The cynic in me thinks that the US is going to roll over and take this fascist shake down. The optimist in me thinks that the people will rise up with a resounding NO and do something about it. Right now I'm not sure which I believe.
If it gets bad enough that most people are starving, rather then just struggling, we'll see action, but I doubt it'll get there anytime soon.
That’s pretty optimistic…
This is an understatement to say the least, and the fact it's been denied and even refused by the powers that be until today is why the pendulum has swung as hard as it has.
Americans wanted change, and they finally got it with ferocious retribution because it's been held back for so long.
`Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.`
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin
Explaining the pendulum swinging violently because folks didn’t feel heard is not the same thing as saying that it’s a good thing that the pendulum has swung so violently.
That said, that is tangential and irrelevant to explaining how and why the pendulum swung back as hard as it did.
Trump won his first term in 2016 because Americans were fed up with the Bush+Obama status quo of endless wars and waste. Drain the swamp, fuck the establishment! As the sentiment of the day went; remember Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party? Biden winning 2020 was a sharp rebuke by the powers that be; how dare the people demand change and elect an outsider, how dare the people demand peace and effective government. Biden and Harris's 2024 campaigns likewise were based strictly and ultimately on continuing the status quo; Harris "had no policy" in large part because the "policy" was the status quo.
Trump winning again in 2024 with a historic campaign is a sharp rebuke to that, he is the people's retribution for being denied and refused for so long time and time again. For voters like me and us, NASA and the like having their funding slashed and denied is merely collateral damage for a greater and long-awaited cause.
Does this include threatening Greenland with military action or does it not count as war if there is little resistance to be expected?
It's objective fact that Trump did not start a single war during his first term (he only inherited wars from his predecessors), his successor Biden immediately went back to starting wars. Americans will not tolerate declarations of war or otherwise military actions on Denmark/Greenland or Panama, we voted for him in large part because he is the first President in a long time who hates wars.
No. More. Wars. This is non-negotiable. Every single warmonger and the military industrial complex can go fuck themselves.
However, if we can get Greenland and the Panama Canal amicably through business/diplomacy then, as an American, why not?
>Dalewyn could have his family deported
If we're here illegally then fuck yeah Trump is doing the right thing; he's just enforcing the law as written. I thought we were all about rule of law?
was there anything amicable about his recent claims about greenland ?
How do you reconcile having a leader suggesting curing covid with bleach to know how to make government efficients ? Musk couldn't turn twitter back as far as we know either..
What war?
Seriously, what war?
I've tried searching for what wars, and found that the only ones started by the US this century were by Bush Jr.; neither Obama nor Biden went to war.
Do you mean the war Russia started by invading Ukraine? The ongoing conflict between Israel and various but changing subsets of their neighbours? Because these were not started by the US, they are outside the control of the US.
> No. More. Wars. This is non-negotiable. Every single warmonger and the military industrial complex can go fuck themselves.
> However, if we can get Greenland and the Panama Canal amicably through business/diplomacy then, as an American, why not?
He refused, when asked, to rule out using military force.
Operation Ocean Shield (2009–2016), International intervention in Libya (2011), Operation Observant Compass (2011–2017), US military intervention in Niger (2013–2024), US-led intervention in Iraq (2014–2021), US intervention in the Syrian civil war (2014–present), US intervention in Libya (2015–2019), Operation Prosperity Guardian (2023–present), Israel–Hamas war (2024–present).
As I said, not started by the US.
This seems to apply in general to that list, e.g. Prosperity Guardian is not even a war, and crucially it is a response to Houthi-led attacks on shipping in the Red Sea so the US also didn't start it. (Which can be described as an escalation that was itself caused by US economic support of Israel, but that kind of geopolitical implications are a never-ending rabbit hole even with 50 years of hindsight that I don't get to benefit from).
Their (and Canada's, Germany's) reason for picking sides in the Syrian civil war is completely opaque from the perspective of normal people like me (if I count as 'normal'…), but again, they didn't start it: civil war.
etc.
> neither Obama nor Biden went to war.
I believe this is false.
No, its not. He certainly engaged in an armed conflict with Iran which was not an active conflict before his term.
