It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president.
If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on merit and based on nepotism instead.
This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough, they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on promises, and it shoots the country in the head.
It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
>It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
For my friends - everything, for my enemies - the law.
I used to love this pithy quote but reflecting on it more recently this doesn't seem like something limited to fascists or fascism. Indeed, this kind of thinking is used by those of any political leaning when ideology becomes more important than principles. An obvious example is the USSR.
Authoritarianism is the umbrella term describing the behaviour of both fascist states and various others. AFAIK all fascist states have been authoritarian - but it’s a common outcome anytime the people running the government are replaced en masse.
Good point, and much harder to challenge. If the majority is against an authoritarian there's protests and sabotage of social structures. If the majority oppresses a fringe group, it's often socially encouraged
For these reasons, I personally believe authoritarianism cannot be opposed without a solid foundation of individualism. The problem becomes that explaining ideological nuance is rarely politically expedient or even rhetorically effective. Appeals to collectivism are more easily digested by the masses.
that's kind of what the USA is going through right now but it's more aptly described as "tyranny of the plurality" because Trump didn't win either majority of of registered voters or majority of the actual vote.
Regardless of tiresome partisan hyperbole, I don't regard the substance of this administration's actions as any more authoritarian the previous or the status quo. In the specific instances where state power has been expanded, I regard it as part of the general trend of expansion. The trend is more indicative of the overall incentives and structure of governance, rather than specific political actors. Similarly, partisan recriminations fit with the same pattern.
IMO, Obama claiming the power to assassinate US citizens on US soil (by declaring them "foreign combatants") was primarily different in that he only used it a little bit.
This is a great example of the horseshoe theory of politics [0], which I believe in very strongly. I made a separate post if anyone cares to discuss it. [1]
It’s based on the flawed assumption that politics can or should be understood on a single axis. It can’t and shouldn’t be. That heuristic is wrong.
If viewed on a 2d axis, the “cohorts that appear similar” on the ends of the horseshoe are still on opposing ends of one of the axes, despite being near each other on another axis.
Horseshoe theory has always read like a Pythagorean epicycle to me, an attempt to redeem a broken model. For a reductive political model, I prefer the 2 dimensional Collectivist-Individualist, Authoritarian-Libertarian axes. No need to literally contort the outdated Left-Right spectrum.
An added benefit is you get to avoid annoying semantic battles such as whether Nazis or Fascists are Right wing or Left wing.
Plus you get to add other axes as needed. My favorite, perhaps relevant today, is principled vs. expedient: do we apply principles like this "Rights" stuff impartially, even to people with whom we disagree, or do we just git 'r done?
To me, the horshoe theory is just a step in the right direction. It shows the limits of a straight 1D line to describe politics, and is a stepping-off point for deeper exploration.
Ideally, maybe we would describe a person's politics with something like a tensor, where each value is the person's support of a specific policy.
Hmm. I guess I feel that "The Horseshoe Theory" is worse than useless. It implies that as someone gets "too much" Right or Left, they inevitably become authoritarian, as if centrists cannot be authoritarian. It equates "weirdness" with "bad". I'd argue that we should skip straight to identifying "authoritarianism" as the problem, and the not having weird or even extreme leftist or rightist ideas.
> I see it as the gateway to people realizing that the left/right 1D line, and even the political compass, are ridiculous.
When this theory is used in discourse, it is always a matter of suggesting that the left fringe and the right fringe are equally to be rejected. Stalin and Hitler, communism and fascism, class struggle and racial theory, Das Kapital and Hitler's Mein Kampf, dictatorship of the proletariat and Nazi dictatorship: the righteous liberal democrat must keep his distance from both extremes in equal measure. The golden path lies in the balanced middle. I am tired of criticizing this nonsense. It is an ideological lie.
The trident means that there is just as much ideology, corruption, political dysfunctionality and all kinds of drivers of suffering, misery and resentment in the supposed political center. But it is very well hidden because it wears a kind of ideological cloak: the horseshoe theory.
So to respond to your sentence I quoted above: the horseshoe theory IS the political compass that should be ridiculed.
Absolutely. See "the only moral abortion is my abortion".
Republicans can play all sorts of games because their mistresses will always be able to get an abortion on the DL without consequence, while "single black mom? 25 to life for murder!"
This is a shameful false equivalency. In the puppet president scenario you outline, the blast radius is, at worst, 4 years? In the case of an insurrection to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, there is a generation or more of democratic order lost.
That depends entirely on your context and frame of reference.
You're describing the blast radius of what was possible in the past assuming that one president was willing to usurp power but only for one term.
In reality, we did go 4 years with a president who wasn't in charge, at least for part of that term, specifically because the public was lied to about his health and some small number of people his the truth. We did not go through 4 years of a presidency after one very much seemed to attempt to take the office despite having lost the election.
In both cases I take huge issue with the intent and the potential outcome. In one case, though, the outcome was real and I lived, for a time, in a presumably democraric society ruled by someone(s) who weren't elected while the one who was elected decreased mentally and physically beyond the ability to rule.
They’re different orders of magnitude. Biden was elected legitimately. Parties can nominate whoever they want, so shenanigans with primaries, while distasteful, are completely legitimate. Likewise, keeping Biden’s mental state from the public is ugly but legitimate. Voters can, and did, punish these actions.
Trump tried to cheat his way to keeping power. Even if you don’t blame him for the violent attempt, it’s well established that he made major efforts before that to change the outcome by more peaceful means that were just as illegitimate.
Playing stupid games within the system means you lose elections and either reform or get replaced. Playing stupid games subverting the system means you don’t have to worry about elections anymore if you succeed. I’m about a million times more concerned about the latter.
Do you not believe Trump was elected legitimately? I totally understand and share many of the concerns over the insurrection and what happened around it, but Trump didn't take office in 2020 and wasn't reelected until 2024.
I must have misread you last comment. I read this as a comparison implying that Biden wasn't legitimately elected but you just meant it to set up the point.
If it’s not an insurrection what it is? What is the organization of thousands of individuals to invade the capital building in protest of election results?
Just because it failed, doesn’t mean it wasn’t an insurrection.
Words like "protest" or "riot" leap to mind. It is more comparable to something like CHAZ in 2020 which could technically be called an insurrection or rebellion, but realistically was more of an unruly protest.
An insurrection would traditionally involve a little planning and a little more seriousness in the attempt. Maybe a plan that could conceivably lead to a change in government.
Obviously. All riots are technically insurrections. They're synonyms. And they are usually protests too; it'd be unusual to have a riot while agreeing with the current direction of the government.
Please stop. This is a topic that people have been saying the same things about for over four years. It's not a good topic for HN as people only bring it up for the purpose of ideological battle, which is against the guidelines.
Please stop. This is a topic that people have been saying the same things about for over four years. It's not a good topic for HN as people only bring it up for the purpose of ideological battle, which is against the guidelines.
I don't know whether Trump can accurately be described as a fascist, but its been clear to me since his first term that domination is the only thing that matters to him. The obscene wealth and the swaggering deceitfulness and the gold-plated bathrooms are just the secondary outcomes of his need to dominate.
Domineering father-figure; raised as a sociopath; given a lot of money. Kind of inevitable.
The Democratic Governor of California denounced them publicly and stopped the effort.
Despite Musk raising millions and campaigning viciously against the Democrats the administration kept all of SpaceX contracts and Tesla ev subsidies. In fact the IRA benefited Tesla disproportionately.
Both sides are NOT the same. One is fascist and the other is not
Joseph M. Arpaio – Former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Trump Supporter
Ray Smith III – Trump Attorney
Cathy Latham – Fake Elector, Coffee County GOP Leader
Robert Cheeley – Trump Attorney
David Shafer – Fake Elector, Former Georgia GOP Chair
Mike Roman – Trump Campaign Staffer
Shawn Still – Fake Elector, Then-Georgia State Senator
Scott Hall – Atlanta Bail Bondsman
Misty Hampton – Former Coffee County Elections Supervisor
Steve Lee – Pastor from Illinois
Harrison Floyd – Black Voices for Trump Leader
Trevian Kutti – Publicist from Chicago
I'm sure this was just Democrats following the law, with no bias, right?
This kind of narrative that you're forwarding now where the Republican Party are fascists and Trump is a threat to democracy is exactly the kind of mentality that was used to elicit this enormous persecution of Trump and officials near him.
Meanwhile, the real elephant in the room is always ignored:
The Democrats shovel hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to large unions in order to secure their support and win elections. This is textbook corruption.
The recipients of USAID grants? All Democrats. Same story all across DC. That's why 92.4% of DC voted for Harris. DC, meanwhile, has a per capita GDP of $250,000.
Policy difference not partisan squables or payback for supporting his opponents. Most Democrats feel Unions are important to help workers (union and nonunion) earn more.
To base the decision on what companies to invite to an EV summit on whether they support the Democrats' favorite constituents is pure politics. The only policy difference here is one which helps the Democrats win elections.
It doesn’t matter what Democrats think about unions. This wasn’t a union summit or a summit on party values—it was about EVs. Tesla is the world leader in EVs and the top American EV manufacturer. Excluding them because they don’t support unionization — an issue tied to massive political support for Democrats through campaign contributions and institutional backing—is indefensible. It undermines the purpose of the summit through rank politicization and partisanship.
As for the claim that Tesla has racial discrimination issues—that’s a distortion. Nearly every major company gets hit with discrimination lawsuits because civil rights law has been weaponized to make that outcome nearly inevitable:
> The recipients of USAID grants? All Democrats. Same story all across DC. That's why 92.4% of DC voted for Harris. DC, meanwhile, has a per capita GDP of $250,000.
Why shouldn’t the recipients receive these grants other than that they are Democrats? What about their projects makes them not meritorious?
If you can't see the opportunity for corruption and bias here, then there's nothing I can do to convince you. This is always a story when people call Republicans corrupt or fascists and say the Democrats are not. They have absolutely no impartiality in the way they look at the world.
There are hundreds of thousands of regulations carrying criminal penalties. If a political party is determined to imprison an opponent, it will find a law they’ve technically violated. In Trump’s case, they used an obscure accounting rule — one so trivial that even prominent Democratic supporters acknowledged it was an inappropriate basis for prosecution.
Hillary Clinton used a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and in 2014, her staff deleted 31,000 emails they labeled personal to prevent them from being scrutinized in an impending investigation. You don't think that if Hillary had been a Republican and if the Democrats were determined to prosecute her, they couldn't have found some law that she broke and prosecuted her on it?
Wait. What do you think about Hegseth's signal and atlantic reporter issue? That is wildly worse and where is the court case that absolutely should be happening?
we are not banana republic (just yet, getting there though) so anyone that breaks a law under a given statute you file charges, run an investigation and punish if law(s) are broken. if memory serves me well there was one :) can’t say the same for Hegseth et al but night is young so-to-speak…
The prosecution record, where Trump and dozens of his allies were prosecuted, is the record of a banana republic.
Like I said there's hundreds of thousands of regulations which hold the potential for criminal sanction. They could have found her guilty of something when she deleted those emails. The SDNY DAG found a way to charge the developers of Tornado Cash with running an illegal money transmission service when they didn't even hold it in custody of any funds, they simply published code. They stretched the law to incredible lengths to get someone they wanted. And they couldn't find something to pin on Hillary Clinton? Ridiculous.
They didn't for political reasons and you're naive or dishonest for believing otherwise.
Yes it was them following the law and being unbiased.
Many of the people involved in prosecuting them are Republicans. Trump is the most corrupt president we've ever had and many of his allies are similarly corrupt.
These days they know they just have to follow the maga line to get out of jail free. The Attorney General of Texas was so ridiculously corrupt he was about to be impeached by Texas Republicans but then he just claimed it was a witchhunt against maga got Trump on his side and suddenly impeachment was cancelled and he's polling a win in the next Senate primary.
Also Trump supported an attempted violent coup in addition to things like telling the Georgia Secretary of State to find him votes after the voting.
Trump has been described as a threat to democracy by many leading conservatives and Republicans. Many of them have had their careers ended and been slandered by former associates despite being conservative who had dedicated decades to the party while Trump doesn't care about ideology or party or outcomes only himself.
> in a series of interviews published Tuesday, saying the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and that he spoke of the loyalty of Hitler’s Nazi generals.
> He also confirmed to The Atlantic that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War II, and recounted the moment.
> Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” Kelly told The Atlantic he’d asked Trump. He added, “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler
Copy-pasting my response to a similar partisan talking point:
--
There are hundreds of thousands of regulations carrying criminal penalties. If a political party is determined to imprison an opponent, it will find a law they’ve technically violated. In Trump’s case, they used an obscure accounting rule — one so trivial that even prominent Democratic supporters acknowledged it was an inappropriate basis for prosecution.
Hillary Clinton used a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and in 2014, her staff deleted 31,000 emails they labeled personal to prevent them from being scrutinized in an impending investigation. You don't think that if Hillary had been a Republican and if the Democrats were determined to prosecute her, they couldn't have found some law that she broke and prosecuted her on it?
--
What you're claiming is absolutely absurd. This idea that Trump leads a criminal enterprise and everyone affiliated with him is corrupt and that's why so many were prosecuted and not that this is the same politicization of the justice system you see all over the world and Democrats, with the tacit support of establishment Republicans, trying to imprison their opponents.
I also want to make it absolutely clear that it is all about framing. From your beltway-manufactured frame, Trump instigated January 6th, and this amounted to insurrection. But a much more reasonable framing is that leading Democrats instigated over 500 riots in the summer of 2020, and are instigating the current riots too:
Kamala Harris even tweeted this out, to bail out rioters:
> “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”
Of course the mainstream news media journalists who are all unionized and thus economically aligned with the Democratic Party barely cover this or criticize it.
Yeah, only the issue here is that @realFascists are in opposition to Trump. And reading this text in that light - it check out and not really a news.
Also, frankly, you folks need to stop monopolizing these topics, based on highly polarized ideological filter, because even before Trump there was dissatisfaction about how Musk monopolized NASA contracts on the promise, that he would deliver more efficient and cheaper solution, while in reality the result is that NASA is currently paying more for Musks private solutions, than when it had to do it by itself. There are sure many other options to what Musk offers and if Trump is there to break up that monopoly and open up the market, then it is a win situation.
>there was dissatisfaction about how Musk monopolized NASA contracts on the promise, that he would deliver more efficient and cheaper solution, while in reality the result is that NASA is currently paying more for Musks private solutions, than when it had to do it by itself
SLS, NASA's rocket, costs $2.5 billion, PER LAUNCH.
That’s all very nice but according to Trump this only suddenly became a problem only a few weeks ago due to some reason. So whatever you are saying has absolutely no relevance to this decision making. If Musk continued licking his boots he’d be doing fine..
I think double standards would be a better term than hypocricy. Hypocricy would imply the pretense to be bound by certain rules, but the whole point of fascism is that those in power are not bound by any rules. They only make rules to bind others. I don't see any hypocricy in the openly advertised corruption of the current administration, it's just plain evil of the “we do it because we can” sort.
> It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
In history textbooks, it's known as the spoils system.
hopefully this time around it will go a little quicker, aka one term. project 2025 specifically pointed out all "disloyal" government employees should be kicked out and only those who bent a knee to trump should replace them, whatever their actual merit and ability to occupy the position
Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in the US, especially at the local and state level. The main difference is a significant portion of governance was temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root.
The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive, leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing the power of checks and balances.
There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku in Japan, and François Mitterrand in France tried to decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
Low-level corruption at the local/state level is related but its effects are different though. In fact even today low level corruption in the US is extremely low by global standards - you can't bribe your way to a drivers license openly, for example. I'm sure it happens but it's not common or openly boasted about (parts of CA or DC could be an exception).
Here the corruption is openly displayed as a kind of peacock-tail to the beneficiaries.
I'd rather not have a whole discussion over this atm (I'm out rn - maybe later), but I recommend reading Yuen Yuen Ang's paper on "Unbundling Corruption" - there are different typographies of what "corruption" is, and some nations have always had a similar type of corruption compared to others.
In addition, low level corruption is orthogonal to grand corruption as can be seen in Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and the US.
Finally, Indian public discourse around corruption is non-targeted, and fails to contextualize significant institutional differences in how local, state, and federal governments operate in India compared to other states (be they democratic like the US or authoritarian like China).
[Feel free to add questions or points of contention, but I won't be able to reply quickly]
Fine, I don't disagree with anything you point out. However where we differ is that I believe identity politics is the trigger factor here, all the other changes you mention (loss of balance of power etc) are downstream of this.
Your causal diagram is backwards. Identity politics isn't the path to corruption. Corrupt politicians like Trump use identity politics to gain power to practice their corruption. Nobody who wanted to bring back Christian hegemony and re-oppress minority groups is cheering that Trump is threatening to take away contracts from Musk because "their side is winning."
But in the US, “minority” means “less poticial power”. By any reasonable measure straight white “Christian” men should be about 20% of the population, yet somehow they have 80% of political power.
> Identity politics isn't the path to corruption. Corrupt politicians like Trump use identity politics to gain power to practice their corruption.
These two sentences, taken together, lead me to exactly the opposite conclusion—exploitation of identity politics allows one to gain power to enact corruption. You play into what people want by being the savior they think they need and then once in power do whatever the hell you wanted in the first place.
Idpol can exacerbate corruption. There are strong feedback dynamics.
And to reply to the comment above yours, there are material factors upstream of idpol. It's not a coincidence that sort of thing is in renaissance across the world.
> you can't bribe your way to a drivers license openly
No but when it comes to local government contracts, building permits and similar stuff its quite different. Also a lot of (what sane people would consider) corruption is legal and institutionalized.
i.e. bribing politicians running for office is perfectly legal and entirely expected by all sides (that Americans are so open about this is quite unique).
The notion that this kind of politicization started in the 90s is fanciful revisionism. It wasn’t really a thing in the US until about 2017. The word it’s known by is Trumpism.
I'm familiar with the rise of talk radio, News Corp, Web propaganda, alt-right, etc., in politics and public sentiment.
What's new to me is that the last couple decades might be a reversion to a pre-war mode of US governance.
(I know WW2 was unifying in some ways, as we'd expect, but I don't recall much from school about how US politics was played before then, other than punctuated events like the Civil War, civil rights movement, etc.)
its revisionism to say that the US has been free of politicization this bad. for most of its history, not counting the civil war very minor (and very major) issues sparked massacres, revolts, and even minor wars between states.
First off, Trump skyrocketed to political fame with his nonsense claims about Obama's citizenship.
The slide started in the 80's when Reagan killed off the 'fairness doctrine' which meant news outlets could present completely one-sided coverage of an issue.
Couple that with massive consolidation of newspapers and TV news stations where all the programming is heavily coordinated and groups like Sinclair started pushing identically worded "false news" narratives across all their stations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo
9/11 was a big turning point in my experience. American conservatives that I considered online friends were simple impossible to reason with within days and completely alien beings after a few weeks.
Interesting. Things did change on 9/11 but it seemed incremental to me. Before that was the constant investigation of Clinton by Gingrich, the dog whistling of Reagan, Nixon's Southern Strategy, and before that to McCarthy and so on.
This is high level rather than your direct experience, so it's not a contradiction. Just a different perspective.
Yes. Almost everything about our current situation can be traced back to Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. Things were much more civil and reasonable before that point.
I don’t know. Nixon had goons breaking into the DNC headquarters (and his whole southern strategy led to racially polarized politics up to this day), and there was that senator who got beaten by another senator just before the civil war. Eisenhower waited in the car rather than attend a meeting with Truman on his inauguration.
Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace to avoid impeachment when it came out. The dude in the White House now did much worse and he was rewarded with reelection.
It has actually been a gradual process for decades from the John Birch Society to Paul Harvey to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to Dick Cheney to Citizens United to Donald Trump.
Edit: Forgot Pat Buchanan. He belongs in there somewhere.
It started before 2017. The right adopted identity politics as a response to the left doing so. Note that even NY Times word usage is a lagging indicator -- this is a case of prestige media picking up trends which originated on social media such as tumblr.
Vox even wrote a defense of the shift back in 2015, with an article called "All politics is identity politics":
Are you tracking actual identity politics or the term "identity politics"? Because the meaning of the term applies just as much to ending slavery, womens' suffrage and civil rights movements.
Otherwise, you might as well argue that fake news only existed from 2016 onwards, because that's when Google Trends says it did.
>the meaning of the term applies just as much to ending slavery, womens' suffrage and civil rights movements.
I'm not sure that's true. E.g. Martin Luther King Jr spoke of the "magnificent words" in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Modern activists would say: "Written by dead pale male slaveholders. We need more diversity! Where are the voices of women and POC?" For King, ideas took precedence over identities. For modern activists, it's the opposite.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was predominantly white. That's puzzling for a movement driven by identity politics. It does make sense for a movement driven by universal humanitarian ideals.
In any case, if you still think I'm wrong, and identity politics is an essential force behind trends such as the civil rights movement -- then I suppose you'll be happy that it's being adopted by the political right in the United States? Since it's got such a great historical track record, surely results will be good? ;-)
>Otherwise, you might as well argue that fake news only existed from 2016 onwards, because that's when Google Trends says it did.
This is a bad analogy, because fake news itself doesn't use the term "fake news". If "fake news" was an ideology which was characterized by particular terminology, we could graph the use of that terminology to document the rise of the ideology. That's what's being done here.
In any case, I do believe that "fake news" (in the narrow sense of websites which write completely bogus news, with no effort at reporting, to drive clicks) is a phenomenon which has, in fact, become more widespread relatively recently (due to the ease of internet publishing etc.) So that's another way in which your analogy is invalid. Fake news did increase in popularity when Trump was the GOP candidate, relative to when Romney was the GOP candidate. And Google Trends helps illuminate that!
I think our definitions of "identity politics" differ too much to have a useful discussion about it. I'm going off the most common definitions I can find (eg dictionaries, wikipedia), but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place.
> It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
Agreed, and I was born here. I was taught we expressly want to reject those things, and now it's all the fashion. It feels like a temper tantrum from a third of the electorate, a rejection of adulthood and reason.
It's because we tried to take down the 'no girls or brown people' sign.
All of this is a long temper tantrum about Obama and then Mrs Clinton, emphasis on the Mrs.
If I had a time machine I would take documentation back and convince someone that we need a few more Old White Guys to let the GOP's base unrustle their jimmies for a bit.
I predicted something like this coming back in the late 90's, not that anyone should have listened to me about civics. I say 'like this', but... not like this. And if I had someone would have requested "wellness checks" (which is American for 'check to see if we can have him involuntarily committed to a mental facility) on my behalf.
My notion back then was that the vibe of the country was such that a black man would need to be elected before a white woman was a serious contender. But that there would have to be a delay. When you rush progress you can spin out. And fuck if we haven't spun out.
Maybe they'll go for a whip-smart gay man next term? Who knows.
>It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
So how could one design a political system so this behavior doesn't emerge / is not incentivized?
In no way this is a good example of such a system, but I still find Bosnia and Herzegovina political system absolutely hilarious. After Dayton peace agreement the literally put ethnicity requirement for presidents to Constitution as a hard rule. One Bosnian, one Serb and one Croatian. And yes, the country is ran by 3 presidents at the same time. So there is no longer a competition whether the main guy in the country will be theirs or ours.
There were two guys: a Roma and a Jew in BiH who also wanted to take the president office. However according to Constitution they didn't have a chance. So they went to EU Human Rights Court to look for a justice. The court told the country it's kinda racist to have a rule like that and they should change it. This was like 15 years ago. Guess whether the rule has changed since then. (Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina for more details).
PS. If you find 3 presidents not fascinating enough, then google for High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Northern Ireland has a similar system, with an executive built on a forced coalition.
The executive is led by a First Minister and Deputy First Minister (despite the difference in title, they have exactly equal powers), who are selected from the largest party representing each of the two main communities.
Major decisions require cross-community support - at least 50% of all those voting AND 50% of the representatives of each of the two communities, OR 60% of all those voting AND 40% of the representatives of each of the two communities.
On paper, it seems slightly absurd... but in practice, it's a reasonable way to deal with deeply divided societies.
I like this term "forced coalition". How about a traditional parliamentary system where a supermajority is required to pass legislation?
I assume if you need 70% to pass legislation then you get a grand coalition pretty much every time?
I guess it could incentivize brinkmanship among coalition partners though, since the leader of the coalition has less leverage if a small party threatens to quit?
When I put my programmer hat on, there's something inelegant about this approach, because it involves hardcoding the words "Bosnian", "Serb", and "Croatian" into the constitution.
It seems like with a sufficiently clever electoral rule, you could generate a small "national steering committee" with an odd number of members, where each major faction is guaranteed representation. But that also sounds a lot like a parliament where there's one party for each ethnic group, and then we're back where we started?
What happens when the 3 presidents disagree? Maybe the trick is to incentivize consensus-driven decisionmaking?
>What happens when the 3 presidents disagree? Maybe the trick is to incentivize consensus-driven decisionmaking?
That's where High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina comes into play. This is external guy appointed by the EU (US also was participating in the appointment in the beginning, but they withdrew themselves from the process quite a few years ago). This guy has the power to fire any (like ANY) politician in the country. And the permission to overrule or enforce any law.
This guy is probably controlled by EU and can't turn into dictatorship mode, but you never know. At the very least two times presidents were fired due to political disagreement.
EU considered to discontinue this practice, but local people encouraged EU to leave things as is. Cause nobody trusts politicians and the systems is still pretty corrupt.
Anyway, whatever decision presidents have to make, all 3 must agree. That's why a lot of controversial topics are hanging for eternity (e.g. recognition of Kosovo).
When country was trying to choose a national flags, all the parts couldn't find the agreement for a long time. That's why High Representative just approved his own version nobody really liked. So today if you visit the country, you will find Serbian flag in the parts where Serbs live and Croatian flags in the part with Croats. Actual country flag normally is in the parts where majority is Bosnian.
having three is interesting because it gives a way to break ties. how do they handle candidates with mixed ethnicity, though? or the Serbians and Croatians converging, while the Bosnians move farther apart from both?
This has not emerged due to the political system, this has emerged due to the issues in the information economy.
The core issue is that news cannot compete with entertainment, and the firms that appeared after Murdoch on the right, insulate themselves and their politicians from the need to be accurate.
The cycle is essentially:
1) Fringe theory appears on the internet
2) Fringe theory is picked up by Notable Person (Someone who is able to come on Prime time Television)
3) Notable comes onto media network and repeats fringe theory
4) Reporting can now cover Fringe Theory as main stream
This economy of ideas shares little with the processes on the center and the left. People who come up with counter arguments don’t end up getting amplified.
This has demolished the exchange and debate of Ideas, and it has worked in all liberal democracies. Implacable Partisanship has been rewarded.
Get rid of FPTP and the Electoral College that enables a two-party stranglehold. If a vote for a third party wasn't a wasted vote, we could see nuanced parties and politicians emerge that don't have to tow a party line.
FPTP is what makes Reform so dangerous though. They have a real chance of having a lot of power. In a proportional representation system where parties have to share power in coalitions these extreme parties actually have to be involved in government, at which point they’re exposed as completely incompetent. See the Netherlands right now for example. I would rather have these extreme positions represented, because they will be represented poorly. It takes wind out of the populist sails, where they can no longer simply promise everything until they’re in power and completely destroy the country.
I think FPTP ends up working out a lot different in the parliamentary context. The US only has 2 parties in Congress, despite FPTP.
In terms of strength of 3rd parties, I'd say they are generally quite weak in the US system, somewhat stronger in a proportional representation parliamentary system, and potentially overpowered in a FPTP parliament like in the UK.
Historically I believe the 2-party system in the US was pretty good at tamping down on extremism, but recently the 2 major parties have acquired too many extremists.
Does it? Could you explain which mechanism you suggest using? Because the main results from social choice theory about ranked choice voting that come to mind seem to be all about impossibility of fair elections (eg Arrow) or even paradoxical situations such as cyclic preferences (eg Condorcet).
How about not creating a precarious underclass with lack of (higher) education that is ready to vote for whatever solution promising to take down the system that made them so desperate for radical change?
If the functioning of your nation's political system depends on the functioning of your nation's education system or your nation's economy, you've created a circular dependency. The education system and the economy are themselves downstream of the political system. Dysfunction in one tends to create dysfunction in the others. See https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2004/Caplanidea.htm...
A good political system is one which continues to work well even when education and the economy suck, so societal self-repair is possible. Ideally it would actually start working better when things suck, so society becomes antifragile.
"More college diplomas" is not a great solution when existing graduates are already working at Starbucks. This is the "elite overproduction" which creates instability.
Yet Americans are still dissatisfied. Part of the problem is that our political system incentivizes candidates and media outlets to stir up dissatisfaction so they can exploit it. There's also envy / the hedonic treadmill.
I don't really buy the education argument. How do you "educate" somebody who lived through the first Trump administration and voted for more of the same? Let's get specific: what exactly did they miss in school that would have driven them towards a different decision?
At some point it's necessary to confront the uncomfortable truth: stupid people are easy for smart, ill-intentioned people to herd, which gives the latter a leg up in any democratic election.
This bug in democracy was there in the beginning. But it's only now, 2500 years later, that it can be exploited effectively enough to invalidate the whole concept.
> At some point it's necessary to confront the uncomfortable truth
Sometimes the truth is even more uncomfortable than “lots of people are stupid.” A much more insidious scenario is when there’s two groups with no major differences in education or access to facts, but one has a cultural which is actively and explicitly hostile to truth. In such scenarios, ever-escalating hostilities between the two groups is inevitable.
>This bug in democracy was there in the beginning. But it's only now, 2500 years later, that it can be exploited effectively enough to invalidate the whole concept.
Not sure where the 2500 number came from. The US is about 250 years old, and the founders were extremely wary of democracy based on its history prior to the US. The US constitution was designed to mitigate issues with democracy, e.g. that is the purpose of "checks and balances". By democracy standards, the US has been very successful; the average constitution only lasts 17 years: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/lifespan-written-constitut...
Nonetheless, you would think that the "technology" for writing constitutions would've evolved more in the past 250 years. And in fact, in the Federalist Papers, it is predicted that political technology will evolve, just like any other field of technology. Yet results there have been quite disappointing, if you ask me. There aren't that many interesting and innovative ideas in this area. Most people, even programmers, tend to get lost in the object level us-vs-them conflict instead of going meta with their creative algorithmic brain.
My comment is too old to edit, but I would like to issue a correction. I should not have written "This article estimates that the US is the #2 longest-lasting republic after the Roman Republic", since the caption for the figure in the article states something different ("Duration of Long-Lived Democracies", i.e. the word "democracy" is used rather than "republic", and also there wasn't a claim to "longest-lived")
I didn't get the impression that Athenian democracy was particularly successful. So it seemed weird to say that the flaws in democracy are only now becoming apparent.
In fact, I understand that CamperBob2's critique of democracy is quite similar to that of Socrates. So I'm puzzled by the claim that it's "only now" that the critique is being proven correct, given that US democracy is notably more stable and long-lived than Athenian democracy.
In general, I think times of turmoil are always much more salient when you yourself are living through them. We lack the historical perspective to understand how bad turmoil has been in the past.
The flaws in democracy were always apparent, and they've always been exploited by parties willing to do the dirty work. But they couldn't be exploited consistently and decisively. Now they can be.
Think of it this way: you can't reach people who don't read much by starting a newspaper, but you can reach them with Fox News and Twitter. Mix in a bit of that old-time religion -- Billy Graham with a side of sauce Bernays -- and the left-hand side of the bell curve is yours to do with as you please.
umm Switzerland disagrees with the assessment of the USA being the oldest democratic republic. If we are only speaking of republic, Portugal has been one since the 12th century, albeit there's been 10 or 11 iterations on the constitution, including Salazars so-called New State.
They missed that liberty and freedom is not a god-given right, but hard-earned privilege. They missed that liberty is not a personal property but a shared practice of pluralism. They missed that liberty is not absolute, but requires compromise and limitations so that we all can be free.
To be fair, those are not things that are taught in school. If they come up at all it is in some historical context, a battle someone else fought--and won. There is no mention that maintaining a liberal democracy requires effort and vigilance. Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen. The USA mostly does not even have such mechanisms and it shows.
>Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen.
Eh, "internal enemies of democracy" is way too vague. E.g. Trump supporters claim that "unelected bureaucrats" in the "deep state" are enemies of democracy. Anyone can call anyone an "enemy of democracy".
Those fighting democracies are very specific about what is and what is not irreconcilable. For example, in Germany you can murder the president--that's just homicide--but you cannot abolish the protection of minorities. That's a violation of the constitution. Germany's far-right party Alternative für Deutschland has been under suspicion of violating a few of those provisions for quite some time now.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (aka. Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) completed a report a few weeks ago but is required by law to withhold it from the public due to due process. Of course it leaked, you can read the report here [1] (it's in German, obviously).
Now there is a discussion ongoing, if the Alternative für Deutschland has to been dissolved. That's a fighting democracy at work, following the rule of law.
Me neither, but as the discussers point out, the Weimar Republic totally failed to apply serious consquences, e.g. Hitler's very short arrest after the Munich coup. Besides, the safeguards include more than limiting free speech.
Of course, those safeguards were designed in the late 1940s, so it's interesting, to say the least, how they cope with modern demagoguery. In any case it is worth a try.
Tangentially, that's a great site! I hadn't heard of FIRE before, but I'm glad they exist. I hope they don't get suborned by one side or the other.
I see it as a continuation of the American Civil War in politics. There was always this attitude but now people are more redicalized, so it's more obvious.
Voila, we've ended up with a low trust society with "petty corruption", which is generally considered harmful as it establishes something about that society that cannot be easily corrected unlike "grand corruption."
>>I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
+1
As an Indian, classic definition of corruption here is something that other people do. When our own do it, its not really called corruption, its more intelligent work done to make our people win.
Similar term is appeasement. It kind of means if people I hate are winning, they must be doing bad things or cheating. It is impossible that people I hate should do well in life.
This is a very important rule stated by the War Nerd: 'Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.'
A small human group is compatible with this tribal behavior because the bulk of actions (or at worst their effects) are quickly perceptible to everyone. The larger the group, the less each person understands what is happening, even the effects of what he does.
That's naive and you know it. A massive drive for him was electing the first black president. A less, but still not-insignificant drive was for Hillary as the first female president.
Thats your opinion, Obama could have been white, and he still would have been voted for by 99.9% of those who voted for him. Young Kennedy-like candidates are rare (eg Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) but are incredibly electable when they show up.
Towards the end of his presidency, most of us forgot he was even black. Just those white southerners and a certain old guy in New York who were fixated on his race from the beginning still thought he was a DEI elect.
There were hit songs about what a big moment it is that he was black. At least among minorities that was a massive deal. If you didn't see that, I think you're probably closer to those white southerners than you might think you are.
Can you imagine if mainstream entertainers made songs celebrating having a white president?
Given that all of them but one are white, what the point that would be? Songs are not because Obama is black, but because he was the first black on the role.
So you are opposed to fixating on people's race and yet there you are singling out white southerners. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
Most people forgot Obama was black except them, they are also the ones constantly accusing Obama of being racially divisive, they should just own what they say. This is kind of like Trump calling people names but then being greatly offended when someone calls him a name, right?
I’d be shocked if Hilary had a net benefit being a female candidate. We’ve had 2 chances to elect a female president and they both lost the general election with not that great turnout.
John McCain’s VP was female during 08 and he lost by a huge margin.
In a way yes. Kamala lost because she was the ultimate DEI candidate (in how own words that the only reason he picked her to be VP). Regardless of her personal skills or qualities it’s very hard to move past that..
Had she had a chance to prove that she could win a primary things might have been different
In a way yes. Kamala lost because she was the ultimate DEI candidate (in how own words that the only reason he picked her to be VP). Regardless of her personal skills or qualities it’s very hard to move past that..
Biden fucked up in many ways, but he also got a lot of flack from bad timing and poor messaging. It’s easy to say COVID hurt Trump in 20 and Kamala in 24, but I think the details mattered.
The inflation rate fell significantly under his presidency, but during periods of high inflation prices soared. Coming back from that after generations of extremely low inflation would have been tough for someone without failing facilities. I think a great politician could have weathered that storm, Biden wasn’t up to the task and Kamala’s messaging didn’t help.
Republicans getting out ahead on that inflation messaging similarly did wonders for Trump and other Republicans. Planting the idea that America somehow didn’t do well when we did far better than the rest of the world was brilliantly executed IMO.
Kamala probably wins in 2016? I mean this in a very nice way but I think you may want research the politics and candidates in the US a little more before bold statements such as that. Kamala was unable to even register on a scale in the primary and what noise she did make was to play a false game on which she essentially accused Biden of being racist filth. I think it is not just that she had no qualifications for office, we could argue about what constitutes a qualification for a long time, but she had no reasoning or theory of why she would even be someone yo run for office. She tablet in such incomprehensible ways that one could not even discern a point from her utterances. You may say the current president rambles but she think the point is always present. Kamala on her best days just spoke in long winded tautologies: “we are always doing each day the things we do every day” or whenever nonsense she chose to present to the public. Further, he main qualification to place herself as one of the poor people was to constantly talk about being a “middle class kid.” The problem is in her generation, the middle class did quite well for themselves so it was such a false premise. Let’s not discuss the accents.
That was not at all the main reason Obama got elected. He was charismatic, likable and promised hope and change. Why is it that the people who don't want identity politics to be a focus make it a focus?
"To all those who supported our campaign, I'm humbled by the faith you've
placed in us. To all of those who did not support us, let me say this. Hear me
out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart. If you still
disagree, so be it. That's democracy. That's America.
The right to dissent peaceably. Within the guardrails of our republic, it's
perhaps this nation's greatest strength. Yet hear me clearly: disagreement
must not lead to disunion. And I pledge this to you, I will be a president for all Americans, all Americans. And I promise you, I will fight as hard for those
who did not support me as for those who did."
Obama taught constitutional law and served in the state and US Senate before running for president. He was [not] some unqualified hack thrust into power because they needed a person of a different race in power.
Obama's campaign was far less about race than Trump's campaigns in 2016 and 2024. Unless you can't hear the dog whistles.
You can't claim that while claiming wanting to elect a black president wasn't a big driver in much of the turnout for Obama. There were multiple musicians literally making songs about finally being able to elect a black president.
Trump's initial popularity was due in no small part to the anger of American white supremacists and the alt-right, this was well documented even back in 2016[0,3]. That the President elected after Obama was the man who mainstreamed the birther conspiracies against Obama was not a coincidence. It wasn't entirely about Obama, but he was the straw that broke white America's back.
The social justice age wasn't a rejection of bigotry. It was a Mccarthy-esque movement of dividing everybody between sexual and racial lines into a hierarchy of who was and wasn't allowed to speak. Speaking against the party line meant exile.
The SJW/Wokeism movement had nothing to do with true equity and "rejection of bigotry". That's why there was such a revolt against it.
Of course, I didn't claim that the republicans aren't now doing everything they claimed to revolt against but worse. As it turns out "free speech" absolutism only applies to things that pwn the libz.
I call b*t. The reality is that the there is a outrage campaign in the right wing media trying to drive anger about some perceived victimhood in people who have largely been privaledged all their life. They would have found something else instead.
Obama was genuinely qualified to be president. Trump was clearly unfit in 2016 (having never held elected office and run nearly all his businesses into the ground), and constitutionally disqualified after Jan 6 2021.
