Of course, this old idiot believes in the Savio approach. The sooner the protests force him to flee the country, the better, because he continues to grow stronger the longer we wait to see what he will do.
On the other hand, what happens then? new elections? new constitution? Or just a trade-off of tyrants. A few us have to be willing to lay our lives down, not let "masked govt. officials just snatch people off streets. And vigilantly watch each other's houses for any signs. We need to set up contact networks to alert everyone when the body snatchers have entered the nerighborhood. They aren't going to willingly give back any they've captured.
And frankly web have to storm the Bastille...and then be really careful the terror ends.
And that will be the hardest part...oh, God, that will be the hardest part.
Or we can just all try to gather our wits, those who might survive the coming holocaust and hope the coming WWIII has any survivors after the wars that the major players will launch from space.
But as long as we expect the worse not to happen, it will continue to get worse.
There is no lesson from history thas I know of that might suggest otherwise---but there are a few (not too many) when revolutions did (for a while) create better and more responsive societies...post WWII; 1177 BCE; US revolution from Britain.
> On the other hand, what happens then? new elections? new constitution? Or just a trade-off of tyrants. A few us have to be willing to lay our lives down, not let "masked govt. officials just snatch people off streets. And vigilantly watch each other's houses for any signs. We need to set up contact networks to alert everyone when the body snatchers have entered the nerighborhood. They aren't going to willingly give back any they've captured.
I would agree 100%. But even if courts rule against Trump, it will be up to us to enforce their rulings. I have been cal.ling for networking to watch and protect neighbors. Trump's govt. has to fall down by the people not only protesting but by united actions of intervention to prevent his actions having force.
If we become afraid we lose.
This is going to be a pivotal week...the supreme courts step in on four stays and the call for the big Apr 5 rally which I hope succeeds even beyond its expectations, coming after the court hearings there will be a lot to protest---either for or against their decisions.
The biggest abuses of Presidential authority were groundbroken not by Republicans, but by Democrats. That same can be said for the Judicial abuses which are ongoing.
No mention of the unprecedented, breathtaking dereliction of fiduciary duty by Biden with the border, with spending, with foreign war adventures, with blanket nonspecific pardons etc etc.
Equally ridiculous is this depiction of Trump as "right". Even disregarding the ridiculous switchover of the Democrat party to censorship, Trump is not "right" so much as he is populist.
Then there's this Constitution business: what Trump is doing with the many Federal agencies is very straightforward. These agencies lie in the Executive branch - does the President, as the head of and the literal only Constitutionally designated member of the Executive branch - have the authority to do whatever he wants with the agencies in said Executive branch which are under his duly Constitutionally delegated, elected authority?
The notion that the President of the United States does not, has zero basis in the Constitution. This notion constitutes a bureaucratic/PMC/legalistic maneuver to create a wholly unelected, unaccountable and opaque government of apparatchiks.
The only "next American Constitution" is the one that PMC/Democrat/apparatchik/bureaucrat/lawfare types are attempting to create.
Instead of going through the normal, Constitutionally designated process to amend said Constitution - i.e. 2/3rds in each of both houses of Congress PLUS a ratification by 3/4s of the US States - we get more of the same nonsense that occurs whenever the PMC/Democrat/apparatchik/bureaucrat/lawfare and Deep State types don't get what they want: more bullshit masquerading as "Constitutional concern".
Excellent. Much to unpack here. You're right to take the constitutional view (and to view them as successive, like France's), because Trumpism in one form or another is going to be with us for the foreseeable. As I just tweeted:
"Most fascist dictatorships don't helpfully self-immolate by starting wars too big to win. They pick on weaker countries or colonies. Franco in Spain & Salazar in Portugal lasted ~40 yrs. Mussolini would've lasted longer if he hadn't allied with Hitler (which he hesitated to do)."
[sharing to Notes—this is my excessively longwinded response to Neuburger’s excellent “Next American Constitution”]
I’m interested in why a new American Constitution refused to be written during the Bush/Cheney years. Maybe something stood in its way?
What if the RW won a long time ago, and we’ve only enjoyed the illusion of democracy ever since.
