It used to be that the US government had pride in its own professionalism. The US is now acting like the countries it loves to destabilize.
Ironically, it's destabilising itself on its own.
Or in jail. We’re not at the coup stakes of life and death, but we’re also like two months into this Presidency. (For what it’s worth, Trump isn’t currently being coup-ish. That’s been left to the pretender.)
It seems like they're spending 30% of effort on the areas that are likely to foment a counter-coup and 70% of their time attacking groups they have personal beefs with.
But of course they're not just focusing on the powerless, they're also annoying the powerful enough that I don't see how it ends well for them.
It's not like he's stopping aid to Ukraine while ruminating on dropping sanctions on our second largest enemy state and repeating word-for-word Kremlin talking points after having a prior relationship with their criminal enterprises for his real estate and an intelligence community espouse the use of foreign power to influence his election outcomes. That would be nuts.
It's not like he attempted to overthrow the government when he lost an election 4 years ago, then pardoned the violent criminals who were incarcerated for that act. Or outright saying he will ignore judicial rulings from unfavored judges while making executive orders that change explicitly language in the constitution, with an EO making it illegal for his executive branch employees to oppose his interpretation of law and installing Aparachniks in each agency to report those in non-compliance. That's a loony idea.
It's not like he's destroying all trade partnerships with allies and internal infrastructure/manufacturing investments simultaneously. That would be silly.
Reaching the altitude of space is much, much, easier than reaching orbital velocity.
This meant that during the Global War on Terror, people had legitimate questions about if Al Qaida could damage the ISS. The answer then was "no", but amateurs reached the Kármán line in 2004, students in 2019, and the current altitude record holder is 143 km.
I suspect that it is well within the capacity of random drug cartels in the US, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Haiti and Jamaica to destroy a Starship during launch, if they so desired.
A functioning US government is a reason not to do that. Nobody in any of those countries will want to risk Musk asking Trump for a favour in the form of a USSOCOM operation.
Destroy the US federal government, and there may well not be an USSOCOM left afterwards. And so far, DOGE has shown zero regard for the value of who they cut, e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/02/doge-nucl...
There are two problems: You have to have enough greater acceleration that you can catch it, and you have to have good enough targeting (and maneuverability) to actually hit it. Those are highly non-trivial problems.
Aiming is one of the easier things: huge target, multi-gigwatt heat signiature.
You’re describing boost-stage missile intercept. It’s incredibly hard.
For an extremely well advertised launch into a predetermined flight path of something which isn't even trying to hide its signature and where you can watch the livestream of the countdown?
Perhaps I'm still underestimating the challenge, but I think boost stage vs Starship is a much less of a challenge than boost stage vs. an actual weapon.
But yeah, given your background, if you say I'm wrong, I know to defer to you on this.
And one day they'll get into an accident, run into the wrong person, or die of old age and then what? Their legacy will be AI generated gold statues and maybe their name on a building.
If they ctually used that wealth to advance the human race (on the ground, not a hypothetical but infeasible future on another planet) that'd be another matter. A percentage of Musk's theoretical wealth can solve every American's financial trouble, give them an education, and make the US great again. But that means giving some of it away and they may need it for... What, anyway? What does Musk use his money for besides buying companies and spawning babies against their will?
At least MBS (an autocrat whose wealth and country are one) spends his money on stupidly large building and opulence like The Line and whatnot, which will either make the UAE the center of world wealth and prosperity, or which will be interesting to archeologists in 2000-4000 years.
But that's the problem of the 'capitalist west' (i'm not sure what is better or what would work); everyone is out for short term gain. Most people care about themselves and some of their close family/friends, but in the end, they couldn't give a flying f if the entire planet implodes when they die. We should be planning on a 2000 year timeline as humanity but instead we plan on 4-8 years instead. So far (but that might be reading the wrong propaganda), China seems to have a plan beyond 4 years and beyond Xi's life and not be in such a neckbreaking hurry of breaking everything over a few years more or less.
I’m not talking primarily about agent Krasnov allegation from a top Kazakh ex-spook (though that is an actual possibility), but about the well known Russian influence operations by financing what used to be extremists (both far-right and far-left) across the West.
Of course, if they get fired and there's nothing else for them to do, there will be uprisings.
There is almost zero causality in the U.S. government’s hiring and firing right now. Particularly relating to current conduct.
To the extent anyone has received job protection, it’s by getting politically fired and then seeking court protection.
So no, this is base cowardice and a lack of patriotism. Not rational action.
So in each workplace most were already marginalized or learned to hide these traits for their benefit. There are way more people in the ‘flight’ than the ‘fight’ camp.
