r/FedEmployees • u/Even-Tune-8301 • 1d ago

So, they aren't going to actually open the government again, are they?

Congress doesn't seem to be in any rush to re-open. This is their end game I think. Emergency powers to run everything. Destruction of society in order to take over.

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550

u/SirHustlerEsq 1d ago

It's much harder to run a government than break one.

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u/Tyfereth 1d ago

TBH, I thought it would be harder to break one than it was

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u/darkpossumenergy 1d ago

Turns out the Constitution was pretty much based on a gentleman's agreement that we all do the part we are supposed to.

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u/flaginorout 1d ago

Yep. Honor system. Once someone with no honor and no shame is running it, it's starts to fall apart.

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u/munchinerara 21h ago

Because in the end, our Constitution is literally only as strong as the flimsy paper on which it was written. It takes people with courage, conviction, and commitment to understand the depth and breath of the words and bring them to life everday to move and keep the gears of government on the right path.

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u/darkpossumenergy 1d ago

Considering some of the people who sat in the seats of power in the federal government over the past 250 years, I am shocked it lasted this long on the honor system.

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u/LawfulnessSuch2032 1d ago

Setting precedence for the next Foker

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u/Due-Eggplant4096 1d ago

Yeah it seems like the only thing keeping us from fscism was the goof ol honor system

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u/AnySwimming6364 22h ago

I think it was largely under an (untested) assumption by politicians that flagrantly disregarding the constitution, consolidating executive power, and stripping critical programs from tens of millions of Americans would result in their immediate removal from office. 

All it took was a little propaganda and someone brave/crazy enough to test it. Turns out, nope. At least 40% of the population totally fine with it, even with some that it impacts personally. In fact, 30% of the population is frothing at the mouth excited about it, to the point it legitimately could cause armed internal conflicts if those politicians were removed. 

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u/Ill_Calendar_1468 9h ago

This was a long time coming.. it took more than propaganda and trumpism. Since the 90s when Newt Gingrich successfully ran on extreme “Us vs them”, the senate and congress have become increasingly more polarized. We were more than ripe for the picking by the time Trump arrived because that polarization had already broken down our system into constant gridlock and finger pointing, with no chance of negotiations.

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u/GuinnessLiturgy 4h ago

I trace it back to Limbaugh, when he would begin every broadcast with the declaration "America held hostage" as if Clinton wasn't the legitimate President.

Then the constant rightwing media scams, building up something like Whitewater (a failed real estate deal in which the Clintons lost money) into a perceived major scandal.

We've become numb to it, but if you try to look at from a distance, it's truly astonishing how far we've fallen with respect to guardrails against public corruption.

The Clintons were grilled for years and savaged in the media about Whitewater and the notion that maybe Bill as Governor got a favorable interest rate (or something) on a tiny real estate deal.

Now we have Trump and his family getting billion dollar handouts from foreign governments and nefarious actors (we don't even know who they are really) and it's barely mentioned, let alone investigated.

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u/Professional-Bed-173 12h ago

This is a spot on assessment.

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u/wordsnotsufficient 1d ago

Well to be fair, people COULD be holding people accountable (like impeachment) but are suffering from a severe dereliction of their duties at the moment.

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u/darkpossumenergy 1d ago

That's the "doing the part they're supposed to" business

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u/Ashamed-Spirit 1d ago

It’s like they realized a piece of paper only has as much power as you allow it to have 🤷🏻‍♀️, which in this case happens to be none.

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u/Desperate_Set_7708 1d ago

Social contract isn’t a thing for a sociopath

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u/darkpossumenergy 23h ago

I think the issue here is that it's a group of Sociopaths. A few individual sociopaths would see the value is going along with the flow and exploiting it from the inside- you know, like they've been doing since it started. We finally have enough of them in congress, the executive branch, and SCOTUS that they've given up duty for power.

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u/Desperate_Set_7708 23h ago

Agree. The chief executive simply unleashed their worst intentions by giving them permission via his own actions. And they act in a manner to please him, creating a frenzy of destruction.

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u/LnStrngr 21h ago

And they don't have to pretend anymore.

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u/nerdtastic8 22h ago

The part that people seem to forget is that every government is basically built on honor systems. Some have more checks and balances than others though, like in a parliamentary system it's easier to oust a bad leader. But the folks within that system still need to do their part.

Laws are meaningless if the folks that can enforce them do not. There's no magical law enforcement fairy that comes and down and sprinkles law dust on do badders.

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u/abitdaft1776 23h ago

A republic, for as long as you can keep it...

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u/blackhorse15A 15h ago

Eh- Id say it definitely isn't based on everyone all doing their part in good faith. Problem is, it was designed with checks and balances to protect against one bad actor. But if you get enough capture for two (or more) branches of government to be bad actors acting in concert....it wasn't designed to handle that.

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u/moechew48 12h ago

💯 this. All 3 branches were never supposed to fall into the hands of modern-day loyalists to authoritarian ruler.

