Elden ring yawwwwn.

It’s beautiful, and it seems like an interesting world, but learning exactly how to dodgerollattack for every enemy with deliberately delayed reflexes is not my kinda fun.

Did - Lived abroad. Cheap, fun, good healthcare/dental, great new foods

Acquired - electric toothbrush, immediate halt of dental decay

Exact same games for me, I started with dead cells and a hundred hours in was like well I guess I do like roguelites after all, Even though I had always thought I didn’t.

And then I played Hades and was absolutely blown away, I love the stories inside and the action.

Boy, if you’re considering hollow knight, you will have zero regrets, it’s so fun and so eerie.

Soulslikes still make me yawn in comparison, dead souls 1, 2 and elden ring.

Maybe one day

Scavengers Reign, very creative sci-fi

That’s a vaguely optimistic way to think about civil war, but I’m doubtful that

1. people perpetually scared enough to find owning guns in urban environments necessary are going to disagree with the fear-mongering rhetoric a president-king invokes.

2. owning guns translates into any sort of effective resistance

3. it was worth killing children and civilians for decades in the hopes of an eventual opportunity to fight something

4. civilians with their own guns won’t be choosing their own targets

5. a sliver of power finally used to destroy a country is more important than the peaceful maintenance of representative democracy.

Mass executions being “barely in” the scope of presidential immunity means that even by your interpretation, mass executions are covered by Presidential immunity

Individual interpretation is the problem.

The president thinks to themselves “yea, that’s barely in” and then it’s official and covered.

Political suicide? Could be. Maybe not.

At the least, mass executions will be part of the official US presidential record. If they are carried out those people are dead and civil erupts, and if they aren’t the president is immune and the person(s) who disobeyed him is subject to execution for treason.

Say the president signs an executive order explicitly stating that any act is considered a presidential duty during the day in which a president conducts a minimum of one official act.

Then literally everything is official no matter what.

Although that’s unnecessary with how the supreme Court has defended official presidential immunity:

On page 30-31 of the SC decision, the supreme Court makes it known that because they have decided the US president is entitled to immunity and specifically cannot “be held criminally liable” for “certain official acts”(interpreted however broadly one would like), examining an unofficial act related to an official act, like legally examining whether or not dumps knew inciting a violent coup was illegal, “would permit a prosecutor to do indirectly what he cannot do directly- invite the jury to examine acts for which a president is immune from prosecution”

This means that any unofficial part of any official conduct, both interpreted however you see fit, cannot be legally scrutinized as scrutiny of an “unofficial act” could result in the legal scrutiny of an “official act” for which the supreme Court has decided there can be no legal scrutiny or prosecution anymore.

So, “hey, drowning that bag of puppies doesn’t seem very official”.

“Yea, too bad we can’t do anything about it since he has to sign a bill into law this afternoon”.

Yyyup.

Even when dumps was elected or roe was overturned, I was very disappointed but rationalized that voting could turn it around, even with a crappy voting system like the US has.

But granting absolute legal immunity to the most powerful branch of government is so broad and so reckless that I no longer clearly recognize any more safeguards on what can happen overnight to the US government.

Counterargument: The US dollar hasn’t budged since the ruling, so for some reason nobody else is worried yet.

I don’t really understand that.

Unofficial duties especially are not discreetly outlined or prohibited, so anything the US president does during an official act becomes an official act That cannot be legally scrutinized or prosecuted.

The president is commander-in-chief of the US military.

So ordering the US Navy to bomb Seattle is an official, legal act.

The president receives ambassadors. If they decide to shoot someone while waiting for an ambassador to arrive, or set a wildfire in a field of horses while on a “brainstorming jog” for that meeting, that shooting or arson is part of their official duty.

The State of the Union is an official act, so the president burning the flag while garroting an orphan on national television is now an official, legal act immune from legal liability.

Likely the same reason you believe replacing a successful incumbent with “generic Democrat” is politically advantageous: manipulated faith in popular conservative media.

Presidential polls are absurd propaganda at this point, and I guess you’re referring to the same two clips fox news hasn’t stopped running since the debate rather than to his obvious first term track record of “being old and still reliably and actively passing progressive legislation”.

He already won against trump, he regularly passes progressives legislation, you vote for Biden and get Harris anyway if you want a backup.

