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The Intellectualist

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Jun 6

Black Saturday: The Day the United States Ceased to Be a Constitutional Democracy

The Moment Democracy Ceased to Function

🧵1/10: Saturday, March 15, 2025, may have seemed unremarkable to most Americans.

But in time, history will remember it as Black Saturday—the moment the United States ceased to function as a constitutional democracy.

For the first time in modern American history, a sitting president openly defied a direct federal court order—and nothing happened. No intervention. No enforcement. No consequences.

A legal ruling was issued, and the White House simply ignored it.

The White House’s Decision: Power Over Law

Inside the White House, the decision was not about law—it was about power.

A federal judge ruled against the administration. The debate inside Trump’s team was not whether the ruling was legal, but whether they could get away with ignoring it. They decided they could. And they were right.

This was not a clash between equal branches of government. It was the moment the judiciary was exposed as powerless.

The courts do not have an army. They rely on compliance.

But a court that cannot enforce its rulings is not a court—it is a suggestion box.

And a presidency that can ignore the courts without consequence is no longer constrained by law—it is an untouchable executive.

Trump did not declare the end of judicial authority in a speech.

He demonstrated it in practice.

This is how democratic systems collapse—not with a single act, but with the normalization of defiance, the expectation that a ruling can simply be brushed aside.
theintellectualist.com/black-saturday…

How the System Failed to Stop Him

2/10: This moment did not happen in isolation. It happened because every prior attempt to hold Trump accountable has failed.

The system tried—and at every turn, it proved incapable of stopping him.

Impeachment failed—twice.

Criminal cases stalled.

The Supreme Court refused to rule on his disqualification.

Congress never moved to check his power.

At each step, Trump tested the system—and the system flinched.

He learned that laws are only as strong as the institutions willing to enforce them.

And so, when faced with a court ruling, he did what he had been conditioned to do—he ignored it. And nothing happened.

The Supreme Court’s Role in Making the Presidency Untouchable

The judiciary was already weakened by years of erosion, but in 2024, the Supreme Court itself ensured that when this moment arrived, there would be no legal recourse left.

In a landmark ruling, the Court expanded presidential immunity to such an extent that the office of the presidency is now functionally above the law.

A president can commit crimes while in office and face no immediate accountability.

And now, with Black Saturday, Trump has proven that he can ignore court rulings entirely without consequence.

This is not the separation of powers.

It is the absorption of power into a single branch. The courts were supposed to be the last line of defense. Instead, they have been reduced to issuing rulings the executive can freely ignore.

theintellectualist.com/black-saturday…

The Role of Fox News in Conditioning the Public

3/10: Fox News did not issue the order, but it made this moment possible.

In the aftermath of Trump’s defiance, Fox put the judge’s face on screen, not as part of neutral reporting, but as a deliberate act of intimidation.

They did not need to explicitly declare that judicial rulings no longer mattered—they had already spent years training millions to believe it.

Through relentless framing, they had conditioned their audience to see the courts as corrupt, as partisan, as obstacles to be overcome rather than institutions to be respected.

Trump did not invent this strategy; he simply acted on it, carrying their rhetoric to its logical conclusion.

Why Americans Do Not See the Collapse Happening

This is why the phrase “you cannot see the forest for the trees” is so powerful in this moment.

The trees are the individual events.

Trump ignoring a court ruling.

The Supreme Court making the presidency immune from criminal accountability.

Congress failing to act repeatedly.

The media normalizing the breakdown of democracy.

The forest is the overarching reality.

The U.S. government is no longer constrained by constitutional limits.

The judiciary has been rendered powerless through precedent and selective enforcement.

The executive branch now decides which laws apply to itself.

Most people living through history don’t realize they are inside a moment of collapse because each event, taken alone, does not seem like the end of democracy.

The shock of one ruling being ignored does not feel catastrophic.

The Supreme Court deciding a president is immune from prosecution feels like just another legal controversy. Congressional inaction feels like business as usual.

The media’s treatment of this moment as just another chapter in the ongoing Trump saga makes it easy to assume the system will self-correct.

But when viewed together, it becomes undeniable that the system has already failed.

theintellectualist.com/black-saturday…

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Jun 1

The Rise of Hitler: A History of How Democracy Fell in Germany and Its Parallels to Today

🧵1/11: His past was steeped in scandal—a felon, accused of treason and sedition, his actions and rhetoric frequently straddling the line of legality. He was convicted for attempting to overthrow the government, yet this criminal history didn’t disqualify him.

It only made him more appealing to those who viewed the establishment as corrupt and broken. Instead of disqualifying him, his criminal record and charges became part of his defiant charm, painting him as an outsider willing to fight the system.

