Everything is a constitutional crisis now, because nobody really knows what a constitutional crisis is. We're just numbing people down and normalizing the words until they mean nothing, because we aren't using them when they really matter. The details of this do not seem like they warrant calling it a constitutional crisis. When we actually face one, there won't be words we can use to describe it anymore, because we've wasted them.
DJT just talked about arresting Newsom. When asked why by reporters he said because he was a bad governor.
We can bury our heads all we want, but this seems like a constitutional crisis to me. Said another way, hiw many signs do we have to ignore before we call it one?
What you're talking about is the rhetoric and politics surrounding the current times as opposed to the reality. Trump says a lot of things and he is a man of action, so that makes him a credible threat whenever he says he's going to do something. At the same time, it's pretty normal that whatever he does goes through a team of lawyers first.
This is convenient for Trump, because anything he says that people get riled up about ends up discrediting them as ridiculous, because the reality ends up being less surprising. In the US you can only be president so long as you remain within an operable window of reasonability, which Trump remains within despite his character.
Now, does that mean you just ignore the rhetoric and stop paying attention to let it normalize in your mind so that when something actually bad happens it can just feel like a minor iteration rather than a shocking leap? No. That said, the rhetoric is the rhetoric and the reality is the reality.
Trump also said to lock Hillary up, yet that never happened. Sure, you shouldn't have to be a constitutional lawyer or understand entirely how the country works to get a decent sense for what's really happening, but ideally high quality journalists help fill that role to contextualize important events, grounding viewers in reality. The problem is that people get so much of their news from entertainment comedy shows and emotional opinion shows now rather than actual boring (good boring) journalistic media. It becomes celebrity clickbait.
I agree with most of what you're saying. The only adjustment I'd make is the idea of a Trump's statements being a trial balloon. He says crazy things to see how people will react.
I agree that most of it is theater, for now. Some things have moved into reality, though. Ignoring judges orders. Sending US citizens to foreign jails. Going after media companies and extorting millions. Going after law firms and extorting millions. Before he did those things, they were just like all the other crazy things he said. Now, they're part of our reality.
He says crazy things to expand people's possibility space, increasing their tolerance for a less bad version of it that might have otherwise been harder for people to accept. This is in Art of the Deal.
Same thing with Gaza becoming some kind of glorious lavish supermall. Same thing with the Ukraine and Russia peace deals. This is just how he is.
It has extra upsides and downsides when used in politics at this level, to be fair.
The US is unique compared to basically every other country on Earth, so an actual constitutional crisis would take more here than in other countries.
A constitutional crisis would be if an entire generation of Americans across a majority of states were educated to hate the constitution. It would be if the military only served the president rather than the constitution, but in reality the military serves the constitution first and foremost and operates across many states. It would be if the supreme court was getting filled with judges that do not believe in the spirit of the constitution.
If someone does something that is actually against the constitution, it's not necessarily a crisis so long as it doesn't set a precedent to ignore the application of the constitution there in an unrecoverable momentum kind of way. That said, what Trump is doing here is neither against the constitution or even unprecedented.
What if the current president didn't want to leave office after losing an election, and summoned a mob to prevent his successor from being certified by way of killing and/or terrorizing the Congress? Would that be a constitutional crisis if that happened or no? And if not why?
No, because it doesn't work that way. What people thought January 6th was and what they thought it meant, are not what it was. That event might be meaningful in any other country, it was not meaningful here in the US except in whatever meaning media decides to give to it.
Media kept calling it an insurrection which made no sense to me, and even the FBI determined that it wasn't an insurrection.
Just because a process like that is interrupted, does not mean the process does not happen. Regardless of interruption, the process continues by law.
That entire building could have been nuked and the country would still go on just fine, with presidential elections and new presidents. I mean that absolutely literally, just so you know the US is not like some country you can just walk into the court house and take over. The US doesn't work that way.