Trump was also reluctant to denounce or criticize white nationalists. He repeated and reposted neo-Nazi content and phrases. He is the one ordering a zealous yet haphazard dismantling of anything that breathes the words racial equity, and without a hint of pushback from his voters.
So when Trump admitted on Howard Stern that he likes to walk in on naked teenage girls because his role of running the teen universe beauty pageant allows him to get away with that, that is ok because he wasn't running a campaign at the time?
>There are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously," and retweeted a false claim that 81% of white murder victims were killed by black people.
> "We've just seen many, many crimes getting worse all the time, and as Maine knows—a major destination for Somali refugees—right, am I right?"
Yeah I mean to be clear, I think Obama was a remarkable leader and it's hard to believe he once occupied the same seat DJT does today
He didn't explicitly use his race (the way Hillary often used her gender), but many who campaigned for him and large parts of his caucuses did. For better or for worse.
Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _pretend to care_ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
Human society is limited in the antidotes to human nature that it can code through law, institutions or culture. It’s the same species throughout 1930’s Germany and today.
We shouldn’t give up on law, institutions or culture, but accepting our failings instead of seeing humans as a perfectible project can at least give us solace in confusing times.
An entire cohort born between 1985~1995 reached their 30s in what they perceived as a far, far worse situation all around (financially foremost, but also almost every social aspect) than their parents.
For many reasons (including the ones above) it's difficult for any institution within reach of the US government to analyze how the alt-right took power but from what I can tell the US economy is in a slow burn. It's been receiving patches roughly once a presidency but it turns out you can't combine a lot of short term solutions to make a long term one. Fixing the economy would require bold decisions and the parties took two different directions. The Republican party realized that any bold policy would get votes regardless of any other factor including coherency. This is why Trump supporters, when asked about their logic usually give some form of "things are bad, and they didn't used to be".
To summarize, there are competing ideas for what got us here, but I think it was less of a real inciting event like WW1 and more of a breaking point that was eventually reached.
I have lived in Alberta my entire life and that used to be true here. It's different now. There's blatant corruption from our provincial government in the news every few months, but it seems like that's just accepted now. Things are not trending in a good direction in Canada.
The far right pretty much across the world is learning just how fragile and consensus-based the institutions of democracy are all at once. They're watching and learning from each other. Hence you have people like Bannon involved in similar tricks in multiple countries.
Obviously I can’t tell you what will happen in 10 years, but if the Prime Minister of Australia did even one days worth of Trumps actions he would be removed within a month or two.
Australia also doesn’t have an almost religious worship of politicians. Australians don’t identify as members of a particular party unless they literally are part of it.
There’s a huge difference between the US and Australia here that you slightly touch on - in Australia, the Prime Minister can be removed by the ruling party at any time vs the US where removing the sitting President can only be done via a handful of items from the Constitution
Don't play coy. If a small number of Republican representatives decided they would impeach Trump they would have absolutely no problem getting the votes they need and you know it. They don't do it because that's not what they want.
Republican representatives are lobbyists to the public for the 1%. It was clear that they hated Trump and wanted him out in his first run and what they want matters as much as what a car salesman wants for Ford.
I'm not sure America had that sort of cult thing pre Trump. JFK was pretty popular as was Regan but even they weren't the same. You guys do have a vote of no confidence which theoretically is easier to pull off then impeachment (majority vote)
Only with a lot of effort. I'm old enough to remember the ICAC in NSW and the CCC in Queensland (Joh Bjelke-Petersen was a bit before my time)... the widespread "travel expenses" fraud that permeated for YEARS.
Your government recently mandated technical capabilities for breaking encryption. Australians let that fly. There is nothing special about Australians, just as there is also nothing special about the British people who also did nothing when the UK mandated technical capabilities to break encryption.
One could even make the argument that the people of these two countries are even more pliant than Americans when they enable a key capability for totalitarian surveillance states without a blink.
There was nothing blatantly corrupt or illegal going on there, it went through the normal process and was unfortunately supported by both major parties. I’m not saying objectionable laws never get implemented. I’m saying the Prime Minister is not a dictator with limitless power.
I remember when certain social media networks argued that having a real name policy will lead to a more polite, kinder internet, because people won't be as rude with their real names attached to their posts. Turns out, people really don't care. I see the most vile, disgusting, racist, xenophobic shit on Facebook every single day, with real names and pictures showing smiling happy people hugging their kids on every one of them. Like you said - people don't feel any need to care about honesty, character, or even appearance of politeness or good manners.
I think they might have figured out that a lot of that honesty and character was a facade. Is the false appearance of morality better than just showing yourself as you really are?
You mean that people lie and cheat? That's always been the case. The point of honesty and character is precisely that they reflect a person's ability to value a higher good than their immediate self-interest. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The fact that reputation has been subjected to unprecedented arms race in the face of the internet and social media doesn't fundamentally change the game, it just makes it more exhausting and overwhelming to pay attention to.
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
This is what a fascist dictatorship looks like. You have a leader who adheres to the persona of a strong man perpetually fighting against enemies who are both too weak and too strong, and at the drop of a hat their enemies change. Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law, so he is supported in arbitrarily abusing and corrupting the state for his own personal benefit because his personal victories are sold as a show of stength.
The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are now living under a totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the world is already well aware.
It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the election campaign and a major advisor to the president now declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes of his supporters, what does this say about Musk?
(Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant; what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to know is a pedophile).
That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting influence of power.
Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults could come in and run the country / companies.
I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first sentence.
Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child rape is resolved this way).
Not only that but Musk was able to successfully argue in court that he's such a well known liar that a reasonable person wouldn't take his accusations of pedophillia seriously
Fox news attempted this defense in court "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but that was also Trump's family's response to the financial statements related to his businesses when it came up in court. But I don't remember which court case it was.
That was the one where he told the IRS the buildings he owned were worth $(x)M for tax purposes, but was simultaneously having them valued at $(10x)M for loan collateral purposes.
He was sued for that by the guy and won his trial by convincing the judge that "pedo" is actually common Afrikaner lingo, and it was a casual insult. This country is a joke.
Also doesn't remove the fact Trump was one of Epstein's closest friends, and everything points to him being involved in some way or the other in those affairs.
Musk's brother was introduced to his girlfriend by Epstein.
Epstein mentored a young model who went onto be a neurosurgeon and married Microsoft's Sinofsky.
Bill Gates had a meeting with Epstein during which an ex-girlfriend of Epstein's who was once Miss Sweden just happened to turn up with her 15 year old daughter.
I'd quite like someone to investigate if our billionaires are being honeypotted left, right and center because it appears you can control a big swathe of the world's wealth if you get old rich nerds laid.
It's still not clear if Epstein made his money by blackmailing yet another Billionaire.
Trump/Epstein connections have been reported on for years with photos and videos so anyone who cares probably was already on the anti-Trump side.
While Musk has a bigger megaphone than most media, he also has a credibility issue - and now especially for the Trump-true-believer crowd that is likely the only group whose bubble would be so shielded that they'd see it as news.
trump was one of the people that originally provided all they knew about epstein to the prosecutors, and once he realized what epstein was, he was banned from all trump venues. What did other do?
It's kind of his pointless go-to A-bomb insult, yet, this time, it's within the realm of possibility. I mean, I don't not believe it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
theoretically he might have discovered this after he had paid for Trump's win.
I despise the guy but it's entirely possible that he was blind to the publicly available evidence before seeing the secret evidence.
Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that. However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has actually been public information for a long time. It's known that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no evidence he went to the island or did something wrong.
It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult, rather than a serious accusation.
When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons explicitly not about any pedophile rings.
So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's because he just learned of it.
I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act? What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the president of the US might.
(Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think this is a fight between two nasty people).
>>>What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
I think you might have bigger issues here. Trump has links to mafia - and that is a fact. I'm more interested on what he was doing in regards to Ukraine, as post Soviet mafia(Georgian-Soviet Jewish mix in NY) via NY US Italian? mafia helped him a lot and gave him loans for his projects. Over the time Kremlins took over Soviet mafia and incorporated it - it might sound like a joke, but it is the truth - all the countries have mafia, but in Russia mafia is running country.
So, from the actions of Trump on how he is dealing with Ukraine, Trump is no better than Biden and Democrats that were frozen by fear because of the threats that Putin said. Which is good... if you want to see fireworks of nuclear weapons in action, because US actions(and inactions) are enabling that. Putin will use nukes on US - for many reasons - mainly because Putin is not at fault here and is misunderstanding American mindset, which is not completely decommissioned by Democrats.
From what I understand Musk simply has no leverage what Kremlin mafia has over Trump, also Musk is autistic who has no training on how to influence other people the way how Putin(could be slightly autistic, as he is mirroring what Russians want - just like Hitler did) does as he is blunt and uses brutal force, which people as social beings does not appreciate.
There is also significant difference between Trump and Musk - Trump can say things bluntly, but he also can operate on personal level and have different attitude to very important people - also he likes flattery.
Musk has only one of those qualities - he can say things bluntly(but without confidence and aura of power), but as autistic he is completely unaware of when he should really shut up when he is not in control of situation.
PS Trump, Musk, even the opposition to me are insects and entomology of humans is just a hobby to me.
Unlike most of people from US(and apparently people that can't understand that they are not part of US) I have my own thoughts, that I don't have a need to resonate and change in frequency according to some general line of one side or other.
Trump was Epstein's best friend according to the latter, in his conversations with the ghostwriter that would write his memoirs. There are videos of the two at 1990s parties, judging women and laughing together. Trump was also mentioned in Epstein's black book.
I feel like you downplay their relations with your "Trump had some relations with Epstein". There is definitely something fishy as to why they still haven't released the entirety of the files, and lie about having done so.
To be fair Elon claimed that Trump is mentioned in the remainder of files which have yet to be released. Presumably what evidence there is of wrongdoing, if it exists, exists there.
"Pedo guy" Musk being Musk, though, who knows? What is the likelihood Musk would even have access to those files if they were so damning to Trump and still sealed?
Nothing about this is "quite obvious." It could go either way. To be honest I wouldn't put it past either one of them to be on Epstein's "list."
I think the tone of the message would be way more serious if it was a serious accusation based on actual evidence. Now it reads like a kindergarten level conspiracy theory, which almost seems like a joke. The silly claim was that Trump being in the files is the reason why they aren't released.
It is also interesting, that many people here somehow have no issues with trump cancelling federal contracts with Harvard, prohibiting student visas for harvard, firing entire sections of NSF, NIH, NOAA, but when it comes to contracts with spacex, they react.
There's plenty of threads about all of those issues here on Hacker News - why do you think the people reacting to SpaceX didn't also react to the rest?
Some people do react to all, but the parent comment that I commented on just mentioned the spacex situation, like it's something new, while this is just the continuation of what's be going on for months.
And I've certainly seen people on HN trying to defend grant cancellations, Harvard attacks, NSF firings etc. I obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions are on the spacex threats, but I conjecture, that many of them don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on universities, science agencies.
Cancelling contracts out of spite or for revenge without due process is wrong in all cases. Including SpaceX. Though I have to say it’s entertaining to see Musk’s own companies be effectively DOGE’d.
> I conjecture, that many of them don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on universities, science agencies.
This is a good point. If you imagine something in your head in a particular way, it is not the same as if you imagine it differently in your head. For example, if I imagine that all dogs are boys and all cats are girls, it paints a different picture of the world than if I imagine that there are both male and females of both animals.
"Not commenting" does not necessarily translate into "having no issues".
Too much stuff is happening, not everyone comments on everything, and frankly your comment is only helpful to the administration by dividing its opponents.
If you want to see any efficient pushback at all, don't apply purity litmus tests to your potential allies.
6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are Supreme Court justices.
All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity".
Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of its way to say you can't even examine the communications between the president and the DoJ.
This contract dispute has nothing to do with Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Cancelling SpaceX contracts for political reasons would be wrong but not criminal.
The point is we won’t find out because presidential immunity also protects against discovery. Cases that previously could have been decided on the merits won’t even make it to adjudication.
It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for government ministers.
We have legislative immunity called the speech and debate clause. It doesn't shield lawmakers from other crimes, nor should it, and it certainly doesn't imply some sort of expansive executive immunity.
The founders were rebelling agaisnt an untouchable executive, remember?
If the founders thought it was so important the President not have immunity from all crimes they would have written it such rather than leaving it to interpretation.
> If the founders thought it was so important the President not have immunity from all crimes they would have written it such
They did; by writing in explicit immunities for some constitutional officers for certain activities, they implicitly rejected other immunities for those and other constitutional officers, by the legal principle “expressio unius est exclusio alterius”.
Well if the constitution does not explicitly grant a certain right it can’t just appear out of nowhere? At this point it’s about the “spirit” of the constitution not what is in the document itself since there is no mention of presidential immunity.
On the other hand it does grant the members of congress immunity under certain circumstances so it’s unlikely they just forgot about the president when writing it.
This sounds like an utopian take or a case of "the grass is greener on the other side".
Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
I am inclined to agree with Acemoglu that good institutions are more important than virtues of the population.
>This sounds like an utopian take or a case of "the grass is greener on the other side".
Well, it wasn't. It's a take made by the 2nd president of the United States, John Adams:
"John Adams said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[1] Morality and virtue are the foundation of our republic and necessary for a society to be free. Virtue is an inner commitment and voluntary outward obedience to principles of truth and moral law. Private virtue is the character to govern oneself according to moral law at all times. Public virtue is the character to voluntarily sacrifice or subjugate personal wants for the greater good of other individuals or the community. Specific moral virtues include charity, justice, courage, temperance, reverence, prudence, and honesty"
This is in a sense self evident because any self governing society can only function if its people are equipped with the reason, morality, and temperament to sustain it. Appealing to "good institutions" is tautological. The reason why some places have good institutions and others have bad institutions is precisely because of character of the people who build and maintain them.
> But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
They're right, but it's a significantly smaller percentage than the US, small enough to not do nearly as much damage as the US counter-part population does.
That Dane or Swiss person will also readily agree how shocking the average education level of the average American is.
> Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
It seems like both of those can easily be true at the same time.
The delusional conspiracy theory Trump won the 2020 election, in order to justify January 6 violence and then pardoning those criminals as his first act as POTUS redux.
Trump sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the United States when he (Mike Pence) refused Trump’s order to overturn that election.
Trump’s longest serving chief of staff said Trump is, A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
The bigotry of low expectations is thinking people are too stupid to know this, rather than understanding 1/3 are anti-American illiberal shitbirds.
Just because they failed to get it once before doesn’t mean they didn’t try and keep on trying.
A vote for a rapist, a felon, and vile insurrectionist is voting in support of abuse. And now we’re getting abused.
The new reality. Every corporate decision made today now must involve an analysis of the local and national government authority, thier political leanings and thier tendancy towards vindictivness.
Does anyone not think that every major corporation is not commissioning psychological reports on certain US leaders? They have public affairs and social media consultants to gauge public reactions. Now they need head shrinks to tell them if and how the guy in the big office might react, be that a state governor, the president, or any number of politically-minded media owners.
Why pay shrinks when you can pay baksheesh to political underlings who claim to be connected? Sure, most of them aren’t, but corruption is a statistics game. You spend $100k on that one guy who really does sleep with the masseuse of the astrologist for dear leader, and it can be a 10,000% return in days.
That said I think SpaceX is the only service even in the running for said contracts. Nasa doesnt have the capability, and Boeing is quite a way behind. There was already speculation that SpaceX would have to take on Boeings commitments for Artemis.
Likewise that Elon can say Trump is “ungrateful” that be received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew the nomination for Elon’s NASA administrator. It’s just open bribery.
American democracy died on the day the supreme court overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US politics is a mere playground for billionaires and corporations.
Nah, America was on this trajectory from watergate. The day the other party decided they wanted to give up on bipartisan efforts, and started primary-ing their own for bipartisan behavior, you took a step down this path.
With the advent of Murdoch’s papers and news efforts, the infinite money and credibility glitch allowed for these specific circumstances to occur.
The question is whether the information economy is downstream of the political economy, or vice versa.
That's a different problem. Toxic bipartisanship has been around for a long time with supporters and opponents. But a single billionaire outright buying a candidate to the point where he can claim that the president would not be in office without him is madness.
This is madness from the perspective of a general citizen point of view.
The mechanisms which were broken, that let these events come to pass - these began with the decision to end bipartisanship by republicans.
This isn’t about toxic bipartisanship, which isn’t even an issue. Unadulterated partisanship as a political strategy, is the start.
The enablement is the news ecosystem that was set up to defend these actions, and eventually launched the conversations entirely out of the gravitational well of facts and norms.
This is misleading (it is approximately correct if you look only at candidate committee spending, but it excludes outside spending—where the advantage went the other way, and the outside spending in 2024 exceeded campaign committee spending.)
Even if the figure itself weren't misleading, basing the argument around it is. The problematic dynamic isn't that the most money makes for a guaranteed win - rather it's that whomever does manage to win will be inclined to work for their major sponsors, especially if they will be up for reelection.
That figure does not include outside supporters spending campaigns. It's disingenuous to not include dark money spending.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/final-price-t...
It's closer to 1.8 billion for Harris supporters versus 1.4 billion for Trump supporters in 2024. That also does not include various media outlets bought in the past decades, including One America News/Fox/Sinclair sandbagging for Trump for the last eight years, at this point, shouldn't one include the budget for Fox News and OAN and Sinclair not to mention the spiking of negative news stories/opinions by LA Times/Washington Post? Even CNN was bought in past year by conservative and the leading story last month for a while was Jake Tapper's book about Biden.
Strong upvote. The Murdoch succession drama is one of the most important things affecting the future of US democracy. There are a lot of smaller and even more radical networks, but I don't think they have the reach and influence of Fox.
FOX is indeed all in for Trump. But on the other side of the ledger, there is the media that was all in for Biden - NPR, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, NYT, etc., during the same time period.
Oh heck no! This is the error in comparison that is allowing an unfair competition between the left + center vs the Right wing information economies.
The whole point of journalism and freedom of speech was to create a market place of ideas that allows for competition between ideas.
The right side of the information sphere insulates its viewers from the left and center. They do not get punished by their own for platforming inaccurate or fringe theories. Instead they compete on getting the more viral narrative platformed, while voices that counter the inaccuracies do not get platformed.
They are a demagoguery machine. The political party and news media are the same entity.
The left and center are largely stuck with the ideas of being relatively true to facts, getting punished by members for getting things wrong.
There are people on the left which are trying to recreate the success of the fringe right, which has become the core base on the right.
They are starting a decades long process, that began around watergate.
The counterpoint is that there is no rational or sane defense of Trump. The rest of the media criticized Biden plenty, arguably way too much in their attempts to be seen as neutral. Meanwhile there is almost nothing good about Trump. So if they write like 90% stories that seem to be against Trump it means they're biased towards Trump.
Almost regardless of political positions it's hard to argue Trump is fit or qualified to be president. He is openly corrupt, persuing an economic policy the vast majority of Conservative economists think is idiotic, and has called our veterans losers. Has never held any other government post has no knowledge of government policies and worse doesn't care to learn. Even though his ignorance is causing a lot of damage including to his voters he doesn't seem to care to learn about how any policy stuff works.
To counter that you need media like Fox or worse OAN/News Max to put out propaganda because it's impossible for even the most partisan person to defend him if they're an honest and thoughtful person
I invite you to spend an hour watching Fox News and then an hour listening to NPR and still claim those are just two sides of the same coin. The level of bias, propaganda, and active misinformation is so much greater on Fox News and it’s not even close. They’re not even pretending to factually report the news anymore. Every single piece is straight propaganda for the Republican Party. The best example of this difference is how mainstream media responded to Biden’s disastrous debate performance. The New York Times and CNN were covering it pretty blisteringly from the get go. There was no sugar coating it. Compare that to how Fox News spins the daily depravity of the Trump administration, and it speaks for itself
On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.)
I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
> but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin.
The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was:
a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight, with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the country at the mercy of international creditors looking for deals heavily tilted in their favour
c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of confidence in the country's currency and ability to service its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.
Yeltsin was the strongman ruler of the 90s. When parliament wouldn't kowtow to him, he launched a bloody coup and then rewrote the constitution to consolidate power in his office.
The only thing that he was truly unsuccessful at as a politician was failing to shrug off some bullshit credit card bribery scandal.
When you've deployed tanks and mortars against the lawful government, and everyone's fine with that I can't understand why you'd let a few thousands dollars that you put on a company credit card bring you down.
> Present circumstances in America aren't that different.
They are different, in the sense that all the damage happening right now is both unnecessary and self-inflicted. Russia needed to do something to transition from the USSR. Shock therapy was a terrible 'something', but it's at least possible to see how it got there.
> an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
Probably can't mention Yeltsin in the context of strongmen without mentioning the shelling of the parliament building.
If you really want to find out the reasons why USSR failed I suggest reading “Collapse the fall of Soviet Union” by Zubok or “Collapse of an Empire” by Gaidar. They are easy to read books. Said reasons are quite different from what is going on in USA at the moment.
You are completely missing Gorbachev, the fall began with him. He was a good guy, but a bit naive within soviet situation. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY hated russians. That's where brutal oppression came from for rest of soviet republics, that's where eastern Europe satellites were invaded and controlled from via strong firm hand (and many military bases). I know this damn well as I was raised thre and saw first hand the continuous destruction of what we would call normal society that russians brought along with them everywhere they went.
When the soviet empire twitched a bit and seams became just slightly more loose, everybody run the fuck away from them. You can't be literally enslaved for 2 generations and ignore whats around you and whats happening to all your citizens, family, friends, yourself. Not when you clearly see how west has technological, moral and societal advantage in its approach and its getting bigger every year. The only exception is Belarus, and the only reason is that the dicktator there needs desperately strong continuous backing or he would be brought down in quick coup.
The fall didn't begin with Gorbachev, it began with the communist party being clueless at adapting to new situations, essentially what China managed to do after Mao, the Soviets didn't after Stalin and the rest. The regime ossified and fell apart, at first slowly and then rapidly.
Gorbachev just refused to spill even more blood.
Present circumstances in America are very different. When Putin took power, Russia's economy had been declining rapidly for a decade; then over his first decade, the GDP dectupled. If the US were to somehow achieve $600,000 GDP per capita by the end of Trump's current term, yeah, Americans would probably want to reevaluate their conventional wisdom about what good governance looks like. But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.
The GDP rise your talking about is to some extent an exchange rate phenonomena. Russia's currency collapsed in the early 90s, by the 00's it was able to strengthen and stabilize. Quality of life went down, but it was not proportionate to the collapse in GDP. Thinking about similar phenomenon occurring in the United States is kind of pointless, that would require a collapse in the dollars reserve currency status which would have dramatic ramifications world wide. The Dollar is the yardstick, if another currency became stronger, it would be the yardstick, and that's an entire regime change kind of for everybody. While Russia's currency can collapse in strength vis a vis the dollar, and then increase a great deal, but it was weaker than the dollar at every point. The collapse in its strength meant that it was difficult for the country to trade in that period. But Russia still had its domestic industry through the entire period, which wasn't affected to the degree that the collapse in trade and currency value would suggest,
Also the volatility of economic growth of smaller countries tends to be much higher than anything experienced by developed countries. When you start from a small scale, GDP jumps of 10x are hardly unheard of. While increases of such magnitude in an already developed country would be unprecedented.
Also, the Russian economy is just a series of frauds run by lawless oligarchs stacked on top of each other. The only limiting factor on them is when Putin randomly decides to throw one of them out of a window. It's a pure patrimonialist system, which is a system sustained by lawlessness, manipulation, and fraud. This is of course the truth of the fascist system itself, its simply an attempt to wrap the whole of society in one big patrimonialist network. There's a reason they had to invade Ukraine - the bills were coming due, and they knew the only way they could make good on promises they otherwise couldn't keep was a sustained program of national subjugation and exploitation. This was inevitable from the moment the system was set up. This system is inherently unstable.
The words of the participants in the system while it is ongoing are meaningless. They are wrapped in some kind of patrimonial network or another, supporting some kind of overhyped fraud or another that represents all their dreams and aspirations. They are censored, subject to constant manipulation, and deliberately manipulated with false flags and psy ops. Their whole society is designed as a giant cartwheel to shove people into various frauds. I can be sad for victims of fraud, yes, but that doesn't make them any easier to deal with before they give up on their expectations and stop believing the lies of the one who is defrauding them, who frequently sicks them on anyone who attempts to combat the fraud, telling them that "Actually that person is the one who's keeping you from getting your money!" Hitler arrayed millions of German youth upon fields of slaughter with such tactics once before, why would we expect any different outcome now? We should've known better.
You’re not wrong but those all happened _after_ the fall of the USSR. They weren’t the cause of its fall they were the cause of post-USSR Russia becoming an oligarchy.
By 1998 the shit had already hit the fan big time for the common people in Russia, all "thanks" to Shock Therapy (which you allude to at your point b)). That was the real tragedy, nothing a more "experienced" president could have fixed (other than doing what Putin ended up doing, which is trying to reverse some of the craziness of said Shock Therapy).
I write this from direct experience, as I grew up as a kid/adolescent in nearby Romania in the '90s, where we had our very own Shock Therapy. In fact my present political stance (a return to nationalism and a reversal of what globalisation has brought about) is heavily marked by that very traumatic period in my life (and the same thing is valid for many of my compatriots).
So you want to reverse the development in Romania over the last 3 decades [1] ? I agree that the way the transition from the Ceauşescu regime was handled was less than ideal to say the least. But let's not forget that rampant nationalism and isolism was what got Romania into the mess in the first ace. I would even argue that every time a government/regime is bringing out the nationalism card it is to cover up for rising inequality, decreasing quality of life and all sort of other issues. An appeal to the "nation" is just not necessary otherwise.
> So you want to reverse the development in Romania over the last 3 decades [1]
Not sure that "reverse" is the best word for it, but, yes, I want the huge societal inequalities that have been created during the last three decades to be "levelled" again. I know that this will probably suck (to use light language) for the winners of those last 3 decades, but that is life.
He's first and foremost a narcissist (strongly grandiose subtype, and all over the place on the communal/malignant axis).
That condition should make him ineligible for any position of power. This is what a society gets when it elects someone mentally ill (in the harmful-to-others rather than the typical harmful-to-ill-person sense).
I am continually astounded by how many people, even if you explain the symptoms to them, will be unable to see it - not just in this one case but in general. There is something in many people that makes them attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly above things.
People can just listen to his biographer or many former aides, but they choose to believe what they want. Many religious supporters still think he's a Christian.
In order to see it, you must recognize the ways in which he fooled you. People would generally rather be fooled again than face the thought that they were fooled at some point in the past. And the more that they have been fooled, the stronger this bias is.
Trump is an absolute genius at fooling people in small ways, then over time ratcheting up the cognitive dissonance until he fools them in big ways. See https://specialto.thebulwark.com/ for a detailed explanation of how he did this with one of the many people that he has turned into puppets.
This is a good observation, but I think causality is reversed: narcissists by nature develop whatever skills will attract the most adoration.
Trump plays the strongman / oppressed white man card. If the populace valued different things he would happily parade around in negligé. He’s just playing to the audience, and it’s not narcissism so much as bullshit archetypes that they want.
Corporate politics doesn’t adequately punish the traits narcissists and sociopaths present. Quite the contrary, those traits can easily become assets in their careers.
Exactly. It's an evolutionarily beneficial trait. We're no longer competing with other species (why social traits developed), we're competing against each other (where the right amount of anti-social traits works best).
Unfortunately that is way outside too many people's Overton window. And, also unfortunately, I don't think the average human is sufficiently intelligent to understand why he should care.[note 1]
Throughout history, we see cycles of freedom and oppression, separated by either collapse or revolt.
- Collapse happens when anti-socials gain so much power in an organization (whether it's a corporation or state) that it starts to function so poorly that it's overtaken by competitors (or even destroys itself).
- Revolt happens when they gain/use that power too blatantly and people notice. Peaceful revolt is possible on the surface but ultimately, all true power is backed by violence - sometimes that violence is just thinly veiled behind multiple steps of action and reaction (unarmed protesters attacked by police will bring rocks and Molotovs next time which will cause even more attacks from the police which might escalate into civil war).
But right now we're at a point where oppressors have enough history to learn from. They don't care about collapse and revolt only happens when people are willing to act. So what they're doing right now is conditioning everyone that violence is wrong. This comes in many forms: bans on social media (every TOS forbids promoting violence these days), forced self-censorship (just watch a couple youtube shorts, good luck finding one where "kill" isn't spelled "k*ll" and bleeped out), zero-tolerance policies (school will punish both aggressor and target when they get into a fight), ...
Trump is a fascist (https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...). Last time people like him got into power in the civilized world, one was shot and hung upside down from a gas station, the other killed himself in a bunker. But this time when people reached for the 4th box of liberty, they were almost universally shunned. So he got into power, elected by the stupid people, and to nobody's surprise immediately started dismantling the system which exists to keep him in check.
He will do it slowly enough that each time he takes a step towards his goal, he will only piss off a small portion of the people and there will never be enough organized opposition at once. At least this time the dictator-elect is so old he might snuff it from natural causes before he does too much damage.
But the average person will not learn from it. The idea that a group of people as large as tens or hundreds of millions needs one special individual at the top is the peak of human stupidity.
---
[note 1]: Some people see this as too arrogant to be said openly but them it becomes just an excuse for them to shut down their logical faculties and reject what I say based on primitive instincts, proving my point.
- Anyway, look at how many democracies use the plurality/FPTP voting system which is known to be pretty much the worst possible (https://rangevoting.org/).
- Look at how many people in the west will say that democracy is obviously good and dictatorship obviously bad but don't question why nearly all corporations have hierarchical (dictatorial) power structures.
- Look at how many people are OK with spending a third or half of their salary on rent, which is just free money that goes to people who contribute nothing to society.
- Look at how many people are unable to differentiate between morality (what is right) vs legality (what the state will penalize you for) and how even the language is warped to mix them (people saying "I did nothing wrong" when they are talking about breaking the rules, whether they are laws or whatever screed a subreddit mod came up with).
Like of the Nietzschan philosophy? So in the case of trump the idea is that his voters like him because he’s different from the “evil” aristocratic class that trump claimed to oppose (eg “drain the swamp”)?
I just think that most people (on both political sides) are not really better. If they would be given the position of power they would be corrupted and incompetent too.
So in a sense you got what you deserve - and your democracy is working.
That’s the key right? It’s world as content. Nothing means anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of ”politics”. But that’s not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what happens next!
If you truly believe that, the fix is the opposite of what the GOP is proposing. Freeze spending at today’s levels, raise taxes (uncap SS, add higher tax brackets, add a wealth tax, etc…), then let the economy grow naturally.
This wouldn’t be possible as the world’s reserve currency and provider of political stability. At incredibly low interest rates, most investments are positive ROI.
But by destroying the US’ position as reserve currency and establishing the country as too untrustworthy to do business with, Trump has made your statement true.
We can’t afford what we spend without those special economic benefits. And we just threw them away for no reason.
Trump and Republicans had a great hand in this (Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, Bush tax cuts, Trump tax cuts, PPP helicopter money for the rich), and are looking to double down with their current disaster of a bill. Hope you're opposing that.
> So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.)
But Musk initiated it, by going against Trump's bill. The new conclusion is "to get contract, you must kiss ass so much and you can't say anything bad, ever"
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it to a person he just decided that he didn't like?
Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting him with accusations of pedophilia.
* those who were concerned about it happening to others have seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms, etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts
* there is a subset that is just super cult of personality around the current president and will bend over backwards to justify actions
If Musk is engaging in corruption with respect to the US government, then what could be done to stop it. Whatever the answer, almost certainly Musk's ties to the government would need to be broken, including contracts and funding.
It's not like the previous party in charge didn't threaten the exact same thing. People still aren't seeing that both parties are descending into the sort of third world mindset while accusing the other of being the sole cause. This is a doom spiral in the making.
That's a hard argument to hold in the context of recent history. Maybe for the better, maybe for worse, merit has taken a back seat in many cases as we prioritized other factors.
What's interesting to me here is that the executive branch has authority to change these contracts. I do understand that's how it has worked for a while, and you could argue that these contracts are part of executing on congress's mandate, but I personally would prefer the executive branch not have this power.
If it were up to me congressional committees would be responsible for this as part of budgeting responsibilities, and the executive branch would be much weaker than it is today.
As with so many other things the executive branch is doing right now, it doesn’t have exclusive power to do this. Congress sets the rules for how procurement works.
I think you're getting to the distinction between power and authority. Congress may have the authority to decide procurement (I'm not 100% sure on this, going with the discussion), but functionally the president may have the power to force their will through the system.
And nobody listened to the people saying that this concentration of power would be a disaster if the office was ever held by a craven jerkwad. And guess what happened!
At this point I'm just happy these two are turning on each other - the more they hurt each other, the less time they have to focus on the rest of us. 6 months was a long time to wait, but I suppose dismantling the machinery of state that was trying to force his companies to follow the law wasn't going to be a quick job.
This is what Trump is doing to Harvard right now. He even is pushing legislation to tax their endowment and also has an executive order to deny them and on them foreign students.
...and to law firms before then, US government contractors (worldwide[1]). If OP thinks thinks this is a nee Trump play, they haven't been paying attention.
2. The US embassy tried to get a Swedish city to agree to some anti-DEI clause in a vendor agreement. Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin.
I remember when Obama threatened Fox Sports mergers due to how Fox News covered his first term in office, and trued to get the Saudis to sign a pro-choice vendor agreement with the embassy. Biden also threatened law firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them from government buildings and revoke security clearance. It was the standard thing for dems to do when dealing with political opponents.
Both sides are totally the same thing, there's nothing to be done.
> Biden also threatened law firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them from government buildings and revoke security clearance.
I did a few quick searches for more information about this claim of yours. I also asked Claude and ChatGPT to research it. I can not find any sources to back up this claim of yours. Can you source it for me?
It was a rhetorical device ascribing things Trump actually did to Democratic presidents to show parent's false equivalency. Everything I listed were things Trump did, though I changed the other parties involved to preserve the political dynamics as best as I could.
Everything about the current US government is wild. Yes, cancelling government contracts because of this stupid fight is corruption, but so is everything else. There's not much that either Trump or Musk do that's not corrupt.
I'd like to see both of them lose their power, because they only abuse it.
More like fascist brain, those who haven't bought into the decades of propaganda recognize this benefits no one. Fascism is not a natural state of mind.
On the contrary, I think it appeals to our baser instincts. Primates, from whom we evolved, settle their power disputes in EXACTLY the manner of "might makes right," and that isn't just about the individuals competing for power, but the dynamics of the crowd and how their allegiances and values shift according to who is in power.
That is true. But the dubiousness of the whole thing starts a long way before that. Why is Musk there at all? Because we are sliding into neo-feudalistic conditions in which a court of the richest people steer the affairs of state and shape them in their own favor. And we've known what Trump is like all along. We didn't have to deduce that from the fact that he is now quarrelling with Musk.
I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon. Graft has been a part of governance in every era. Typically, pandering to special interests is proportional to the government's slice of the economic pie. As the state interventions increase, so does the ability for bureaus to grant favors.
What is somewhat unique here, is the brazen and flippant nature of the funding cut. I'm sure if we looked, we could find similar cases in US history.
Author Patrick Newman has written on the topic of cronyism in US history. It is interesting to read the historical narrative framed from the perspective of who was lobbying and looting.
I think there has always been this type of corruption. The interesting thing this time is how open it is, and how clearly visible it is in the stock market, where who is president results in swings of hundreds of billions of dollars. This includes both Trumps corruption for (and now against Tesla/SpaceX) and Bidens lawfare against his them.
So far this is all talk, in effect non of the contracts got created because of that and so far non have been canceled because of that. This is all just media whoring around.
“President Trump said on Saturday that he believed his relationship with Elon Musk was over after the two sparred publicly on social media this week, and he warned there would be “serious consequences” if Mr. Musk financed candidates to run against Republicans who voted in favor of the president’s domestic policy bill.”
Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.
Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.
Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.
> by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins
If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?
GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years?
Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies?
Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies?
Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)?
Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days?
Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually?
I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.
Funding is already falling ie NSF disbursements so I’d expect the h-index to fall off significantly. So sure patents will fall, journal pubs will fall, enrollment will fall, staff count will fall, total experiment count will fall, grant count will fall.
I think this was always true, it’s just that most presidents add a few extra clauses to the requirements instead of blatantly saying they’re going to cancel contracts.
> ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
I'm definitely in agreement with the 60 percent. This should be unthinkable and political suicide. Openly speculating on if you can use the government as personal retaliation is absolutely undemocratic.
So why is it so hard for me to care in this case? Because Elon Musk has used the government in the exact same way. He just got done cancelling random contracts he didn't like. He just circumvented democracy to play his little doge game.
It is really hard to care about cheating when it happens to a cheater. Disgust at this move against SpaceX or Tesla has to start with consequences for Elon. If this is wrong, then Elon must be jailed.
This whole article is speculation about a war of words on social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any citation.
>One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the exchanges as “bluster” that neither Musk nor Trump would actually implement
Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm unaware of.
This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around. Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
It's not ethics or morality, it's just "not being a child." A president not personally retaliating against a critic doesn't need to have anything to do with ethics, it's just requires a post-middle-school mentality of "I may not be happy with this person but I [my country] can still benefit from things they do."
Being an adult child has moral and ethical consequences.
Behaviours and emotions that are totally legit and tolerated in a child are no longer so in an adult.
An adult that has all the privileges and freedoms of adulthood over childhood, like the ability to vote, drink, drive and hold an office, also has to abide by the moral obligations of being an adult.
But if you're rich enough (or poor enough, hah) nobody's gonna hold you to "adult behavior" standards. Is there really a moral or ethical aspect to "don't get into a shouting match on Twitter"? Or is it simply childish?
In 2016, that would have been the case due to popular vote and electoral college vote not matching. However, 2024’s popular and electoral college match show the cracks are in the racist and sexist and apathetic voter base.
It’s not just the democratic process itself, but the institutions around it. The main reason Trump isn’t in jail is because the Republican Supreme Court repeatedly protected him, even to the point of inventing new ahistorical doctrines. Once one of the major parties is no longer committed to of law we’re in uncharted territory.
My point is Trump also won the popular vote, which means the people don’t want the traitor in jail either. Institutions are only as good as the people that compose them, in this case the institution is the country as a whole.
It's been going on a long time. Democrats and Republicans, especially in the Pentagon, have bought influence of politicians to get billions of tax dollars.
So you should change the comment to say "most Democrat and Republican voters in the primaries apparently wont vote out those who give or take bribes." That would be correct.
Jethro's advice to Moses in God's Word is still good advice for voters today. If a politician ever meets this criteria, then we'll see amazing things happen. That's below with verse 21 highlighted:
"19 Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, 20 and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. 21 Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. 22 And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:19-23) (ESV)
At least Berlusconi didn't have access to nuclear warheads.
Seriously, I visited the US few times between 2005 and 2010 and each time people were raising the topic of Berlusconi. How can you have a president like that, who voted for him, bunga bunga etc etc.
Now you know how you can have such personality in power too. With even more power.
Ah, I thought he was referring to the clowns they have in Athens.
But, no. The Greeks didn't create Western Civilization because the only non-awkward definition of Western Civilization is that scion of the Roman Church.
Surely the cultural exchange with Greeks contributed to this.
Greece was always eastern facing as far back as before Alexander. It is only with the Cold War that they glanced West.
Aside for Magna Grecia, Greeks have very scant presence in Western Europe.
