231 points | by iancmceachern19 小时前
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/29/usda-inspect...
I'm really tired of all this Calvinball.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread
And even if it was politically motivated to investigate, the evidence would have to be made public and Musk would have had a day in court to challenge any enforcement actions. Surely the inconvenience to Musk’s legal team and the court system is worth determining if potential charges had merit rather than Musk deciding?
Let’s assume the decision to investigate an inappropriate number of test animals dying (per internal complaints) is completely political. That investigation is just one of many by the inspector… perhaps the others are in most Americans’ interests. And still Musk and government have millions of dollars of contracts in shares interest.
Now let’s assume the inspector’s firing was a political move by Musk. All of the other non-connected investigations which may have positive impact are without a lead. And Musk’s other interests in the government are still very much intact.
And finally where are the checks and balances when there is no threat of losing re-election.
[I wanted to reply to your now-dead post about that bat-rastard zaNi huckfead.]
This law was passed specifically in response to Trump breaking the antecedent law, Inspector General Reform Act of 2008, during his first term.
Will the "party of law and order" do anything? Nope.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11546
Good on Ms Fong for refusing to leave.
Reporters should be pushing microphones in their faces asking why they approve of the latest thing Trump did, or at least what they think of him breaking laws they passed.
The media has many shortcomings, but how are reporters supposed to hold accountable people who simply do not care?
So no, not really. You have a list of complaints from the regulated parties.
In all seriousness, the situation is very dire. The future does not, currently, bode well for the common man.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/grassley...
if this country is going to the toilet, it’ll be because of its citizens who keep believing nonsense to hear on tv and the internet and subsequent voting pattern… and yes, I say this very ironically. go to the senate site (while it’s online, lol) and look for yourself.
The IGs have already been removed. He already broke the law. Requesting an explanation as to why he did it post facto changes nothing about that, ergo the GOP Senators are doing effectively nothing: the IGs are already gone.
The letter doesn't even allude to any consequences whatsoever, neither for the initial illegality nor refusing their request for explanation of the illegality.
What does bipartisan even mean? I've seen my state lose a republican congressperson who, while I disagreed with, called out trump on disrespecting branches of gov during first term and since been replaced with a pro-trump congressperson. The checks and balances are eroding and the citizen response has to be strong.
A. he already broke the law. The point in notifying in advance is for Congress to push back if they think the reason was inappropriate, as Inspector Generals are the watchdogs that report to Congress.
B. Do you really think he had "the substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons for any such removal or transfer" for 17 simultaneous firings days into his administration?
Bystander: “call the police, he’s breaking the law!”
You: “You’re letting your mind rot. He broke the law? What’s the docket number of the case where the judge says this?”
/r/iamverysmart content here.
Anyway, the law is crystal clear. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11546
Keep on truckin'.
The law is crystal clear, and he didn't follow it intentionally.
You can say they did, but it doesn’t mean anything until it’s determined. People make accusations all of the time. Many are wrong.
I think it's an unprecedented opportunity to record the history of a downfall using modern tools, and future generations might benefit enormously.
When I learned about the disruption of the Weimar Republic in highschool, a thing our teacher did was make copious use of newspaper clippings to explain the delta between ground truth and public sentiment, and how certain narratives increased in frequency, etc. He had personally spent quite some time in old archives and on microfilm readers to create his little library. Something like this, but with much more data.
A friend of mine did her master's in political science on crawling data in Islamic extremist social media cycles and trying to correlate activity there with a dataset on terrorist events, trying to find out if you could anticipate them somehow.
This is a loose collection of thoughts, but I think there's something there in the signal.
Using your Weimar example, I would not argue that Germany or humanity is/are better off for having gone through the cataclysm of WW2. In terms of building context, you might find it helpful to read this dry but very detailed examination of the nazi administrative state, and how it delivered economic resources to its political clients through a combination of reorganization, financial engineering, and striaght-up theft:
https://archive.org/details/hitlersbeneficia00alyg
On a more abstract level, try 'The logic of political survival' by Smith & Bueno de Mesquita. both books will give you a useful framework within which to assess the contextual significance of ongoing news events.
I also think this is a good summary for those who had never heard of Weimar before: https://archive.is/xh2Ci
But like most summaries, it suffers a bit from focusing on the key events, and not capturing this sort of ... change in the ambient noise floor, and what relationship the average citizen had to what was going on, and what perception of events. I think it's the "Would you have been able to tell that it'd get this bad?" is kind of the more interesting part. A political weather forecasting model, if you will.
