Along with all this, he has undermined trust in systems that were largely held together by trust. How many times were we taught about the “checks and balances” built into the system, only to see they’re ultimately a facade. The court rules against an action the president takes, but they can’t actually enforce it. The president overules congress’s power to write the budget, but they can’t actually stop him.
All checks and balances required a faith in the system working along a myth that was created. Not that myth has been shown to be false and there’s no going back. It’ll take serious amendments to the constitution to repair, or a new one altogether. I don’t think either of those are happening in the current political climate though.
So yes, he’s done a lot of harm externally, but also internally.
To be fair, this is a problem that has always existed with our Constitution. The Constitution gave us a framework for government and rules to abide by, but its fatal flaw is that it said exactly nothing about what to do when someone breaks those laws. The entire document is basically little more than a glorified gentleman’s agreement. There’s nothing in the document that says what to do if those elected to support and defend the Constitution instead decide to take a shit on it.
If anything, we should consider ourselves lucky for a couple of things. One is the fact that it took 250 years for someone to realize that our Constitution has absolutely no teeth to it and the answer to the question of “What are you going to do about it?” is effectively “Nothing.” The other is that the first person to go down that path is an inept moron. Now granted, the man has still done permanent and irreparable harm to our country and our standing in the rest of the world. But imagine the damage the man would be able to do if he were competent. Imagine if Trump had the political savvy and intelligence of Mitch McConnell. We’d be in a fuck of a lot more trouble.
Along with all this, he has undermined trust in systems that were largely held together by trust. How many times were we taught about the “checks and balances” built into the system, only to see they’re ultimately a facade. The court rules against an action the president takes, but they can’t actually enforce it. The president overules congress’s power to write the budget, but they can’t actually stop him.
All checks and balances required a faith in the system working along a myth that was created. Not that myth has been shown to be false and there’s no going back. It’ll take serious amendments to the constitution to repair, or a new one altogether. I don’t think either of those are happening in the current political climate though.
So yes, he’s done a lot of harm externally, but also internally.
To be fair, this is a problem that has always existed with our Constitution. The Constitution gave us a framework for government and rules to abide by, but its fatal flaw is that it said exactly nothing about what to do when someone breaks those laws. The entire document is basically little more than a glorified gentleman’s agreement. There’s nothing in the document that says what to do if those elected to support and defend the Constitution instead decide to take a shit on it.
If anything, we should consider ourselves lucky for a couple of things. One is the fact that it took 250 years for someone to realize that our Constitution has absolutely no teeth to it and the answer to the question of “What are you going to do about it?” is effectively “Nothing.” The other is that the first person to go down that path is an inept moron. Now granted, the man has still done permanent and irreparable harm to our country and our standing in the rest of the world. But imagine the damage the man would be able to do if he were competent. Imagine if Trump had the political savvy and intelligence of Mitch McConnell. We’d be in a fuck of a lot more trouble.