I don't know why you are angry at history and frankly I don't care, but you should read a bit more. Even the Roman pantheon was practically a copy of the Greek one, Greek was the language of science and philosophy, the first people to study mathematics in the west and so on and so forth.
All the great Romans revered Greece and Greek.
Anyway I don't know why I'm explaining history to some random angry kid online, have a nice day
Yes, Athens is a part of the West. I never denied that. But how about Jerusalem? How about Rome? How about uncivilized (ie without a city) barbarians?
How about the over 1600 years of history since the split of the Roman empire?
The 1000 years since the Schism?
The 500 years since the Fall of Constantinople?
The Eastern Roman Empire was of a completely different character than the Western one, follows a vastly different path, and one that started diverging (due to all the heresies [0]) as early as Constantine. Since the fall of Constantinople the Greeks had very limited contact with the West until independence in the late 19th century.
According to you the West didn't do anything, didn't evolve, in the last 1600 years since we've been de facto incommunicado?
For example, to say that the West of the Scholastics is "Greek" when the Greeks have always rejected them (with very poignant criticism might I add) is a laugh in the face of the Scholastic's transformational contribution to the West (above all our modern university system).
St Augustine [1] , Boetius [2], and the Papacy [3] create the West anew from of these ingredients.
[0] which (Russian Orthodox) Solovyev lays at the feet of a jealous Greek hierarchy
[1] accepted but looked down on by the Greeks
[2] the last of the ancients and the first of the Scholastics
[3] the most foundational institution for the West and rejected by the Greeks
You are conflating different and irrelevant arguments. The discussion was never about Byzantium or modern Greece. It was whether we can trace the beginning of Western civilisation in Ancient Greece instead of Rome, which indeed we can. Far before Christianity, a topic which you seem blindly passionate about, with some apparent beef against Orthodoxy.
This has little to do with Christianity.
And I find little interest in this pointless discussion, therefore this is my last reply.
I wouldn't say it's a misnomer, the lack of ideology is the signature appeal. It's exactly what affords Trump unlimited flexibility among his supporters since there are no expectations of consistency.
Yeah, I would say "acquisition of and wielding power" is the signature feature of Trumpism, and why he appeals to so many.
Whether true or not (and FWIW, I think it is, at least to some degree), the left largely took the mantra of "tsk tsking" for a long time - you should feel bad about using a plastic straw, bad about driving your car, bad about the US' treatment of Native Americans, etc. etc. So Trump's complete shamelessness is appealing to many
I read a good post recently that explained that Trump and the Republican's rank hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug. It shows that Trump and his team are unbound by the constraints they want to apply to others.
bigger stage and bigger impact. Trump had more impact on the world trades in a few months than Berlusconi in 20 years as Berlusconi was limited to Italy and sometimes Europe.
That's exactly what I meant. A lot of people in the US don't follow politics in Europe, but those who do are unlikely to think Berlusconi was a president when he was actually a prime minister.
Prime ministers in Italy are also called Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri, therefore technically yes. He was holding the executive power, and although Italy is a parliamentary republic, most of the laws are driven by the Government.
I remember thinking this same thing during the first trump term as an American, with Berlusconi I used to be like "how the fuck can people accept this from their leaders" and then it came home. Obviously the string of war criminals we had prior weren't great either but Trump hits different.
This reads like pretty classic infighting between a dictator and one of his more powerful cronies.
I am surprised at how fast it happened, though. Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship. Maybe our dear leader is just as incompetent at being a dictator as he is everything else.
I was not as surprised. It is a lot like the pattern in his previous term with people that he brought on and then had a fallout with and they became the enemy like cabinet members, VP, etc. This second term is markedly different in that he appointed only due hard yes men. I think the only difference is that Musk was very useful for his money and independent sway.
> Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship.
It doesn't seem that way to me, e.g. Putin arrested Khodorkovsky (the richest man in Russia) in 2003. The way I see it, the politician needs the oligarch's money to gain political power, but then he has actual state power, including guns and the judicial system. At that point the oligarch has no purpose -- after all, the politician can just make new ones -- so it makes sense to cast him out or destroy him.
Trump could bankrupt SpaceX with the stroke of a pen and bleed Tesla dry by revoking EV credits. He could even try to revoke Musk's citizenship over (real or fake) issues with his immigration status in the past. If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
> If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
This is the funniest part to me, in the context of THIS president. The guy that demands fully loyalty but gives none?
I can't imagine being the richest guy in the world, and embarrassing myself to such a degree all for.. what? He paid maybe $300M to help elect the guy, wore all the stupid hates, lavished orange man with praise.. and for what. What was ever the upside? The possible downside was obviously asymmetric to any clear eyed viewer.
This crop of billionaires was created from a time when capital was ascendant and state power was on the decline. I think as a result they’ve come to believe that the state is mostly there for their benefit especially during Republican administrations.
Not that both the Republicans and Democrats are very pro large business. Remember Harris raised at least _twice_ as much money from billionaires than Trump.
They're just pro different big businesses, largely based on their demographics.
Personally I'm still annoyed that Obama's administration had the DOE take over servicing federal student loans to "protect students" only for them to somehow be sold to a private company based in Chicago from what I can tell.
Billionaire spending heavily favored Republicans. Over two-thirds (70%) of billionaire-family contributions went in support of GOP candidates and conservative causes. Less than a quarter (23%) backed Democratic hopefuls and progressive causes. (The remainder went to committees without a clear partisan or ideological identity.
I hadn't looked for a while, but Harris was out raising and out spending Trump substantially when I'd last read up on it. Much of that seemed to come primarily from big donors.
Sure the more of the top richest people may have donated more to Trump or Republicans, but Harris raised much more overall.
Seems like they both raised about the same from their top 20 largest donors:
> The Harris campaign received significantly more funding than Trump's, outspending the Republican advertising machine by more than 70 percent in the final stretch of the election.
> According to data from Open Secrets, Harris received almost $400 million from her 20 largest backers. Trump received over half a billion dollars from his top 20, which included over $100 million from SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company.
My take of that is that Trump raised a bit more from concentrated donations from the richest billionaires, but Harris overall raised more from larger numbers of billionaires and millionaires.
Well... Sure, he got Starlink approved for rural broadband funding and ended some NTSB investigations into Tesla's "suicide mode." But those things can be reversed with a quickness if he's no longer on Trump's side.
He also wrecked a lot more of the federal government that doesn't affect him one way or the other, and may have harvested a ton of data for his AI company. We'll see if anything comes of that.
It was weird to see all those billionaire tech bros lining up to kiss his arse. What is the point of spending all that effort to be super rich and powerful if it means you have to grovel to a terrible human being like Trump? Does not compute.
At the very least, an arrest by ICE is a real possibility. His brother has admitted on camera that they were illegal at one point, and there is now a lot of precedent for "arrest first - ask questions later" even if you're a natural born citizen.
We have moved so past the "government is expected to be impartial" and now at "if musk backs a dem I will destroy him" stage. No one bats an eye. This is going to be the norm at least on the Republican Party. I worry every one expects presidents to weaponize everything against their perceived opponents.
In Europe, media and politicians are openly stating how you got to watch what you say to Mr Trump, be nice to him to get favored in deals.
Like the trade tax, if you’re nice to trump he may decrease your country tax.
It was made very clear in France that we invited him to 14 juillet, notre dame ceremony and other ceremony only to get favor from him.
People of the United States pay the price for his favors, he gets the benefits.
That’s just one step before handling him bags of money.
Of course all of that matters with previous presidents, they are humans before all, but it was marginal. With him, that’s the first time it’s openly spoken about on national tv and by politicians like it’s nothing, like what we did with dictator from middle eastern except it’s the president of the USA.
A lot of eyes are being batted. But really, him punishing Musk is barely in the top 100 things we're worried about right now. We're barely a few months into his term. The chances of seeing full on Martial Law before 4 years is terrifyingly high.
That stood out to me, too. Even in the current environment, that's messed up. No, the sitting president does not get to threaten peoples' ability to make campaign contributions to the opposing party.
I have never seen the inside of it. But to be honest the home page looks clean. How's the interface, in case you have ventured in? Is it clean and simple?
YouGov made a survey on June 5, asking "If you had to choose, who would you side with more between the following?" with Musk and Trump to choose. For Republicans, it's 71% Trump, 6% Musk, 12% neither, 11% not sure.
Musk is popular amongst republicans because Trump has championed him. The pro-Musk Republicans are also pro-Trump republicans and their loyalty to Trump will beat out whatever respect they have for Musk. Musk is not a threat to Trump, because Trump’s entire platform is built on Trump-or-bust. Musk was a useful idiot to Trump. Musk thinking that Trump’s Epstein connection was somehow going to hurt Trump shows just how impotent Musk is. Trump fans couldn’t care one iota about that.
It's really that simple. If you want to know what MAGA supporters believe about any topic, just look up what Trump last said about it. He could change his mind three times in a single day, and they would also change their mind (and talking points) in lock step three times.
Some people really do act like that, in my limited experience. Trump's opinion changes and lo and behold their beliefs have updated to the same view as Trump's.
Yep. In 2016 all of Trump's scandals were already exposed. It didn't do anything. Trump can easily walk away from Musk right now with no problems. Tesla is probably not going to last at high valuation much longer anyways
So, the government would do what, lean on Russia with whom the USA is currently engaged in a proxy war? Also, for Boeing or Blue Origin, the cost would currently be higher per launch, and as far as I know, no one has the kind of satellite network that SpaceX does.
Of course, those are sane considerations. I suppose I shouldn’t accuse the Donald of any kind of rational thinking.
SpaceX is critical infrastructure to the US at this point and its continued availability and operation is of national security interest.
That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
Less nuclear: the US has a lot of control over what SpaceX does. The FAA (and to a lesser extent the NOAA) has to approve every launch. They could simply gorund SpaceX.
If you think SpaceX could simply move operations elsewhere, think again, The US prohibits ASML, a Dutch company, from selling EUV lithography machines to China.
Apart from all of that, SpaceX is absolutely dependant on US government funding and contracts. Withdrawing those, or even the threat of such, allows the US to wield a lot of power over SpaceX.
What's rather surprising about this feud is that Trump is currently the adult and has been uncharacteristically restrained in his response thus far. Of course, all that could change. It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
> nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
This isn't at all clear. It's clear that they could easily compel them to prioritize and fulfill government contracts. Far less clear that they could just take it. It is clear that the current administration could "try" but such an effort might result in a lawsuit that lasts longer than the administration does and thereby become moot.
It may take a long time to be fully litigated, but the courts also take a while to act, and we've seen that this administration takes full advantage of this fact. The odds are also stacked against Elon here because the national security interests would likely make a compelling argument to stay any injunctions SpaceX might seek. SpaceX might prevail in the end, but the whole process would get very uncomfortable for Elon in the meantime.
Actually the defense production act provides a perfectly viable path actually supported by law to ensure that the governments interests are served.
An injunction would be entirely logical as it prevents irreparable harm based on a fanciful understanding of the law unlikely to prevail and hurts the government not at all.
Certainly the government trying to steal like a common criminal puts anyone in an uncomfortable position but the only real risk is the fact we live under incipient fascism.
> That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
A public-private partnership is the dream for any shareholder. Guaranteed revenue and profits funded by taxes, investment capital from the government on great terms, becoming "too big to fail", etc.
> It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
How is it insane to repeat what everyone already knows? The only novelty here is Musk himself saying it to his legions of followers, who would have been otherwise inclined to downplay the significance of it.
It's insane because of the implications: Musk was a major contributor to Trump's campaign, and a major advisor, and at the last minute he implies Trump is a pedophile?
This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a pedophile elected! He couldn't have learned this at the last minute, he obviously held this ace in his sleeve.
This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the eyes of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get a pedophile elected president if it would suit his business vision.
Not after the election, since he supported Trump (barring some disagreements) until a few weeks ago. They parted with a hug, just before this blowup.
So are we supposed to believe Musk just found out about the Epstein link, hidden in unreleased documents, in the last few days? It's extremely farfetched.
I think Musk has pluses and minuses. I think he does have some mental issues volatile and lash out and make poor decisions even if I do agree with some things and disagree with others. To be honest, he is someone that staked his reputation on completely verifiably and provably lying about the legitimacy of his ranking in a video game and at a time with all eyes on him besmirched a large streamer he previously has thought of partnering with on X as best by “bad at video games.” It’s just terrible judgment. I’m surprised the “normie” didn’t focus on kind of pathetic it looked to lie about videos games and instead they made wild accusations comparing him to the bad people from 30s.
This isn't the first time Musk has baselessly accused someone of pedophilia on social media.
He did it randomly to some guy he didn't like in Thailand who saved some kids trapped in a cave. He's probably done it other times.
It's just an Elon Musk thing. Go totally unhinged on social media and defame people without evidence. He does it all the time.
The only guy more famous than Musk for saying absolute nonsense on social media, is Trump.
It is all fake, lame, and nonsense.
What's shocking is that the people running our country are behaving like absolute children. I feel like they wouldn't be able to hold down a job at my company because they're so unhinged, they would have been fired long ago, and yet here they are, billionaires, deciding the fate of 350M people.
To be clear, I'm not debating the veracity of the accusation, I'm asking what it says about Musk that he claims to have knowingly helped elect president someone he knew to be a pedophile.
I mean, I would assume that anyone who's still a Musk supporter has no morals to speak of anyway, so I'm not sure why they would be concerned by this implication.
Wow, that is some amazing threading of the mental needle to focus blame on Musk. Doesn't this indictment apply to every single person who voted for Trump in 2024? Those pictures of Epstein, Trump, and Maxwell having themselves some grand old times have been popularly circulating for like a decade at this point.
If the indictment doesn't apply, then why can't Musk play the same card of "I didn't know/believe/accept" while he was supporting, but only recently has he "now come to know" ?
Why wouldn't I heap blame on Musk (as well as on Trump, mind you)? The guy's deranged and repulsive.
I don't think your objections are fair. Let's go over them:
The average Trump voter doesn't know much about Epstein, and certainly doesn't believe Trump was involved in anything with that scandal. Any evidence that may turn up would be considered "fake news" to them. Whatever you may think of Trump voters, and whatever things they really are to blame for, knowingly voting for someone they believe to be a pedophile isn't one of their sins.
Musk just implied Trump is a pedophile (or is suppressing certain documents because of his links to a pedophile). Musk also claims without him Trump wouldn't have been elected. These are Musk's claims, so he has thrown away any possible defenses of "but I didn't know/believe this" and "but I'm irrelevant in the grand scheme of things".
You also claim Musk could defend himself with "but I didn't know at the time". This is very, very weak. When exactly do you suppose he learned this? In the few days that have elapsed since this very public falling out, maybe even a few days before? Oh, please. You know you don't believe this, these two were heaping praise on each other and calling themselves friends for most of their collaboration since Trump's second term, and only now Musk found out about Epstein? What, an aide rushed this info to him just in time for their current breakup? Absurd.
Any way you slice it, Musk had this accusation up his sleeve the whole time, he just chose to deploy it now.
So again I must ask, what does this say -- in his fans' eyes -- about Musk as a person?
PS: You seem to believe I'm somehow defending Trump here. If that's your worry, let me be clear that I think Trump is a disgrace. I don't know whether he's a pedophile though, unlike Musk I don't claim to have seen any secret documents. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if both Trump and Musk are pedophiles, these aren't exactly examples of decent human beings.
PPS: it has also just occurred to me you could be wondering why I'm focusing on the outrageous things Musk has said, but not on the contradictory, absurd or just plain dumb things Trump is saying about Musk? Well, because Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do lots of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now. Musk, as the world's richest person, has a much longer shelf life and more time to do damage to the US and the rest of the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult following. So I wonder what his followers think.
IME Trump supporters will justify anything he does or may plausibly have done. They're too invested in him or have bought into the idea that the other must be so much worse.
Elon stans seem to have a similar mindset.
Getting folks to think critically about Elon's actions would require an Epstein video of Trump engaging in SA with a clearly underage child. Likely only if coming out of police evidence lockers sealed before AI video existed. And it would have to be reported widely and maybe even released publicly without cuts (only blurring).
This is also a left smear. Many conservatives have expressed dissatisfaction with this bill that is the focus of all this. It’s not true what you are saying. It’s not true that those that voted for him agree and justify everything. Regardless of what you may think of Covid response, many conservatives expressed disagreement with him on that as well.
It is not as if supporters will deny all but a clear video tape of such an incident. There is no evidence this is true and there is plenty of reason to think it does not exist. The fact that Trump turned on Epstein while he was alive and Epstein’s attorney tried to find ways to smear Trump because of his involvement with the prosecution stands at odds with Musk’s claim that many here are granting prima facie.
Trump has a reputation for walking in on women and teens in the dressing areas at his pageants. At least one of Epstein's GFs said Trump assaulted her. Epstein said he was Trump's closest friend.
It's very possible the Epstein files do have (or used to have) damning evidence. Though IME folks who call themselves MAGA are unlikely to take any evidence seriously.
Trump himself has said he believes he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it.
You're talking about Stacey Williams allegation a couple weeks before the election and right after those regarding Doug Emhoff? It's not as simple as piling on a list of allegations. If it is so possible why did Epstein not use it against Trump especially when Trump was trying to have adverse action inflicted on Epstein? As far as the 5th Avenue thing, this is another one of these things that happens on the left where they take all of his jokes so literally and just run with it. I saw another normie take from that Lawrence O'Donnell in which he was just beside himself up in arms over Trump's tweet about Biden being a robot was absolute proof that Trump believed in Biden robots and that he was mentally incapacitated. One can have criticism without it devolving into breathless derangement.
"I only just realized!" is obviously disingenuous, but it suffices for the routine plausible deniability.
The real distinction is whether you believe that someone who has done bad deeds can be supported for other reasons, or whether they need to be repudiated in their entirety. For example even if you know Trump is a child rapist (and you condemn child rape), but you think as President he's going to do good for the country, you can still support him for President while being intellectually consistent [0].
This is separate from the issue of whether the person who has done wrong should face justice (eg continuing, you can think that Trump should go to jail but modulo that not happening, that he will do good for the country [0]). And separate from the issue of whether someone in a position to facilitate justice happening has an overriding duty to do so (I don't think Musk is in this position either though. Trump's one actual skill is escaping consequences).
> This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a pedophile elected! He couldn't have learned this at the last minute, he obviously held this ace in his sleeve...
> This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the eyes of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get a pedophile elected president if it would suit his business vision.
The second does not immediately follow from the first. Modulo the larger distinction I made above, it may just be the case that every second powerful figure is some kind of child rapist or similarly morally bankrupt, and this has been normalized, so even if you have morals to be applied you just have to hold your nose to get anything done. I have no idea, but I do know Epstein was connected to a lot of people.
You're also imparting a narrower business vision rather than political or moral where such compromises would be see as more justified. So no, these events might indict Musk in your mind further, but I don't think this is a universal conclusion.
> Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do lots of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now. Musk, as the world's richest person, has a much longer shelf life and more time to do damage to the US and the rest of the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult following.
I've got the complete opposite take on this. Trump has his hands on the actual levers of power, power which continues to acrete the more he destroys our institutions. Whereas Musk seems close to his limit with buying Xitter and blackmailing politicians (about funding opponents). It feels like Musk is just an avatar of the terrible dynamics of wealth concentration, which are present regardless of him personally. While Trump is actively pushing our society off a cliff in a way we will not be able to come back from. Just a feeling per my own heuristics, I'll have to ponder this more.
[0] just to be very explicit this is certainly not my own view about Trump!
Everyone knows what? There have been no shortage of journalists trying to destroy him, where is the evidence. He was quite involved in assisting prosecutors against Epstein, as a civilian. As others have pointed, Musk does have a penchant for making this exact allegation, unfounded, against people he disagrees with, even over the most bizarre of things. If we all just say we know allegations against people we disagree will true, without basis in fact, then we are no better than parliamentary monarchy for which we fought a revolution against, let alone kangaroo courts around the world.
But Musk is not implying any of those less-than-flattering things. Nobody knows what Musk actually thinks, but what he implied is pretty clear. He calls it "a bomb", and we all know what that means.
And this matters, because Musk was a major campaign contributor and advisor to someone he has now implied to be a pedophile. What does this say about Musk?
As per usual, every accusation from a narcissist is a confession.
You know who absolutely is connected to Epstein? Elon's brother, Kimbal (allgedly) [1].
And while not related to Epstein but is just gross and in a similar ballpark, Elon's father Errol, had a stepdaughter from his wife's first marriage, Jana Bezuidenhout, who grew up in his house from age 4. He later went on to father two children with Jana (the first when she was 30, I believe) [2]. It's unclear when the relationship began. The only public statements are after Jana had a break-up.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a guy so gross in his personal life comes from a gross family. Everything about Musk is deranged.
Do you remember the (not so distant era) when Musk was the nerd's and hacker's darling? SpaceX, his genius, his vision! This was before we knew much about his personal life and opinions. It seems so long ago now... Before he took to Twitter to claim it was OK to coup countries for their resources, or started naming children like mathematical formulas.
He's a symptom. It is our society, globally, that has become deranged. Almost all public figures are a shade of scumbag these days. Maybe they always were and there is no longer any reason to hide it.
I can speak for Argentina, where the situation (the sharp deterioration of public discourse, the "rule by Twitter posts", flamewars between government officials, incredibly aggressive public discourse, obvious fraud that doesn't get prosecuted if it's done by some political factions, etc) mirrors the US in many ways. I would say in Argentina we repeat tragedy in the form of farce, except what's going on in the States is also a farce.
Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague statements or evidence.
> What does this say about Musk?
Who knows? Musk has thin associations with Epstein and Maxwell as well, he is a proven liar, is at times visibly manic, and has been reported to drop relationships at a whim when challenged.
There could be plenty of things driving his behavior, but I don't think this informs anything new about his character.
You got me wrong: I'm not talking about the veracity of the accusation, I'm asking about what it says about Musk (regardless of its truth).
Especially in the eyes of Musk fans.
This guy is now effectively claiming he helped get someone elected president whom he knew was a pedophile. Musk claims Trump got elected thanks to his support (again, Musk claims this). He also claims Trump is a pedophile.
So what do Musk fans think about Musk (not Trump) in light of this?
> Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague statements or evidence.
When it comes to drawing conclusions about the intent of the person making the vague statement, this is an error. It helps create the plausible deniability that public manipulators use to their advantage.
This is hardly a charitable interpretation. The lack of competition provides for little incentive for improvement. Now, for prisons, I think for-profit prisons are quite problematic because the incentives are abjectly antithetical to justice.
> We have a national space agency that has had plenty of time and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
That's quite inaccurate. NASA doesn't do much themselves, they hire external contractors but keep significant control over them. SpaceX got more funding and less control and they didn't start from scratch, NASA gave them all of their technical documentation, now-how and working prototypes.
NASA could have done everything SpaceX does if they were given the same conditions and funding, however, they've never had funding for blowing up five spaceships in row, they were held to much stricter standards.
The entire story looks like a blatant attempt to take control of space operations away from NASA and thus from the government.
how do explain other governments funding efforts to copy spacex without success, its easy to hand wave away peoples efforts and achievements with hindsight
>NASA could have done everything SpaceX does if they were given the same conditions and funding
This may have been hypothetically possible, as are many things that never came to be, but it is impossible to know whether this really would have happened.
enjoy the snap reaction brain drain as entrepreneurs move their efforts offshore, people are being disingenuous by saying its as simple as deciding to nationalise a company everyone said would fail and who china and Europe are desperately trying to emulate, all over retaliatory statements, be careful what sort of government behaviour you normalise because you happen to be on the winning side of that behaviour, seasons change
onlyrealcuzzo above commented that Trump canceling SpaceX contracts would be "literally the path that led the USSR to ruin".
However, we have a case of a private contractor trying to manipulate the president by means of "revelations" and decommissioning of a service important for national security. If the president cannot change those contracts the US would be literally on the path to oligarchic Russia... I'm not sure what's worse.
Trump is generally moving in the direction of reducing government control of corporations to the point of risking government capture by oligarchic interests. What's happening now is a direct consequence of his policies and it's ironic that Trump's powers are being questioned when it comes to corporate regulation.
Trump's personal faults are irrelevant at the moment, if the GOP doesn't stand firmly behind Trump we are going to find ourselves in an incredible mess.
Yes, it's quite disingenuous to say that USA is engaged a proxy war. Ukraine has military support from other countries but they are the ones making decisions at the end of day.
For example Ukraine just carried out a complex drone attack on Russia's bomber fleet, this was careful planned by Ukrainian miliary without any involvement of the US and US was not informed of this ahead of time. And after the fact USA got upset with Ukraine for doing that.
Yeah. I believe Moscow props them up and has platformed them, but not because of any secret intelligence - it's the opposite: they are installing this exact chaos.
Eh, still giving Moscow too much credit IMO. Certainly I don't think Moscow was critical to get them where they are (that's ironically giving too much credit to the American people, too; it turns out we're really dumb).
The DoD would certainly just take care of Elon if they had to. Who are we kidding. The DoD are the actual owners of Space X. Hes a figure head / civilian face.
They are literally just running the Howard Hughes playbook over again. Hes a front guys.
When policy dispute escalates to ad hominem and fund cutting arguments, it becomes clear that the presidency no longer serves the institution, but becomes a personal kingdom.
What do we even need to be sending people into space for? It seems like a lot of savings could be had if we just completely shut down the entire manned space program. Unless there is some direct business case for it, why do it at all? Don't tell me some vague definition of "science". This isn't some new frontier that needs exploring, its well understood at this point. There needs to be a direct benefit to the american tax payer to justify the cost of putting a person up there. I don't see a reason to send people to space, if something needs to be done, it can be automated and sent as an autonomous payload. Sending people to space feels wasteful in the age of robotics, fast data links and autonomous systems. If we can operate a rover on mars, we can do whatever needs to be done in orbit or the moon or deep space, without human aid.
It feels like a vanity and an anachronism to an era from the past. Manned space travel is risky, expensive, environmentally destructive, and for what? For some human being to manually manipulate scientific instruments in orbit that should have been, or could have been automated and get the same results?
Gone are the days where people actually think we could be living in space. From what we know now, not only is it impractical, dangerous, inefficient, its also unhealthy. This isn't a question of some new technology that needs created to support it, it's a limitation of physics and millions of years of evolution on earth.
Send satellites to orbit? Yes. Collect power from space? Yes. Conduct scientific research? Okay. But we don't need to send people to do that anymore. Manned space travel had its place in time, and it no longer makes sense to do it, so lets have the maturity to move on from the past.
You can't have this argument in good faith at the present moment because the institution is under attack not because of a pragmatic reason as you describe but because the joke of a president is mad at a private citizen for their speech. Ignoring all previous Musk love or hate that somebody may have, look at the action that may take place here - the government taking adverse action against a private citizen for their speech.
We can have the pragmatic discussion AFTER the fascism is over.
Most of the benefits of manned space exploration are fake, yes. The incentives of the people doing it though aren't to be honest about it. NASA talks about how critical a constant human presence on the ISS is for ‘science’; never once have I heard them even try to justify $100B spend as more than a keyword.
There are a few real things a manned space program does: showing force in rocket technologies, serving as inspiration in STEM fields, and taking an early step to humans flourishing throughout the universe. There are also real but bad reasons, like NASA bloat is seen as a way to buy voters.
Are you unfamiliar with the many world-changing technologies and inventions that have come about because of the needs and drivers of the human space program? On what basis do you form the belief that we would not continue to develop and benefit from new world-changing innovations despite all historical evidence that says otherwise?
A huge amount of scientific invention is made incidentally to another goal. It's intensely myopic to disregard that.
I was waiting for this comment! What innovations have come about in the last 20 years of the human space program? Everyone always makes this claim but never can name a single one, or brings up unrelated things like the heat tiles on the space shuttle. What kinds of developments could not have been done with autonomous payloads?
Seems from the table of contents, it breaks down to: earth observation, microbiology in microgravity, human health research, inspiring younglings, new physics, and "growing the low-earth economy".
Then broader there's a yearly one called Spinoff that points to the technology transfers, but that's not just from human flight, but from all NASA-funded work.
> What kinds of developments could not have been done with autonomous payloads?
This is very much the wrong question to ask. The question isn't whether something can be done with different payloads. The question is whether something would have been done if not for the drive to send people into constrained environments. Closed loop osmotic water filtration systems would not be so developed without the driving motivation of sustaining life in a box. Sending payloads at all is actually extremely tangential except insofar as if you officially terminate the actual sending of people then the motivation to develop technologies that make it easier to send people vanishes.
It's not super clear from your wording, but it sounds kinda like you want to hear about research within the past 20 years that has made it to already being commercialized, but that would be ignoring the fact that taking decades for research and development done for human spaceflight to get applied to other uses, which it often does, doesn't negate the facts that it often does take longer than that for ventures to reach the public and that the research and development was done for human spaceflight. It seems unlikely that you're looking for older developments that have only been commercialized recently, though I can point you to several, and developments done more recently but not yet commercialized for other uses have no success record yet. It makes your request sound a bit disingenuous.
Not the OP, but I am genuinely completely unaware - I don't follow space tech at all (or really know much about its history). Could you elaborate on some of them?
> This isn't some new frontier that needs exploring, its well understood at this point
This is where I started to think this was trolling and that it would soon devolve into overly satirical commentary to prove the opposite point. I was surprised it didn't do this. I'm very interested in this defeatist mentality, welp we know it's impractical we should stop trying. It's not only ignoring the advancements that manned space exploration has brought but seemingly ignores how advancements are done in general for all of human existence. This mindset would have us living in caves after a few hardships.
You could argue we know enough now but this overestimates how much humans know especially with respect to space
> but this overestimates how much humans know especially with respect to space
Does it? We can't know how many secrets there are out there, maybe there's infinite and maybe there's nothing. It's hard for us to know the opportunity cost until we understand what we're bartering for.
Like, humanity could pool their resources to comprehensively explore the Mariana Trench if we wanted. That's fairly unknown, entirely feasible, and could yield scientific advancement. But it's also expensive, and doesn't guarantee any lucrative returns for us. Maybe there's gold deposits at the bottom of the floor, maybe it's all silt and sand. Maybe we harvest the gold, and discover that humanity has upset a delicate balance that has only survived by us ignoring it.
Iunno, if I was an alien civilization somewhere, I'd be praying to whatever higher powers exist to ensure humanity stays far, far away from me.
You're being downvoted unfairly, because the fact of the matter is that the only science being done in orbit that fundamentally requires humans is research into the effects of microgravity on the human body.
But we know it's bad, and we know the fix: Just simulate gravity by spinning the spacecraft like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or in Interstellar. Easy.
There's this... thing... with NASA that you can recognise once you see it, because you will see it, over and over: Once they find something that the government is willing to fund, they will never stop researching that thing, because to "solve" the problem is to turn the funding tap off.
My favourite example of this phenomenom is water and/or life on Mars. There's been a ludicrous volume of press releases (like clockwork!) about possible life (or water) on Mars. However, notably, not a single mission to Mars has ever included any instrument that could definitively disprove that there is life or water on Mars. To do so would be an instant off-switch for billions in funding, so "oops" these instruments are always omitted.
Send a microscope! A frigging microscope! One! They're not that big or heavy!
Nope, can't do it. That would be the end, you see? Got to keep sending magnetometers, microphones, cameras, stereo cameras, all sorts of things. Just not anything that would accidentally prove that there's nothing to find.
Of course, this entire conversation is off-topic because the topic is not the merit of funding human spaceflight, but the merit of a president suddenly threatening a specific company with losing their federal contracts for criticizing the president.
Isn't there specific laws that allows the government to take over businesses for war time production? Hasn't he already used harsher laws for less already?
It's wild to me how many conspiracy theories I've seen about how this is all staged, like it's a distraction or it's just Elon repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are cratering).
Psychologically, I think this is reflective of cognitive dissonance. The two conflicting ideas are that two people with much to lose would get in the dumbest fight imaginable and the myth of meritocracy [1]. You see, people want or need to believe that people get into these positions through merit: skill, intelligence and hard work.
That's simply not true. We are talking about two of the egotistical, thin-skinned, genuinely stupid narcissists on the planet. Drugs may even be a factor. There is no planet where a charade like this involves calling the president of the United States a pedophile [2].
Media reports seem to universally agree that everybody in the administration absolutely hates Elon. Additionally, IMHO Elon is absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible room reader and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a loyal following. He does not. Any clout he has is solely because of being a Trump acolyte.
The myth of meritocracy is perpetuated to keep you working hard to make somebody else rich. It is to reinforce the existing social and economic order. It is to assign blame to those who are poor because poverty is treated as a personal moral failure.
If Trump chooses to, he can effectively bankrupt Elon. That's how insane all of this is.
For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
There are negotiations over a trade deal with China because of the tariffs and what is quite likely the dumbest trade war in history. The terms of that deal could be fatal to Tesla's future.
Trump could even get Elon denaturalized and deported. How? Immigration fraud. It's fairly clear from the facts (and his brother's statements about 10 years ago) that when Elon dropped out of a Stanford PhD to start a company he was technically undocumented. If you misrepresent to USCIS then it is absolutely grounds for denaturalization should they choose, although such proceedings are incredibly rare.
>For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
This isn't an issue. Execs nor shareholders are required to have clearance and even the ones that have clearance aren't read in to top secret stuff without a need to know. Elon's focus was starship which is quite far removed from any of those contracts (falcon gov launches or starshield). Gwynne Shotwell runs and will continue to run those parts of SpaceX just fine without Elon having clearance.
> Execs nor shareholders are required to have clearance and even the ones that have clearance aren't read in to top secret stuff without a need to know
No clearance would absolutely compromise Musk’s ability to control SpaceX. (I think that’s a good thing.)
It wouldn’t matter for spacex, which is the point. It wouldn’t make “military contracts awkward”, whatever that means.
Musk would still maintain the ability to control what SpaceX targets as far as customers go. And he could easily decline any plans to pursue contracts that require changes in strategy.
Him having clearance is irrelevant to both the govt and to the future of spacex. Gwynne runs those parts of the company. Musk is only playing with Starship when he’s looking at spacex at all.
Aren't they using the same rockets for non-government missions that they use for government missions, so the classified parts of government missions would just concern the payload and where they fly it to? Musk shouldn't need access to that information to run the company.
> the classified parts of government missions would just concern the payload and where they fly it to?
Which in turn affects practically everything from launch timing to fuelling thresholds to whether the rocket can be used in reusable or expendable mode and thus whether that booster can be reüsed for the next launch. (Same for Starshield’s requirements impacting Starlink.)
Note that I’m not even touching ITAR, which Musk could be found subject to as a triple national.
> or it's just Elon repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are cratering)
I'm not going to say for sure that it's true, but this is not a conspiracy, or even a super genius move by Elon. I think it's a very natural and plausible instinct given the circumstances. He can't have avoided noticing the crash in sales, and the back of the mind can realize things the consciousness is in denial about. It would just register in his mind as "need to detach my image from this enemy".
> Elon is absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible room reader and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a loyal following.
Two things:
* Being on the spectrum doesn't make you completely clueless. Elon is also a drug addict, as was revealed recently to all that couldn't tell yet. And his unique position of "richest man ever" certainly must warp his self-image into a form of sociopathy.
* He does have a loyal following, looking at the braindead blue check marks approving of his every tweets. Although it's hard to say how many of them they really are, as they are extremely vocal.
There's nothing invalid about meritocracy, but that's not what we have. We have some other kind of "ocracy": government by the lucky. I lack the Greek literacy to name the phenomenon correctly but that's what it would translate to in English.
Neither Trump nor Musk has any business running anything more impactful than a used car lot or a corner Starbucks franchise, but their competition was permanently out to lunch in both cases, and here we are. How can anyone be surprised when two merit-free, chaos-loving narcissists fail to get along?
“ For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
Meh, tell it to Darwin. Heat death will come for us all in the end, and there is no refuge to be found in our navels. Why accelerate it by embracing mediocrity? We should identify talent, reward it, and do the best we can with what we have, while we can.
The part about "identifying talent" is where people seem to lose the plot, unfortunately.
You think a carefully staged spat between two men with long track records of impulsive idiocy is the simple solution?
I mean, there is a sense where a conspiracy is always the simplest explanation for public affairs, in the same way "a wizard did it" is simple. But that's not usually what people mean when they talk about Occam's razor.
There is no myth. Both Trump and Elon have generational talent in their respective domains. This is the kind of talent that’s so unique, it creates its own domain that didn’t exist before, and that no one will be able to replicate after.
But they’re both unstable, and have many other negative features.
One can have an extraordinary talent in starting generational companies, and have a social media addiction (among possibly other addictions and problems) that makes one unstable. These aren’t mutually exclusive.
One of their fathers was a successful slumlord, and the other owned an emerald mine in South Africa. Those provide a one-time advantage (which in Trump's case would have been more profitable if he had socked it away in an index fund.) How do they establish 'generational talent' for being POTUS or building rockets and cars?
It will be interesting to see if any of Elon's offspring choose to follow in his footsteps. Probably not the transgender child he disowned, or the one whose name has to be written with Unicode characters, but that leaves something like 20 others to vie for the throne.
The only talents they are great at are grift and daring someone to enforce rules against them in a society that largely relies on people holding themselves to standards and risk avoidance instead of active enforcement.
Without SpaceX, all of us will never leave this planet and will have very restricted access to space exploration.
EU is more dead than alive regarding space exploration;
India moves slowly for obvious reasons;
CH will never be used for any major western country project;
Russia space program is gone;
Yet, America always hated SpaceX!!
Elon has his problems but SpaceX is one of the best things that has ever happened, now even CH can return rockets back to Earth.
I am pretty sure Australia would accept SpaceX with open arms.
Due to being too close to Trump, Elon burned the bridge with EU and Canada so he will never be able to move his company there.
Australia is a very good candidate.
> Trump said that Isaacman was a Democrat, although Isaacman has donated to both Republican and Democratic candidates and organizations over the year.
Beside the polemic over two toddler arguing in public, what grab my attention is the fact that someone who is considered to be appointed to NASA leadership use to give money to both opposite political side during election.
That’s messed up, someone like that has obviously absolutely no standing, honor,.. whatever you call it. Someone you can’t rely on, that will betray you.
I would consider it to be about the same level as a crackhead, you know he is going to betray you and all its responsibilities at some point, you just don’t know when.
Seriously, you don’t lead the NASA with people like that.
Why not? We don’t know his motivations for political donations.
At the very least it might be worth questioning what he found appealing about each candidate’s view of NASA and leadership. But an outright disqualification over this?
Should we pull up voter records and see which party’s primary each person participated in?
I’d strongly prefer a society where agency leaders are picked for their expertise, not party allegiance.
> I’d strongly prefer a society where agency leaders are picked for their expertise, not party allegiance.
Me too of course, but it’s not even about that. I could understand if they chose someone because he is competent and republican.
What triggers me is the kind of snake this man is, if the Chinese offered him money to reveal secrets and he thinks he can get away with, I have no doubt he would collaborate.
You need a man you can trust at this position, someone that wouldn’t betray his country. If he’s the kind to spread money on both side of the political spectrum, regardless of his moral compass, or just dignity, I would be extremely cautious.
That’s basically not a man with conviction, or dignity.
You are right about him being a snake. I don't think anyone is dumb enough to offer secrets to Chinese for money, so doubt that would ever happen. Do you want to be triggered more? You are right about the trust issue and you will have more trust issues after watching some of this https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-arqxBG7bIl63KZ6VwKH... Read the source material though if you want to get any actual insights.
