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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.
There were definitely a couple literal demented sociopath rapists in the mix. What changed wasn't the law, but the political context and institutions.
It took decades for the GOP to systematically destroy faith in institutions.
It took years of Trump presidency followed by a strong reaffirmation of popular support in the last election.
It took Obama and Biden abdicating their duty to their electorate by respectively refusing to nominate a new Justice and refusing to prosecute Trump for sedition.
It took the media failing their duty to inform voters of Trump's past, intentions, and state of mind.
It took decades of slow work by the right to reframe the media landscape to be less truthful and more obedient.
It took social media and their algorithms to galvanize fascism.
It took an entire cold war and war on terror to normalize an absolutely abnormal and near insurmountable militarization of domestic law enforcement.
The US constitution is not to blame. That's a cop-out answer, a lame scapegoat. America wouldn't be saved by passing amendments alone. The rot goes far deeper than that. Just like the 13th amendment didn't do much to fix the system of racial injustice the US was built on. If it was just a matter of wording, a silly loophole, it wouldn't have worked. It worked because the vast majority of Americans abdicated their allegiance to the Bill of Rights, to Human Rights, and to Democracy.
? Obama was stuffed by McConnell on Garland, and Biden oversaw the appointment of Jack Smith to investigate Jan6 as well as the top secret stolen files.
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."
Narrator: "They couldn't."