#sesquibicentennial

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Does anyone think the United States will exist as it does today in 2026?

That's the semiquincentennial, our 250th anniversary, and I honestly do not know if the country will make it there in one piece. 2024 is going to be a DISASTROUS presidential election, with multiple state governments already promising to interfere with any results they don't like, and I just KNOW the military is gonna tie itself up in some new overseas bullshit we don't belong in because America doesn't "do" the whole peacetime thing. Our economy is built on war, half the population base their entire political identity on war, so the absence of war will leave those nutjobs itching for a fix, like addicts in withdrawal. Things have only gotten worse in the last year, when everyone was expecting it to magically get better once Trump was gone, and no matter how dee we plunge I just don't see rock bottom coming anytime soon.

The judiciary has shown itself to no longer be independent and impartial. We knew this was coming, but the fact that the Republican Party now openly runs on a platform of packing the courts to het favorable rulings is despicable. And they PROJECT, every single horrible thing they do or plan on doing, they project it onto their opponents. They will admonish the Democrats for something they don't plan on doing, then turn around and do exactly that thing; they call all their shots, they're an open book, they have no poker face and yet we're powerless to stop them. It's an ego thing, they get off on being cruel and rubbing our noses in it. I WISH the Democrats were as radical as the Republicans claim they are. If the Democrats did half the things they were accused of, the Republicans would never win another election.

I'm surprised there haven't been more assassination attempts from either side. Tensions are so high, politicians are so divisive, our culture is so polarized, I'm amazed we don't hear of crazed gunmen going after senators and judges every day. It's a powder keg waiting to go off; once one gets taken out, all hell will break loose as both sides race to take out the other before the powers that be can step in to stop it. If someone killed a right wing politician, do you honestly believe there would be no retaliation? I could see a left winger getting shot and no one giving a shit, but a right winger getting shot would lead to all out war, I'm sure of it. Double standard. Establishment Democrats would trust the justice system to work it out through long protracted legal channels, while Republicans would take matters into their own hands and start picking off opponents one at a time. Tit for tat.

I wouldn't doubt it if 2026 saw a rise in right wing extremism. All the nationalists would be empowered by the anniversary, especially if they took back power in 2024 and appointed a couple extra Supreme Court justices (let's be honest; Breyer is gonna end up being Ginsburg 2.0, retiring or dying with a Republican in office. Thomas claims to be in for life, he's got a good 15 or 20 more years left in him, but I have a feeling he'll retire like Kennedy once the Republicans get back in power, replaced by some rising Nazi starlet who is even more conservative and less impartial than he is).

We need judicial term limits. Not mandatory retirement ages, actual set term limits, because if you require justices to retire at age 70, all you're gonna end up doing is incentivize the parties to start nominating younger and younger justices. If they HAVE to retire at 70, why would you ever nominate someone over the age of 60? We'd start seeing justices in their 40s, maybe even their 30s, newly barred lawyers who've never heard a case but promise to vote however the party wants them to for help rest of their lives. No, what we need is to stagger the seats so that one retires every two or three years, ensuring that there's always fresh blood being injected into the justice system, new voices who know they can't just sit pretty forever.

We need Congressional term limits too; maybe 2 or 3 for senators, and like 5 or 6 for the house.

We need a whole slew of new amendments. Hell, at this point I'd say we need a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the whole document from the ground up. Fresh start. The old way isn't working. Other countries change their constitutions all the time, so why do Americans fetishize theirs as though it's somehow special? It's built on the will of the people, and people's wills change over the centuries. 27 updates in 250 years is far too few.