[flagged]
Sure there is. A general strike for example. But we’re talking about the USA, so fat chance.
I don’t see anything about “We The People” being restricted or did I miss something?
Oh my sweet summer child.
There are abundant ways to wield power even when not in direct control of branches of government. For example, the unions that are suing to stop some of this have hundreds of thousands of members. They could shut down just about anything they want and wield enormous amounts of pressure.
Air traffic controllers could stand in solidarity to fellow fired federal workers and ground every airplane in the country indefinitely. Teamsters could completely immobilize Tesla, SpaceX, and everything else Elon Musk cares about in hours.
If you don't like my examples, come up with your own, but these concepts aren't fantastical at all they're just core ways to wield power in society. The Scandinavian countries do stuff like this all the time it's not even a relic of the 1930's or something.
There is a power struggle to determine what our society's goals are, how it accomplishes those goals, and for the benefit of whom. The "MAGA" side has a clear conception of this concept, and they're trying to grab as much power as they can get away with.
There is a massive amount of power that could be brought to bear against that. There always is whenever it's an attempt at rule by rich oligarchs, as they're always wildly outnumbered.
Someone just has to use it.
Once they defy those, it’s done.
The enforcement of federal laws including court orders requires the Trump justice department to act. And his first moves (naturally) were to fire all oversight people, install extremist hardcore loyalists at the top, and fire anyone underneath who was not equally loyal. Anybody who thinks any other administration has done anything remotely comparable in the modern era is just uninformed
All of us should take a moment to acknowledge all the Peter Thiel-adjacent folks in this community who drove us directly to this moment
The Supreme court has only a few armed police, basically no teeth. There is nothing really holding the executive to listen to them, and the legislators won't check any fouls either. There is surprisingly little beyond tradition to stop them going off the rails.
Norm violations have a way of accelerating in a tit-for-tat way, because once your opponent does it you will lose if you don't respond in kind. This didn't start here, and it definitely won't end here.
"All of us should take a moment to acknowledge all the Peter Thiel-adjacent folks in this community who drove us directly to this moment"
"Move fast and break things" is a culture we promulgated. Yes, me, you, everyone commenting here. The people we looked up to for years - mentors and thought leaders - are the ones planning and directing this effort. Hackers apparently are the ones implementing it. If we want to talk about it in our cultural terms, these guys are imo acting like black hats and we need to grapple with that.
Clearly we as a community are not ready for these conversations, but flagging them and burying them isn't going to make the need for them go away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
The only reason Brown v. Board of Education was enforced was because the President sent troops from the 101st Airborne Division to ensure black children were able to go to school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education#Re...
I'm preparing for a war on American soil, by "Americans" or whatever they're going to call themselves - MAGA I guess.
The thing is, even if Trump said something similar, I think we'd still keep going about things in the same ho-hum way we are now. Left-wing newspapers will have headlines, Fox will have nothing, and Democratic congresspeople will have some kind of protest. Maybe there will be marches in a few big cities.
I honestly think nothing will rise to the level of an actual crisis until the military is ordered to do something that some percentage of officers refuse to comply with.
Indeed.
> I'm not sure how you think we'll have business-as-usual
Are you seeing general strikes? Chaos in the streets? Democratic congresspeople being successful at stopping anything? The Supreme Court stepping in?
No, none of those. Trump went and had fun at the Superbowl last night, and some editorials wrung their hands over Vance saying that Trump doesn't need to obey the courts. Most people in the country are ignoring what they see as some typical partisan bickering.
This is a more interesting question to ask of some of the historic government waste the department is theoretically supposed to be tackling and the people who authorised wasteful government spending.
In Musk's case the unqualified young people in question are hardly in a position to persuasively argue they have a sophisticated grasp of workplace norms, government finances and auditing practices, and their Twitter edglordism is nothing that he wouldn't do himself so I don't think they've slipped by some thorough vetting process.
When people were criticizing the age of the people on the team, the narrative was that they are young and energetic adults and that it’s offensive to bring their age into question.
As soon as one of them (age 25!) was discovered to have written some blatantly racist remarks, the narrative flipped to pleas to forgive them because they’re just kids.
Not to mention how quickly this all went from shining a light on the situation to insisting that we blindly trust claims of corruption with no evidence or even independent review.
It’s all so absurd to watch. Regardless of where you fall on the political side, the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy is so blatant that you can’t possibly ignore it unless you’re resigned to being so hyper-partisan that anything goes as long as it’s done by your team.
What besides IT knowledge qualifies them including Musk to do what they claim to do?
Sounds more like McKinsey on steroids.
Yeah, you just made that up. The "narrative" about the 25-year-old's remarks was not based on his age. This is the narrative, from JD Vance the vice president himself:
"Here’s my view:
I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.
We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.
So I say bring him back.
If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that." [0]
[0] https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633
Obviously the operative line is the central one about not rewarding journalists who try to destroy people, "Ever". That means regardless of who the target is or their age.
>intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy is so blatant that you can’t possibly ignore it
Hypocritical intellectual dishonesty indeed.
It's interesting that JD Vance should invoke that defence considering this particular "kid" with a fondness for racist edglordism was tasked with the responsibility of firing tens of thousands of other people...
You're literally just deleting the important part of the message to pretend a supporting comment is "the narrative".
It's hypocritical intellectual dishonesty to pretend JD's point was something other than what it obviously was.
If this is your argument, don't be surprised when people look up the facts, note that you're dishonest this way, and tune you out.
What if we didn’t worry about whether we’re “rewarding” the journalist, and just evaluated people’s actions and deeds when we decide how much public trust we want to extend to them?
Because he says:
> If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.
Saying things like "Normalize Indian hate" and "I was racist before it was cool" are statements that pretty well support a "bad dude" classification, especially in the context of a role where he'll be responsible for firing people and removing "DEI hires." Even if you agree (with Musk, Elez, etc.) that DEI is a problem, hiring a self-avowed racist to deal with it seems pretty idiotic.
Calling him "a kid" is also pretty disingenuous. He was 24 or 25 when he made those posts, hardly a kid. And they weren't ancient history, they were last year. I'm also for forgiveness if time has passed and people show that they deserve it, but it isn't ruining his life to hold him accountable to things he said last year, as an adult.
I appreciate that people who concur with Vance's objection to journalists reporting the truth are going to tune me and most things out, but that says more about your own lack of intellectual honesty than anyone else's...
Does that apply to politicians or billionaires as well? Considering Musk's history of doing that?
On a more general note, if it's racist remarks everyone is coming out with "lets forgive them", "they were young", "lets not destroy people because of some innocent remarks", but god forbid they say something that is being perceived as "leftist" ... burn them!
Why would there be? The people hired Trump to be the CEO, the CEO hired Musk (personally, I think it is mostly to serve as a distraction while real personal/political goals are handled elsewhere), but regardless, any government only works when most leaders (and voters) have mostly good intentions.
It is not feasible to have a check and balance on every decision, everything would grind to a halt.
The US president presides over the executive branch of the US government.
It’s not a one to one equivalence, but commander-in-chief is pretty close to a chief executive office.
As one obvious example, a CEO controls the company budget. A President can merely suggest a budget to Congress.