> his successor Biden immediately went back to starting wars.
No, he didn't.
> No. More. Wars.
Since election, Trump has threatened war in or with Mexico, Denmark, and Panama, as well as the US actively completing the genocide Israel has started in Gaza. “No. More. Wars." Is very clearly not his priority.
This is a joke right? I'm not sure 'amicably' means holding a gun to someone's head to get them to do what you want them to do. Trump stated he would use force if necessary.
> No. More. Wars.
Biden also didn't start any wars. Trump is talking about annexing Gaza, and he continues to talk about war with Iran. Trumps aggression is how wars start because it puts everyone on edge.
When Trump starts a war, which seems inevitable unless his advisors get some control, will you then admit it was dumb to vote for Trump? I'm sure you'll explain it away somehow as #winning.
> I thought we were all about rule of law?
I just assume you're trolling at this point. Trump just pardoned people who beat up law enforcement. He also talks about deporting people he simply doesn't like. He's farther from the rule of law than any POTUS in history.
Congratulations, seems like you have fully bought into MAGA propaganda.
Burning the system down because of hurt pride doesn't sound like a good thing to me.
Your agent of retribution is now threatening my country.
It's because of people like you that I now have to start thinking of what I have to do if they start massing troops in Buffalo. No wars indeed...
And just so you know, invading us will never work. You are right to not want the US to enter a war. Because it has lost every war it has ever started.
It's really interesting seeing how widely varied peoples' definitions of these things are.
I thank NZ for leading the way.
American Exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.
But they now believe that movie actors are drinking the blood of babies and that China somehow rigged up the increase in CO2 as a way to confound us. They think scientists are mostly lying.
It's not clear from an information theoretic perspective how to restore stability to the US system.
Maybe once they've killed a million immigrants, I'm sorry had excess mortality in the camps in the hot SW and in Cuba, and things all around them are worse for their own children and families, they will repent and embrace truth, justice and the American way. One can hope.
...what?
Trump's son-in-law was put in charge of supply distribution, refused to invoke the defense production act, and when they finally did, Trump took ages to actually "order" ventilators. They refused to implement testing because they knew that tests would show how bad things were and justify measures that would hurt the stock market.
Trump largely didn't do anything at first because COVID-19 was most severely impacting the coastal blue states because of higher population densities.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/did-trump-kushner-igno...
and https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/jared-kushner-let-th...
They routed supplies away from blue states to red states. He sent ventilators to Russia, FFS:
https://ru.usembassy.gov/delivery-of-u-s-ventilators-to-russ...
Trump told states to get their own PPE (because blue states needed them more badly than red states, and he didn't want red states to have to pay for it), then the feds outbid state agencies for PPE. And when that didn't work, just outright had customs steal them:
https://www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/letters/warren-deman...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/how-the-federal-gove...
Our state's orders for PPE was impounded at the port by the feds, who them claimed they had no idea what anyone was talking about. Our state got a bunch of PPE because the NFL football team owner sent his team's 737 to China to pick up masks and gowns (which turned out to have all sorts of problems, like being sized for children.)
Our governor stopped just shy of saying "yes" when asked if he'd sent state troopers into NYC to meet the plane and escort the truck.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/04/14/baker-mum-on-whether-st...
> If the wealthy don't pay enough taxes, the middle class will be harmed.
"Will be"? It's been going on for decades. Bush and Trump tax cuts made it even worse and skyrocketed the deficit to boot.
But I think the earlier comment may have been referring to the restrictions in the US relative to other countries. Most other countries were much more severe for their lockdowns
And that passed without much more than an exasperated sigh.
No, I think the populace will go along with whatever these folks deem acceptable. It’s like a bad movie.
* The Trump Administration doesn't believe in the two state solution stalemate. * They have leverage over The Netanyahu Administration in Israel due to the ongoing military support needed. * The Netanyahu Administration wants to incorporate Gaza into Israel as also doesn't believe in two state solution but cannot do so without repercussions. * US could take over Gaza as the West won't sanction it, China needs to sell to it, RoW not an issue. * Trump wants US to take over Gaza, use US corps and workers to rebuild paid for by Israel, and then sell back to Israel at a later time.