The first firings were all people who knew a guy who knew a guy who wronged Trump. With that kind of retaliatory example, do you not think openly trying to course-correct would result in being fired?
Russia has no military advantage against ours, so there is no reason to placate them due to a threat of war (nukes excluded here, unless Russia has rapidly outpaced us). The only thing that's left is the relationship between the leaders themselves.
If Trump were truly interested in isolationism, he'd instead have simply pulled support for Ukraine and not offered to be a part of negotiations, but many more things were offered for no obvious gain to us.
Recent battle experience is kind of an advantage.
Russia is running a full-scale war against US and NATO weaponry in Ukraine for three years, studying it and refining its tactics.
What was the last battle for USA? Houthis in Yemen? Few airstrikes and limited engagements.
It is very naive to believe Putin doesn’t want to cripple the US economy or that war is not a real threat. The US is critically dependent on semiconductors, and TSMC is much closer to Russia than to America. Think it through.
At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness.
I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy, but battle experience is not a problem.
The US military has been engaged in conflicts for decades, but most of them involved fighting non-state actors or weaker conventional forces, not a high-intensity war against an advanced military.
The US military is far a cut above everything else, in terms of tactical readiness, sheer firepower and especially effective size.
We outspend any other nation - China included of which we spend an estimated 2.5 times more than - and we have been in that lead position for decades, not just years.
While yes, US forces haven’t squared off against conventional militaries of any note in some time, the US military has at least been engaged in real conflict. To my recollection the Chinese military have undertaken no significant military campaigns in the last 20+ years and lack the air & sea power to functionally match anything the US military can throw at it by comparison.
Which leaves ground forces, which is both vulnerable to air power and is effectively the numbers game the Chinese can win outright in a protracted war that escalated to that level, and cyber warfare, which the Chinese have proven to be quite adept at but the US military has been aware and developing counter measures against that for a long time as well
This talking conventionally of course.
China being a nuclear power means it would be unlikely to escalate past a certain point if anyone is acting rationally. There’s no reason you want to give another nuclear power a reason to use those weapons, and certainly the US nuclear arsenal is not one anyone wants to see fired either.
So in all likelihood this continues as a Cold War
Nonetheless, I feel the need to point out that it's budget is a terrible indicator for that.
I'm not even american and have heard just how massively overcharged everything is that's sold to the US military.
It's entirely possible that i.e. China, that can produce their military equipment could actually be way better equipped then it's budget implies. I don't think that Chinas military has caught up to the US yet, but the military spending feels like a bad comparison considering how differently they're financed.
To which I want to add, that even though the DoD modes have its own (and worth addressing) budget process issues they’re at least largely getting what they are paying for in most circumstances as well as continuing to fund R&D at a fairly robust clip.
In the area of defense R&D in particular that large gap in budgetary spending will matter a lot more than building any “well known” military equipment as the next generation will come online faster than other nations can keep up without ramping their own spending
Well, Russia is a nuclear power, and not everyone is acting rationally. Russia got part of it's own territory occupied now, and some important oil and gas facilities are literally being bombed, not talking about regular cities and homes.
Russian nuclear doctrine is: Russia could launch nuclear weapons in response to an attack on its territory by a non-nuclear-armed state.
Their warheads are still at bay, why is that? I don't believe they will ever fly, because no-one is stupid enough to make the first move, and the war can go on neglecting them.
Prior to invading Ukraine one might have thought so, but the experience there shows the challenge in thinking that.
Meanwhile the last time the US military deployed to a traditional battlefield the opponent army lasted a matter of months.
Lord willing we’ll never know about these hypotheticals.
You may be surprised how the public can be united against a human enemy. The success of the Right during COVID was turning the outrage away from the invisible virus and onto the humans forcing them to wear a mask.
The famous example is the F4 Phantom getting beat in dogfights against the Mig 21 in Vietnam. It was mostly solved by changing the tactics and to improvements to later model aircraft.
Obviously dogfights aren't realistic in the modern age but that is just one of many variables which might lead to an unexpected deficit. Robustness, reliability, repairability, availablity of parts, ability to operate out of unimproved airfields, using poor qualify fuels etc.
Western military tactics are still working well against Russian commanders, but they being simply larger population wise, can if they’re willing, win a war of attrition simply because the Ukraine doesn’t have the bodies or internal resources to fight forever. It’s the same strategy general Grant used to decisively win the US civil war
Putin really waited out the US election. For reasons I can’t seem to grok Trump wants to ally with the world’s dictators. He’s proven himself a reliable ally to Putin at this point.
