Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/03/trump-presidency-for-life.html
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I actually read that blog post a few days ago when it got linked on reddit. I’ll just repost my comment from there. It’s pretty detached from reality. (the post, not my comment)
I actually went and read the article. Holy shit, is it disconnected from reality.
The amendment reads, in part: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
This sounds reasonable enough, especially in light of FDR’s hold on the office. Yet those who supported the amendment more than 70 years ago could not have foreseen the prospect of a one-term president who lost the office but who later regained it in a subsequent election. Grover Cleveland remains the only president to have successfully vaulted himself to the White House in nonconsecutive elections, in 1884 and in 1892.
So…the person writing this article in 2024 is aware that Grover Cleveland served nonconsecutive terms 132 years ago, but somehow thinks that people who supported a Constitutional Amendment just 55 years after Cleveland left office were unaware of that? As recently as 1940, Herbert Hoover declared himself a candidate for President. He didn’t get his party’s nomination, obviously, but he tried. He had also tried in 1936. So the idea that in 1951, Americans couldn’t imagine someone seeking nonconsecutive terms as President is laughable.
And then there’s this gem:
Besides the glaringly obvious differences between the men in their brain power, physical strength, and ability to walk in a straight line, Trump and Biden are about four years apart, making this issue something of a wash.
I don’t think that makes the point he thinks it does. Trump is obese, eats nothing but fast food, has had trouble walking down a ramp, and can’t string more than a couple of coherent sentences together. He keeps thinking he’s running against Obama, couldn’t tell the difference between Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, and once talked about airports during the American Revolution. Biden is old, and he stutters, as he has his entire life, is prone to gaffes, which he has been his entire life, but he’s otherwise sharp, he’s physically fit, and he’s kinda kicking ass as President.
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Anyone who expects the institutions of democracy to protect us from a party which is singularly focused on destroying those exact institutions, once given the tools to do so, I can only say may God have mercy on your souls. I shall not.
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I wonder if these clowns who are enthusiastic about presidents getting a third term would welcome Obama as a candidate. They forgot to advocate for this possibility in 2016 and 2020.
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They don’t need to. Once they have the power, they are very aware that demographic shifts are very disfavoring to them. There will be no further chances to change the power structure after that.
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So, not too bad then, President for Life for Trump is probably a couple of years, given his state of health…
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It’s not like they’d go back to democracy afterward. Trump doesn’t have heirs because he loves them.
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It doesn’t matter. These people don’t play by the rules.
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They literally have a fucking cretin on the team. Names withstanding, I’m sure the rest of the people there are absolute pieces of shit as well.
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Did an AI come up with those names?
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Troup Hemenway? Give me a break…
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I predict a Trump animatronic made out of the Rage Mango’s deceased, taxidermied carcass. Next comes the cage match about who gets to put their hand up his bum to make him their puppet.
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And there are still SOME people who keep pushing this idea that another Trump presidency would not be so bad, and we’d get through it… 
And frankly, have been weakening them since the NIXON administration!!! There is a reason why some people got swept up in the MAGA movement, and that’s because the institutions that have been built up since the New Deal has been suffering assaults since the 70s, and there has been an underground movement to undermine those institutions culturally, too, since that time.
And you think that someone doesn’t just step into the role of dictator for life after that? You know that’s not have authoritarians states work, right? Once democratic institutions are destroyed they don’t just reappear once the dictator is gone… you need to time to rebuild them and meanwhile, another strong man has stepped in (or there is a fight over who gets to be el presidente for life).
So, YES it WILL be that bad. I wish people would take this shit seriously, because it CAN happen here.
Seriously… none of this is a joke. If this goes down, we’re talking camps and mass murder. People will be killed. Our country will literally be in the shitter, and it’s the country with literally the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet…
And jinx, @chenille
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And yet, for those non-MAGAts who still plan on voting Republican, this entire blueprint for a fascist coup is unexpected. Mein Kampf got more mainstream press coverage in its time than Project 2025 is now.
Somehow, the Heritage Foundation has eclipsed the happily neutered NRA as the most dangerous, anti-democratic lobbying organisation in Washington DC.
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I was actually considering that it wouldn’t be too difficult to create a Trump ChatGPT and MidJourney bot that would parrot whatever its programmers wished. Deepfakes already abound.
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Why would they bother?
They will just ignore it, like they will ignore the rest of the Constitution.
ETA:
So, he would be President Forever; he will never die, for all intents & purposes.
Body doubles, holograms, and plausible explanations would suffice for an information-controlled society… and nay-sayers would be swiftly Dealt With.
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SCOTUS will declare that it’s not “self-executing”
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… I thought that was Putin. /sarcasm
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I guess we’re all laughing our way into fascism, then… 
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It might be more coherent than Dementia Don.
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