Despite the agency's human resources department saying he hadn’t even been onboarded, Jeremy Lewin oversaw the destruction of USAID. It’s not clear he had the legal authority to do so.
Sounds good in theory, but Trump could kill all of Chuck Grassley’s great grand children on the Senate floor and the Republicans still wouldn’t vote to convict him.
14A3 disqualification. He already wasn’t legally appointed so the second term pardons aren’t legal anyway. But somebody needs to enforce the disqualification
Are you saying that because he conspired seditiously to overthrow the United States government on J6, 2021, that he was constitutionally ineligible to run for office and should therefore not have been on the ballots in 2024?
Cause I can get behind that, but like, how do we even begin undoing the mess that it’s caused?
Yeah that’s the only way. And that’s what I keep trying to remind people, but a lot of people don’t want to hear it.
Like, I’m not being naïve about the upbill battle that it is, I know we’re the underdogs and success is not guaranteed. But it’s literally the only way.
So people who claim “that never works” are only being defeatist. More accurately, “it hasn’t worked yet.” Nothing does until it does, but that’s no reason not to try.
And it’s intellectually lazy to assume nothing will ever change, because change has always been the only constant running throughout all of human history.
rant:
But some people get really smug about claims like “well the past was always XYZ, so the future will be too!” Yet the facts of history do not support that claim, and it’s honestly a praesen-centric claim, because it applies hindsight bias to the past, survivorship bias to the present, and availability bias to the future. In other words, it’s a claim that our current perspective, from our current vantage point, is the only valid one.
It’s to claim “we are at a unique moment in time that is somehow separate from the very past from which it emerged, and is obviously superior to it in every way; even though it only is what it is because it came to be via the processes that unfolded throughout the past and up until this very moment.”
And so everything “good” or “correct” looks like it’s because we’re in the enlightened present, and everything “bad” or “wrong” looks like it was because of the ignorant past. But the truth is, there’s no separation, and it’s exceptionalist to claim that there is. There’s a continuity which can’t be ignored.
So in a way, it’s really just another extension of ego-centrism, just like ethnocentrism, linguocentrism, natio-centrism, etc.; i.e. of being unable to imagine anything outside one’s own experience or identity.
It merely expands the “in-group” to “now” rather than drawing spatial or cultural boundaries. Perhaps a more enlightened perspective than those other examples, but still trapped within the delusion of separation.
I digress. Key takeaway: do not feel we are doomed just because it seems grim, because that assumes we are omniscient. In truth, the possibilities for the future might defy the limits of our imaginations. So we mustn’t give up; we must keep striving for change.
Unfortunately, the only ones with that power are the elected officials and a lot of conservative dems are just republicans with another name ready to do as they are told.
Executive orders and pardons are the bastardization of checks and balances. Pardons do make some level of sense at least from the fluidity of law. But blanket pardons and whatever the fuck has been going on needs a level of oversight.
There should be a rule where if a president gets impeached and convicted, all the pardons they issued should be voided.
Sounds good in theory, but Trump could kill all of Chuck Grassley’s great grand children on the Senate floor and the Republicans still wouldn’t vote to convict him.
14A3 disqualification. He already wasn’t legally appointed so the second term pardons aren’t legal anyway. But somebody needs to enforce the disqualification
Are you saying that because he conspired seditiously to overthrow the United States government on J6, 2021, that he was constitutionally ineligible to run for office and should therefore not have been on the ballots in 2024?
Cause I can get behind that, but like, how do we even begin undoing the mess that it’s caused?
Yeah basically keep pushing left until a majority is willing to impeach and disqualify
Yeah that’s the only way. And that’s what I keep trying to remind people, but a lot of people don’t want to hear it.
Like, I’m not being naïve about the upbill battle that it is, I know we’re the underdogs and success is not guaranteed. But it’s literally the only way.
So people who claim “that never works” are only being defeatist. More accurately, “it hasn’t worked yet.” Nothing does until it does, but that’s no reason not to try.
And it’s intellectually lazy to assume nothing will ever change, because change has always been the only constant running throughout all of human history.
rant:
But some people get really smug about claims like “well the past was always XYZ, so the future will be too!” Yet the facts of history do not support that claim, and it’s honestly a praesen-centric claim, because it applies hindsight bias to the past, survivorship bias to the present, and availability bias to the future. In other words, it’s a claim that our current perspective, from our current vantage point, is the only valid one.
It’s to claim “we are at a unique moment in time that is somehow separate from the very past from which it emerged, and is obviously superior to it in every way; even though it only is what it is because it came to be via the processes that unfolded throughout the past and up until this very moment.”
And so everything “good” or “correct” looks like it’s because we’re in the enlightened present, and everything “bad” or “wrong” looks like it was because of the ignorant past. But the truth is, there’s no separation, and it’s exceptionalist to claim that there is. There’s a continuity which can’t be ignored.
So in a way, it’s really just another extension of ego-centrism, just like ethnocentrism, linguocentrism, natio-centrism, etc.; i.e. of being unable to imagine anything outside one’s own experience or identity.
It merely expands the “in-group” to “now” rather than drawing spatial or cultural boundaries. Perhaps a more enlightened perspective than those other examples, but still trapped within the delusion of separation.
I digress. Key takeaway: do not feel we are doomed just because it seems grim, because that assumes we are omniscient. In truth, the possibilities for the future might defy the limits of our imaginations. So we mustn’t give up; we must keep striving for change.
You don’t. That’s the catch.
Unfortunately, the only ones with that power are the elected officials and a lot of conservative dems are just republicans with another name ready to do as they are told.
So in other words, we need to vote to break the republican trifecta? And in following electoral cycles, primary any dem who votes with maga?
Great, time to roll our sleeves up then.
Maybe it’s time we ditch the whole concept of pardons.
Executive orders and pardons are the bastardization of checks and balances. Pardons do make some level of sense at least from the fluidity of law. But blanket pardons and whatever the fuck has been going on needs a level of oversight.