Well, the German atrocities of the Third Reich are well-documented and we are probably just a few years behind the U.S.
The best documentary won't help to prevent backsliding into superstition and barbarism if people don't believe them.
On the other hand, the history of downfall is basically self-documenting itself in real-time and people still don't believe it because people simply don't care about things that don't fit into their ideological borders or their perception of reality.
Truth doesn't exist anymore and thus anything that relies on truth.
I think trying to bar such a system simply would make the same things covert.
That sounds interesting. Wish it had been converted into a blogpost or something for more permanence.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/
Also has a Patreon
The people have always turned to fascism when the harsh realities of human nature, economy, and democracy are manifest. It's our fallback. National chemotherapy.
Yes, please document it. Our great great grandchildren need to know the mess we are in and who is responsible.
Call a spade a spade. It’s looking like South Africa. Our government has been coöpted by South African patronage politics.
Ever since 2016, I've been offering these small apologies to the people of Italy when the subject comes up online.
Before, I wondered what was wrong with them for such a blatant crook stay in power, confident that It Couldn't Happen Here.
Just a minor distinction though!
So while I absolutely hate what is going on right now this seems to be what the people wanted. I question each day whether that needs to be respected or we should resist.
I also wonder if his supporters have any idea of what is going on. I am sure fox news isn't covering any of this and if they are it's probably being spun in some horrific way.
Social media was weaponized and turned into a tool that manipulates people's view of the reality. Each person gets a personalized feed that presses their buttons to think certain way.
For example with war in gaza. If for example you were pro Israeli, you will see content that Harris was siding with Hamas, and trump actually was the most Israel friendly candidate.
If you were supporting Palestine you would get that there's no difference between Harris and trump, and it is best to do protest vote.
Same with leaning too much to the left, or not enough to the left etc.
Pretty much every issue was handled this way. People who got their news from social media had no idea what her stance were on any topic, because that was filtered.
Few years ago we had huge scandal about Cambridge Analytica, there was a bit loud about it and then died out, meanwhile it all continued and was perfected.
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook manipulated older generation. While TikTok managed to capture younger, left leaning generation and make it more apathetic.
I don't think it is a coincidence that pretty much all social media (except the Chinese TikTok) was present on his inauguration.
I also don't think it is a coincidence that all social media companies have involvement with AI. With it, they no longer need humans to generate content, so the whole manipulation is much easier to do.
This isn't just isolated to US and it is being used in Europe too. Look at elections in Moldova, Romania, what's happening in Germany etc.
Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century" book is a must read so we can prevent this.
Here's summary of the lessons: https://substack.com/@snyder/p-155209838
The book is quite short and he also reads and discussed them on his YouTube channel.
I really dislike this argument. It shifts responsibility from the voters to evil nebulous puppet-masters. I reject that. At some point, you have to accept that people can think and make decisions for themselves.
I also agree that people have responsibility for their actions. For example, it has been personally sobering to observe some friends and colleagues agree that defunding PEPFAR and putting 20 million lives at risk was morally the right thing to do.
And then we have to accept that this world is what we want and deserve, and this dicussion goes in cycles.
Perhaps you are lucky and don't have anyone in your family affected by disinformation.
I have family members that no longer watch TV, listen radio, read news papers. All "news" they are getting is from sources that also tell them that all other sources lie.
They live in complete different reality that it is a distorted mirror of actual reality.
We have a constitution and separation of powers which many seem to have forgotten about this week
Do you honestly believe your news is being spun any less?
The economy was already humming when Trump first entered office and despite his best efforts it continued to do so through his term.
The only real policy victory his first term was the TCJA. Otherwise, it was a lot of bark, no bite.
But now with four years to prepare, they came in barking and biting like hell.
Ironically, losing in 2020 gave MAGA time to create a game plan which we’re seeing in action now. A second Trump term right after the first would have been more effectual than the first, but not to the degree we’re seeing now.
I think you have a few nasty surprises coming up.
Those of use living in the real world don't have the luxury of believing what ever makes us feel good; we seek out and even pay for journalism that describes the world as it is and not just how we want it to be.
There is no false equivalence here. Fox news is absolute trash. Don't even attempt to put it in the same conversation as othe news sources.
When they tried to force Hillary Clinton down everyone's throats in the most rigged primary I've ever seen, when Kamala Harris skipped the primary entirely and was just plain anointed instead? Voters care about that shit too, so you can't claim "overthrowing democracy" is the exclusive of the GOP. In both cases, the election was theirs to lose, and they lost it quite actively.