No, I am an American and I think some things the republicans do are dumb and some things the democrats do are dumb. This tribalism is not helpful for actually sifting out what policies are sensible and what aren’t.
I used to follow all the spaceX stuff. But I cant watch any of it now, just cus its associated with that sack of shit musk. I want every endeavour of his to fail more than I want us to have a functional starship.
There is so much theater and reality TV in the Trump administration that it's hard to conclude anything. Most of the theater is there to play to his MAGA base.
First there was the (staged?) row with Zelensky. A couple of months later nothing has really changed.
Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130 days in that position). Time for another public row to show that Trump is tough on subsidies for electric vehicles.
SpaceX will of course continue to get funded. A large number of LEO satellites are needed for Trump's Golden Dome and Starlink is needed in crisis regions.
The Zelensky interview was only staged (manufactured) by the White House. You may have noticed immediately after the US stopped intelligence sharing just long enough for Putin to take back Kursk.
This is so farfetched and I find it absolutely bizarre that anyone can have a worldview where they think this level of conspiracy is the most likely explanation for any of these things. It runs contrary to the point of a conspiracy which is to do things that benefit you. Being called a pedophile and splitting your base is not to your benefit.
Even if it was to his benefit to get called a pedophile, there still would be no reason to assume 4D-chess genius. The malignant narcissist and drug explanation is right there. The long track record of infighting and interpersonal fallouts is right there. The track record of falsely calling people pedophiles is also right there.
But for some reason we must discard all reason and conclude that Trump and Musk are conspiring.
"The spat was revelatory, it was epic, it was historic, at least according to the thousands of earnest and excited commentaries that were instantly published.
It was also a well-timed outburst.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump did not have a feud five days ago and might not have a feud five days from now. Until proved otherwise, all of this is theater. Think of it as the political version of professional wrestling. For a few hours, everyone was diverted by the spectacle of a brawl between the world’s richest man and its most powerful person."
Having you and other politically naive persons shoot down anything as a "conspiracy theory" is exactly what enables the system.
These guys are both masters of dominating attention on social media. It got them to where they are. The way to dominate the national attention in this world we've created, is to act like a child and call someone a pedo. They are not the leaders we wanted, but may be the leaders we deserve.
That's a really good take, and I personally missed that his departure was pre-planned all along (you are the first I saw to mention 130 days). But, again. "So, thank you, Elon, as you are leaving your role anyway, how about making a little performance for the public? Be my friend, post on Twitter that I didn't release Epstein files because I'm in them…"
There is no multiverse where Trump would knowingly allow someone to mock or criticize him. If Musk grovels enough Trump may let him back; he loves emasculating his rivals.
> Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130 days in that position).
He couldn't legally stay more than 130 days, but Trump is already ignoring plenty of more important laws and getting away with it. I doubt adding this one to the list would make any difference.
I really don't think the Zelensky thing was staged, and I doubt this was either.
As far as I can tell about Zelensky, he had every intention to cancel Trump's proposed deal after the white house meeting, but he is losing the war with Russia so badly that he absolutely needs US support, so he had no choice but to come back to the table.
Musk pulling out the Epstein thing and Trump pulling out the SpaceX contracts are both two subjects these guys are very touchy about. If they were faking it, they wouldn't have gone for the (emotional) throat on this one.
That said, Trump always chickens out, so there's no real chance SpaceX is getting its contracts canceled, even the ones that legitimately are a huge waste of money.
What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat? Shouldn't those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the country is served by them and at what price.
Trump needs to take his lumps on his BBB. That bill is full of pork for billionaires and cuts funding for poor folks. It should come as no surprise that people don't like it.
> Shouldn't those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the country is served by them and at what price.
I'm always amazed when I read questions like this.
I mean ... have you been paying attention?
Law firms getting security clearances canceled, incarceration without due process, Harvard defunded, memecoins, gutting of the federal government, &c. &c. &c. &c.
Every data point screams malevolence and lack of concern for the common good of the nation.
And you're confused about decision-making over SpaceX that "seems" to ignore how the country is best served?
Don't get me wrong. You pose a valid question. In fact, only a person who himself cares about the common good would ask this type of question.
But man, the big flashing warning signs should be answering your question for you.
> What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat?
Well, SpaceX is owned by Musk. Therefore Trump, if seeking to hurt Musk, could attempt to hurt SpaceX.
The ends justify the means. The country's best interests are collateral damage, the benefit that SpaceX offers the country is not relevant to Trump's ego/feelings having been hurt.
Elon Musk has recently talked about forming a third party in the US. Does anyone have an idea of what such a party would look like? I imagine it would be significantly different than the Republican Party.
Pretty much the same garbage economic policies, concerning concentration of power and abhorrent hatred of minorities, with the difference that H1B visas are welcome.
"one in eight Americans thinking women are too emotional to be in politics" [1]. Well, I don't know, maybe men should not holding high political offices /s
A friend who studied political science an conflict made this observation about American politics: 30% of the voting population is insane. They will believe the most mind-bendingly illogical things, and then vote for them, so the best you can ever expect from the general population is 70% agreement on reality.
In that light, we're doing really well with only 1/8 believing such a thing.
Come on, as Beth says, those two should just fuck and get it over with.. We are all adults here. Say it with me: "Those two should just fuck and be be friends, again"
Please, spare us. The most powerful men in the world are having a spat over social media like a pair of tweens, and you have the gall of calling out the left, as if the "left" (whatever the hell that means in the US, since you have no left, but I digress) was the one that voted them. Take a look in the mirror if you want to cry about dumb thoughts.
Please spare me you inability to understand what is being said.
Trump and Musk engaging in a social media bitch-slapping session is not at all what my comment was about. What they are doing is idiotic.
> Take a look in the mirror if you want to cry about dumb thoughts.
My comment is about something else. Oddly enough, you provide supporting evidence for what I have observed for many years. HN has become an echo chamber where only one point of view is tolerated and all others are rejected and attacked violently in many ways.
I figure that's intended as a "gotcha", but a hallmark of any autocracy, fascism included, is the factional fights and purges. And few understand, but being an early supporter of fascism actually increases one's statistical chances of ngmi.
For what it's worth, the way you've phrased this question doesn't sound like you want to discuss any of these issues. It sounds like you have bones to pick with what people have said and want to argue about it.
Yes. He's insinuating that the only reason you would dislike musk is sure to his association with trump. He's also insinuating that people who dislike trump just like the opposite of what trump like, so that is trump dislikes musk then they musk like him.
My definition of fascist is a person that is ok with, or perhaps takes active steps towards, a society where powerful people can manipulate/pick/write the rules in order to further increase their power. By this definition it's not "absurd" at all to call him a fascist.
Yes, I realize there are degrees.
No point telling me that the Wikipedia definition is different. This is the definition which I think is the most useful because it captures the essence of why fascism is bad: it's an instability of the system.
According to this definition all the usual suspects are fascists (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao), but also characters like Trump and his enablers, and Musk and his fanboys.
I ask because your definition is very broad. Generally, every political system has business owners / elites / lords who have more influence.
The Bolsheviks had almost exclusive influence and control, but they weren't fascist.
Most liberal democracies have elites and lobbyists who have more influence than the common man. they aren't fascist.
I think your definition is convenient because it's so broad and then you can apply it to who you dislike.
Among the american elite, at least 1/5 of congress, most of the senate, most of the fortune 500, a good chunk of hollywood would qualify as fascist according to this definition.
> The Bolsheviks had almost exclusive influence and control, but they weren't fascist.
Who is "the Bolsheviks"? Most supporters of the party did not have as explicit goal to accumulate power for themselves. If you're referring to Lenin and Stalin, they certainly where fascists by the useful definition.
> Among the american elite, at least 1/5 of congress, most of the senate, most of the fortune 500, a good chunk of hollywood would qualify as fascist according to this definition.
No, I disagree. Most of those people have only enough power to effect miniscule tweaks to the system. Those don't qualify. Like I said, it is in part a matter of degree.
> I think your definition is convenient because it's so broad and then you can apply it to who you dislike.
Frankly, I would phrase this question the same way. But it has more to do with society, that simply just don't want to be responsible for anything. And that is the same society that put Musk on pedestal, that Simpsons immortalized and the same society has a bones to pick when reminded about those glorious moments, but not to just be ashamed of themselves and their behaviour, like you are demonstrating here just perfectly.
Here's a thought exercise. Could you list history's top 5 worst fascists in descending order? #1 would be the worst. and would Elon make it? Would Trump?
I know this was intended to be a snarky remark but I'm going to reply anyways. Despite US politics being the way it is, the world isn't binary. Just because 2 bad people are fighting each other, it doesn't make one of them good. The enemy of my enemy isn't always my friend. Sometimes it's just another enemy.
You're right. But Elon became Bad when he partnered with Trump. And prior to that, he was saving the world from climate change , and Tesla's were very popular status symbols for that.
In 20 days musk will be a goodie and then you mustn’t at all say anything negative at all about him. He’s a goodie. Again, trump is a baddie (baddie status began in 2016 fyi, before that point he was a goodie).
A lot of SpaceX technology has export restrictions. On top of that, Elon himself doesn't have any engineering knowledge or degrees and his entire knowledge base on space travel is from Kerbal Space Program that he played for like a week. So what exactly is he going to bring to other countries space programs? The people working at SpaceX aren't going to move to China, and Elon can't just pack his rockets up in a suitcase and fly somewhere else with them.
I was recently wondering whether the Australia/UK (AUKUS) exemptions for ITAR might mean SpaceX could operate freely in those countries. For example Australia is a reasonable launch location.
> Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn’t have the cards.
That contradicts almost everything we've seen on his government. He doesn't seem to be a deal maker, doesn't seem to even grasp the concept of deals, and doesn't seem to care if he has the cards or not.
As a US citizen, it's not clear to me that Elon legally can set up anything overseas without starting from scratch, and going that far might just make him the next Gerald Bull.
I hear that all the time but what deals has he made as president? He more seems like a bully who tries to beat up people but then quickly retreats when they hit back.
I always ask myself, "what is being done by the left hand, while we are distracted by the right hand?"
Could this dust-up have anything to do with some other bill being passed or a policy implemented? I can think of the big reconciliation (BBB) bill, and Palantir getting access to more information on American citizens, as 2 things that the public could be distracted from by the Musk-Trump issue.
The public doesn't need elaborate schemes to be distracted, no one actually cares about that stuff. Republicans don't even really care about massive deficit spending in the budget which is out in the open.
Correct. Republicans voted to close the border and deport illegal aliens, not cut the budget deficit. The fiscally responsible republican party hasn’t existed since the 1920s. Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other republicans weren’t going to cut those either, but they were going to talk about reforming them.)
One has to love this chameleon of a Republican "platform" where values and ideals are championed to browbeat support for a particular action, but then written off as irrelevant when they're awkward for analyzing other actions - while other values and ideals are dragged out in support.
A week ago, "the debt" was really important. Now that Dear Leader has declared otherwise, apparently it's not. Right into the memory hole it goes.
The reality is there is no platform beyond anger (the base), and naked autocratic power (the politicians). Everything else is post-hoc rationalization.
(and just to clarify so I'm not written off as some progressive partisan: I'm a libertarian who was unaligned, understood and saw merit in both camps' ideals - until the Republican party turned its back on conservatism in favor of cult of personality reactionaryism)
There is a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. No taxes on tips was on the platform (#6) as was no cuts to medicare or social security (#14). Balancing the budget was not on the platform.
There are republicans who care about the debt, but the party as a whole doesn’t. The economic libertarians have been thoroughly marginalized in the modern GOP, because economic libertarianism is unpopular.
To be clear, I admire the traditional small government conservatives, though I am not one. The GOP hasn’t been that party since the 1920s. The mass immigration of the 20th century made that approach unviable. We’re a country of machine politics now and it’s only going to become more pronounced. The guy who ran on “No Taxes on Tips” to buy the Latino vote in Nevada was never going to balance the budget.
That platform statement does not contain values or ideals! It contains goals, which could possibly be achieved in very different ways. Values and ideals are then trotted out in support of the specific policies that purport to achieve those goals, and my point is that those ideals are highly inconsistent and seemingly sum up to mere blind anger.
Your individual assertion that you don't care about a balanced budget isn't particularly relevant to the larger context where an overwhelming amount of Trump supporters did just make arguments professing support of the need to get the budget under control to justify last week's policies.
Just because people don’t have a grand unifying theory tying their preferences together doesn’t mean their preferences are motivated by “mere blind anger.” Trying to fit your preferences into some internally consistent framework is a high-IQ fixation.
That’s especially true because society is hard to analyze. For example, I think it will be bad for society to encourage greater race and ethnic consciousness in a diverse society. I can point to all the sectarian conflict that exists in countries around the world as an example of what I seek to avoid, but that’s hardly definitive. Is the upshot that we have to proceed with a vast social experiment, because we can’t provide a closed form analysis of the proposal a priori?
Ideals don't have to rise to the level of "grand unifying theory" to be meaningful. In fact given how poorly "grand unifying theories" tend to work, the whole point is that ideals sit in a sweet spot of complexity between there and a novel judgement for every new development.
I had an argument to write here, but I'm having a hard time getting it down to something concise and without a lot of inbaked assumptions, so I am just going to turn it into a question. Like, I am really trying to understand the continued support for Trump. I was an unaligned libertarian. I read Moldbug as he was writing. I got it. I disagreed from a philosophic information theoretic perspective (complexity multiplies, Urbit is just another "write once run anywhere"), but I still get the desire.
Then Trump. I totally got 2016 Trump support. The system seemed so entrenched and immutable, at least this guy is shaking things up and talking about real problems. I was the one telling my breathless progressive friends that he was likely to win. "But he's soooo racist" "uh-huh".
But then just the total lack of performance when actually in office? All performance, no execution besides who can be hurt this week? The only commonality I see is "owning the libs" where "the libs" means anyone who doesn't support Dear Leader. It just seems like one big tautology, for a lack of a real constrictive political direction or values.
I really want see where I am wrong, because none of these policies add up to making sense to me. Tariffs that harm our country, phrased in terms as if needing physical goods is somehow a strength? And then not even followed through on ? Attacking our allies for "not paying their share" while they buy into our economic empire and prop up our currency?
I get the populist anger, yes. But anger on its own does not produce good outcomes - in fact, quite the opposite.
I guess my question boils down to - if there are values besides anger, spite, owning the libs, and autocracy, then what exactly are they these days ? I don't mean the old mantras that are brought up to make people frustrated they didn't pan out, and then sidestepped when discussing current policy (like you've done with the deficit here). But the actual values that can be appealed to critique the current path? Heck, phrase it in terms of what would make you see a different candidate as even better than Trump.
Because like, for example:
> I think it will be bad for society to encourage greater race and ethnic consciousness in a diverse society
I agree with this. I don't call it "reverse racism", I just call it "racism" - a focus on collectivism in terms of group identity. But what I see in Trumpism isn't a repudiation of that general racism, but rather continued escalation of the dynamic merely with the "other side" winning. But I feel like if I tried to flesh that argument out by appealing to what you threw out as a supposed value, then I'm just going to run into a different newly-conjured value that overrides the first - in other words, rationalizations rather than actual values.
It looks like Trump has decided to approach deficit reduction like he approaches climate change: claim that it is a hoax that his policies will increase the deficit [1].
According to that document he actually is cutting the deficit by $1.407 trillion with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and with the tariffs and deregulation the deficit will be cut by least $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
> Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other republicans weren’t going to cut those either, but they were going to talk about reforming them.)
Technically they weren't going to cut them, but they also weren't doing anything to effectively address the upcoming shortfalls in the SS and Medicare trust funds and in fact the tax changes they are trying to enact would shorten the time to those shortfalls.
I think you're falling into the "they are playing 5D chess" trap, whereas the truth is almost certainly much simpler: two powerful men with giant and brittle egos, who were on a collision course from day one, have now collided. That's it.
They’re to powerful men with huge egos who fundamentally disagree on political priorities. Trump had a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. Balancing the budget wasn’t on it, but the following was: “FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE” (all-caps original).
> Palantir getting access to more information on American citizens
This is overblown IMO. The government already has this data on citizens and they're merely using it how they like (i.e. consolidating it through a contractor)
The time to stop this would've been before it was collected in the first place.
That's what I usually think too. Even if just to be cautious: people alluding to "Hanlon's razor" (as if it's a real thing) are basically declaring themselves the smartest in the room, so by another well-known eponymous effect they are usually the dumbest in the room. Usually the worst suspicions are confirmed later.
This time, though, I'm running with the crowd. I think this is just too much. I mean, come on, screaming on Twitter that Trump didn't release Epstein files, because he is in them? Sure, it doesn't hurt him, it's no news nor a real accusation, but I'm pretty sure Trump didn't want that to be posted. The whole thing doesn't look nice for anybody, it doesn't help anybody. No, I really think Musk has become totally insane this time, or/and is drugged out. The left hand still may be doing something, but that's taking the opportunity, not making this all up for the sake of distraction.
If you are familiar with John Lilly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly), you may notice some similarities with Musk. Lilly used/abused ketamine and began to believe in some form of extraterrestrial oversight of earth, something like that. Musk keeps tweeting about "simulation theory", and to me sounds totally deranged. He says he thinks reality is a simulation (batshit imho), and that boring simulations are cancelled, and only exciting ones are allowed to run (by whom..?), stuff like that. He's out of his mind. I am not choosing sides here, and Trump's behaviour is absolutely deplorable (again, imo).
Are you referring to Musk saying "The most entertaining outcome is the most likely"? It's just a joke, it's a version of Occam's razor — I can't find any mention of him arguing that this is genuinely how the world works.
I would not consider Musk as a researcher of the topic - he has not published any papers or even works on philosophical level, so you are giving Musk too much of attention - just like his appearance in Simpsons.
In regards to reality as simulation, well - the issue here is that definitions are not very precise. That simulation is reality to us. We have mind limitations, by which we operate just like animals have them and that makes our reality. I have experienced deja vu many times and the mechanisms to that might be linked that things are predestined - pretty much this is main belief, that all pre-Christian societies believed in and generally Christianity is not in opposition to that either - it just states that there is a free will to humans and that they must choose God over Santa and deja vu can be experienced only by saints that are in direct contact of Ultimate Being.
I don't know where Musk is getting his ideas, but what is mundane and boring to some might be exciting to others. Insects controlled by pheromones might be living most exciting life that there is.
I think I have heard some other ideas that most probably developed on the basis of ideas of Lilly. It involves reincarnation of souls in other beings. I'm not completely sold on idea(because that is presented as noble and next nuclear war is not under any definition), but that might explain why society is deranged as that right now, as current beings does not have noblest souls... though it can also be explained by many other factors. Though, the mechanics of transfer of nomadic souls would explain no need for transportation to reach all the other planets that have life, but also - that is not really what matters - we don't think that dinos had more importance over humans and to be fair humans themselves are just an episode in this Universe as well.
The idea of Lilly can be expanded - pretty much Universe can be just a playground for various beings to experience whatever - just like a RPG game or a live movie, where you can play a role. It does not necessarily require soul mechanism mentioned earlier. But it also does not matter for your existence - you are as real and important as you want it to be. Or don't matter at all and there is no reason or value for anything.
Regardless, your destiny is to live through this cosmic theater and experience Musk - do you like it or not. Pretty much your reality can also be formed by your mind and it seems, that Musk is very central part in it.
To be clear, the biden-musk dispute included threats to Tesla. The entire thing is insane. Musk has done more for America than either of the last two presidents.
It's just such a shame that Elon was pressured into this messy politics stuff. After all, he could have just stayed in his own lane, kept his nose clean, made value for shareholders and saved America along the way. It was so easy! Hell, he could have just become president himself with his spotless track record of administrative accomplishment. Who wouldn't vote for him?
Now look at the poor guy. Burned his bridges with the liberals when he bought Twitter, harassed queer people and reneged his environmental commitments. Now the bridge to modern conservatism is on fire, because gasp the Republicans won't agree on making a smaller, less-capable government! Those filthy backstabbers, how was Elon supposed to know he was fraternizing with frauds, socialists and sex pests?
It's... it's discrimination. Don't they know Elon is on the autism spectrum, how are they getting away with this harassment? H-hey, why are you guys walking away - this is important! America's future is on the line, here!
I don't care about Musk personally but if you think Trump's threat is the first direct named threat against his company by a politician, I think you are off your rocker
By most accounts, that's what typically happens to businessmen who have close ties to the Russian Federation. Doubly so if you spent your early 20s on a traipse around post-bloc oblasts looking to buy decommissioned weapon systems. Triply so if you're still picking up when Putin calls you.
If it's any consolation though, Elon's not alone. Plus, he's probably earned a real nice dacha near occupied Sumy for the valuable work he's done the government.
When described from 10,000 feet, I could almost believe this. If Musk were smart he might be doing something like this on the route to rehabilitating his image with customers.
But the particulars on the ground show that Musk is not smart, just vindictive, power-hungry, petulant, and childish. He literally posted that he would decommission Dragon because of Trump's threat, which was stupid in intent and stupid in potential negotiating effect on Trump (Trump does not know what Dragon is and does not care):
Are you sure? You know that Trump constantly talks about his TV ratings? I forget who it was, but I remember there being a story last year or the year before, of someone who was publicly criticizing Trump met with him and was expecting to be absolutely whipped and scolded, instead behind the scenes Trump thanked them for making good television. The financial impact on Musk’s companies do make this seem real, but somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if this drama was fake. It did occur to me, and I can tell I’m not the only one... the top Google autocomplete for me for “is the trump” is “is the trump musk feud real”.
I absolutely would be too, if there wasn’t a long demonstrated history on the part of both of these people to use public drama as smoke to distract from other things they’re doing.
Not quite relevant, but I've noticed that there's this trend on HN where if there's a non-tech-related happening that's significant and it's obviously something that people want to discuss, people will try and find a tech-related angle in order to discuss the wider issue.
It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president.
If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on merit and based on nepotism instead.
This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough, they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on promises, and it shoots the country in the head.
It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
> corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
I think the end goal is domination. From https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267 :
It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/hypocrisy-and-fascism-2018-0...
>It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
For my friends - everything, for my enemies - the law.
I used to love this pithy quote but reflecting on it more recently this doesn't seem like something limited to fascists or fascism. Indeed, this kind of thinking is used by those of any political leaning when ideology becomes more important than principles. An obvious example is the USSR.
Authoritarianism is the umbrella term describing the behaviour of both fascist states and various others. AFAIK all fascist states have been authoritarian - but it’s a common outcome anytime the people running the government are replaced en masse.
The tyranny of the majority is another, often overlooked form of authoritarianism.
Good point, and much harder to challenge. If the majority is against an authoritarian there's protests and sabotage of social structures. If the majority oppresses a fringe group, it's often socially encouraged
For these reasons, I personally believe authoritarianism cannot be opposed without a solid foundation of individualism. The problem becomes that explaining ideological nuance is rarely politically expedient or even rhetorically effective. Appeals to collectivism are more easily digested by the masses.
that's kind of what the USA is going through right now but it's more aptly described as "tyranny of the plurality" because Trump didn't win either majority of of registered voters or majority of the actual vote.
Regardless of tiresome partisan hyperbole, I don't regard the substance of this administration's actions as any more authoritarian the previous or the status quo. In the specific instances where state power has been expanded, I regard it as part of the general trend of expansion. The trend is more indicative of the overall incentives and structure of governance, rather than specific political actors. Similarly, partisan recriminations fit with the same pattern.
i tend to see trumps abuse of office as an unprecedented claim to powers a president does not, did not, and should not have.
only partisan blinders would cause one to equate trumps actions with anything from our past.
mark my words, maga is about dismantling the american system and establishing a totalitarian state. obey.
IMO, Obama claiming the power to assassinate US citizens on US soil (by declaring them "foreign combatants") was primarily different in that he only used it a little bit.
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/obama-administration-cla...
As is the tyranny of the minority.
This is a great example of the horseshoe theory of politics [0], which I believe in very strongly. I made a separate post if anyone cares to discuss it. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44214040
Horseshoe Theory is stupid.
It’s based on the flawed assumption that politics can or should be understood on a single axis. It can’t and shouldn’t be. That heuristic is wrong.
If viewed on a 2d axis, the “cohorts that appear similar” on the ends of the horseshoe are still on opposing ends of one of the axes, despite being near each other on another axis.
I see it as the gateway to people realizing that the left/right 1D line, and even the political compass, are ridiculous.
IMHO, political positioning should be described as a tensor, where each data point is the person's position on a specific policy.
Horseshoe theory has always read like a Pythagorean epicycle to me, an attempt to redeem a broken model. For a reductive political model, I prefer the 2 dimensional Collectivist-Individualist, Authoritarian-Libertarian axes. No need to literally contort the outdated Left-Right spectrum.
An added benefit is you get to avoid annoying semantic battles such as whether Nazis or Fascists are Right wing or Left wing.
Plus you get to add other axes as needed. My favorite, perhaps relevant today, is principled vs. expedient: do we apply principles like this "Rights" stuff impartially, even to people with whom we disagree, or do we just git 'r done?
To me, the horshoe theory is just a step in the right direction. It shows the limits of a straight 1D line to describe politics, and is a stepping-off point for deeper exploration.
Ideally, maybe we would describe a person's politics with something like a tensor, where each value is the person's support of a specific policy.
Hmm. I guess I feel that "The Horseshoe Theory" is worse than useless. It implies that as someone gets "too much" Right or Left, they inevitably become authoritarian, as if centrists cannot be authoritarian. It equates "weirdness" with "bad". I'd argue that we should skip straight to identifying "authoritarianism" as the problem, and the not having weird or even extreme leftist or rightist ideas.
This is a really interesting argument that I had not previously considered. It might take me a few days/weeks/months to fully process. Thank you.
Agreed, the matrix expresses this idea more exactly.
It should be a trident theory.
If you don't mind, could you expand on this a bit?
> I see it as the gateway to people realizing that the left/right 1D line, and even the political compass, are ridiculous.
When this theory is used in discourse, it is always a matter of suggesting that the left fringe and the right fringe are equally to be rejected. Stalin and Hitler, communism and fascism, class struggle and racial theory, Das Kapital and Hitler's Mein Kampf, dictatorship of the proletariat and Nazi dictatorship: the righteous liberal democrat must keep his distance from both extremes in equal measure. The golden path lies in the balanced middle. I am tired of criticizing this nonsense. It is an ideological lie.
The trident means that there is just as much ideology, corruption, political dysfunctionality and all kinds of drivers of suffering, misery and resentment in the supposed political center. But it is very well hidden because it wears a kind of ideological cloak: the horseshoe theory.
So to respond to your sentence I quoted above: the horseshoe theory IS the political compass that should be ridiculed.
Absolutely. See "the only moral abortion is my abortion".
Republicans can play all sorts of games because their mistresses will always be able to get an abortion on the DL without consequence, while "single black mom? 25 to life for murder!"
Red fascism is a term that has been used to equate Stalinism with fascism, so maybe the quote still has merit?
For my true friends, champagne! For my sham friends, true pain.
Close, but the correct version has better wordplay: "Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends."
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This is a shameful false equivalency. In the puppet president scenario you outline, the blast radius is, at worst, 4 years? In the case of an insurrection to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, there is a generation or more of democratic order lost.
That depends entirely on your context and frame of reference.
You're describing the blast radius of what was possible in the past assuming that one president was willing to usurp power but only for one term.
In reality, we did go 4 years with a president who wasn't in charge, at least for part of that term, specifically because the public was lied to about his health and some small number of people his the truth. We did not go through 4 years of a presidency after one very much seemed to attempt to take the office despite having lost the election.
In both cases I take huge issue with the intent and the potential outcome. In one case, though, the outcome was real and I lived, for a time, in a presumably democraric society ruled by someone(s) who weren't elected while the one who was elected decreased mentally and physically beyond the ability to rule.
They’re different orders of magnitude. Biden was elected legitimately. Parties can nominate whoever they want, so shenanigans with primaries, while distasteful, are completely legitimate. Likewise, keeping Biden’s mental state from the public is ugly but legitimate. Voters can, and did, punish these actions.
Trump tried to cheat his way to keeping power. Even if you don’t blame him for the violent attempt, it’s well established that he made major efforts before that to change the outcome by more peaceful means that were just as illegitimate.
Playing stupid games within the system means you lose elections and either reform or get replaced. Playing stupid games subverting the system means you don’t have to worry about elections anymore if you succeed. I’m about a million times more concerned about the latter.
Do you not believe Trump was elected legitimately? I totally understand and share many of the concerns over the insurrection and what happened around it, but Trump didn't take office in 2020 and wasn't reelected until 2024.
He was. Where do you see me saying otherwise?
> Biden was elected legitimately.
I must have misread you last comment. I read this as a comparison implying that Biden wasn't legitimately elected but you just meant it to set up the point.
Right, that’s a response to issues with the Democratic primary, not a contrast with Trump’s election.
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If it’s not an insurrection what it is? What is the organization of thousands of individuals to invade the capital building in protest of election results?
Just because it failed, doesn’t mean it wasn’t an insurrection.
Words like "protest" or "riot" leap to mind. It is more comparable to something like CHAZ in 2020 which could technically be called an insurrection or rebellion, but realistically was more of an unruly protest.
An insurrection would traditionally involve a little planning and a little more seriousness in the attempt. Maybe a plan that could conceivably lead to a change in government.
It was also a protest and a riot. These things are not mutually exclusive.
Obviously. All riots are technically insurrections. They're synonyms. And they are usually protests too; it'd be unusual to have a riot while agreeing with the current direction of the government.
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Please stop. This is a topic that people have been saying the same things about for over four years. It's not a good topic for HN as people only bring it up for the purpose of ideological battle, which is against the guidelines.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Please stop. This is a topic that people have been saying the same things about for over four years. It's not a good topic for HN as people only bring it up for the purpose of ideological battle, which is against the guidelines.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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> I think the end goal is domination. From https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267
I don't know whether Trump can accurately be described as a fascist, but its been clear to me since his first term that domination is the only thing that matters to him. The obscene wealth and the swaggering deceitfulness and the gold-plated bathrooms are just the secondary outcomes of his need to dominate.
Domineering father-figure; raised as a sociopath; given a lot of money. Kind of inevitable.
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The Democratic Governor of California denounced them publicly and stopped the effort.
Despite Musk raising millions and campaigning viciously against the Democrats the administration kept all of SpaceX contracts and Tesla ev subsidies. In fact the IRA benefited Tesla disproportionately.
Both sides are NOT the same. One is fascist and the other is not
The Democratic White House chose to not invite Tesla to their EV Summit. That was not political?
The Democratic DoJ and Democrat DAGs prosecuted dozens of former Trump administration officials and Trump allies, and even Trump himself:
Trump Administration Officials:
Michael Flynn – Former National Security Advisor
Stephen K. Bannon – Former White House Chief Strategist & Campaign Advisor
Mark Meadows – Former White House Chief of Staff
Jeffrey Clark – Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Peter Navarro – Former White House Trade Advisor
Trump Allies:
Paul Manafort – Former Trump Campaign Chairman
George Papadopoulos – Former Trump Campaign Foreign Policy Advisor
Rick Gates – Former Trump Deputy Campaign Chairman
Roger Stone – Longtime Trump Advisor and Friend
Michael Cohen – Former Personal Attorney to Donald Trump
Elliott Broidy – Former Trump Fundraiser
Rudolph Giuliani – Attorney to Trump, Former Mayor of New York City
Waltine Nauta – Personal Aide to Trump
Carlos De Oliveira – Property Manager at Mar-a-Lago
Sidney Powell – Trump Campaign Attorney
Kenneth Chesebro – Trump Attorney
Jenna Ellis – Trump Campaign Attorney
John Eastman – Trump Attorney
Dinesh D'Souza – Conservative Commentator, Trump Supporter
Joseph M. Arpaio – Former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Trump Supporter
Ray Smith III – Trump Attorney
Cathy Latham – Fake Elector, Coffee County GOP Leader
Robert Cheeley – Trump Attorney
David Shafer – Fake Elector, Former Georgia GOP Chair
Mike Roman – Trump Campaign Staffer
Shawn Still – Fake Elector, Then-Georgia State Senator
Scott Hall – Atlanta Bail Bondsman
Misty Hampton – Former Coffee County Elections Supervisor
Steve Lee – Pastor from Illinois
Harrison Floyd – Black Voices for Trump Leader
Trevian Kutti – Publicist from Chicago
I'm sure this was just Democrats following the law, with no bias, right?
This kind of narrative that you're forwarding now where the Republican Party are fascists and Trump is a threat to democracy is exactly the kind of mentality that was used to elicit this enormous persecution of Trump and officials near him.
Meanwhile, the real elephant in the room is always ignored:
The Democrats shovel hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to large unions in order to secure their support and win elections. This is textbook corruption.
https://politifact.com/factchecks/2022/dec/14/kevin-brady/bi...
The recipients of USAID grants? All Democrats. Same story all across DC. That's why 92.4% of DC voted for Harris. DC, meanwhile, has a per capita GDP of $250,000.
Because Tesla is anti-union.
So politics, not the merit of the EV company. This was a EV company summit, not a labor unions summit.
Policy difference not partisan squables or payback for supporting his opponents. Most Democrats feel Unions are important to help workers (union and nonunion) earn more.
To base the decision on what companies to invite to an EV summit on whether they support the Democrats' favorite constituents is pure politics. The only policy difference here is one which helps the Democrats win elections.
It's not
Democrats believe that unions help keep wages high and are good for the economy.
If Musk wasn't anti union he probably would have been invited. I say probably because of Teslas issues with racial discrimination
It doesn’t matter what Democrats think about unions. This wasn’t a union summit or a summit on party values—it was about EVs. Tesla is the world leader in EVs and the top American EV manufacturer. Excluding them because they don’t support unionization — an issue tied to massive political support for Democrats through campaign contributions and institutional backing—is indefensible. It undermines the purpose of the summit through rank politicization and partisanship.
As for the claim that Tesla has racial discrimination issues—that’s a distortion. Nearly every major company gets hit with discrimination lawsuits because civil rights law has been weaponized to make that outcome nearly inevitable:
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/wokeness-as-saddam-statues-...
> The recipients of USAID grants? All Democrats. Same story all across DC. That's why 92.4% of DC voted for Harris. DC, meanwhile, has a per capita GDP of $250,000.
Why shouldn’t the recipients receive these grants other than that they are Democrats? What about their projects makes them not meritorious?
If you can't see the opportunity for corruption and bias here, then there's nothing I can do to convince you. This is always a story when people call Republicans corrupt or fascists and say the Democrats are not. They have absolutely no impartiality in the way they look at the world.
I think you mean convicted. Because they did crimes. If they would stop doing crime they wouldn’t get convicted.
Still waiting for someone to lock Hillary up. Oh wait…
There are hundreds of thousands of regulations carrying criminal penalties. If a political party is determined to imprison an opponent, it will find a law they’ve technically violated. In Trump’s case, they used an obscure accounting rule — one so trivial that even prominent Democratic supporters acknowledged it was an inappropriate basis for prosecution.
Hillary Clinton used a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and in 2014, her staff deleted 31,000 emails they labeled personal to prevent them from being scrutinized in an impending investigation. You don't think that if Hillary had been a Republican and if the Democrats were determined to prosecute her, they couldn't have found some law that she broke and prosecuted her on it?
Wait. What do you think about Hegseth's signal and atlantic reporter issue? That is wildly worse and where is the court case that absolutely should be happening?
That's nothing. Compare that to deleting 30,000 emails to avoid them being scrutinized in an investigation.
You think Hegseth's use of Signal is nothing. Gotcha. Rules for thee but not for me.
I think using an open source encrypted communication app is no big deal compared to what Hillary Clinton did.
The Democratic Party thinks that what Hillary Clinton did was no big deal. Rules for thee, but not for me.
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Comments like this really don't belong in hacker news. They amount to blind partisanship and instigation of flame wars.
comparing Hegseth to HRC will do a whole lot more :)
Clinton deleted 30,000 emails to prevent them from being scrutinized in an investigation.
we are not banana republic (just yet, getting there though) so anyone that breaks a law under a given statute you file charges, run an investigation and punish if law(s) are broken. if memory serves me well there was one :) can’t say the same for Hegseth et al but night is young so-to-speak…
The prosecution record, where Trump and dozens of his allies were prosecuted, is the record of a banana republic.
Like I said there's hundreds of thousands of regulations which hold the potential for criminal sanction. They could have found her guilty of something when she deleted those emails. The SDNY DAG found a way to charge the developers of Tornado Cash with running an illegal money transmission service when they didn't even hold it in custody of any funds, they simply published code. They stretched the law to incredible lengths to get someone they wanted. And they couldn't find something to pin on Hillary Clinton? Ridiculous.
They didn't for political reasons and you're naive or dishonest for believing otherwise.
Yes it was them following the law and being unbiased.
Many of the people involved in prosecuting them are Republicans. Trump is the most corrupt president we've ever had and many of his allies are similarly corrupt.
These days they know they just have to follow the maga line to get out of jail free. The Attorney General of Texas was so ridiculously corrupt he was about to be impeached by Texas Republicans but then he just claimed it was a witchhunt against maga got Trump on his side and suddenly impeachment was cancelled and he's polling a win in the next Senate primary.
Also Trump supported an attempted violent coup in addition to things like telling the Georgia Secretary of State to find him votes after the voting.
Trump has been described as a threat to democracy by many leading conservatives and Republicans. Many of them have had their careers ended and been slandered by former associates despite being conservative who had dedicated decades to the party while Trump doesn't care about ideology or party or outcomes only himself.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/politics/trump-fascist-john-k... Trump's former chief of Staff General John Kelly
> in a series of interviews published Tuesday, saying the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and that he spoke of the loyalty of Hitler’s Nazi generals.
> He also confirmed to The Atlantic that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War II, and recounted the moment.
> Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” Kelly told The Atlantic he’d asked Trump. He added, “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler
Copy-pasting my response to a similar partisan talking point:
--
There are hundreds of thousands of regulations carrying criminal penalties. If a political party is determined to imprison an opponent, it will find a law they’ve technically violated. In Trump’s case, they used an obscure accounting rule — one so trivial that even prominent Democratic supporters acknowledged it was an inappropriate basis for prosecution.
Hillary Clinton used a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and in 2014, her staff deleted 31,000 emails they labeled personal to prevent them from being scrutinized in an impending investigation. You don't think that if Hillary had been a Republican and if the Democrats were determined to prosecute her, they couldn't have found some law that she broke and prosecuted her on it?
--
What you're claiming is absolutely absurd. This idea that Trump leads a criminal enterprise and everyone affiliated with him is corrupt and that's why so many were prosecuted and not that this is the same politicization of the justice system you see all over the world and Democrats, with the tacit support of establishment Republicans, trying to imprison their opponents.
I also want to make it absolutely clear that it is all about framing. From your beltway-manufactured frame, Trump instigated January 6th, and this amounted to insurrection. But a much more reasonable framing is that leading Democrats instigated over 500 riots in the summer of 2020, and are instigating the current riots too:
https://x.com/camhigby/status/1931898945435021349
Kamala Harris even tweeted this out, to bail out rioters:
> “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”
Of course the mainstream news media journalists who are all unionized and thus economically aligned with the Democratic Party barely cover this or criticize it.
Yeah, only the issue here is that @realFascists are in opposition to Trump. And reading this text in that light - it check out and not really a news.
