Early Xer, so never really had vinyl. My first real music collection was cassettes, mostly via Columbia House. CDs were a huge improvement and I still have 100s. I rarely actually listen to them, though.
Also fair. There's also the stress of infinite choice and the loss of a monoculture as a binding mechanism.
I agree that the lack of permanance is a huge downside. But, of course, that was true of old media as well. The cassettes I bought in the 1980s wore out pretty quickly. CDs were more permanent, although I no longer have a CD player aside from my Bluray.
They're differently inconvenient. There's definitely something lost in the algorithmic world, but near-infinite availability is quite the gain. Everything come with trade-offs.
I think that's right. There are soooo many problems with the system right now, some built into a system designed in 1787 for a radically different country and some of-the-moment.
Yes. But it took the Holocaust to gain traction in creating human rights law that superceded national sovereignty. Americans had some concerns that Jim Crow would be attacked, for example.
I tend to think of "crisis" in terms of a particular standoff rather than institutional decay.
It required the Holocaust and a whole lot of persuasion to create genocide and, indeed, "human rights" as a legal concept.
But that's always been our system. Absent pushback from Congress, POTUS has significant freedom of action while cases slog through the courts.
The topic being Congress' abdication of foreign policy oversight. Published before Trump came down the escalator at his eponymous hotel to announce his candidacy.
100%
It was going so well up until this morning, too.
"We tortured some folks. [Whaddya gonna do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]"
There is bascially a 100% chance if that if Trump orders the destruction of Iran's entire electrical infrastructure along with a finding from DOJ / DOD GS that it's legal, the U.S. military will carry it out and basically 0% chance any future D admin would prosecute them for it
It is what it is. Notably, though, a Republican-majority SCOTUS, including every Trump appointee save Kavanaugh, ruled against him. And Trump complied with the ruling. Granted, he's trying a new avenue to circumvent but that's not unusual.
Again, I think the argument is over semantics. The Constitution has always depended on stakeholders to do their duty. Sometimes, they don't.
I still hold out hope that there are 7 SCOTUS Justices willing to do their job. But that's a slow path when the other branches are under same-party control.
In the run-up to the first Gulf War, SNL had a skit where Dana Carvey, as George HW Bush, gave a speech to the Iraqi people where he said America was a great scorpion and jackals would slake their thirst on the blood of Iraqi soldiers. It was funny because it was so absurd.
The replies to this show how many people think the minority party in the Senate has magical powers.
That would almost certainly have happened in the 45 administration. He ensured that no one in the 47 adminstration would be the "adult in the room."
Where I see Trump in a category of his own is that his predecessors actually cared about the rule of law, and were thus incredibly selective in transgressing it to achieve their policy aims. Trump does not give a shit.
Presidents violate the Constitution all the time. Obama, for whom I didn't vote but respected as acting in what he thought the country's best interests, did so in both the Libya war and the DACA EO just off the top of my head. Congress let him get away with the former and SCOTUS stopped the latter.
But, yes, laws and the Constitution itself are regularly transgressed. Jefferson freely admitted the Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional and violated his own principles. It just happened to be the right thing to do.
It really depends on what "this" you're referring to. There have been a mind-numbering amount of transgressions. Funding DHS despite lack of Congressional funding is low on my list, but still a huge transgression.
I'd love to know the details, which I'm certain you can't share. But I presume that nobody wearing military rank insignia is in the decision chain for invoking the 25th?
SCOTUS has long recognized that Presidents have more leeway when Congress fails to act. It's inherent in the system.
Most, if not every, modern President has violated black letter law and the clear text of the Constitution itself. I think this one has been more frequent and blatant in that. But laws, including the Constitution, aren't self-enforcing.
Those are much higher on my list of concerns. I'd call those Minor Constitutional Crises. They'd be Major/Existential if they were SCOTUS orders.
I think it's a crisis, just a political, rather than a Constitutional one. That said, I consider defying a post-Carter understanding of the ADA pretty far down the list of our political crises caused by rubber stamping this POTUS.
I think the disagreement is semantic, not substantive. We agree on the facts and that it's problematic. I just reserve the term for active defiance of, not mere disregard for, another branch's lawful authority. Here, Congress is just being supine and the courts haven't been asked to rule.
Which, of course, is not news to you.
I hate it, but I just see Trump violating longstanding norms in outrageous ways. But the Constitutional means of stopping him exist, they're just slow and hindered by lockstep partisanship.