When the new crowd (AOC etc.) get introduced to Congress and are immediately told "these are the corporations whose interests you are supposed to stand for"? Voters remember that, so you can't just claim Trump is more corrupt than anyone else.
Or to take a step back: In 2008, Obama got elected on a promise of change, but by-and-large just did more of the same. Trump withdrew us from Afghanistan disastrously, but he only had to because the actually-competent people had refused to for over a decade, even though America was already sick of Vietnam 2.0.
Now, I do think Trump is a very bad thing for the US. But he's only a symptom of a problem that has gone unaddressed for a long time.
Republics hated it and fought against it.
They do not. Most of his supporters are either rich or uneducated normal people who lack the mental capacity to realize what's going on. They just repeat the talking points. Respond to anyone of them with a non-talking point, compassion, and honesty and they just shut down. They haven't a clue about what's really going on. I bet none of his supporters even know who Robert Mercer is, the person that got him elected in the first place.
Repeat statement from Trump -> demonstrate that it's untrue -> repeat statement from Trump on new topic -> demonstrate that it's untrue -> repeat statement from Trump on new topic -> demonstrate that it's untrue
They're in a cult.
Also keeping in mind that Biden ran 2020 campaigning to return to the previous (Obama-era) status quo and Biden/Harris ran 2024 campaigning to further maintain that status quo. The status quo after given another 4 years of chance was flatly rejected in favor of a return to change.
>I question each day whether that needs to be respected or we should resist.
Well, considering you guys villified Republicans and Trump voters post-2020 (and justifiably so to some degree), I would assume the answer was always the former. Indeed, certain Democrats crying that 2024 was stolen or the like are hypocritical echoes of the same from Republicans and Trump voters in 2020. The pendulum swung back, as it always does.
>I also wonder if his supporters have any idea of what is going on.
I do, at least.
With regards specifically to Phyllis Fong, I have no confidence that an Inspector-General that occupied the office for twenty two years straight[1] can ethically perform their prescribed role. I am in complete agreement with her termination, we need someone (anyone) new and different in there.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Department_of_Agriculture...
Are you "in complete agreement" because of actual things Fong did, or because you think that 22 years experience in a position is disqualifying?
Yes.
An Inspector-General is in charge of inspecting and auditing, as the name would suggest. That requires being impartial in absolute terms, because you must be able to call out problems no matter how inconvenient they are.
Being in a position of power means an inevitable accrual of reputation and influence, and 22 straight years of accrual is ridiculous. Her excessively long tenure is also unusual; the longest-serving Inspector-General besides her served for 8 years, shortest being 2 years not counting acting IGs, average is about 4 years each IG not counting her 22 year tenure.
So yes, I support her termination because her long tenure lends me no confidence she can perform her duties ethically anymore. There must be a regular changing of the incumbent to head off the office being bought or otherwise corrupted. There are millions of other D.C. bureaucrats to replace her with, and even more Americans overall. There is no reason to keep her specifically for this long and I daresay that the lack of a term limit for this office has to be an oversight.
In a nutshell, you're advocating for a term-limit on roles like this, which is an entirely valid argument.
Yes, she's sure going to be replaced by someone impartial...
So again: the people have spoken. America is getting exactly what America wants.
So I know it makes you feel intelligent and cool to say "ah, but you see: this is what they wanted," but in every other way you can measure it besides the very narrow way you're focused on, it's as untrue as it could be.
Unfortunately they either didn't read the fine print, or concluded that it was a price they were willing to pay. I suspect it is more the former.
As Obama said, elections have consequences.
I don't see a positive future for the US, as it is so clearly a declining empire, exhibiting every textbook symptom. The startup/tech crowd loves talking about cheap phones and "services", but the reality is bleak outside of this narrow tech bubble.
They wanted to cause harm for reasons unrelated to economics.
One of the reasons Trump is getting all these historic wins is because the US Democrats refuse point blank to do some introspection and ask if their policy positions are effective. Name-calling and shaming tactics turned out to not be good enough to stop Trump, so there is an interesting question of who they could stop and under what circumstances they could be politically successful.
I refuse to accept the childish assertion that the majority of American voters are card carrying members of a radical political system that was defeated last century. This is just an emotional response to a reality that one does not want to accept.
Does it? It was when Obama got elected that Republicans started freaking out. Take a look at the 2008 Republican party platform [1]. On energy they talk about wanting an energy supply that is diverse, reliable, and cleaner.
