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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

The illustration in the article is extremely appropriate.

It's quite strange why Americans tolerate that an unelected, and even unappointed foreigner would destroy their country piece by piece. Isn't that exactly what the much-touted second amendment was designed to prevent?

Edit: YCombinator "AI Startup School" [0] used to present the list of speakers, and Musk was the first one on that list. Now there's no list anymore. It would be interesting to know if it means he's not coming, or if YC isn't comfortable with publishing their choices.

[0] https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus

Original text on that page was: YC is throwing our first-ever AI startup school in San Francisco on June 16 and 17th.\n\nAI Startup School will gather 2000 of the top CS seniors, masters, and PhD candidates in AI to hear from speakers including Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Andrej Karpathy, Andrew Ng and many more

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> It's quite strange why Americans tolerate that an unelected, and even unappointed foreigner would destroy their country piece by piece.

The guy is certainly unelected but he's a citizen of the US who happened to be born overseas. When do you believe someone stop being a foreigner?

When one holds no multiple citizenships?

There’s a bit of a difference between a foreigner and a dual citizen (or a person with multiple citizenships).

The most strident proponents of the 2nd Amendment voted for this.

> Isn't that exactly what the much-touted second amendment > was designed to prevent?

IIANM, the second amendment is motivated by the interest of maintaining a militia, mostly against invasion attempts like the British one in the US war of independence.

That is not what most second amendment proponents assert

> Isn't that exactly what the much-touted second amendment was designed to prevent?

The historical record is actually very clear on this: the second amendment was designed to prevent the United States from establishing a standing army.

Re elected: Musk's DOGE role was very public before the election. A major part of the Trump campaign promises was to do this.

Re foreigner: Would it be ok if he pays $5M for the gilded citizenship or should the job be given to a citizen? Would that make it ok?

It would not make it ok if he was American-born, but the fact that he wasn't even born in the US adds insult to injury.

> It's quite strange why Americans tolerate that an unelected ...

They literally voted for this nonsense. Trump won by an undeniable landslide. His previous administration, campaign, and his constant stream of consciousness on X provides all you need to know about his plans, ambitions, intentions, etc. He's not doing a bait and switch here; quite the opposite. So, people can't really claim ignorance. Or that this isn't exactly what they voted for.

As for all the outragism, end of world nonsense, and general level of panic visible among (mostly) the minority of people that didn't vote for this, I don't think it's that helpful, constructive, or persuasive. This constant level of "OMG we're all going to die!!!! Boooohoooohoooo!" is just endless variants of the boy who cried wolf. It's having the opposite effect of training people into learning that this is all fine. Who even listens to that stuff anymore? Probably not a majority of voters. That's how we ended up with this situation.

And given that there are mid term elections coming up November next year, now would be a good time to come up with a better plan than just handing that on a silver platter to Trump. Again. There's a sense of urgency that is a bit missing here. Democrats are in full on panic & headless chicken mode currently. That's worrying.

There's a real possibility to win back the house and senate for Democrats. But that will only mean something if those two institutions can live up to their constitutional responsibilities and not be deadlocked into inaction; like they have been for the last half century or so.

Is there a plan beyond just trying to restore the status quo that lead to all this? That doesn't sound like a very good plan to me. Why should people vote for that? If there is a plan, can somebody please articulate what it is? All this reactive outragism is wearing people out.

I'm btw. a European moderate (in case you thought otherwise); I don't vote for populists. And I have no vote in this. I do have a stake in the outcome. All this nonsense is threatening to throw the world into big recessions, war and chaos. So, I am kind of grumpy with you people in the US. Get your shit together please. This is embarrassing.

It’s a little silly to write six paragraphs about people having unhelpful responses to something they are powerless to change and then end with “get your shit together”.

A good first step would be to stop the daily dose of outragism on what Trump, Musk, et al. did yesterday. Gloomy headlines like "The end of Weather Forecasting" are not helpful. The opposite actually. It re-enforces the notion that democrats don't have a better plan.

Given that Trump is demolishing federal institutions currently, what's the plan for rebuilding those? Raise a lot of taxes and rehire everyone? Might not go down that well with voters. Restore it exactly as it was in all its gridlocked and dysfunctional ways? Same thing. That's not a plan. It's not even the beginning of a plan. I get that people are upset and emotional about this. But, reality check: it's happening. So, what's the plan forward from that? Simple question. I'm not aware of a coherent debate about any of that.

My recommendation would be dealing with the shit that's raining down currently. Accept that federal institutions will have been downsized by the time power reverts to the Democrats. Given that, how do can they make it better? What's their vision for getting things back on the rails? I don't think a reset at the federal level is necessarily that bad even. This seems to be a bit of a taboo topic with democrats. Because it involves admitting that things maybe weren't that perfect. It's easier to whine about how bad things are than it is to suggest concrete alternatives.

Nah, that is what democrats were doing for years. Rational discourse does not work. It is not that democrats would never lie or never get emotional or whatever.

But what Trump made clear is that rational reasonable plans are not a path anywhere.

Trump and Musk plan to destroy our government institutions and sell off the parts and your advice is to just accept it and come up with a plan for what to do in the aftermath?

As someone who actually lives here, I think it is very appropriate to freak out a bit and want to put a stop to this. It’s very easy to destroy, but extremely difficult to build back. I like the post office, national parks, and the national weather service and would like to keep them as is, thank you very much.

Your attitude, shared by centrists in the US, is why we are in this current situation. Might I suggest you worry more about the AfD and less about US politics?

He did not win by a landslide. He didn’t even get a majority of the vote. The final tally was 49.8% - 48.3%. A victory of 1.5% is not a landslide.

Further, Trump spent a huge amount of his campaign denying any association with project 2025. I also don’t recall any moment where he said he would turn over control of the government to Elon Fucking Musk.

The ~36% of eligible non-voters "won". Reps had ~32%, Dems ~31%.

Something about the US makes its voting behavior resemble the uniform distribution.

Trump did nor wom by landslide. It was fairly close.

It really wasnt very close. Trump won 58% of the electoral college. Most since obama. You can disagree with how presidential elections are run but until that changes electoral college margin is all that matters

Even by that measure, it wasn’t a landslide. Trump’s electoral vote margin of victory is ranked at 44 out of 60 elections. And it’s not like he crushed it compared to Biden. Trump was at 57.99% in 2024 and Biden was at 56.88% in 2020 (47th place).

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

I meant popular vote. I mean yes, electoral college is designed to give south and conservatives advantages. But popular vote is what gives you legitimacy.

You seem angry. Trust me, you are not half as angry as we Americans who are watching our country about to burn. You don't have any skin in this game. Is your livelihood, your house, your assets, your family, your children, your friends, your university, your retirement, your city, your town, your civic life all at stake? It is for us. We are going to have to decide how much violence we will tolerate in a few months, and how much blood and money it will take. It's terrible. Here I was, just about to enter retirement, and now I am confronted with this idiocy by people with no morals, no ethic, no wisdom, about as ignorant as you can possibly imagine, with their brains eaten by TDS. I just can't.

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