Now that said, there is the parallel matter of whether Trump could run for a 3rd term. Well, there is precedent since we have had a 3 term president before during war time. If China attacks Taiwan and we get dragged into a war, I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility. Nobody has the taste for a forever president though.
If I looked around me and saw lots of people wanting some kind of one-party one-leader system for decades then I might be concerned, but I see that nowhere.
Actual constitutional crisis as more than a phrasing used for emphasis is a high bar.
> That entire building could have been nuked and the country would still go on just fine, with presidential elections and new presidents.
I don't understand how. You're saying the President could literally murder the entire Congress, and things would just go on fine? Who would ever run for Congress after that, knowing that if they ever defied the President he could murder them without repercussions?
> If I looked around me and saw lots of people wanting some kind of one-party one-leader system for decades then I might be concerned,
Are you saying there can only be a constitutional crisis if it's popular and endemic to disagree with the constitution? If that's the case, how can we ever stop a constitutional crisis from happening if you can only recognize it after it's set in?
> I don't understand how. You're saying the President could literally murder the entire Congress, and things would just go on fine? Who would ever run for Congress after that, knowing that if they ever defied the President he could murder them without repercussions?
That's not what I said. Even then, if the president nuked congress they wouldn't be president anymore. Kind of self defeating. Also, the president doesn't control the nukes, the military controls the nukes and the military serves the constitution.
> Are you saying there can only be a constitutional crisis if it's popular and endemic to disagree with the constitution? If that's the case, how can we ever stop a constitutional crisis from happening if you can only recognize it after it's set in?
Fortunately it takes time to poison people against their own country, so we measure these things and react.
> That entire building could have been nuked and the country would still go on just fine, with presidential elections and new presidents.
So you mean if some other country nuked Congress.
But that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm asking you is: what if the President of the United States, in some way shape or form aims to kill Congress. If he succeeds, is that a constitutional crisis?
> Fortunately it takes time to poison people against their own country, so we measure these things and react.
I would say this has easily been happening over the past 10 years. Don't you think that on the road toward a constitutional crisis, a lot of people would point out the inflection points along the way, as they've been doing? But you seem to be dismissing them as hyperbolic, rather then heeding their warnings.
> But that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm asking you is: what if the President of the United States, in some way shape or form aims to kill Congress. If he succeeds, is that a constitutional crisis?
It depends on what happens afterwards. It's not necessarily a constitutional crisis. If the president was then jailed and new congress members were voted in, then no. It would basically be an isolated event with the constitution continuing to operate the way it should.
> I would say this has easily been happening over the past 10 years. Don't you think that on the road toward a constitutional crisis, a lot of people would point out the inflection points along the way, as they've been doing? But you seem to be dismissing them as hyperbolic, rather then heeding their warnings.
So, there has been a rise in Marxism under different names, some taught to college students. There has also been steady increase in rhetorical temperature over the past 30+ years. The sort of recipe ingredients for discontent have been increasing since the 1970s oil situation, but maybe delayed by technology and cheap goods from China. Then China and technology increasingly became part of the problem rather than the solution.
Hyper-individualism making strong community formation a little harder. Less civic involvement, the decline of civics in schools. Demographic imbalances don't help, housing supply limitations too.
So, some things are more an expected increase in frustration from many dynamics. Others are things we can react to, or resolve. It's not the first time the US has faced some of these issues and come out of them alright, so it's a bit premature to call it a constitutional crisis.
In other ways, we just have to tighten up our ship to prepare for a potential war with China as deterrence. Part of the reason more powers were given to presidents with congressional oversight is out of acceptance that congress can be too slow. Especially now, congress is so bogged down right when we need to be able to take decisive action.
In that sense, it wouldn't be strange in the context we're entering for the US to lean towards more sharper, action oriented usage of power that people can label as authoritarian all they want. Those powers can be taken back by congress or denied by the supreme court if necessary, unless they are constitutional in which case separation of powers comes into play.