Maybe that happened on November 22, 1963. Maybe it was July 26, 1947 at the signing of the National Security Act which put us on a permanent war footing. It could’ve also been August 23, 1971 when the real business coup launched itself from the Powell Memo (et voila, Ronald Reagan).
When was the last time grassroots voters had real power in Democratic Presidential Primaries? McGovern, prolly. After the 2016 fiasco DNC lawyers argued in court that primaries are only symbolic; that The Party is more like a private club (that makes its own rules), than a mechanism of Democracy required to run fair and square elections.
So then, what if *these conditions* preclude citizenship with rights/freedoms? What if we’re more like subjects of dynasties run by fossil fuels, defense, chemicals, and Wall Street? We’re worried about the Koch Bros, but what about the RW family foundations that ran things for the previous 100 years? Reynolds, Phillips, Bradley, Welch…Mellons, Scaifes, Coors—all those John Birch Society, Cold War anti-communists who won big during R and D presidencies alike since the 50s.
What if the only struggle that matters is the one where Big Tech overtakes fossil fuel, defense, pharma and Wall Street for hegemony in the American Empire?
The New Deal is gone. Medicare will soon be all “Medicare Advantage.” Social Security is all that’s really left and it’s not enough. Seniors are living in their cars because they can’t afford housing and need to travel for seasonal shift work at Amazon and Walmart (preferably in warm climes).
The final blow to the New Deal came from a Democrat, no a Republican (and not that I don’t think an R wouldn’t have given his first born to claim that victory). In 1996 Bill Clinton “Ended Welfare As We Know It,” and had his photo taken with a 42-year old Black mother—Lillie Harden (say her name)—who’d die 12 years later from a stroke because she didn’t qualify for Medicaid and couldn’t afford her medicine.
Meanwhile “the left” has almost completely dismantled itself—bamboozled by neoliberal cultural trends that grew out of postmodernism’s snipe hunt for the Most Oppressed Person. The vast majority of the left lost interest because the politics of The Most Oppressed Person neither applies to or appeals to them. Beware, pointing this out makes you a bigot.
We, The People, control nothing. We’re prisoners of our own shibboleths which keep us in darkness watching a final shadow dance, but I hear it’s gonna be a good one. One half of the shadows will “cancel” the other half and then that half divides into two that cancel each other. I can’t wait to find out how it all ends.
We need an enforceable Social Contract w/the Dem Party, because if they don’t honor our votes, donations, and volunteer work—then we don’t have a functioning forward operating base and we might as well arm ourselves for Le Grande Revolucîon. If “we win” in 2028, without any grassroots power, we’ll get another version of Team Clinton or Team Obama. Woo and hoo.
Without the burden of these obstacles, a New American Constitution would be unnecessary.
Really nice comment, Brook. Thanks! I like the Lillie Harden point.
Me, I'd place the start of the FDR fall with the treasonous Richard Nixon in 1968, he who anticipated Reagan in trading with enemies for power, and getting it. Ford confirming that his crimes would never come home (to him) made sure they came home to us.
yes, that’s the earlier version of “we’re looking forward not backward.” crimes of previous administrations have to be reconciled in the next admin or else we, the people, owe them no confidence that they won’t be doing the same thing.
i was flabbergasted when Obama didn’t roll back the excesses grabbed by Bush/Cheney and remember that ‘stalwart Ds’’ response was “Obama will use them better.” well, that’s not the point. it’s that the ongoing business of the executive branch isn’t always going to be under the purview of those that ~50% of Americans trust.
if there comes a future time...the executive should only execute congressional laws; no military sent nowhere w/out cong. approvals; and if we rebuild agencies (without real emergency), remove them from any executive control.
And representatives need to represent the constituencies, the varying factions Madiison writes about in fed #10; the laborers, the farmers. 95% of our officials are lawyers and executives from companies that represent only tiny percentage of the pop. That can be a republican democracy but was already an oligarchic one.
What has worried me for a while is an Article V Constitutional Convention. 2/3 of the state legislatures need to call for one and then 3/4 of those would need to approve any proposed amendments. This convention would be highly undemocratic as each state delegation would get one vote to be cast up or down on proposed amendments.
