zlacker

Given that the president is invested with enormous power and has proved both able and willing to upend others' lives for political ends, pretending that he's just another random e-celeb seems kind of disingenuous.

>>anigbr+(OP)
Well the problem then is the overgrowth of executive power in the past two decades. Unfortunately, literally everyone was silent on that during both the Bush and Obama administration as well, and now are complaining that their chickens have come home to roost.

>>tathou+F3
"literally everyone"

I don't know what world you were living in.

>>tathou+F3
I don't know about you but I voted for Obama and regretted it when this happened [1]:

> National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, Pub.L. 112–81. This NDAA contains several controversial sections (see article), the chief being §§ 1021–1022, which affirm provisions authorizing the indefinite military detention of civilians, including U.S. citizens, without habeas corpus or due process, contained in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Pub.L. 107–40.

Not to mention his failures to uphold the principles that he ran on: gitmo, whistleblower protections (vis a vis Manning, Asange and Snowden), massacres of civilians ("drone strikes"), etc.

Just because you haven't been watching, doesn't mean that this hasn't outraged the people who do. All of that stuff was covered by NPR at the time, so it's not like any of it was a secret.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorizati...

>>klyrs+Ej
I have been fairly outraged for the past twenty years. Most people have not.

And to my credit, I haven't actually voted or supported the candidate who went on to be president since 2000.

>>cglace+4f
The world where -- when I call out presidents for abuse of executive power -- I'm met with various justifications for why 'my guy' is doing the right thing. It's ridiculous. Whether it's Bush's response to 9/11 and his wars or Obama's record executive orders, every time I bring these up, I'm met with justifications for why it's okay this one time.

This is what you get when most people do that.

>>tathou+Ql
Exactly this.

Never give "your guy" powers that you don't want the "other guy" to have.

Because the powers you give to Obama... will end up with Trump - and vice versa.

>>tathou+F3
"literally everyone was silent"

This is such a cliche, and yet simultaneously someone in this thread is saying we don't have to worry about the current President becoming a dictator because of the zillion times previous Presidents were accused of wanting to seize power.

How do you think these contradictory cliches thrive alongside each other?

>>perl4e+dz
I'm not quite sure I understand? Isn't what you're citing a case of people continuing to be quiet in the face of executive overreach?

>>werner+Kq
This assumes a basic ability to identify double standards and refuse them on principle. And this country really can't do that right now. Republicans are at a whole new level of hypocrisy than the ordinary variety in American politics. Mitch McConnell said it is obvious that we cannot have a supreme court candidate seriously considered during a presidential election year - when it's the black man in the office. And then this year when asked about what happens if there's vacancy he says unquestionably they will ram the candidate through.

This sort of double standard, smirked at, and then dismissed with "both sides are bad" type whataboutism, is uncivil. It's a betrayal. It's a violation of the social contract. And it's only made worse because the Obama candidate who was refused even a hearing? Orrin Hatch, a multiple decades Congressional Republican, had previously told Obama that he should pick Merrick Garland. It was expressly not principled, and then they boast about this.

Were this truly an actual rule, it means no judges can be confirmed if the political party of president and senate differ. It is cynical and hyper-partisan, and there is no person from either party who has been more vile in this regard than Mitch McConnell. In all ways that matter he's worse than Trump, not least of which is, he's actually competent. The country has consistently become more partisan while he has been majority leader. It doesn't correlate with presidents, it correlates with him.