The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by jakelazaroff on Monday February 03, 2025 @08:37PM (#42926329)

The requirements to amend the Constitution are clear: a 2/3 supermajority in each chamber of Congress, followed by 3/4 states ratifying it. Neither chamber comes close to clearing that bar, let alone the state margins.

So this discussion is pretty confusing to me, because the Trump administration objectively does not have the level of support you seem to think they do. Are you saying the incoming administration should get a little amendment as a treat? Are you just not aware of the procedure? Where’s the disconnect here?

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Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by avmich on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:50PM (#42927109)

The position of the devil's advocate is that the procedure is a little undemocratic - it prevents people to express their will, right? - and ought to be bent when it's really needed. Insert whatever justification here the interested side could plausibly produce.

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Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by jakelazaroff on Monday February 03, 2025 @10:21PM (#42927410)

And like many devil’s advocate positions, it doesn’t make sense. Like, how exactly does the procedure prevent people from expressing their will? If there were truly popular support for DOGE, they would be able to conjure up the required votes in Congress and amongst the states.

But they can’t, because that support doesn’t exist. You’re starting from the presupposition that this is “the people’s will”, but voter turnout was less than 2/3 and Trump only won a plurality of that. That’s not to say that he didn’t win, but you’re talking about whether we should amend the Constitution to satisfy less than a third of eligible voters.

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