At this moment in time, that concern seems moot. As Federal Manager Musk noted with Twitter, control of the servers means control period. He has the servers that provide the few concrete material benefits our oligarchy affords us. We can kiss those programs goodbye.
I think this is headed for a tech bro heaven where docile us sacrifice in order to provide the resources necessary for their AI wet dream.
I expect Trump to take a long slow leak on the texts of any adverse Court rulings. How many divisions do those Courts have?
So we are down to the whims of our armed constituencies: the police and our armed forces. Will they uphold their oath to the Constitution?
we can try, in unity to force him to obey. But you're right. The courts can't do it by their decisions, their must be a unified effort by everyone who believes in the courts to support their decisions.
God loves you. The things that prick at your soul is permissible evil and your challenge is to overcome. Look to God for help, not your feelings and tremendously brilliant intellect.
Terrifyingly cogent, but I'm wondering if even Mario Savio had the chops for this one. Off the top of my head, it seems the Free Speech movement started with an unlawful card table set up on a sidewalk. We are well beyond that moment, and the nostalgia with which so many boomers hold the sixties is misplaced. The movement was a parlor game (with some exceptions) that can't possibly prepare us for the in-the-streets reality of real revolutions of the past.
Thanks, Geri. The 60s revolt had critical mass. That's the key. That's why people were shot. Ultimately it succeeded culturally (the 'sexual revolution', etc.) and failed politically.
Thanks for the reply. Yes, it did succeed culturally, though someone, somewhere, said that if you're going to have a revolution, make sure you replace what you tore down with something better. In the long term, I wonder if the cultural changes were better. (I'm of the age where I see cultural deterioration and a baseness that seems to permeate our world.)
Would Trump want to be hated? He already is hated by more people than all the rest of the former Presidents combined. But he could care less.
Of course, this old idiot believes in the Savio approach. The sooner the protests force him to flee the country, the better, because he continues to grow stronger the longer we wait to see what he will do.
On the other hand, what happens then? new elections? new constitution? Or just a trade-off of tyrants. A few us have to be willing to lay our lives down, not let "masked govt. officials just snatch people off streets. And vigilantly watch each other's houses for any signs. We need to set up contact networks to alert everyone when the body snatchers have entered the nerighborhood. They aren't going to willingly give back any they've captured.
And frankly web have to storm the Bastille...and then be really careful the terror ends.
And that will be the hardest part...oh, God, that will be the hardest part.
Or we can just all try to gather our wits, those who might survive the coming holocaust and hope the coming WWIII has any survivors after the wars that the major players will launch from space.
But as long as we expect the worse not to happen, it will continue to get worse.
There is no lesson from history thas I know of that might suggest otherwise---but there are a few (not too many) when revolutions did (for a while) create better and more responsive societies...post WWII; 1177 BCE; US revolution from Britain.
So as you say, Mr. Neuburger, we will see.
> On the other hand, what happens then? new elections? new constitution? Or just a trade-off of tyrants. A few us have to be willing to lay our lives down, not let "masked govt. officials just snatch people off streets. And vigilantly watch each other's houses for any signs. We need to set up contact networks to alert everyone when the body snatchers have entered the nerighborhood. They aren't going to willingly give back any they've captured.
I share these concerns.
Thomas
I would agree 100%. But even if courts rule against Trump, it will be up to us to enforce their rulings. I have been cal.ling for networking to watch and protect neighbors. Trump's govt. has to fall down by the people not only protesting but by united actions of intervention to prevent his actions having force.
If we become afraid we lose.
This is going to be a pivotal week...the supreme courts step in on four stays and the call for the big Apr 5 rally which I hope succeeds even beyond its expectations, coming after the court hearings there will be a lot to protest---either for or against their decisions.
Laughable PMC + TDS nonsense.
The biggest abuses of Presidential authority were groundbroken not by Republicans, but by Democrats. That same can be said for the Judicial abuses which are ongoing.
No mention of the unprecedented, breathtaking dereliction of fiduciary duty by Biden with the border, with spending, with foreign war adventures, with blanket nonspecific pardons etc etc.
