volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@danwentzel they could say that, but it would be undermining democracy if they make such an announcement.

The democratic process elected Trump. I'm sorry the DNC put forward a candidate who was so bad that she lost to a convicted felon who lies all the time, but they should probably do better.

In the meantime, while they're working on fixing their own house they should not undermine the rest of the country by refusing to engage in the governmental processes.

They should build up, not tear down.

@ewolff you know you're playing into his hands with that sort of thing, right?

He tries to get reactions out of people, and oh look, you gave him the reaction he was looking for.

Somewhere he's really enjoying being in your head.

@adwright He's well known to be a troll.

Why go any farther than that?

@pluralistic see this is the key captive users and no constraints? That's a contradiction. If the users are captive that's a giant constraint!

No, this is the nonsense that people post around here about BlueSky, and we should identify the silliness.

In many ways that platform is better than this one, and it's worth recognizing that, not fighting against it with arguments so don't really make sense.

@debacle No, BlueSky is out there and distributed. It's not centralized or walled.

In fact this is one of the beauties of it, it takes down some of the walls around instances here on this platform.

It's LESS of a walled garden.

@pluralistic

@BlueBeachSong but does she celebrate the functioning of the government that she has sworn to uphold?

@tehuti88 The most important thing is to realize that the president only implements the laws passed by Congress. THEY are really the source of the problems, and we keep reelecting the same congresspeople that fail us over and over again.

We need to stop. We need to boot out an awful lot of congresspeople and not let them escape accountability by pointing to the other branch of government.

Nothing's going to improve so long as they keep passing bad laws.

@left_adjoint I would just emphasize that the main thing people can do about the federal government is be careful about who they elect as representatives.

So often people are so obsessed with the presidency that they don't even know that they are reelecting representatives that are promoting the exact situations that they regret so dearly.

You're right, drinking down despair is not useful. Educating yourself on what your representatives are doing might just be, though, because you might find out you're re-empowering people that are failing you.

@TCatInReality I imagine at least some labor officials are familiar with the story of killing the golden goose...

@JackTheCat Well that's not true.

That's not how the federal government works, and if Whitehouse really believes this, if he's not just lying to the public, then he really should not be senator.

@JackTheCat@mastodon.scot Well that's not true.

That's not how the federal government works, and if Whitehouse really believes this, if he's not just lying to the public, then he really should not be senator.

@Bad_Banner What?

Trump and his supporters have embraced policies of supporting legal immigration.

On the other hand, Democrats ran a candidate so terrible that she was beaten by a felon who is roundly regarded as an untrustworthy lying scumbag.

So yeah, people who voted for Trump can certainly be proud of immigration in their family history. I would encourage them to talk about that because it builds up norms that support immigrants, which seems very healthy.

And Democrats need to get their acts together.

@realTuckFrumper Well I think that's pretty much how he got elected, echoing the feelings of a whole lot of Americans that are pissed off by things like this.

@karlauerbach The Supreme Court said that presidents can be prosecuted when they break the law.

I don't expect that to be overturned anytime soon, and I think that's a good thing.

@emptywheel.bsky.social I don't think it's a fight over whether to think the law binds Trump as much as a fight to have people understand basic civics, the basic structure of the US government. There's a lot of people who do not understand how any of this works, and so they're left confused about these topics.

For example, misunderstanding about the different roles of the different branches and how they keep each other in check leads a lot of people to believe some really silly things.

YES the law binds Trump. And it's critical that we stop reelecting representatives who would be deferential to the executive branch.

But if people don't know how the government works they won't be able to hold our representatives accountable for enabling Trump.

@RunRichRun this is the kind of article that seems completely unaware that different governments are structured differently, and the differences between this government and that government are absolutely critical to understanding how the situations are different.

A little political science education would be useful here.

The US government is structured very specifically to make sure presidents don't have the authority to do what this article points to in the parliamentary system.

This is just a really ill-informed article coming to a ridiculous conclusion, and a basic understanding of civics would debunk the picture it tries to paint.

@mattround If more people asked that question and then listened to the answer then maybe we wouldn't have so many people running around with their hair on fire making ridiculous claims about Trump II being a slide into fascism.

They would know that that is not at all what's happening here.

@caitp Presidents can pardon people at any moment throughout their entire presidency.

It's just that they might delay pardons until the very last moment to avoid accountability.

@karlauerbach Right, and the court also actively promoted prosecution of misbehavior that is not within the core function of the presidency.

Since presidents are not authorized to violate civil rights by sending people to Guantanamo for, like, no reason, that would not be within the core function of the presidency.

So the Supreme Court ruling would encourage prosecution of a president who does such a thing.