Yes. If enough of you in the US stop "playing pretend" and stop believing in law and constitution meaning something more often than not, your country will instantly go up in flames (and probably take a chunk of the rest of the world with it).
I mean, this isn't the first time leadership has ignored the constitutuon, and the country has rarely gone up in flames.
The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Internment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps strike me as particularly infamous, and the Second Red Scare (or McCarthyism) involved a lot of unconstitutional conduct as well. But I'm sure there's lots of other things, too.
Hopefully, past experience will repeat and after a brief period, there will be a return to the traditions of rule of law and respect for the constitution.
You're right. I'm just addressing GP's hyperbole taken straight:
> Do we still play pretend that the law and constitution mean something
Leadership ignoring constitution in some areas is a problem, but as long as law is generally still seen as working, and expected to work, in everyone's daily dealings, things aren't bad. They may not be fine, but can be improved. However, once enough people stop believing law and constitution matter in general, that's when they actually stop working, because they're just words on paper, and their only power stems from everyone expecting everyone else experts them to have authority.
Yes. Trump gets away with shit because he’s deeply charismatic and his most ardent supporters think he’s the next coming of Christ. Elon has some super fans but not like that.
All this also isn’t occurring in a vacuum: the GOP is full of highly ambitious people who won’t want the competition for their own run.
GOP lost house and senate seats they could have won behind another candidate. Trump is useful to the party until he’s not. Elon is of zero use at all to the party.
I suspect it must be what charisma looks like in a social environment I am not a part of because for the life of me I cannot see it as charisma, all I hear is barely coherent ramblings, in a weird tone.
> Trump gets away with shit because he’s deeply charismatic
This needs to be said more. Trump is a singular force in our current politics. Even people who despise Trump will admit that one on one and in small groups he’s incredibly charismatic and likable. Bill Clinton comes to mind as another POTUS with just a super high level of charisma.
Musk on the other hand is incredibly awkward and would have very little broad appeal.
I do also, but I've heard it said a few times from different people who have interviewed him or been around him in small group situations. And it's been said to caution people who continue to underestimate his appeal.
It'd be interesting to see them simultaneously discard birthright citizenship and the natural born requirement. I'm sure at least someone in the party will try, there's really no low they won't reach for.
Like the law matters anymore. The Supreme Court already said that everything Trump does is an official act and thus legal. If Trump declared that Musk can run for president then that is now legal and the law.
That's not what the Supreme Court said. They said that virtually anything the president does is possibly an official act, and therefore can't even be prosecuted, unless the prosecutors first prove to a judge that it wasn't an official act. And if the judge isn't convinced it wasn't an official act, then the president is immune from any prosecution for that act. So if Trump ordered the military to kill Harris and Obama, this would be an official act and he would be free from any legal consequence for it - the judiciary couldn't even investigate the reasons for it, because that would encroach on the power of the executive branch.
However, this laughably broad, king-level power still doesn't grant him the power to just make anything into law. He can't be prosecuted for anything, but that doesn't mean that anything he wants is now law.
Elon Musk cannot run for President of the United States because he is not a natural-born US citizen. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and the US Constitution requires presidential candidates to be natural-born citizens of the US.
Musk needs to find a different way to exert his will through his allies.
And no, he is very far for being that popular that anybody would find a way to waive the natural born citizen requirement. He is also not that popular and he doesn’t have the charisma of a president.
You don’t need to worry about him being a president. If you want to worry about him: he doesn’t need to become a president to have insane amount of power and influence over the US.
Can't currently run. But they said Trump couldn't run for a third term, and yet there is a constitutional amendment on the table to do just that. Nothing is off the table now.
You do not need the popular will of the people to govern: that's a collective fiction we all agree to in order let democracy function.
If people no longer believe democracy functions and simply accept that as the status quo, then it doesn't.
Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for decades while they had elections the whole time, and wasn't always President in that time. But there's never been any doubt who's in charge.
That is not true. You absolutely need the popular will, or at least assent, to govern. Even in the deepest, darkest dictatorships, like North Korea, if the vast majority of the population decided to rise against the leaders, millions would die, but they would ultimately win.
Any leader of any type has to convince the populace that accepting their rule is better than fighting it. Even if current weaponry allowed an army to kill the entire rest of the population of a country, that still doesn't allow a leader to rule by force alone: for one, the army will revolt at some point before killing the majority of their brethren. And even if they didn't, the loss of the majority of the population would ultimately leave the country far too economically devastated to serve any purpose, even for the glorious leader.
I was talking specifically about him becoming the president of the United States. I even highlighted that he doesn’t need to become the president to have extreme power over the country.
Just my opinion, and I say this with love, but if you think Musk is going to become president, you need to turn off BlueSky and touch grass.
Given his current health, Trump isn't going to stay in charge more than four years though. He could keep the title but would end up as impotent puppet on life support (like Bouteflika was at the end of his reign over Algeria).
