Robert Reich
su_liam@rbreich What the hell kind of holiday is “President’s Day,” except a hagification of the executive branch. Treating the presidency like it was a parade of fucking heroes is half the reason we’re where we are today.
@rbreich For more than a century, the presidency has grown in power without significant check. We can’t give any credit to the Democrats, who faced with the opportunity/duty to fix things after Nixon, Reagan, Dubya and Trump’s first foray into smearing shit on the Oval Office walls, decided they preferred to keep the powers asserted by their predecessor over reining in the next wannabe tyrant.
@rbreich So, as it turns out, the final steps to absolutist dictatorship are being taken by possibly one of the worst human beings to besmirch the Earth with his existence, which has got to make things easier. But we have spent the last century or so chaining iron balls to our legs, and we have packed Congress with the weakest, most watered-down empty suits in the history of amoral, unprincipled empty suits…/1
@rbreich 2/… more interested in maintaining the return on their own investments than fighting a tyrant. “President’s Day,” fuck President’s Day, and fuck anything that pretends that, “The Big Man,” is some kind of hero for the sole false virtue of being in a position of power. We would be better off as a society if by default we treated the Trumps and Epsteins and their hangers-on as enemies of the people until proven otherwise.
@rbreich Power can and frequently does corrupt. Absolute power and those who seek it are absolutely corrupt. Until we take that lesson to mind and treat power with the suspicion it and its wielders deserve, we will always find a way to ourselves and the innocents around us into slaves.
The only thing to be celebrated isn’t the office, or its first holder, but the decision of Washington and some of his successors NOT to be king.