Sorry, does “disarming” here mean “not engaging in illegal authoritarian action”?
I’m not sure what system is being protected in the scenario where everyone is openly and illegally authoritarian. I hope that if Democrats get back into power they will invest in stabilizing democracy and the rule of law, not just attempting to run the same authoritarian playbook for their own benefit.
You call the described actions "illegal", but under the law of the land as it stands today, nothing the President does is illegal if he can make even a vague claim to be doing it as an official act of the Office of President.
To be clear, this is wrong, terrifying, and needs to be overturned, but it is the law of the land, since the SCOTUS decision that made it so.
Assuming we can get to a place where Democrats hold power in our government once again, until we can get the absolute mess that the Republicans have made cleaned up in its entirety, it would be not merely irresponsible, but catastrophic for the Democrats to fail to use every tool at their disposal, including things that are only legal because the Republicans thought they would never have to give up power, in order to achieve that end.
The alternative is to fall back into fascism, which should be seen as unacceptable by absolutely anyone with a conscience.
Alternatively, the US could look at a new, stronger constitution. Like, presumably no-one really _intended_ that the US constitution would make the president an unaccountable dictator; if the Supreme Court has done that under the auspices of the constitution, it's clearly not fit for purpose and should be amended or replaced.
Other countries do this _all the time_. Ireland had amended its constitution more times in a century than the US has in 250 years (and even then, the US ones are pretty front loaded). France is on its fifth republic.
This is not possible without first doing the things that I describe. (Or something similar.)
Too many states are too heavily gerrymandered to disenfranchise minorities and other likely-Democratic voters for a Constitutional amendment that favors (small-d) democratic rule to pass. Same problem with a new Constitution.
To the sentiment more broadly, I tend to agree: we have given our original Constitution too much deference. It is flexible, yes, but not flexible enough to deal with all the changes that have arisen since, with one of the biggest problems being the much more rapid pace of life today. As for what specific measures are needed to fix it.....god, I don't know. I can come up with a few, but I don't for a second think they'd be comprehensive enough to prevent what happened over the past 40ish years to lead to this.
I agree with this. Though this would require getting a lot of people to stop imagining that the founding fathers created a perfect document. There’s a very weird belief that the founding documents (and the founding fathers) are essentially infallible and that governing in accordance with these is the best possible option. Of course this leads to “originalist” jurisprudence which seems to consist of finding ways to pretend that whatever the judge believes is exactly what the founding fathers intended.
Though even then, given the context, it's hard to imagine that they intended making the president an unaccountable dictator. Like, Trump's taking on more power than George III.
