politics

For one, the framers weren't entirely exemplary, but others have pointed that out, so I'll try a moderating argument:

Even a genius at that time couldn't have really comprehended or predicted the impact of technological development. I don't just mean this in a "hindsight is 20/20" or "technology is developing faster" sense, but rather that the study of history itself wasn't quite as developed as it is today.

Modern communication, investigation, restoration methods have massively increased the wealth of sources any given scholar has access to. Lacking that, it's far easier to fill gaps in knowledge with assumptions from your own experience or what bits of knowledge you do have and assume that some things have been constant for a long time. Conversely, it's hard to imagine those things might change. The best you can do is observe contemporary developments, attempt to guess where they might lead and try to take precaution against the most likely or most dangerous possibilities.

One such precaution is to create a system whereby the many can stop individuals from abusing their power, strip them of that power and do all of that with due process and careful deliberation. But then, the speed at which the powerful could do damage was also more limited.

As technology changes, so too should systems of government. What worked two centuries ago just isn't viable any more. Many developments in the last century would probably have prompted different decisions by well-meaning, educated and intelligent people.

I don't think the breakage of a system that failed to adapt is the fault of the people who first penned it. They included tools to change that system itself with what seemed like a reasonable hurdle at the time. They can hardly be blamed if those tools aren't used (or at least not for good).

In conclusion: it's possible that the framers had the best intentions, considerable intelligence and a high level of education for their time, and still couldn't have done better.

That isn't to say they must have had those purest intentions or been that smart. Hell, just the disconnect between advocating for liberty and holding slaves points to a significantly different understanding of liberty. I could write a whole paragraph here, but my core point is that the system of checks and balances breaking isn't (just) the error of a few elite politicians, underestimating the potential for corruption, but rather of many generations of politicians eroding what protections those politicians might have put in place.

If you believed in the power of the people, their desire to be free, just came out of a bloody struggle to be free of one corrupt tyrant and unwittinglu projected your own level of education on them, would you realistically foresee that they'd vote this stain into office not once, but twice, and that all the other representatives would stand by idly while their own power is being undermined?

That's what impeachment is for.

They expected that voters/citizens and other branches of govt wouldn't stand for it.

Instead they're either in on it or too cowardly to do anything.

To be fair, this didn't happen before Trump. I don't think they could ever have seen the extent of bullshit we're going through right now.

Exactly. Many were historians and Christians.

They already had the previous example of the sale of indulgences within the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Even American colonial revolutionaries were offered pardons by King George III to stop fighting.

Commenter below cites the fact that the expectation was that the congress would step in if popular sentiment was outraged by this sort of thing, but this state of affairs was foreseeable.

They ended up with a powerful executive even though they believed previous kings had too much power. e.g. “His Excellency” George Washington refused the title of King.

Also of note is that there were relatively few voters and they were privileged and generally well educated and informed members of the public. White men with land.

They were Marketing MBAs, using fancy words to hide true enshitification.

Dead in a bunker like his predecessor

My conspiracy theory is that BTC took off because Russia used as a tool to avoid sanctions. If you look at a chart the timeline matches up and they have had sizeable crypto holdings.

I still stand by this being a huge ~~factor in reduced accountability and accelerating corruption~~ innovation of capitalism.

Corruption succeeds within a corrupt system.

3.5 now

Get that paper

This pardon is for Adriana Camberos, who seems to be from an actual Mexican crime family.

They never recover all the funds fraudsters come out of prison with laundered money in hard to track accounts so I'll give you three guesses and I'll be real disappointed if you need more than one.