TikTok resurfaces video of Trump saying US shouldn't have a president with felony conviction
Lauren Lane
Trump in 2016:
She shouldn't be allowed to run.
If she were to win this election, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
In that situation we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment
and ultimately a criminal trial.
It would grind the government to a halt.
Different question. How is it that in the USA it is legal to run for president when you are a convicted felon? I mean you obviously do not qualify for the job.
Same reason felons can vote; if being a criminal removes your ability to participate in the political process then the government suddenly has a very strong incentive to criminalize their political opponents.
Afaik the idea is that you want to avoid someone to be able to convict their opponents. So make it impossible to take them out using the legal system. Makes total sense to me.
The essay argues that any tyrant remains in power while his subjects grant him that, therefore delegitimizing every form of power. The original freedom of men would be indeed abandoned by society which, once corrupted by the habit, would have preferred the servitude of the courtier to the freedom of the free man, who refuses to be submissive and to obey.
Spinoza asked "why do people fight for their servitude as if it were their salvation?"
Fear, and superstition; ideology. Under certain circumstances, the masses want fascism.
When the left buys in to the game of fear, hatred, passivity, and superstition - a game turbocharged by social media - we become complicit.
"Instead of politics, we engage in chatter. And it is a sad chatter, whose prevailing form is denunciation. The practice of denunciation debases the multitude. In the place of action, it accepts hatred, which merely externalizes the sadness of passivity; in the place of agency, it accepts fear, and pleads for security; in place of the collective democratic subject, it accepts the superstitious mob.
Superstitious mobs can only serve tyrants, as Spinoza knew well. We now face a new theocracy of our own making, one which through the chatter of social media decomposes our powers and makes politics impossible."
The Spinoza quote? As far as I understand it, it could actually be Deleuze paraphrasing Spinoza, perhaps Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, or maybe better said as "Deleuze' translation of Spinoza."
It's not that silly if law enforcement officials and judges are elected, like how they are in the American system. Ideally the court/justice system is entirely loose from politics.
Also don't forget that the founding fathers did all partake in sedition, many of them not really having a clear slate whatsoever.
But yeah this particular instance hasn't crossed their minds at all.
My argument being if you can convict a person through the judges you influenced, you can sentence them to imprisonment similarly as well. So it's a moot point.
We have less qualifications to run for president than we do for working at McDonald's. Per the constitution you need to be born in the USA, be 35 by the day you are sworn in, and have lived in the USA for the last 14 years.
But as others have said, the felony thing prevents weaponizing the justice system against political opponents.
Campaign donators need some sign that you will bend to their demands, and so having a decent felony record is a good indication that you will play ball.