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The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Internment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps strike me as particularly infamous, and the Second Red Scare (or McCarthyism) involved a lot of unconstitutional conduct as well. But I'm sure there's lots of other things, too.
Hopefully, past experience will repeat and after a brief period, there will be a return to the traditions of rule of law and respect for the constitution.
> Do we still play pretend that the law and constitution mean something
Leadership ignoring constitution in some areas is a problem, but as long as law is generally still seen as working, and expected to work, in everyone's daily dealings, things aren't bad. They may not be fine, but can be improved. However, once enough people stop believing law and constitution matter in general, that's when they actually stop working, because they're just words on paper, and their only power stems from everyone expecting everyone else experts them to have authority.
All this also isn’t occurring in a vacuum: the GOP is full of highly ambitious people who won’t want the competition for their own run.
GOP lost house and senate seats they could have won behind another candidate. Trump is useful to the party until he’s not. Elon is of zero use at all to the party.
This needs to be said more. Trump is a singular force in our current politics. Even people who despise Trump will admit that one on one and in small groups he’s incredibly charismatic and likable. Bill Clinton comes to mind as another POTUS with just a super high level of charisma.
Musk on the other hand is incredibly awkward and would have very little broad appeal.
For those infected he's articulate and smart.
For those outside the cult he's a demented bumbling fool.
I hope you're right. He will eventually die. Who has enough clout to take his place without splitting the Republican Party?
The definition of "natural born" has never been tested and could well be redefined to be meaningless.
However, this laughably broad, king-level power still doesn't grant him the power to just make anything into law. He can't be prosecuted for anything, but that doesn't mean that anything he wants is now law.
Musk needs to find a different way to exert his will through his allies.
And no, he is very far for being that popular that anybody would find a way to waive the natural born citizen requirement. He is also not that popular and he doesn’t have the charisma of a president.
You don’t need to worry about him being a president. If you want to worry about him: he doesn’t need to become a president to have insane amount of power and influence over the US.
I see no reason why Clearance Thomas and co wouldn't give Musk the same treatment.
If people no longer believe democracy functions and simply accept that as the status quo, then it doesn't.
Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for decades while they had elections the whole time, and wasn't always President in that time. But there's never been any doubt who's in charge.
Any leader of any type has to convince the populace that accepting their rule is better than fighting it. Even if current weaponry allowed an army to kill the entire rest of the population of a country, that still doesn't allow a leader to rule by force alone: for one, the army will revolt at some point before killing the majority of their brethren. And even if they didn't, the loss of the majority of the population would ultimately leave the country far too economically devastated to serve any purpose, even for the glorious leader.
Just my opinion, and I say this with love, but if you think Musk is going to become president, you need to turn off BlueSky and touch grass.