this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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USA has always been an ambivalent place, both committed to equality and liberty in an idealized manner and also committed to perpetuating inequality, particularly across racial, ethnic and religious lines. A child of the 1970s I like the version of America I was taught about in-between Saturday morning cartoons via School House Rock. No more kings!
Edit: before anyone else points it out, the video depicts racism against native americans and the colonists were crazy religious zealots. But it's also about rejection of the English king. So all the ambivalence seems to be there.
Well, the nazis weren't really big on monarchism either
Cute, but also naive and highly revisionist. The ideals behind it are nice but they were never fully realized or even well thought out, particularly for certain groups or people seen as lesser.
In particular, the substitution of a president for a king was, I think, one of the most naive and dangerous mistakes in early US history. Did they really think calling him something different would change the dynamics? The entire existence of Trump can be traced back to this decision.
? Being able to elect your leader, criticize them, etc. is pretty vastly different from having a king and lineage of people who all think they’re special for no reason at all. Trump being treated like he should be a king by the dumbest people anyone knows is a failing by those people to have even the slightest sign of brain activity. Everyone else knows that the president/prime minister/whatever is just a temporary leader and one essentially hired to do a job.
The idea that a country needs (~~to exist~~) to be ruled by a single individual is completely unfounded, and perpetuated by people who are either fools or foolish enough to think they have a shot at the throne. Early on, there were proposals for the USA to have a king, a president, and many other ideas including no executive branch or having a tribunal. I could see a good case for splitting the executive across 3 persons with equal and asymmetrical powers.
Assuming you do a ranked choice vote for all 3 at once (or 1 at a time in rotation, like Senators) it should be extremely difficult to compromise the office by, say, buying one deeply indebted former TV host and running them for president.
Exactly, they couldn't possibly be anything like kings.
You see, the small group of ultra wealthy people in America who control the government and make the laws, due to their hereditary power and vast holdings, aren't from the Aristocrstic region of Europe or the Oligarchy region of Western Russia.
So, its a totally different thing. Although, I was a little confused when I first heard about Bush II or that something the Kennedy dynasty could exist. Luckily, I saw a play all about it in the Rockefeller Palace in new York, not far from Trump's.
This comment is exactly the lack of imagination and critical thinking I am criticizing. There are some structures and norms around the president that make its office less dangerous than a king. But not much less dangerous. He has much of the same powers. The ability to command the military and execute the law are the two most important, and we already saw how trump tried to abuse these powers in his first term. We were just lucky that many of his followers resisted. But will they next time? I think not. His new cadre has been selected with that in mind, and he’s made it clear he will dispose of or punish anyone who resists him.
What “everyone knows” is not what everyone knows if not everyone knows it. The office of the presidency is inherently vulnerable to the type of attempted power grab that Trump is currently enacting. There is nothing unusual or particularly stupid about his followers. They are just people who have been indoctrinated into an authoritarian cult.
Many people don’t know, but the earliest British kings were elected. But over time, the king gained more and more power until it became the tyrannical institution in our current imagination. The same happened in Rome with the rise of the emperor. And Hitler, and the Bolsheviks, and many many others. Most tyrants arise within systems that purport to be democratic.
A truly just and benevolent system of government must resist these attacks on it far more strongly. I believe we are seeing the gradual failure of the American system today. With luck we will fight off this attack and the system may limp on for a few more years. But without reforms to more substantially limit executive power, the system remains vulnerable. The office of the president is clearly the weak point, and if we’re smart we’ll think on how the powers of that office can be deconstructed and distributed more widely.