A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
They enshrined the 2nd amendment for a reason. but for now its enough to do simple things like:
“Checks and balances” in the context of US federal government just means that each branch has the ability to check the growth of power of the others. It’s not “a lie” because it’s still true. Right now congress could, if they wanted to, impeach the president or pass laws preventing him from doing the things he wants. The SCOTUS could stop him too if they wanted to actually take up cases on the law instead of using the shadow docket to avoid making rulings.
Trump partisans hold a trifecta in government right now so they are not going to use their checks they have available to them. But one branch refusing to check another because its members were elected from the same stock of partisan lunatics is not the same as checks and balances not existing.
The executive is exceeding its power. Whether the other branches are just ok with it doesnt matter, they fail their obligation to the constitution. The executive does not have the power to rewrite the constitution. The executive does not have the power to write law. The executive does not have the power to deploy the military. The executive does not have the power to tariff. These are all things that are going unchecked.
The legislature doesnt even have some of these powers without a super majority. They are only stalling the process to prevent the checks from occuring.
The checks still exist to correct those abuses of power. Just because congress or SCOTUS is unwilling to use them doesn't mean they don’t exist.
A law that can be ignored is not a law.
That’s a nice bromide but framing the current constitutional crises as the result of a “lie” about checks and balances fundamentally mischaracterizes the issues at hand. For one it diminishes the compliance of the other branches which is clearly critical for enabling the abuse that we see. And it also overlooks the general issue that about half the national actively enables the naked corruption and ascendant facism of the current government.
The problem of the present moment is not the structure of the government it’s the tolerance of the population.
You can read the constitution of the united states for free. You can also read the constitution of every US state for free (except probably some red states; but I’m just assuming that. ((You can also find that out for yourself for free…)))
Checks and balances are real, they have just been exploited from time immemorial. Go ahead and civil disobedience as much as you want you sweet summer child / foreign agent!
Someone has had an incentive to teach you pretty much everything you know. You hope much of it was benevolent, but maybe the teachers were taught to use benevolence that way (by pedagogical teachers before them)... Then there's this whole thing called "The Hidden Curriculum" which is the accidental lessons burried in the structures and systems of how we learn (for instance showing up, but avoiding detention and homework are part of the Hidden Curricula of the school system, unintended lessons that we absorbed without being told to)... And then there's Labour History, which is like this secret history of workers rights that most schools won't teach, and it soon becomes obvious that teaching can have ideological and systemic purposes attached, and even hidden or subconscious back flows and subconscious effects.
It's all a bit much.
You guys are getting taught stuff?.jpg
Jan 6 rioters got hired to run DOJ https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07/nx-s1-5493197/doj-trump-jan-6-defendant-jared-wise-capitol-riot