I don't agree with that position but I think that's what the deal looks like overall.
If I have to hire a hitman to take out my mistress I'm going to just opt to not have a mistress. I guess we will have never ending reasons for needing a proxy against Iran?
EDIT: To be clear, that's predicated on assumption things are fundamentally different here and now from Germany in the 1930s. If not, we're already cooked.
It's hard to take stuff like this seriously. Even if you're worried about fascism specifically, why Germany in the 1930s and not Italy in the 1920s? The latter seems more relevant to the present moment. I think the reason is that the German Nazis are the bad guys of history and these kinds of comparisons have less to do with historical parallels but more with Godwin's Law.
Protesting for Gaza was squashed last time by basically everyone, and will be again.
It's mostly too late to do anything at that point. People won't even have money for ammo.
bringing down the system?
Win or lose, I'm thinking money is flowing up to the same people.
I'm not sure why conservative commentators can't see the result of this knee-jerk policy of deporting every illegal immigrant, and even those with birthright citizenship. It's a scorched earth policy, and you are only going to reap ashes from it.
I try to understand how the "other side" is thinking about this. Disagreements on policy aside, why would "freedom loving Americans" want a king that can rule unilaterally?
Not trying to start a flame war or pose a gotcha question, I'm genuinely curious. What am I missing?
For example, the civil service passed new rules in the dying days of the Biden administration intended to stop Trump implementing Schedule F. This didn't come from Congress or the courts. They just passed it themselves. Trump is the boss so can undo that rule with a new rule, but they passed it within a framework of yet more rules they made themselves to slow that down so - if followed - it will take months. This is purely self serving protectionism and has nothing to do with democracy or the Constitution.
There's an interesting document here [1] that goes into all the ways the civil service betrayed Trump in the first term. Betrayal is a correct and moderate term to use. They were doing things like forging documents, lying to appointees about non-existent laws, refusing to prosecute legally clear cut cases in order to propagate woke ideology (e.g. discrimination against Asian Americans), deliberately keeping their bosses in the dark, refusing direct orders to do work if it would run contra to woke ideology and many more things.
From the Trump team's perspective the rules are largely fake: when they align with what the left want they're followed to the letter, when they don't they're ignored or subverted without consequence. He played that game in his first term, and is apparently no longer willing to do so. It's hard to know what Congress will do but presumably they're aware of the fact that their own laws have created this situation to some extent (even if not the full extent). It wouldn't be surprising to see civil service reform bills appear soon.
[1] https://americafirstpolicy.com/assets/uploads/files/Tales_fr...
This is resistance. It is justified. Expect more of it.
There is such a thing as true and false, and there is such a thing as right and wrong.
I know which side's views and plans are almost always on the side of the false and the wrong.
One side wants to divide, one tries to unite, one seeks the truth, the other side does more than lie, it attempts to erase the very notion of truth. One side denigrates, insults and immiserates the weak and the poor. The other attempts to lift them up.
Often in a moral quandary ask yourself 'Which position would be more difficult for me to take?' that's a strong indicator of what is right.
It's easy to divide, denigrate, spread rumours, and to make statements without regards to truth or falsehood. It's easy to hate, to dehumanise and to cause pain.
I've said it in another post. Why are there so many people ready to line up to defend the powerful against the weak, the rich against the poor?
What a brave and noble purpose! I'd love to see you defend that.
Don't you see? They would give the exact same speech about the other side and absolutely believe it, and in fact so would many other people. You say one side is clearly right and the other clearly wrong - that's what the people at DOGE think, just the other way around from you.
That doesn't mean right and wrong don't exist. It does mean that interpreting real world events is often hard and people can come to opposing conclusions, either because they interpret shared facts differently, or because they're aware of things the other side isn't, or because they believe things that aren't actually true.
Right now the Republicans perceive themselves as the weak and oppressed (or did until five minutes ago), and they perceive the Democrats as the powerful oppressors. Putting aside the question of whether it's true or not, they believe that the Dems control every part of the Federal civil service and are willing to systematically lie and conspire in order to completely destroy the Republicans, up to and including imprisoning them on false claims, smearing them with coordinated fake news, and even directly putting their lives in danger by turning a blind eye to assassination attempts. They think the Dems are the side of the rich and powerful and they have solid reasons to believe that, e.g. they systematically out-fundraise the Republicans by a massive margin and right now Musk is busy uncovering the ways billions of dollars in federal funds are diverted into a 100% Democratic NGO ecosystem.
