this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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It's disturbing how this whole debacle has led to exactly zero conversations about curbing the power of the executive
Like congress is totally fucking useless but they used to at least have some self respect. You would think that for being power hungry jackals they would be a little more power hungry
I said the same thing in Trump’s first term when he was threatening to nuke the DPRK. Liberals were all up in arms that Trump would possibly do that, but NONE of them even questioned if the executive should have that kind of power in the first place.
That said, I’m currently reading Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. And it’s clear to me that the men who wrote that dogshit constitution clearly thought the executive and the judiciary should have a ton of power. Those rich assholes hated the poor and yeoman farmers, and so much of what they put in the final document was basically just “we can never let anyone challenge the sacred rights of property”, and saw the executive as the final check on democracy. The whole idea of the electoral college was that they couldn’t trust people to make that decision (and “people” here just means propertied white men anyway) so they would nominate aristocrats to make the real decision. They saw a powerful judiciary and executive as the real source of power. Really, this all is just a return to form.
Yeah, it's not new. Wasn't the senate explicitly designed as an anti-democractic body as well?
The senate was designed specifically for the wealthy, it was seen as a sort of House of Lords for the US and was seen as the superior to whatever house of legislature had more democratic representation.
Such a great read, if not a bit boring when he's just listing off their property.😅 But it was a real eye opener to the thought process behind this country, especially finding out the truth behind the Constitutional Convention and what the general population was moving towards with Shaw's Rebellion.
I found it to be a great followup to Gerald Horne's Counter-Revolution of 1776, if you've not read that yet.
Yeah good point they've always been useless
Congress and the judiciary both. Trump is operating with near absolute impunity and shows how this system relied almost entirely on the willingness of participants to "play by the rules" in the past.
Matt Christman has a good Inebriated Past that is closely related to this, Chapo Trap House Ep 329
like the drug guy?
I don't follow
For congress, they have been willingly ceding power to the executive for most of US history. The most obvious one is war making and war declarations. Congress will cede powers that are risky or divisive between donors and constituents or factions of either. They mostly just want to hang on to enough power to get the lobbying dollars and get sinecure jobs afterwards, but not enough power that they make risky decisions that would piss off those donors/corporations.