My submission for the Tweet du jour:

[intheflow]

28. The Constitution is not infallible.

The framers were in the midst of a war with England and created a document that

a) assumed no free man (i.e., a man free from the divine right of kings) would favor a tyrant;
b) only men of "honor" would be elected to Congress by a free electorate;
c) all the MEN making these decisions were white landowners who created a document that both protected their wealth/power/status/privilege and was flexible enough for evolving interpretation and revision.

IOW, there is no fail-safe for the majority under the Constitution when foxes are in the hen house. Literally, we are held hostage by voting cycles and we have to change procedural rules (which again, assumes only honorable people are elected to Congress).

There is also no professional penalty for lying to the detriment of the nation. Censure is toothless. It is an imperfect system created by imperfect men and it can be changed. Abolish the electoral college, and go with straight majority rule. The judicial system is designed to protect minority rights under majority rule. (In theory, though that, too, is made ineffective by racist authoritarian abusers. But that's a rant for another thread.)

So it wasn't individuals that failed us here, it's the systems we have in place. That's not to say that the 43 aren't responsible for their actions, but that their actions only succeeded because of the system.