You might think all the above is obviously untrue, equivocation or whatever, but they think it's true. So be careful with rhetoric about resistance. That isn't how democracy is meant to work; such talk can be and is being turned around on you.
Of course I see, and like in a chess match I looked past it cos I thought it was too obvious.
But I say again your argument amounts to false equivalence.
They can believe crazy and false things as fervently as they like, it doesn't make those beliefs an equivalent mirror image to what liberals believe.
This whole thread started with a complaint from you about Schedule F being 'unfair.'
Apparently anything except the liberals handcuffing themselves and letting themselves be frogmarched out of their jobs is unacceptable.
Meanwhile the new 'unitary executive' is allowed to jump up and down like Donkey Kong on anything he feels like no matter what the rules norms, laws or the constitution says.
Did I capture the essence of it?
I am totally serious about the need for resistance. The new people in charge just walked up to an unguarded lemonade stand which runs on the honour system, drank all the lemonade, pissed in the jar stole the money and smashed everything.
And why can they do that? Because they don't go in for honour and decency, but they expect us to. Democracy provides the tools and the freedom for people to subvert democracy.
I don't expect the new regime to grant such generous 'equivalent' terms should it manage to consolidate it's position.
I don't mean violent resistance, but we do have to resist.
1. Norms, honour, decency etc. In that case, the democratic norm that's honourable and decent would be to gladly comply with both the spirit and word of whichever government is in power regardless of the individual's personal beliefs, up to and including calmly accepting redundancy. This is what the platonic ideal of a civil servant is meant to do. The Republicans believe, with good reason, that the US civil service hasn't been doing this (same issues exist in other countries).
2. Bold resistance, elections be damned. Do whatever it takes, violate every norm, exploit every procedure, regulation and rule to fuck the right as hard as possible. That they won a legitimate victory is of no importance in this worldview because they are Crazy and Wrong and Bad, and therefore it is right and true to subvert them as much as you can.
These two positions aren't compatible but you're talking as if they are. You can't both cheer on stuff like the attempts to subvert Schedule F and claim to be the side of generosity, honour and democratic norms. Either you're subversive rebels and must accept the outcome if Trump successfully crushes you beneath his bootheel, or you're genteel servants of the people in which case you have to help him achieve his goals within the bounds set by law and the courts.
Now we fully agree that world 1 is preferable, and in that world Trump/Musk would need to spend much more time waiting on Congress to pass laws before they can shut down orgs like USAID, and the intelligence community wouldn't have produced 50+ people willing to lie in order to manipulate a domestic election. But nobody believes we live in world 1. Even now you're trying to have it both ways, and arguing that you should be allowed to claim to represent world 1 whilst simultaneously calling a legitimately elected government a "regime".
Isn't the current administration more culpable on this point? (viz. the last time Trump lost an election)
And in terms of norms I mean that there isn't a strict law or constitutional clause written to proscribe each and every thing that the president can and cannot do. The system relies on the people acting in good faith, which is definitely not happening in this case. Instead they are cynically trying to exploit every loophole they can to smash a system they don't even understand.
> whilst simultaneously calling a legitimately elected government a "regime".
It _is_ a regime. Who elected Musk or his Doge minions?
Most dictatorships consolidated power legally. That it was legal doesn't mean I want to live in one.
ANd speaking of having it bot ways, you can easily infer what side I'm on, but I get the sense that you are trying to hide behind 'just so arguments'. Could it be that you support the new regime and are trying to avoid saying it out loud?
I wonder why someone would want to hide that...?
Democracy isn't electing kings.
I meant "do what they want" as in: the winning party gets to choose the policy. The winning party can ignore the will of the losing party.
Every week a new target will be set, and no matter what will be done, people won't realize that the cause of their own problems are internal. Canada, Denmark, Mexico, Panama, you name it. At the same time there's a superpower (China) that is actively trying to unseat the leader. Superpower with more people, better manufacturing, more potential for the future income, more manpower, not cool with getting bullied and etc. That will also make the citizens unhappy, because "how dare China be better than us?!".
It also doesn't help that Americans aren't having children, which is objectively bad for the future of the leadership. The push for natalism, banning contraceptives, choice and etc. is points towards "you will have children no matter what and you will love it" scenario.
It's like a culmination of multiple problems that have been left rampant for the past couple of decades. Now they're trying to frantically swing the pendulum, but there's a chance that they'll end up pulling it a bit too hard so it will break.
But this time around something seems to have changed, where his supporters are ok with trump and team doing whatever. Be a forever president, rip up the constitution, rule by decree.
It's a sentiment I often see, not just here, and I just don't understand it.
Biden comes in, it was similar, maybe worse because of inflation and increased income inequality. Imposed a bunch of social changed as well. Democrats say a bunch of things and all that ends up happening is a bunch of social changes that most of the country find strange. Now we have Trump again.
Did that help things?
A green new deal that set out to get electricity to people's houses at $0.08/kwh and stood a reasonable chance of doing so would have been a great start. That's not what it was, alas.
You can't just look at what the parties say they want to do when they're in power. You have to look at what they actually spend their time and energy on while in power.
Both parties are pretty hypocritical when it comes to stated goals vs revealed goals.
I can see some truth to it while living across the border. The things move extremely slow due to enormous amount of legislative barriers and opposition. When you make any big disruptive change, obviously families will suffer, incomes will be lost and etc. So, if you want gigantic changes (good or bad) for a huge country, you need either backing of super majority of people or ability to be above the law because everyone would be afraid to go after you. From my point of view, that’s why China can do drastic changes to their established sectors (tech, private education, construction and etc.) and keep pivoting as necessary. Sure, I don’t agree with their political ideology. However they have an enormous bureaucracy that will sit down and rewrite laws when the goals change.
I’ve met some Republicans throughout my travels, and after some drinks have heard how they want to feel proud of their country. How they used to be proud of their land, origins and etc. Nowadays, they just don’t feel it.
It would be very dumb of me to generalize, but when a good chunk of people don’t feel proud of anything in their lives, it shows signs of cultural weakness. A weakness that’s incredibly easy to exploit as the feeling of pride actually feels good. Current admins are giving a sense of hope that they’ll restructure entire government to some point where citizens will be proud of their progress.
There was a successful coup and the USA as such has fallen, now presumably on the route to failing.
And this, I think, points to the corruption of the entire political class in America with just being upshot.
I believe that what those wealthy people aren't accounting for is the need for some class of humans to act as a translation layer between the expert AI systems and the rest of us in order to allow the discoveries and results to percolate through human institutions.
Or, rather, they may be underestimating the bottleneck that will be introduced by trying to hoard all of those results within their own circles of trust and influence.
No LLM trained on PubMed will be able to suss this all out - more data is needed.
Even in pure mathematics, where I am currently a grad student and as needed a big fan of trying to get LLMs to explain stuff to me at 1 am, they just aren't that good. If it's a popular question where I could have tried math overflow, sure, it's probably just going to get some details weirdly wrong, but for subtle complex concepts, it's not making some golden age of truth and understanding.
And God help the LLMs trying to understand physics that are trained on all the BS on Youtube and the blogs.
And for all you HN readers supporting these massive changes: you'd test changes beforehand and plan their deployment carefully if this were software. So why why do you support explicitly not doing those things when the livelihood of 300 million people depend on the economy being stable?!?
And before the inevitable derail or whatabout attempt: Don't play political games with people's lives.
And, again, everything is political, including every aspect of discussions on HN.
Culture warriors only care about about their "side" winning. It's not an intellectual battle, but an emotional one. Rules be damned, their side is winning and dishing out retribution for, and rolling back decades of defeat on the battle for social values - civil rights, race mixing, gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, and the gall to elect a black president, BLM, #metoo, etc.
Vengeance can make people do crazy things and the craziest thing is how people don't realize vengeance can destroy them just as much, if not more than their intended target. Not so much shooting ourselves in the foot, more like stabbing ourselves in the heart.
