Well it isn’t anymore 😐

We're all sons of bitches now.

Damn, monarchy sounds ass

America refuses to have a king so. Take from that weight you will

Good thing we don't have a king in this country 🤷🏼‍♀️

Indeed.

Good thing we don't have a king then.

Yeah, well, they didn't have indoor plumbing either.

I think we’re being suckered. The ruling on the tariffs may have sent him over the edge and he’s up in Camp David preparing to (putatively) suspend the Constitution.

Haha, they will have a hard time rounding all of us up.

Good thing we’re not a monarchy. ☺️

Good thing he’s no king.

i would have, bet

For those having trouble parsing this, I think that this was bad, and that it's good we have abandoned (indeed, expressly forbidden!) the practice

Down With The King’s Peach! Up With Freeze Peach!

This is very explicitly unconstitutional in our country

I think we're safe until the crown makes contact with the orange skin.

With your “this” remaining undefined, your statement can be interpreted in two different ways. But I think we can appreciate your intent.

Also the one that's, y'know, true

I meant that one

One of the rare occasions I’m sorry I don’t pray.

😂 Just when I needed a laugh, too! Thanks.

I don't pray but I OFFER MY ENERGY

I daily send ALL THE BEAMS.

I've been lax in my prayers lately. I mean, if it'll help...

O Lord we beseech thee SMITE HIM!

O Lord our God, arise! Scatter our enemies And make them fall! Confound their politics Frustrate their knavish tricks On Thee our hopes we fix O, save us all!

hence the re-litigation of flag burning

Good thing we’re NOT in those time!!!

so you are saying it is tradition if I word play here (they have the same origin and are cousin words, doublets)

LOL I did not actually know this, although it makes sense

The most disgusting of crimes, to me. Worthy of capital punishment, preferably under Old English Colonial Law.🤷🏼‍♀️ Worse than murder, because a single betrayal of your country can doom countless lives. 🧐 We still need justice against those who plotted our overthrow by Coup, Fraud & Force, with Trump.

thoughts and prayers

Thankfully he’s no king

Not yet!

I'll get right on that

But don’t Republicans like treason?

Like we haven't been wishing for that obituary since 2016

Well we don't have a king so we can pray all we want. 😁

Aren't we glad he's not a king

you know he would if he could. but he can't. so suck it.

It might still be. I don't know if the law was changed.

Who’s praying? We’re all just asking a question.

We're not praying for the death of a king. We're praying for the death of a magat.

Wait is that Kash Patel at my door?

Glad I didn't live back then

Now, it's patriotism.

Times have damned sure changed, thank God, although our current king still declares it so.

Treason against what/who, DICKtator, DICKtatorship?! Preaching to choir, us true Americans devoted and loyal to US Constitution/democracy! DICKtator wannabe king is insurrectionist, still, trying to complete coup. (Per Constitution I think treason only charged in war, but DICKtator make own rules.)

I’m willing to take that risk.

was it if God agreed tho? 🤔😂

This is America. We have no kings. I’m simply praying for the good of the world as He sees fit.🤞

I’m also praying that He puts RFK Jr in charge of Trump’s healthcare. Apparently such healthcare is good enough for many of the meek who are to inherit the earth per Matthew 5:5.

many magats absolutely believe this is the case with yamtits.

In ALL times, secretly meeting with the enemy WAS treason.

We are not a monarchy and T is not a king.

📌

Good thing we said, “No Kings‼️”, then. Both thoughts and prayers fall under our First Amendment Rights, (see, e.g., “Free Exercise Clause”) found in the U.S. Constitution. So. 🦋 As a U.S. lawyer, I can assure you, it’s No Worries.

Well, it ain't no damn king and it'd be very pleasant to not have to deal with him ever again.

I'm an atheist. I'm stuck with just hoping really REALLY hard.

In monarchical times, the people who overthrew the tyrannical monarchy invented abrupt, permanent solutions for how to retire the monarch and his royal court.