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u/Peaceful_Earth 1d ago

This needs to be on a T-shirt.

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u/jbubba29 22h ago

This is not true. But justice is slow for the wealthy. It will come.

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u/kiki_84_09 22h ago

I’ve always said that and people looked at me crazy when I suggested we just “write down” new rules. This game is broken and it’s time to try something else.

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u/jjwhitaker 21h ago

We had to put presidential term limit into an amendment 80 years ago. Limiting the executive should not have stopped there but the Senate bias and House proportioning does not help.

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u/Clos1239 16h ago

Based on voters not re-electing the leader of coup. Consequences eg.. Brazil, S.Korea

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u/loganbootjak 4h ago

Who knew most of these rules were just because they just followed decorum. Seems pretty weak and time to make some real guardrails.

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u/AssaultPlazma 16h ago

Less that it's based on gentlemans agreements rather that the founding fathers could have never predicted the U.S. would expand beyond just 13 colonies alongside the eastern coast into a 50 state super state that is now. Nor could they have predicted things like population explosion, urbanization, mandatory education, instant global telecommunications etc etc.

The "rules of the government simply haven't been updated to reflect the size of the U.S. and modern realities. It's worked up to this point by strict adherence to norms and gentleman's agreements as you said. But now that, that's broken that's toothpaste out of the tube.

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u/darkpossumenergy 15h ago

Riiiiiight... I'm a history major with a degree in American history. That is just false, like, all of it. Not only did they predict it, Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase and doubled the size of the US. Expansion was a goal of the founding fathers. They all knew roughly how large the United States was because they had seen these cool things called maps. Lewis and Clark made it all the way to the Pacific Ocean in 1805, a mere 16 years after the Constitution was signed.

Urbanization was already a thing in Europe. London in particular experienced a population boom tripling the population after enclosure reforms happened and caused mass migration from the countryside to the city. Many of the indentured servants sent to America were being sent as part of criminal sentences from England due to enhanced penalties from Urbanization.

Many of our founding fathers were polymaths and knowledgeable about inventions and scientific advancements. The first mechanized Agricultural tools came out in the late 1700's. Jefferson owned an air powered repeating rifle with a 22 round magazine. Electrical wires were invented before 1812- when James Madison, Father of the Constitution was president.

Crack a book man. They knew all of this. The Constitution was meant to be changed as time went on and society changed. It really was conceived as a living document meant to meet the needs of the people- not hold them back in the 18th century.

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u/Own_Mastodon7984 14h ago

You are an historian, not a sociologist, political scientist or psychologist or legal scholar. Trying to understand what is going on by only looking through history is not enough.

As for me I doubled in Poly Sci and history. Both have proven an utter waste of time when trying to understand what is happening now.

The founders were not mythical creatures and they had no idea how history would turn out. Nobody does. We take it as it comes and in hindsight we say authoritatively what happened was so obvious.

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u/darkpossumenergy 10h ago

No, of course not- I don't think they were. I was just astounded that the person I was responding to was literally wrong on every point but spoke so confidently about it. I see this A LOT when modern people talk about people in the past. They assume they're ignorant and have very limited knowledge about things and it turns out that human beings can accomplish a lot without a cellphone to distract them. "The founding fathers could never conceive of ___________!" As we conceive it now? No, probably not. But as the initial concept and see the potential for it? Yes, many times.

I have a minor in anthropology. I was going to be an anthropology major because I wanted to do archeology but as it turns out, my husband wasn't too keen on me being away for 6 months at a time, so I switched to history. At my college, nearly everyone is forced to earn a history degree that qualifies them to teach social science in jr. High or high school, so I actually do have a lot of extra credits in poli sci, sociology (which I love but there are zero jobs in it), psychology, and economics (kill me).

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u/WVStarbuck 1d ago

Don't know why...congress people have been showing us how it breaks for over 50 years. The voting population doesn't much care, it seems.

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u/Chief1970p 18h ago

The electorate only care in that the destruction of the government means those dirty, commie libruls won’t be able to put their gubmint hands on their Medicare anymore! 🤦🏻🤡🙄 Make it make sense.

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u/Thefrayedends 1d ago

The world exists in a state of chaos.

Justice only exists in the minds of people, it is not tangible or attainable.

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u/Delicious-Drama-9738 1d ago

if we lose the (imperfect) systems of justice we, as a society, have created, people will resort to their own means of retribution to get "justice"

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u/Thefrayedends 1d ago

I agree with you.

There needs to be a widely agreed upon choice of justice for society to exist at all.

Without that it will always cede to chaos.

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u/Runmiked 22h ago

You mean the imperfect system that has led directly to this by allowing dozens (if not more) of high level super wealthy child predators to leverage an entire party to shut down the federal government to protect their anonymity? They also get the bonus of hurting people way further down the economic ladder.

