Us Axes Website for Reporting Human Rights Abuses by Us-Armed Foreign Forces

I seem to remember him promising that he would release the Epstein Files the moment they were available.

That one's been taking a loooong time. All the ties that Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell have to Israel probably isn't super great for PR either.

He said he would not touch the existing Whitehouse when building his new gilded $300m ballroom. I could go on and on and on...

The dude thinks like a toddler. Unfortunately a large part of this country also thinks this way.

They are conservatives. People that care about things like small governments and fiscal responsibility are not. It's sad when somebody takes control over a group you identify with and changes it's goals but you're one person versus millions. The word doesn't mean what it used to.

That's exactly what happened though -- the MAGA party took over. Conservatives "cut bait" with traditional Republicans, condemned them (see how they talk about Liz and Dick Cheney or even GWB, Mitt Romney, and John McCain, their own presidential nominees), and started a new party within the rotting corpse of the old GOP. There's still some "Republican" branding around but if you pay attention they're not waving "Republican" flags or wearing "Republican" hats anymore.

I've picked up on that too. Which, in my opinion is strange... she was 22 or 23 wasn't she? We just have to wait another 2 generations, and those will think themselves still children at 35.

Representatives would be more representative if not for gerrymandering.

Most people just don't care. They just want to live their lives. Their lives are not good, but they're not awful, they're aware there are a lot of people are worse off than them, and they know if they rock the boat too much they might get singled out and their life gets worse.

The powers in charge recognise this, and just accept that absolute monarchy in their image is fine, and they can do what they want, and so do so. And life in "the court" is particularly fine, and everybody eats and drinks well, and nobody does or says much. The occasional opposition pops up, but they can be charged with treason, and imprisoned, or even better, executed. Problem solved.

I often summarise this as saying that Putin is not the problem, Putinism is - there's vested interests in keeping him, and his ideology, just where it is. Trumpism is real, Thatcherism still has a hold in the UK, it's all these political systems with ardent supporters holding onto a name because they define their own safety and economic well being with the ideas most closely associated with them. It can take decades (perhaps centuries), for the "court" around such people to break free.

Then, at some point a minority who does not have it good in this system decides to do something about it. A charismatic leader makes some speeches, rallies people into action, an insurrection, revolution or civil war takes place.

Most people just don't care. Until the civil war arrives at their doorstep and they have to choose a side, which they do, often quite grudgingly.

The old guard sometimes wins, and doubles down on the way things were. Sometimes they are toppled. In the old days the losers were killed to make sure there was no going back, but these days they tend to get to stick around and get real bitter. South Africa might be the only example in history where they tempered this stage a little through incredible experiments in public justice, but even there, there are problems.

An attempt is then made to fix the wrongs of the past: more accountability, more democracy, or even less democracy, whatever the thing is that caused those kings and queens and their courts (even if they were in fact constitutionally not actual kings or queens, just behaving like ones), to have that power, it's all shaken up. New dice are rolled.

Most people just don't care. But there's an optimism for a while, perhaps.

And a new system takes hold. Sometimes for a few years, sometimes for a few centuries. And then the cycle repeats.

This is crudely how the United States was mostly born. And the United Kingdom (after multiple cycles in England, Wales and Scotland). There is no country in Europe that hasn't seen this cycle many times. It's the recent history of almost all of South America, Asia and Africa, except in many cases they also had to deal with foreign kings and queens having a will enforced by foreign armies or - worse still - the CIA getting involved, because, why not?

The Middle East has had its run-ins in places with this cycle, but making sure most people born in your country feel rich sure has helped a lot in recent decades, as does being able to punish (or eliminate), people who raise their hand and begin "Wait, I have a question..."

Yes, I'm cynical, yes, I'm sad about it, no I don't think there's much that can be done.

I sincerely hope this isn't a story that has a near future in the US (or indeed anywhere else), but... it's not looking or feeling great.

More directly, they all talked about how problematic political parties could be, and then did nothing at all to prevent them. They weren't exactly good systems thinkers.

Regardless, what the founders believed is relevant because they're the ones that wrote the currently operative legal document that governs the country. We can replace that document whenever we want! But until we do that, the document, and what its authors intended it to mean, are binding on us.

What's so crazy about comments like this is they have an air of, "we are actually the good guys in the right, but the system works against us!"

You got out-voted.

(The Epstein issue is a special case - some of the MAGA base still believes it was not a hoax and that Epstein was not alone in his crimes.)

The founders didn't foresee Congress being this cowardly. Probably because a lot of them had fought in a war together.

Modern crisis planning in action. Wait till the fuel is on fire, before putting out the fire, assessing the loss and assigning blame.