George Hahn

Shit got real and unreal fast.

As Shayla Love wrote in The Atlantic, excessive use of the drug can make anyone feel like they rule the world.

For most people, the danger of that delusion is contained inside a relatively small blast zone.

The addict, their friends and family, their world.

In Musk's case, his world is our world.

Last weekend, an estimated 8 million Americans participated in No Kings protests.

The rallies speak to the moment, but the demonstrators concerned are as old as America.

As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers No.

47,

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

After fighting a revolution against a monarch, the Constitution's framers split power across three branches of government, devising a system of checks and balances to put each branch in tension with the other two.

Cumbersome by design, we spent the next 230 years reassembling the king.

The Constitution grants the power to tax and regulate foreign commerce exclusively to Congress.

But according to Duke law professor Timothy Meyer, functionally, trade policy has been dominated by the executive branch since the 1930s.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973, sold as a check on Richard Nixon after revelations that he'd secretly bombed Cambodia...

actually codified a 60-day blank check for presidential military action.

Meanwhile, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed one week after 9-11, has been cited to justify classified military operations in at least 22 countries.

Congress has never declared war in my lifetime, but we've fought many, and we're fighting one now.

On paper, our system was built to avoid choke points by distributing power.

We built one anyway.