Every accusation, every charge of treason, only fueled his rise, showing his supporters that he could not be tamed and was the only one willing to challenge the powers that had held the nation in their grip.
youtube.com/watch?v=ShqC31…

2/11: At first, they dismissed him. The elites, the media, the political class—they thought they could control him. They mocked him as a sideshow, a foolish provocateur, destined to be forgotten.

But in the wake of high inflation, economic instability, and a country that had lost its bearings, his words struck a chord with those who had been cast aside.

In an age of rising populism, economic dislocation, and a shrinking middle class, his rhetoric didn’t promise solutions—it promised retribution. It wasn’t just blame he offered; it was a convenient, scapegoated enemy to rally against.

His was a message soaked in anger, dripping with resentment for anyone deemed an outsider. Minorities, immigrants, political rivals—all of them were the root of the nation’s collapse. And in this narrative of vengeance, he found his power.
youtube.com/watch?v=ShqC31…

3/11: It wasn’t just the forgotten and the downtrodden who rallied to him.

His support was a web of disenfranchised voters, alienated workers, and desperate communities—a rage that turned inward, then outward.

People who had once believed in the promise of democracy now saw him as their only hope, their only defender. He was the hammer to crush a system they believed had betrayed them.

They didn’t care what he stood for, as long as he was willing to destroy the things they hated. And with every provocation, every scandal, his following grew—spurred on by his audacity and his defiance.

The more they despised him, the more they were drawn to him, their loyalty strengthening with every wave of mockery that he deflected effortlessly.
youtube.com/watch?v=ShqC31…

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Apr 16

Trump Defies Second Court Order — Black Saturday Crisis Escalates

Black Saturday: The Day Democracy Ceased to Function

🧵1/9: Saturday, March 15th, 2025, may have seemed unremarkable to most Americans.

But history will remember it as Black Saturday—the day the United States ceased to function as a constitutional democracy.

A federal judge issued a lawful court order.

The President refused to comply.

No appeal. No enforcement. No institutional response.

The judiciary was defied—and nothing happened.

This was no routine conflict.

It was a constitutional orphaning—a power vacuum exposed in real time.

For the first time in modern history, a sitting president ignored a federal ruling without consequence.

The presidency, unbound by consequence, slipped outside the law.

Trump didn’t announce the end of the Constitution.
He demonstrated it.

Quietly.

Deliberately.
theintellectualist.com/black-saturday…

The Rubicon Was Crossed—And Nothing Stopped It

2/9: This wasn’t erosion.
It was erasure.
The moment metastasized.
The judiciary became a suggestion box.
The system didn’t resist—it adapted.
Not to law, but to power.

Black Saturday wasn’t just an isolated incident. It was a line crossed with no return.

theintellectualist.com/black-saturday…

The Courts Speak—And Are Ignored

3/9: On April 16, 2025, Judge James Boasberg found probable cause that the Trump administration committed criminal contempt by defying the March 15 court order.

Individuals were transferred into Salvadoran custody despite an explicit judicial ban.

While the Supreme Court vacated the order on procedural grounds, it affirmed the core right: detainees are entitled to habeas relief before deportation.

The constitutional violation was real—and now judicially confirmed.

Yet no compliance followed. No enforcement. No accountability.

theintellectualist.com/black-saturday…

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Apr 8

Bob Woodward on Donald Trump: “It looks like he wants to destroy the economy.”

A Warning from Watergate: Woodward Returns

🧵1/11: On March 28, 2025, Bob Woodward sat down with The Washington Post’s Colby Itkowitz for his first major interview since Donald Trump’s second inauguration.

It was more than a retrospective.

It was a warning.

A quiet alarm from the man who helped bring down Nixon, now sounding the signal again—this time, not over a break-in, but over the deliberate unraveling of an economy.

Woodward has written books on ten presidents. He’s interviewed Trump extensively. But in this conversation, he didn’t hedge.

When asked what Trump’s end goal appears to be, Woodward answered plainly:

“It looks like he wants to destroy the economy.”

theintellectualist.com/bob-woodward-t…

Doctrine of Destruction: Trump’s Economic Endgame

2/11: To understand why a president might do that, you have to understand what he’s trying to build in its place.

During Trump’s first term, in January 2018, he summoned his economic advisors to the Oval Office.

He wanted tariffs—aggressive ones.

His chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, warned him that tariffs would backfire. They’d raise prices on American consumers.

They’d jeopardize the very stock market gains Trump often boasted about. They’d risk triggering retaliation from allies.

Trump didn’t flinch.

He dismissed Cohn, called him a “globalist,” and told him to sit on the couch—like a subordinate being punished.

That word, globalist, wasn’t random.

