Any Given President may...

in our new America...

The Capitol prepares for the Inauguration of Any Given President.

Cassidy Steele Dale forecasts and contextualizes the present to equip us to make a better, kinder future…

… and one of those ways to invoke.

I wrote the first draft of this back over the weekend when I was still in freakout mode about it — both as an American and as a futurist. I thought I’d calm down and a few days would knock the horns off of how bad the news was.

Nope.

See, for the past year or two I’ve been unable to forecast futures for many aspects of American life, government, and industry without knowing the outcome of this year’s presidential election. Simply put, the next several decades-to-centuries in the life of this country depend a great deal on how this election turns out.

Originally, I’d imagined this as a simple binary — a single variable axis — of whether Trump or Biden wins. (For forecasting purposes, in this historical window it matters less who is on the Democratic ticket for President because all the major potential Democratic candidates are of the same basic orientation.)

But then we got this: the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity makes forecasting exponentially more complicated and difficult because now Any Given President of either party can legally embrace abject criminality — or refuse to. And that may be the second variable.

Worse, the Supreme Court’s legal test within the ruling made the conditions under which Any Given President may be prosecuted for criminal acts less clear and less intuitive rather than moreso.

I’m not a lawyer; I’m a futurist. Nothing that follows is legal analysis; this is me trying to sort through what’s possible next so I can forecast.

The Supreme Court effectively ruled that Presidents now are above the law; that Any Given President may commit any crime — even for personal or political campaign benefit — simply by stamping his crime an official act. And while the Supreme Court said that crimes committed for personal or political benefit are unofficial rather than official acts and therefore prosecuteable, the Court — deliberately and/or stupidly — sabotaged most means by which a President might be prosecuted for crimes nonetheless.

Bits more:

• In their legal test in this ruling, the Supreme Court separated — and then conflated — core and official acts, making the latter oftentimes as legal and as unquestionable as the former. And apparently defined unofficial acts not at all.

• The Supreme Court also gave Presidents presumptive immunity. If you recall, in this country, if you are arrested you are presumed innocent until you are proven guilty in a court of law. Presumptive immunity is sorta the reverse. It means that if a President commits a crime — even a very blatant one — that President is presumed to have immunity and prosecuting that President is out of bounds until someone proves that it is definitively not. (Yes, my eyes crossed, too. The whole thing is a mess.) This also functionally means that Any Given President may commit any crime and may be taken to court after it is far too late — if anyone dares — but with the legal deck stacked against the victims so badly the President will walk free every time. This means that Any Given President may now commit any crime, even in broad daylight, and fully expect to get away with it.

The reason liberals and some conservatives are freaking out right now is twofold:

1. The ruling makes Any Given President effectively beyond the reach of the law.

2. Liberation from an unaccountable, uncheck-able, abusive king was the entire reason for the American Revolution. The Supreme Court just gave Any Given President the authority and immunity to become King George at his global-imperial-worst even against his own subjects the moment that Any Given President chooses to. This is why — currently — only lawmakers and police and prosecutors really understand how bad this is and that this is new law; many average Americans don’t understand yet.

This ruling also means that:

So.

• Prior to mere days ago, only the top two quadrants were imaginable, much less legally allowable. Now the bottom two quadrants exist, are permissible, and are legally protected by the highest court in the land.

• Forecasting futures for the United States in which a President operates out of either of the bottom two quadrants is next to impossible until the specific patterns and dynamics of that Lawless President’s criminality can be discerned and mapped.

Now, I’m sure the current majority on the Supreme Court will say I’m overreacting and that No sane, well-meaning President would do bad things and That’s not what we meant. And to that I would say (1) You are correct <stares in irony> and (2) It doesn’t matter what you meant. It only matters what Any Given President claims they can do — and what authorities they can convince their rubes to believe a President has — and what they can accomplish before the slow wheels of justice can catch up. And what Any Given President, who controls the Department of Justice, permits the wheels of justice to do.

This also means that going forward there will be an all-out race to hold Any Lawless President to account for Any Criminal Activity before That Given President can co-opt, cow, or kill every federal department and agency, every court, every police agency, and all his or her critics from within and without.

So.

Again, I’m not a lawyer but I’ve been listening to a few — including some, you know, Supreme Court Justices who are chock-full of dissent.

