At least the road to hell is entertaining.
FBI Director Kash Patelās girlfriend Alexis Wilkins is suing ex-agent Kyle Seraphin for defamation for calling her a āformer Mossad agentā and suggesting her relationship with Patel is a āhoneypot.ā
Should have just been a solid blue logo with CD in white with U.S. Center For Disease as the caption
āTwas making fun of the Cracker Barrel thing tho.
I got the joke.
Sometimes the best jokes are just the ājokeā the new brand would bring, because of its basis in truth.
Right, of course thatās the proximate cause, but this invites the additional question of why this happened in the US and not Australia.
Here I would have to point the finger at landmark decisions like Brown v Board and Roe v Wade, which alerted the conservative movement to the fact that the courts can be used as a de facto legislature beyond democratic control.
Unlike some of the other problems with the US system, I would say this one was harder to see coming. The Constitution contains the idea āit would be cool if people didnāt get persecuted for speaking their mindā and somehow this became ācorporations are allowed to just pump infinite money into the political system and you canāt make laws saying they canātā. How the hell did that happen? I think itās a complex question, but I think a big factor is the ineffectiveness of Congress. The Constitution does not grant it enough power. The ludicrous Commerce Clause cheat code was an attempt to work around this, but it has not been enough, and the rise in power of the executive and judicial branches I see as a consequence of the ineffectiveness of Congress.
The Australian Constitution just doesnāt contain enough juice to be weaponized, I think. You canāt twist the protection of free speech into some other thing because there is no protection of free speech in the document. This comes with its own dangers, but I think one of the main lessons of the American system is that a legislature that is too weak is probably more dangerous than one that is too strong. If political power canāt be projected through the legislature, then political pressure demands the growth of other locuses of power which are able to subvert the legislature.
Shorter version:
In theory Congress is stronger than both the SC and the Executive. The problem is once enough members decide to act in bad faith.
Social media is rampant right now with wishful speculation that Dear Leader may have departed our world or is on the bring of doing so. The JD Vance interview about assuming office, lack of public appearance and none scheduled over the weekend, tariff tweet that didnāt have his usual dumb-dumb toneā¦
I am hearing that on his deathbed Donald Trump received the light of Islam and unhesitatingly recited the Shahada. Even now he looks down on the Ummah from the gardens of Jannah. Truly there is no god but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet!
But as Chris says. thereās more to explain that that. Why are some systems more susceptible or encouraging of bad faith actors than others?
We will know something is up if heās not golfing tomorrow.
Itās a great question, however assuming that because America is going through this it is a fault of the system, is going to lead to some incorrect answers imo. Itās possible Australia, or other countries which are still democratic, have even more susceptible systems.
If people took their roles seriously then words would still have meaning, and crime would still be illegal. Any system can be destroyed once enough of these people are elected to office. As far as a list of reasons for why weāre here, I think how USAās government was formed or operates is pretty far down the list.
But these questions have been scrutinized. By political scientists who look at multiple different systems of government over a long period. Presidential systems do worse than parliamentary systems.
Itās a core cultural failing of the US.
The culture is way to individualistic and when you add the American dream myth it leads to a āfuck everyone but meā culture which erodes democracy.
Check out Hofstedeās Collectivist theory
This is really the key. I think the Founders were brilliant, but they just didnāt have the knowledge that we have today about how to design an effective government. Presidentialism sucks, and it sucks way more in the Information Age, because you have to concentrate a lot of authority in a single executive for the government to function, but you need to be able to do that in a way that doesnāt sap legitimacy from the legislature. Parliamentary systems can do that easily, and presidential systems canāt.
If thereās a problem RFK Jr. will use horse manure or whatever to bring him back from the dead.
Can you imagine if he actually died right now?