My life and work is to help people to realize how responding with hate or indifference will destroy us, and that responding with love is the only way through.
You can buy another countries tech if it benefits you or just move.
Andreesson has the same blindness - he wrote the first web browsers (having not invented HTTP or the web or browsers) and parleyed that into a fortune by investing. I guess he's a skilled investor, a smart financial person, but there is no evidence that he has some special science expertise or extraordinary intelligence. From my observations, one can understand nothing about science or the physical world and do well with software and investing.
As far as "far-sighted," the history from 1980 onwards is the destruction of many things in society devoted to the long view in favor of short-term financialization.
The former is 100% how it will go. The only question is: how bad will it get?
A poster down thread mentions a million dead immigrants. I personally think it will just be in the low 6 figures. Maybe high 5 figures.
The doom and gloom in these comments is truly funny. I remember the exact same when Trump won the first time.
It’s like HN has no memory.
This time no checks and balances exist within the administration, and the supreme court has been turned.
I wish I could laugh.
Trump as POTUS ordered the VPOTUS to overturn an election, and when Mike Pence refused the order, Trump sent a mob to have the VPOTUS assassinated. It’s distinctly not funny, though very memorable, that people who voted for Trump again think of themselves as American patriots.
I remember the racist lie of birtherism.
You can grab them by the pussy, they let you do it. I remember it.
I think some are addicts to the anger, drama, and depravity of Trump TV. Perhaps they can be treated like drug, sex, and shopping addicts.
The stupid and malicious are probably lost for our lifetime. The best thing to do is cut them off. They’re not good people. They voted for a rapist, that’s how desperate and low they’ve become.
I remember Mike Pence boilerplate Republicanism wasn’t good enough. Trumpers want and need an abuser. They voted for that, not despite it.
A good deal why we’re here is liberals coddled Trumpers, forgave them in advance, helped to normalize the depravity by inviting Trumper friends and family to all the usual social functions, despite the insanity. We were too nice. And this is permission. We gave them permission all along.
Kick abusers to the curb. All of them. They’re not good people. Stop trying to make them better by lying about who and what they are. Stop normalizing the depravity. That’s the beginning.
Ironically I assume this is how people like Hitler took power.
“Kick Jews to the curb. All of them. They’re not good people. Stop trying make them better by lying about who they are. Stop normalizing the depravity. That’s the beginning.”
It’s almost like I’m reading the moustache man’s words himself.
Your attempt to be treated as some sort of victim is denied.
At this point, almost certainly the former.
1. Most Trump supporters do not think that there is a problem.
2. “Regular people” — that is, the folks who don’t track news — won’t notice any problems in their day-to-day lives until after said shakedown has been completed.
The only way large swathes of people will demand action is if they are hit hard in the wallets in an immediate and clear way (e.g., rapid price increases to one or more critical goods or services) or if a critical process (e.g., social security checks) gets disrupted. I’m not sure the current types of changes will reach that level.
> 1. Most Trump supporters do not think that there is a problem.
Talk to any conservative -- even people who are/were skeptical of Trump -- or browse any conservative-leaning social media. It's clear that the people who voted for Trump fully understood what they voted for: they wanted what's happening. Project 2025 is a good thing in the eyes of many. Maybe they think politicizing the whole executive branch is a little distasteful, but in the eyes of literally millions of Americans, it's a means to a well-justified and long-awaited end.
This is a very tight and succinct summary of many conversations I’ve had with conservative family and acquaintances.
> I don't know why you're being downvoted.
The votes on my comment are going up and down like a yo-yo.
I’m pretty sure it’s because I used the term “regular people”, and I used it in quotes. I get the sense that some people are reading more into that phrase than I intended.
They believe it has already been politicized by people who hate them.
The Project 2025 document is really interesting along those lines as well. It's close to 1000 pages, but you can skim pretty much any section that isn't about the military and get the idea. Politicizing the executive branch is an explicitly stated goal, over and over. And furthermore, the push to disband the department of education is specifically an overly political, not because it's ineffective in its mission, but because it's "a one-stop shop for the woke education cartel" -- and yes that is a direct quote.
