Garrett Graff: You can explain America's constitutional collapse in a single coherent sentence

[snot]

28. Unfortunately, they weren't alone.

E.g., the AUMF has generally been supported by a majority of both parties, and its use or over-use by presidents from both parties has consistently been supported by the representatives of their own party as well as at least some from the opposing party.

How about the abduction, torture, and/or targeted killing of US citizens without a trial or anything else resembling due process, whenever a Pres. cares to label someone a "terrorist"?

Another e.g.: there's no real dispute that the privacy of innocent citizens is continually being invaded, directly or indirectly, by governmental agencies from the NSA to local police, in blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment and other privacy protections; but few if any congressional reps. in either party seem to care.

Similarly, first amendment protections have been pretty well shredded, with peaceful protests regarding one issue or another, depending on which party is in power, being suppressed, and administrations pressuring social media platforms to censor, demonetize, or shadow-ban kinds of speech that US governments are constitutionally prohibited from censoring directly themselves.

Or, what happened to antitrust enforcement? How can the kinds of consolidation we've seen in the media, amazon, Google, Meta, health care, et al. possibly be in the best interests of consumers? Even if savings are offered in the short term, we all know that these monopolies will raise prices or find other ways to exploit us as soon as they've cornered enough of the market.

And when's the last time either a Pres. from either party put someone in charge of Treasury who wasn't affiliated with the Wall St. firms that caused the 2008 Great Financial Crash, got bailed out, and then gave themselves the biggest bonuses they'd ever received?

There's been a frightening collapse in the rule of law generally – I'm not talking about petty crime; I'm talking about brazen disregard by governmental authorities, as well as the white-collar thugs they're supposed to restrain, for both national and international law.