Had Trump lost the election I imagine we would see Russia seriously considering or even starting its withdrawal from the conflict.
Back to the military bit again: there is no way the war in the Ukraine is showing anything other than how vulnerable and poorly aged the equipment of the Russian military is and how their tactics have not improved much if any since the 1980s
there's a medium sized chunk the American Right, which has now won, who unrelated to Russia or China or whatever actually want the US to become sci-fi dystopia of authoritarian christo-white-nationalism.
The US is destabilising itself with the help of Russia.
I don't have to pick up a sign to try and defend my country, it's Russia's fault.
I don't have to fight against my president to preserve democracy, it's Russia's fault.
It used to be that voters actually cared about professionalism, principles, and critical thinking.
Campaigning on really any of those doesn't work these days, its not surprising that our government has those same shortcomings.
The phrase "good enough for government work" has never been a positive in my lifetime.
But I'm sure the Dulles brothers were proudful...
This IS what people voted for. American business practices applied to the government.
I very much doubt this is what people want. But people aren't asked their opinion, and there's a difference between disagreeing and starting an insurrection to prevent a coup.
They think they have little invested in the stability of the system.
The lowest income voters trended towards Harris. As did the highest income voters. Trump's support lies solidly in the middle class.
If somebody is middle-income and thinks they aren't benefiting from a stable government and economy, I'm not really sure what to say... could we collectively do better? Absolutely. Is burning it all to the ground even remotely sensible? No, not even close.
It is not what people want. The Trump administration’s popularity is already below 50%, and much lower among independents (around 30% depending on the poll).
Many people aren’t yet aware of what’s happening. A lot of the electorate is getting their news from filtered sources like Fox News or various far right media outlets. Joe Rogan has gone all in on praising Musk and Trump. People who get their information from Trump are being fed lies that are obvious to anyone not inside the bubble. They don’t know what’s happening because their heroes are telling them it’s all necessary and good.
When you start polling people on the actual actions taken, things being cancelled, and consequences the approval is very low.
Anecdotally, I have some extended family who were very pro-Trump. One of them recently discovered that her job was funded through a federal grant, and now it’s likely going to be cut even though she doesn’t work for the government directly. They also discovered that one of their family members is covered by Medicaid through an avenue that’s looking like it will be cut. They went through a stage of disbelief, but now they’re in a phase where they’re sure everything will be fine and Trump will get it fixed. It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.
I suspect that other scapegoats can be found to blame for their problems; as you say, their news sources will offer them all sorts of filters to deflect blame from the obvious source.
Woke, Biden, DEI, Obama, trans, Hillary, Soros, gays, illegals, fluoride. Take your pick.
Now now, there's no need to choose, you can just blame all of them all at once!
My biggest mystery is how these people have the energy to hate so many things so deeply. It sounds exhausting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
> The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies: Goldstein and the enemy super-state of the moment. In re-directing the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's governance of Oceania and toward non-existent external enemies, the Party minimises thoughtcrime and the consequent subversive behaviours of thoughtcriminals.
The only thing it gets wrong is the variety of Goldsteins.
I keep hearing stuff like this, but it doesn't seem to be widespread enough to seem to matter, at least in my circle. There's this whole topic of conversation where there's this voter regret thing. I'm in Michigan, so there's been a few of these I've seen proclaiming the Muslim community are having regrets voting for Trump (it was a big thing around the election due to the whole Gaza situation, because voting for Harris was apparently not going to be enough). But I am worried I'm just seeing bullshit propaganda and these types of things aren't actually what's happening because everyone I've talked to seem to be content with the way things are going. It's incredibly weird.
The real interesting voter regret is when the likely Trump voters start realizing that their guy isn’t who they thought. It’s not going to happen quickly because denial and rationalization can go on for a very long time.
I am starting to see it in some of the VCs and crypto people I know personally and follow on Twitter. The launch of the Trump memecoin went through a rationalization cycle where the crypto people tried to spin it as a good thing, but now nearly all of them have given up and agreed it was a bad move for crypto
One of the loudest pro-Trump VCs in my state has gone from being a cheerleader to asking questions about what DOGE is actually doing. The trigger for him was, strangely enough, Musk having public issues with the parents of two of his children. Something about realizing that he’s not a good family man and father finally broke his illusions of Musk as the perfect hero.
I think it’s little things like this that will start making people ask questions about their heroes. The more topics and agencies they get their hands on, the more people will be impacted and be forced to reconcile their reality with their imagined ideals of this administration.
