Unprecedented
By Tracie Aylmer
The US Supreme Court has just given full unprecedented immunity to the President of the United States. No matter what criminal activity he does or wants to do, nothing will be declared as evidence.
As the Supreme court is GOP aligned, they are expecting Trump to win. He has already declared that if he becomes president again, he will enact revenge. America’s civil war will be very short. Trump will be the dictator that everyone fears.
He will fight dirty. We have already seen what he is capable of. There will be no saving America if he gets in charge.
Everyone asking about his convictions? They will be wiped if he gets in. He will be accountable for literally none of his actions, past, present, or future.
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19 comments
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Clakka
Return to home pageWhen you read and learn about the abysmal chaos, dysfunction and publicly-approved political corruption the USA has sunk to, it gives the rest of the world REAL cause to say “Thank God we don’t live in America!”. America is a nation that continues to pompously set itself up as “judge and jury” over the rest of the world; that has NEVER been backward in coming forward with self-righteous outspoken criticism of any other nation THEY see as not towing (their version) of the democratic line; a nation that displays open condescending contempt for any other system of justice or politics that does not tally with their OWN narrow view of the world or how the world should be; a nation that continually bullies its so-called allies (including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK) into submission demanding that they join them in every divisive, genocidal war America instigates in order to force THEIR particular views, systems and beliefs onto others. Such wars include (but are not limited to) the Korean war, the tragedy of the war in Vietnam and the genocidal carnage in Iraq! The fact is that it comes as no surprise that such a diabolically corrupt, arrogant, misogynistic and self-serving political psychopath as Trump has managed to lie and bully his way to the top of a nation that, under his misguidance, has lost every drop of integrity and credibility!
When the majority of America’s citizens seem to be content to drink the Kool Aid, are happy to believe all the pro-Trump, racist right-wing propaganda pushed out in the lying Murdoch press and are then willing to place such a festering, depraved sociopath at the helm of their nation, the obvious answer to the question “what can go wrong?” is LOUD and clear and NONE of it good! The fact that Americans are now willing to give their Presidents INCLUDING this lying, conniving imposter, Trump, complete IMMUNITY against any lie or criminal act will set a horrific precedent allowing any dangerous psychopath who becomes President to do anything he or she wants – including genocidal murder!
The fact is that the deluded megalomaniacal narcissist, Donald Trump, is a self-serving pathological liar who poses a REAL danger to world peace and everything democratic, fair-minded, egalitarian and compassionate people (inside and outside of America) believe in. Trump is an unconscionable, self-serving pathological liar who has PROVEN that the ONLY person he supports and/or cares about is the malignant, power-obsessed, racist misogynist who stares back at him in the mirror every morning. Trump will stop at NOTHING to get what he wants and that INCLUDES instigating another world war – a war that, inevitably, neither HE nor any member of HIS family will get personally involved in – in order to silence and control any other individuals, political groups and/or nations who have opinions or views that differ from his own!
Wake up, America! Trump is a convicted criminal who is mad, bad and incredibly dangerous to EVERYTHING Americans once believed in! If Trump, once again, rises to the top (like faecal matter in a polluted pond), America will be misguided, misrepresented and ruled by a born-to-rule, dangerously intolerant, misogynistic, megalomaniacal narcissist who will, most assuredly, turn America – and the world – into a very unstable, scary place indeed!
If the President is immune, then Biden is the President, so he can just shoot Trump! Problem solved.
I just tried to share this article on Facebook and it was deleted by Facebook with a warning about misinformation. This is the first time Facebook has ever blocked one of my posts. Just thought I’d let you know what Fb have done.
The repulsive US Supreme court again!!
The bribe factory.
Thanks, Robyn. That’s been happening a lot lately. Worse still, Facebook’s reasons for posts being removed borders on the ludicrous.
Michael Taylor, I agree! The manner in which unconscionable Facebook “managers” are silencing free speech by controlling what can and cannot be published goes against EVERYTHING that is democratic! Of course, such undemocratic, autocratic control over our Murdoch-influenced media reveals all the terrifying hallmarks of right-wing fascism whereby any other view that does not coincide or agree with the xenophobic, racist, misogynistic BS pushed out in the Murdoch press is silenced, altered, deleted or shouted down as lies and/or “misinformation”! This type of depraved, dictatorial control over what is published in media is exactly what Hitler did in order to silence any other view outside his own appalling level of anti-Semitic persecution whereby he abhorrently abused and used Jews as “scapegoats” in order to push his own appalling agenda!