It appears to me that, until this ruling is fixed, Any Given President…

• may break any federal law — may murder, kidnap, conspire, steal, and defraud;

• may criminalize dissent and political opposition as treason and insurrection, and may deploy federal law enforcement and the United States military to jail American citizens who criticize, defy, or vote against him;

• may order police to mass-shoot unarmed protesters;

• may order federal law enforcement and the United States military to commit federal crimes for him including kidnapping or murdering Members of Congress or any other ‘enemy of America' and if they refuse to;

• may offer Presidential pardons to any American citizen willing to do so instead;

• may functionally make Americans’ First Amendment rights no longer protected but afforded only at the whim and will of That Given President according to specific citizens’ support, favor, or payment;

• and may make the same of the Second and the Third and the rest;

• may accept — and solicit — bribes for Presidential pardons or for policy;

• may accept bribes from foreign adversaries to help them, to switch sides in a war, to betray America’s allies, and to reorder the world;

• may sell American secrets and betray American soldiers in the field;

• may order the assassination of Supreme Court Justices who oppose him and replace them with his or her own — or leave the remaining seats literally open as a reminder to the others that they serve (and live) at his or her own discretion;

• may make political loyalty to him — signed on the dotted line — a requirement for office in his or her Administration and for federal employment like the Nazi Party and the Ba’ath Party did;

• may give the religion — or the particular religious strain — that supports him or her preferred status, afford it political and legal aid and comfort, and use the state to persecute or marginalize all others;

• may impound funds appropriated by Congress — the representatives of the American people — to be spent by the Executive Branch toward the benefit of Americans and American allies and redirect those funds for That Given President’s benefit (or the benefit of those who purchased him or her) instead;

• may ignore all checks and balances from the Judicial and Legislative Branches;

• may ignore popular outrage and the will of the American people;

• may disappear your loved ones in the night; and

• may kill you.

And no one’s objections, legal suits, or votes will matter because now Any Given President may repeatedly sabotage the certification of presidential elections regardless of the popular and Electoral College votes and then engineer his or her own reelection by The House of Representatives and remain President for the rest of his or her life — protected and aided by Any Given President’s own allies, his own media, his own Supreme Court, his own secret police, his own vigilantes, and his own Christians.

Doesn’t mean that Any Given President will, only that Any Given President now can.

But like I said: I’m not a lawyer; I’m a futurist. And hyperbole is the greatest threat to our freedom. And I may be wrong about a lot of this.

Nevertheless.

Several futures remain possible — and balanced on a knife’s edge — and will be determined according to the will and quality of character of Any Given President going forward.

Now, Any Given President at Any Given Moment…

1. may be corrupted by absolute power and become a global criminal and a global tyrant who joins or forms a new Axis of Evil;

2. may instead refuse to wield the power they have been afforded — as George Washington did;

3. may pack the Supreme Court to set the stage to undo Trump v. United States once that Court gets another relevant case to try;

4. and may attempt to undo this ruling — horribly and hauntingly and for the ages and should never do — by entering the Supreme Court while all nine are sitting on the bench, choosing the Justice the other eight like and respect the most and shooting that Justice dead, then dropping his or her gun, turning to the nearest cop and saying I just murdered one of the highest-ranking federal officials in this Republic. I did it as an official Presidential act. I did it to coerce. I confess. I surrender. And I submit myself to the mercy of American courts and these surviving eight. Try me.

I can’t forecast much right now, but I can forecast this:

The moment Any Given President uses the powers of The Office of the President to blatantly and deliberately commit crimes of these sorts, that President will become a king no longer subject to the will of the American people.

• The most important question now in any presidential debate or in any interview with Any Presidential Candidate now is no longer Will you accept the outcome of the election? but If you are elected, will you use the power the Supreme Court has afforded to the President of the United States against American citizens? And any answer other than an unequivocal No will be an absolute Yes.

And the moment Any Given President crosses that line and commits crimes and becomes an unchecked king and is cheered on by his supporters for doing so, citizens of countries the world over will conclude that the American system deeply failed, that the American Experiment failed, that an American-style democracy that’s benevolent, free, and fair always-ever-was just the pipe dream of a few centuries of stupid, deluded idealists. And that no one in the world should aspire to government of the people, by the people, and for the people ever again. And that — after everything and after all — those who gave their last full measure for American democracy died in vain.