Equally ridiculous is this depiction of Trump as "right". Even disregarding the ridiculous switchover of the Democrat party to censorship, Trump is not "right" so much as he is populist.
Then there's this Constitution business: what Trump is doing with the many Federal agencies is very straightforward. These agencies lie in the Executive branch - does the President, as the head of and the literal only Constitutionally designated member of the Executive branch - have the authority to do whatever he wants with the agencies in said Executive branch which are under his duly Constitutionally delegated, elected authority?
The notion that the President of the United States does not, has zero basis in the Constitution. This notion constitutes a bureaucratic/PMC/legalistic maneuver to create a wholly unelected, unaccountable and opaque government of apparatchiks.
The only "next American Constitution" is the one that PMC/Democrat/apparatchik/bureaucrat/lawfare types are attempting to create.
Instead of going through the normal, Constitutionally designated process to amend said Constitution - i.e. 2/3rds in each of both houses of Congress PLUS a ratification by 3/4s of the US States - we get more of the same nonsense that occurs whenever the PMC/Democrat/apparatchik/bureaucrat/lawfare and Deep State types don't get what they want: more bullshit masquerading as "Constitutional concern".
Excellent. Much to unpack here. You're right to take the constitutional view (and to view them as successive, like France's), because Trumpism in one form or another is going to be with us for the foreseeable. As I just tweeted:
"Most fascist dictatorships don't helpfully self-immolate by starting wars too big to win. They pick on weaker countries or colonies. Franco in Spain & Salazar in Portugal lasted ~40 yrs. Mussolini would've lasted longer if he hadn't allied with Hitler (which he hesitated to do)."
https://x.com/Blackthorn7977/status/1905520965200597231
[sharing to Notes—this is my excessively longwinded response to Neuburger’s excellent “Next American Constitution”]
I’m interested in why a new American Constitution refused to be written during the Bush/Cheney years. Maybe something stood in its way?
What if the RW won a long time ago, and we’ve only enjoyed the illusion of democracy ever since.
Maybe that happened on November 22, 1963. Maybe it was July 26, 1947 at the signing of the National Security Act which put us on a permanent war footing. It could’ve also been August 23, 1971 when the real business coup launched itself from the Powell Memo (et voila, Ronald Reagan).
When was the last time grassroots voters had real power in Democratic Presidential Primaries? McGovern, prolly. After the 2016 fiasco DNC lawyers argued in court that primaries are only symbolic; that The Party is more like a private club (that makes its own rules), than a mechanism of Democracy required to run fair and square elections.
So then, what if *these conditions* preclude citizenship with rights/freedoms? What if we’re more like subjects of dynasties run by fossil fuels, defense, chemicals, and Wall Street? We’re worried about the Koch Bros, but what about the RW family foundations that ran things for the previous 100 years? Reynolds, Phillips, Bradley, Welch…Mellons, Scaifes, Coors—all those John Birch Society, Cold War anti-communists who won big during R and D presidencies alike since the 50s.
What if the only struggle that matters is the one where Big Tech overtakes fossil fuel, defense, pharma and Wall Street for hegemony in the American Empire?
The New Deal is gone. Medicare will soon be all “Medicare Advantage.” Social Security is all that’s really left and it’s not enough. Seniors are living in their cars because they can’t afford housing and need to travel for seasonal shift work at Amazon and Walmart (preferably in warm climes).
The final blow to the New Deal came from a Democrat, no a Republican (and not that I don’t think an R wouldn’t have given his first born to claim that victory). In 1996 Bill Clinton “Ended Welfare As We Know It,” and had his photo taken with a 42-year old Black mother—Lillie Harden (say her name)—who’d die 12 years later from a stroke because she didn’t qualify for Medicaid and couldn’t afford her medicine.
Meanwhile “the left” has almost completely dismantled itself—bamboozled by neoliberal cultural trends that grew out of postmodernism’s snipe hunt for the Most Oppressed Person. The vast majority of the left lost interest because the politics of The Most Oppressed Person neither applies to or appeals to them. Beware, pointing this out makes you a bigot.