The bottom line is that there is absolutely NO PLACE in our democratic nation for such unelected self-righteous individuals to have such autonomy and dictatorial control over what is or is not published in a widely-used medium such as Facebook! Facebook is a medium that MUST allow the uncensored publication of the beliefs and views of ALL its readers – especially in western nations (like Australia) that strongly support democratic free speech. Facebook “managers” who deem to hide their OWN right-wing agenda behind anonymity need to be named, shamed, exposed and removed!
@Gregl. Amen to that! The world would become a much better place overnight. I can almost hear the collective sigh of relief emanating across the planet.
The final nail in the coffin of democracy in a country that was originally supposed to be the great experiment in how government and the people will thrive under it’s system. What a joke it has become. The most money hungry nation on earth doesn’t know what democracy is anymore, unless they class gross greedy capitalism as that. Money is the only thing they care about and how to get more of it. A spoiled oxygen thief who’s daddy left him $400 million to play with was always going to be the envy of so many sad lazy Seppos who wish they were also born with a platinum spoon in their mouths too.
The American notion of hard work getting you what you desire has gone out the window long ago. Now it is who can I sue and how much for, or, who can I cheat out of their savings so I don’t have to work to get it. (The orange clown was very good at doing just that, conning gullible people out of their savings). Any who have travelled to the Land of the Freaks and the Home of the Brainless will know what I mean. Every single person has their hands out for money. Everyone wants to be tipped before they will do anything. I have been to the Divided States on business more times than I can count on one hand and the best part of each trip was getting back on the plane to leave. It beggar’s belief why so many people are trying to cross it’s borders to get in there.
The only thing we can hope for is that there are enough good Americans worried about the future of their country who will vote for anyone else but the felon and traitor. Ultimately, they are the only thing able to save their country from further spiralling down the plug hole to oblivion and taking the rest of us with them!
If the Orange Mad Man gets back in he’ll be just like his “heroes” the Putrid Putin, Xi the Pooh, Little Fat Rocket Man, and the rest of the RRWNJ’s that seem to control way too much of the world. The Ukraine, Taiwan, and possibly NATO for starters will be well and truly screwed.
What about our lot, what will Labor do, unless there’s an election and Der Reichspud (dog help us) wins? Knee pads, lip balm and tissues to wipe their brown noses springs to mind.
It looks like the blueprint for a dictatorship.
They used to call it “rex non potest peccare”, meaning the king can do no wrong.
There is another Latin phrase that comes to mind “Deus adiuva nos omnes” or God Help Us All.
Roll out the Delorian !
Gregory, it seems rather obvious that “the great experiment in how government and the people will thrive” has failed.
I’m speaking as someone who, prompted by the demise of “socialism”, bolshie-style, over three decades ago, made himself realise that “liberalism” in its conventional definition as a symbiotic combination of liberal-democratic polity and “free” market economics, will require fundamental review and re-negotiation.
This review and re-negotiation did not occur. On the contrary: everyone capable of wielding any influence whatsoever imbibed greedily on the Kool-Aid triumphantly served up by the likes of Francis Fukuyama.
Even now, somewhat more sombre and critical assessments, like Pankaj Mishra’s The west’s self-proclaimed custodians of democracy failed to notice it rotting away don’t really seem to connect.
If they did, there would be a more widespread understanding that Donald Trump, with all his blustering incompetence and manipulative overreach, is merely one of the symptoms of a public polity under prolonged severe stress, and NOT its original cause.
@Arnd. No where did I say the convicted felon was the original cause. He just took it to new levels of incompetence and blustering. I recently read Nick Bryant’s excellent book ‘When America Stopped Being Great’ and it points to the 60-80s as the period partisanship for the good of the country changed to dividing the whole country against each other in politics. Ronnie Ray-gun started the art of lying to the public more so than any previous presidents, the current joke bipartisan politics that has become the norm in the land of excess, namely lies, abuse and rhetoric.
Don the Con merely borrowed it and took it to heights that no sane person was (until now) game enough to push the boundaries to the breaking point before. How any sane American with a functioning brain can think this joke of a sub-human can fix a country he helped break is the most difficult aspect to understand. The other guy may be past his prime but he is still a hundred times the man that the tangerine traitor even will be.
John C, thanks for the reply … and maybe it precipitates a more in-depth exchange.
