Originally Posted by
Endus
That it's "unimaginable" is exactly the problem, frankly.
The USA carefully avoided implementing any real checks and balances on the Presidency or, really, Congress for that matter. In fact, it provided them greater leeway and protections than private citizens, to engage in malfeasance and abuse, and not suffer legal penalties as anyone else would.
You folks should have seen this coming. Not now. 250 years ago. This is one of the single most glaring fuck-ups by the Founding Fathers in drafting the Constitution. No other developed country is this helpless against malfeasance by their own government.
In Canada, just as an example;
1> The opposition parties could call for a Non-Confidence vote. And any budget vote is a Confidence vote. If the vote on any budget fails, or any separate Non-Confidence motion passes, Parliament dissolves and an election is called.
2> The Governor General can decide that the government has acted egregiously or has lost the confidence of the people even if a non-confidence vote isn't gonna happen, and can dissolve Parliament and call an election (basically never happens, but it's there).
3> The Prime Minister is just the Party's leader. Their position is more akin to Speaker of the House than to the President. He can be removed by his party with an internal vote to replace them as leader. They don't even need grounds, just an "ehh, not feeling them any more".
4> No member of Parliament, and certainly not the PM, has any immunity to legal proceedings. If criminal charges are filed and the member is placed under arrest, their riding has an immediate by-election to replace them. They're pretty much out of office, just by being arrested and charged.
Compare to the US situation. Budget bills failing and a government shutdown occurring would mean an election was called. The GG (I know the US has no equivalent) could have said "this is all screwy" and called an election. If Trump had been charged with any of the numerous crimes he's accused of (and note, charged. Not found guilty.) he'd be out of office already. And there'd be no protection against those charges, whether by federal or State authorities (so they can't rely on the AG to quash it). The Republicans could have decided, at any point, that it's too big a risk and replaced him with any other Republican. Etc.
The USA has no checks or balances. This is entirely by (bad) design. It's not that these things are "unimaginable", it's that Americans thought they were magical perfect people who can do no wrong and bad things will never happen, and so you're completely blindsided the moment a figure emerges to educate you that bad people exist.
It's like not bothering to pass laws banning murder and acting shocked when some fucko goes on a killing spree and you don't have any grounds to stop them. That's your fuckup for letting that happen in the first place. It was eminently "imaginable", you just didn't bother to think ahead and assumed everyone would play nice forever.