{"id":35054,"date":"2016-06-11T03:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-06-11T07:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35054"},"modified":"2016-06-10T19:08:15","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T23:08:15","slug":"the-fear-of-il-donalduce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/06\/11\/the-fear-of-il-donalduce\/","title":{"rendered":"The fear of Il Donalduce<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lots of Americans are suddenly discovering that over the years, they’ve granted a heck of a lot of power to the executive branch that constitutionally were not supposed to be granted to the president. That probably seemed okay when the president was someone they supported, but every four to eight years there’s a gasp of realization that the powers that you thought would only be used “for good” might now fall into the hands of the Anti-Christ\/Hitler\/Stalin\/[insert-favourite-boogeyman]. At Status 451<\/em>, Simon Penner<\/a> explains why, when you strike at the King you dare not miss:<\/p>\n

As a Canadian, seeing the 2016 election from the outside, people\u2019s reactions to Trump confuse me. Especially as someone who appreciates well-designed systems, I can\u2019t believe people\u2019s gross ignorance of their own nation. People are so afraid of the terrible things Trump will do that protests like this<\/a> happen. And yet, the vast majority of things people are afraid of are things he can\u2019t do<\/em>. Was I the only person who paid attention in civics class?<\/p>\n

The US was founded as a nation as a response to an uprising against an autocrat. Its founders were horrified at the potential for another such autocrat to arise, and they designed their government accordingly. There was to be a strict separation of powers, with mutually opposed groups keeping each other in check. Most importantly, the office of the executive was intentionally crippled. The president was supposed to have very little power. The founders thought that mitigating potential bad leaders was more important than empowering potential good leaders.<\/p>\n

So if Trump can\u2019t do these bad things<\/em>, what\u2019s the problem? Well, the theory<\/em> that the country was based on is solid. But you know what they say: In theory, there\u2019s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. Perfect, beautiful ideas never survive implementation. In this case, there are no backwards arcs in the state machine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On paper, Trump can\u2019t do anything too bad. In practice, he can, because previous presidents have set the precedent. People like to make fun of small-c conservatives who want government out of their lives. Libertarians are a favourite scapegoat online, for similar reasons. Every time a president said \u201cwe need the power to do X\u201d, a libertarian said \u201cno, we can\u2019t let you do that; your powers are restricted for a reason.\u201d In the case of, say, Obamacare, we looked at the libertarians and said \u201cwhy do you hate poor people? Why do you want them to die? Can you be so heartless? Can\u2019t you make an exception this one time?\u201d You should have listened to them, in detail. Once a proof of concept is committed to master, it is the new feature. \u201cOne\u201d time never is.<\/p>\n

Over time, various factions have engaged in special pleading. \u201cWe need this superweapon, just this one time. Can\u2019t you see the challenge we\u2019re facing? Are you really going to demand principles when people are suffering?\u201d The same argument turned Rome into a dictatorship, millennia ago. When you shoot your superweapon at the king, you\u2019d best not miss. He can pick it up from your fallen comrades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lots of Americans are suddenly discovering that over the years, they’ve granted a heck of a lot of power to the executive branch that constitutionally were not supposed to be granted to the president. That probably seemed okay when the president was someone they supported, but every four to eight years there’s a gasp of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,13],"tags":[715,1037,188,670],"class_list":["post-35054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-usa","tag-constitution","tag-donaldtrump","tag-electionwatch","tag-hillaryclinton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-97o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35055,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35054\/revisions\/35055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}