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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29852 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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This ruling is obviously correct. This is why impeachment and elections exist. If Biden ordered Trump whacked, the Democrats would face electoral ruin. If people continued to vote for Biden after… that’s democracy.

Why stop there? Just order the guy after Trump whacked, then the next guy after that… Does it even matter if a large number of people refrain from voting Biden afterwards if he’s the only option left?

This hypothetical is completely asinine for so many reasons. If there was such a complete breakdown of order that one party was murdering everybody in the other party, a Supreme Court opinion wouldn’t matter in the slightest.

Regardless, suppose the Supreme Court ruled the other way. Why not, in addition to murdering the opposing candidate, just murder all of your enemies on the Supreme Court and Congress until the only people left rule that you are immune and refuse to impeach you? Loophole!

It’s such a bad faith argument. If Biden or Trump went on a murder spree, the Supreme Court would find some justification, thin or not, to rule it not an official act.

I don't understand. If a scenario of murdering multiple candidates is asinine then surely the scenario of Biden murdering Trump is also asinine and the Supreme Court opinion doesn't matter?

If there's a complete break down of order that Biden is able to murder Trump without any major repercussions except some electoral issues in November then he can also do it to two or three other politicians that step up after Trump. I just took your scenario and expanded on it. If you have problems with the "if he's the only option left" part, that is not meant to be taken literally. As in, he's not literally murdering everyone who disagrees with him, just that no one of value will have time to establish themselves to challenge his presidency after the first few are gone.

Laventriy Beria was murdered by Georgiy Zhukov.

I think that after the first few murders Biden's own House and Senate Democrats would join with the Republicans and vote to impeach him. Whatever you think about the Democrats, most of them would be extremely uncomfortable living in a dictatorship ruled by fear and tyranny.

Whatever you think about the Democrats, most of them would be extremely uncomfortable living in a dictatorship ruled by fear and tyranny.

I think that's definitely true. But I also think that if someone were to become dictator, they wouldn't exercise power against their enemies quite so nakedly. Any dictator worth his salt is going to harp on how the people he killed were exceptional threats to the Republic, who undermine the foundations of our democracy, etc. And I think people (of either side) would eat it right up, given the current political climate.

There's a limit to how many people you can brand as enemies of the Republic. If you don't get rid of every single Republican candidate in every single competitive state then your supporters are going to lose their re-election campaigns in the face of the backlash from your massively unpopular campaign of state-sanctioned murder. Either you kill too many and your supporters turn on you for going too far or you don't kill enough and your supporters turn on you for fucking over their re-election campaigns.

There's a reason that the standard practice is to abolish free elections and purge political opponents simultaneously. If you don't do both at the same time then you get kicked out in short order. And I don't think this one Supreme Court ruling all by itself is enough to overthrow the whole American democracy.

There's a limit to how many people you can brand as enemies of the Republic.

Indeed there is. Robespierre found that limit. Unfortunately, it's much higher than zero.

The flip side is that a small cabal in a monoculture forum can impose material costs on the other side.

The risk to me is far more on that side compared to the seal team six fantasies.

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