Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
As a non-US person, it blows my fucking mind how frequently y'all haul out a goddamn Ouija board to channel the founding fathers on any issue. What would George Washington think about ChatGPT? Uh probably that it comes out of a box possessed by the a demon and then he'd ask if you owned a comfort girl he could borrow for the night? What a valuable exercise. Much wow.
Spaceman pointing a gun at other Spaceman "wait it's all a cult?"
It helps to realize that most of the people "defending" the Constitution have literally never read it, and they even admit that.
Like religion, "God" is whatever the TV (and radio) people say that He is - he's so strong, he's so precious, he rides around shirtless on horseback and wrestles bears, literally barehanded, and so forth.
Such people don't care one bit what the founding fathers have to say - heck, they don't even listen to Trump Himself when he said to take the vaccine (which he invented ofc). On the other hand, May The Founding Fathers Be Praised (and other chants that sound nice).
Not only have they not read the Constitution, but they also haven't read any of what the founders actually wrote, and most of them were prolific writers.
https://theonion.com/area-man-passionate-defender-of-what-he-imagines-consti-1819571149/
I feel like you also have people who've read it enough to understand that a rewriting of the Constitution would lead to them losing power. The deification of the Founding Fathers makes the Constitution a sacred document and you don't change sacred documents.
Which is funny because the Founding Fathers understood that the Constitution shouldn't be a sacred document. While this is the only base law the USA has had in two centuries, this was the third base law for the overall country they lived in within their lifetimes.
Hence the cognitive dissonance yeah, though those looking to (ab)use the document can still make it work for them even while maintaining the fiction that "we didn't change it".
One example is the recent SCOTUS ruling that iirc allows a sitting President to assassinate their political opponents if they so choose, publicly and openly, and yet the conservatives who pushed for and made that happen are still (atm) calling the USA as a "democracy" rather than a totalitarian regime. Meanwhile, the liberal side doesn't even bother with advocating for a platform any longer and instead focuses purely on attacking their opponent and shoring up the appearance of their own (independently of any specifics I mean) - a recent development for them (in the degree to which it is enacted, if not quite entirely), though conservatives have been doing that since at least Ron Desantis lost to Trump.
In short, "facts don't matter", to so very many these days, whereas what does is matters of presentation - tone of voice, who you know, how much money is backing you, etc. We see this all up and down the scale - in people trying to be famous on YouTube/Insta/Tiktok/etc., in the stock market, daddy's nephew getting the cushy VP job at the office, and the very presidency itself, as well as most of (all of the entrenched) Senators, Representatives, judges, and most other things down in-between. Our society has forgotten the past struggles that gave the people of the past reasons to avoid certain things - e.g. actual literal full-on Nazi-ism - therefore we will now commence repeating them, our only hope to learn from firsthand experience what we refused to learn from reading books and listening to those who were actually there. i.e. we won't take time to listen, bc we are too busy speaking.
Oh yes. As a US person it blows my mind as well. We have an unhealthy fear of changing the Constitution, despite its many amendments. Of course that also precludes changing portions of it that were clearly designed under different pretenses than currently exist (e.g. 2A, but that's a whole can of worms I'm just tired of opening at this point).
The main issue there in my view isn't actually the Constitution but the sheer division at every decision. Nothing can be changed anywhere if people can't even agree on the same facts anymore. It ultimately means the US is at a constant government standstill. Fun times.
In many ways we now feel like two different countries. The blue country with dense populations centered around either coast, and the red country with sparser population in the middle.
the "change" republicans want is to tear the whole thing down and turn it into a dictatorship
Which is exactly what their beloved Founding Fathers™ were trying to prevent.
This is an interesting read.
What's even sillier is that they don't even respect his views and it doesn't change anything. He strongly opposed to a two-party system, yet here we are.
Correction! You non-American! You mean Waifu body pillow, they didn't use comfort girls until Abe (stick it where you can) Lincoln. God read the Decloration of Indopence!
Abe didn't need a comfort girl he had Joshua Speed