In far-right discourse, it’s a term saturated with anti-Semitic overtones—used to cast Jewish figures as manipulators of finance and internationalism.

Cohn, a Jewish man and former president of Goldman Sachs, wasn’t just being ignored.

He was being marked. It wasn’t a policy debate.

It was a purge.

theintellectualist.com/bob-woodward-t…

Trade as Target: The Infrastructure of Influence

3/11: That moment passed quickly. But its implications did not.

Soon after, someone inside the administration handed Woodward a piece of paper—torn from a notepad, written in thick black Sharpie.

Just three words, scrawled in Trump’s hand:

“Trade is bad.”

That wasn’t economic analysis. That was a doctrine.

Trade isn’t just policy.

It’s infrastructure.

It supports tens of millions of American jobs—in agriculture, energy, logistics, shipping, and tech.

It links our prosperity to our influence.

It binds us to our allies and keeps autocracies in check.

To declare “trade is bad” is to reject not just globalization—but interdependence itself.

Some will say Trump was simply pursuing tough-love trade policy.

That tariffs are leverage, not ideology.

But leverage isn’t wielded with a sledgehammer.

And real strategy doesn’t end in isolation.

In the months after that Oval Office confrontation, Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum.

The world responded in kind. Canada, the EU, and China hit back with retaliatory tariffs.

American soybeans sat rotting in silos.

Machinery costs rose.

Farm bankruptcies spiked.

The Federal Reserve estimated that more than 300,000 jobs were lost before the pandemic ever arrived.

We’ve seen what happens when leaders conflate nationalism with economic retreat.

From Smoot-Hawley in the 1930s to Brexit today, the cost is never abstract.

It’s supply chains broken, prices inflated, trust shattered.
theintellectualist.com/bob-woodward-t…

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Apr 2

Trump to Unveil Largest Tax Increase in World History

A Hidden Tax Bomb, Not Passed—But Imposed

🧵1/10: What if the biggest tax hike in U.S. history wasn’t passed by Congress—but snuck in through a tariff?

That’s exactly what President Trump is planning, according to economic columnist Matthew Lynn, writing for The Telegraph on March 31, 2025.

Liberation Day: A $600 Billion Fiscal Earthquake

The initiative is called Liberation Day.

It’s expected to be unveiled this week, and it could impose tariffs so sweeping that they’d generate an estimated $600 billion a year in revenue.

That’s not a side policy—it’s a fiscal earthquake.

To put that in perspective, it would exceed all corporate tax revenue in the United States and instantly become the third largest source of federal funding, behind only income taxes and payroll taxes.
youtube.com/watch?v=kvdfyn…

Navarro’s Pitch: A Massive Tax Shift Without a Vote

2/10: Trump loyalist Peter Navarro pitched the plan on Fox News, saying the goal is to tax imports—particularly foreign cars and manufactured goods—in a way that “brings jobs back.”

But Navarro also admitted that the federal government could collect $600 billion a year through this new tariff structure.

If that happens, it would amount to a 15% increase in total U.S. tax revenue, without a single act of Congress.

How Trump Can Do This Alone

How is this possible?

Because under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the president has unilateral authority to impose tariffs.

That means this $600 billion tax could materialize without a single Congressional vote.

It’s a stunning shift in the structure of American taxation—executive fiat replacing legislative deliberation.

youtube.com/watch?v=kvdfyn…

The Real Cost: You Pay, Not China

3/10: And despite the patriotic branding, the true cost will land on consumers, not foreign governments.

For illustration: a working-class family in Indiana earning $48,000 per year may already be spending nearly 20% of their income on imported necessities—from electronics to appliances to school supplies.

If tariffs add even 10% to those costs, their effective purchasing power could shrink by thousands.

A Stealth Tax Masquerading as Trade Policy

This isn’t a trade policy. It’s a stealth tax detonation wrapped in a flag. And if enacted without offsetting tax cuts, it will bleed American wallets slowly and silently—like a leak beneath the floorboards.

The Illusion of Reshoring—And the Cost of Protectionism

Supporters argue that tariffs might encourage U.S. manufacturing.

That’s not impossible.

Some production may indeed shift from Stuttgart to South Carolina or from Shenzhen to Seattle.

But that shift would take years—if it happens at all.

And in the meantime, prices will rise, wages may stagnate, and American consumers will be footing the bill.

Worse still, protected domestic companies tend to grow sluggish and inefficient.

Without international competition, there’s less pressure to innovate, reduce costs, or improve productivity.

The tariffs become a comfort blanket for monopolies—and a straitjacket for everyone else.

youtube.com/watch?v=kvdfyn…

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Apr 1

To Help Trump Defy the Constitution, a GOP Senator Proposes Ending Judicial Independence

When the Judge Serves the Ruler

🧵 1/10: What happens when the judge serves the ruler?

