Gods I hate that I agree with you. I had no idea how thin the threads were that held this republic together, or how readily my fellow citizens would throw the entire American experiment away just for the sake of spite. Trump is the first despot, but he certainly won't be the last.

The problem with the Supreme Court is that you need the Senate to be on board with any kind of action. Two approaches:

• Add additional justices to make the Republicans there a minority. None of the Republicans is willing to vote for this, and nor are Manchin and Sinema, which would leave no more than 49/100 votes in favor of adding new ones. So you can't do it
• Remove the crooks. This requires 67/100 votes. None of the Republicans is willing to vote for this, so you can't do it.

Making something meaningful happen here requires actually electing enough Democrats to the Senate to act.

how fragile this country always was

i don't think that the system and country was that fragile, it did required decades of propaganda from the far right to get to the point it is now

All of civilization ultimately relies on the honors system, and nobody's ever been able to change it.

I always saw him like an anomaly, an unexpected improbable blip in history that may have an effect over decades but the disruptions it brought will go away... eventually.

When he came into power I immediately thought of something in the Foundation series (I try to avoid spoiling it because even if the books have been around for some time people are discovering it through the Apple TV series).

So yeah it'll get better but perhaps not in our lifetime...

This is why people need to get out and vote. Nearly every election where Dems had over 60% turnout they have won. Reps never have changes in turnout and I think they have around 65-70% usually? All people need to do is get out and vote and these people lose their edge

The US has been on track for Trump since WWII ended and the crazy christian sects got an ear in the government. It's even surprising it didn't happen earlier.

You'd think Republicans trying to take away porn would have woken more people up.

The problem is that you can't write out the details of how people might abuse a system centuries hence; people are really innovative about that. What they tried to do was build a system of competing centers of power, so that so long as the bulk of elected officials were interested in doing the right thing for the country, they'd be able to serve as a check on those who aren't.

Our problem today is that we've got a major party which is interested in ending democracy, and which has a real chance of holding enough positions of power that it's not possible for the majority of the people who stop them.