A distinguished group of retired four-star generals and admirals from the U.S. military have argued in a brief filed in theĀ U.S. Supreme CourtĀ on Monday thatĀ Donald Trumpās claims of absolute āpresidentialĀ immunityā from criminal prosecution tied to Jan. 6 is an āassaultā on the āfoundational commitmentsā underpinning democracy and if his argument is allowed to succeed before them later this month, it threatens āto subvert the careful balance between the executive and legislative branches struck in the Constitution.ā
The 38-page amicus brief features 19 authors, all of them decorated retired admirals, generals or secretaries from branches of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force respectively. On April 25, the high court is poised to hear Trumpās question of immunity against prosecution for his alleged criminal conspiracy to subvert the results of the 2020 election. and according to the brief, these are arguments that should be approached with extreme caution.
One of the ways democracy falls is if we prematurely declare it fallen. Abortion referendums in deep red states have passed. Democrats have won in Alabama suburbs. Republicans could at best tie Democrats in economic conditions that heavily favored them.
Democracy is succeeding. What weāre seeing is that it takes time to change things, because there is entrenched power. Thatās slowly eroding away though, because they have gone too far against the people.
We are in a position to completely eliminate entrenched Republican power over the next decade or so if we remain persistent, all through democracy. It will be slow, but it will work.
Youāve got it backwards. Democracies fall because people assert the institutional rot canāt happen to their sacred soil and refuse to acknowledge their own internal failures.
When barely half the eligible voting population bothers to participate? When seats are so heavily gerrymandered that 40% of the voting public can command a super majority in the legislature? When every election is (fairly or not) considered rigged or stolen going back to the Kennedy Administration?
We are not. Nobody on the Dem side of the ballot wants this. Party leadership wants a strong opposition. They even state as much publicly.