Oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Monday over the president’s power to remove the commissioners of independent agencies left little doubt that its Republican-appointed justices are about to fundamentally reorder our system of government. They appear ready to eliminate most pockets of expertise and nonpartisanship that we rely on as stewards of important economic, political, scientific, and regulatory power.
They will do this, if this morning’s arguments are any indication, without grappling with the predictable and disastrous fallout, with the endpoint of their own logic, or the historical record to the contrary. Instead, the six Republican appointees appear ready to race headlong into a Trumpian future in which no agency or decision is beyond the reach of the precedent’s political cronies.
“You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed Monday, “and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.”
Let me be as clear as I can be.
Trump, a figure visibly and egregiously unfit for the role of leading the nation, was elected by Americans, twice, fair and square by the rules we’ve set for ourselves. But he’s just a figurehead.
Press “freedom” has been hacked by monied interests to capture the minds of a vast margin of the American voting public and brainwash them into distrusting any media but their own, which has taught them to believe lies, parrot talking points and armed them with thought-collapsing rhetoric to disrupt anyone who might help unfuck their poisoned brains. All this has been going on for decades, but the internet really just helped tie it all together, providing the perfect echo chamber that no one ever has to leave.
The net result is a captured government focused on destroying their greatest weakness: agents and sources of truth. Massive media consolidation destroys the national news-gathering apparatus and controls the entertainment diet to restrict subversive content, and the implosion of the department of education ensures more and more future adults will grow up never having had the benefit of a robust education.
So are we fucked? Maybe. But bumping off politicians isn’t the answer.
I wouldn’t call it fair and square with the amount of election tampering and voter suppression that went on.
Trump bragged, on air, multiple times, that they rigged the 2024 election.
Eh. It’s part of the answer tho.
Political leaders need to know they have accountability, otherwise they don’t work for the people. Death is the ultimate accountability. Like most significant and irreversible options, it should be used as a last resort.