02-20-2017, 09:39 PM
(02-20-2017, 04:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I think Bannon is the real president; he can't be fired. They both work for Putin. Putin will have to fire them.
Bannon is taking the game of Karl Rogue a few steps forward in the direction of totalitarian rule. A Commie state typically has a formal President and Parliament, but real power is within the Party apparatus. Government by Party boss is how Stalin did things.
It is worth remembering that the Soviet Constitution is a near-plagiarism of the American Constitution, even down to the weak formal government. While our Constitution has tight controls on the potential for despotism of the President, it has none against someone like Rove or Bannon who exercises executive or legislative power without being elected, appointed and subject to Congressional approval, or operating as an employee of the Federal government and easily fired for misconduct.
Do not be fooled. The United States of America is no longer a democracy. Lobbyists have controlled the House of Representatives since 2011 and the Senate since 2015. Donald Trump is effectively a puppet of the same corporate interests who pay the corporate lobbyists. Sure, we have a republic, but only in the sense that we have no monarch.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.