# Checks and Balances

There's a fair amount of anxiety going around about the upcoming US election, a
lot of it over a potential second Trump presidency and "Project 2025."  I'd like
to point out some things that may help everyone chill out a bit: we have checks
and balances!  Since a lot of this sort of anxiety isn't really relevant right
now if you lean toward the Republican side of the aisle, this is mostly for the
left-leaning folks, but maybe that'll switch a few years from now.  Who knows?

Also, remember everyone: if a news article makes you angry or anxious, it's
probably because you're being targeted by a psyop* of some form or another.
Think about who benefits from you feeling that way when you read a headline or
article. (* see below)

## Executive orders

The president has some ability to exercise power via executive order.  These
things are kind of limited to actions that the executive agencies should take
and can be reigned in by either Congress passing new laws or the judicial branch
vacating the order because it is unlawful and/or unconstitutional.  In order to
do anything "big" the president needs approval from Congress, and judges that
oversee cases about it need to agree that the action matches the Constitution
and law.

Let's delve into a little more detail.

## Speed bumps

To list them out, there are at least three big hurdles that need to be cleared
for executive actions to be meaningful:

1) Congressional speed bumps
2) Judicial speed bumps
3) State and local speed bumps

These aren't exhaustive, and neither are the details below, but they are big
hurdles and it's worth thinking about them.

## Congressional speed bumps

At any given time the House of Representatives and Senate are split roughly
equally between Republicans and Democrats with a slight majority one way or
another.  This is particularly relevant in the Senate because they have the
filibuster for most things, which requires a 60% approval vote - that is, it
requires more votes than either party has on their own.  That also means shitty
laws for "deporting everyone I don't like" or "revoke traitor's citizenship" are
almost guaranteed to not pass, even if an entire side of the political aisle
votes in favor of said extremely dumb bills (which is itself unlikely).  Next
time someone wants to get rid of the filibuster for some sort of political
expediency, remember that it is a wall against authoritarian garbage.

Congressmen and Senators also have their own motivations and goals that they
want to achieve.  They are both trying to draft federal law to benefit their
districts and otherwise land federal money for their constituents.  If the
president is doing something at odds with that it'll be a problem.

Finally, Congress has the power of the purse.  The President doesn't get
to decide where money goes and for what purpose, outside of some limited bounds.
This is why in Trump's first presidency you didn't get to see him pull money out
of nowhere to build his border wall.  He tried several times to gather the
funding for it, and he finally had to bend over backwards to pull some money
from the military under the guise of border security being national security,
and even that hit hiccups.

## Judicial speed bumps

There are a tremendous number of judges appointed by opponents of Trump (or, if
you're reading this later, whoever the current President is) and those judges
can all make rulings to frustrate or void bad executive actions.  Even if the
case isn't resolved immediately, judges can pause or prevent implementation of a
policy until it is resolved via the courts.  This can tie actions up for years
if there is enough contention.

## State and local speed bumps

The size of the federal executive branch is small compared to state and local
government personnel resources.  The FBI and the like *have to* rely on state
and local resources to get things done.  If a state doesn't want to play ball
with something it thinks is unlawful or unconstitutional, then the federal
government is going to have a really tough time getting that thing done.  If
California doesn't want to forcibly deport all of the legal Hispanic citizens
that live there then it's really not going to happen.

## What if a military coup happens?!

If you really, honestly think this will happen then you should be *really*
pro-second amendment right now.  Go and buy a gun and learn how to use it.  If
someone manages to actually get enough control of the US military to do that,
then any forecasting I've made goes out the window and so has yours.  No amount
of protesting or voting will get you out of that situation.

That being said, I'm absolutely willing to put money down that this will not
happen.

## So now what?

The checks and balances we have are important.  They mean that nothing can go
too far off the rails unless things get really, really weird.  So, unless the
collective panic over what I consider to be business-as-usual hits a fever pitch
and riots break out, we basically just have to weather the next four years and
then we'll get a new guy.  That's not to say we should get complacent and think
that nothing could go wrong, but it means that an extremely complicated machine
with a ton of moving parts would have to go wrong in an absolutely perfectly
unlikely way for "doom" to fall on us.

Trump kicked the tires of these checks and balances once and they held.
Considering basically none of the election denying stuff went anywhere at all
I'd even venture to say that they held extremely well. The fact that our
Constitutional system was robust to even someone who doesn't give a damn about
the rules says a lot for how useful and powerful these rules actually are.

## (*) What's all this psyop stuff?

I'm not talking some big malicious government conspiracy or anything. It should
be pretty obvious to anyone who has been on the internet for more than about 20
minutes that there is an entire behemoth force that tries to make people do
things by manipulating their emotions.  In the market we call it advertising.
In politics we call it propaganda.  Basically all of it these days tries to
make some particular emotion rise up in you to get you to do something.

This is why political ads and news headlines (which operate with closely
related goals when the topics match) try to make you either mad, scared, or
anxious.  If you're afraid, you're more likely to do something.  The trick is
for the advertiser/speaker/reporter to get you to do the thing "they" want you
to do, and believe the thing they want you to believe.

In the case of news headlines, the target action is click on more news stuff.

In the case of politics, the target action is voting.

It should be clear to anyone who is paying attention that "raw" news has been
giving way to news with more and more of a political taint over the past couple
of decades.  The staff of the New York Times wants to get Democrats elected, and
Fox news staff wants to get Republicans elected.  Making you freak out about the
"other team" is a good way to both maximize clicks and satisfy the staff's
personal agendas.  That's the psyop - a bunch of other otherwise-normal people
trying to make you do stuff by freaking you out.  Don't fall into that trap.