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Comment by kingraoul3 | Hacker News Reader

The Senate binned Republicanism when they murdered the Gracchi.

Sulla had an opportunity to fix everything, but he misidentified the symptoms for the disease, formalizing the cursus honorum and stripping power from the Assembly, instead of changing the incentive structure of the Senate and addressing wealth inequality.

I don't think that's systemic analysis, the governmental form of Republican Rome was based on small freehold farmers. Once they were displaced by the slave-powered Latifundia, the Homo Novus would have find a way to translate their economic power into political power, displacing the patrician class.

Agreed. Once the taboo of violence against other officials in the state got broken, all hell broke loose.

This implies that once a political norm is broken, it will forever be broken. That does not bode well for our current political situation in the US.

It is hard to un-break democratic norms, but there is no theoretical reason it can't be done. It'll just take a lot of work and some major changes.

Here's a little game that pop historian Mike Duncan released a little while ago. See if you can figure out the political moves you have to make to pull the Roman Republic back from the brink: https://www.riddle.com/showcase/165065/narrative

Haha, that's a good one from Duncan. All you have to do it put the republic above yourself each time (also the order is citizenship > war > land reform, and watch out for loops in the decision tree)

I've only found one "loop" in the decision tree that wasn't really a loop, because no matter what "next choice" you make, the people get tired of your wishy washyness and you get cast into exile.

Since there has been ongoing process in concentrating power in the federal government, which itself concentrates its power into the executive branch - and there appears to not be slowing down or reversing - the question is not if, but when the us will be under single person rule and what shape will it take.

>the question is not if, but when the us will be under single person rule and what shape will it take.

The question will remain if as long as the right to bear arms remains a right. No tyranny can survive an armed and angry population.

The problem that follows that, though, is something the French faced during their revolutionary years. We could be in for a bloodbath if we don't move correctly.

A tyranny can survive as long as it wants if it has the armed and angry population on its side. That's how fascism works.

Uh, so why has citizen's united been allowed to stand. If the 2nd amendment will magically save us all some day... why is it waiting?

I am more cynical and think that the 2nd amendment does protect against sudden tyranny but slow insidious tyranny is quite able to work around it.

On the other hand, I'm pretty hopeful that the first amendment will be able to get us out of our terrible situation.

Because (despite what you seem to think) Citizens United did not create a tyranny.

And it seems ironic that you oppose Citizens United, but favor the First Amendment. If Citizens United had been decided the other direction, that would have been a blow against the First Amendment.

Some rulings against Citizens United would have been tyrannical, it was and is a very complicated question where assets of a campaign like their access to media and a copy shop offering to print bulletins for free can become really sticky questions.

The US needs to heavily reform how election funding, free speech and volunteered labour all relate and it is a complicated question. But Citizens United did take us a big step in the wrong direction by lowering the impact of individuals' expression of free speech in relation to financial endorsement.

Citizens United would not have been a blow to the First, that's silly. The right of free speech does not necessarily include the right to unlimited corporate political campaign spending. Our country ran just fine and the people were plenty free before the age of super-PACs.

The population BECOMES the tyranny.

Tell 51% of the population that they are gods and if they don't feel like that it must be because of the other 49% percent.

fascists. tyrants. populists.

Talk about tyranny of the majority can be counter-productive. Whether they believe they themselves are gods or not, many Americans believe that the framers were practically gods [1]. The framers were very concerned about tyranny of the majority, and had it in mind when designing the federal system. [fuzzy non-logic goes here]. Therefore whoever governs in America is not tyrannical, regardless of whether they hold a majority, and they are justified in whatever they do.

1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Fl...

I might be reaching a bit, but I'd think that, with current technology, psyops etc., it should not be that hard to defeat any rebellion before it ever starts - whether by neutralizing (not "kill" in the USA, but deincentivize, defame or frame) potential leaders or stopping public discourse from ever reaching that stage.

And if it really got bad, you’re not winning against fighter jets and tanks with whatever guns you’ve been allowed to amass. The 2nd amendment is weird, and the political fighting about it even weirder. In 1776, you could reasonably expect to possess the same weaponry as a government. In 2018, you’d need to have advanced military technology. For all the hoopla about the 2nd amendment these days, it’s painfully naive to believe it makes any bit of sense in the context of modern warfare.

I'd say that depends on the convictions of the people involved. I don't know how kids feel about their Constitution, or their rights. If they don't care, we're screwed.

If there is a deep commitment to protecting their rights, no defamation will stop them.

I think this idea would make an interesting speculative novel: America is on the brink of tyranny. The Constitution has been set aside (for some 'sufficient' reason) and freedoms summarily stripped from the people (in essence, we have become what China is now).

What do Federal law enforcement agencies have to do in order to quell rebellion? Psy-ops? Kill teams and other wet work? Propaganda? Probably a liberal mashing up of these and other tactics.

How would rebellion work? Who succeeds and survives? Why and how do others fail? What is the best outcome? The worst?

Psyops, definitely. jimjimjim upthread has the right idea. Start by setting up all sorts of alternative news sources each of which tell you to distruct the others. Get the militia movement on side, that's completely critical. Have a convicted traitor running the NRA. The kind of people who volunteer to do their own immigration enforcement, or who seize wildlife reserves. All this lot hate the "federal government", so you have to rebadge the takeover as something else.

Spread reports of election interference by "liberals". Use it as a pretext for cancelling polling in certain counties. Stage a couple of mass shootings at polling places. Bingo.

That ignores that the norms came to be norms in the first place.

The norms are generally established at the same time as the constitution is; ie, after a revolution or other major political event. I'm not a historian, but I can't think of an example of democratic norms being re-established peacefully after being violated.

Reunification after the American Civil War? Though I suppose some might argue that we are still suffering from that divide.

But the norms of democracy were never challenged during the civil war. Nobody ever denounced the press or said that votes shouldn't count, or that the courts are illegitimate, or that the constitution was somehow wrong. It was a formal rebellion seeking independence under a different democracy.

> Nobody ever denounced the press or said that votes shouldn't count, or that the courts are illegitimate, or that the constitution was somehow wrong. It was a formal rebellion seeking independence under a different democracy.

Umm...:

Press Denunciations:

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/21/us/sherman-letters-show-c...

Voting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_New_York_state_election

Courts:

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/07/the-first-court-packing-pl...

Denunciation of the Constitution:

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...

The 'different' democracy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_(slave)

The problems of our ancestors remain just as alive today. Learning from history means to learn about the holes in ourselves.

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