Also, frankly, you folks need to stop monopolizing these topics, based on highly polarized ideological filter, because even before Trump there was dissatisfaction about how Musk monopolized NASA contracts on the promise, that he would deliver more efficient and cheaper solution, while in reality the result is that NASA is currently paying more for Musks private solutions, than when it had to do it by itself. There are sure many other options to what Musk offers and if Trump is there to break up that monopoly and open up the market, then it is a win situation.
>there was dissatisfaction about how Musk monopolized NASA contracts on the promise, that he would deliver more efficient and cheaper solution, while in reality the result is that NASA is currently paying more for Musks private solutions, than when it had to do it by itself
SLS, NASA's rocket, costs $2.5 billion, PER LAUNCH.
Can you clarify what reality you're talking about? How NASA would do it cheaper?
That’s all very nice but according to Trump this only suddenly became a problem only a few weeks ago due to some reason. So whatever you are saying has absolutely no relevance to this decision making. If Musk continued licking his boots he’d be doing fine..
Doublethink
I think double standards would be a better term than hypocricy. Hypocricy would imply the pretense to be bound by certain rules, but the whole point of fascism is that those in power are not bound by any rules. They only make rules to bind others. I don't see any hypocricy in the openly advertised corruption of the current administration, it's just plain evil of the “we do it because we can” sort.
> It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
In history textbooks, it's known as the spoils system.
For those unaware of ~1900 US political history and how the spoils system was dismantled through political will: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_...
hopefully this time around it will go a little quicker, aka one term. project 2025 specifically pointed out all "disloyal" government employees should be kicked out and only those who bent a knee to trump should replace them, whatever their actual merit and ability to occupy the position
But is his plan to only stay one term?
The goal is to make sure the Republicans never lose another election ever again, no matter how. So yeah no it won’t last only one term.
Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in the US, especially at the local and state level. The main difference is a significant portion of governance was temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root.
The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive, leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing the power of checks and balances.
There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku in Japan, and François Mitterrand in France tried to decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
Low-level corruption at the local/state level is related but its effects are different though. In fact even today low level corruption in the US is extremely low by global standards - you can't bribe your way to a drivers license openly, for example. I'm sure it happens but it's not common or openly boasted about (parts of CA or DC could be an exception).
Here the corruption is openly displayed as a kind of peacock-tail to the beneficiaries.
I'd rather not have a whole discussion over this atm (I'm out rn - maybe later), but I recommend reading Yuen Yuen Ang's paper on "Unbundling Corruption" - there are different typographies of what "corruption" is, and some nations have always had a similar type of corruption compared to others.
In addition, low level corruption is orthogonal to grand corruption as can be seen in Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and the US.
Finally, Indian public discourse around corruption is non-targeted, and fails to contextualize significant institutional differences in how local, state, and federal governments operate in India compared to other states (be they democratic like the US or authoritarian like China).
[Feel free to add questions or points of contention, but I won't be able to reply quickly]
Fine, I don't disagree with anything you point out. However where we differ is that I believe identity politics is the trigger factor here, all the other changes you mention (loss of balance of power etc) are downstream of this.
Your causal diagram is backwards. Identity politics isn't the path to corruption. Corrupt politicians like Trump use identity politics to gain power to practice their corruption. Nobody who wanted to bring back Christian hegemony and re-oppress minority groups is cheering that Trump is threatening to take away contracts from Musk because "their side is winning."
> minority groups
This includes ‘women’. A group that probably has a small majority.
Women are definitely a majority by demographics.
But in the US, “minority” means “less poticial power”. By any reasonable measure straight white “Christian” men should be about 20% of the population, yet somehow they have 80% of political power.
> Identity politics isn't the path to corruption. Corrupt politicians like Trump use identity politics to gain power to practice their corruption.
These two sentences, taken together, lead me to exactly the opposite conclusion—exploitation of identity politics allows one to gain power to enact corruption. You play into what people want by being the savior they think they need and then once in power do whatever the hell you wanted in the first place.
Idpol can exacerbate corruption. There are strong feedback dynamics.
And to reply to the comment above yours, there are material factors upstream of idpol. It's not a coincidence that sort of thing is in renaissance across the world.
> you can't bribe your way to a drivers license openly
No but when it comes to local government contracts, building permits and similar stuff its quite different. Also a lot of (what sane people would consider) corruption is legal and institutionalized.
i.e. bribing politicians running for office is perfectly legal and entirely expected by all sides (that Americans are so open about this is quite unique).
I understand that US federal law makes it difficult for a politician to appropriate campaign donations and use them for personal expenses.
Interesting; is there an accessible 10-minute read on this US (edit: governance) de-politicized/re-politicized history, or does it have a name?
The notion that this kind of politicization started in the 90s is fanciful revisionism. It wasn’t really a thing in the US until about 2017. The word it’s known by is Trumpism.
I'm familiar with the rise of talk radio, News Corp, Web propaganda, alt-right, etc., in politics and public sentiment.
What's new to me is that the last couple decades might be a reversion to a pre-war mode of US governance.
(I know WW2 was unifying in some ways, as we'd expect, but I don't recall much from school about how US politics was played before then, other than punctuated events like the Civil War, civil rights movement, etc.)
its revisionism to say that the US has been free of politicization this bad. for most of its history, not counting the civil war very minor (and very major) issues sparked massacres, revolts, and even minor wars between states.
First off, Trump skyrocketed to political fame with his nonsense claims about Obama's citizenship.
The slide started in the 80's when Reagan killed off the 'fairness doctrine' which meant news outlets could present completely one-sided coverage of an issue.
Couple that with massive consolidation of newspapers and TV news stations where all the programming is heavily coordinated and groups like Sinclair started pushing identically worded "false news" narratives across all their stations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo
I recommend people read this to see why this comment is wrong: When the Cloke Broke by John Ganz https://a.co/d/hL4vo7d
9/11 was a big turning point in my experience. American conservatives that I considered online friends were simple impossible to reason with within days and completely alien beings after a few weeks.
Interesting. Things did change on 9/11 but it seemed incremental to me. Before that was the constant investigation of Clinton by Gingrich, the dog whistling of Reagan, Nixon's Southern Strategy, and before that to McCarthy and so on.
This is high level rather than your direct experience, so it's not a contradiction. Just a different perspective.
Yes. Almost everything about our current situation can be traced back to Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. Things were much more civil and reasonable before that point.
I don’t know. Nixon had goons breaking into the DNC headquarters (and his whole southern strategy led to racially polarized politics up to this day), and there was that senator who got beaten by another senator just before the civil war. Eisenhower waited in the car rather than attend a meeting with Truman on his inauguration.
Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace to avoid impeachment when it came out. The dude in the White House now did much worse and he was rewarded with reelection.
It has actually been a gradual process for decades from the John Birch Society to Paul Harvey to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to Dick Cheney to Citizens United to Donald Trump.
Edit: Forgot Pat Buchanan. He belongs in there somewhere.
Trumpism is just Reaganomics brought to its logical conclusion.
This predates Trumpism.
You can see the rise of left-wing identity politics by looking at term usage in the NY Times:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th...
It started before 2017. The right adopted identity politics as a response to the left doing so. Note that even NY Times word usage is a lagging indicator -- this is a case of prestige media picking up trends which originated on social media such as tumblr.
Vox even wrote a defense of the shift back in 2015, with an article called "All politics is identity politics":
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/29/7945119/all-politics-is-identi...
Are you tracking actual identity politics or the term "identity politics"? Because the meaning of the term applies just as much to ending slavery, womens' suffrage and civil rights movements.
Otherwise, you might as well argue that fake news only existed from 2016 onwards, because that's when Google Trends says it did.
>Are you tracking actual identity politics or the term "identity politics"?
The term "identity politics" is not being tracked. Rather, terminology used by modern left-wing idpol ideology is being tracked. See here: https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/new-york-times-word-usage...
>the meaning of the term applies just as much to ending slavery, womens' suffrage and civil rights movements.
I'm not sure that's true. E.g. Martin Luther King Jr spoke of the "magnificent words" in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Modern activists would say: "Written by dead pale male slaveholders. We need more diversity! Where are the voices of women and POC?" For King, ideas took precedence over identities. For modern activists, it's the opposite.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was predominantly white. That's puzzling for a movement driven by identity politics. It does make sense for a movement driven by universal humanitarian ideals.
In any case, if you still think I'm wrong, and identity politics is an essential force behind trends such as the civil rights movement -- then I suppose you'll be happy that it's being adopted by the political right in the United States? Since it's got such a great historical track record, surely results will be good? ;-)
>Otherwise, you might as well argue that fake news only existed from 2016 onwards, because that's when Google Trends says it did.
This is a bad analogy, because fake news itself doesn't use the term "fake news". If "fake news" was an ideology which was characterized by particular terminology, we could graph the use of that terminology to document the rise of the ideology. That's what's being done here.
In any case, I do believe that "fake news" (in the narrow sense of websites which write completely bogus news, with no effort at reporting, to drive clicks) is a phenomenon which has, in fact, become more widespread relatively recently (due to the ease of internet publishing etc.) So that's another way in which your analogy is invalid. Fake news did increase in popularity when Trump was the GOP candidate, relative to when Romney was the GOP candidate. And Google Trends helps illuminate that!
I think our definitions of "identity politics" differ too much to have a useful discussion about it. I'm going off the most common definitions I can find (eg dictionaries, wikipedia), but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place.
> It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
Agreed, and I was born here. I was taught we expressly want to reject those things, and now it's all the fashion. It feels like a temper tantrum from a third of the electorate, a rejection of adulthood and reason.
It's because we tried to take down the 'no girls or brown people' sign.
All of this is a long temper tantrum about Obama and then Mrs Clinton, emphasis on the Mrs.
If I had a time machine I would take documentation back and convince someone that we need a few more Old White Guys to let the GOP's base unrustle their jimmies for a bit.
I predicted something like this coming back in the late 90's, not that anyone should have listened to me about civics. I say 'like this', but... not like this. And if I had someone would have requested "wellness checks" (which is American for 'check to see if we can have him involuntarily committed to a mental facility) on my behalf.
My notion back then was that the vibe of the country was such that a black man would need to be elected before a white woman was a serious contender. But that there would have to be a delay. When you rush progress you can spin out. And fuck if we haven't spun out.
Maybe they'll go for a whip-smart gay man next term? Who knows.
>It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
So how could one design a political system so this behavior doesn't emerge / is not incentivized?
In no way this is a good example of such a system, but I still find Bosnia and Herzegovina political system absolutely hilarious. After Dayton peace agreement the literally put ethnicity requirement for presidents to Constitution as a hard rule. One Bosnian, one Serb and one Croatian. And yes, the country is ran by 3 presidents at the same time. So there is no longer a competition whether the main guy in the country will be theirs or ours.
There were two guys: a Roma and a Jew in BiH who also wanted to take the president office. However according to Constitution they didn't have a chance. So they went to EU Human Rights Court to look for a justice. The court told the country it's kinda racist to have a rule like that and they should change it. This was like 15 years ago. Guess whether the rule has changed since then. (Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina for more details).
PS. If you find 3 presidents not fascinating enough, then google for High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Northern Ireland has a similar system, with an executive built on a forced coalition.
The executive is led by a First Minister and Deputy First Minister (despite the difference in title, they have exactly equal powers), who are selected from the largest party representing each of the two main communities.
Major decisions require cross-community support - at least 50% of all those voting AND 50% of the representatives of each of the two communities, OR 60% of all those voting AND 40% of the representatives of each of the two communities.
On paper, it seems slightly absurd... but in practice, it's a reasonable way to deal with deeply divided societies.
I don't know... Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three. Two guys with equal power is a recipe for inaction in critical moments.
In practice Northern Ireland is subordinate to Westminster in most "critical moments".
I like this term "forced coalition". How about a traditional parliamentary system where a supermajority is required to pass legislation?
I assume if you need 70% to pass legislation then you get a grand coalition pretty much every time?
I guess it could incentivize brinkmanship among coalition partners though, since the leader of the coalition has less leverage if a small party threatens to quit?
Interesting.
When I put my programmer hat on, there's something inelegant about this approach, because it involves hardcoding the words "Bosnian", "Serb", and "Croatian" into the constitution.
It seems like with a sufficiently clever electoral rule, you could generate a small "national steering committee" with an odd number of members, where each major faction is guaranteed representation. But that also sounds a lot like a parliament where there's one party for each ethnic group, and then we're back where we started?
What happens when the 3 presidents disagree? Maybe the trick is to incentivize consensus-driven decisionmaking?
>What happens when the 3 presidents disagree? Maybe the trick is to incentivize consensus-driven decisionmaking?
That's where High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina comes into play. This is external guy appointed by the EU (US also was participating in the appointment in the beginning, but they withdrew themselves from the process quite a few years ago). This guy has the power to fire any (like ANY) politician in the country. And the permission to overrule or enforce any law.
This guy is probably controlled by EU and can't turn into dictatorship mode, but you never know. At the very least two times presidents were fired due to political disagreement.
EU considered to discontinue this practice, but local people encouraged EU to leave things as is. Cause nobody trusts politicians and the systems is still pretty corrupt.
Anyway, whatever decision presidents have to make, all 3 must agree. That's why a lot of controversial topics are hanging for eternity (e.g. recognition of Kosovo).
When country was trying to choose a national flags, all the parts couldn't find the agreement for a long time. That's why High Representative just approved his own version nobody really liked. So today if you visit the country, you will find Serbian flag in the parts where Serbs live and Croatian flags in the part with Croats. Actual country flag normally is in the parts where majority is Bosnian.
having three is interesting because it gives a way to break ties. how do they handle candidates with mixed ethnicity, though? or the Serbians and Croatians converging, while the Bosnians move farther apart from both?
This has not emerged due to the political system, this has emerged due to the issues in the information economy.
The core issue is that news cannot compete with entertainment, and the firms that appeared after Murdoch on the right, insulate themselves and their politicians from the need to be accurate.
The cycle is essentially:
1) Fringe theory appears on the internet
2) Fringe theory is picked up by Notable Person (Someone who is able to come on Prime time Television)
3) Notable comes onto media network and repeats fringe theory
4) Reporting can now cover Fringe Theory as main stream
This economy of ideas shares little with the processes on the center and the left. People who come up with counter arguments don’t end up getting amplified.
This has demolished the exchange and debate of Ideas, and it has worked in all liberal democracies. Implacable Partisanship has been rewarded.
Get rid of FPTP and the Electoral College that enables a two-party stranglehold. If a vote for a third party wasn't a wasted vote, we could see nuanced parties and politicians emerge that don't have to tow a party line.
Strengthening third parties can also increase extremism though. Consider parties such as Reform in the UK or AfD in Germany.
I think what you want is electoral rules which tend to select for consensus-makers. Approval voting would be an example.
FPTP is what makes Reform so dangerous though. They have a real chance of having a lot of power. In a proportional representation system where parties have to share power in coalitions these extreme parties actually have to be involved in government, at which point they’re exposed as completely incompetent. See the Netherlands right now for example. I would rather have these extreme positions represented, because they will be represented poorly. It takes wind out of the populist sails, where they can no longer simply promise everything until they’re in power and completely destroy the country.
I think FPTP ends up working out a lot different in the parliamentary context. The US only has 2 parties in Congress, despite FPTP.
In terms of strength of 3rd parties, I'd say they are generally quite weak in the US system, somewhat stronger in a proportional representation parliamentary system, and potentially overpowered in a FPTP parliament like in the UK.
Historically I believe the 2-party system in the US was pretty good at tamping down on extremism, but recently the 2 major parties have acquired too many extremists.
> the 2 major parties have acquired too many extremists.
You're blaming both parties for where the US is now?
Yep, see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44216278
MAGA is basically a reaction to the far left.
Ranked Choice Voting goes a long way to solving this as well.
Does it? Could you explain which mechanism you suggest using? Because the main results from social choice theory about ranked choice voting that come to mind seem to be all about impossibility of fair elections (eg Arrow) or even paradoxical situations such as cyclic preferences (eg Condorcet).
These kinds of perfectionism complaints keep the status quo of FPTP, which is the worst of them all.
Since none of the proposed replacements can be perfect according to the theory, let’s just stick with the worst one.
Big fat /s
You need to educate the people and convince them on how it works. Easily a 30 year project in places like India.
Easily a 30 year project in the US, too.
Yep. Sadly, Ranked Choice is not doing too well at the ballot in the US.
https://ballotpedia.org/Results_for_ranked-choice_voting_(RC...
How about not creating a precarious underclass with lack of (higher) education that is ready to vote for whatever solution promising to take down the system that made them so desperate for radical change?
If the functioning of your nation's political system depends on the functioning of your nation's education system or your nation's economy, you've created a circular dependency. The education system and the economy are themselves downstream of the political system. Dysfunction in one tends to create dysfunction in the others. See https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2004/Caplanidea.htm...
A good political system is one which continues to work well even when education and the economy suck, so societal self-repair is possible. Ideally it would actually start working better when things suck, so society becomes antifragile.
"More college diplomas" is not a great solution when existing graduates are already working at Starbucks. This is the "elite overproduction" which creates instability.
Americans already have a relatively high standard of living by global standards, e.g. see median income adjusted for cost of living: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=t...
Yet Americans are still dissatisfied. Part of the problem is that our political system incentivizes candidates and media outlets to stir up dissatisfaction so they can exploit it. There's also envy / the hedonic treadmill.
I don't really buy the education argument. How do you "educate" somebody who lived through the first Trump administration and voted for more of the same? Let's get specific: what exactly did they miss in school that would have driven them towards a different decision?
At some point it's necessary to confront the uncomfortable truth: stupid people are easy for smart, ill-intentioned people to herd, which gives the latter a leg up in any democratic election.
This bug in democracy was there in the beginning. But it's only now, 2500 years later, that it can be exploited effectively enough to invalidate the whole concept.
> At some point it's necessary to confront the uncomfortable truth
Sometimes the truth is even more uncomfortable than “lots of people are stupid.” A much more insidious scenario is when there’s two groups with no major differences in education or access to facts, but one has a cultural which is actively and explicitly hostile to truth. In such scenarios, ever-escalating hostilities between the two groups is inevitable.
>This bug in democracy was there in the beginning. But it's only now, 2500 years later, that it can be exploited effectively enough to invalidate the whole concept.
Not sure where the 2500 number came from. The US is about 250 years old, and the founders were extremely wary of democracy based on its history prior to the US. The US constitution was designed to mitigate issues with democracy, e.g. that is the purpose of "checks and balances". By democracy standards, the US has been very successful; the average constitution only lasts 17 years: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/lifespan-written-constitut...
This article estimates that the US is the #2 longest-lasting republic after the Roman Republic: https://www.broadstreet.blog/p/the-democratic-institutions-o...
Nonetheless, you would think that the "technology" for writing constitutions would've evolved more in the past 250 years. And in fact, in the Federalist Papers, it is predicted that political technology will evolve, just like any other field of technology. Yet results there have been quite disappointing, if you ask me. There aren't that many interesting and innovative ideas in this area. Most people, even programmers, tend to get lost in the object level us-vs-them conflict instead of going meta with their creative algorithmic brain.
My comment is too old to edit, but I would like to issue a correction. I should not have written "This article estimates that the US is the #2 longest-lasting republic after the Roman Republic", since the caption for the figure in the article states something different ("Duration of Long-Lived Democracies", i.e. the word "democracy" is used rather than "republic", and also there wasn't a claim to "longest-lived")
Never trust internet comments!
> Not sure where the 2500 number came from.
Athens probably? From what I remember of school, this was the world's first democracy. (I've heard that Americans are taught something else!)
I didn't get the impression that Athenian democracy was particularly successful. So it seemed weird to say that the flaws in democracy are only now becoming apparent.
In fact, I understand that CamperBob2's critique of democracy is quite similar to that of Socrates. So I'm puzzled by the claim that it's "only now" that the critique is being proven correct, given that US democracy is notably more stable and long-lived than Athenian democracy.
In general, I think times of turmoil are always much more salient when you yourself are living through them. We lack the historical perspective to understand how bad turmoil has been in the past.
The flaws in democracy were always apparent, and they've always been exploited by parties willing to do the dirty work. But they couldn't be exploited consistently and decisively. Now they can be.
Think of it this way: you can't reach people who don't read much by starting a newspaper, but you can reach them with Fox News and Twitter. Mix in a bit of that old-time religion -- Billy Graham with a side of sauce Bernays -- and the left-hand side of the bell curve is yours to do with as you please.
umm Switzerland disagrees with the assessment of the USA being the oldest democratic republic. If we are only speaking of republic, Portugal has been one since the 12th century, albeit there's been 10 or 11 iterations on the constitution, including Salazars so-called New State.
Correction here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223617
They missed that liberty and freedom is not a god-given right, but hard-earned privilege. They missed that liberty is not a personal property but a shared practice of pluralism. They missed that liberty is not absolute, but requires compromise and limitations so that we all can be free.
To be fair, those are not things that are taught in school. If they come up at all it is in some historical context, a battle someone else fought--and won. There is no mention that maintaining a liberal democracy requires effort and vigilance. Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen. The USA mostly does not even have such mechanisms and it shows.
>Modern, ie. post-WW2, "fighting democracies" have built-in safeguards to oppose internal enemies of democracy, but if they are effective remains to be seen.
Eh, "internal enemies of democracy" is way too vague. E.g. Trump supporters claim that "unelected bureaucrats" in the "deep state" are enemies of democracy. Anyone can call anyone an "enemy of democracy".
Those fighting democracies are very specific about what is and what is not irreconcilable. For example, in Germany you can murder the president--that's just homicide--but you cannot abolish the protection of minorities. That's a violation of the constitution. Germany's far-right party Alternative für Deutschland has been under suspicion of violating a few of those provisions for quite some time now.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (aka. Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) completed a report a few weeks ago but is required by law to withhold it from the public due to due process. Of course it leaked, you can read the report here [1] (it's in German, obviously).
Now there is a discussion ongoing, if the Alternative für Deutschland has to been dissolved. That's a fighting democracy at work, following the rule of law.
[1] https://assets.cicero.de/2025-05/Geheimgutachten_Teil%20A.pd...
I'm not sure Germany's approach is a good one, based on the historical record:
https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...
Me neither, but as the discussers point out, the Weimar Republic totally failed to apply serious consquences, e.g. Hitler's very short arrest after the Munich coup. Besides, the safeguards include more than limiting free speech.
Of course, those safeguards were designed in the late 1940s, so it's interesting, to say the least, how they cope with modern demagoguery. In any case it is worth a try.
Tangentially, that's a great site! I hadn't heard of FIRE before, but I'm glad they exist. I hope they don't get suborned by one side or the other.
I see it as a continuation of the American Civil War in politics. There was always this attitude but now people are more redicalized, so it's more obvious.
It seemed more subdued during the 1990s/2000s, until a black guy became President, and a good one at that.
And then the Democrats wanted to put forward a... a... a woman, too!
In that case, it would be neat if corruption were illegal!
Or just more accessible, so the average person can get a piece of the benefits that cartels and megacorp executives already get.
Voila, we've ended up with a low trust society with "petty corruption", which is generally considered harmful as it establishes something about that society that cannot be easily corrected unlike "grand corruption."
>>I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
+1
As an Indian, classic definition of corruption here is something that other people do. When our own do it, its not really called corruption, its more intelligent work done to make our people win.
Similar term is appeasement. It kind of means if people I hate are winning, they must be doing bad things or cheating. It is impossible that people I hate should do well in life.
> "we" are winning and "they" are losing
This is a very important rule stated by the War Nerd: 'Most people are not rational, they are TRIBAL: "my gang yay, your gang boo!" It really is that simple. The rest is cosmetics.'
A small human group is compatible with this tribal behavior because the bulk of actions (or at worst their effects) are quickly perceptible to everyone. The larger the group, the less each person understands what is happening, even the effects of what he does.
I don't know wtf War Nerd is, but tribalism being alive and well is nowhere near a new/novel observation worth noting anyone pointed out.
Agree that it is not a novel observation, but it is worth noting here. The discussion would be less ridiculous if there were less tribalism.
It is about more than "being alive and well" but being omnipresent and determinant.
Stating it is useful because many neglect (or maybe even ignore) this fact.
The way the War Nerd puts it is IMHO the best.
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That's naive and you know it. A massive drive for him was electing the first black president. A less, but still not-insignificant drive was for Hillary as the first female president.
Thats your opinion, Obama could have been white, and he still would have been voted for by 99.9% of those who voted for him. Young Kennedy-like candidates are rare (eg Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) but are incredibly electable when they show up.
Towards the end of his presidency, most of us forgot he was even black. Just those white southerners and a certain old guy in New York who were fixated on his race from the beginning still thought he was a DEI elect.
There were hit songs about what a big moment it is that he was black. At least among minorities that was a massive deal. If you didn't see that, I think you're probably closer to those white southerners than you might think you are.
Can you imagine if mainstream entertainers made songs celebrating having a white president?
Given that all of them but one are white, what the point that would be? Songs are not because Obama is black, but because he was the first black on the role.
So you are opposed to fixating on people's race and yet there you are singling out white southerners. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
It's important not to start wars first. Good arguments would also help.
They self-selected. Loudly.
Most people forgot Obama was black except them, they are also the ones constantly accusing Obama of being racially divisive, they should just own what they say. This is kind of like Trump calling people names but then being greatly offended when someone calls him a name, right?
I’d be shocked if Hilary had a net benefit being a female candidate. We’ve had 2 chances to elect a female president and they both lost the general election with not that great turnout.
John McCain’s VP was female during 08 and he lost by a huge margin.
Hillary and Kamala got boosts from being a woman. They just had a massive drop because of, especially in Hillary's case, being deeply unlikeable.
Kamala probably wins in 2016.
> Hillary and Clinton got boosts
It’s Hillary and Kamala Harris.
I’m not saying they don’t get some voters from being women, the point is they also lost votes from being women.
I think a rotting corps might have won in 2016, but 4 years later vs a women and suddenly he’s doing great.
Kamala lost because of Biden, who somehow was even less likeable than Hillary by the end.
In a way yes. Kamala lost because she was the ultimate DEI candidate (in how own words that the only reason he picked her to be VP). Regardless of her personal skills or qualities it’s very hard to move past that..
Had she had a chance to prove that she could win a primary things might have been different
In a way yes. Kamala lost because she was the ultimate DEI candidate (in how own words that the only reason he picked her to be VP). Regardless of her personal skills or qualities it’s very hard to move past that..
Biden fucked up in many ways, but he also got a lot of flack from bad timing and poor messaging. It’s easy to say COVID hurt Trump in 20 and Kamala in 24, but I think the details mattered.
The inflation rate fell significantly under his presidency, but during periods of high inflation prices soared. Coming back from that after generations of extremely low inflation would have been tough for someone without failing facilities. I think a great politician could have weathered that storm, Biden wasn’t up to the task and Kamala’s messaging didn’t help.
Republicans getting out ahead on that inflation messaging similarly did wonders for Trump and other Republicans. Planting the idea that America somehow didn’t do well when we did far better than the rest of the world was brilliantly executed IMO.
> coming back from that after generations of extremely low inflation would have been tough for someone without failing facilities
But facing off against someone who was never particularly sharp or articulate. I think it evened the playing field.
Yes... Biden's presidency objectively wasn't bad, but the way it was messaged and the optics he gave off were just impossible to recover from.
Kamala probably wins in 2016? I mean this in a very nice way but I think you may want research the politics and candidates in the US a little more before bold statements such as that. Kamala was unable to even register on a scale in the primary and what noise she did make was to play a false game on which she essentially accused Biden of being racist filth. I think it is not just that she had no qualifications for office, we could argue about what constitutes a qualification for a long time, but she had no reasoning or theory of why she would even be someone yo run for office. She tablet in such incomprehensible ways that one could not even discern a point from her utterances. You may say the current president rambles but she think the point is always present. Kamala on her best days just spoke in long winded tautologies: “we are always doing each day the things we do every day” or whenever nonsense she chose to present to the public. Further, he main qualification to place herself as one of the poor people was to constantly talk about being a “middle class kid.” The problem is in her generation, the middle class did quite well for themselves so it was such a false premise. Let’s not discuss the accents.
It did help her to get on the ballot quite a bit. Of course it had the opposite effect in the general election.
That was not at all the main reason Obama got elected. He was charismatic, likable and promised hope and change. Why is it that the people who don't want identity politics to be a focus make it a focus?
52.9% vs 45.7% of the electoral vote doesn’t come down to race here.
Obama was vastly more charismatic and coming after for years of an unpopular Republican president, 28% on election night. https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ra...
Not that idiot was enough to resonate with voters.
Obama 2012: "There are no red states or blue states, just the United States."
You may dismiss that as just words, but the modern right does not even attempt to speak in those terms.
Does the modern left?
What about the Harris-Walz campaign? There was no identity politics, it was a message of national unity and civic nationalism.
Biden's inaugural address was full of this
"To all those who supported our campaign, I'm humbled by the faith you've placed in us. To all of those who did not support us, let me say this. Hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart. If you still disagree, so be it. That's democracy. That's America. The right to dissent peaceably. Within the guardrails of our republic, it's perhaps this nation's greatest strength. Yet hear me clearly: disagreement must not lead to disunion. And I pledge this to you, I will be a president for all Americans, all Americans. And I promise you, I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did."
Fair enough.
Obama taught constitutional law and served in the state and US Senate before running for president. He was [not] some unqualified hack thrust into power because they needed a person of a different race in power.
Obama's campaign was far less about race than Trump's campaigns in 2016 and 2024. Unless you can't hear the dog whistles.
Can you clarify what Trump's 2016 had to do with race
This is the part where you feign not hearing dogwhistles. How about this, are you aware of any openly racist organizations that support him?
The resentment of a chunk of white Americans who for some reason did not like having a black president.
You can't claim that while claiming wanting to elect a black president wasn't a big driver in much of the turnout for Obama. There were multiple musicians literally making songs about finally being able to elect a black president.
Trump's initial popularity was due in no small part to the anger of American white supremacists and the alt-right, this was well documented even back in 2016[0,3]. That the President elected after Obama was the man who mainstreamed the birther conspiracies against Obama was not a coincidence. It wasn't entirely about Obama, but he was the straw that broke white America's back.
[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/donald-...
[1]https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/donald-trump...
[2]https://archive.is/tZpFB
This wasn't because of racism. This belief is why the left keeps losing to him... a total misunderstanding of what brought him into power.
Some of the earliest figureheads of the so-called "alt right" movement were homosexuals and racial minorities
Trump's win was a revolt against the social justice age. His win was a revolt against emergent phenomenon like "cancel culture".
> Trump's win was a revolt against the social justice age.
So, it wasn't bigotry it was just a reaction against the rejection of bigotry?
The social justice age wasn't a rejection of bigotry. It was a Mccarthy-esque movement of dividing everybody between sexual and racial lines into a hierarchy of who was and wasn't allowed to speak. Speaking against the party line meant exile.
The SJW/Wokeism movement had nothing to do with true equity and "rejection of bigotry". That's why there was such a revolt against it.
> Speaking against the party line meant exile.
But that has got worse, not better.
Trump is threatening to cancel contracts with Musk and to Munich him if he funds opposition.
That’s the bluntest example of ‘cancel culture’ you’ll find.
Also: Musk and Trump deserve each other.
Of course, I didn't claim that the republicans aren't now doing everything they claimed to revolt against but worse. As it turns out "free speech" absolutism only applies to things that pwn the libz.
I call b*t. The reality is that the there is a outrage campaign in the right wing media trying to drive anger about some perceived victimhood in people who have largely been privaledged all their life. They would have found something else instead.
Obama was genuinely qualified to be president. Trump was clearly unfit in 2016 (having never held elected office and run nearly all his businesses into the ground), and constitutionally disqualified after Jan 6 2021.
Trump was also reluctant to denounce or criticize white nationalists. He repeated and reposted neo-Nazi content and phrases. He is the one ordering a zealous yet haphazard dismantling of anything that breathes the words racial equity, and without a hint of pushback from his voters.
That's your opinion though. Obviously lots of people disagree.
Read the Wiki on his 2016 campaign. Or pretty much anything he said on race prior to the campaign.
That he attracted votes from anyone without white skin is amazing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
Don't just send me a random dump wiki dump. Give me actual racist things he said in 2016.
It's not racist to push baseless claims the opposition who is black was born in Africa and not qualified to run for office ?
How else would you define racism if not across xenophobic lines by the color of ones skin ?
Obama was not his opposition, and that was not his campaign.
So when Trump admitted on Howard Stern that he likes to walk in on naked teenage girls because his role of running the teen universe beauty pageant allows him to get away with that, that is ok because he wasn't running a campaign at the time?
Jump to 1:38 https://youtu.be/kikTv0I8XVw?si=VVfSpMDt7rKEIcRJ
What the heck are you talking about?
I’m sorry that the volume of racist statements he has made means that you have to scroll down. The below link should take you straight there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump#2...
So you can't give me a single racist statement he made.
For the risk of feeding a troll:
>There are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously," and retweeted a false claim that 81% of white murder victims were killed by black people.
> "We've just seen many, many crimes getting worse all the time, and as Maine knows—a major destination for Somali refugees—right, am I right?"
Just 2 of them.
How are either of those sentences "racist"?
Yes, both parties do it. In California for example left-wing politics is openly racist and I have sympathy for even the crazy republicans here.
However to defend Obama - he explictly ran on unity and went out of his away to not openly benefit his own race.
Yeah I mean to be clear, I think Obama was a remarkable leader and it's hard to believe he once occupied the same seat DJT does today
He didn't explicitly use his race (the way Hillary often used her gender), but many who campaigned for him and large parts of his caucuses did. For better or for worse.
This is why the standard for something to be considered improper behavior is (or used to be) the appearance of a conflict of interest.
People stopped giving a shit about anything. This is just one of dozens of things that would have been totally unacceptable a few years ago.
The world is no longer a serious place.
Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _pretend to care_ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
Social media is easy to blame, but we had something similar, but worse happening in Germany well before the invention of the computer even.
Human society has not developed an antidote to charismatic demagogues yet I'm afraid.
Human society is limited in the antidotes to human nature that it can code through law, institutions or culture. It’s the same species throughout 1930’s Germany and today.
We shouldn’t give up on law, institutions or culture, but accepting our failings instead of seeing humans as a perfectible project can at least give us solace in confusing times.
Sorry, but Germany had just suffered a humiliating defeat and was punished severely for WWI in which all sides were equally guilty for all of it.
When did something of this magnitude just happen in the USA?
P.S.: This does not excuse Germany's actions wrt. WWII but it does help to explain.
Just an opinion, but -
An entire cohort born between 1985~1995 reached their 30s in what they perceived as a far, far worse situation all around (financially foremost, but also almost every social aspect) than their parents.
For many reasons (including the ones above) it's difficult for any institution within reach of the US government to analyze how the alt-right took power but from what I can tell the US economy is in a slow burn. It's been receiving patches roughly once a presidency but it turns out you can't combine a lot of short term solutions to make a long term one. Fixing the economy would require bold decisions and the parties took two different directions. The Republican party realized that any bold policy would get votes regardless of any other factor including coherency. This is why Trump supporters, when asked about their logic usually give some form of "things are bad, and they didn't used to be".
To summarize, there are competing ideas for what got us here, but I think it was less of a real inciting event like WW1 and more of a breaking point that was eventually reached.
> WWI in which all sides were equally guilty for all of it.
Not true, while Germany was not solely responsible, it and Austria-Hungary were much more responsible than others.
This kind of stuff would not fly in Australia. Not to say that there is no corruption, but that it isn’t absolutely blatant and ignored.
Yeah. Same in Canada. Nowhere is free from corruption, but the magnitude and danger of this problem is uniquely American.
I have lived in Alberta my entire life and that used to be true here. It's different now. There's blatant corruption from our provincial government in the news every few months, but it seems like that's just accepted now. Things are not trending in a good direction in Canada.
The far right pretty much across the world is learning just how fragile and consensus-based the institutions of democracy are all at once. They're watching and learning from each other. Hence you have people like Bannon involved in similar tricks in multiple countries.
Oddly enough Albertans poll Carney as favourably as Poilievre. So I see what you see but in general I do not believe it’s actually that bad.
Plus Alberta has always on again off again thrown middle-child tantrums.
Are you really so sure? I think the vast majority of Americans would have expressed the same sentiment less than 10 years ago.
Obviously I can’t tell you what will happen in 10 years, but if the Prime Minister of Australia did even one days worth of Trumps actions he would be removed within a month or two.
Australia also doesn’t have an almost religious worship of politicians. Australians don’t identify as members of a particular party unless they literally are part of it.
There’s a huge difference between the US and Australia here that you slightly touch on - in Australia, the Prime Minister can be removed by the ruling party at any time vs the US where removing the sitting President can only be done via a handful of items from the Constitution
Don't play coy. If a small number of Republican representatives decided they would impeach Trump they would have absolutely no problem getting the votes they need and you know it. They don't do it because that's not what they want.
Republicans have said clearly that they will only act when core support for trump drops. And that has not dropped no matter what.
Republican representatives are lobbyists to the public for the 1%. It was clear that they hated Trump and wanted him out in his first run and what they want matters as much as what a car salesman wants for Ford.
I'm not sure America had that sort of cult thing pre Trump. JFK was pretty popular as was Regan but even they weren't the same. You guys do have a vote of no confidence which theoretically is easier to pull off then impeachment (majority vote)
Only with a lot of effort. I'm old enough to remember the ICAC in NSW and the CCC in Queensland (Joh Bjelke-Petersen was a bit before my time)... the widespread "travel expenses" fraud that permeated for YEARS.
Your government recently mandated technical capabilities for breaking encryption. Australians let that fly. There is nothing special about Australians, just as there is also nothing special about the British people who also did nothing when the UK mandated technical capabilities to break encryption.
One could even make the argument that the people of these two countries are even more pliant than Americans when they enable a key capability for totalitarian surveillance states without a blink.
There was nothing blatantly corrupt or illegal going on there, it went through the normal process and was unfortunately supported by both major parties. I’m not saying objectionable laws never get implemented. I’m saying the Prime Minister is not a dictator with limitless power.
The corruption in state government, especially WA for example is pretty blatant but I get your point.
I remember when certain social media networks argued that having a real name policy will lead to a more polite, kinder internet, because people won't be as rude with their real names attached to their posts. Turns out, people really don't care. I see the most vile, disgusting, racist, xenophobic shit on Facebook every single day, with real names and pictures showing smiling happy people hugging their kids on every one of them. Like you said - people don't feel any need to care about honesty, character, or even appearance of politeness or good manners.
I think they might have figured out that a lot of that honesty and character was a facade. Is the false appearance of morality better than just showing yourself as you really are?
You mean that people lie and cheat? That's always been the case. The point of honesty and character is precisely that they reflect a person's ability to value a higher good than their immediate self-interest. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The fact that reputation has been subjected to unprecedented arms race in the face of the internet and social media doesn't fundamentally change the game, it just makes it more exhausting and overwhelming to pay attention to.
That always brings to mind this comic: https://condenaststore.com/featured/he-tells-it-like-it-is-p...
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
This is what a fascist dictatorship looks like. You have a leader who adheres to the persona of a strong man perpetually fighting against enemies who are both too weak and too strong, and at the drop of a hat their enemies change. Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law, so he is supported in arbitrarily abusing and corrupting the state for his own personal benefit because his personal victories are sold as a show of stength.
The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are now living under a totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the world is already well aware.
>Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law,
Is it any accident that JD and Elon keep calling for "rule of the people" instead of "rule of law".
Agreed.