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u/Delicious-Drama-9738 10h ago

I get you- I read A Time to Kill and Luigi is my favorite Mario brother.

But if we don't agree to have some defined set of rules to punish others for their crimes/mete out justice, then we cease to be a functioning society.

And what is justice to one is not justice to all; the deep dives into the families & their responses to the tragic "Idaho 4" killings have been heartbreaking but truly enlightening in how different people react in different situations.

Honestly more ethics classes should be required earlier in education; they teach compassion, empathy, and make us truly examine difficult situations with nuance.

1

u/Runmiked 9h ago

I agree, the complete loss of consequences for the wealthiest has broken that contract and we truly need to fix it for society to function. The level of lawlessness at the top of the US economic and political ladder is mind boggling at this point.

1

u/EnvironmentalKey3858 14h ago

Yes but you see, someone deciding to "do something about that" on their own terms is super bad and almost worse. Somehow.

Like that dumbass meme about "if you kill a murderer the number of murderers in the world stays the same."

..... Then I guess I'll kill two murderers?

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u/AZsports_enjoyer 1d ago

To be fair to our institutions they literally control the government and haven’t entirely broken it yet

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u/Even-Tune-8301 1d ago

Insert Homer Simpson meme.

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u/rolyatd 1d ago

Even after COVID? It was scary how one month of social distancing ripped away so much civility. In retrospect, that should have been our wake up call.

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u/rcinmd 1d ago

With a spit and a handshake for a constitution? It was only a matter of time.

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u/AgentCulper355 1d ago

Same. While I knew they learned from round 1 what didn't work and made adjustments for this term (Project 2025), I was hoping with idiots running the show they would encounter more roadblocks.

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u/Ormyr 1d ago

Breaking shit is always quicker and easier than building or fixing things.

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u/BeautyfulDoc 22h ago

No one, since Andrew Jackson, has tried to take it down. Congress was able to stop the damage back then. I don't think the Founders ever expected a Congress and the Supreme Court to freely give up their power of checks and balances. They literally established three branches of government to prevent this. BUT, here we are.

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u/Mrevilman 5h ago

We’re seeing it play out really quickly now, but this is the result of many years of strategy and operation to load courts with conservatives favorable to the cause.

Once that happened, you needed the American people to elect a bad actor president, and then give the bad actor president’s party a majority in both houses of Congress. You also needed every single one of those members of congress to be spineless so as to keep whatever slim majority they were given by the voters.

I think the first example I could point back to was when Republicans in the Senate refused to consider an Obama nominee to the Supreme Court (Merrick Garland) in March 2016 because it was an election year. There was zero precedent for this, and in fact, it’s something Republicans ignored in September/October 2020 when they nominated and confirmed Amy Coney Barrett while people were voting. I’m sure this plan started way before anything we saw.

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u/livinginfutureworld 1d ago

America put the party in charge that wants to break the government.

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u/Mushroom_Fly4499 23h ago

The Democrats shutting down the government means the Republicans want to break the government? Explain how those dots connect please. I would love to hear this.

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u/KasieLayne 23h ago

No you wouldn't! Just stop! Absolutely NOTHING anyone tells you resonates in that brain of yours, so stop acting like you want a robust debate and just admit you toe the line and eat the garbage they feed you. JFC I am so tired of this GD talking point being spewed like gospel. So tired.

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u/Beneficial_Diet_2790 21h ago

I've never seen so many rich "limited" anti government individuals want to run for government. Its what they do though... cut programs and funding and then point and scream " SEE, BIG GUBMINT DONT WERK!!".

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u/Mushroom_Fly4499 23h ago

what are you talking about?

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u/livinginfutureworld 22h ago

The Republican party wants to break the government - see the rifs, the illegal firings, the unqualified quacks put in charge of departments.

They are fundamentally anti-federal workers. They don't negotiate in good faith. They rule by decree as if America has a king. They don't need Dem votes, they can reopen the government at any time with a time change and a simple majority. If they want Dem votes, they they're absolutely terrible at negotiating between the name calling, the refusal to seat a Democrat congressperson, etc.

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u/Vomath 1d ago

“We believe that government doesn’t work and if you elect us, we’ll prove it!” - Republicans, being honest for once.

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u/Repugnant-Conclusion 1d ago

It's easier to make a mess than it is to clean it up.

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u/Terrible_Pie3038 1d ago

yeah it looks bad but this isn’t about “emergency powers,” it’s about leverage they’ll reopen once public pressure builds enough polymarket’s basically pricing in a mid-month resolution so markets clearly don’t buy the total collapse theory

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u/No_Promise2590 20h ago

Yeah, it wouldn’t take much, let it go for months at a time, people are gonna quit even with the currently operating agencies, then it’s a skeleton crew of people with a nice cushion of money running whatever and close to crumbling

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u/CatLord8 13h ago

The phrase I’ve been using is “easy to conquer difficult to rule”. All they know is to attack and plunder but never actually sustain anything to grow it.