alt Hacker NewsThat's a very pessimistic view. That boils our system of three branches of government to a purely partisan game of capture the flag in which we all lose if one team captures all three at one.
SCOTUS is a bit different as it both isn't driven by political parties and justices have a history of more frequently breaking with the party they are seen as aligned with.
2024 has not been a year for optimism about the American system of checks and balances functioning as advertised.
Even more broadly, there's an old quote:
The soap box is under threat: https://reason.com/2025/12/18/this-tennessee-man-spent-37-da... and https://www.npr.org/2025/04/08/nx-s1-5349472/students-protes...The ballot box is under threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding_in_the_...
Judiciary is under threat: https://www.gov.harvard.edu/2025/07/24/the-u-s-judicial-cris... and https://judicature.duke.edu/articles/judicial-independence-t...
That just (to much the same horror and sense of unreality I had watching the 9/11 attacks unfold) leaves the ammo box.
Now, I'm British by birth, a country where even the police are not routinely armed, so the American view that weapons are a "fundamental right" is utterly alien to me, and this difference is one of the reasons why I never seriously considered moving to Silicon Valley at any point in my career.
Trump seems pro 2nd Amendment: is that because he is afraid and needs them to like him, or because isn't afraid as he has an army and a secret service to keep him safe, or does he just plain like guns and hasn't even thought about personal risk despite getting shot at?