I can’t imagine how abandoning a proven candidate who beat trump before inspires political confidence if you haven’t been successfully manipulated to trust in the reliability of conservative media instead of years of reality.

Replacing the major candidate who already passed significant democratic legislation for 4 years is unlikely to result in greater Democratic faith or voter galvanization.

Harris certainly does not have that kind of momentum or support.

Any sort of candidate scramble now is all but forfeiting the 2024 election to trump.

Democrats already functionally control the Senate and have for biden’s four presidential years; I can’t see how nervously replacing Biden wins them any more seats, even optimistically.

That said, by the numbers, keeping the house majority and packing the court is more likely than a complete constitutional rewrite, a strategy I used as an example to show just how bleak the chance of restoring the us balance of executive power is.

Live abroad(I do this a lot anyway), apply for asylum internationally if civil war/ presidentially decreed assassinations are carried out

Two salient points:

This has not already happened in Russia.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin does not legally have absolute immunity.

China would have been a better example, since the Communist party is above the law and xi did abolish term limits for himself.

In the US, a president could not pardon themselves for state crimes, and the president murdering someone would have been a prosecutable state crime until this decision.

Not so anymore.

Didn’t turn out great, but is definitely worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRQQtd1KYXQ&t=644

Absolute immunity is exactly how genocide and civil wars are facilitated.

I doubt it will get as far Rwanda better of societal complexity, but if someone awful is elected and they decide to execute trans, or arab, or left handed people, or decides to murder anyone themselves, there’s no reason why they should consider the legal allowance of or consequences of their actions before taking action and no way outside of specific new amendments to scrutinize, prosecute or guard against that action in the future.

The states now have to rely on the personal judgments and courage of everyone under the commander in chief, which is everyone, to refuse to carry out atrocities.

It’s definitely the latter, corruption.

There’s no way the conservative justices could have drawn many of their conclusions with any consistent interpretation of the constitution and the enumerated rights.

The court conservatives are clearly advancing corporate and political partisan interests and interpreting identical constitutional amendments and passages different ways on different decisions.

Thomas has explicitly said that all he wants to do is hurt liberals, and accepted gifts from wealthy donors with connections to cases he oversees.

I’m sure he’s not the only one.

Without legal consequence, yes.

That action could not be legally scrutinized or judged and Biden, as president, would be immune from prosecution.

Not even Putin is above the law according to any interpretation of the Russian constitution.

There can be a fight, but it can be stopped at any point by the executive branch for any reason without restriction or consequence.

Plus, now there is a legal precedent for presidential immunity, so even if the best situation occurs and executive balance is restored, the next team of bandits can point to 2024 and say well look, the highest court in the land said their ruling supersedes the Constitution.

Fixing this will require some sort of comprehensive rewrite of either the Constitution to make its powers inviolate or better yet, to make the limitations on the branches inviolate.

Maybe increase the amendments by tenfold to elucidate exactly what is allowed and not allowed, because right now “reasonable judgment” is often invoked as a limitation on important legal rulings, but if you have a conservative majority refusing to honestly engage with “reasonable judgment” and willing to pwrjure themselvesto irritate harmful and unreasonable judgment, as the conservatives on the court are and have been willing to do for decades, then they can do things like violate or invalidate the Constitution.

The problem with all of these solutions is that the limitations on executive power are already very clear, and the supreme Court is objectively violating them.

I don’t see a clear resolution at this point, although I’m so shocked by the end of the US government that I’m still working through the consequences and considering hopeful solutions.

Right now, the most hopeful solution I see is like when dumps asked pence to violate the Constitution and declare him president, pence refused.

So if another atrocity is now ordered, right now the only hope is that the person being ordered to do it will risk being executed for treason and not follow that order.

Relying on many someones like pence to all do the right thing is not exactly comforting.

Great point.

We’ve passed the point that everything “could be on the table”, everything is on the table as of that ruling.

Biden is right now absolutely unfettered by the Constitution, amendments, federal and state laws, according to the supreme Court.

Biden immediately made it clear that no American was above the law, but right now he is above the law and choosing not to take advantage of the now unrestricted power of his office.

Not likely to be a tradition in future presidents.

The US President now has legal immunity from executing those laws faithfully.