They say "In the long run, American production should move to zero-emission sources, and our nation's fossil fuel resources are the bridge to that emissions-free future". They wanted more domestic oil to reduce foreign dependance, more nuclear (specifically calling out that it is zero-carbon. They also said
> Alternate power sources must enter the mainstream. The technology behind solar energy has improved significantly in recent years, and the commercial development of wind power promises major benefits both in costs and in environmental protection. Republicans support these and other alternative energy sources, including geothermal and hydropower, and anticipate technological developments that will increase their economic viability. We therefore advocate a long-term energy tax credit equally applicable to all renewable power sources.
> Republicans support measures to modernize the nation's electricity grid to provide American consumers and businesses with more affordable, reliable power. We will work to unleash innovation so entrepreneurs can develop technologies for a more advanced and robust United States transmission system that meets our growing energy demands
Read that to a Republican today without telling them where it is from and they will probably guess it was from Biden.
They also pushed conservation:
> Conservation does not mean deprivation; it means efficiency and achieving more with less. Most Americans today endeavor to conserve fossil fuels, whether in their cars or in their home heating, but we can do better. We can construct better and smarter buildings, use smarter thermostats and transmission grids, increase recycling, and make energy-efficient consumer purchases. Wireless communications, for example, can increase telecommuting options and cut back on business travel. The Republican goal is to ensure that Americans have more conservation options that will enable them to make the best choices for their families.
Here's what they said about cars:
> We must continue to develop alternative fuels, such as biofuels, especially cellulosic ethanol, and hasten their technological advances to next-generation production. As America develops energy technology for the 21st century, policy makers must consider the burden that rising food prices and energy costs create for the poor and developing nations around the world. Because alternative fuels are useless if vehicles cannot use them, we must move quickly to flexible fuel vehicles; we cannot expect necessary investments in alternative fuels if this flexibility does not become standard. We must also produce more vehicles that operate on electricity and natural gas, both to reduce demand for oil and to cut CO2 emissions.
> Given that fully 97 percent of our current transportation vehicles rely on oil, we will aggressively support technological advances to reduce our petroleum dependence. For example, lightweight composites could halve the weight and double the gas mileage of cars and trucks, and together with flex-fuel and electric vehicles, could usher in a renaissance in the American auto industry.
They had a big section on environmental protection which leads of with saying how the aforementioned energy policies will put the US in a good position to address climate change. They go on to spend 7 paragraphs explain a market and technology approach to addressing this.
Compare to the 2012 platform [2] and the 2016 platform [3].
[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2008-republican-pa...
[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2012-republican-pa...
[3] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2016-republican-pa...
And then they voted for Trump. Ta-Nehisi comment with name "trum is first white president" makes the point better then I would do.
This is a bald lie, and is wildly unbecoming of discussion on this site.
But it’s also a hilarious assertion in the face of literally anything Trump has ever tried to say out loud.
Here's one full hour of complete sentences from a talk at Google in 2010.
https://youtu.be/aJllQ9d3pYM?t=161
It's difficult to be a public prosecuter without also being literate.
> and I'd advice anyone to do the same.
Something you might work on.
The issues on the minds of American issues were mostly things like housing, healthcare; economics. Trump at least pretended to be also angry and willing to do something about it, while saying the Democrats were lukewarm would be flattering them.
What is the point of saying "people wanted this"? To legitimize not fighting it? I don't even care what I wanted yesterday, what do I care what someone else wanted last November?
They have continuing quest to make abortions as illegal as possible, the quest for male supremacy, the climate denial ... This was not hold your nose for economics. This was I don't care about economics, I hate others too much.
> What is the point of saying "people wanted this"? To legitimize not fighting it?
I am sick of excessive benefits of the doubt constantly given to the conservatives and their voters. Of sympathetic portraits of poor then while people they harm never get that. Of them lying, knowingly throwing false accusations and then centrists or left being blamed for not being nice to then.
Yes it should be fought. But it is not true that republican voters were victims of something when eventually Musks actions harm some of them. They wanted to cause harm and will cause more harm to people not like them.
And even if it was, to me the question isn't "did someone else want this at some point in the past, probably based on false or even no information" anyway, but how to judge it now. Sometimes people want wrong things for shitty reasons and a minority has to stand up to them standing on their principles.
Trump won by being not nice. Democrats lost by being nice.
> [Nonvoters] were "OK" with whatever others decided.
Those are not the same thing! Stop contradicting yourself in order to sanewash Trump.
There is a set of people eligible to vote. There is a set of people who do vote. Anyone in the first set who chooses not be in the second set, is no longer included in statements about What The People Want. You snooze, you lose.
