alt Hacker News2024 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:
There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge (or ammo). Please use in that order.
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?
Well no disagreement there, unfortunately.
I definitely agree our democracy seems to be under attack on multiple fronts, and at least the people I'm often around regardless of political affiliation seem to have lost sight of how our system is intended to work.
A violent civil war wouldn't surprise me, though I don't think we're close to it yet and I hope I never see it happen. Though I would prefer seeing that rather than seeing our system successfully destroyed and replaced with what seems to be coming up, an authoritarian socialism of one form or another.