It's not cool anymore when someone else is running the scam
We need to be building a platform that houses the left and right in order to have a chance at standing up to this. This will be a real litmus test for the US: do we favor our tribal affiliations more than the country that enables us to have those affiliations? Or are we willing to put them aside for the greater good?
We're seeing a moment now where the "pro-crypto" team is bifurcating (really this has always been true but it's more obvious now) into good crypto vs bad crypto. Or mission driven vs profit maximalising. Oversimplifications of a nuanced political, tribal landscape with many many sides but you get the idea.
Democrats being anti all crypto was clearly wrong, attacking the more legitimate parts MORE fiercely than the illegitimate parts. But the flip side is Trump's "crime season" as they call it in crypto twitter, which also sucks. Maybe some day we'll get crypto that is useful, profitable, and designed in a beneficial way. That day is not today.
It also hasn't fully hit yet. The layoffs are in progress, already awarded grant money is still paying salaries. 3-6 months is when the pain will really begin. Until then, I think a lot of people are still thinking that it either won't really happen to them, or that Trump will somehow make an exception just for their particular federal money pipeline.
On top of that, I am no expert top of the job market software engineer. If I lose this job I am going to be competing against people significantly better than me because so many others have (or will) be losing their jobs. Basically, this is the potential beginning of the end of my career.
Thankfully, I think I'm okay through this year, and probably next... but after that, completely a mystery. And that's only because we have agreements for funding through 2026. There are no guarantees beyond that.
Ah, straight from denial into that other stage, more denial
Just under 50% of the population voted for President Trump, so it's a given that "already" the popularity is below 50%.
I'm not just being pedantic, it's an important distinction.
156,302,318 voted (~63.9% of ~244 million eligible voters, extrapolated)
77.3 million voted for Trump (~49.8% of voters).
So that's ~31.6% of eligible voters or ~22.7% of the US population.
- I live in a deeply partisan state where the outcome was predetermined: a disproportionate amount of those who didn't vote would have to vote in the opposite of those who voted (if I lived in a different state the pressure to vote would have been greater)
- I lack an easy means to get to my polling location and my state makes absentee ballots difficult to get
- I would have probably also needed to do some ID stuff (my ID is currently expired, for reasons)
- Registering to vote puts my name/address/registered party/etc onto easily searchable public websites like https://voterrecords.com/
My reasons aren't great but they're reasons. If there was less friction to voting I would have voted, as I recognize it's an important civic duty.
People voted for tariff and massive day 1 changes and federal cuts.
People wanted a loud strong man president who makes deals.
These actions ARE what people (who voted) wanted… people just didn’t think about the outcome
I hear that it is the same people who voted Donald last time who voted Donald again this time. No others voted for him.
The issue seems to be that many people who are not trumpists did not vote at all.
Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that if everyone who could vote actually did vote, then Donald would have lost.
So ... maybe he won, but i hardly think he represents the majority is US citizens.
The 51% of voters that voted for him… (correction: 49.8%)
> I hear that it is the same people who voted Donald last time who voted Donald again this time. No others voted for him.
This is wrong. There were more republican voters this time around than last time.
> The issue seems to be that many people who are not trumpists did not vote at all. Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that if everyone who could vote actually did vote, then Donald would have lost.
This is a constant issue in the US. Low voter turnout causes seemingly unpopular candidates to win.
Go out and vote, people. Please.
> So ... maybe he won, but i hardly think he represents the majority is US citizens.
Never said it did. But if you don’t voice your opinion when it matters, then your opinion literally doesn’t count.
So, the American people voted for trump and this administration. Either through their vote or their inaction.
Nitpick: 49.8%
The Democrats offered a really bad alternative (Biden) for most of the campaign season. Even if you liked his politics, there was (IMHO) legitimate reason to question his mental competence.
My guess is that Trump would have lost if the Democrats had fielded a less-bad alternative.
Kamala really ran a campaign like someone trying to lose.
Somehow Americans have really bought into it, the lies, the disinformation, the destruction. I cannot understand, the moving targets shift (CRT, immigration, DEI, cancel culture, wokeness, whatever is next) so it isn't about them whatsoever, they are just the distractions being fed to gather support, there's something else much deeper and darker broken in American society that became so obfuscated by these distractions to the point where I have absolutely no fucking idea why half of the country seems to hate everything that brought the USA to the position it had on the global stage.
Perhaps it's just hubris after a very long period of quasi-absolute power, seems like power corrupts not only individuals but whole nations.
That's hard to accept, given what HN was once. The difference between ten years ago and last year was noticeable; the difference between last year and this is much starker.
You're in a war, even here.
It can be Russian disinfo but it's definitely not only that.
