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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

Authoritarian power transfers usually involve (immediate) executions, or at least the imprisonment/exile of important people from the previous government/administration/regime, to stabilize the new regime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Political_Surviva...

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The Heritage Foundation (who is behind all this and has been at it since 1973), says that the transfer of power will be bloodless if we allow it to remain bloodless.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/heritage-foun...

They've been telling us exactly what they're going to do ... and we just let it happen.

Presumably authoritarian regimes only execute/imprison/exile dissidents if they think it's necessary to eliminate opposition. An authoritarian regime which does not think there's much of a threat to opposition probably wouldn't bother.

There is a huge cost in executions. Especially in places where they have not been super common place and super public.

Serves to prove it's not an authoritarian regime? They know they won by not so much and are likely to lose next time, especially given Trump can't run anymore.

TBF, we're only on day 2. (I am 90% certain it won't come to that, but there's a 10% queasiness left that hasn't been ameliorated by the haphazard approach untethered from legality that we've seen so far)

"This guy is running around giving everyone pardons. The funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon. And if you look at it, it all had to do with him."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

I fully expect Trump to ruin Biden's final years with investigations and court cases. Maybe that's not out right execution, but Trump definitely wants revenge.

Sure. But that is, for better or worse, perfectly legal. (No, I'm not saying it's great, but I'm saying this is still within non-dictatorship realms)

Whereas executions have a small issue in that area.

I don't think even Trump wants to call in the constitutional landmark case of a president pardoning himself. That'd be true chaos.

>I fully expect Trump to ruin Biden's final years with investigations and court cases

I'm still 50/50 on if Trump makes it that far, physically. He's older than when Biden ran his administration and not exactly in the best health.

But I guess they did get Regean through his last years. Nothing's impossible.

> That'd be true chaos.

We've crossed the Rubicon.

I mean if Biden actually was making corrupt deals trading influence/access for money then he absolutely should be investigated and prosecuted for it. And there's already hard proof that Hunter was selling access to his father, and that the foreigners he was selling said access to believed he could actually provide it.

If we didn't have the DOJ and other institutions protecting Biden for the last several years it would be pretty easy to find out if he actually did sell influence (vs. Hunter deceiving the people he was making deals with) with just a couple of warrants and subpeonas.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/former-fbi-informa...

Which has nothing to do with the hard evidence on Hunter's laptop

He ran on “lock her up” in 2016 and never followed through.

I find it hilarious that everyone is scared of Trump when there was a concerted effort by the other side to use the justice system to stop him from ever running again.

Need I remind everyone of multi-year Russiagate investigation that was all made up? The misdemeanor charges that becomes felonies with massive fines? The media collusion to silence the Hunter Biden laptop story when the FBI knew at the time it was real?

It’s the pot calling the kettle black. It’s the thieves accusing everyone else of stealing.

All made up? You're thinking of the Benghazi hearings, which were admitted to be nothing but a smear campaign by the Republicans[0].

"Russiagate" meanwhile found plenty of stuff[1].

[0]https://www.vox.com/2015/9/30/9423339/kevin-mccarthy-benghaz...

[1]https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigati...

Yes, the Steele Dossier which the entire Russiagate investigation was based on was fake and funded by Hillary Clinton.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-2022-midterm-elect...

Four years and immense government resources were wasted investigating the President calling him a "tool of the Russian government".

And the "plenty of stuff" found? "Undisclosed contacts" and "obstruction of the investigation".

What a massive flop.

> I find it hilarious that everyone is scared of Trump when there was a concerted effort by the other side to use the justice system to stop him from ever running again.

I honestly don't get what you mean by this. Lets say all your comments about Biden, the FBI, laptops and whatever else are 100% true. How does that change if I should be worried about stuff Trump might do? To use a totally extreme example, if John Wayne Gacy went around talking all the shit in the world about Jeffrey Dahmer, does that somehow make Dahmer not a serial killer?

> He ran on “lock her up” in 2016 and never followed through.

So that proves he lies and makes promises he can't/won't/doesn't keep? Is that a positive trait in a politician? How are we supposed to determine when he is 'just joshing, bro' and actually is being truthful? And yes, I know Biden and the dems also make promises they don't keep, but again that doesn't excuse Trump from doing the same.

An established bureaucracy used to "following orders" will just soldier on assuming the authoritarian comes in legally. The most well known example is Germany. The Führer came in elected, got voted to dictator after the Reichstagsbrand and then never left power - and barely anyone in the executive resisted.

And this is likely also where the US are heading. The putsch will not be loud and with a bang like Syria, it will be slow as molasses but about as difficult to impossible to stop like a broken dam worth of water moving downstream.

I mean, it's pretty clear they want to sue Fauci and more. Attacking dedicated public servants working for the health of the country is going to have serious negative effects.

that's the beauty of it all outright murders usually create resistance

this way the opposition is cleansed in a mini genocide as well as algorithmically in a decentralized manner so resistance can't form

the fourth reich is here :)

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