In theory, Executive Orders are supposed to be a quick response to emergent situations. Even at its best, Congress is slow and cumbersome, as an assembly of many people tends to be, and as an organ of deliberate legislation should be. Until it can provide a more permanent solution to an urgent problem, the president is empowered to order temporary ones. It’s a good idea. In theory.

The critical point is that this power is supposed to be checked by Courts and Congress. A president that abuses that power should be stripped of it. Unlawful orders should be blocked. SCOTUS could fast-track an urgent case. In theory.

In practice, that’s where the system is falling apart. SCOTUS has long been stacked with partial judges, while states have gerrymandered and indoctrinated to the point where their representatives are no longer beholden to the approval of the people. With SCOTUS and Congress both complicit, those checks no longer actually check.

This isn’t a sudden exploitation of a loophole that has been there from the start. It’s the rotten fruit of decades of vile labour. It’s an ulcer that has been festering for decades and is now rupturing.

I don’t wonder about executive orders functioning as they should (though I find it depressing), I wonder how the hell it got this far, both in the US and in other countries, that it takes an almost cartoonishly petty madman to rip it wide open before it becomes visible, and I still have to argue with family about conservatism being a deeply anti-democratic and anti-liberty movement.

How is it still not obvious that this isn’t the work of one man, but the culmination of many people working together to prepare the stage for his grotesque, narcissistic power play?