{"id":6390,"date":"2025-05-28T07:44:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T11:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=6390"},"modified":"2025-05-28T08:47:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T12:47:16","slug":"no-more-the-way-things-were","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2025\/05\/28\/no-more-the-way-things-were\/","title":{"rendered":"No More “The Way Things Were”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is no coming back from [waves hands<\/em>] all of this. Trump could be impeached tomorrow and thrown in prison the day after, along with everyone who supported him, and it would not change the fact that this happened,<\/em> that this was allowed<\/em> to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The midterms could come around and the Democrats could win a super-majority landslide victory and pass new laws to curtail the power of the President and to enact new safety systems for this kind of abuse and it still wouldn’t change the fact that this happened<\/em>, despite the laws at the time. There is no going back to “the way things were.” <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you step into lawlessness, once you start ignoring your own laws and rules, there is no going back – because no matter what new laws or rules you create, there will always be the knowledge that the prior laws and rules were broken before, so who’s to say they won’t be broken again? Like Yoda said, “once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s not to say we shouldn’t try to undo all this, and to enact new laws to try and prevent it in the future – but we also can’t lie to ourselves and believe that we can just make up some new rules and everything will be better and the problem is solved and it’ll never happen again. Because a core element of trust<\/em> has been forever lost because of all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can (and should) certainly try to restore that trust, to rebuild it, but there is no magic wand, there is no fast track for trust – the only answer is time, and most likely it will be a long time; maybe even generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But given the alternative, we owe it to ourselves – and to our future generations – to try, and the sooner we start, the less time we’ll have to wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no changing the fact that all of this has happened. Once you step into lawlessness, there is no quick fix, no “oops, sorry.” There is only a long, slow path to rebuilding a trust that is now lost… and the sooner we start, the less time it will take. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"uspol","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,17],"tags":[412,19,385,421],"class_list":["post-6390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society","tag-america","tag-government","tag-politics","tag-united-states","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-1F4","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1462,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/11\/03\/a-programmers-perspective-on-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":6390,"position":0},"title":"A Programmer’s Perspective on Politics","author":"Keith Survell","date":"November 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Election time always finds me musing on the nature of politics. Of course I must admit that being a computer programmer colors my view of the whole process more than just a little bit. I mean, I know that the political process in this country is one that has evolved\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Image courtesty Flikr user umjanedoan","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2008\/11\/really-old-law-books.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1044,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/02\/11\/how-to-write-laws-the-right-way\/","url_meta":{"origin":6390,"position":1},"title":"How to write laws – the RIGHT Way","author":"Keith Survell","date":"February 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"At least, I think it's the right way: \"If I were writing laws such that I wanted everybody to agree on how to interpret them, I would use the software development life cycle: First, have lawmakers (analogous to \"developers\") write drafts of the laws. Then a second group (the \"test\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":691,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/12\/13\/secret-laws\/","url_meta":{"origin":6390,"position":2},"title":"Secret Laws","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a very interesting discussion over at \"Stop the Bleating!\" regarding \"Secret Laws, and the Gilmore v. Gonzales case. It's really quite interesting - and this is one of the best summaries that I've read thus far.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":414,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/02\/16\/bill-gates-and-other-communists\/","url_meta":{"origin":6390,"position":3},"title":"Bill Gates and other communists","author":"Keith Survell","date":"February 16, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The patent\/copyright\/intellectual property issue is a big one these days, and I agree that the laws could definitely use some revision.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":245,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2004\/10\/27\/the-torture-memo\/","url_meta":{"origin":6390,"position":4},"title":"The torture memo","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"To quote: What should the President do when defending the country requires breaking the laws? Why, he should break the laws, which usually means instructing his subordinates to do so. He, and they, remain subject to punishment, and he remains subject to impeachment.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6280,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2025\/02\/11\/oathbreaker\/","url_meta":{"origin":6390,"position":5},"title":"Oathbreaker","author":"Keith Survell","date":"February 11, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Talking about sworn oaths and the people who break them.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6390"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6400,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6390\/revisions\/6400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}