That question haunted the Founders. They had seen what power could do to justice—and what justice must do to constrain power. That’s why they built a system where the law stands above the leader, not beneath him.

Imagine if a president lost in court—not because of bias, but because the law and the facts weren’t on their side.

A federal judge rules that the president’s actions are unconstitutional or unlawful.

Checks and balances working exactly as designed.

Now imagine that president simply creates a new court—one that agrees with him.

A custom court. A bench dressed to obey.

That isn’t reform.

That’s absolute power, rubber-stamped and notarized.

So ask yourself: What happens when the courts are no longer independent—but installed?

When the robes answer not to law, but to loyalty?

youtu.be/Stodp_iUn6U

The Proposal

2/10: On March 25, 2025, Ashley Moody, a Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, proposed exactly that.

Appearing on Fox News, she suggested that the federal government should create “specialty courts” to bypass federal judges who issue rulings unfavorable to President Donald Trump.

Some defenders argue this is a fix for judicial bias—a counter to so-called “liberal” courts.

But reform operates within the system.

This proposal operates above it.

Reform seeks to uphold the rule of law.

This replaces it.

And this comes as the administration Moody defends openly defies court orders, purges civil servants, and rewrites institutional norms in real time.

Moody, a former federal prosecutor and Attorney General of Florida, framed it as reform.

But in truth, it was an attempt to sidestep judicial independence altogether.

Her proposal isn’t reform.

It’s an attempt to selectively silence the courts—using tools that history, and the very Framers whom people like Moody claim to venerate, explicitly condemned.

It echoes the kind of system the Founders studied, feared, and rejected.

The Star Chamber

The Founders knew what happens when rulers shape courts to serve their will.

In pre-democratic England—before the 1689 Bill of Rights—prerogative courts operated under direct royal authority.

Unlike common law courts, they had no juries, followed no standard legal procedures, and weren’t accountable to the public.

They held secret hearings and punished dissent without due process.

They didn’t exist to deliver justice—they existed to enforce the monarch’s will.

The most infamous of these was the Star Chamber. It answered directly to the crown. It bypassed juries, ignored legal protections, and became a tool for silencing opposition.

Its original mission was noble—punishing powerful nobles who intimidated the courts.

But once the king controlled it, it became something darker: law in appearance, repression in practice.

Its abolition in 1641 wasn’t just legal housekeeping.

It was a declaration: liberty cannot exist where power controls judgment.

The Founders’ Design

3/10: The American Founders studied what the Star Chamber became—and vowed never to repeat it.

They pored over Blackstone’s Commentaries, Locke’s Treatises, and the debates that dismantled prerogative courts.

They weren’t just building a government.

They were building a firewall against the corrosion of justice.

Their break with Britain was more than rebellion. It was reinvention.

They had seen what happens when Parliament is sovereign—when rights can be granted or revoked at will.

They rejected a system where liberty depended on the generosity of those in power.

Freedom, they believed, required more than elections. It required structure.

A written Constitution that bound all branches—not served them.

Judges who didn’t answer to presidents or parliaments.
Rights that were protected, not bestowed.

The British system was liberal for its time.

It replaced kings with parliaments.

But Parliament simply inherited the unchecked authority of the crown.

The Founders understood that concentrated power was dangerous—no matter who held it.

So they divided it—into three co-equal branches.

They drew from Montesquieu’s theory of separation of powers, where ambition would check ambition.
And they reinforced it with Madison’s warning in Federalist No. 47:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

They didn’t aim for perfect leaders.

They built institutions to withstand imperfect ones.

Lessons from Fallen Republics

And they knew those institutions could erode faster than they were built.

They studied republics that promised liberty—but succumbed to those who weaponized it.

In Athens, demagogues like Cleon rose not through wisdom, but spectacle.

He inflamed public passions, punished dissent, and made law a tool of vengeance.

Athens gave voice to the people—but lacked structure to withstand manipulation.

In Rome, it was generals instead of orators.

The Gracchi brothers bypassed norms in the name of reform.

Marius fused military command with political ambition.

Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon not to destroy the Senate—but to neuter it.

He ruled in the name of the republic while dissolving its substance. And when he died, it wasn’t restoration.

It was the beginning of empire.

Authoritarianism doesn’t always arrive with a crown.
Sometimes it arrives with applause.

Venice fell more quietly.

Once a republic governed by merchant councils, it became rule by secrecy and silence.

The Doge remained. The rituals endured. But real power vanished behind closed doors.

youtu.be/Stodp_iUn6U

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