It broke the minute Trump exposed the fact that the Constitution says exactly nothing about what to do if anyone chooses to violate it, and the answer to the question of "What are you gonna do about it?" was essentially "Nothing."
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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It's really been a broken system since Marbury v. Madison (1803). The lesser known finding of that case was that SCOTUS can declare something to be illegal or a violation of the law but can't do shit beyond that. It took over 200 years for a President to fully understand SCOTUS has no real teeth. If you control the enforcers of the law, you ARE the law.
It's not that it took 200 years for a President to understand that, it's just that all Presidents since then and until trump weren't demented sociopath rapists who couldn't be arsed to think of the good of anyone else.
Using the law enforcement arm to specifically commit national crimes against citizens was more often than not considered what it was; treason.
Every president in some way or form pushed those boundaries without any consequences. Even the lightly better ones, like the shade of grey only lightly different than black.
Trump is the culmination of every president taking its way with the constitution without even a slap on the wrist.
I'd argue the checks and balances worked, the electorate failed. Trump tried to overturn and election and the checks and balances held. That should have been political suicide. He should have not even won a school board seat after that, but the electorate failed and reinstated him. You cannot build enough checks and balances into representative government to save the electorate from repeated mistakes. The checks are there to ensure someone must show their true intents to the electorate before they make a choice.
Like Franklin said "If you can keep it."
Vigorous enforcement is necessary, but there's that whole "in group, out group, protect, bind" thing.
It broke once all three came under single party control. Mmmmm. What does the us historically think of one party control. let me think. let me think.
Tbh it was always broken - it’s just that it’s never been done this blatantly, contemptuously, and systematically before.
This is the firesale, and orangeboi et al are just vacuuming up every single cent they can wring from the wreckage that they’re turning our government and society into at breakneck pace.
Andrew Jackson already did that, but we acted like checks and balances still worked because Jackson defying the supreme court only resulted in the Trail of Tears.
Congress has abdicated their power for decades. The remedy is impeachment and scaling back administrative law for actual bills through Congress.
But that would require them to actually work! What the hell kind of masochists do you take them for?
It's sad to realize that there never really were any "checks and balances". It was all based on an honor system, that relied entirely on no one trying to cross any boundaries.
As soon as Trump pushed even slightly against those so-called guardrails, they simply fell over.
All systems are honour systems at their core. If no one respects the rule of law then laws don’t matter.
Some systems, though, have actual mechanisms for enforcement attached to them. But apparently none of that was included in the legal framework that the entire country is built on.
"Hey! You can't do that! That very clearly violates Constitutional law."
"Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it?"
(checks Constitution) "Oh...uhhh. I guess nothing?"
Mechanisms of enforcement still need enforcers who respect the rule of law. If the enforcers stop respecting the rule of law and prefer to play power politics then the won’t help you.
Enforcers are part of the honour system. If they aren’t honourable then the system breaks down.
Except in this case...there are no enforcers. At all.
There is no mechanism in place to actually enforce a court ruling, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There is no mechanism in place to enforce legislation that's been passed by Congress, if the executive branch decides to ignore it. There aren't even any mechanisms in place to enforce Constitutional amendments that should actively restrict the executive branch's actions. They had a lot to say about what the executive branch should not be allowed to do...but they seemingly forgot to include any way of ensuring they would be held accountable, if they didn't follow the rules.
There are literally NO "checks and balances" in place to enforce anything if the executive branch decides to ignore the other two branches of government. It's like passing legislation that declares murder a crime...but not including any consequences for actually committing it.
Correct. Society as we know it is a social understanding
Yeah. I was just thinking about why zombies are so threatening. They represent the total collapse of the social order and a replacement of a large percent of the population of ordinary people with savage predators.
It's no coincidence that zombie dramas and video games became extremely popular in the USA right as people started feeling they were surrounded by hostile forces in a collapsing society with no one looking out for them.
I like what I've heard around the Internet: "social contract"
Violate that contract, agreements (and a lack of consequences) are null.
