Marcus Hutchins :verified: on Nostr: While I think everyone is aware of how harmful Trump's policies are, what actually ...
While I think everyone is aware of how harmful Trump's policies are, what actually scares me the most is the constitutional side of things. We just went very far into uncharted territory.
When the constitution was created and the US institutions were constructed, they were built on the belief that the people needed to be protected from the government (think they hit the nail on the head there). But...
They put such a strong focus on protecting the people from the government, that a lot of the constitutional limits only apply to the government's powers, not private individuals. Which means that it not only doesn't limit the power of private individuals, but also limits the government's power to rein them in.
This got touched on a bit with the whole Twitter misinformation debacle. The government cannot censor you based on your views, but a private platform can censor anyone for any reason. So what happens if a private individual just buys one of the largest online public squares in existence and pledges his unwavering support behind a fascist?
Trump could not ask, instruct, or coerce him into censoring his political opponents, but he could go "gee, I really hate how many followers my political opponent is getting". And a private individual could just delete that person account of their own free will.
Same for a lot of the other amendments too. For the government to search someone's private property, they must show probably cause that a crime is being committed, then argue that before a judge. But a private individual in charge of say, a private social media platform, could just volunteer private user data to the government.
As wealth and power becomes more and more centralized, it becomes easier and easier for the government to side-step all of the checks & balances because everything was so focused on "what if the government tries to do tyranny" and not "what if private individuals accumulate power equivalent to that of governments and take the tyranny into their own hands"
This all of course assume the constitution even matters anymore, as it's basically only upheld by the shared belief that certain principals are immovable, which kind of hasn't been the case for a really long time. It was just never really tested what exactly happens if someone says "fuck the constitution, and fuck the supreme court"
When the constitution was created and the US institutions were constructed, they were built on the belief that the people needed to be protected from the government (think they hit the nail on the head there). But...
They put such a strong focus on protecting the people from the government, that a lot of the constitutional limits only apply to the government's powers, not private individuals. Which means that it not only doesn't limit the power of private individuals, but also limits the government's power to rein them in.
This got touched on a bit with the whole Twitter misinformation debacle. The government cannot censor you based on your views, but a private platform can censor anyone for any reason. So what happens if a private individual just buys one of the largest online public squares in existence and pledges his unwavering support behind a fascist?
Trump could not ask, instruct, or coerce him into censoring his political opponents, but he could go "gee, I really hate how many followers my political opponent is getting". And a private individual could just delete that person account of their own free will.
Same for a lot of the other amendments too. For the government to search someone's private property, they must show probably cause that a crime is being committed, then argue that before a judge. But a private individual in charge of say, a private social media platform, could just volunteer private user data to the government.
As wealth and power becomes more and more centralized, it becomes easier and easier for the government to side-step all of the checks & balances because everything was so focused on "what if the government tries to do tyranny" and not "what if private individuals accumulate power equivalent to that of governments and take the tyranny into their own hands"
This all of course assume the constitution even matters anymore, as it's basically only upheld by the shared belief that certain principals are immovable, which kind of hasn't been the case for a really long time. It was just never really tested what exactly happens if someone says "fuck the constitution, and fuck the supreme court"