Thank fuck we fought a whole revolution to not be ruled by monarchs

Indeed

Thinkers fancier than you or I have contemplated this dilemma. 😉 Imprecatory prayer, wishing harm/death/curses on another person is not ok. Deprecatory prayer, asking God to deliver us from some evil, in whatever way God deems best, is ok. & thus, I have my path. 😇

I read the news today oh boy About a lucky man who made the grade And though the news was rather sad Well I just had to laugh I saw the photograph

Everyday, it's a-gettin' closer Goin' faster than a roller coaster Death like yours will surely come our way Ah hey, ah hey hey

Well fortunately (imo) no one's listening, so 🤷‍♂️ to the first part

Your OP says "prayer." 😉

There are easily-seen analogous approaches for the atheists in the crowd too. It's not hard to get there. 😉

All we really have is placards, chants and demonstrations, if we aren't willing to go public, we can't play

still, even if nobody’s listening, it gets your soul all sticky. “Deliver us from evil (and I don’t see how you’re gonna unless he’s dead)” is probably the outer limit.

Ehh I used to worry about this, in like 2017

it’s more about habits than anything else. would I get a lot of short-term benefit from an intermittent nicotine dosage to improve focus? probably. but the long term effects of smoking still make it a bad habit to indulge in.

What is a “soul”?

You know. The thing Trump lacks.

Correct, he is a soulless demon from the pits of hell

Now THERE's a conundrum I thought the demons in hell were fallen angels whose souls had been sullied by rebellion If they had no souls, how could they suffer the eternal torture they were then commissioned to inflict on the rest of us?

It's almost like none of it is true. 🤔

Celebration throughout Oz, &c.

🤣

It's great fun contemplating that religious scholars in the past have not only wished it, but wrestled with it enough to have *terms of art* for *how* to ethically allow themselves to wish it.

relevant in rebutting this facile piece in @theatlantic.com what we wish for, what we predict, & what we work towards are separate we root for patients, bust our butts to find cures, & admit limits -- but we don't tolerate snake oil www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

Don't let "being political" become a failing or slur. It's important not to become defensive when someone tries to say "You're being political," if what you're doing is standing up for truth/morals/ethics. No paywall version of Atlantic Wu article www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

I'm being political? You're being political. Your'e being political right now. You've got some political on your shoe.

*You're

Apostrophes are political too, you know.

I'm a lit major with a hyphen in her name. How much time you got?

agreed but there's also (IMO) a clear difference between what science can and cannot say and what smart public policy based on science but also other systems of knowledge looks like you can't treat abortion or end-of-life decisions like STEM I am engaged in all of it, but it takes gear-shifting

And that's why I decided at 17 to go to the flagship Jesuit university & be a lit major w a comp sci minor (cuz they didn't grant a major back then). When my AI class was in the philosophy dept, & my AI prof had already taken the Intro to PCs lab course I taught. Gotta know the systems of knowledge.

We can still wildly speculate why nobody's seen him for days. As a treat.

also evidently SOMEONE is playing showtunes in the White House REALLY LOUDLY and though this is meant to imply he is alive & listening to comfort music the question is WHY and also might it be covering some sound like a lot of moaning and retching say

So we all get beheaded, or what?

Depends on if Trump is king or not

This would take me out before the cholera 💯

Fine. Come for my head then. I’ll die free before I ever bow down.

To be clear, I'm saying this practice was oppressive and tyrannical and not befitting a free people

Yes. I wasn’t under the misapprehension that you expected me to bow down lol.

Okay cool lol, some people definitely have been 😅

that's okay, we'll keep it fairly quiet...

Good thing we’re not a monarchy then.

Good thing he's not a king

even imagining it (even in a negative way) was iffy

Yes, PREDICTING the death of the king was treason

Predicting the death of the king was akin to predicting the death of the state to them, and in a sense, it was

During Elizabeth I term *getting married while of a certain rank without permission* was treason. (See Arabella Stuart, whose birth would have been of considerable threat to Elizabeth had she been male instead. Her parents elopement got her maternal grandmother thrown in the Tower for a spell)

Had to double check Wikipedia to make sure; she eventually died in the Tower herself. Wonder if grandma left her any messages lol

Arabella really got fucked over terribly by James I and her own lineage. She never asked for any of that and I've honestly felt bad for her.

Sorry, it was the Countess of Lennox who went to the Tower for a bit (Arabella's paternal grandmother) Bess of Hardwick was ordered to Elizabeth's court for an inquiry but wisely stayed at her estate and ignored the summons until things calmed down. She had quite enough on her hands with her

Estranged husband Shrewsbury who was a serious sonafabitch and was attacking her renters, seizing monies and starting especially nasty rumors about Mary of Scots who was stuck with Bess at her estate often)

They reformed it to reduce it only to the top handful in the line of succession, but they still technically require the monarch's permission. Like, Elizabeth II had to give the sign-off for Charles to marry Camilla, and I think the same for William and Kate.