It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the election campaign and a major advisor to the president now declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes of his supporters, what does this say about Musk?
(Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant; what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to know is a pedophile).
That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting influence of power.
Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults could come in and run the country / companies.
I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first sentence.
Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child rape is resolved this way).
Not only that but Musk was able to successfully argue in court that he's such a well known liar that a reasonable person wouldn't take his accusations of pedophillia seriously
Wow, I didn't know this.
I didn't even know this was a possible defense at all, "everything I say is bullshit, so if anyone takes it seriously, that's on them".
Fox news attempted this defense in court "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
Maddow and MSNBC made the same argument in court. It’s a very useful defense for these entertainment news programs.
A pox on all of them.
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but that was also Trump's family's response to the financial statements related to his businesses when it came up in court. But I don't remember which court case it was.
That was the one where he told the IRS the buildings he owned were worth $(x)M for tax purposes, but was simultaneously having them valued at $(10x)M for loan collateral purposes.
> Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker
Laughably so.
Musk: I can save those boys trapped in the cave! We can use this stupid submarine thing of mine.
Hero: No need, I and my Navy SEAL cave-diving pals have got this.
Musk: How dare you! You're a pedo.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44779998
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45418245
Would you bet against accusation in this instance?
The existing recordings and convictions against Trump don’t seem to have hurt him. Why would this?
He was sued for that by the guy and won his trial by convincing the judge that "pedo" is actually common Afrikaner lingo, and it was a casual insult. This country is a joke.
Also doesn't remove the fact Trump was one of Epstein's closest friends, and everything points to him being involved in some way or the other in those affairs.
Musk's brother was introduced to his girlfriend by Epstein.
Epstein mentored a young model who went onto be a neurosurgeon and married Microsoft's Sinofsky.
Bill Gates had a meeting with Epstein during which an ex-girlfriend of Epstein's who was once Miss Sweden just happened to turn up with her 15 year old daughter.
I'd quite like someone to investigate if our billionaires are being honeypotted left, right and center because it appears you can control a big swathe of the world's wealth if you get old rich nerds laid.
It's still not clear if Epstein made his money by blackmailing yet another Billionaire.
Trump/Epstein connections have been reported on for years with photos and videos so anyone who cares probably was already on the anti-Trump side.
While Musk has a bigger megaphone than most media, he also has a credibility issue - and now especially for the Trump-true-believer crowd that is likely the only group whose bubble would be so shielded that they'd see it as news.
trump was one of the people that originally provided all they knew about epstein to the prosecutors, and once he realized what epstein was, he was banned from all trump venues. What did other do?
It's kind of his pointless go-to A-bomb insult, yet, this time, it's within the realm of possibility. I mean, I don't not believe it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
theoretically he might have discovered this after he had paid for Trump's win. I despise the guy but it's entirely possible that he was blind to the publicly available evidence before seeing the secret evidence.
He supposedly learned it after the fact.
Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that. However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has actually been public information for a long time. It's known that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no evidence he went to the island or did something wrong.
It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult, rather than a serious accusation.
> He supposedly learned it after the fact.
When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons explicitly not about any pedophile rings.
So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's because he just learned of it.
I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act? What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the president of the US might.
(Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think this is a fight between two nasty people).
I think having 400 billion dollars earns a person a measure of resp- well, whatever Trump is capable of that would equate to respect
Trump is very interesting critter to observe.
>>>What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
I think you might have bigger issues here. Trump has links to mafia - and that is a fact. I'm more interested on what he was doing in regards to Ukraine, as post Soviet mafia(Georgian-Soviet Jewish mix in NY) via NY US Italian? mafia helped him a lot and gave him loans for his projects. Over the time Kremlins took over Soviet mafia and incorporated it - it might sound like a joke, but it is the truth - all the countries have mafia, but in Russia mafia is running country.
So, from the actions of Trump on how he is dealing with Ukraine, Trump is no better than Biden and Democrats that were frozen by fear because of the threats that Putin said. Which is good... if you want to see fireworks of nuclear weapons in action, because US actions(and inactions) are enabling that. Putin will use nukes on US - for many reasons - mainly because Putin is not at fault here and is misunderstanding American mindset, which is not completely decommissioned by Democrats.
From what I understand Musk simply has no leverage what Kremlin mafia has over Trump, also Musk is autistic who has no training on how to influence other people the way how Putin(could be slightly autistic, as he is mirroring what Russians want - just like Hitler did) does as he is blunt and uses brutal force, which people as social beings does not appreciate.
There is also significant difference between Trump and Musk - Trump can say things bluntly, but he also can operate on personal level and have different attitude to very important people - also he likes flattery. Musk has only one of those qualities - he can say things bluntly(but without confidence and aura of power), but as autistic he is completely unaware of when he should really shut up when he is not in control of situation.
PS Trump, Musk, even the opposition to me are insects and entomology of humans is just a hobby to me. Unlike most of people from US(and apparently people that can't understand that they are not part of US) I have my own thoughts, that I don't have a need to resonate and change in frequency according to some general line of one side or other.
wtf did i just read?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZJorAVgHy7Y
Trump was Epstein's best friend according to the latter, in his conversations with the ghostwriter that would write his memoirs. There are videos of the two at 1990s parties, judging women and laughing together. Trump was also mentioned in Epstein's black book.
I feel like you downplay their relations with your "Trump had some relations with Epstein". There is definitely something fishy as to why they still haven't released the entirety of the files, and lie about having done so.
To be fair Elon claimed that Trump is mentioned in the remainder of files which have yet to be released. Presumably what evidence there is of wrongdoing, if it exists, exists there.
"Pedo guy" Musk being Musk, though, who knows? What is the likelihood Musk would even have access to those files if they were so damning to Trump and still sealed?
Nothing about this is "quite obvious." It could go either way. To be honest I wouldn't put it past either one of them to be on Epstein's "list."
I think the tone of the message would be way more serious if it was a serious accusation based on actual evidence. Now it reads like a kindergarten level conspiracy theory, which almost seems like a joke. The silly claim was that Trump being in the files is the reason why they aren't released.
And apparently he has now deleted the tweet.
Without seeing the unreleased files we can't know how silly the claim is.
It is also interesting, that many people here somehow have no issues with trump cancelling federal contracts with Harvard, prohibiting student visas for harvard, firing entire sections of NSF, NIH, NOAA, but when it comes to contracts with spacex, they react.
There's plenty of threads about all of those issues here on Hacker News - why do you think the people reacting to SpaceX didn't also react to the rest?
Some people do react to all, but the parent comment that I commented on just mentioned the spacex situation, like it's something new, while this is just the continuation of what's be going on for months.
And I've certainly seen people on HN trying to defend grant cancellations, Harvard attacks, NSF firings etc. I obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions are on the spacex threats, but I conjecture, that many of them don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on universities, science agencies.
Cancelling contracts out of spite or for revenge without due process is wrong in all cases. Including SpaceX. Though I have to say it’s entertaining to see Musk’s own companies be effectively DOGE’d.
"I obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions are on the spacex threats, but I conjecture, that many of them don't like them"
Your original comment didn't mention that you were conjecturing anything, you just stated your conjecture as an observation or a fact.
Less charitably, this is called building a straw man.
> I conjecture, that many of them don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on universities, science agencies.
This is a good point. If you imagine something in your head in a particular way, it is not the same as if you imagine it differently in your head. For example, if I imagine that all dogs are boys and all cats are girls, it paints a different picture of the world than if I imagine that there are both male and females of both animals.
It is a curious phenomenon
Nearly all of them were flagged (at least initially).
"Not commenting" does not necessarily translate into "having no issues".
Too much stuff is happening, not everyone comments on everything, and frankly your comment is only helpful to the administration by dividing its opponents.
If you want to see any efficient pushback at all, don't apply purity litmus tests to your potential allies.
6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are Supreme Court justices.
All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity".
Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of its way to say you can't even examine the communications between the president and the DoJ.
This contract dispute has nothing to do with Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Cancelling SpaceX contracts for political reasons would be wrong but not criminal.
The point is we won’t find out because presidential immunity also protects against discovery. Cases that previously could have been decided on the merits won’t even make it to adjudication.
No, that's not how it works. The Trump v. United States case had no bearing on civil discovery.
Bur it protects against criminal discovery, Civil cases can be quashed by current president uaing methods that used to be criminal for a president.
What about Nixon?
It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for government ministers.
We have legislative immunity called the speech and debate clause. It doesn't shield lawmakers from other crimes, nor should it, and it certainly doesn't imply some sort of expansive executive immunity.
The founders were rebelling agaisnt an untouchable executive, remember?
If the founders thought it was so important the President not have immunity from all crimes they would have written it such rather than leaving it to interpretation.
> If the founders thought it was so important the President not have immunity from all crimes they would have written it such
They did; by writing in explicit immunities for some constitutional officers for certain activities, they implicitly rejected other immunities for those and other constitutional officers, by the legal principle “expressio unius est exclusio alterius”.
That the opposite of how laws work..
Opposite of common law, but exactly how the Constitution works.
Well if the constitution does not explicitly grant a certain right it can’t just appear out of nowhere? At this point it’s about the “spirit” of the constitution not what is in the document itself since there is no mention of presidential immunity.
On the other hand it does grant the members of congress immunity under certain circumstances so it’s unlikely they just forgot about the president when writing it.
~40% of the country sees that as strength.
Democracies only really work with an educated and altruistic population, and the US is only getting further away from that.
This sounds like an utopian take or a case of "the grass is greener on the other side".
Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
I am inclined to agree with Acemoglu that good institutions are more important than virtues of the population.
>This sounds like an utopian take or a case of "the grass is greener on the other side".
Well, it wasn't. It's a take made by the 2nd president of the United States, John Adams:
"John Adams said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[1] Morality and virtue are the foundation of our republic and necessary for a society to be free. Virtue is an inner commitment and voluntary outward obedience to principles of truth and moral law. Private virtue is the character to govern oneself according to moral law at all times. Public virtue is the character to voluntarily sacrifice or subjugate personal wants for the greater good of other individuals or the community. Specific moral virtues include charity, justice, courage, temperance, reverence, prudence, and honesty"
This is in a sense self evident because any self governing society can only function if its people are equipped with the reason, morality, and temperament to sustain it. Appealing to "good institutions" is tautological. The reason why some places have good institutions and others have bad institutions is precisely because of character of the people who build and maintain them.
https://www.johnadamsacademy.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_I...
> But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
They're right, but it's a significantly smaller percentage than the US, small enough to not do nearly as much damage as the US counter-part population does.
That Dane or Swiss person will also readily agree how shocking the average education level of the average American is.
> Americans believe that Denmark or Switzerland has an educated and altruistic population. But if you talk to a Dane or a Swiss person about politics, they will laugh and tell you that their country is full of evil and stupid idiots, too.
It seems like both of those can easily be true at the same time.
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Ignoring the Constitution is authoritarian, right?
I guess you haven't been paying attention:
Trump's attacks on Judge Boasberg for example
JD Vance saying judges cannot check the President's power
This is basically exactly what they are saying : the president has ultimate unchecked power, and the judges cannot keep ruling on these pesky laws.
The delusional conspiracy theory Trump won the 2020 election, in order to justify January 6 violence and then pardoning those criminals as his first act as POTUS redux.
Trump sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the United States when he (Mike Pence) refused Trump’s order to overturn that election.
Trump’s longest serving chief of staff said Trump is, A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
The bigotry of low expectations is thinking people are too stupid to know this, rather than understanding 1/3 are anti-American illiberal shitbirds.
Just because they failed to get it once before doesn’t mean they didn’t try and keep on trying.
A vote for a rapist, a felon, and vile insurrectionist is voting in support of abuse. And now we’re getting abused.
The new reality. Every corporate decision made today now must involve an analysis of the local and national government authority, thier political leanings and thier tendancy towards vindictivness.
Does anyone not think that every major corporation is not commissioning psychological reports on certain US leaders? They have public affairs and social media consultants to gauge public reactions. Now they need head shrinks to tell them if and how the guy in the big office might react, be that a state governor, the president, or any number of politically-minded media owners.
Why pay shrinks when you can pay baksheesh to political underlings who claim to be connected? Sure, most of them aren’t, but corruption is a statistics game. You spend $100k on that one guy who really does sleep with the masseuse of the astrologist for dear leader, and it can be a 10,000% return in days.
Everything you say is true.
That said I think SpaceX is the only service even in the running for said contracts. Nasa doesnt have the capability, and Boeing is quite a way behind. There was already speculation that SpaceX would have to take on Boeings commitments for Artemis.
It's murky. NASA outsources a lot of money to SpaceX because Musk could burn through risk and money at levels NASA would get cancelled for.
At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and NASA technology become a reason to fold into a national asset.
China didn't achieve its Great Leap Forward by pandering to wealthy celebrities who cosplay as geniuses.
>Great Leap Forward
Altough most readers will catch your meaning, that phrase does not mean what you think it means.
>At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and NASA technology become a reason to fold into a national asset.
Was speculating that this might be the outcome. If you wanted to punish musk this would be the way to do it.
You would need to pay off Boeing at the same time but it could work.
The Great Leap Forward (1958-62) was an absolute disaster that resulted in widespread famine.
It's a great example of Move Fast and Break Things applied to government.
Likewise that Elon can say Trump is “ungrateful” that be received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew the nomination for Elon’s NASA administrator. It’s just open bribery.
American democracy died on the day the supreme court overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US politics is a mere playground for billionaires and corporations.
Nah, America was on this trajectory from watergate. The day the other party decided they wanted to give up on bipartisan efforts, and started primary-ing their own for bipartisan behavior, you took a step down this path.
With the advent of Murdoch’s papers and news efforts, the infinite money and credibility glitch allowed for these specific circumstances to occur.
The question is whether the information economy is downstream of the political economy, or vice versa.
That's a different problem. Toxic bipartisanship has been around for a long time with supporters and opponents. But a single billionaire outright buying a candidate to the point where he can claim that the president would not be in office without him is madness.
This is madness from the perspective of a general citizen point of view.
The mechanisms which were broken, that let these events come to pass - these began with the decision to end bipartisanship by republicans.
This isn’t about toxic bipartisanship, which isn’t even an issue. Unadulterated partisanship as a political strategy, is the start.
The enablement is the news ecosystem that was set up to defend these actions, and eventually launched the conversations entirely out of the gravitational well of facts and norms.
Harris outspent Trump 3:1. Hillary outspent Trump 2:1. It's not that easy to buy an election.
This is misleading (it is approximately correct if you look only at candidate committee spending, but it excludes outside spending—where the advantage went the other way, and the outside spending in 2024 exceeded campaign committee spending.)
Even if the figure itself weren't misleading, basing the argument around it is. The problematic dynamic isn't that the most money makes for a guaranteed win - rather it's that whomever does manage to win will be inclined to work for their major sponsors, especially if they will be up for reelection.
Elon spent more on behalf of Trump than the entire official Harris campaign spent. This is a terrible argument.
We know the Supreme Court legalized unlimited campaign spending, and we’re not dumb enough to think Elon’s money wasn’t part of the Trump campaign.
Elon spent well over a billion dollars on the campaign? You'll need a cite for that.
That figure does not include outside supporters spending campaigns. It's disingenuous to not include dark money spending. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/final-price-t... It's closer to 1.8 billion for Harris supporters versus 1.4 billion for Trump supporters in 2024. That also does not include various media outlets bought in the past decades, including One America News/Fox/Sinclair sandbagging for Trump for the last eight years, at this point, shouldn't one include the budget for Fox News and OAN and Sinclair not to mention the spiking of negative news stories/opinions by LA Times/Washington Post? Even CNN was bought in past year by conservative and the leading story last month for a while was Jake Tapper's book about Biden.
Strong upvote. The Murdoch succession drama is one of the most important things affecting the future of US democracy. There are a lot of smaller and even more radical networks, but I don't think they have the reach and influence of Fox.
FOX is indeed all in for Trump. But on the other side of the ledger, there is the media that was all in for Biden - NPR, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, NYT, etc., during the same time period.
Oh heck no! This is the error in comparison that is allowing an unfair competition between the left + center vs the Right wing information economies.
The whole point of journalism and freedom of speech was to create a market place of ideas that allows for competition between ideas.
The right side of the information sphere insulates its viewers from the left and center. They do not get punished by their own for platforming inaccurate or fringe theories. Instead they compete on getting the more viral narrative platformed, while voices that counter the inaccuracies do not get platformed.
They are a demagoguery machine. The political party and news media are the same entity.
The left and center are largely stuck with the ideas of being relatively true to facts, getting punished by members for getting things wrong.
There are people on the left which are trying to recreate the success of the fringe right, which has become the core base on the right.
They are starting a decades long process, that began around watergate.
The counterpoint is that there is no rational or sane defense of Trump. The rest of the media criticized Biden plenty, arguably way too much in their attempts to be seen as neutral. Meanwhile there is almost nothing good about Trump. So if they write like 90% stories that seem to be against Trump it means they're biased towards Trump.
Almost regardless of political positions it's hard to argue Trump is fit or qualified to be president. He is openly corrupt, persuing an economic policy the vast majority of Conservative economists think is idiotic, and has called our veterans losers. Has never held any other government post has no knowledge of government policies and worse doesn't care to learn. Even though his ignorance is causing a lot of damage including to his voters he doesn't seem to care to learn about how any policy stuff works.
To counter that you need media like Fox or worse OAN/News Max to put out propaganda because it's impossible for even the most partisan person to defend him if they're an honest and thoughtful person
> The counterpoint is that there is no rational or sane defense of Trump.
The point is about does spending buying an election, not rationality or sanity.
I invite you to spend an hour watching Fox News and then an hour listening to NPR and still claim those are just two sides of the same coin. The level of bias, propaganda, and active misinformation is so much greater on Fox News and it’s not even close. They’re not even pretending to factually report the news anymore. Every single piece is straight propaganda for the Republican Party. The best example of this difference is how mainstream media responded to Biden’s disastrous debate performance. The New York Times and CNN were covering it pretty blisteringly from the get go. There was no sugar coating it. Compare that to how Fox News spins the daily depravity of the Trump administration, and it speaks for itself
I vouched for this comment because it sparked an interesting discussion chain on candidate vs. third party spending.
On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.)
I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
> but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin.
The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was:
a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight, with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the country at the mercy of international creditors looking for deals heavily tilted in their favour
c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of confidence in the country's currency and ability to service its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.
Yeltsin was the strongman ruler of the 90s. When parliament wouldn't kowtow to him, he launched a bloody coup and then rewrote the constitution to consolidate power in his office.
The only thing that he was truly unsuccessful at as a politician was failing to shrug off some bullshit credit card bribery scandal.
When you've deployed tanks and mortars against the lawful government, and everyone's fine with that I can't understand why you'd let a few thousands dollars that you put on a company credit card bring you down.
> Present circumstances in America aren't that different.
They are different, in the sense that all the damage happening right now is both unnecessary and self-inflicted. Russia needed to do something to transition from the USSR. Shock therapy was a terrible 'something', but it's at least possible to see how it got there.
2025 is... Something else entirely.
> an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
Probably can't mention Yeltsin in the context of strongmen without mentioning the shelling of the parliament building.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cr...
If you really want to find out the reasons why USSR failed I suggest reading “Collapse the fall of Soviet Union” by Zubok or “Collapse of an Empire” by Gaidar. They are easy to read books. Said reasons are quite different from what is going on in USA at the moment.
You are completely missing Gorbachev, the fall began with him. He was a good guy, but a bit naive within soviet situation. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY hated russians. That's where brutal oppression came from for rest of soviet republics, that's where eastern Europe satellites were invaded and controlled from via strong firm hand (and many military bases). I know this damn well as I was raised thre and saw first hand the continuous destruction of what we would call normal society that russians brought along with them everywhere they went.
When the soviet empire twitched a bit and seams became just slightly more loose, everybody run the fuck away from them. You can't be literally enslaved for 2 generations and ignore whats around you and whats happening to all your citizens, family, friends, yourself. Not when you clearly see how west has technological, moral and societal advantage in its approach and its getting bigger every year. The only exception is Belarus, and the only reason is that the dicktator there needs desperately strong continuous backing or he would be brought down in quick coup.
The fall didn't begin with Gorbachev, it began with the communist party being clueless at adapting to new situations, essentially what China managed to do after Mao, the Soviets didn't after Stalin and the rest. The regime ossified and fell apart, at first slowly and then rapidly. Gorbachev just refused to spill even more blood.
Present circumstances in America are very different. When Putin took power, Russia's economy had been declining rapidly for a decade; then over his first decade, the GDP dectupled. If the US were to somehow achieve $600,000 GDP per capita by the end of Trump's current term, yeah, Americans would probably want to reevaluate their conventional wisdom about what good governance looks like. But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.
Well, there's an easy way to get to $600,000 GDP per capita, just crash the value of the US dollar by 10x. And this may well be in Trump's reach.
The GDP rise your talking about is to some extent an exchange rate phenonomena. Russia's currency collapsed in the early 90s, by the 00's it was able to strengthen and stabilize. Quality of life went down, but it was not proportionate to the collapse in GDP. Thinking about similar phenomenon occurring in the United States is kind of pointless, that would require a collapse in the dollars reserve currency status which would have dramatic ramifications world wide. The Dollar is the yardstick, if another currency became stronger, it would be the yardstick, and that's an entire regime change kind of for everybody. While Russia's currency can collapse in strength vis a vis the dollar, and then increase a great deal, but it was weaker than the dollar at every point. The collapse in its strength meant that it was difficult for the country to trade in that period. But Russia still had its domestic industry through the entire period, which wasn't affected to the degree that the collapse in trade and currency value would suggest,
Also the volatility of economic growth of smaller countries tends to be much higher than anything experienced by developed countries. When you start from a small scale, GDP jumps of 10x are hardly unheard of. While increases of such magnitude in an already developed country would be unprecedented.
Also, the Russian economy is just a series of frauds run by lawless oligarchs stacked on top of each other. The only limiting factor on them is when Putin randomly decides to throw one of them out of a window. It's a pure patrimonialist system, which is a system sustained by lawlessness, manipulation, and fraud. This is of course the truth of the fascist system itself, its simply an attempt to wrap the whole of society in one big patrimonialist network. There's a reason they had to invade Ukraine - the bills were coming due, and they knew the only way they could make good on promises they otherwise couldn't keep was a sustained program of national subjugation and exploitation. This was inevitable from the moment the system was set up. This system is inherently unstable.
The words of the participants in the system while it is ongoing are meaningless. They are wrapped in some kind of patrimonial network or another, supporting some kind of overhyped fraud or another that represents all their dreams and aspirations. They are censored, subject to constant manipulation, and deliberately manipulated with false flags and psy ops. Their whole society is designed as a giant cartwheel to shove people into various frauds. I can be sad for victims of fraud, yes, but that doesn't make them any easier to deal with before they give up on their expectations and stop believing the lies of the one who is defrauding them, who frequently sicks them on anyone who attempts to combat the fraud, telling them that "Actually that person is the one who's keeping you from getting your money!" Hitler arrayed millions of German youth upon fields of slaughter with such tactics once before, why would we expect any different outcome now? We should've known better.
You’re not wrong but those all happened _after_ the fall of the USSR. They weren’t the cause of its fall they were the cause of post-USSR Russia becoming an oligarchy.
> Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.
Speaking of civil war -and asking from abroad-, what the heck is happening in LA?
Hopefully the beginning of part or all of California seceding.
By 1998 the shit had already hit the fan big time for the common people in Russia, all "thanks" to Shock Therapy (which you allude to at your point b)). That was the real tragedy, nothing a more "experienced" president could have fixed (other than doing what Putin ended up doing, which is trying to reverse some of the craziness of said Shock Therapy).
I write this from direct experience, as I grew up as a kid/adolescent in nearby Romania in the '90s, where we had our very own Shock Therapy. In fact my present political stance (a return to nationalism and a reversal of what globalisation has brought about) is heavily marked by that very traumatic period in my life (and the same thing is valid for many of my compatriots).
So you want to reverse the development in Romania over the last 3 decades [1] ? I agree that the way the transition from the Ceauşescu regime was handled was less than ideal to say the least. But let's not forget that rampant nationalism and isolism was what got Romania into the mess in the first ace. I would even argue that every time a government/regime is bringing out the nationalism card it is to cover up for rising inequality, decreasing quality of life and all sort of other issues. An appeal to the "nation" is just not necessary otherwise.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/fig3_330480915
> So you want to reverse the development in Romania over the last 3 decades [1]
Not sure that "reverse" is the best word for it, but, yes, I want the huge societal inequalities that have been created during the last three decades to be "levelled" again. I know that this will probably suck (to use light language) for the winners of those last 3 decades, but that is life.
> Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
did people expect any different when they elected a reality TV star to be president?
one that's such an incredible businessman he managed to bankrupt not one, but two casinos
He's first and foremost a narcissist (strongly grandiose subtype, and all over the place on the communal/malignant axis).
That condition should make him ineligible for any position of power. This is what a society gets when it elects someone mentally ill (in the harmful-to-others rather than the typical harmful-to-ill-person sense).
I am continually astounded by how many people, even if you explain the symptoms to them, will be unable to see it - not just in this one case but in general. There is something in many people that makes them attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly above things.
People can just listen to his biographer or many former aides, but they choose to believe what they want. Many religious supporters still think he's a Christian.
In order to see it, you must recognize the ways in which he fooled you. People would generally rather be fooled again than face the thought that they were fooled at some point in the past. And the more that they have been fooled, the stronger this bias is.
Trump is an absolute genius at fooling people in small ways, then over time ratcheting up the cognitive dissonance until he fools them in big ways. See https://specialto.thebulwark.com/ for a detailed explanation of how he did this with one of the many people that he has turned into puppets.
Narcissists are over-represented as CEOs and such, as well. I think a fair number of Americans like narcissists.
This is a good observation, but I think causality is reversed: narcissists by nature develop whatever skills will attract the most adoration.
Trump plays the strongman / oppressed white man card. If the populace valued different things he would happily parade around in negligé. He’s just playing to the audience, and it’s not narcissism so much as bullshit archetypes that they want.
Corporate politics doesn’t adequately punish the traits narcissists and sociopaths present. Quite the contrary, those traits can easily become assets in their careers.
Exactly. It's an evolutionarily beneficial trait. We're no longer competing with other species (why social traits developed), we're competing against each other (where the right amount of anti-social traits works best).
We desperately need to fix those incentives for society and civilisation to survive.
Unfortunately that is way outside too many people's Overton window. And, also unfortunately, I don't think the average human is sufficiently intelligent to understand why he should care.[note 1]
Throughout history, we see cycles of freedom and oppression, separated by either collapse or revolt.
- Collapse happens when anti-socials gain so much power in an organization (whether it's a corporation or state) that it starts to function so poorly that it's overtaken by competitors (or even destroys itself).
- Revolt happens when they gain/use that power too blatantly and people notice. Peaceful revolt is possible on the surface but ultimately, all true power is backed by violence - sometimes that violence is just thinly veiled behind multiple steps of action and reaction (unarmed protesters attacked by police will bring rocks and Molotovs next time which will cause even more attacks from the police which might escalate into civil war).
But right now we're at a point where oppressors have enough history to learn from. They don't care about collapse and revolt only happens when people are willing to act. So what they're doing right now is conditioning everyone that violence is wrong. This comes in many forms: bans on social media (every TOS forbids promoting violence these days), forced self-censorship (just watch a couple youtube shorts, good luck finding one where "kill" isn't spelled "k*ll" and bleeped out), zero-tolerance policies (school will punish both aggressor and target when they get into a fight), ...
Trump is a fascist (https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...). Last time people like him got into power in the civilized world, one was shot and hung upside down from a gas station, the other killed himself in a bunker. But this time when people reached for the 4th box of liberty, they were almost universally shunned. So he got into power, elected by the stupid people, and to nobody's surprise immediately started dismantling the system which exists to keep him in check.
He will do it slowly enough that each time he takes a step towards his goal, he will only piss off a small portion of the people and there will never be enough organized opposition at once. At least this time the dictator-elect is so old he might snuff it from natural causes before he does too much damage.
But the average person will not learn from it. The idea that a group of people as large as tens or hundreds of millions needs one special individual at the top is the peak of human stupidity.
---
[note 1]: Some people see this as too arrogant to be said openly but them it becomes just an excuse for them to shut down their logical faculties and reject what I say based on primitive instincts, proving my point.
- Anyway, look at how many democracies use the plurality/FPTP voting system which is known to be pretty much the worst possible (https://rangevoting.org/).
- Look at how many people in the west will say that democracy is obviously good and dictatorship obviously bad but don't question why nearly all corporations have hierarchical (dictatorial) power structures.
- Look at how many people are OK with spending a third or half of their salary on rent, which is just free money that goes to people who contribute nothing to society.
- Look at how many people are unable to differentiate between morality (what is right) vs legality (what the state will penalize you for) and how even the language is warped to mix them (people saying "I did nothing wrong" when they are talking about breaking the rules, whether they are laws or whatever screed a subreddit mod came up with).
> There is something in many people that makes them attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly above things.
It's the slave moral and if you think the majority of people would be better (given the opportunity) you are naive
Like of the Nietzschan philosophy? So in the case of trump the idea is that his voters like him because he’s different from the “evil” aristocratic class that trump claimed to oppose (eg “drain the swamp”)?
> Like of the Nietzschan philosophy?
Yes, but the rest I disagree.
I just think that most people (on both political sides) are not really better. If they would be given the position of power they would be corrupted and incompetent too.
So in a sense you got what you deserve - and your democracy is working.
How does it connect back to the Nietzschan philosophy you mentioned?
The idea that the oppressed would be morally better when given the position of power is naive.
They are oppressed because they are already morally corrupted. Otherwise they would rather die for their freedom in the first place.
Nietzsche called this slave moral.
I miss the days when I wasn’t an extra on a b-rate tawdry reality show.
> he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course
TACO, as the saying goes.
That’s the key right? It’s world as content. Nothing means anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of ”politics”. But that’s not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what happens next!
> Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
The revolution wouldn't have been televised but the polycrisis will be live streamed.
America's ruin will be spending itself into bankruptcy.
If you truly believe that, the fix is the opposite of what the GOP is proposing. Freeze spending at today’s levels, raise taxes (uncap SS, add higher tax brackets, add a wealth tax, etc…), then let the economy grow naturally.
This wouldn’t be possible as the world’s reserve currency and provider of political stability. At incredibly low interest rates, most investments are positive ROI.
But by destroying the US’ position as reserve currency and establishing the country as too untrustworthy to do business with, Trump has made your statement true.
We can’t afford what we spend without those special economic benefits. And we just threw them away for no reason.
The geopolitical stability is now cheaper[1] than the debt service.
Naturally, that calls into question the incredibly low interest rates, and the reserve currency status.
If you need to blame Trump, the last straw was COVID.
> At incredibly low interest rates, most investments are positive ROI.
Step 1: Hold short term rates at zero, forever Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit Step 4: Wow, that's a lot of debt
[1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/first-time-us-spending-more-debt-in...
Trump and Republicans had a great hand in this (Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, Bush tax cuts, Trump tax cuts, PPP helicopter money for the rich), and are looking to double down with their current disaster of a bill. Hope you're opposing that.
> So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.)
But Musk initiated it, by going against Trump's bill. The new conclusion is "to get contract, you must kiss ass so much and you can't say anything bad, ever"
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Somebody needs to make memes about Elon looking forward to some taco and get Trump to see them...
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it to a person he just decided that he didn't like?
Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting him with accusations of pedophilia.
So far, all of this is quite normal.
What does a democracy do when people willingly and knowingly vote for fascism? “Vote for me and you’ll never have to vote again” won…
Part of the problem is that
* those who were concerned about it happening to others have seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms, etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts
* there is a subset that is just super cult of personality around the current president and will bend over backwards to justify actions
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-wa...
https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/130_days_of_elon...
https://cepr.net/publications/corrupt-control-of-the-trump-a...
If Musk is engaging in corruption with respect to the US government, then what could be done to stop it. Whatever the answer, almost certainly Musk's ties to the government would need to be broken, including contracts and funding.
It's not like the previous party in charge didn't threaten the exact same thing. People still aren't seeing that both parties are descending into the sort of third world mindset while accusing the other of being the sole cause. This is a doom spiral in the making.
> If you can cancel contacts not based on merit
That's a hard argument to hold in the context of recent history. Maybe for the better, maybe for worse, merit has taken a back seat in many cases as we prioritized other factors.
What's interesting to me here is that the executive branch has authority to change these contracts. I do understand that's how it has worked for a while, and you could argue that these contracts are part of executing on congress's mandate, but I personally would prefer the executive branch not have this power.
If it were up to me congressional committees would be responsible for this as part of budgeting responsibilities, and the executive branch would be much weaker than it is today.
As with so many other things the executive branch is doing right now, it doesn’t have exclusive power to do this. Congress sets the rules for how procurement works.
It’s not supposed to. It sure looks like it does. Power is more than what the written rules say you can do.
I think you're getting to the distinction between power and authority. Congress may have the authority to decide procurement (I'm not 100% sure on this, going with the discussion), but functionally the president may have the power to force their will through the system.
Congress has been too deferential to executive power for decades.
And nobody listened to the people saying that this concentration of power would be a disaster if the office was ever held by a craven jerkwad. And guess what happened!
> This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin.
Or China to current-day prosperity. It’s hard to admit but it’s a double edged sword and there are winners and losers.
Choose your poison wisely.
Incorrect. It was liberalization (to some extent) of the otherwise heavily centralized economy that led China to its present day prosperity.
Saying this was not the path to China’s current-day prosperity is to place a VERY heavy weight, on a very thin branch.
At this point I'm just happy these two are turning on each other - the more they hurt each other, the less time they have to focus on the rest of us. 6 months was a long time to wait, but I suppose dismantling the machinery of state that was trying to force his companies to follow the law wasn't going to be a quick job.
This is what Trump is doing to Harvard right now. He even is pushing legislation to tax their endowment and also has an executive order to deny them and on them foreign students.
...and to law firms before then, US government contractors (worldwide[1]). If OP thinks thinks this is a nee Trump play, they haven't been paying attention.
2. The US embassy tried to get a Swedish city to agree to some anti-DEI clause in a vendor agreement. Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin.
> Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin.
This is literally also what the dems were doing with USAID discrediting gamergate and funding bias news networks, neither party is above it.
I remember when Obama threatened Fox Sports mergers due to how Fox News covered his first term in office, and trued to get the Saudis to sign a pro-choice vendor agreement with the embassy. Biden also threatened law firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them from government buildings and revoke security clearance. It was the standard thing for dems to do when dealing with political opponents.
Both sides are totally the same thing, there's nothing to be done.
> Biden also threatened law firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them from government buildings and revoke security clearance.
I did a few quick searches for more information about this claim of yours. I also asked Claude and ChatGPT to research it. I can not find any sources to back up this claim of yours. Can you source it for me?
For example:
https://claude.ai/share/d36c7a89-adff-4625-9cd6-89e60b254ea1
https://chatgpt.com/share/684972cb-0140-8006-9f0f-9075537bf2...
It was a rhetorical device ascribing things Trump actually did to Democratic presidents to show parent's false equivalency. Everything I listed were things Trump did, though I changed the other parties involved to preserve the political dynamics as best as I could.
[dead]
That's no more (or less) corruption than him saying I like Elon so I'm awarding him all this government contracts
July 4th we commemorate getting rid of one mad king overseas and replacing him with.. oh wait.
You should always self-host your foreign mad king. The latency to England is just too high.
Canada has done it the right way. Self host but have a redundant backup across the pond.
We actually had one back in the 1800's: https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-joshua-norton-emperor...
KaaS (king as a service)
Everything about the current US government is wild. Yes, cancelling government contracts because of this stupid fight is corruption, but so is everything else. There's not much that either Trump or Musk do that's not corrupt.
I'd like to see both of them lose their power, because they only abuse it.
They see it as the guy on their side having more power, therefore they, by extension, have more power.
Primate brain go brr.
More like fascist brain, those who haven't bought into the decades of propaganda recognize this benefits no one. Fascism is not a natural state of mind.
On the contrary, I think it appeals to our baser instincts. Primates, from whom we evolved, settle their power disputes in EXACTLY the manner of "might makes right," and that isn't just about the individuals competing for power, but the dynamics of the crowd and how their allegiances and values shift according to who is in power.
That is true. But the dubiousness of the whole thing starts a long way before that. Why is Musk there at all? Because we are sliding into neo-feudalistic conditions in which a court of the richest people steer the affairs of state and shape them in their own favor. And we've known what Trump is like all along. We didn't have to deduce that from the fact that he is now quarrelling with Musk.
I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon. Graft has been a part of governance in every era. Typically, pandering to special interests is proportional to the government's slice of the economic pie. As the state interventions increase, so does the ability for bureaus to grant favors.
What is somewhat unique here, is the brazen and flippant nature of the funding cut. I'm sure if we looked, we could find similar cases in US history.
Author Patrick Newman has written on the topic of cronyism in US history. It is interesting to read the historical narrative framed from the perspective of who was lobbying and looting.
Here's a recent lecture on the Marshall Plan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBGo2WbAoPI
I think there has always been this type of corruption. The interesting thing this time is how open it is, and how clearly visible it is in the stock market, where who is president results in swings of hundreds of billions of dollars. This includes both Trumps corruption for (and now against Tesla/SpaceX) and Bidens lawfare against his them.
That 40% are in a cult about 1 mad rant away from an ivermectin Jonestown.
So far this is all talk, in effect non of the contracts got created because of that and so far non have been canceled because of that. This is all just media whoring around.
They see it; it's why they voted for him.
It’s pretty incredible. NYT now:
“President Trump said on Saturday that he believed his relationship with Elon Musk was over after the two sparred publicly on social media this week, and he warned there would be “serious consequences” if Mr. Musk financed candidates to run against Republicans who voted in favor of the president’s domestic policy bill.”
So the president can decide who someone supports?
Two truly awful humans fighting it out.
1 Musk = 13 Scaramuccis . Please update your SI unit tables accordingly.
It's just wild that ~40% of the country wouldn't just wait and see what actually happens.
Maybe what you think of as corruption is not what your opposing party thinks of as corruption?
Exemplifying the meme.. "[Doing American things Americanly]: What are we, ASIAN???"
You are taking this at face value. It’s all farce.
Elon helped Trump get elected. Now Trump has to help Elon get the Trump stink off so people stop calling it the swasticar.
Every accusation from Trump/Fox/Republicans is an admission. This is the "swamp" they were going to drain. It is now overflowing.
I've said before that by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins. I may have been too optimistic, it might happen earlier.
I agree entirely.
Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.
Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.
Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.
> by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins
If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?
GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years? Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies? Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies? Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)? Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days? Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually?
I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.
I’d argue we’re already there with all the social fragmentation but I reckon we’ll see a measurable decline in scientific output / discovery.
Patents? Journal articles published?
Funding is already falling ie NSF disbursements so I’d expect the h-index to fall off significantly. So sure patents will fall, journal pubs will fall, enrollment will fall, staff count will fall, total experiment count will fall, grant count will fall.
I think this was always true, it’s just that most presidents add a few extra clauses to the requirements instead of blatantly saying they’re going to cancel contracts.
he appointed him, and it saves the taxpayer money...
It’s not they don’t see it - they don’t care. This has always been the moral compass of the US.
Not American.
> ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
I'm definitely in agreement with the 60 percent. This should be unthinkable and political suicide. Openly speculating on if you can use the government as personal retaliation is absolutely undemocratic.
