I’ll do justice to my name and ask just this silly question: what’s up with killing sitting us presidents?
Is this like a sport? Why does it happen so much? Are all those guys hated by most of the population, or just really really hated by extremists? In other parts of the world when it happens it’s to steer governance in a radically different direction - like military coups and the like - is there any similarity with us presidents removed by force? Or is it that its population is against democracy itself?
Am I making this a big deal and presidents get shot because that’s how Americans settle all of their arguments among themselves?
Late 19th century was a chaotic time.
Lincoln was assassinated by a Southern sympathizer immediately after the US Civil War.
James A. Garfield was assassinated by some mentally ill rando who expected a job and didn’t get it.
McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist (a legitimate philosophical anarchist, ie a libertarian socialist).
Question on my mind is whether counterfeiting is still part of their remit. Huh, it is:
The Secret Service is mandated by Congress with two distinct and critical national security missions: protecting the nation’s leaders and safeguarding the financial and critical infrastructure of the United States.
The more you know, I guess.
They should treat the current president like money and protect him by locking him in a vault.
Anaerobic environment in the vault, to prevent early decay.
I think it’s too late for that. 😔
Isn’t this what happened with the Praetorian Guard in the Roman Empire? They got so powerful that they became the gate keepers and system to decide on who the leader is going to be.
You’d think we would have learned from history … we just end up repeating it endlessly.
It’s a common problem with ‘guard’ formations, but such ‘guard’ formations typically don’t resemble the Secret Service.
The Secret Service in the US has pretty limited powers, both legally and practically. If they decided to, say, hold the President hostage, they would have all of about five minutes before the US military flattened them in a hilariously one-sided conflict. The USSS is meant to stop randos with guns and sudden ambushes that could not possibly be predicted.
The Secret Service resembles pre-modern private bodyguard units more than ‘state’ ones. The difference is that the Secret Service being a government institution means that the bodyguards are more accountable to government institutions, and not reliant on the wealth of the individual they’re protecting. If, tomorrow, the US government decided to replace every member of the Secret Service, all we would lose is experience and temporary security, not any legislators’ heads. The USSS have no serious power, practical or political, unlike traditional guard units.
The ‘guard’ units we think of, like the Praetorians, usually either were massive military formations meant to prevent an OUTSIDE coup (ironically well-placing them for an inside coup), or a kind of massive secret police. In the Praetorian case, they were both. Think of the Praetorians as a kind of sick CIA-FBI-NSA-USSS hybrid, with all of the worst qualities and assigned responsibilities of each, and none of the extremely limited restraint or accountability. (For that matter, if someone was gonna do a coup in the US, I’d point to the CIA over the USSS)
The modern equivalent usually is a guard-style unit, like Saddam’s Republican Guard, and most modern democracies eschew guard units for that very reason. Also because basically telling your military you don’t trust them isn’t great for morale - or loyalty, ironically. In the absence of guard-style units, if there’s a modern coup it’s performed either by a junta of military officers, or by special forces. Modern government bodyguards are rarely involved, save sometimes being convinced to ‘stand aside’ instead of being massacred by an actual military force.
I agree that in the modern age our government and military systems are set up in such a way to not exert or have so much control. But groups like the USSS and the CIA don’t need to use force or armies to stage a coup … all they need to do is to take out key leadership in clandestine ways.
The biggest example that comes to mind is JFK. It was a planned and orchestrated hit job by the government to take out their own leader that key leadership at various levels didn’t want. In this day in age, the evidence, research and documentation obviously points to their own government being responsible for the death of their own leader. A convenient removal that led the government down a whole new path that leadership had wanted in the first place. It would have been called a coup in any other nation … but since we are talking about the US, it’s passed off as a conspiracy.
A modern example of how groups and systems like the Praetorian Guard in the modern form of the USSS and the CIA conspired to remove and replace their own leader. They didn’t do it with force … but they had a key role in making it all possible.
Man, that’s because it is a conspiracy. The JFK assassination, of a man who was not much more than a charismatic moderate liberal, is not some smoking gun (ha). Especially considering his immediate replacement was just an uncharismatic moderate liberal who nonetheless stomped the opposition in the next election.
that led the government down a whole new path
Yes! LBJ was so conservative Fox News would blush!
Fuck are you on about?
Because Politicians are not Historians, they don’t like history, they only think about the next way to make a buck.
Damn that guy doesn’t age
