Sotomayor: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assasinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?

“That could well be an official act,” Trump lawyer John Sauer says

  • Vaquedoso@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    107
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    Watching from an outside of the U.S. perspective, it leaves me speechless seeing how staggering the transition was from ‘bastion of democracy and the free world’ to ‘increasingly malfunctioning society with russian-like values’

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      73
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      America has historically been more hype than substance. The more you learn about our history, the thinner that “Bastion of Democracy and Free World” veneer gets.

      We have residents who still remember when it was illegal for black and white people to date. We have “sheriff’s gangs” in major cities, who are indistinguishable from the cartels they’re supposed to police. We literally still have a torture prison on an island we’re functionally at war with, who we can’t put on trial because we broke their brains but we can’t let go because we’re still scared of them.

      Dig into the history and you find out about Nixon’s CIA sending arms to the Khmer Rouge. You learn about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s sex trafficking island. You learn about our century of atrocities in Haiti and Guatemala and Panama. You learn about the Tuskegee Experiments. You learn about that time George Bush Sr set up an teenager to sell a DEA agent crack directly outside the White House for the purpose of inflating fears of a drug epidemic.

      Just really ugly despicable stuff. And its been happening for a long while.

      • Heavybell@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        6 months ago

        Don’t forget, a lot of the early free trade, free press rhetoric was because the US stood to benefit the most from it. Of course the country with mass printing technology wants everyone to be able to buy their printed propaganda. Do they want to share the technology? Not so much.

      • Ashe@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        The propaganda works though. People outside of the US struggle to see, and believe that the US has its own damning problems. 2 years ago I got close to a Romanian bartender while traveling. She told me about how she held scorn for her sister, who moved to the US despite having been warned against it.

        What happened to her sister is what so many of us are victims of. Debt trapping, stalled wages, poor access to medical care and financial incentive to not seek care. Not to mention the poor quality food that wears you down.

        As a result, she has had to send money to both her sister and Mom, and had to cancel several contract terms and vacation seasons off to care for her Mother. Her sister couldn’t help due to being in debt, and at risk of losing her job if she were to travel, regardless of the emergency.

        It’s a cruel system that bundles up as an image of living free. The marginally higher standard of living has a lot of cracks, but they’re hard to see until you’re living with them.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      6 months ago

      Oh this place hasn’t ever been a bastion of democracy. There’s so much inequity, vote surprising, gerrymandering, racial oppression, and straight up lying going on that even we have a hard time figuring out how much of our own history is a thick-ass layer of sugar.

      • irreticent@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        vote surprising

        I know it was probably a typo for suppressing, but vote surprising sounds like a jab at the electoral college.

        “Surprise! Your vote doesn’t really matter due to the electoral college.”

    • Melllvar@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      6 months ago

      It’s almost as if hostile nation states are manipulating public opinion to destabilize western democracies and alliances.

    • uis@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Hey! They are against universal education. And universal healthcare. These are most anti-russian values I ever seen. I know what I am talking about.