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Let’s not forgot about not having publicly funded elections.
Failing?
Supreme court, July 2024: “the president is the god king, and cannot be beholden to laws of mere mortals”
The Guardian, July 2025: “i don’t know guys, checks and balances seem to be failing, don’t you think?”
checks and balances were already fucked but whatever was there was finally shot dead and thrown in a ditch like a Noem family pet a year ago, dickheads, what the fuck are you talking about
*failed
*has failed.
**completely and totally
***repeatedly
It’s never really existed to an extent. It’s been gamified from the get-go.
The AskHistorians podcast called it, in the aftermath of January 6 riots. They did not explicitly compare January 6 with the fall of Roman republic, but explained why the republic fell. The institutions got too corrupt in spite of checks and balances. The concept worked many times and was threatened before, until the breaking point had been reached. Brutus proclaimed he saved democracy after assassinating Caesar, but the crowd booed and heckled him because Caesar was popular and could actually get the job done, unlike corrupt politicians who typically make excuses not to do what the people want, because the elites would not want to ruffle their feathers of their patrons and their own interests.
People are not dumb. If politicians are doing what the people want, populism would never be a thing.
If politicians are doing what the people want, populism would never be a thing.
Populism works to get politicians elected because it is nothing more than politicians telling the people what the people want to hear.
Populism has nothing to do with actually doing what is in the best interests of the people, it’s about making the people believe that their interests are going to be served.
Populism is getting a bad rap, but more often than not, it is triggered when people feel under pressure from worsening cost and standards of living. If we follow Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the base requirement of security of food and shelter has to be addressed first, before more conceptual self-realisation needs and other abstract ideas are thought of. If you are constantly worried about how to put food on the table, or how to pay the rent, you would not have sufficient time to think more abstract ideas like exploring the nebula, algebra, democracy, rule of law, checks and balances, etc.
Demagogues rile up populism to get into power, because there is genuine frustration among the people on not having their basic needs being met. Needless to say, populism is still democracy. Here in Europe (or in anywhere really), experts have already repeated numerous times that in order to prevent the further rise of far right, just build more houses. But of course politicians don’t want that, because they themselves are landlords or have financial stakes in keeping property and rent prices high. Unfortunately, demagogues twist the genuine concerns and frustrations, and exploit the desperate situation people are in to gain power.
Oft mentioned is different from famed.
Hahahaha
Breathes in hahahahaha
Checks-and-balances rely on:
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Voter interest in civic participation
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Careerist politicians and bureaucrats
If voters have no civic interest and prefer masturbatory prejudices to serious consideration of civic duty, and if ‘careerist’ politicians are given immense power and wealth for stepping aside (either by retirement or by simple non-action when in office) thus rendering self-castration of their office personally meaningless to their career path/personal fortunes, checks and balances don’t mean shit.
All systems are reliant on a population’s willingness to obey and enforce their rules. We in the US, apparently, have very little appetite for that anymore.
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laws mean nothing when you can just ignore them
Need more…
It’s sad to realize that there never really were any “checks and balances”. It was all based on an honor system, that relied entirely on no one trying to cross any boundaries.
As soon as Trump pushed even slightly against those so-called guardrails, they simply fell over.
Every country which went into dictatorship had checks and balances. US checks and balances were not unique.
All systems are honour systems at their core. If no one respects the rule of law then laws don’t matter.
Some systems, though, have actual mechanisms for enforcement attached to them. But apparently none of that was included in the legal framework that the entire country is built on.
“Hey! You can’t do that! That very clearly violates Constitutional law.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it?”
(checks Constitution) “Oh…uhhh. I guess nothing?”
“Hey! You can’t do that! That very clearly violates Constitutional law.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it?”
(checks Constitution) “Oh…uhhh. I guess nothing?”
Impeachment, that’s what they’d do about it. But that would require politicians who do their job and also uphold the constitution. If the question is: what happens when everyone involved breaks the law and doesn’t do their job?
The answer is one of two things: the people vote them out.
If they are voted out but refuse to cede power peacefully, we end up with violence.
Nothing about the checks and balances are broken, what’s broken is the percentage of the population that just doesn’t care their representative isn’t actually doing their job.
Mechanisms of enforcement still need enforcers who respect the rule of law. If the enforcers stop respecting the rule of law and prefer to play power politics then the won’t help you.
Enforcers are part of the honour system. If they aren’t honourable then the system breaks down.
Except in this case…there are no enforcers. At all.
There is no mechanism in place to actually enforce a court ruling, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There is no mechanism in place to enforce legislation that’s been passed by Congress, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There aren’t even any mechanisms in place to enforce Constitutional amendments that should actively restrict the executive branch’s actions. They had a lot to say about what the executive branch should not be allowed to do…but they seemingly forgot to include any way of ensuring they would be held accountable, if they didn’t follow the rules.
There are literally NO “checks and balances” in place to enforce anything if the executive branch decides to ignore the other two branches of government. It’s like passing legislation that declares murder a crime…but not including any consequences for actually committing it.
Correct. Society as we know it is a social understanding
I like what I’ve heard around the Internet: “social contract”
Violate that contract, agreements (and a lack of consequences) are null.
Time to build some guillotines.
Yeah. I was just thinking about why zombies are so threatening. They represent the total collapse of the social order and a replacement of a large percent of the population of ordinary people with savage predators.
It’s no coincidence that zombie dramas and video games became extremely popular in the USA right as people started feeling they were surrounded by hostile forces in a collapsing society with no one looking out for them.
This is not about “society as we know it”, this is about a particular way of designing your political system. The American way of doing things in this regard is not terribly widespread.
So no, this is not about lofty and universal concepts like “social contract” or anything like that, it is about specific constitutional designs, which are not the same everywhere. Especially the “checks and balances” system.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Our government is completely populated with cowards who don’t even want the responsibility of the power of their positions. And our civics education is so poor that they know the only thing the masses pay attention to is the president. So everyone can collectively fuck off with their jobs and face no backlash.
When the person in charge puts people in those positions to hand the power to him. It’s not willfully ceding at that point, it’s a concerted effort.
With Trump’s staff and cabinet choices sure, but he didn’t put Congress or the Senate together, the voters did. Unfortunately both are filled with Republicans who are all to happy to be hand over their power or Democrats who are too scared to use theirs.
Now it’s too late, Trump has his own personal paramilitary with a budget that on par with military spending. At this point Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost has a better chance of taking Trump and MAGA down then a Democrat.
Of course all that would do is put a Democrat in charge who would just slow the decline for four years.
He didn’t put the House and Senate there. They’re the ones ceding power.
There are no “independent branches of government”. They are all governed by people of the same party. Your assumption copies the beliefs of the original founders that some imaginary “civic duty” would overrule all partisanship, when all recorded political history going back to the earliest civilisations show us that partisanship is an inevitable phenomenon in human societies.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Anyone with any sense?
This is how political parties work. And, the “founding fathers” were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.
This is how political parties work. And, the “founding fathers” were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.
Well at least one of them tried to argue against having political parties in order to avoid this problem
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While you can’t actually get rid of parties themselves, I really think taking them off the ballots would help immensly
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I think the latter would still be an improvement, though not as much of one as I’d like
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There’s a difference between voting in a block, and literally passing/interpreting legislation to expand powers of another branch at the expense of your own.
If you vote in a block, you still have your vote. If you pass laws saying actually you can do whatever you want without a law saying you can, you just took your own vote out of the equation.
There’s a difference between voting in a block, and literally passing/interesting legislation to expand powers of another branch at the expense of your own.
Not really. As soon as people are told they have to vote for what the party wants instead of each person individually voting as they believe, then it’s just a matter of where you draw the line. If your party’s leader is president then why wouldn’t you just fall in line and pass everything he wants. If you’re a judge and your party’s president is in office, why wouldn’t you try to find legal justification for everything he wants. Why should there be party infighting between the president and the head of the house? Surely the house should just fall in line and let the President get his agenda passed.
Because parties change power? And you end up setting precedent that is used against you? Not to mention the voting part is literally part of the job they are paid and elected to do?
So what? You can wait until the next election and undo whatever they did. Or you can use your power to adjust the system so your opponents can’t win.
It relied on voters actually caring about corruption and imposing a cost on corrupt behaviour. Unfortunately, Americans gonna American.
Caring about corruption impartially. They may care about it if it is the opposing team doing it, but are perfectly willing to ignore it if it is their own team. And with “they” I mean the Republicans.
“Famed”? Lol
It can only work if the government wasn’t partisan. Kinda impressive it took this long for the facade to fall off.
