🌱 Thread on the Presidency

I’ve had similar thoughts as some of this thread on maybe the presidency shouldn’t be as important as it is.

The only way to unify the country is to prosecute this administration.

“Won’t that make the Trumpets angry?”

Yes. Of course it will. But that’s way better than validating their idea that they’re untouchable with a license to kill.

Humans are creatures of social imitation. We take cues on what is acceptable behavior based on what others around us are doing in that context. What we see everyone else permit, we are likely to permit.

What we see everyone else embrace, we are likely to embrace

To let the bad actors slide will not unify or heal this nation. It will simply embolden bad actors And it will desensitize good faith actors. And it will normalize terrible behaviours And people will die.

An ebbing tide lowers all boats.

There is nothing that will tear this country apart faster than continuing to reinforce that certain people are subject to the justice system and other aren’t. Trump has spent four years making political corruption and crime broadly acceptable.

THIS actually trickles down.

What we cannot do is rid ourselves of Trump and tacitly let Trumpism stand. The goal of Trumpism is to kill all sense of legitimacy and fair play everywhere forever. Where facts don’t exist, only opinion.

Letting that stand would be the most destructive thing I can think of.

We need to free ourselves from the idea that a President cannot be stopped because the Presidency is too important. The White House is not “home base” where you’re safe and accountability can’t get you. Being President doesn’t mean King For Four Years.

It’s just civil service.

We don’t think of the Presidency as a civil service position like working at the DMV or delivering the mail. But that’s what it is. It’s another government service job. We just made it into more than it is supposed to be. And Trump ran with it

We must claw it back.

People keep saying that we need to being respect back to the office of the President. I think we need to do the opposite.

Respect for the Presidency above all else is why when a murderous con man occupied the White House the country was paralyzed rather than ousting him.

I think respect for the Presidency should dwindle. I think the sense of the President as the focal point of the country is toxic. The hero worship surrounding the office needs to die a painful death.

The job should be about responsibility, not power.

Until the POTUS is just another person who happens to be responsible for making sure that legislation is enacted and that foreign officials have someone to call… We will be in this existentially precarious position forever.

Where the whole country lives and dies on one human

The Presidency isn’t sacred. It’s not a priesthood. It’s not a mark of divinity It doesn’t make you a hero Or smarter or more upstanding or worthy of personal respect. It’s just a damn job. It’s a job.

With no competence requirements or licensure.

The Presidency cannot remain beyond the reach of the people. It cannot just be a jackpot for whoever is elected where whatever you do in the White House is fine because it’s “good to be King”

The President must be accountable.

America is dying because people would rather perform loyalty to the Presidency than to care whether or not we survive Americans are at the brink of civil war over the whims of a single human.

That is pure absurdity

Unifying the country doesn’t mean trying to find what makes everyone happy.

It means convincing the country that we ALL have things that we must stand for together in order to survive and that there are functional mechanisms for holding the powerful to account.

Think about how different things would be if we just saw the Presidency as a regular job. If the idea of getting rid of an incompetent president wasn’t about a cult of personality but rather about making sure the office works.

Even the GOP would have replaced him.

There simply is no path to unity when partisanship is a shield for criminal enterprise and corruption. Nothing can be healed while accountability is being denied.

Any “unity” that comes from merely excusing the acts of a President so as not to upset their acolytes is false.

Pretending racism disappeared in favor of a hollow and imaginary “post-racial,” unified America led us to a rabid resurgence of violent white nationalism

Calling “no harm, no foul” on the crimes of the Trump Era will produce a toxic false unity that will breed even worse.

This is actually (and tragically) a very unique opportunity to recast the position of President. A side effect of Covid-19 has been to kill a great deal of unnecessary ceremony

We have learned we all still survive without the bells and whistles.

We spent a year watching celebrities in their PJs and CEOs chasing their kids on zoom. We had virtual conventions and everybody’s hair got shaggy and we didn’t care about fashion as much.

We kinda just had to be regular humans all around.

We have an opportunity to pull the facade down. We can rethink what is ACTUALLY important and what people like the President really need to do their jobs. And then demand that they take nothing else. They don’t need glamour They don’t need pardons

They need to do their JOBS.

Nothing in the Constitution says that the President has to live an opulent, lavish life. Nothing says that they must be treated as royalty and coddled. Nothing says that they are entitled to personal deification. This is all just BS rich folks decided later.

It’s just a job.

So if we decide that the President is just a regular American who held an important position for a while… We should have no problem holding them to account for criminal abuses of the responsibility, authority and trust we vested in them.

Only then can we begin healing.

America cannot fear its employees.

That will never work.