I have been saying for some time already that my concern that #Trump would order the use of #nuclear weapons in #Iran, and that no one in the chain of command would refuse the order or stop him was increasingly palpable.

The problem with our government is not so much a structural problem with how it is constituted, but a structural problem with the society that produced it. The social norms upon which the #Constitution rests are broken, and have been for decades.

While it is certainly true that improvements can be made to the structure of our government and its Constitution and laws, the fact remains that what has actually failed in America is the general respect for the rule of law, of which the Constitution is merely a symbol.

As George W. Bush (in)famously (supposedly) said, "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper."

That is to say, the Constitution has no real authority, no real power, if no one is willing to enforce it.

There is nothing about the structure of government that can restrain the evil, if the will of the people to do so has failed.

Henry George wrote exactly this in 1879, in "Progress and Poverty", Book X, Chapter 4: "How Modern Civilization May Decline".

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I don't believe that it was the project of the Republican Party to destroy Americaβ€”not at firstβ€”but ever since the 1930s, and especially since 1964, the Republicans have done everything they possibly could to prevent social progress and equality in America. The more success they achieved, the more destructive their goals became. It's been a long, slow progression from opposition to the New Deal, the civil rights movement, feminism, and LGBT rights, to the utter havoc wreaked by Project 2025.

"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security"

The design evinced by the combination of #neoliberalism and #neofeudalism has always at its core ethos been "divide and conquer", with the ultimate goal of reinstituting overt #aristocracy via #ownership of literally everything.

I will probably come back to this later. Right now, I have something else to which I must needs attend with my full attention.