes me wonder whether a lot of the cultural demonization of Muslims is a way of dissuading these people from setting some kind of alliance with that kind of suicide-terrorist realm.

Also--particularly re said younger ones, how culturally bereft would one have to be to devote one's entire existence to guns like this? It's like the guns fill what is otherwise a horrible, gaping hole in their lives, where nobody saw fit to draw their attention to other things...

 

[Northern Light]

Here's a different spin on the implications for a future Supreme Court appointments............and this one.....not strictly partisan, as best I can tell.

The State of Mississippi is suing the State of Tennessee over ground water.

That's right..........there's a large aquifer that exists at/near/under the border between these 2 states.

The argument is starting to get heated about whose water it is.............who should be allowed to take how much, and at what price, if any.

In a cross-state aquifer spat, a view of a water-stressed future

Mississippi sued Memphis over its use of a deep aquifer. A possibly paradigm-shifting Supreme Court decision looms.

grist.org

The importance of this, the Supreme Court could rule on this as early as next term.