Counter argument one. All of our previous failsafes have failed and we'd never thought we'd be here. Here we are. The chances of more failsafe failing, however unlikely, are there. Counter argument two. I'm certain other people, in other countries, with unexpected situations also said "there's no way x could happen. There are too many obstacles in the way for something like that." There they were.
1) "All of our previous failsafes", I'm assuming, refers to the notion of "faithless electors" and the idea that the Electoral College exists to keep madmen like Trump from assuming office. Except it's been in the best interests of the political system to remind us how much we have a representative democracy pretty much since the War of 1812 and you can't assume that the electorate standing up and defying the states that they represented would go all that smoothly either. You get a constitutional crisis either way. I'm not sure how well you remember 2000... that was nearly dicey. I wish it were dicier. But it, too, was a full-blown constitutional crisis and we got through it. 2) is an extremely hand-wavey argument. You're basically saying "no one could know" yet everyone with two eyes and an ACLU card pointed out that Trump, were he to become president, would be a bombastic buffoon with no interest in governance who would be deeply swayed by whatever sycophants he surrounded himself with. The disconnect is none of us thought it would get that far. Now that it is, this is pretty much what you'd expect if you thought Team Trump had zero chance of executing things smoothly. I figured things would be rough, but even I didn't think they'd suck this hard. Remember: we're in a full-blown holy fuck what happens next moment over an executive order that prohibits immigration from seven countries. We've done that sort of thing all the time. The difference is, it usually happens based on consensus. Want a glimpse into the mind of Steve Bannon? Here's his hero: (psych! had to poke a little fun) No actually it's this guy: Prolly well before your time, but back in '81, the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike in the middle of the summer. Reagan told them to get back to work in 48 hours or he'd fire 'em. Pandemonium was predicted. Chaos in the streets! Who will land the planes! So they stood firm, and Reagan fired 15,000 of them. Everything went better than expected. Air traffic was back up to 80% within a few days, thanks to 2,000 scabs, 3,000 supervisors and about 800 military. The system was effectively all better in a couple years and 15,000 sour-ass union pricks were out of a career. Yay Reagan! Yay strike-breaking! Yay free enterprise! Thing is, though, Congress passed a law that air traffic controllers couldn't strike back in '55. They upheld that ruling in '71. It was damn dramatic, no doubt, but it was also the legislative, judicial and executive branches acting in concert. Reagan's big power move was literally doing his job (despite the truly scary consequences). His renegade, maverick action was preventing a constitutional crisis. But Bannon doesn't think that deeply. So here we are.
Failsafes refer to people making rational decisions in a rational process and preventing irrationality through majority vote and the friction of beuracracy keeping the train from derailing. Whoever is making the decisions right now is trying to carve glass with a sledgehammer. If they succeed, it'll be an amazing feat. If they fail, that glass sculpture is still fucked up and now someone's gotta clean up the mess. My second argument is also in reference to previous heads of other states that I don't want to bring up or name but there's a super scary, super long list of people who have fucked the world up in real bad ways. I'm trying real hard to toe the line here and not be super critical of our government and I'm failing spectacularly at it. Other people keep dropping the f-bomb, I'm pretty certain I haven't yet, but seriously. Damn.
Bannon et. al. are not acting irrationally. They're acting rashly. They're acting impetuously. They're acting amateurishly. but they ain't being irrational. Whoever is making the decisions right now is trying to open a can of beans with a scalpel. If they succeed, it'll be an amazing feat. If they fail, the scalpel won't cut much ever again. Your second argument is not an argument, it's an expression of unthinking fear. Your government is busily tearing itself apart over the civil rights of people that aren't citizens. If you aren't proud, you aren't paying attention.
I'm proud of the people at the women's march. I'm proud of the people rushing to the airports to offer legal aid, emotional support, and solidarity. I'm proud of the people determined to be vigilant day and night for the sake of their neighbors, their country, and the international community. I'm fucking terrified that any of this is happening and how much worse things could possibly get. This isn't sane and this isn't healthy and this isn't the direction I want the world to go.
Yeah but come on, of all the agencies to go rogue you just knew the Forest Service would be somewhere near the top of that list. At least given my encounters with Forest Rangers and the like.
Yeah but come on, of all the agencies that could possibly go political you cannot tell me that the Forest Service was on the short list. My great aunt Marge was a staunch Republican who, for 30 years, ran the FDR memorial in upstate New York. Generally they're above this sort of thing.