Timeline for Could a US political party gain complete control over the government by removing checks & balances?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 17, 2020 at 9:20 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
|
|
| Apr 9, 2019 at 0:11 | comment | added | DevilApple227 | @IllusiveBrian It's certainly true that there is a large chunk of trained civilians. I argue, however, that that isn't even needed. Granted, this group of trained civilians makes a tyranny even less viable, but even in their absence I imagine that attempting a dictatorship in the United States would be a dangerous game to play. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 17:22 | comment | added | Jared Smith | @Bobson that's true, and never is an extreme claim at any time, but those shifts take place over decades, and people in California and Arkansas (just to name two) states are not going to all change their minds simultaneously overnight. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 13:38 | comment | added | Lorendiac | "For context, in the 2016 Senate elections, Democrats won 46 seats, and Republicans won 52." That's badly put. In any given Congressional election year, about 1/3 of the Senate seats are at stake. The other 2/3 are already filled by people who were elected 2 years earlier or 4 years earlier, and still have time left in their six-year terms before they will need to worry about running for re-election (or choosing not to run). So the Democrats did not "win" 46 seats all at once -- they just won enough to end up with a grand total of 46, many of which they already had before Election Day 2016. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 5:46 | comment | added | Michael Homer | Since Congress is in charge of admitting new states, I think (given the circumstances presupposed in the question) that “it would take some pretty cataclysmic events to cause a change drastic enough to give one side a 3/4 majority” is a bit strong. There’s no need for any existing state to “flip” (but the cataclysm may have already happened to get there in the first place). | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 5:16 | comment | added | Wes Sayeed | 2nd paragraph contains an error: "... the states need to approve Constitutional amendments (such as one needed to change the size of the Supreme Court.)" A Constitutional amendment is not required to change the size of the Supreme Court. It can be done through the normal lawmaking process (and has been done several times throughout U.S. history). | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 2:06 | comment | added | Jouni Sirén | When republican institutions are subverted, the majority of the population usually supports it or at least silently accepts it. A large number of privately owned guns would simply mean more guns to use against those who disagree. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 1:54 | comment | added | IllusiveBrian | Also, I think there's one more thing the answer leaves out - if the government were plainly corrupt and attempted to use the military and intelligence agencies to exert their rule, they would have mass desertions on their hands, and even worse a lot of insider threats. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 1:49 | comment | added | IllusiveBrian | You say "untrained civilians," but the US has a lot of combat veterans and a significant percentage privately own weapons. If even a small percentage of them decide to become insurgents they'll train all the other insurgents. It may not be to the same extent that the regular army gets, but they have the advantage of only needing to be trained to defend their home turf. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 1:00 | comment | added | Bobson | I strongly object to the "will never fall" line. Parties evolve over time, and their coalitions change with that. There were extremely lopsided results in 1980, 1984, and 1988, and the 1976 map looks nothing like the modern one. Democrats won most of the South (including Texas) and Republicans won the entire west of the country (including California). Sure, that was 40 years ago, but what do you expect the map to look like in another 40 years? That said, I think the third part of this answer is quite good. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 0:00 | history | answered | DevilApple227 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |