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Comment by 9283409232 | Hacker News Reader

It should be clear at this point that DOGE is trying to create a unified database of all persons in the US for targeting. Every single bit of data that they can get about you from the government or social media will be tagged to you Minority Report style. They were clear about wanting to deport citizens to El Salvador as well. Once you are identified as the other side they will come for you. If you are waiting for it to get worse before taking action and getting involved, we are already at that point.

> And Berulis noticed that an unknown user had exported a "user roster," a file with contact information for outside lawyers who have worked with the NLRB.

Possibly looking for lawyers for Trump to target with EOs or blackmail.

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If someone is incompetent enough to understand Cobol databases, I doubt they are thinking about it on this level.

Given all of Musks actions, he is probably wanting to destroy any agency that went against him, because he truly believes he is the humanities savior and his companies are doing things the right way.

How you are getting downvotes is beyond me. People are finally waking up to the idea that the whole point of the Trump admin is to privatize the government, but haven't woken up to the fact that we are entering an era of state terror. Keep your heads buried HN, you'll be dragged kicking and screaming into reality in a few months anyways.

It's extremely frustrating and something I've thought a lot about over the years where we were pretty obviously building towards this outcome. A couple things:

First the "average" american is softly but ideologically committed to liberalism¹ & democracy as fundamental values. From that perspective the mind kind of recoils from accepting this. If this is really what's happening, what does civic obligation demand of me? How does that reconcile with my inability to keep my family safe in the face of a motivated & powerful state that wishes to harm me through them? Easier to believe this isn't what is happening, I don't need to take action yet. A powerful example of motivated reasoning.

Second a significant part of the userbase here, as with the general population, supports some or all of these actions. Simple as.

¹ Like in the traditional sense, ie "a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law" from wikipedia.

> Second a significant part of the userbase here, as with the general population, supports some or all of these actions. Simple as.

People support what they claim to do doing and are naive enough to believe they are doing what they say without asking questions about why they seem to be going out of there way to avoid transparency or providing any real evidence to their claims.

They're downvoting it because it feels bad. And well, it does! This sucks major ass.

Part of me is sympathetic to them because a lot of these people are people who live privileged lives and have never before been in any political pressure. These people have previously been able to just detach from politics because they knew, no matter what, they would end up on top. And now, that assumption is no longer true and they have the enter a world that a variety of minority groups have already been living in. They have to face the reality that politics isn't just something on the TV, but something that affects their lives.

If the administration was even remotely competent, this would be scary. There is EASILY a list of things that they could do if they truly cared about going full authoritarian.

But when they start doing stuff like tarrifs for no reason what so ever, to the point where even Musk thinks its stupid, the situation is sad more than scary. US has lost its edge for literally nothing in return.

Ignoring court orders, grabbing people off the streets to disappear, and publicly wondering how they can deport citizens isn't scary to you?

I mean, scary is a relative term. Its just as scary as Trump being legally immune to anything he does, as granted by Supreme Court.

The Republicans are basically still at the mercy of the economy - Trump backed of tariffs real quick when Japan started selling off US debt on the cheap. So I don't think its going to get levels of Saddam Hussein authoritarian. But time will tell.

The thing is, just like in Russia, smart people will know when to leave, and will leave, which is good. As soon as it becomes economically better to work in EU, you will have lots of talented people immigrating there which will bolster their economy.

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