this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
502 points (97.2% liked)

World News

46138 readers
2363 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] themadcodger@kbin.earth 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We learned that last time Trump was president that most of our country has been run on gentlemen's agreements. It was news to a lot of us as well.

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

I think a huge part of the problem is that it's run on Gentlemen's agreements but we pretend it's not. The UK's "Constitution" is a hodgepodge of laws and court cases and things that probably closer to treaties than anything else. It's a mess, but they know it's a mess so there's a very real sense that the gentlemen's agreements are important and as real as anything else.

In America, we worship our Constitution like a holy text, but so many of our institutional controls depend on Judicial Review (which is not technically mentioned in the constitution), on following along with the presumed intent, and on fudging around the edges when it's obvious the machinery of the state would grind to a halt if we had to amend it every time a novel situation arose. Yet, nevertheless, we have an entire school of thought built around the idea of shallow surface readings. The "originalists," not to put too fine a point on it, are fucking idiots.

If you get the idea that the only important thing is the blackletter text agreed to by a gaggle of 18th century provincials, many of whom were intelligent and well-intentioned, but all of whom were elites and either slave-owners or okay with hanging out with slave owners, then you have a recipe for considering stupid shit like presidential immunity or having a speaker of the house who's not a Congressperson and who can become president despite already serving two full terms, because it doesn't explicitly say you can't. It's childish and dangerous, and their ascendancy in the judicial branch is a travesty.