That being said, the writing was on the wall in 2016, the first time Trump ran, HN (and the anglosphere internet in general) took a sharp dive down in quality, and Covid made it all worse.
I just try to remember that the printing press caused a lot of wars, but over the longer term it lead to a better world.
What they did was see the way 9/11 reset what was allowed in mainstream American discourse, and that as conservatives moved into a tightly-managed bubble they were also willing to give up the idea of verifiable facts in favor of what felt right. That created a big weakness for a patient adversary as they didn’t need to try to get people to trust, say, RT but rather pick which existing voices to quietly support or try seeding ideas to.
I think it’s better to treat them like a catalyst or the accelerant on a fire where they didn’t start it but they both made it worse and might not have much control over it at this point.
His "charm" is that he won't do 3/4 of what he says, the difficulty is figuring out which quarter he is going to enact.
Yes! I know apparently smart people who voted for Trump because they thought that his more extreme rhetoric was merely intended to wind up the left. Like the first time he got elected. Except that this time he had a plan.
This time he (illegally) fired a bunch of them right out of the gate. The Heritage Foundation wasn't caught off guard (and a bit out in the cold) by his success this time, and backed him with a plan. They did it out in the open, the recruiting and a whole lot of specifics about what they wanted to do and how they were going to do it. It wasn't even close to a secret, you could literally go download and read documents, watch interviews of key figures in front of friendly audiences, that kind of thing.
With the Vance pick, you could also easily spot the Yarvin influence & connections and make some guesses about some things. When Elon started worming his way in, it was clear that side of it wasn't just going to be in the head of a VP who can't personally do much, but was going to have traction.
His voters who are now like "WTF?" need to sit down and have a serious think about how they got conned by someone who was standing under a neon sign with a flashing arrow pointing down at him that read "I am conning you! Signed: Donald Trump". Like I'm not sure it even counts as a con, it was so transparent.
Everyone else… yeah.
Meanwhile Trump isn't even able to keep phrases like "rare earth minerals" correct in his head (repeatedly calling them "raw earth"). To be honest 90% of the meeting was him waffling on about how this news organisation was brilliant (because they give him a softball question) and this one was going bankrupt because their rating suck (because they asked a difficult question). You could see Zelensky trying to keep himself from rolling his eyes.
voters are very very dumb for believing him, but he did lie.
Again, I don't think people are stupid. I do think they'll say one some things in mixed company to hide their racism.
This continued labeling of all fiscal conservatives as racists is a key reason Democrats keep losing to an obviously crazy person. Nobody’s going to vote for the party which calls them a racist.
A lot of fiscal conservatives are “middle class” undecided voters who have mortgages and kids to worry about. Unsurprisingly they voted for the party who promised lower taxes over the one which did nothing but accuse them of racism.
It will be far too late. That's why they're going so fast. The damage comes with a huge latency. Perhaps America can be saved and this is nothing but a bump in the ride, I'm no Nostradamus, but this could very well be the end of the Free West.
Europe seems to be realising it must get its act together. Europe + Canada + the Americas have a hope in hell of containing America if it goes off the rails internationally. (When Trump & Musk tip the economy into recession it will be tempting to drum up a stupid war. My guess would have been Iran. But who the hell knows.)
It honestly hasn't existed for decades.
If I was a governor of a blue state, I’d be strongly encouraging laid off government workers to work for my state. I’d also be working to eliminate the trade deficit (including federal taxes and spending) with rest of the US.
Why subsidize this crap if it’s not going to lead to economic prosperity, security, or even pretending the constitution still exists?
Also, Ontario supplies half the US’s nickel, and is threatening an embargo. That’d shut down a bunch of our factories in short order. They could also cut off electricity supplies to the north, but I get the impression the US grid would mostly absorb that (probably thanks to investment in smart grids for renewables, ironically).
I’m not sure “they could have known, but didn’t bother to learn, and instead voted based on Fox News and talk radio and podcast and Facebook post bullshit” is enough to say they didn’t vote for this. If it is, that’s… kinda usually the case.
…and that reversing lasts until the next time they turn on their TV and get reset by Fox News. I used to see it all the time with my parents. Now I just don’t talk to them much.
On a related note, I find it interesting that your comment is being downvoted while contributing to the dialogue productively.
Inference is left as an exercise to the reader.
Or is brigading considered a kind of astroturfing?
"If only the Tsar knew"
But, anyone who has ever been through such a rewrite knows they're usually more trouble than they're worth, and no matter what, you will lose A LOT. Doesn't matter how thorough you are or how many requirements you capture. Most are lost to the ether, never again to be seen... until the exact moment you need them.