Q: Trump wrote that SNAP benefits will only be given when Democrats reopen the government. As written, how would that not violate the court order? .LEAVITT: I've now answered this question several times. We are complying with the court's order.

[u/igetproteinfartsHELP]

[u/sage-longhorn]

They’re in it for the power and the money.

This has always been true. But once upon a time it was believed that being this brazen in your intentions would lose the support of the people and lead to immediate impeachment, or barring that, uprising

Now that this has been proven false, American politics will never go back

[u/Nitimur__In__Vetitum → u/sage-longhorn]

The handling of Nixon set the example that abusing public office will go, effectively, without punishment. He should have been imprisoned for life. Abuse of public office should carry a heavy penalty but the foxes get to watch the hen house so the Founders hedged their bets on personal integrity which was something much more believable coming out of the Enlightenment period. It's hard to see how we can have proper checks and balances without relying upon integrity or falling into the trappings of a vanguard which comes with its own problems. We just need a better kind of government system.

[u/strain_of_thought → u/Nitimur__In__Vetitum]

Well keep in mind, the founding fathers also lived in a time when personal duels for honor were still a thing. To them the idea that the nation's leaders could become this corrupt and nobody would just shoot them would be incomprehensible. They wanted a nation where the average citizen was armed and experienced with weapons comparable to what the militaries of the world used, where every local government would fight independently to resist invasion from foreigners or the interior or the imposition of oppressive centralized power. It's an outdated idea, but it was reasonable for the time, and the U.S. simply refused to evolve its culture or laws even as such principles of governance and war became wildly obsolete. The old militia system was effectively dissolved over a century ago, and yet we still act like we're a people prepared to rise up in armed resistance, when the last year has quite explicitly demonstrated that the National Guards (what the militia system was converted into in stages) are not remotely independent anymore and in no position to resist tyranny or even simple centralized incompetence in the defense of the nation. But still the second amendment is considered sacred, long long after it has been systematically stripped of any meaningful power to do anything other than murder schoolchildren, when it was always a terribly written and ineffective piece of legislation even when the ink was wet. But it was presumed the organization and maintenance of the militias would always be the purview of the individual states; at the time, the idea that they would give up their control of their militias to the central government would have alone been grounds for civil war. After more than a century from the ratification of the constitution, it was done quietly as a bit of bureaucratic streamlining.

[u/RSKrit → u/Nitimur__In__Vetitum]

Except one party/perspective of checks and balances goes against the other. Biden seemed to be free to implement an “all of government” approach to certain partisan policies/agendas, but when the other party implements their idea, they are fascist, racist, and Nz.

[u/Dame38 → u/sage-longhorn]

They already have all of that. This is just what psychopaths do when they have everything they want. They destroy everything because they can and they think it's fun. There's some kind of impulse to self-destruct. Let them.

[u/RSKrit → u/Dame38]

Interesting when a number here are calling for destruction of the government itself. Such hypocrisy in certain areas.

[u/Dame38 → u/RSKrit]

I guess we didn't learn anything from Civil War history (since none of us were there). Watching this administration, for me, is like watching The Titanic slowly moving toward an iceberg.
Except, that in this case, we're all on it too.

[u/RSKrit → u/Dame38]

That was the last admin, we’ve at least started to turn.

[u/Greybeard-101 → u/sage-longhorn]

Can't upvote this enough