really darkly humorous that the President still retains the ability to launch a nuclear strike but has been cut out of his social media accounts

the cascade of actions by private companies -- FB, Twitter, now Shopify(!) -- is contrasted by the lack of forceful political consequences

because this account is getting a little too dark here's a dumb meme

more thoughts https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1347227802429480960

a lot of people responding to this by asserting that he does not have the ability to do so or that he is not actually in charge anymore. you may or may not be right, but this is speculation about palace politics.

this is one of the inherent flaws of nuclear authority to begin with, in that its exercise in practice is so discretionary as to make these speculations inevitable https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1347228351665205251

in order to predict whether a legally valid authority can be exercised, we -- even in 'normal' times -- have to make guesses about the correlated decision-making of various elements of the chain of command that are in theory subordinate to the president

as of now, its entirely possible that a triumvirate of pence, o'brien, and the acting secretary of defense are the ones actually running the executive. but they do not have the legal authority to do so, which is a wee problem

all of what may be happening at the moment have individual precedents in US history -- "shadow presidencies" beginning with wilson's "petticoat government" or attacks by mobs affiliated with politicians against other politicians in 19th century -- but rarely so many *combined*

rogue nuclear launch is, all things being considered, really not in the top 10 things i'm worried about right now. but its an example of what failing to git rid of him via impeachment or 25th amendment gives us

The president has the legal authority to do X, because he is Da Boss (TM). But in practice everyone knows he is not fit to serve. The contradiction is managed via palace politics, which we have to speculate about https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1347235086916317184

if we had, using constitutionally valid authorities, removed him, we would not need to speculate about his ability to do *anything*. but we haven't. so now we wait, and we come up with little theories about who is actually keeping the lights on