I’m not assured that Biden is “a hundred times” better than The Orange One. As a long-established member of the Beltway Establishment, he just seems used to not straying too far from the established political customs and habits of that club, but seemingly without much explicit understanding why. He, and his fellow Democrats, seem patently unable to think outside of the box. The particular box I’m talking about even has a name: the Overton Window.
The now firmly established inability of the progressive side of politics – the US Democrats, but also British Labour under Starmer, German Sozialdemokraten under Scholz, en Marche under Macron, and the ALP right here in Australia, etc. – to think outside of that box means that they do not perceive either the grave dangers or the great opportunities beyond.
Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of “the deplorables” is symptomatic of that inability, as is Jim Chalmers’ The Monthly essay about capitalism with purpose and optimism, as is British Labour’s alleged plan to get BlackRock to rebuild Britain.
In other words: the perceived steadfastness of Biden consists mostly of unexamined inertia.
In other words still: I concur with the notion that we’ve been on borrowed time since the late 60s (cultural upheaval of ’68) and early 70s (’72 oil crisis and the economic upset in its wake). But we haven’t really done anything about it, and it seems unlikely that we’re going to start now. Incidentally, I think that it was Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon and his White House Plumbers who took manipulative deceit in politics to the next level. And it was the voting public who chose Nixon over George McGovern, who could have brought his mix of Christian, socialist and liberal values and an exemplary degree of personal honesty and integrity to US politics. No wonder he failed.
Here’s one world view.
Here’s another another world view.
To me, the decision is fraught, in that it appears to overturn the powers of the legislature (Congress), the people’s representatives, to make considered laws applicable to all people equal under the law (including the President), and instead embeds immunity and presumptive immunity to the President allowing the President to act in any way he/she deems fit, even criminally in an (undefined) official capacity. Leaving the definition of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ to be decided case by case by lower courts without any guidance in this decision. Invariably, the lower courts would be forced to refer on a case by case matter that decision back to SCOTUS. It thereby creates a circularity bypassing the legislature (Congress), mangling the ‘separation of powers’ and conferring absolute power only to SCOTUS and the President, as if infallible ‘King’ enabling despotism, dictatorship and annihilation of any / all come what may.
The background to the SCOTUS ‘decision’ is referral of matters arising in the case against Trump re the 2020 insurrection and etc surrounding the election outcome. See the SCOTUS decision ‘Syllabus’.
Here’s the SCOTUS full decision including dissents”. It’s well worth reading.
To me it is no surprise that the ‘decision’ appeared to be split along political party lines, as follows:
FOR:
John Roberts (Chief Justice) appointed by GWBush (Rep)
Clarence Thomas appointed by Bush (Rep)
Samuel Alito appointed by Bush (Rep)
Neil Gorsuch appointed by Trump (Rep)
Brett Kavanaugh appointed by Trump (Rep)
FOR:- but only in part concurs
Amy Coney Barrett appointed by Trump (Rep)
AGAINST:
Sonia Sotomayer appointed by Obama (Dem)
Elena Kagan appointed by Obama (Dem)
Ketanji Brown Jackson appointed by by Biden (Dem)
Sotomayers dissent is scathing. Jackson’s dissent goes to the “theoretical nuts and bolts” of the matter and to me makes complete sense. I include below some extracts of Jackson’s dissent:
“Here, I will highlight just two observations about the results that follow from this paradigm shift. First, by changing the accountability paradigm in this fashion, the Court has unilaterally altered the balance of power between the three coordinate branches of our Government as it relates to the Rule of Law, aggrandizing power in the Judiciary and the Executive, to the detriment of Congress. Second, the majority’s new Presidential accountability model under- mines the constraints of the law as a deterrent for future Presidents who might otherwise abuse their power, to the detriment of us all.”
” … this Court has effectively snatched from the Legislature the authority to bind the President (or not) to Congress’s mandates, and it has also thereby substantially augmented the power of both the Office of the Presidency and itself.
“After today’s ruling, the President must still “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Art. II, §3; yet, when acting in his official capacity, he has no obligation to follow those same laws himself.”
“Perhaps even more troubling, while Congress (the branch of our Government most accountable to the People) is the entity our Constitution tasks with deciding, as a general matter, what conduct is on or off limits, the Court has now arrogated that power unto itself when that question per- tains to the President. In essence, the Court has now im- posed its own preclearance requirement on the application of Congress’s laws to a former President alleged to have committed crimes while in office. Who will be responsible for drawing the crucial “ ‘line between [the President’s] personal and official affairs’ ”? Ante, at 29. To ask the question is to know the answer. A majority of this Court, applying an indeterminate test, will pick and choose which laws apply to which Presidents, by labeling his various allegedly criminal acts as “core,” “official,” or “manifestly or palpably” beyond the President’s authority.”