So why is it so hard for me to care in this case? Because Elon Musk has used the government in the exact same way. He just got done cancelling random contracts he didn't like. He just circumvented democracy to play his little doge game.
It is really hard to care about cheating when it happens to a cheater. Disgust at this move against SpaceX or Tesla has to start with consequences for Elon. If this is wrong, then Elon must be jailed.
This whole article is speculation about a war of words on social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any citation.
>One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the exchanges as “bluster” that neither Musk nor Trump would actually implement
Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm unaware of.
This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around. Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Musk but the president--any president--shouldnt be able to do this.
The biggest self-indictment in that post by POTUS was "I was always surprised Biden didn't do it!"
I am not surprised that Biden didn't cancel all SpaceX contracts for political reasons, neither are most rational people.
Trump doesn't believe that smart people with power can have ethics or morality because he doesn't have them himself.
It's not ethics or morality, it's just "not being a child." A president not personally retaliating against a critic doesn't need to have anything to do with ethics, it's just requires a post-middle-school mentality of "I may not be happy with this person but I [my country] can still benefit from things they do."
The property of "being a child" in an adult is effectively a matter of ethics and morality
No, it can be justified with rationality alone.
I phrased it poorly:
Being an adult child has moral and ethical consequences.
Behaviours and emotions that are totally legit and tolerated in a child are no longer so in an adult.
An adult that has all the privileges and freedoms of adulthood over childhood, like the ability to vote, drink, drive and hold an office, also has to abide by the moral obligations of being an adult.
But if you're rich enough (or poor enough, hah) nobody's gonna hold you to "adult behavior" standards. Is there really a moral or ethical aspect to "don't get into a shouting match on Twitter"? Or is it simply childish?
> But if you're rich enough [..] nobody's gonna hold you to "adult behavior" standards
but that's a problem, isn't it?
That's on us. Why on earth did we stop expecting adult behaviour from ultra-rich people?
Rational and ethical have a lot of overlap.
Trump is good at revealing the cracks in US democratic process, or lack thereof.
In 2016, that would have been the case due to popular vote and electoral college vote not matching. However, 2024’s popular and electoral college match show the cracks are in the racist and sexist and apathetic voter base.
It’s not just the democratic process itself, but the institutions around it. The main reason Trump isn’t in jail is because the Republican Supreme Court repeatedly protected him, even to the point of inventing new ahistorical doctrines. Once one of the major parties is no longer committed to of law we’re in uncharted territory.
My point is Trump also won the popular vote, which means the people don’t want the traitor in jail either. Institutions are only as good as the people that compose them, in this case the institution is the country as a whole.
It's been going on a long time. Democrats and Republicans, especially in the Pentagon, have bought influence of politicians to get billions of tax dollars.
So you should change the comment to say "most Democrat and Republican voters in the primaries apparently wont vote out those who give or take bribes." That would be correct.
Jethro's advice to Moses in God's Word is still good advice for voters today. If a politician ever meets this criteria, then we'll see amazing things happen. That's below with verse 21 highlighted:
"19 Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, 20 and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. 21 Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. 22 And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:19-23) (ESV)
At least Berlusconi didn't have access to nuclear warheads.
Seriously, I visited the US few times between 2005 and 2010 and each time people were raising the topic of Berlusconi. How can you have a president like that, who voted for him, bunga bunga etc etc.
Now you know how you can have such personality in power too. With even more power.
The Italians truly invent everything first, eh? Fascism, trumpism, etc
Western civilization.
Oh, and before Berlusconi there was Menem. He's the original clown turned president.
Greece?
Argentina.
Ahaha I'm pretty sure he meant that it was Greece and not Italy that invented everything first.
Ah, I thought he was referring to the clowns they have in Athens.
But, no. The Greeks didn't create Western Civilization because the only non-awkward definition of Western Civilization is that scion of the Roman Church.
Surely the cultural exchange with Greeks contributed to this.
Greece was always eastern facing as far back as before Alexander. It is only with the Cold War that they glanced West.
Aside for Magna Grecia, Greeks have very scant presence in Western Europe.
I don't know why you are angry at history and frankly I don't care, but you should read a bit more. Even the Roman pantheon was practically a copy of the Greek one, Greek was the language of science and philosophy, the first people to study mathematics in the west and so on and so forth.
All the great Romans revered Greece and Greek.
Anyway I don't know why I'm explaining history to some random angry kid online, have a nice day
Yes, Athens is a part of the West. I never denied that. But how about Jerusalem? How about Rome? How about uncivilized (ie without a city) barbarians?
How about the over 1600 years of history since the split of the Roman empire?
The 1000 years since the Schism?
The 500 years since the Fall of Constantinople?
The Eastern Roman Empire was of a completely different character than the Western one, follows a vastly different path, and one that started diverging (due to all the heresies [0]) as early as Constantine. Since the fall of Constantinople the Greeks had very limited contact with the West until independence in the late 19th century.
According to you the West didn't do anything, didn't evolve, in the last 1600 years since we've been de facto incommunicado?
For example, to say that the West of the Scholastics is "Greek" when the Greeks have always rejected them (with very poignant criticism might I add) is a laugh in the face of the Scholastic's transformational contribution to the West (above all our modern university system).
St Augustine [1] , Boetius [2], and the Papacy [3] create the West anew from of these ingredients.
[0] which (Russian Orthodox) Solovyev lays at the feet of a jealous Greek hierarchy [1] accepted but looked down on by the Greeks [2] the last of the ancients and the first of the Scholastics [3] the most foundational institution for the West and rejected by the Greeks
You are conflating different and irrelevant arguments. The discussion was never about Byzantium or modern Greece. It was whether we can trace the beginning of Western civilisation in Ancient Greece instead of Rome, which indeed we can. Far before Christianity, a topic which you seem blindly passionate about, with some apparent beef against Orthodoxy.
This has little to do with Christianity.
And I find little interest in this pointless discussion, therefore this is my last reply.
If we're tracing seeds, the Ancient Greeks openly acknowledged their debt to Egypt. Therefore the Egyptians invented the West.
But my point is that the West is Rome enlightened by Greeks and humanized by Jews.
What is Athens + Jerusalem? Eastern Europe. Orthodoxy. (No beef, btw. Ive been to Meteora and just missed a chance to stay in Mt. Athos)
What is Rome + Athens + Jerusalem? The Catholic Church.
Your perception of history is muddled by religion.
desktop programmable computers with style ? https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
Mafia!
Don’t get me started on Roman Emperors…
Trumpism is just another league I believe. You may say it's Berlusconism on steroids, but the global impact makes this a thing by itself.
It really isn't; Trump just has a bigger stage. Trumpism is a misnomer by itself; Trump has no ideology, no grand scheme that I can discern.
> Trump has no ideology
I wouldn't say it's a misnomer, the lack of ideology is the signature appeal. It's exactly what affords Trump unlimited flexibility among his supporters since there are no expectations of consistency.
Yeah, I would say "acquisition of and wielding power" is the signature feature of Trumpism, and why he appeals to so many.
Whether true or not (and FWIW, I think it is, at least to some degree), the left largely took the mantra of "tsk tsking" for a long time - you should feel bad about using a plastic straw, bad about driving your car, bad about the US' treatment of Native Americans, etc. etc. So Trump's complete shamelessness is appealing to many
I read a good post recently that explained that Trump and the Republican's rank hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug. It shows that Trump and his team are unbound by the constraints they want to apply to others.
bigger stage and bigger impact. Trump had more impact on the world trades in a few months than Berlusconi in 20 years as Berlusconi was limited to Italy and sometimes Europe.
And alphabet.
From the Italian letters alpha & beta :)
No, it is Google thing. Thread lightly, as people get offended by that...
What a morons :D
> How can you have a president like that
Did people really think that Berlusconi was the president of Italy?
Wasn't he?
Unless you mean president !== primer minister, but that would be such a futile remark in this context.
That's exactly what I meant. A lot of people in the US don't follow politics in Europe, but those who do are unlikely to think Berlusconi was a president when he was actually a prime minister.
Prime ministers in Europe have functions of US Presidents. Equivalent of European presidents I think is missing in the US.
Prime ministers in Italy are also called Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri, therefore technically yes. He was holding the executive power, and although Italy is a parliamentary republic, most of the laws are driven by the Government.
Mainly the people that voted for him.
I remember thinking this same thing during the first trump term as an American, with Berlusconi I used to be like "how the fuck can people accept this from their leaders" and then it came home. Obviously the string of war criminals we had prior weren't great either but Trump hits different.
This reads like pretty classic infighting between a dictator and one of his more powerful cronies.
I am surprised at how fast it happened, though. Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship. Maybe our dear leader is just as incompetent at being a dictator as he is everything else.
I was not as surprised. It is a lot like the pattern in his previous term with people that he brought on and then had a fallout with and they became the enemy like cabinet members, VP, etc. This second term is markedly different in that he appointed only due hard yes men. I think the only difference is that Musk was very useful for his money and independent sway.
I hope it escalates into a pay per view cage match.
Elon already has a black eye so I think the cameras weren't invited.
The last time Elon proposed a cage match he pussied out.
His mommy wouldn't let him do it
I bet a lot of readers think you are joking here.
And then lost a fight to 5 year old son?
To a 62 year old.
> Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship.
It doesn't seem that way to me, e.g. Putin arrested Khodorkovsky (the richest man in Russia) in 2003. The way I see it, the politician needs the oligarch's money to gain political power, but then he has actual state power, including guns and the judicial system. At that point the oligarch has no purpose -- after all, the politician can just make new ones -- so it makes sense to cast him out or destroy him.
Trump could bankrupt SpaceX with the stroke of a pen and bleed Tesla dry by revoking EV credits. He could even try to revoke Musk's citizenship over (real or fake) issues with his immigration status in the past. If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
> If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
This is the funniest part to me, in the context of THIS president. The guy that demands fully loyalty but gives none?
I can't imagine being the richest guy in the world, and embarrassing myself to such a degree all for.. what? He paid maybe $300M to help elect the guy, wore all the stupid hates, lavished orange man with praise.. and for what. What was ever the upside? The possible downside was obviously asymmetric to any clear eyed viewer.
And so that asymmetric downside now begins.
This crop of billionaires was created from a time when capital was ascendant and state power was on the decline. I think as a result they’ve come to believe that the state is mostly there for their benefit especially during Republican administrations.
Haven't they ever seen House of Cards?
I think it's also a mark of the self delusion some of these "Great Men" tend to have, before you even get into the surrounding yes-men & ketamine.
Probably some sort of "well I am worth $400M, but if I can get that to $2M, I can do my Mars space colony with enough room for my harem, for sure".
vs "Gee I have more money than one can ever spend and remain mortal.. I could go enjoy my life like Bezos before it all evaporates..."
The Bezod who sat next to him at the inauguration?
Sure they all attended
But few have tied themselves as explicitly to the man as musk. Funded. Wore the dumb hats. Went on campaign trail.
It was like a deep romance. You don’t walk away from that stench.
Meanwhile Bezos has been on his yacht in the Mediterranean lol
Not that both the Republicans and Democrats are very pro large business. Remember Harris raised at least _twice_ as much money from billionaires than Trump.
They're just pro different big businesses, largely based on their demographics.
Personally I'm still annoyed that Obama's administration had the DOE take over servicing federal student loans to "protect students" only for them to somehow be sold to a private company based in Chicago from what I can tell.
Surely this is untrue?
Isn't it the opposite? What are you basing this on?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/billionaires...
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-buying-elec...
Billionaire spending heavily favored Republicans. Over two-thirds (70%) of billionaire-family contributions went in support of GOP candidates and conservative causes. Less than a quarter (23%) backed Democratic hopefuls and progressive causes. (The remainder went to committees without a clear partisan or ideological identity.
I hadn't looked for a while, but Harris was out raising and out spending Trump substantially when I'd last read up on it. Much of that seemed to come primarily from big donors.
Sure the more of the top richest people may have donated more to Trump or Republicans, but Harris raised much more overall.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/11/04/trump-v...
Seems like they both raised about the same from their top 20 largest donors:
> The Harris campaign received significantly more funding than Trump's, outspending the Republican advertising machine by more than 70 percent in the final stretch of the election.
> According to data from Open Secrets, Harris received almost $400 million from her 20 largest backers. Trump received over half a billion dollars from his top 20, which included over $100 million from SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/11/04/trump-v...
My take of that is that Trump raised a bit more from concentrated donations from the richest billionaires, but Harris overall raised more from larger numbers of billionaires and millionaires.
Didn't Musk dismantle the federal agencies that were investigating and suing his companies?
Well... Sure, he got Starlink approved for rural broadband funding and ended some NTSB investigations into Tesla's "suicide mode." But those things can be reversed with a quickness if he's no longer on Trump's side.
He also wrecked a lot more of the federal government that doesn't affect him one way or the other, and may have harvested a ton of data for his AI company. We'll see if anything comes of that.
maybe he wanted a ticket to the island, maybe he got it
Everyone who consorts with Trump ends up covered in shit.
It was weird to see all those billionaire tech bros lining up to kiss his arse. What is the point of spending all that effort to be super rich and powerful if it means you have to grovel to a terrible human being like Trump? Does not compute.
"This time WE will be in control." is probably what they were thinking.
> He could even try to revoke Musk's citizenship
At the very least, an arrest by ICE is a real possibility. His brother has admitted on camera that they were illegal at one point, and there is now a lot of precedent for "arrest first - ask questions later" even if you're a natural born citizen.
We have moved so past the "government is expected to be impartial" and now at "if musk backs a dem I will destroy him" stage. No one bats an eye. This is going to be the norm at least on the Republican Party. I worry every one expects presidents to weaponize everything against their perceived opponents.
In Europe, media and politicians are openly stating how you got to watch what you say to Mr Trump, be nice to him to get favored in deals.
Like the trade tax, if you’re nice to trump he may decrease your country tax.
It was made very clear in France that we invited him to 14 juillet, notre dame ceremony and other ceremony only to get favor from him.
People of the United States pay the price for his favors, he gets the benefits.
That’s just one step before handling him bags of money.
Of course all of that matters with previous presidents, they are humans before all, but it was marginal. With him, that’s the first time it’s openly spoken about on national tv and by politicians like it’s nothing, like what we did with dictator from middle eastern except it’s the president of the USA.
A lot of eyes are being batted. But really, him punishing Musk is barely in the top 100 things we're worried about right now. We're barely a few months into his term. The chances of seeing full on Martial Law before 4 years is terrifyingly high.
That stood out to me, too. Even in the current environment, that's messed up. No, the sitting president does not get to threaten peoples' ability to make campaign contributions to the opposing party.
I’ve got to love that these two guys both have their own social media platform.
Hopefully one day everyone will be on his own social media and when you want to check on someone, you get on his social media to see what he say.
Like I don’t know, how we used to do things with blogs, MySpace and so on ! The future is great.
That’s actually fascinating! I didn’t consciously recognize that till I read this comment haha
What's trump's social media?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Social came out of him being banned by twitter a few years ago
I have never seen the inside of it. But to be honest the home page looks clean. How's the interface, in case you have ventured in? Is it clean and simple?
Never visited
Apparently, Musk is very popular among Republicans: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/06/elon-musk-...
YouGov made a survey on June 5, asking "If you had to choose, who would you side with more between the following?" with Musk and Trump to choose. For Republicans, it's 71% Trump, 6% Musk, 12% neither, 11% not sure.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/survey-results/daily...
Musk is popular amongst republicans because Trump has championed him. The pro-Musk Republicans are also pro-Trump republicans and their loyalty to Trump will beat out whatever respect they have for Musk. Musk is not a threat to Trump, because Trump’s entire platform is built on Trump-or-bust. Musk was a useful idiot to Trump. Musk thinking that Trump’s Epstein connection was somehow going to hurt Trump shows just how impotent Musk is. Trump fans couldn’t care one iota about that.
It's really that simple. If you want to know what MAGA supporters believe about any topic, just look up what Trump last said about it. He could change his mind three times in a single day, and they would also change their mind (and talking points) in lock step three times.
Some people really do act like that, in my limited experience. Trump's opinion changes and lo and behold their beliefs have updated to the same view as Trump's.
Yep. In 2016 all of Trump's scandals were already exposed. It didn't do anything. Trump can easily walk away from Musk right now with no problems. Tesla is probably not going to last at high valuation much longer anyways
If anything, Trump fans will pat him on the back for pwning those 13-year-old libs.
Trump has unprecedented power of retribution. The best Elon can pull off is swearing at opponents in an interview.
So, the government would do what, lean on Russia with whom the USA is currently engaged in a proxy war? Also, for Boeing or Blue Origin, the cost would currently be higher per launch, and as far as I know, no one has the kind of satellite network that SpaceX does.
Of course, those are sane considerations. I suppose I shouldn’t accuse the Donald of any kind of rational thinking.
SpaceX is critical infrastructure to the US at this point and its continued availability and operation is of national security interest.
That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
Less nuclear: the US has a lot of control over what SpaceX does. The FAA (and to a lesser extent the NOAA) has to approve every launch. They could simply gorund SpaceX.
If you think SpaceX could simply move operations elsewhere, think again, The US prohibits ASML, a Dutch company, from selling EUV lithography machines to China.
Apart from all of that, SpaceX is absolutely dependant on US government funding and contracts. Withdrawing those, or even the threat of such, allows the US to wield a lot of power over SpaceX.
What's rather surprising about this feud is that Trump is currently the adult and has been uncharacteristically restrained in his response thus far. Of course, all that could change. It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
> nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
This isn't at all clear. It's clear that they could easily compel them to prioritize and fulfill government contracts. Far less clear that they could just take it. It is clear that the current administration could "try" but such an effort might result in a lawsuit that lasts longer than the administration does and thereby become moot.
It may take a long time to be fully litigated, but the courts also take a while to act, and we've seen that this administration takes full advantage of this fact. The odds are also stacked against Elon here because the national security interests would likely make a compelling argument to stay any injunctions SpaceX might seek. SpaceX might prevail in the end, but the whole process would get very uncomfortable for Elon in the meantime.
Actually the defense production act provides a perfectly viable path actually supported by law to ensure that the governments interests are served.
An injunction would be entirely logical as it prevents irreparable harm based on a fanciful understanding of the law unlikely to prevail and hurts the government not at all.
Certainly the government trying to steal like a common criminal puts anyone in an uncomfortable position but the only real risk is the fact we live under incipient fascism.
The most correct reply here.
> That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
A public-private partnership is the dream for any shareholder. Guaranteed revenue and profits funded by taxes, investment capital from the government on great terms, becoming "too big to fail", etc.
My thoughts exactly. This is a clear case of eminent domain. Doesn't spacex have a board to control their ceo?
You don’t get more milk by beating the cow.
> It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
How is it insane to repeat what everyone already knows? The only novelty here is Musk himself saying it to his legions of followers, who would have been otherwise inclined to downplay the significance of it.
It's insane because of the implications: Musk was a major contributor to Trump's campaign, and a major advisor, and at the last minute he implies Trump is a pedophile?
This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a pedophile elected! He couldn't have learned this at the last minute, he obviously held this ace in his sleeve.
This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the eyes of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get a pedophile elected president if it would suit his business vision.
> He couldn't have learned this at the last minute, he obviously held this ace in his sleeve.
Why? He could easily have learned this after the election.
Not after the election, since he supported Trump (barring some disagreements) until a few weeks ago. They parted with a hug, just before this blowup.
So are we supposed to believe Musk just found out about the Epstein link, hidden in unreleased documents, in the last few days? It's extremely farfetched.
I think Musk has pluses and minuses. I think he does have some mental issues volatile and lash out and make poor decisions even if I do agree with some things and disagree with others. To be honest, he is someone that staked his reputation on completely verifiably and provably lying about the legitimacy of his ranking in a video game and at a time with all eyes on him besmirched a large streamer he previously has thought of partnering with on X as best by “bad at video games.” It’s just terrible judgment. I’m surprised the “normie” didn’t focus on kind of pathetic it looked to lie about videos games and instead they made wild accusations comparing him to the bad people from 30s.
This isn't the first time Musk has baselessly accused someone of pedophilia on social media.
He did it randomly to some guy he didn't like in Thailand who saved some kids trapped in a cave. He's probably done it other times.
It's just an Elon Musk thing. Go totally unhinged on social media and defame people without evidence. He does it all the time.
The only guy more famous than Musk for saying absolute nonsense on social media, is Trump.
It is all fake, lame, and nonsense.
What's shocking is that the people running our country are behaving like absolute children. I feel like they wouldn't be able to hold down a job at my company because they're so unhinged, they would have been fired long ago, and yet here they are, billionaires, deciding the fate of 350M people.
Yeah, I remember that other accusation.
To be clear, I'm not debating the veracity of the accusation, I'm asking what it says about Musk that he claims to have knowingly helped elect president someone he knew to be a pedophile.
I mean, I would assume that anyone who's still a Musk supporter has no morals to speak of anyway, so I'm not sure why they would be concerned by this implication.
Wow, that is some amazing threading of the mental needle to focus blame on Musk. Doesn't this indictment apply to every single person who voted for Trump in 2024? Those pictures of Epstein, Trump, and Maxwell having themselves some grand old times have been popularly circulating for like a decade at this point.
If the indictment doesn't apply, then why can't Musk play the same card of "I didn't know/believe/accept" while he was supporting, but only recently has he "now come to know" ?
Why wouldn't I heap blame on Musk (as well as on Trump, mind you)? The guy's deranged and repulsive.
I don't think your objections are fair. Let's go over them:
The average Trump voter doesn't know much about Epstein, and certainly doesn't believe Trump was involved in anything with that scandal. Any evidence that may turn up would be considered "fake news" to them. Whatever you may think of Trump voters, and whatever things they really are to blame for, knowingly voting for someone they believe to be a pedophile isn't one of their sins.
Musk just implied Trump is a pedophile (or is suppressing certain documents because of his links to a pedophile). Musk also claims without him Trump wouldn't have been elected. These are Musk's claims, so he has thrown away any possible defenses of "but I didn't know/believe this" and "but I'm irrelevant in the grand scheme of things".
You also claim Musk could defend himself with "but I didn't know at the time". This is very, very weak. When exactly do you suppose he learned this? In the few days that have elapsed since this very public falling out, maybe even a few days before? Oh, please. You know you don't believe this, these two were heaping praise on each other and calling themselves friends for most of their collaboration since Trump's second term, and only now Musk found out about Epstein? What, an aide rushed this info to him just in time for their current breakup? Absurd.
Any way you slice it, Musk had this accusation up his sleeve the whole time, he just chose to deploy it now.
So again I must ask, what does this say -- in his fans' eyes -- about Musk as a person?
PS: You seem to believe I'm somehow defending Trump here. If that's your worry, let me be clear that I think Trump is a disgrace. I don't know whether he's a pedophile though, unlike Musk I don't claim to have seen any secret documents. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if both Trump and Musk are pedophiles, these aren't exactly examples of decent human beings.
PPS: it has also just occurred to me you could be wondering why I'm focusing on the outrageous things Musk has said, but not on the contradictory, absurd or just plain dumb things Trump is saying about Musk? Well, because Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do lots of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now. Musk, as the world's richest person, has a much longer shelf life and more time to do damage to the US and the rest of the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult following. So I wonder what his followers think.
IME Trump supporters will justify anything he does or may plausibly have done. They're too invested in him or have bought into the idea that the other must be so much worse.
Elon stans seem to have a similar mindset.
Getting folks to think critically about Elon's actions would require an Epstein video of Trump engaging in SA with a clearly underage child. Likely only if coming out of police evidence lockers sealed before AI video existed. And it would have to be reported widely and maybe even released publicly without cuts (only blurring).
This is also a left smear. Many conservatives have expressed dissatisfaction with this bill that is the focus of all this. It’s not true what you are saying. It’s not true that those that voted for him agree and justify everything. Regardless of what you may think of Covid response, many conservatives expressed disagreement with him on that as well.
It is not as if supporters will deny all but a clear video tape of such an incident. There is no evidence this is true and there is plenty of reason to think it does not exist. The fact that Trump turned on Epstein while he was alive and Epstein’s attorney tried to find ways to smear Trump because of his involvement with the prosecution stands at odds with Musk’s claim that many here are granting prima facie.
Trump has a reputation for walking in on women and teens in the dressing areas at his pageants. At least one of Epstein's GFs said Trump assaulted her. Epstein said he was Trump's closest friend.
It's very possible the Epstein files do have (or used to have) damning evidence. Though IME folks who call themselves MAGA are unlikely to take any evidence seriously.
Trump himself has said he believes he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it.
You're talking about Stacey Williams allegation a couple weeks before the election and right after those regarding Doug Emhoff? It's not as simple as piling on a list of allegations. If it is so possible why did Epstein not use it against Trump especially when Trump was trying to have adverse action inflicted on Epstein? As far as the 5th Avenue thing, this is another one of these things that happens on the left where they take all of his jokes so literally and just run with it. I saw another normie take from that Lawrence O'Donnell in which he was just beside himself up in arms over Trump's tweet about Biden being a robot was absolute proof that Trump believed in Biden robots and that he was mentally incapacitated. One can have criticism without it devolving into breathless derangement.
"I only just realized!" is obviously disingenuous, but it suffices for the routine plausible deniability.
The real distinction is whether you believe that someone who has done bad deeds can be supported for other reasons, or whether they need to be repudiated in their entirety. For example even if you know Trump is a child rapist (and you condemn child rape), but you think as President he's going to do good for the country, you can still support him for President while being intellectually consistent [0].
This is separate from the issue of whether the person who has done wrong should face justice (eg continuing, you can think that Trump should go to jail but modulo that not happening, that he will do good for the country [0]). And separate from the issue of whether someone in a position to facilitate justice happening has an overriding duty to do so (I don't think Musk is in this position either though. Trump's one actual skill is escaping consequences).
> This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a pedophile elected! He couldn't have learned this at the last minute, he obviously held this ace in his sleeve...
> This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the eyes of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get a pedophile elected president if it would suit his business vision.
The second does not immediately follow from the first. Modulo the larger distinction I made above, it may just be the case that every second powerful figure is some kind of child rapist or similarly morally bankrupt, and this has been normalized, so even if you have morals to be applied you just have to hold your nose to get anything done. I have no idea, but I do know Epstein was connected to a lot of people.
You're also imparting a narrower business vision rather than political or moral where such compromises would be see as more justified. So no, these events might indict Musk in your mind further, but I don't think this is a universal conclusion.
> Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do lots of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now. Musk, as the world's richest person, has a much longer shelf life and more time to do damage to the US and the rest of the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult following.
I've got the complete opposite take on this. Trump has his hands on the actual levers of power, power which continues to acrete the more he destroys our institutions. Whereas Musk seems close to his limit with buying Xitter and blackmailing politicians (about funding opponents). It feels like Musk is just an avatar of the terrible dynamics of wealth concentration, which are present regardless of him personally. While Trump is actively pushing our society off a cliff in a way we will not be able to come back from. Just a feeling per my own heuristics, I'll have to ponder this more.
[0] just to be very explicit this is certainly not my own view about Trump!
Everyone knows what? There have been no shortage of journalists trying to destroy him, where is the evidence. He was quite involved in assisting prosecutors against Epstein, as a civilian. As others have pointed, Musk does have a penchant for making this exact allegation, unfounded, against people he disagrees with, even over the most bizarre of things. If we all just say we know allegations against people we disagree will true, without basis in fact, then we are no better than parliamentary monarchy for which we fought a revolution against, let alone kangaroo courts around the world.
How do you force a company to provide services?
Nationalization can't work for a company working at the bleeding edge of tech. Everyone would leave, their stock options now worthless or paid out.
Name one single time in history nationization has worked? I can name 100 counter examples.
> an absolutely insane thing to do
Is it?
The statement itself doesn't seem to imply anything other than Musk seems to think he is in those files.
Trump is in some of the JE "files" that were already released (flight logs).
I think the cultural obsession with the unknown surrounding Jeffery Epstein informs what people infer from statements like that.
There are many less-than-flattering ways that Trump could be associated with JE that do not include pedophilia.
But Musk is not implying any of those less-than-flattering things. Nobody knows what Musk actually thinks, but what he implied is pretty clear. He calls it "a bomb", and we all know what that means.
And this matters, because Musk was a major campaign contributor and advisor to someone he has now implied to be a pedophile. What does this say about Musk?
As per usual, every accusation from a narcissist is a confession.
You know who absolutely is connected to Epstein? Elon's brother, Kimbal (allgedly) [1].
And while not related to Epstein but is just gross and in a similar ballpark, Elon's father Errol, had a stepdaughter from his wife's first marriage, Jana Bezuidenhout, who grew up in his house from age 4. He later went on to father two children with Jana (the first when she was 30, I believe) [2]. It's unclear when the relationship began. The only public statements are after Jana had a break-up.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-girlfrie...
[2]: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/31886...
Didn't know these details about Musk's family.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a guy so gross in his personal life comes from a gross family. Everything about Musk is deranged.
Do you remember the (not so distant era) when Musk was the nerd's and hacker's darling? SpaceX, his genius, his vision! This was before we knew much about his personal life and opinions. It seems so long ago now... Before he took to Twitter to claim it was OK to coup countries for their resources, or started naming children like mathematical formulas.
> Everything about Musk is deranged.
He's a symptom. It is our society, globally, that has become deranged. Almost all public figures are a shade of scumbag these days. Maybe they always were and there is no longer any reason to hide it.
Regrettably, I must agree with you.
I can speak for Argentina, where the situation (the sharp deterioration of public discourse, the "rule by Twitter posts", flamewars between government officials, incredibly aggressive public discourse, obvious fraud that doesn't get prosecuted if it's done by some political factions, etc) mirrors the US in many ways. I would say in Argentina we repeat tragedy in the form of farce, except what's going on in the States is also a farce.
> we all know what that means
Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague statements or evidence.
> What does this say about Musk?
Who knows? Musk has thin associations with Epstein and Maxwell as well, he is a proven liar, is at times visibly manic, and has been reported to drop relationships at a whim when challenged.
There could be plenty of things driving his behavior, but I don't think this informs anything new about his character.
You got me wrong: I'm not talking about the veracity of the accusation, I'm asking about what it says about Musk (regardless of its truth).
Especially in the eyes of Musk fans.
This guy is now effectively claiming he helped get someone elected president whom he knew was a pedophile. Musk claims Trump got elected thanks to his support (again, Musk claims this). He also claims Trump is a pedophile.
So what do Musk fans think about Musk (not Trump) in light of this?
Honestly, if there were any fans of Musk after he imitated a Nazi salute, I don't think their perception of him has much further room to sink.
> Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague statements or evidence.
When it comes to drawing conclusions about the intent of the person making the vague statement, this is an error. It helps create the plausible deniability that public manipulators use to their advantage.
SpaceX can move to another country if the US starts creating problems. Plenty of countries will happily take them.
If it’s critical infrastructure it should be nationalized
This is a very anti-USA way of thinking because it doesn’t allow companies to extract profit.
Healthcare, education, roads, prisons, electricity, transit, all of it is designed in the USA so a company can extract profit.
This is hardly a charitable interpretation. The lack of competition provides for little incentive for improvement. Now, for prisons, I think for-profit prisons are quite problematic because the incentives are abjectly antithetical to justice.
We have a national space agency that has had plenty of time and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
Why wouldn't SpaceX turn into the funding and political football that NASA is, if it were nationalized?
Like, this isn't a hypothetical. SpaceX only has a market because of the incompetence of the "public option."
> We have a national space agency that has had plenty of time and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
That's quite inaccurate. NASA doesn't do much themselves, they hire external contractors but keep significant control over them. SpaceX got more funding and less control and they didn't start from scratch, NASA gave them all of their technical documentation, now-how and working prototypes.
NASA could have done everything SpaceX does if they were given the same conditions and funding, however, they've never had funding for blowing up five spaceships in row, they were held to much stricter standards.
The entire story looks like a blatant attempt to take control of space operations away from NASA and thus from the government.
how do explain other governments funding efforts to copy spacex without success, its easy to hand wave away peoples efforts and achievements with hindsight
>NASA could have done everything SpaceX does if they were given the same conditions and funding
This may have been hypothetically possible, as are many things that never came to be, but it is impossible to know whether this really would have happened.
Challenger
enjoy the snap reaction brain drain as entrepreneurs move their efforts offshore, people are being disingenuous by saying its as simple as deciding to nationalise a company everyone said would fail and who china and Europe are desperately trying to emulate, all over retaliatory statements, be careful what sort of government behaviour you normalise because you happen to be on the winning side of that behaviour, seasons change
onlyrealcuzzo above commented that Trump canceling SpaceX contracts would be "literally the path that led the USSR to ruin".
However, we have a case of a private contractor trying to manipulate the president by means of "revelations" and decommissioning of a service important for national security. If the president cannot change those contracts the US would be literally on the path to oligarchic Russia... I'm not sure what's worse.
Trump is generally moving in the direction of reducing government control of corporations to the point of risking government capture by oligarchic interests. What's happening now is a direct consequence of his policies and it's ironic that Trump's powers are being questioned when it comes to corporate regulation.
Trump's personal faults are irrelevant at the moment, if the GOP doesn't stand firmly behind Trump we are going to find ourselves in an incredible mess.
They would have to tip a bunch of money into boeing to help them get to space x parity in time for Artemis launch dates. It isnt happening.
> lean on Russia with whom the USA is currently engaged in a proxy war?
Are they though? Trump is on Putins side. Who disputes that?
Yes, it's quite disingenuous to say that USA is engaged a proxy war. Ukraine has military support from other countries but they are the ones making decisions at the end of day.
For example Ukraine just carried out a complex drone attack on Russia's bomber fleet, this was careful planned by Ukrainian miliary without any involvement of the US and US was not informed of this ahead of time. And after the fact USA got upset with Ukraine for doing that.
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Moscow was never either of their biggest priorities, I think. Allies of convenience, mostly. Moscow benefits from their infighting anyway.
Yeah. I believe Moscow props them up and has platformed them, but not because of any secret intelligence - it's the opposite: they are installing this exact chaos.
Eh, still giving Moscow too much credit IMO. Certainly I don't think Moscow was critical to get them where they are (that's ironically giving too much credit to the American people, too; it turns out we're really dumb).
I think out social media is very actively influenced by certain regimes. They are rotting us from within.
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The DoD would certainly just take care of Elon if they had to. Who are we kidding. The DoD are the actual owners of Space X. Hes a figure head / civilian face.
They are literally just running the Howard Hughes playbook over again. Hes a front guys.
>with whom the USA is currently engaged in a proxy war?
USA isn't currently engaged a proxy war with Russia
Yes we are.
Ukraine is fighting a Russian invasion. And republicans are pressuring Ukraine to give up. How is that a proxy war?
But numbers don't lie, USA still sending billions of weapons to Ukraine even with the Trump shenanigans.
As if they weren’t selling the weapons.
The biggest threat to Musk’s empire is simply to remove Chinese electric vehicle tariffs.
I'd like to point out this situation to anyone who supported privatizing Space. Your access can be cut off in a second.
When policy dispute escalates to ad hominem and fund cutting arguments, it becomes clear that the presidency no longer serves the institution, but becomes a personal kingdom.
What do we even need to be sending people into space for? It seems like a lot of savings could be had if we just completely shut down the entire manned space program. Unless there is some direct business case for it, why do it at all? Don't tell me some vague definition of "science". This isn't some new frontier that needs exploring, its well understood at this point. There needs to be a direct benefit to the american tax payer to justify the cost of putting a person up there. I don't see a reason to send people to space, if something needs to be done, it can be automated and sent as an autonomous payload. Sending people to space feels wasteful in the age of robotics, fast data links and autonomous systems. If we can operate a rover on mars, we can do whatever needs to be done in orbit or the moon or deep space, without human aid.
It feels like a vanity and an anachronism to an era from the past. Manned space travel is risky, expensive, environmentally destructive, and for what? For some human being to manually manipulate scientific instruments in orbit that should have been, or could have been automated and get the same results?
Gone are the days where people actually think we could be living in space. From what we know now, not only is it impractical, dangerous, inefficient, its also unhealthy. This isn't a question of some new technology that needs created to support it, it's a limitation of physics and millions of years of evolution on earth.
Send satellites to orbit? Yes. Collect power from space? Yes. Conduct scientific research? Okay. But we don't need to send people to do that anymore. Manned space travel had its place in time, and it no longer makes sense to do it, so lets have the maturity to move on from the past.
You can't have this argument in good faith at the present moment because the institution is under attack not because of a pragmatic reason as you describe but because the joke of a president is mad at a private citizen for their speech. Ignoring all previous Musk love or hate that somebody may have, look at the action that may take place here - the government taking adverse action against a private citizen for their speech.
We can have the pragmatic discussion AFTER the fascism is over.
Most of the benefits of manned space exploration are fake, yes. The incentives of the people doing it though aren't to be honest about it. NASA talks about how critical a constant human presence on the ISS is for ‘science’; never once have I heard them even try to justify $100B spend as more than a keyword.
There are a few real things a manned space program does: showing force in rocket technologies, serving as inspiration in STEM fields, and taking an early step to humans flourishing throughout the universe. There are also real but bad reasons, like NASA bloat is seen as a way to buy voters.
Are you unfamiliar with the many world-changing technologies and inventions that have come about because of the needs and drivers of the human space program? On what basis do you form the belief that we would not continue to develop and benefit from new world-changing innovations despite all historical evidence that says otherwise?
A huge amount of scientific invention is made incidentally to another goal. It's intensely myopic to disregard that.
I was waiting for this comment! What innovations have come about in the last 20 years of the human space program? Everyone always makes this claim but never can name a single one, or brings up unrelated things like the heat tiles on the space shuttle. What kinds of developments could not have been done with autonomous payloads?
Not an expert, but it seems NASA holds a few magazine publications for just that, it must come up often.
One VERY on topic is "ISS Benefits for Humanity", which shows why the ISS benefits everyone.
See edition 2022: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/iss_benefits...
Seems from the table of contents, it breaks down to: earth observation, microbiology in microgravity, human health research, inspiring younglings, new physics, and "growing the low-earth economy".
Then broader there's a yearly one called Spinoff that points to the technology transfers, but that's not just from human flight, but from all NASA-funded work.
See last few years' edition: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff/archives
> What kinds of developments could not have been done with autonomous payloads?
This is very much the wrong question to ask. The question isn't whether something can be done with different payloads. The question is whether something would have been done if not for the drive to send people into constrained environments. Closed loop osmotic water filtration systems would not be so developed without the driving motivation of sustaining life in a box. Sending payloads at all is actually extremely tangential except insofar as if you officially terminate the actual sending of people then the motivation to develop technologies that make it easier to send people vanishes.
It's not super clear from your wording, but it sounds kinda like you want to hear about research within the past 20 years that has made it to already being commercialized, but that would be ignoring the fact that taking decades for research and development done for human spaceflight to get applied to other uses, which it often does, doesn't negate the facts that it often does take longer than that for ventures to reach the public and that the research and development was done for human spaceflight. It seems unlikely that you're looking for older developments that have only been commercialized recently, though I can point you to several, and developments done more recently but not yet commercialized for other uses have no success record yet. It makes your request sound a bit disingenuous.
Not the OP, but I am genuinely completely unaware - I don't follow space tech at all (or really know much about its history). Could you elaborate on some of them?