The time to say whether you want or don't want a President is in November. You stay quiet then, you don't get to complain in January "This isn't what I wanted!" To stay home by choice is be OK with whatever outcome others decide.
And those others spoke clearly that this is the outcome they wanted.
Honestly, my head hurts at the apologism over non-voters. If you don't vote, you don't count!
No, that'd be frickin' insane, since:
1. Basically none of the "the people" ever "spoke" at all.
2. Even when non-voters somehow aren't "the people", there's nothing remotely "clear" Bob winning with a minority.
The moral fiber of nonvoters is irrelevant, this is about how you exaggerated a weak signal to the point of outright falsehood.
Those are fundamentally different.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-ger...
Maybe Musk and Trump can beat his record.
What exactly do you think is "gonna be just fine" about the most intense set of attacks of democracy this country has ever seen?
Also, think we can get there without him genociding the adult trans community, putting trans minors in correction camps, and invalidating the human rights of all homosexual Americans? Can we get there without him turning every ally against us?
I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about that.
Can we do it while still having
bent over is right. that is the height of their calibre.
hmmm. let's see ...
$ echo "Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Elon Musk's brain implant startup Neuralink, "forcefully removed from office" after refusing termination order" | ...
oh, never mind.
I'm too lazy to write the regex for getting this output from the above input:
Elon Musk's brain implant forcefully removed after termination order
echo "Phyllis Fong, who was investigating Elon Musk's brain implant startup Neuralink, "forcefully removed from office" after refusing termination order" | sed -E "s/Phyllis Fong, who was investigating (.*) startup Neuralink,(.*) from office(.*) refusing/\1\2\3/"(CONMEBOL being South America's soccer/football association)
enough with your puerile, shallow pop psychology, bro.
maybe you didn't get what I mean by "your term".
I meant this comment by NicoJuicy, the parent comment that I replied to:
>US is becoming a banana republic
and the term that I meant was, Banana republic.
possibly you have not read the details of what a Banana republic really means, and how horrible it is, of both parties involved in that injustice, or rather those injustices, because it happened many times, with many countries, south of the US, in Central and/or South America. here you go:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
short partial summary:
the US and some US business companies (in a nexus, of course) was usually involved in the creation of those Banana republics, to the financial advantage of both them and the concerned countries' rulers aka dictators, and to the huge detriment of the general public in these countries, including huge scheming, violence and looting against them, etc.
and guess just who coined the term Banana republic?
I bet this will surprise you. it was an American author, with pen name O. Henry:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry
he was not innocent himself, he embezzled money from a bank, and fled south.
I have read a short story by him:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Leaf
it may be even manipulative by him, to make money, by tugging at heart strings, but I found it good nonetheless. we had it in English literature class in High School, IIRC.
wrong use of caps not by me, but by voice typing errors, can't be bothered to correct them.
also, wherever you are from, maybe you should read the following articles before pronouncing judgement on things you seem to know very little about:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Indigenous_Peoples%27_His...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_My_Heart_at_Wounded_Kne...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee_Brown_(writer)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_United_States
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_women_in_the_Unit...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
and maybe most of all, because it is kind of a summary and an indictment:
But yes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
I had read about him earlier, in connection with the Banana republics.
let people form their own opinion on these issues.
I searched for and found a version of it:
https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/th...
The presence of the Citrus Caesar and the billionaire boys is due to substantial, ongoing problems. The U.S. Government, like any code base, has accrued much cruft over the last century. Whether or not DJT has any lasting positive effect isn't knowable yet.
The risk of this current course being a cure worse than the disease is substantial. The two things to keep in mind in any case are:
- trust, but verify
- look for the substantive reform, not lipstick on the pig
There's no cure in that, just corruption.
Mitch McConnell made it his personal mission to prevent "substantive reform" of any kind from being passed through the Senate.
The voters are the ultimate judge, and typically end up with a government that reflects them, warts and all.
And no, judges are judges. That’s why they’re called that.
The larger pattern is actually that reactionary politics have no coherent model of the world, and that’s why it’s showing up by your continued inability to state your position.
For any readers interested in an extreme version of the intellectual emptiness that dominates this sphere (apparently Andreessen finds compelling!), the NYTimes profile of Curtis Yarvin was pretty hilarious for exactly this reason.
It is indeed a larger pattern!
The Tower of Babel: who can understand it?
Let us go ahead and assign you the "W". Best wishes, and the last word is yours.
Great commit to the bit
If you got fired from literally any private sector company and refused to leave your office, security would escort you out immediately.