Your comment also tells me that this was never about immigrants taking our jobs.
You seem to be living in a right-wing fantasy world that really doesn't exist. Things are going to get really bad in the country with this administration, the first two weeks have been extremely messy. No, these policies are definitely not going to lower the price of anything - we're on track for wild inflation with these plans. The leopards are going to be well fed though!
Price of eggs dropped yet?
Orwell wrote about this in 1984 (and also, incidentally, fought fascists on the ground during the Spanish Civil War):
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."
There was zero condescension in my tone or intent.
I put “regular people” in quotes simply because I think most people who do follow the news absolutely don’t realize that the vast majority of people don’t.
A simple litmus test for this is to ask random people you meet outside of your personal social and professional circles (e.g., the front desk person at the gym, a cashier at a grocery store, a rideshare driver… whatever) a simple question like “Who are our US senators?” or “What is the NIH?” I’ve done this, and the sentiment was largely “don’t know, don’t care”.
This isn’t a criticism. It’s just an observation that some issues that some folks on HN care about (e.g., details about how lesser known parts of the government function — for example, what’s happening at the NIH and NSF) just aren’t on the radar for large swathes of the population.
> absolutely notice it at the pump and at the grocery store. They aren't mindless robots.
I think we agree on this, right?
And my point is that price changes for most things won’t hit immediately.
1. There have been delays in most of the tariffs.
2. The impact of some tariffs will take longer to hit than others. Fresh food will be fast. Goods with longer shelf lives canned goods, alcohol, and prepared foods might take a while.
Edit: Scratch that, they plan to abolish the department of education
However, the DOE does things like make sure there is funding for children with additional needs, which lets be honest, are not going to be replicated in certain states if the DOE is indeed disbanded.
This was a very weird realization and one that left me pretty sad.
Edit to clarify: I also mean no condescension toward "regular people".
Correct.
I’ve heard some harrowing stories about the moment of realization straight from the mouths of some of these people.
Edit: To be clear, I’m referring to my family and their friends who lived through it.
I’d love to know more.
Probably not news, but here are a few big ones that I remember from our conversations:
1. Family member lived in a rural area. They could see the train line that ran between two major cities. I can’t remember the exact order of events (e.g., construction), but at some point they noticed packed trains turning off the main tracks to go to a facility. Packed trains went in, and empty trains came out. At first they didn’t think anything of it… just resettlement stuff or war stuff or whatever. But then it continued. And continued. The rumors started. Everything was hush hush. Nobody dared to ask the authorities. Only later did they learn that it was a concentration camp and what actually happened there. That one kind of blew my mind… they had no idea about what was going on except vague rumors, most of which were wrong.
2. One family member had access to privileged information about the war (in the later stages of the war). One bit of info they knew was about causalities, and how certain assignments were less survivable than others. The propaganda machine made it seem like it was noble to go fight the war that would inevitably be won, but this person knew with a reasonable degree of mathematical estimation that some of the kids being sent off weren’t likely to come back. They said it was tough to look those parents, especially mothers, in the eyes when they made some comment about hoping their kid came home safely. My family member knew that these parents would likely never see their son again, and all for what was looking like a lost and/or questionable war effort that was still playing on nationalist sentiments.
3. This really isn’t that interesting, but… The propaganda late in the war made it seem like Germans in general and the troops specifically were eating well with an abundance of good food, while people who actually grew the food had to do things like use sawdust and straw as filler in their bread. They had a long list of accommodations that they told me that they made so that they didn’t feel hungry, and I don’t remember them all. The cool thing is that there were ways for the rural folks to get access to food beyond the rations. Sometimes they could sneak some extra food to the city-dwelling family members, but the folks in the cities seemed to have it tougher. They were sort of bitter about how the food situation got progressively worse as the war progressed as well as the total disconnect from reality that the propaganda was presenting.
Note that these were stories that were told to me decades ago about stuff that had happened many decades before then. I’m sure that some stories were embellished while others were muted. I’m also sure that some of the details were “lost in translation” — either via my mediocre German, their mediocre English, or the limits of language assistance that some of the bilingual folks provided.
I don’t really feel like I did these stories justice.
