>>35660
How I normally try to explain it is by using an example a lot of people should understand: Corporations. Why can’t a large corporation ever turn things around no matter how many times the CEO changes? The CEO technically has the power to fire all the old rot and regenerate the company with fresh talent…but that NEVER happens. It’s always a meaningless reorganization which never produces results. They’ll spend big on a new product or initiative which inevitably fails and they get replaced with the next CEO to repeat the cycle. Why can’t these CEOs just purge the bad / useless peopl? Ie, if the current group of people can’t execute, why can’t they just be replaced? Because, the CEO does not actually have the power to do that; he can TECHNICALLY do a purge, but in reality it wont happen. Why? Because the very rot which has set into the company will resist being purged — they will rebel and go march on the Board of Directors complaining that the CEO is destroying the company, and the CEO will the one out the door and not them. In any large organization everything is based on a popularity contest / who’s in the majority. In this analogy the Board is represented by the Courts and the Legislature. People like to believe that the President is a sort of limited king, but in reality it’s mostly a ceremonial position, a figurehead for the voters. Issued Executive Orders is meaningless if they can be overturned or simply ignored. For example, why couldn’t Obama order Gitmo shut down? Because when he ordered the Department of Defense to shut it down, they basically told him to fuck off and Obama learned who was actually in charge. Presidents from at least Obama (and probably Bush Jr) have no actual control over the Federal government’s policies, and definitely since Obama the military as well. Power is held in huge, amorphous influence networks of middle management, elected officials, many special interests and public sector unions etc, and things happen almost entirely by osmosis. Society is much too large, interconnected and stuffed with money for anyone to actually take control of it.