Speaking as a non-American with an interest in politics and philosophy: I really hope that if (if!) you have free elections again, and if the Democrats win, that you start taking your Constitution seriously for the first time in a century.
That means no more going to war without Congressional approval. No more extrajudicial executions of American citizens. No more commerce clause loopholes to regulate that which clearly shouldn’t be a matter for the Federal govt. to regulate. No more executive orders as an end-run around Constitutional limitations, instead of Constitutional amendments.
Someone will always argue that it’s just pragmatic politics. That you couldn’t have had the New Deal, or the EPA, or Obamacare, or the War on Terror, whatever, without court-stacking, executive orders, illegal invasions, etc.
But you know what? Every time you did that, every time you got what you wanted despite the Constitution and laws in the way, you weakened the system, and you weakened respect for it amongst voters and their elected representatives.
In the end, you got Trump and MAGA wielding power that you helped to normalize.
Please don’t make that mistake again.
Mattermost user here, I self-host an instance for friends and family (and their children).
To upgrade and discover I’d lost access to the message history on my own instance was infuriating. I’m investigating alternatives right now.
So far Zulip seems reasonable - although Google and especially Apple being shits about push notifications means you can’t self-host push notification servers 🙄 So I’m considering forgoing push notifications altogether and leaning on email notifications instead.