I just remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut after some of these conversations. It was like history had come alive right before my eyes.
I remember having a few sleepless nights just processing the things I had been told.
I remember almost throwing up once (the night after the story about the trains). I just couldn’t believe the level of depravity was so easily able to exist with basically no questions asked.
I remember my naive younger self thinking about what I would have done had I been in their shoes. It didn’t take me long to realize that I probably wouldn’t have done much differently, mainly because their range of options were so limited (or at least perceived to be so, with detention, death, or “disappearing”being the consequence if you were wrong).
I also remember them talking about neighbors snitching on each other (probably to the gestapo, but it could have been another entity). Some neighbors with petty intentions would make up false claims about neighbors they didn’t like. This forced everyone to be on “perfect behavior”, and it sowed a lot of distrust in normally tight-knit communities. There was one story about a tattle-tale who had a come-uppance, but I can’t remember any of the details. I think that was the first time the word Schadenfreude came alive to me… it existed in that story on multiple levels.
There a little more commentary in a reply above to jventura.
"First they came for DEI and I didn't speak out, because I was not Black..."
There were plenty of companies like Coinbase that ignored DEI initiatives and requested that employees leave "politics at the door" - and we all knew what kind of politics they meant. You could have voted with your feet.
I'm fully onboard with employees asking employees to be respectful to their colleagues regardless of gender, race, creed or color, that's just good for business.
I have voted with my feet by avoiding the self-announced inclusive. My objection is specific to reducto-ad-hitlerum.
DEI makes sure that everyone is part of the merit process.
It’s like how white people feel like Babe Ruth is an all time great, but say Josh Gibson isn’t because he played in the all black league. But playing in the all white league doesn’t count against you at all. No one considers them any less.
Never know, if enough people divest , people might give a shit.
But I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not all that big a fan of that style comment rising to the top threads like this myself, even though I likely lean very opposite of cft on political matters and what I think the impact of this will be like.
We're at the final stage of the cycle—ochlocracy. (Mob rule)
I don't think Trump will be king, to be blunt he's too old and not skilled enough.
I'm worried about the next guy or the one after that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
If one party wants to do things democratically at all cost, and the other party wants to bring down democracy, then the latter will win.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/feb/04/benjamin-...
Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to “permanently” leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas. He described Gaza as a “pure demolition site” and claimed Palestinians would “love to leave Gaza”. “I don’t know how they could want to stay,” he said.
Trump’s comments marked the first time he has publicly floated the permanent relocation of Palestinians from Gaza. The US president’s remarks in effect endorsed ethnic cleansing of the territory over the opposition of Palestinians and the neighbouring countries.
Trump is literally for completely ridding Gaza of the Palestinians so Israel can colonize it. An ACTUAL genocide.
This was the goal of the Biden administration. The difference now is that without Israel demolishing Gaza every day, the resistance has demonstrated they cannot be dislodged. Trump has no credibility. They simply cannot do it and both the U.S. and Israeli officials that enabled this are war criminals that should be prosecuted immediately.
And actually, you in fact can argue that Trump has been better on the issue than Biden. Multiple news outlets have reported that it was Trump that forced the ceasefire:
- https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-forced-netanyahu-to-make-a...
- https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64825
- https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-01-13/ty-article/.p...
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-official-trump-envoy-sway...
Everything you find with regarding Trump is rhetoric while his actions have been much more peaceful than Biden's.
Which brings me back to my main point: it's absurd and hysterical to be claiming that Trump is uniquely fascist here. Whoever is freaking out now about him, and was not freaking out about Biden, is a fraud and should be called out as a fraud.
The US was in favor of a two state solution. The US is now saying that half of one state, by population, is no longer available. It's clear to anyone with two neurons to rub together that the other half is gone within the next four years.
And I don't think that the US was mentioned by the ICJ, even if it had confirmed genocide.
The only government efficiency they’re concerned with is the efficiency of funneling other people’s money into their own pockets. Even Putin’s oligarch buddies are nowhere that bold nor think they’re that much above the law.
Ironically, the essence of a confidence trick, or con artistry, is to convince people that you're superhuman, much much much smarter than everyone else.