We, The People, control nothing. We’re prisoners of our own shibboleths which keep us in darkness watching a final shadow dance, but I hear it’s gonna be a good one. One half of the shadows will “cancel” the other half and then that half divides into two that cancel each other. I can’t wait to find out how it all ends.
We need an enforceable Social Contract w/the Dem Party, because if they don’t honor our votes, donations, and volunteer work—then we don’t have a functioning forward operating base and we might as well arm ourselves for Le Grande Revolucîon. If “we win” in 2028, without any grassroots power, we’ll get another version of Team Clinton or Team Obama. Woo and hoo.
Without the burden of these obstacles, a New American Constitution would be unnecessary.
Really nice comment, Brook. Thanks! I like the Lillie Harden point.
Me, I'd place the start of the FDR fall with the treasonous Richard Nixon in 1968, he who anticipated Reagan in trading with enemies for power, and getting it. Ford confirming that his crimes would never come home (to him) made sure they came home to us.
yes, that’s the earlier version of “we’re looking forward not backward.” crimes of previous administrations have to be reconciled in the next admin or else we, the people, owe them no confidence that they won’t be doing the same thing.
i was flabbergasted when Obama didn’t roll back the excesses grabbed by Bush/Cheney and remember that ‘stalwart Ds’’ response was “Obama will use them better.” well, that’s not the point. it’s that the ongoing business of the executive branch isn’t always going to be under the purview of those that ~50% of Americans trust.
Broken trust is broken social contract.
if there comes a future time...the executive should only execute congressional laws; no military sent nowhere w/out cong. approvals; and if we rebuild agencies (without real emergency), remove them from any executive control.
And representatives need to represent the constituencies, the varying factions Madiison writes about in fed #10; the laborers, the farmers. 95% of our officials are lawyers and executives from companies that represent only tiny percentage of the pop. That can be a republican democracy but was already an oligarchic one.
What has worried me for a while is an Article V Constitutional Convention. 2/3 of the state legislatures need to call for one and then 3/4 of those would need to approve any proposed amendments. This convention would be highly undemocratic as each state delegation would get one vote to be cast up or down on proposed amendments.
At this moment in time, that concern seems moot. As Federal Manager Musk noted with Twitter, control of the servers means control period. He has the servers that provide the few concrete material benefits our oligarchy affords us. We can kiss those programs goodbye.
I think this is headed for a tech bro heaven where docile us sacrifice in order to provide the resources necessary for their AI wet dream.
I expect Trump to take a long slow leak on the texts of any adverse Court rulings. How many divisions do those Courts have?
So we are down to the whims of our armed constituencies: the police and our armed forces. Will they uphold their oath to the Constitution?
we can try, in unity to force him to obey. But you're right. The courts can't do it by their decisions, their must be a unified effort by everyone who believes in the courts to support their decisions.
Otherwise...meaningless.
The only thing that matters is whether the cops and army will shoot when ordered, to, whether the spooks will play ball.
Law and the Cosntitution are meaningless, if and to the extent that people of influence and authority decide they are meaningless.
God loves you. The things that prick at your soul is permissible evil and your challenge is to overcome. Look to God for help, not your feelings and tremendously brilliant intellect.
Terrifyingly cogent, but I'm wondering if even Mario Savio had the chops for this one. Off the top of my head, it seems the Free Speech movement started with an unlawful card table set up on a sidewalk. We are well beyond that moment, and the nostalgia with which so many boomers hold the sixties is misplaced. The movement was a parlor game (with some exceptions) that can't possibly prepare us for the in-the-streets reality of real revolutions of the past.
Thanks, Geri. The 60s revolt had critical mass. That's the key. That's why people were shot. Ultimately it succeeded culturally (the 'sexual revolution', etc.) and failed politically.
Thanks for the reply. Yes, it did succeed culturally, though someone, somewhere, said that if you're going to have a revolution, make sure you replace what you tore down with something better. In the long term, I wonder if the cultural changes were better. (I'm of the age where I see cultural deterioration and a baseness that seems to permeate our world.)
BTW, I am preparing for critical mass. We need it.