> This isn't some new frontier that needs exploring, its well understood at this point
This is where I started to think this was trolling and that it would soon devolve into overly satirical commentary to prove the opposite point. I was surprised it didn't do this. I'm very interested in this defeatist mentality, welp we know it's impractical we should stop trying. It's not only ignoring the advancements that manned space exploration has brought but seemingly ignores how advancements are done in general for all of human existence. This mindset would have us living in caves after a few hardships.
You could argue we know enough now but this overestimates how much humans know especially with respect to space
> but this overestimates how much humans know especially with respect to space
Does it? We can't know how many secrets there are out there, maybe there's infinite and maybe there's nothing. It's hard for us to know the opportunity cost until we understand what we're bartering for.
Like, humanity could pool their resources to comprehensively explore the Mariana Trench if we wanted. That's fairly unknown, entirely feasible, and could yield scientific advancement. But it's also expensive, and doesn't guarantee any lucrative returns for us. Maybe there's gold deposits at the bottom of the floor, maybe it's all silt and sand. Maybe we harvest the gold, and discover that humanity has upset a delicate balance that has only survived by us ignoring it.
Iunno, if I was an alien civilization somewhere, I'd be praying to whatever higher powers exist to ensure humanity stays far, far away from me.
To me it sounds like more like hyperbolic pragmatism than defeatism.
You're being downvoted unfairly, because the fact of the matter is that the only science being done in orbit that fundamentally requires humans is research into the effects of microgravity on the human body.
But we know it's bad, and we know the fix: Just simulate gravity by spinning the spacecraft like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or in Interstellar. Easy.
There's this... thing... with NASA that you can recognise once you see it, because you will see it, over and over: Once they find something that the government is willing to fund, they will never stop researching that thing, because to "solve" the problem is to turn the funding tap off.
My favourite example of this phenomenom is water and/or life on Mars. There's been a ludicrous volume of press releases (like clockwork!) about possible life (or water) on Mars. However, notably, not a single mission to Mars has ever included any instrument that could definitively disprove that there is life or water on Mars. To do so would be an instant off-switch for billions in funding, so "oops" these instruments are always omitted.
Send a microscope! A frigging microscope! One! They're not that big or heavy!
Nope, can't do it. That would be the end, you see? Got to keep sending magnetometers, microphones, cameras, stereo cameras, all sorts of things. Just not anything that would accidentally prove that there's nothing to find.
Of course, this entire conversation is off-topic because the topic is not the merit of funding human spaceflight, but the merit of a president suddenly threatening a specific company with losing their federal contracts for criticizing the president.
Isn't there specific laws that allows the government to take over businesses for war time production? Hasn't he already used harsher laws for less already?
It's wild to me how many conspiracy theories I've seen about how this is all staged, like it's a distraction or it's just Elon repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are cratering).
Psychologically, I think this is reflective of cognitive dissonance. The two conflicting ideas are that two people with much to lose would get in the dumbest fight imaginable and the myth of meritocracy [1]. You see, people want or need to believe that people get into these positions through merit: skill, intelligence and hard work.
That's simply not true. We are talking about two of the egotistical, thin-skinned, genuinely stupid narcissists on the planet. Drugs may even be a factor. There is no planet where a charade like this involves calling the president of the United States a pedophile [2].
Media reports seem to universally agree that everybody in the administration absolutely hates Elon. Additionally, IMHO Elon is absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible room reader and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a loyal following. He does not. Any clout he has is solely because of being a Trump acolyte.
The myth of meritocracy is perpetuated to keep you working hard to make somebody else rich. It is to reinforce the existing social and economic order. It is to assign blame to those who are poor because poverty is treated as a personal moral failure.
If Trump chooses to, he can effectively bankrupt Elon. That's how insane all of this is.
For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
There are negotiations over a trade deal with China because of the tariffs and what is quite likely the dumbest trade war in history. The terms of that deal could be fatal to Tesla's future.
Trump could even get Elon denaturalized and deported. How? Immigration fraud. It's fairly clear from the facts (and his brother's statements about 10 years ago) that when Elon dropped out of a Stanford PhD to start a company he was technically undocumented. If you misrepresent to USCIS then it is absolutely grounds for denaturalization should they choose, although such proceedings are incredibly rare.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
[2]: https://deadline.com/2025/06/trump-musk-epstein-files-claim-...
>For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
This isn't an issue. Execs nor shareholders are required to have clearance and even the ones that have clearance aren't read in to top secret stuff without a need to know. Elon's focus was starship which is quite far removed from any of those contracts (falcon gov launches or starshield). Gwynne Shotwell runs and will continue to run those parts of SpaceX just fine without Elon having clearance.
> Execs nor shareholders are required to have clearance and even the ones that have clearance aren't read in to top secret stuff without a need to know
No clearance would absolutely compromise Musk’s ability to control SpaceX. (I think that’s a good thing.)
It wouldn’t matter for spacex, which is the point. It wouldn’t make “military contracts awkward”, whatever that means.
Musk would still maintain the ability to control what SpaceX targets as far as customers go. And he could easily decline any plans to pursue contracts that require changes in strategy.
Him having clearance is irrelevant to both the govt and to the future of spacex. Gwynne runs those parts of the company. Musk is only playing with Starship when he’s looking at spacex at all.
Aren't they using the same rockets for non-government missions that they use for government missions, so the classified parts of government missions would just concern the payload and where they fly it to? Musk shouldn't need access to that information to run the company.
> the classified parts of government missions would just concern the payload and where they fly it to?
Which in turn affects practically everything from launch timing to fuelling thresholds to whether the rocket can be used in reusable or expendable mode and thus whether that booster can be reüsed for the next launch. (Same for Starshield’s requirements impacting Starlink.)
Note that I’m not even touching ITAR, which Musk could be found subject to as a triple national.
The proof is in the black eye.
MAGA cope is astonishing in its intensity. I’ve never seen anything like it. Truly a different take on reality.
> or it's just Elon repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are cratering)
I'm not going to say for sure that it's true, but this is not a conspiracy, or even a super genius move by Elon. I think it's a very natural and plausible instinct given the circumstances. He can't have avoided noticing the crash in sales, and the back of the mind can realize things the consciousness is in denial about. It would just register in his mind as "need to detach my image from this enemy".
> Elon is absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible room reader and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a loyal following.
Two things:
* Being on the spectrum doesn't make you completely clueless. Elon is also a drug addict, as was revealed recently to all that couldn't tell yet. And his unique position of "richest man ever" certainly must warp his self-image into a form of sociopathy.
* He does have a loyal following, looking at the braindead blue check marks approving of his every tweets. Although it's hard to say how many of them they really are, as they are extremely vocal.
There's nothing invalid about meritocracy, but that's not what we have. We have some other kind of "ocracy": government by the lucky. I lack the Greek literacy to name the phenomenon correctly but that's what it would translate to in English.
Neither Trump nor Musk has any business running anything more impactful than a used car lot or a corner Starbucks franchise, but their competition was permanently out to lunch in both cases, and here we are. How can anyone be surprised when two merit-free, chaos-loving narcissists fail to get along?
It's been described as kakistocracy (government by the people who are most unsuitable for government).
I think you're aiming for some idea of "tychocracy," but really, you mean "oligarchy."
Meritocracy is like perfect communism, in that it's never been tried (and never will).
I had a history prof who said "Communism is for the angels. But the angels don't need it."
That being said, I don't fully agree with grandparent's statement that ...
> We have some other kind of "ocracy": government by the lucky.
As much as it pains me to say it, it wasn't just "luck."
Musk is reasonably bright and Trump is ... well ... he's not as dumb as many portray him.
Instead they're both horribly broken in other ways.
Trump seems devoid of empathy and that metaphorical vacuum is filled with malevolence. He also appears to have very little self-control.
I can't tell you what is broken with Musk. Maybe the same stuff as w/ Trump, but to a slightly lesser degree.
Luck certainly played a part in their respective successes, but so did intelligence and ruthlessness.
“ For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
Meh, tell it to Darwin. Heat death will come for us all in the end, and there is no refuge to be found in our navels. Why accelerate it by embracing mediocrity? We should identify talent, reward it, and do the best we can with what we have, while we can.
The part about "identifying talent" is where people seem to lose the plot, unfortunately.
It's much easier and more satisfying to give opportunities to family and friends, so that's what we do.
The current US administration has gone all-in on this idea. Not an actual merit hire in the bunch.
> Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance
Probably a bit late to do that as Musk can tap into the Starlink setup at the White House: https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/unvetted-starli...
Why wouldn’t it be staged? There is a much simpler explanation than “this is cope for people who think life is based on merit”.
To underestimate your enemy is the most common mistake.
You think a carefully staged spat between two men with long track records of impulsive idiocy is the simple solution?
I mean, there is a sense where a conspiracy is always the simplest explanation for public affairs, in the same way "a wizard did it" is simple. But that's not usually what people mean when they talk about Occam's razor.
There is no myth. Both Trump and Elon have generational talent in their respective domains. This is the kind of talent that’s so unique, it creates its own domain that didn’t exist before, and that no one will be able to replicate after.
But they’re both unstable, and have many other negative features.
One can have an extraordinary talent in starting generational companies, and have a social media addiction (among possibly other addictions and problems) that makes one unstable. These aren’t mutually exclusive.
One of their fathers was a successful slumlord, and the other owned an emerald mine in South Africa. Those provide a one-time advantage (which in Trump's case would have been more profitable if he had socked it away in an index fund.) How do they establish 'generational talent' for being POTUS or building rockets and cars?
It will be interesting to see if any of Elon's offspring choose to follow in his footsteps. Probably not the transgender child he disowned, or the one whose name has to be written with Unicode characters, but that leaves something like 20 others to vie for the throne.
> Both Trump and Elon have generational talent in their respective domains
That's an interesting way of saying they were born into a wealthy family
I was also born into a wealthy family but I haven't created multiple billion dollar companies.
Neither has Trump, so don’t feel bad.
Well presumably you have some actual morals.
I bet you would have no moral given the opportunity.
This seems like the sort of projection where someone is inadvertently "telling on themself".
I bet you have none, opportunity or not.
You're probably right!
> One can have an extraordinary talent in starting generational companies
I though Musk was just adept at buying certain companies
Maybe he is talking about Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump U, Trump Airlines...
The only talents they are great at are grift and daring someone to enforce rules against them in a society that largely relies on people holding themselves to standards and risk avoidance instead of active enforcement.
Elon maybe—we’ll see if they outlast him. Trump did not start any generational companies.
Without SpaceX, all of us will never leave this planet and will have very restricted access to space exploration.
EU is more dead than alive regarding space exploration; India moves slowly for obvious reasons; CH will never be used for any major western country project; Russia space program is gone;
Yet, America always hated SpaceX!! Elon has his problems but SpaceX is one of the best things that has ever happened, now even CH can return rockets back to Earth.
I am pretty sure Australia would accept SpaceX with open arms. Due to being too close to Trump, Elon burned the bridge with EU and Canada so he will never be able to move his company there. Australia is a very good candidate.
> Trump said that Isaacman was a Democrat, although Isaacman has donated to both Republican and Democratic candidates and organizations over the year.
Beside the polemic over two toddler arguing in public, what grab my attention is the fact that someone who is considered to be appointed to NASA leadership use to give money to both opposite political side during election.
That’s messed up, someone like that has obviously absolutely no standing, honor,.. whatever you call it. Someone you can’t rely on, that will betray you.
I would consider it to be about the same level as a crackhead, you know he is going to betray you and all its responsibilities at some point, you just don’t know when.
Seriously, you don’t lead the NASA with people like that.
Why not? We don’t know his motivations for political donations.
At the very least it might be worth questioning what he found appealing about each candidate’s view of NASA and leadership. But an outright disqualification over this?
Should we pull up voter records and see which party’s primary each person participated in?
I’d strongly prefer a society where agency leaders are picked for their expertise, not party allegiance.
> I’d strongly prefer a society where agency leaders are picked for their expertise, not party allegiance.
Me too of course, but it’s not even about that. I could understand if they chose someone because he is competent and republican.
What triggers me is the kind of snake this man is, if the Chinese offered him money to reveal secrets and he thinks he can get away with, I have no doubt he would collaborate.
You need a man you can trust at this position, someone that wouldn’t betray his country. If he’s the kind to spread money on both side of the political spectrum, regardless of his moral compass, or just dignity, I would be extremely cautious.
That’s basically not a man with conviction, or dignity.
You are right about him being a snake. I don't think anyone is dumb enough to offer secrets to Chinese for money, so doubt that would ever happen. Do you want to be triggered more? You are right about the trust issue and you will have more trust issues after watching some of this https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-arqxBG7bIl63KZ6VwKH... Read the source material though if you want to get any actual insights.
Why do you think that people have to be loyal to a single political party?
In the USA, you can’t be a Democrat and Republican supporter. Their stance vary way too much.
This is proof that someone pretending to support both does in fact support none and more importantly can’t be trusted.
It’s about being trustworthy and loyal to your country.
No, I am an American and I think some things the republicans do are dumb and some things the democrats do are dumb. This tribalism is not helpful for actually sifting out what policies are sensible and what aren’t.
I used to follow all the spaceX stuff. But I cant watch any of it now, just cus its associated with that sack of shit musk. I want every endeavour of his to fail more than I want us to have a functional starship.
Two pathological narcissists were inevitably going to end up at each other's throats. It was only a matter of time.
Question: Can Musk get to Mars without control over NASA.
If yes, then should he have accepted Trump's decision on who should run the agency.
There is so much theater and reality TV in the Trump administration that it's hard to conclude anything. Most of the theater is there to play to his MAGA base.
First there was the (staged?) row with Zelensky. A couple of months later nothing has really changed.
Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130 days in that position). Time for another public row to show that Trump is tough on subsidies for electric vehicles.
SpaceX will of course continue to get funded. A large number of LEO satellites are needed for Trump's Golden Dome and Starlink is needed in crisis regions.
The Zelensky interview was only staged (manufactured) by the White House. You may have noticed immediately after the US stopped intelligence sharing just long enough for Putin to take back Kursk.
https://www.justice.gov/jmd/ethics/summary-government-ethics...
It looks like it is 130 days per year, not a rolling start from the date of hiring.
This is so farfetched and I find it absolutely bizarre that anyone can have a worldview where they think this level of conspiracy is the most likely explanation for any of these things. It runs contrary to the point of a conspiracy which is to do things that benefit you. Being called a pedophile and splitting your base is not to your benefit.
Even if it was to his benefit to get called a pedophile, there still would be no reason to assume 4D-chess genius. The malignant narcissist and drug explanation is right there. The long track record of infighting and interpersonal fallouts is right there. The track record of falsely calling people pedophiles is also right there.
But for some reason we must discard all reason and conclude that Trump and Musk are conspiring.
Direct your bewilderment at the conspiracy theorists of the NYT!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/technology/elon-musk-trum...
"The spat was revelatory, it was epic, it was historic, at least according to the thousands of earnest and excited commentaries that were instantly published.
It was also a well-timed outburst.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump did not have a feud five days ago and might not have a feud five days from now. Until proved otherwise, all of this is theater. Think of it as the political version of professional wrestling. For a few hours, everyone was diverted by the spectacle of a brawl between the world’s richest man and its most powerful person."
Having you and other politically naive persons shoot down anything as a "conspiracy theory" is exactly what enables the system.
Yeah I think this is the most logical take.
These guys are both masters of dominating attention on social media. It got them to where they are. The way to dominate the national attention in this world we've created, is to act like a child and call someone a pedo. They are not the leaders we wanted, but may be the leaders we deserve.
Well, he did get elected TWICE so, seems deserved enough to me.
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That's a really good take, and I personally missed that his departure was pre-planned all along (you are the first I saw to mention 130 days). But, again. "So, thank you, Elon, as you are leaving your role anyway, how about making a little performance for the public? Be my friend, post on Twitter that I didn't release Epstein files because I'm in them…"
…Really?
>First there was the (staged?) row with Zelensky. A couple of months later nothing has really changed.
I understand that the US stopped authorizing new shipments of gear to Ukraine like they were doing under Biden.
I don't believe it was staged. I think it was a long-shot attempt by Zelensky to make his case directly to the American people:
https://xcancel.com/RichardHanania/status/189556292259384155...
There is no multiverse where Trump would knowingly allow someone to mock or criticize him. If Musk grovels enough Trump may let him back; he loves emasculating his rivals.
> Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130 days in that position).
He couldn't legally stay more than 130 days, but Trump is already ignoring plenty of more important laws and getting away with it. I doubt adding this one to the list would make any difference.
I really don't think the Zelensky thing was staged, and I doubt this was either.
As far as I can tell about Zelensky, he had every intention to cancel Trump's proposed deal after the white house meeting, but he is losing the war with Russia so badly that he absolutely needs US support, so he had no choice but to come back to the table.
Musk pulling out the Epstein thing and Trump pulling out the SpaceX contracts are both two subjects these guys are very touchy about. If they were faking it, they wouldn't have gone for the (emotional) throat on this one.
That said, Trump always chickens out, so there's no real chance SpaceX is getting its contracts canceled, even the ones that legitimately are a huge waste of money.
What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat? Shouldn't those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the country is served by them and at what price.
Trump needs to take his lumps on his BBB. That bill is full of pork for billionaires and cuts funding for poor folks. It should come as no surprise that people don't like it.
> Shouldn't those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the country is served by them and at what price.
I'm always amazed when I read questions like this.
I mean ... have you been paying attention?
Law firms getting security clearances canceled, incarceration without due process, Harvard defunded, memecoins, gutting of the federal government, &c. &c. &c. &c.
Every data point screams malevolence and lack of concern for the common good of the nation.
And you're confused about decision-making over SpaceX that "seems" to ignore how the country is best served?
Don't get me wrong. You pose a valid question. In fact, only a person who himself cares about the common good would ask this type of question.
But man, the big flashing warning signs should be answering your question for you.
> What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat?
Well, SpaceX is owned by Musk. Therefore Trump, if seeking to hurt Musk, could attempt to hurt SpaceX.
The ends justify the means. The country's best interests are collateral damage, the benefit that SpaceX offers the country is not relevant to Trump's ego/feelings having been hurt.
They referenced the contracts directly in the disconnected social media exchange on Thursday.
I fear you materially overestimate Trump's rationality.
Elon Musk has recently talked about forming a third party in the US. Does anyone have an idea of what such a party would look like? I imagine it would be significantly different than the Republican Party.
I know a centrist gesture they could adopt as the party greeting.
Pretty much the same garbage economic policies, concerning concentration of power and abhorrent hatred of minorities, with the difference that H1B visas are welcome.
If I had to guess, socially liberal sans wokism or welfarism with an initial focus on fiscal conservatism to pull the US out of the debt hole.
Where, Musk grants himself all govt funding and zero taxes on corps and superrich.
"one in eight Americans thinking women are too emotional to be in politics" [1]. Well, I don't know, maybe men should not holding high political offices /s
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03616843221123...
A friend who studied political science an conflict made this observation about American politics: 30% of the voting population is insane. They will believe the most mind-bendingly illogical things, and then vote for them, so the best you can ever expect from the general population is 70% agreement on reality.
In that light, we're doing really well with only 1/8 believing such a thing.
I blame the leaded paint
Maybe neither should. The problem is the power existing in the first place, waiting around for someone like Trump.
Come on, as Beth says, those two should just fuck and get it over with.. We are all adults here. Say it with me: "Those two should just fuck and be be friends, again"
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Please, spare us. The most powerful men in the world are having a spat over social media like a pair of tweens, and you have the gall of calling out the left, as if the "left" (whatever the hell that means in the US, since you have no left, but I digress) was the one that voted them. Take a look in the mirror if you want to cry about dumb thoughts.
Please spare me you inability to understand what is being said.
Trump and Musk engaging in a social media bitch-slapping session is not at all what my comment was about. What they are doing is idiotic.
> Take a look in the mirror if you want to cry about dumb thoughts.
My comment is about something else. Oddly enough, you provide supporting evidence for what I have observed for many years. HN has become an echo chamber where only one point of view is tolerated and all others are rejected and attacked violently in many ways.
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I figure that's intended as a "gotcha", but a hallmark of any autocracy, fascism included, is the factional fights and purges. And few understand, but being an early supporter of fascism actually increases one's statistical chances of ngmi.
i translated this to boomernese and it still didn't make sense. Could I ask you to rephrase it?
For what it's worth, the way you've phrased this question doesn't sound like you want to discuss any of these issues. It sounds like you have bones to pick with what people have said and want to argue about it.
Yes. He's insinuating that the only reason you would dislike musk is sure to his association with trump. He's also insinuating that people who dislike trump just like the opposite of what trump like, so that is trump dislikes musk then they musk like him.
He's just a troll.
i agree with the first part, but how does that make me a troll? It is peculiar.
the left loved musk until he started helping trump
Have you never heard the expression that the friends of your enemies are your enemies? Strange.
Anyway I've despised that guy since the Thai cave episode. Don't know if I'm "the left" tho.
Despising Elon is acceptable. He's cringy . but is he a fascist? that's the absurd part.
My definition of fascist is a person that is ok with, or perhaps takes active steps towards, a society where powerful people can manipulate/pick/write the rules in order to further increase their power. By this definition it's not "absurd" at all to call him a fascist.
Yes, I realize there are degrees.
No point telling me that the Wikipedia definition is different. This is the definition which I think is the most useful because it captures the essence of why fascism is bad: it's an instability of the system.
According to this definition all the usual suspects are fascists (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao), but also characters like Trump and his enablers, and Musk and his fanboys.
I ask because your definition is very broad. Generally, every political system has business owners / elites / lords who have more influence.
The Bolsheviks had almost exclusive influence and control, but they weren't fascist.
Most liberal democracies have elites and lobbyists who have more influence than the common man. they aren't fascist.
I think your definition is convenient because it's so broad and then you can apply it to who you dislike.
Among the american elite, at least 1/5 of congress, most of the senate, most of the fortune 500, a good chunk of hollywood would qualify as fascist according to this definition.
> The Bolsheviks had almost exclusive influence and control, but they weren't fascist.
Who is "the Bolsheviks"? Most supporters of the party did not have as explicit goal to accumulate power for themselves. If you're referring to Lenin and Stalin, they certainly where fascists by the useful definition.
> Among the american elite, at least 1/5 of congress, most of the senate, most of the fortune 500, a good chunk of hollywood would qualify as fascist according to this definition.
No, I disagree. Most of those people have only enough power to effect miniscule tweaks to the system. Those don't qualify. Like I said, it is in part a matter of degree.
> I think your definition is convenient because it's so broad and then you can apply it to who you dislike.
Aaaaand I'm done talking to you.
are there democrat examples who fit this definition?
Frankly, I would phrase this question the same way. But it has more to do with society, that simply just don't want to be responsible for anything. And that is the same society that put Musk on pedestal, that Simpsons immortalized and the same society has a bones to pick when reminded about those glorious moments, but not to just be ashamed of themselves and their behaviour, like you are demonstrating here just perfectly.
The answer is yes to all your questions. What are you conflicted about?
when did they start becoming fascists?
They're both still fascists, still ok to vandalize teslas. Their relationship has nothing to do with either point.
Here's a thought exercise. Could you list history's top 5 worst fascists in descending order? #1 would be the worst. and would Elon make it? Would Trump?
I know this was intended to be a snarky remark but I'm going to reply anyways. Despite US politics being the way it is, the world isn't binary. Just because 2 bad people are fighting each other, it doesn't make one of them good. The enemy of my enemy isn't always my friend. Sometimes it's just another enemy.
You're right. But Elon became Bad when he partnered with Trump. And prior to that, he was saving the world from climate change , and Tesla's were very popular status symbols for that.
So this is a unique case, let's not pretend.
... Are you under the impression that people who share a broad ideology always get on with each other? Like, what? What on earth are you saying here?
I mean, if nothing else, see Ernst Röhm.
Hey it’s ok to be confused. This week we stop hating musk (but trump is still a baddie).
You’re allowed to make comments like this where you express joy at watching his suffering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44196058. but only for another week.
In 20 days musk will be a goodie and then you mustn’t at all say anything negative at all about him. He’s a goodie. Again, trump is a baddie (baddie status began in 2016 fyi, before that point he was a goodie).
Hot take: they're both baddies, and they always will be.
Was he when he was saving the world from climate change? Was trump a baddie when he was a B-tier celeb on Apprentice?
Yes. Obviously.
He was never saving the world from climate change, you're just naive.
That’s not the point we’re making.
What's the point then?
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A lot of SpaceX technology has export restrictions. On top of that, Elon himself doesn't have any engineering knowledge or degrees and his entire knowledge base on space travel is from Kerbal Space Program that he played for like a week. So what exactly is he going to bring to other countries space programs? The people working at SpaceX aren't going to move to China, and Elon can't just pack his rockets up in a suitcase and fly somewhere else with them.
> and secondly Elon could setup a second SpaceX base overseas
I'd be very surprised if this is possible given ITAR regulations.
I was recently wondering whether the Australia/UK (AUKUS) exemptions for ITAR might mean SpaceX could operate freely in those countries. For example Australia is a reasonable launch location.
>Trump is a deal maker
Is he though?
He didn't write the book 'The art of the deal'.
He is a terrible businessman. I read that most of his properties are loss making. How many other people have lost money on a casino?
He didn't end the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 24 hours, as he said he would.
What good deals has he made?
> Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn’t have the cards.
That contradicts almost everything we've seen on his government. He doesn't seem to be a deal maker, doesn't seem to even grasp the concept of deals, and doesn't seem to care if he has the cards or not.
As a US citizen, it's not clear to me that Elon legally can set up anything overseas without starting from scratch, and going that far might just make him the next Gerald Bull.
cia would step in before we ever allowed that to happen.
"Trump is a deal maker"
I hear that all the time but what deals has he made as president? He more seems like a bully who tries to beat up people but then quickly retreats when they hit back.
> Trump is a deal maker
He's absolutely not
But we are now allied with North Korea, secured peace in Ukraine, and have permanent trade deals with everyone.
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> fight between an autistic and a f...er
There are many better nouns to describe Elmo that don't involve disparaging neurodivergent folks.
I don't believe Musk's claim at all that he is autistic, that is just his excuse for being an asshole and/or high on drugs, depending on the day.
Please don't attribute Musk's behavior to autism.
It's a disgusting and inaccurate smear against people on the autism spectrum.
I'm autistic and I still like musk
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Those two embiciles should just fuck and get it over with. Geez.
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FAFO. The most predictable outcome in recent memory.
I always ask myself, "what is being done by the left hand, while we are distracted by the right hand?"
Could this dust-up have anything to do with some other bill being passed or a policy implemented? I can think of the big reconciliation (BBB) bill, and Palantir getting access to more information on American citizens, as 2 things that the public could be distracted from by the Musk-Trump issue.
The public doesn't need elaborate schemes to be distracted, no one actually cares about that stuff. Republicans don't even really care about massive deficit spending in the budget which is out in the open.
Correct. Republicans voted to close the border and deport illegal aliens, not cut the budget deficit. The fiscally responsible republican party hasn’t existed since the 1920s. Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other republicans weren’t going to cut those either, but they were going to talk about reforming them.)
One has to love this chameleon of a Republican "platform" where values and ideals are championed to browbeat support for a particular action, but then written off as irrelevant when they're awkward for analyzing other actions - while other values and ideals are dragged out in support.
A week ago, "the debt" was really important. Now that Dear Leader has declared otherwise, apparently it's not. Right into the memory hole it goes.
The reality is there is no platform beyond anger (the base), and naked autocratic power (the politicians). Everything else is post-hoc rationalization.
(and just to clarify so I'm not written off as some progressive partisan: I'm a libertarian who was unaligned, understood and saw merit in both camps' ideals - until the Republican party turned its back on conservatism in favor of cult of personality reactionaryism)
There is a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. No taxes on tips was on the platform (#6) as was no cuts to medicare or social security (#14). Balancing the budget was not on the platform.
There are republicans who care about the debt, but the party as a whole doesn’t. The economic libertarians have been thoroughly marginalized in the modern GOP, because economic libertarianism is unpopular.
To be clear, I admire the traditional small government conservatives, though I am not one. The GOP hasn’t been that party since the 1920s. The mass immigration of the 20th century made that approach unviable. We’re a country of machine politics now and it’s only going to become more pronounced. The guy who ran on “No Taxes on Tips” to buy the Latino vote in Nevada was never going to balance the budget.
That platform statement does not contain values or ideals! It contains goals, which could possibly be achieved in very different ways. Values and ideals are then trotted out in support of the specific policies that purport to achieve those goals, and my point is that those ideals are highly inconsistent and seemingly sum up to mere blind anger.
Your individual assertion that you don't care about a balanced budget isn't particularly relevant to the larger context where an overwhelming amount of Trump supporters did just make arguments professing support of the need to get the budget under control to justify last week's policies.
Just because people don’t have a grand unifying theory tying their preferences together doesn’t mean their preferences are motivated by “mere blind anger.” Trying to fit your preferences into some internally consistent framework is a high-IQ fixation.
That’s especially true because society is hard to analyze. For example, I think it will be bad for society to encourage greater race and ethnic consciousness in a diverse society. I can point to all the sectarian conflict that exists in countries around the world as an example of what I seek to avoid, but that’s hardly definitive. Is the upshot that we have to proceed with a vast social experiment, because we can’t provide a closed form analysis of the proposal a priori?
Ideals don't have to rise to the level of "grand unifying theory" to be meaningful. In fact given how poorly "grand unifying theories" tend to work, the whole point is that ideals sit in a sweet spot of complexity between there and a novel judgement for every new development.
I had an argument to write here, but I'm having a hard time getting it down to something concise and without a lot of inbaked assumptions, so I am just going to turn it into a question. Like, I am really trying to understand the continued support for Trump. I was an unaligned libertarian. I read Moldbug as he was writing. I got it. I disagreed from a philosophic information theoretic perspective (complexity multiplies, Urbit is just another "write once run anywhere"), but I still get the desire.
Then Trump. I totally got 2016 Trump support. The system seemed so entrenched and immutable, at least this guy is shaking things up and talking about real problems. I was the one telling my breathless progressive friends that he was likely to win. "But he's soooo racist" "uh-huh".
But then just the total lack of performance when actually in office? All performance, no execution besides who can be hurt this week? The only commonality I see is "owning the libs" where "the libs" means anyone who doesn't support Dear Leader. It just seems like one big tautology, for a lack of a real constrictive political direction or values.
I really want see where I am wrong, because none of these policies add up to making sense to me. Tariffs that harm our country, phrased in terms as if needing physical goods is somehow a strength? And then not even followed through on ? Attacking our allies for "not paying their share" while they buy into our economic empire and prop up our currency?
I get the populist anger, yes. But anger on its own does not produce good outcomes - in fact, quite the opposite.
I guess my question boils down to - if there are values besides anger, spite, owning the libs, and autocracy, then what exactly are they these days ? I don't mean the old mantras that are brought up to make people frustrated they didn't pan out, and then sidestepped when discussing current policy (like you've done with the deficit here). But the actual values that can be appealed to critique the current path? Heck, phrase it in terms of what would make you see a different candidate as even better than Trump.
Because like, for example:
> I think it will be bad for society to encourage greater race and ethnic consciousness in a diverse society
I agree with this. I don't call it "reverse racism", I just call it "racism" - a focus on collectivism in terms of group identity. But what I see in Trumpism isn't a repudiation of that general racism, but rather continued escalation of the dynamic merely with the "other side" winning. But I feel like if I tried to flesh that argument out by appealing to what you threw out as a supposed value, then I'm just going to run into a different newly-conjured value that overrides the first - in other words, rationalizations rather than actual values.
But please point out where I am wrong.
It looks like Trump has decided to approach deficit reduction like he approaches climate change: claim that it is a hoax that his policies will increase the deficit [1].
According to that document he actually is cutting the deficit by $1.407 trillion with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and with the tariffs and deregulation the deficit will be cut by least $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/mythbuster-the-o...
> Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other republicans weren’t going to cut those either, but they were going to talk about reforming them.)
Technically they weren't going to cut them, but they also weren't doing anything to effectively address the upcoming shortfalls in the SS and Medicare trust funds and in fact the tax changes they are trying to enact would shorten the time to those shortfalls.
I think you're falling into the "they are playing 5D chess" trap, whereas the truth is almost certainly much simpler: two powerful men with giant and brittle egos, who were on a collision course from day one, have now collided. That's it.
They’re to powerful men with huge egos who fundamentally disagree on political priorities. Trump had a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. Balancing the budget wasn’t on it, but the following was: “FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE” (all-caps original).
> Palantir getting access to more information on American citizens
This is overblown IMO. The government already has this data on citizens and they're merely using it how they like (i.e. consolidating it through a contractor)
The time to stop this would've been before it was collected in the first place.
That's what I usually think too. Even if just to be cautious: people alluding to "Hanlon's razor" (as if it's a real thing) are basically declaring themselves the smartest in the room, so by another well-known eponymous effect they are usually the dumbest in the room. Usually the worst suspicions are confirmed later.
This time, though, I'm running with the crowd. I think this is just too much. I mean, come on, screaming on Twitter that Trump didn't release Epstein files, because he is in them? Sure, it doesn't hurt him, it's no news nor a real accusation, but I'm pretty sure Trump didn't want that to be posted. The whole thing doesn't look nice for anybody, it doesn't help anybody. No, I really think Musk has become totally insane this time, or/and is drugged out. The left hand still may be doing something, but that's taking the opportunity, not making this all up for the sake of distraction.
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Maybe this timeline leads to nationalization of spaceX
If you are familiar with John Lilly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly), you may notice some similarities with Musk. Lilly used/abused ketamine and began to believe in some form of extraterrestrial oversight of earth, something like that. Musk keeps tweeting about "simulation theory", and to me sounds totally deranged. He says he thinks reality is a simulation (batshit imho), and that boring simulations are cancelled, and only exciting ones are allowed to run (by whom..?), stuff like that. He's out of his mind. I am not choosing sides here, and Trump's behaviour is absolutely deplorable (again, imo).
Are you referring to Musk saying "The most entertaining outcome is the most likely"? It's just a joke, it's a version of Occam's razor — I can't find any mention of him arguing that this is genuinely how the world works.
I would not consider Musk as a researcher of the topic - he has not published any papers or even works on philosophical level, so you are giving Musk too much of attention - just like his appearance in Simpsons.
In regards to reality as simulation, well - the issue here is that definitions are not very precise. That simulation is reality to us. We have mind limitations, by which we operate just like animals have them and that makes our reality. I have experienced deja vu many times and the mechanisms to that might be linked that things are predestined - pretty much this is main belief, that all pre-Christian societies believed in and generally Christianity is not in opposition to that either - it just states that there is a free will to humans and that they must choose God over Santa and deja vu can be experienced only by saints that are in direct contact of Ultimate Being.
I don't know where Musk is getting his ideas, but what is mundane and boring to some might be exciting to others. Insects controlled by pheromones might be living most exciting life that there is.
I think I have heard some other ideas that most probably developed on the basis of ideas of Lilly. It involves reincarnation of souls in other beings. I'm not completely sold on idea(because that is presented as noble and next nuclear war is not under any definition), but that might explain why society is deranged as that right now, as current beings does not have noblest souls... though it can also be explained by many other factors. Though, the mechanics of transfer of nomadic souls would explain no need for transportation to reach all the other planets that have life, but also - that is not really what matters - we don't think that dinos had more importance over humans and to be fair humans themselves are just an episode in this Universe as well.
The idea of Lilly can be expanded - pretty much Universe can be just a playground for various beings to experience whatever - just like a RPG game or a live movie, where you can play a role. It does not necessarily require soul mechanism mentioned earlier. But it also does not matter for your existence - you are as real and important as you want it to be. Or don't matter at all and there is no reason or value for anything.
Regardless, your destiny is to live through this cosmic theater and experience Musk - do you like it or not. Pretty much your reality can also be formed by your mind and it seems, that Musk is very central part in it.
To be clear, the biden-musk dispute included threats to Tesla. The entire thing is insane. Musk has done more for America than either of the last two presidents.
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Nooooo! Not muh heckin' Tesla stonks!
It's just such a shame that Elon was pressured into this messy politics stuff. After all, he could have just stayed in his own lane, kept his nose clean, made value for shareholders and saved America along the way. It was so easy! Hell, he could have just become president himself with his spotless track record of administrative accomplishment. Who wouldn't vote for him?
Now look at the poor guy. Burned his bridges with the liberals when he bought Twitter, harassed queer people and reneged his environmental commitments. Now the bridge to modern conservatism is on fire, because gasp the Republicans won't agree on making a smaller, less-capable government! Those filthy backstabbers, how was Elon supposed to know he was fraternizing with frauds, socialists and sex pests?
It's... it's discrimination. Don't they know Elon is on the autism spectrum, how are they getting away with this harassment? H-hey, why are you guys walking away - this is important! America's future is on the line, here!
I don't care about Musk personally but if you think Trump's threat is the first direct named threat against his company by a politician, I think you are off your rocker
By most accounts, that's what typically happens to businessmen who have close ties to the Russian Federation. Doubly so if you spent your early 20s on a traipse around post-bloc oblasts looking to buy decommissioned weapon systems. Triply so if you're still picking up when Putin calls you.
If it's any consolation though, Elon's not alone. Plus, he's probably earned a real nice dacha near occupied Sumy for the valuable work he's done the government.
This feud is just a pantomime for the crowd in my opinion. There's a bigger play here.
You grossly underestimate the pettiness and pedantry of those involved
Lol, I guess this is what happens when two assholes surround themselves with sycophantic yes-men for far too long.
Nobody taught them how to play nice. I've met eight year olds with more civility and maturity than those two...
Oh well. Reminds me of that Alien vs Predator movie: Whoever wins, we lose.
When described from 10,000 feet, I could almost believe this. If Musk were smart he might be doing something like this on the route to rehabilitating his image with customers.
But the particulars on the ground show that Musk is not smart, just vindictive, power-hungry, petulant, and childish. He literally posted that he would decommission Dragon because of Trump's threat, which was stupid in intent and stupid in potential negotiating effect on Trump (Trump does not know what Dragon is and does not care):
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/06/05/musk-trump-spacex-dragon...
Both use deception and disruption to get to their goals. Now they both are at the receiving end. This will not end well for either.
That's giving these people far too much credit.
Are you sure? You know that Trump constantly talks about his TV ratings? I forget who it was, but I remember there being a story last year or the year before, of someone who was publicly criticizing Trump met with him and was expecting to be absolutely whipped and scolded, instead behind the scenes Trump thanked them for making good television. The financial impact on Musk’s companies do make this seem real, but somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if this drama was fake. It did occur to me, and I can tell I’m not the only one... the top Google autocomplete for me for “is the trump” is “is the trump musk feud real”.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/president-trump...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/television-tr...
What are you alluding to here?
I'm inclined to Hanlon's Razor.
I absolutely would be too, if there wasn’t a long demonstrated history on the part of both of these people to use public drama as smoke to distract from other things they’re doing.
the variation I prefer is: never attribute to wisdom that which is adequately explained by stupidity
If it was a charade Epstein would not have been mentioned.
Not quite relevant, but I've noticed that there's this trend on HN where if there's a non-tech-related happening that's significant and it's obviously something that people want to discuss, people will try and find a tech-related angle in order to discuss the wider issue.
If we all worked in machine shops, we’d be talking about the steel tariffs.
Articles on HN dont need a tech angle to begin with so this doesn’t make since.
I noticed one obsession in hn community: dating/relationships
New lua library - 2 comments. Something about dating or relationships - 70 comments.