If you're OK with foreign aid cuts, guess who's next
By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
If a dictatorophilic “president” refuses to obey the law, and when his party in Congress doesn’t care, who’ll stop him?
The Constitution is but a piece of parchment. What can believers in democracy do? Roll it up and smack him with it? The weakness of constitutional democracy is “Consent of the Governed.” It works only when citizens and their leaders willingly submit to its laws. When our government, established by men who escaped tyranny and sought to prevent it here, ignores it, who’s there to enforce it? The Supreme Court? The body that granted Trump nearly unlimited immunity, gutted the Voting Rights Act, and grafted words onto the parchment saying that unlimited, unaccountable political donations are free speech? That decided corporations are people? Ignores Justices Calence Thomas and Samuel Alito’s corruption?
If the court were to declare any of Trump’s or President Musk’s actions unconstitutional, Musk, J.D. Vance, and Holy Mike Johnson have been clear: they don’t care. SCOTUS can direct U.S. Marshals (TouTube: tinyurl.com/marshal4u) to arrest people who ignore its rulings, but they’re under the aegis of Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose first actions were to do Trump’s bidding in going after prosecutors who lawfully targeted his crimes. We’ll find out soon enough whether Trump will uphold the Constitution. And whether Trump’s foresight-deficient voters will rejoice if he doesn’t (Esquire: tinyurl.com/whocares4u).
Until Republicans restrict it to Republicans, the ultimate restraint on leaderly lawlessness is the vote. But, following successful, long-term efforts by rightwing media, that’s failed, too. Which leaves only the slimmest of hopes that the taken-in will take back out; something toward which the Foxified have shown no inclination. They need to understand how democracy protects them, which they don’t. They need to realize and care what’s happening to it, which they can’t. They need to seek sources of accurate information, which they won’t. If Trump, who just opined that CBS and “60 Minutes” should be abolished, deplatforms all but Foxoid media, they never will. Free speech, which Republicans once claimed Democrats were against, is in the eyes of the office-holder.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-if-youre-ok-with-foreign-aid-cuts-guess-whos-next/