Future Wednesday: Have no faith in constitutions

Well howdy thar, folks! Welcome to a new occasional feature in this here establishment.

I foresee these as open threads where I do a bit of pontificating, but are really venues for you to chime in with your own thoughts and visions. These posts will be about gaming out possible decent futures, and how to achieve them. If all you think will happen are dystopias, then dystopias ye shall have. No, there will be no Utopia; humanity is too frail for that, at least as long as it has to compete for finite resources extracted by a rentier class. But better futures are possible, and even achievable; the current reality merely has to force the issue. 

We are in such a time. We all knew that a second regime headed by Donald Trump would be awful. I don't think anyone foresaw just how bad it would be. I knew it would be Very Bad; this is Very Bad Plus. Even though the regime is run by and staffed by morons, they're vindictive and punitive, and that causes enough damage as it is. The one saving grace that it's not worse is due to the fact that, again, they're morons. However, it seems that the courts won't be a check on the regime, not when the Supreme Court's radical right justices are just fine with letting it do whatever it wants. (Of course, they're also part of this regime.)

One of the sources of our current dysfunction is, of course, our Constitution. As we saw during Trump's first term, things we thought were settled constitutional law were, in fact, gentlemanly agreements, which depended on individual virtue and dedication to time-honored traditions and values. We saw it even before Trump assumed office in 2017, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider President Barack Obama's nominee for the seat of the dead dead dead Antonin Scalia. Once the Republicans obstructed what we thought was accepted constitutional order, we knew we were in a brave new world. When political order depends, as I said, on individual virtue, it will break apart when one side of the aisle possesses no virtue. It will collapse when one side of the aisle eschews the norms which had dominated the Republic for generations. "Norms" are not worth spit if not backed up by law and, ultimately, force.

Of course, the Framers, myopic as they were—3/5's Compromise, yo—did recognize that what they enacted in 1788 would have to change with the times. (Yes, contra that wretch Scalia, the Constitution is a living document, which grows and changes with new conditions and new realities.) That is why they provided for an amendment mechanism, so that the basic law of the land could adapt to those new realities.

For our thought experiment, let us assume that this regime ravages the country to such an extent that the blue/red divide is rendered moot. Let's assume that there is a hunger in the country to make it so that anything like MAGA will never again assume power in this nation. And, furthermore, let us assume that the country decides not to have a full constitutional convention to issue a completely new constitution, but instead amends it, as after the Civil War. All these assumptions in place, what would you like to see as new, post-Trump amendments to the Constitution?

Here are a few of mine.

• No one convicted of any felony in any jurisdiction is eligible to run for any federal office.
• All presidential candidates, when they declare for party primaries, must pass a thorough security check. 
• A reform of the presidential pardon power.
• Strict enforcement of the Emoluments Clause.
• The number of seats on the Supreme Court will match the number of appellate court districts.
• The War Powers Act becomes part of the Constitution.
• An expansion of the Senate. Montana shouldn't have the same two senators as California.
• The House of Representatives will be expanded with every census to account for the increase in population.
• Once a federal agency or department is created, it can only be eliminated by an act of Congress.

These are just off the top of my head. We can no longer rely on norms and feels. We can no longer trust a part of our commonwealth to behave with honor. Therefore, everything, to the extent it can be, needs to be written down.

We can wallow in despair, or we can envision a better future. I know where I stand.

I open it up to you. Share your ideas in the comments.