Comment by tathougies
5 years ago
Well the problem then is the overgrowth of executive power in the past two decades. Unfortunately, literally everyone was silent on that during both the Bush and Obama administration as well, and now are complaining that their chickens have come home to roost.
I don't know about you but I voted for Obama and regretted it when this happened [1]:
> National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, Pub.L. 112–81. This NDAA contains several controversial sections (see article), the chief being §§ 1021–1022, which affirm provisions authorizing the indefinite military detention of civilians, including U.S. citizens, without habeas corpus or due process, contained in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Pub.L. 107–40.
Not to mention his failures to uphold the principles that he ran on: gitmo, whistleblower protections (vis a vis Manning, Asange and Snowden), massacres of civilians ("drone strikes"), etc.
Just because you haven't been watching, doesn't mean that this hasn't outraged the people who do. All of that stuff was covered by NPR at the time, so it's not like any of it was a secret.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorizati...
I have been fairly outraged for the past twenty years. Most people have not.
And to my credit, I haven't actually voted or supported the candidate who went on to be president since 2000.
"literally everyone"
I don't know what world you were living in.
The world where -- when I call out presidents for abuse of executive power -- I'm met with various justifications for why 'my guy' is doing the right thing. It's ridiculous. Whether it's Bush's response to 9/11 and his wars or Obama's record executive orders, every time I bring these up, I'm met with justifications for why it's okay this one time.
This is what you get when most people do that.
Exactly this.
Never give "your guy" powers that you don't want the "other guy" to have.
Because the powers you give to Obama... will end up with Trump - and vice versa.
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"literally everyone was silent"
This is such a cliche, and yet simultaneously someone in this thread is saying we don't have to worry about the current President becoming a dictator because of the zillion times previous Presidents were accused of wanting to seize power.
How do you think these contradictory cliches thrive alongside each other?
I'm not quite sure I understand? Isn't what you're citing a case of people continuing to be quiet in the face of executive overreach?