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Comment by averageRoyalty | Hacker News Reader

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"We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrati...

Yarvin's writing as Moldbug is very clear on the subject. Both Thiel and Vance are public admirers and have reflected Yarvin's RAGE (Retire All Government Employees) in public. Thiel acolytes and admirers are staffing DOGE, drawn from tech communities and web forums.

They do not believe in functioning democracy but instead in a Randian "utopia" where the lords of capital run regions of the country as kings and the poor are turned into "biofuel."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

There's a website that mockingly tracks the p2025 progress. I can't say whether it's accurate or fully honest.

I assume it's exaggerating but is pointing at some red flags and parallels:

https://www.project2025.observer/

It's from the admin of r/keep_track. It is far from complete (missing lots) and the summaries they write aren't always accurate.

The Federal Reserve section is one that's clearly incomplete, for instance, including just two goals when the document has several (e.g. curbing last-resort lending is missing).

That said, the site's a good portal if you're aware of those limitations. I really like that each item has a link to the PDF.

Yeah, the plans have been laid out in the public for a while.

We're seeing it happen in real time.

There are also various public talks and other published pieces by members of the admin, laying out exactly what they're planning to do (and now are doing) and why.

I dunno when they figured out they can just conduct conspiracies in public and nobody will call them on it, so there's little reason to bother with secrecy, but that's how they work now, and it's been weird to watch. I first noticed it with Bush II when prominent members of his administration published multiple pieces (before he was elected) calling for war with Iraq, and stating that the US should take essentially any half-decent excuse to go to war with Iraq even if that excuse itself is bad, then... did exactly that! And got away with it! Inexplicably, the media would interview them on the topic of going to war with Iraq and didn't make all the questions about that. It was barely a footnote to media coverage of the run-up to the war, which was so damn weird when anyone could just go read the text of these pieces themselves, with familiar names on them, telling us exactly how they were planning to fuck us. Didn't matter, they could just straight-up publish "here's how we're going to screw the public" and then screw the public exactly that way, and laugh all the way to the goddamn bank (literally, in many cases—they made so friggin' much money off the post-9/11 security apparatus and the wars)

It is really frustrating how news organizations don’t remember previous news cycles and connect the threads. That’s why the trump strategy of flooding the system with outrage constantly is so effective. People can’t maintain the narrative over time and so things get buried.

The public WANTS to be lied to.

They were basically asking for it.

People in positions of power gave the public exactly what they want.

Not sure how true this all is, but it's a centralized discussion of different systems of thinking I've seen associated with the current administration's tack https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/18/jd-vance-w...

If you prefer video, this explains it pretty well.

https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no

That video is terrifying.

If what happened to USAID isn’t evidence enough for you, I suggest you go and read up on Project 2025. Below is a link to the chapter on the commerce department where they call for the dismantling of NOAA. As the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russel Vought is one of the most powerful men in the executive branch and was one of the main architects of Project 2025.

Enjoy your reading.

https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA...

This isn't comprehensive but has been helpful: https://www.project2025.observer/

(also woo lucky 7777 karma)

Thanks, that's very interesting! I don't follow US politics closely, so it gives me a starting point.

The "starve the beast" strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast) has been around for a long time and is something that some right wing conservative people want to do. E.g. Norquist's quote that "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.".

As someone else mentioned, this isn't only about improving efficiency of the government but also about it doing less. So things that currently you would be getting from the government you would no longer be getting. You might agree or disagree with this idea.

Predicting what Trump is going to do is not easy. I don't think he really knows himself each day what he will get up to. Mostly draw a lot of attention to himself, seems the main goal. He's doing fantastic on that front. Regarding policy, he is a lot more purposeful vs his previous term and he is pretty closely following the Project 2025 playbook:

https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1itd7xq/whats...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RHMnJmuv82n6OuY8KYmJ...

Enacting government policy primarily through executive orders is an "interesting" approach. I would say that's not how you want a government to work. Maybe Trump's extreme use of EOs will prompt some reform or maybe it will become the new norm. The other branches of the US government don't seem very interested in actually performing their job.

The congress in 2021 seemed very interested in doing their job but the minority in the Senate did a really good job of obstructing anything and everything using the pocket filibuster.

meta: it's interesting because this kind of disingenuous "Just asking questions. I'd love to know more!" had been pretty effective at shutting down conversation when the topics were abstract. People were inevitably tired of explaining the same things over and over to a contingent that didn't want to understand.

But now that our country is being imminently destroyed by these treacherous looters, there are enough people ready to immediately jump in with straightforward answers that the FUD is a mere speed bump, making the technique pretty useless for shutting down discussion and consensus.

I'm not from your country and don't follow its politics closely. The GP had said that the intent had been clearly written but provided no breadcrumbs for me to research further.

Your country makes up 5% of the worlds population, the other 95% of us are not all following that closely and certainly not trying to commit some form of sabotage by asking for more information.

You're voluntarily in a thread about US politics. If this is your first such thread, reading it would have gotten you the background.

Also, the "I haven't seen" construction is quite dodgy on its own, as it has become common pattern of the neofascists to feign ignorance rather than acknowledge details.

If it was really an innocent one time question, you're certainly not the only one to have been harmed by this destruction.

There were about 10 comments on the brand new thread at the time. I replied in context to someone saying "these people" are trying to "destroy the country" and have written openly about it. There was not enough context at the time for me to research further, so I asked for more information.

I'm not aware of any HN rule for you to need to be a subject matter expert to participate and ask questions.

I'm not across "neofascist" playbooks, but I assume if you provide evidence backing up a claim you've made then it strengthens the claim to those reading it.

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