But there was also the whole category of petty treason, which was basically anybody acting against their social superior, a peasant killing their lord or something like that. High treason was against the monarch and that's the sense of the word that survives.

Being childless and already targeted by multiple plots to put someone with a plausible claim in her place, Elizabeth was SERIOUS about not allowing marriage without her say in the matter. Even idle discussion about succession at court or elsewhere was a great way to get questioned or worse

It's also notable that diaries are glaringly absent in this period and personal correspondence was often burned as a basic precaution. You really didn't want Walsingham reading your candid thoughts on paper.

I recall reading an excerpt from a surviving letter of a father to his son who was a junior officer under Essex in the 1599 campaign in Ireland. He advised his son to say nothing of his opinions to anybody and keep his ears open above all else "Essex hath friends. He hath enemies also"

"compassing" was the term, and in theory it still required an overt act. Not that you'd get very far arguing the technicalities with Henry VIII.

Yes. It's a modern myth, but the formal offense in 1351 required an actual plot towards regicide (or curiously enough, imprisonment of the king), but not idle thoughts. Oddly enough the treason clause's "overt acts" requirement ultimately derives from it!

"Caesar had his Brutus — Charles the First, His Cromwell — And George the Third" — ("Treason!" cried the Speaker — "Treason, treason!" echoed from every part of the house). Henry faultered not for an instant, but rising to a loftier attitude, concluded thus ...

- "may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." (Evidently it was possible to speak of the possible death of a king and counter the "treason" charge) /end

Heh. Would have been under parliamentary immunity anyway, I think.

Would need to look it up, but IIRC parliamentary immunity wasn't a defense against high treason (at least not until the civil war)

Kind of the constitutional question at stake in that war, huh As the nature of the Union was in ours

Right. Charles famously tried to arrest members in the chamber on treason charges, and, then things happened and parliament chopped of his head

Yup. The two witnesses rule, too. Fun fact during WWII that was seen as too antiquated and problematic. So they passed a new law for "treachery" and hanged a few traitors under that.

(the UK did, that is, not the US)

You know, I've sometimes wondered if the treason clause should be read as preventing the creation of "basically treason" crimes And if so, what that says about seditious conspiracy and the Espionage Act

Yes, that's kind of the thing that it doesn't really limit anything unless you specifically try to call it "treason." I suppose you could make the theoretical argument. I wouldn't bet on it ever working.

Maybe something there to tease out about how treason back then technically wasn't a felony, it was a different category unto itself.

Also there were subcategories of it! What we think of as treason now is really high treason, but there were petit treasons too

I mean, tbf the US did basically the same at around the same time with the Espionage Act

Right. Sent the Operation Pastorius spies to the electric chair using that, and then later the Rosenbergs.

going around loudly saying "the king is definitely immortal" and creating an extremely confusing court case in which I am still found guilty

Lmao yup

Reminds me of those protesters in China who were going around holding up blank white sheets of paper

Though come to think of it, if I were actually a medieval crown prosecutor and I wanted to cut this gordian knot, I’d come after you for blasphemy rather than treason

Heresy maybe, some kind of religious offense

"Look, we know you're trying to say SOMETHING, and we hate it. Jail."

I'm not praying and he's not our king

What about voodoo? 🤔

Didn’t they chop off the heads of those that got too rich? I’m ok with that too.

Well in these times not even raiding the Capitol counts as treason. Hell it might even get you a job....

In more recent times, inciting a violent riot to overthrow a legitimate election is considered treason.

What about laughing & clapping? 👏 🤣

Not to God it wasn't! (it might be some kind of other religious crime idk I'm not religious)

Don’t give him anymore ideas.

“Which moronic baron could possibly take this over” also recognizable dynamic

Good thing I DON'T LIVE IN A MONARCHY.

Indeed.

Or loyalist if the one on the throne was a pretender. 🤣

My take on how it's gonna go down...

And in 2025, it’s considered reason

We don’t have a king. We have a problem.

Just praying for the U.S. and the world.

Good thing the mother fucker isn't king then.. So I'll keep praying.