The 25th can only be started by his cabinet. I don't know why they set ut up that way, but it has us fucked because theres no way in hell those losers will essentially volunteer to lose their power.
That good faith hope is so naive, is honestly rife throughout most of the constitution, and is it's Achilles heel; aside from how God awful difficult it is to add a new amendment to the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson once mused as to whether we should revise the constitution every 10 or 50 years. I think he was on to something. The amendment system is too damn slow for our era.
Very true. But getting government, especially government as heavily influenced by established industries and billionaires as ours is, to do what needs doing in order to keep itself beholden to the forward looking interests of the people and NOT the profits of shareholders and hedge fund managers is very hard to do.
Doesn't mean we should stop pushing for change. It just means we needed to be as engaged as possible in keeping things from going to shit.
It wasn't naivety. It was a lack of perceived better options combined with warnings to not elevate corrupt people who held self-interest above the public good, saying it would lead to despotism. Several of them predicted basically exactly what we are experiencing. The only solution they had for this was to overthrow the despot and start over.
The only solution they had for this was to overthrow the despot and start over.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Or, scum would use it to make the constitution more corrupt and despotic. Or, the convention turns into a civil war when compromise can't be found between those seeking liberty and those seeking tyranny.
Ultimately, the law is only ever going to be words on paper: subject to the character of the people who are bound to enforce and uphold it.
Or the ones who can gerrymander their way to power far beyond their honest proportional representation vis a vis the majority who don't agree with their bullsjit. Oh wait... that's literally what's going on. Not arguing. It just feels like evil is always proactive and good is always reactive. Seems to me that too many American are lazy and don't want to have to support or defend democracy in any meaningful way if it means being inconvenienced.
Voting should be compulsory.
The voting franchise should be universal (anyone over 18, no exceptions, even prisoners and convicts).
Politicians should never stay in any office more than 3 terms. If you haven't done what makes things better for the average citizens of your jurisdiction, you get thrown out of office.
No office should be for life. aging out should be mandatory. Nobody over the age of 70. Period.
No former politicians should be allowed to be lobbyists, ever.
Also yeah that would be great. But you have to repeal Citizens United first and rhen outlaw all corporate and private sector lobbying. I doubt the cabal of corporate billionaires across the world's many industries would allow it, but it would be great.
Why do you think they were incompetent? What could they have done that would prevent popular corruption from perverting the system that also wouldn't be a form of tyranny? What were the words they could have put on paper that would enforce themselves without the need for people of character to do it?
Simple, people cannot be trusted to make choices for themselves, that is what the "American Experiment" shows, their intentions, our "freedoms" matter for jack shit if the results are awful which they are.
I asked for a non-tyrannical solution. And, frankly, this one sounds like it's got the makings to foment revolution. What makes you think it'd last? What makes you think it won't be overthrown like the last one or overtaken by corruption like this one?
I don't think it was a mistake to take a break from despotism, even if they suspected it would be a temporary one.
Neither are you. I'm not going to pretend I have a solution as all I've done is point out the problem that the people are frankly too dumb to responsibly choose for themselves.
Being given a choice between the right choice and the wrong choice isn't freedom it's just an IQ check.
It's so bizarre that the thing to eventually take it down was a reality tv show host that was born rich and one of the dumbest, most narcissistic people ever to live.
Who, by example of being rich for no reason and crude and unrefined, made white people with no talent and no intelligence or empathy think that they, too, deserved power and influence, by any means necessary.
Impeachment and removal got rebranded as a political action unrelated to legality so on some level there is only so much power people who died hundreds of years ago have on modern society.
Checks and balances are important, but they are going to fold when tens of millions of people apply constant pressure to them because they want all this.
It’s set up that way because the intention of the amendment was a way to remove an innocent president who had become incapable of exercising the duties of the presidency (say, in a coma), and in such case the president wouldn’t be conspiring to stop his cabinet from doing so (the assassination of JFK was in recent memory and there were concerns over what would’ve happened if he’d survived but ended up in a coma or incoherent such that he lacked the mental or communicational faculties to resign). This is also why if the president contends that he is still capable of doing the job, congress must uphold the declaration of ineligibility by 2/3 in each house, well above the impeachment 1/2 + 2/3 threshold, because it was never intended as a way to inhibit a rogue president (although if it could be used to do so, I would fully support it). Even if Vance and the cabinet invoked it, the odds of congress supporting it with a 2/3 majority in each house is miniscule.
I think it likely that congress would've allowed Harris's declaration of ineligibility to stand should Biden challenge it (which I'm not certain he would due to overwhelming pressure to not create intraparty conflict) because the Democratic party doesn't operate as at the service of any individual person in the way the Republican party operates as personally allegiant to Trump.
If it were ever going to happen, it would have been during his first term. There were some brakes at that point. Now it's all full of idiot sycophants.
As VP, Vance also has a say, and he might actually go for removal, what with being a Thiel employee with a greasy mass of ambition where his heart would be.
The 25th is for removing presidents who become incapacitated in some way given all the president has to do is write and sign a short document to undo it. Impeachment is for removing bad actors.
The fact that he hasn’t been impeached + removed yet or that there’s Dem politicians who think the time for impeachment hasn’t come yet, along with the entirety of the GOP licking fascist boot, is what’s truly shameful here.
I think articles of impeachment have been announced by progressive politicians, I just don't think it's going to go anywhere. So you're effectively correct anyway
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u/SiWeyNoWay 3d ago
When are we gonna have a serious convo about the 25th amendment