Time to build some guillotines.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Our government is completely populated with cowards who don't even want the responsibility of the power of their positions. And our civics education is so poor that they know the only thing the masses pay attention to is the president. So everyone can collectively fuck off with their jobs and face no backlash.
I mean, who would think that independent branches of governments would WILLINGLY cede their power to other branches of government?
Anyone with any sense?
This is how political parties work. And, the "founding fathers" were aware of it too. They just thought that somehow the US was special and would magically avoid this problem.
When the person in charge puts people in those positions to hand the power to him. It’s not willfully ceding at that point, it’s a concerted effort.
Every country which went into dictatorship had checks and balances. US checks and balances were not unique.
It relied on voters actually caring about corruption and imposing a cost on corrupt behaviour. Unfortunately, Americans gonna American.
It's not a check and balance when the Executive has gone rogue and the Justice Department operates under the Executive.
There is no check. There is no balance.
Remove the Justice Department from the Executive branch and place it under the Judicial branch.
Similarly, there's no check and balance on the Supreme Court either.
Make it so that the House and Senate can over-ride a bad Supreme Court decision without having to pass an Amendment to do it.
It's rock-paper-scissors, guys. President can veto the House and Senate, the Judicial should hold the executive accountable, and the House and Senate should be able to over-ride the Supreme Court.
The problem is the majority of the legislative and the head of the executive decided to collude to just ignore the constitution and then proceeded to stuff the judicial branch with their puppets. The problem with the checks and balances is they don't have an answer to "but what if 2/3rds of the government decides to wipe their ass with the constitution at the same time?".
No amount of reorganizing the deck chairs changes that calculus. The system was broken the moment they just decided not to remove Trump from office during his first impeachment. The only way I can see to do anything about that flaw is to just make it ridiculously easy to impeach any politician, say something like a general vote of the public that only requires a 25% margin to pass. Sure the Republicans absolutely would have used something like that against Obama, but at least we'd be able to clean all the corrupt bastards out of congress and the supreme court as well.
"No Confidence Vote" like in a parliamentary system.
Yup, and there's some other conditions that would benefit from an immediate recall, too. It's insane that the consequence for failing to pass a budget or raise the debt ceiling is that our financial system is damaged or collapses. Failure to get it done in a timely manner should result in an automatic extension or raise paired with snap elections on all members involved.
Or hell, even just allow recall petitions at the federal level. Better to have a revolving door than a legislature that's tempted to see what touching the third rail is like.
That does require a significant majority of the executive branch to go through with it.
Impeachment is in ways similar to it.
but what if 2/3rds of the government decides to wipe their ass with the constitution at the same time
Or just, "what if a party works together and falls in line under a single leader"?
It should have been obvious not that this was possible, but that it was inevitable.
The only way I can see to do anything about that flaw is to just make it ridiculously easy to impeach any politician, say something like a general vote of the public that only requires a 25% margin to pass
If that happened, seats would be constantly vacant. You'd have 75% D districts with a 25% R minority who would simply remove anybody the other side elected. The D's would retaliate by removing a R. The oligarchs would love that system because there would be nobody to pass laws that stopped their looting.
The fundamental problem is democracy.
Giving every single person a vote, no matter what, is a problem. Weighing every single vote equally, no matter what, is a problem. The GOP won because there were enough people who had lost touch with reality that their lies were believable. And, now that they won, they're going to rig the game even more, and make sure that there are no limits put on disinformation.
Democracy may be the best system we have found so far, but it has some severe failure modes.
Failing? Tbh I feel like they’ve already completely failed.
Someone writes the checks to tip the balance.
laws mean nothing when you can just ignore them
*cuts off penis*
”Why is my penis failing?”
No fucking shit, Sherlock, what gave it the fuck away?
It died, fell to the ground, started rotting, MAGA took a dump on it and now it really stinks up the place.
Someone just noticed this?
Is failing. Has failed. Same difference I suppose.
Failing?
It’s never really existed to an extent. It’s been gamified from the get-go.
We ain’t had “checks and balances” since Allen Dulles and Curtis Lemay had JFK and RFK killed. We’ve been feeding off the husk of America like spider crabs.
Ya think???
