"Trump is following a playbook written for him by Christian White Nationalists."

[Elok]

Wondering if you still feel he's not a threat? Now that we are on the verge of going to war with NATO over some ice we already can have military bases on freely. Threatening Mexico, Canada, Cuba, Columbia, and Panama with invasion, after having kidnapped Venezuela's president and claimed their oil. Military and ICE in our city streets, going door to door to ask for papers.

I meant "not a threat" to mean "not at risk of becoming an actual effective dictator." And he isn't. He's doing desperately stupid things on a bigger scale than in his first term. I'm not happy about that. He's still not Hitler. Everything you listed is an own goal over the long term, if not the immediate term. This is all rather pathetic and I'm wondering if he'll do something stupid enough to actually lose the midterms and get impeached, and if it would be better for that to happen--it would have to be truly dire, and cause real damage--or for us to just run out the clock at the existing level of stupidity.

[The Mad Monk]

I have felt for over thirty years now that the POTUS, as an institution, has constitutionally gone off the rails and is in need of some serious rebalancing; this video managed to solidify reasons for this feeling. While it begins and ends with Trump, it's really a history of the expansion of Presidential power over the past 170 years.

[Dauphin]

I have felt for over thirty years now that the POTUS, as an institution, has constitutionally gone off the rails and is in need of some serious rebalancing; this video managed to solidify reasons for this feeling. While it begins and ends with Trump, it's really a history of the expansion of Presidential power over the past 170 years.

Do you think it will rebalance?

[The Mad Monk]

Not without a push. I was hoping that Trump's antics during his first term would have gotten something started, but now I'm despairing that even the second term could get it done without something truly atrocious; like war with NATO atrocious. It goes without saying that the sweep of powers now invested in the office requires a person of high wisdom and moral character, but the electoral system allows no such requirements. Therefore, we need to engineer limits into the power of the office, but that would require constitutional amendments. Yes, plural. Also, congress needs to stop rubber stamping judicial appointments, no matter how inconvenient it gets.

Care to guess how likely any of that is?

[The Mad Monk]

Also, I had no idea that Reagan came up with "Make America Great Again"; Trump really does steal everything.

[Dauphin]

Bill Clinton also used it. Although in both cases I assume they had narrower meaning - more on making economic boons (given the economy was in recession in '80 and '92), and probably a tinge of the post-Vietnam blues in Reagan's case.

[Dauphin]

Trump's other slogan. America First. Well I think we know where that one came from.....

[Uncle Sparky]

The Abbott & Costello routine. They were funnier.

[Uncle Sparky]

Happy first anniversary of tRump's second inaugeration for those who celebrate. I'm sure there are celebrations in the streets.

[Dauphin]

Is the Brownshirt aesthetic deliberate?

[Lorizael]

DHS social media accounts just post straightforward Nazi propaganda all day long. Yes, it's deliberate.

[Geronimo]

Not without a push. I was hoping that Trump's antics during his first term would have gotten something started, but now I'm despairing that even the second term could get it done without something truly atrocious; like war with NATO atrocious. It goes without saying that the sweep of powers now invested in the office requires a person of high wisdom and moral character, but the electoral system allows no such requirements. Therefore, we need to engineer limits into the power of the office, but that would require constitutional amendments. Yes, plural. Also, congress needs to stop rubber stamping judicial appointments, no matter how inconvenient it gets.

Care to guess how likely any of that is?

I think in theory one amendment could entirely supersede the entire rest of the constitution. It depends only on the wording.

[Dauphin]

I assume evolution through multiple amendments over time would be more likely than revolution. If the day comes where one amendment replaces everything, you've become France.

[Lorizael]

One of the greatest logicians of all time, Kurt Gödel, was said to have discovered a subtle logical inconsistency in the Constitution that enabled dictatorship.

This is in contrast to the very non-subtle problem with the Constitution: what if a narcissistic, self-aggrandizing buffoon simply claimed to have the powers of a dictator and everyone else was too embarrassed to correct him.

[Dauphin]

Watching the video footage from Minneapolis today.

What the **** America?

[Lorizael]

ICE is not going to stop killing people.