Do we have a Constitutional Infection?

[marylandblue]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/is-america-on-the-verge-of-a-constitutional-crisis/555860/



Even amid the constitutional degradation of this moment... rejuvenating mechanisms are very much in evidence. On a daily basis, features of our democratic culture look more like antibodies fighting off an illness than like the rot before an inevitable collapse.

Journalists have been relentless and ferocious and effective in unmasking and reporting the truth—and news institutions have developed more committed readership as a result. A broad democratic coalition of citizens is mobilizing against Trumpism—most recently in a Pennsylvania congressional district believed to be so solidly Republican that Democrats let the incumbent run unopposed in recent elections. Other institutions, including the very FBI that Trump is assaulting, are knuckling down and doing their jobs in the face of pressure. This is not the stuff of a rotting democracy.

Trump can whine and he can fire senior FBI officials, but he has been singularly ineffective either in getting the bureau to investigate his political opponents (they have not yet “locked her up”) or in dropping the Russia investigation, which continues to his apparent endless frustration. If this is constitutional rot, it's inspiring a surge of public commitment to underlying democratic ideals—including the independence of law enforcement.

What we are seeing, in other words, is a little more dynamic than rot, a phrase that assumes we know the outcome. It’s more like constitutional infection or injury. The wound may indeed lead to a crisis; it may become gangrenous. But to describe the United States today as facing a constitutional crisis misses the frenetic pre-crisis activity of the antibodies fighting the bacteria, alongside the antibiotics the patient is taking.

We are definitely in a period of sustained constitutional infection. The question is whether we can collectively bring that infection under control before we face an acute crisis.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. DU as antibodies

Keep fighting the orange infection.

Anybody got a cure for McConnellitis?

[marylandblue]

2. Take two protests and call me in the morning

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. too far gone

The disease is so far progressed I fear it needs emergency surgery, a.k.a. impeachment, a.k.a. McConnellectomy.

Hopefully we can do a Ryanectomy in November.

The protests so far seem to have helped the patient immensely. Last count I saw was 39 legislative seats flipped from red to blue (DLCC). Now with the gun protests, people are flipping from 'untouchable' to common sense controls.