“Effectively, the Court elbows out of the way both Congress and prosecutorial authorities within the Executive Branch, making itself the indispensable player in all future at- tempts to hold former Presidents accountable to generally applicable criminal laws.”
” … the Court today transfers from the political branches to itself the power to decide when the President can be held accountable.”
” … today’s paradigm shift mark a step in the wrong direction, then the practical consequences are a five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance and the normal operations of our Government. The majority shoos away this possibility.”
” … it is when the President commits crimes using his unparalleled official powers that the risks of abuse and autocracy will be most dire. So, the fact that, “unlike anyone else, the President is” vested with “sweeping powers and duties,” ibid., actually underscores, rather than undermines, the grim stakes of setting the criminal law to the side when the President flexes those very powers. ”
“From this day forward, Presidents of tomorrow will be free to exercise the Commander-in-Chief powers, the foreign-affairs powers, and all the vast law enforcement powers enshrined in Article II however they please—including in ways that Congress has deemed criminal and that have potentially grave consequences for the rights and liberties of Americans.”
“To the extent that the majority’s new accountability par- adigm allows Presidents to evade punishment for their criminal acts while in office, the seeds of absolute power for Presidents have been planted. And, without a doubt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. “If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny.” Id., at 312. Likewise, “[i]f the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” Olmstead, 277 U. S., at 485 (Brandeis, J., dissenting). I worry that, after today’s ruling, our Nation will reap what this Court has sown.”
“Once self- regulating, the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges, with courts pronouncing which crimes committed by a President have to be let go and which can be redressed as impermissible. So, ultimately, this Court itself will decide whether the law will be any barrier to whatever course of criminality emanates from the Oval Office in the future. The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious.”
I don’t believe one has to be a lawyer to observe the deliberative bias (and perhaps concealed purpose) in the ‘decision’ and the good sense and logic in the dissents.
Should Biden as President seek to do anything to proscribe or eliminate the SCOTUS decision, that may just throw fuel on the current fire and bring on insurrection and wrecking murderous revolution (as is America’s age old preference for dealing with its historical impasses)
When reading this SCOTUS decision hand-in-glove with Project 2025 the whole world should beware of unbridled wreckage by the USofA.
Arndt,
did not Francis Fukuyama flip, and denounce his previous deliberations? See Francis Fukuyama wiki, in particular sections ‘Current views’ and ‘Views following Russian invasion of Ukraine’.
Nevertheless, since the treachery of Reagan set it all in motion, it seems that now the the spineless Dems, and feckless GOP hand in glove with Trump, Atlas et al and SCOTUS have gone on to take it beyond repair. Seems we shall soon see.
Clakka: “I don’t believe one has to be a lawyer to observe the deliberative bias (and perhaps concealed purpose) in the ‘decision’ and the good sense and logic in the dissents.”
That holds true as long as politics and (constitutional) jurisprudence is conducted within established, yet still largely unspoken and ill-defined bounds of good faith.
But we are now clearly moving beyond these bounds – and whilst the SCOTUS verdict, split along both the ideological line as well as the gender line (anyone else notice?), the principle of philosophical charity demands that we acknowledge that legal prosecution on trumped-up (if you pardon the unfortunate pun) charges of political office holders for ulterior politically manipulative reasons can and has occurred, and very frequently at that.
The SCOTUS decision, broadly speaking, was a clear case of having to choose between a rock and a hard place. It was a clear reminder, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, that in high politics, guarantees, including legislative guarantees, are impossible to come by.
Clakka, Francis Fukuyama has developed flipping and flopping to a low art. Whilst he may have (re-)discovered a preference for liberal democracy with a social conscience, it wasn’t that long ago that he sang the praises of Benevolent Dictatorship. As Mark Beeson noted in his review of Fukuyama’s then most recent offering in The Conversation:
Fukuyama is blathering eejit who wouldn’t recognise a political principle if one snuck up on him and bit him on the bum. What he does posess is an instinct for sniffing out the political flavour of the month, and a capacity for quickly scribbling books that echo those flavours.
Arndt,
Yeah, thanks for reminding me about Fukuyama’s China comparison, I had read of it before, and thinking at that time something similar to your description “blathering idiot” and etc.