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Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

It's not a clusterfuck. The librarian of congress move was a deliberate hostile attempt attempt by the executive to take control over the legislative branch. Just like AFL vs John Roberts is a hostile attempt to take over the judicial.

It's an concerted attempted authoritarian takeover through bureaucratic methods. When they exhaust this, you'll see them frustrated and declare states of emergencies. The founders wrote about this in the Federalist Papers, people like this have always existed.

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"It's not a clustefuck" ... proceeds to describe a clusterfuck ...

What was your intention here?

A clusterfuck us usually no real plan, and everyone deciding on their own, causing chaos.

No, what we are seeing is a coup. The USA has exhausted in causing coups in other parts of the world. Now, we are in a coup caused by the USA government.

The executive branch is captured. The courts are captured. Most of Congress is captured. Those left over whinge about 'illegal' and basically send out more emails for more donations. And throw in a few stump speeches.

>the exec, the courts, and a majority of congress

I genuinely don't understand how this can be a coup when all three branches agree. I mean sure, we are well outside the strict scope of Constitution, but that ship left generations ago.

The new wave of authoritarianism uses the bureaucracy and state machine against itself. They've learnt from the past, there's no Night of the Long Knives, or the burning of the Reichstag, that's too overt.

Look at Orbán, Erdogan, and similar new authoritarians, the coup is a slow grinding of every facet of democracy: grind the press, grind the judiciary, throw a new law into the mix made up by your cronies in the parliament/Congress, keep grinding at the foundations of democracy over decades and you get a shell of institutions that used to be the foundation of a democratic state being re-purposed to push the agenda of the dictator.

The veneer of institutions is the point, it's to make you have exactly this reaction:

> I genuinely don't understand how this can be a coup when all three branches agree.

Because you are expecting an overt coup, not a slow moving covert one.

> They've learnt from the past, there's no Night of the Long Knives, or the burning of the Reichstag, that's too overt.

They did actually try it, though, and all the prior involved got pardons from the president. Totally agree with you overall point, just wanted to point this out.

This book is a great (albeit drily written/translated) analysis of how an authoritarian state operated in practice on the day-to-day level, in contrast to the spectacular political turning points you mention. It documents the dull but important methodology of fiscal management, financial engineering, how the nazies restructured the existing bureaucracy to suit their own ends, and the legal and technical means they used to expropriate wealth from political enemies, out-groups, and eventually the subjects in annexed or conquered territories.

It's not an enjoyable read in either subject matter or style, but provides invaluable insights into the mechanics of authoritarian rule behind the iconic renditions of oppression in snappy uniforms.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805087260/hitlersbenefici...

> I genuinely don't understand how this can be a coup when all three branches agree.

The courts have been captured and politicized heavily. Clearance Thomas should be expelled for emoluments. Kavanaugh also for lying on the stand.

Congress has a bare majority for republicans. So getting impeachments for actual crimes by republicans is a non-starter.

POTUS and executive branch can run roughshod, and order all sorts of illegal actions. Congress won't impeach. And they can pardon anybody underneath them. Musk is a perfect example - no clearance, yet somehow 'legally' is destroying sections of government that was investigating him. And given a complete pass. Its also how ICE can kidnap and traffick people, all the while flaunting disobeidance from a federal judge.

This is a coup by the oligarchy against the people. And aside violent uprisings (of which I do not condone), there's not much at all we can do.

>The courts have been captured and politicized heavily

This isn't a real thing. They're not captured, people are just on them that you don't like and they're ruling against your values.

>Congress has a bare majority for republicans

So the majority is governing?

So, emoluments violations, bribery, and perjury should be legal?

I wasn't calling out party political disputes. I was calling out taking massive bribes, violating the emoluments clause, and perjury.

Your politics are showing. I prefer rule of law, not of kakistocrat.

There is no arguing with these people they don't have objectivity or critical thinking.they will just take this as a personal attack and dig in more. The only thing left is to prepare for the violent insurrection (which you don't condone) and maybe pray for the pendulum to swing the other way and we can have a parallel to McCarthyism purging the unamerican magats from our midst.

Where have you been for the past 25 years?? These are par for the course in our governing class. This isn't whataboutism, this is extensive behavior that we've seen for at least a generation now (e.g. expensive speeches to Wall St, congressional insider trading, revolving door of regulators/industry)

> Where have you been for the past 25 years?

This is a very myopic view.

In the past 3 months, we've seen curtailing of civil liberties (bypassing due process), open bribery (memecoin pay-to-play, Qatari airplane), illegal interference with independent agencies (firing head of CFPB), executive overreach ("emergency" tariffs), violations of free speech (punishing law firms for their clients), etc. None of this is precedented at this scale.

What you are doing is exactly what aboutism, by claiming that minor transgressions in the past excuse blatant authoritarianism.

The Clinton Foundation somehow wasn't open bribery? That was the most powerful political family in America for a generation. You think people paid him&her for speeches because they're talented orators?

Pelosi insider trading is a minor transgression? She was the most powerful congressman for years. You think she didn't do anything to earn those stock tips?

Wow, it's like you didn't even read/understand my comment.

Yes, those are problems. Congressional stock trading should be illegal, although it isn't at the moment. The Clinton Foundation was noticeably founded after Bill Clinton was president; lots of presidents get money for speeches, but typically after they hold elected office.

What you are missing is the scale and openness of the current corruption. Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, received a pearl necklace valued at $425 from Bangladeshi Prime Minister and was not allowed to keep it; now, Trump is getting a $400 million plane from the Qataris and apparently is allowed to keep it. Does that seem the same to you?

> This isn't a real thing. They're not captured, people are just on them that you don't like and they're ruling against your values.

They're not ruling against "my values", they're actually illegally. The people who are supposed to stop them aren't, and are thus captured.

It won't be a coup if they abide by the results of the 2026 election. Last time an election didn't go their way, they did not abide by the results.

It's a coup now because they are seizing power that has not been granted to them.

Firing the head of the CBFP, installing a non-approved Librarian of Congress, bypassing agency regulations such as IRS privacy laws, etc. That's all illegal. It's a coup by the President against the rest of the government.

What are you saying? It's all a big nothing burger until 2026? And then maybe it's still nothing?

Nope. That's not at all what I'm saying.

It's just not officially a coup until they refuse to cede power. We know they are very capable of it (already tried it once). In the meantime they are sowing chaos and destroying institutions.

A clusterfuck generally implies a mishandled situation. The author is saying that there was intention behind the actions and that this outcome was the goal.

Ah, _to me_ a clusterfuck is just a complex of terrible circumstances, it can be caused intentionally.

Thanks for the clarification.

A clusterfuck describes chaos and disorganization. This is just a deliberate attack, it is being executed well. It is just malicious.

People will prefer calling it both malicious and disorganized. Well executed sounds too positive.

Calling it well-executed is pragmatic. There's no reason to avoid positive-sounding things if they're true, especially not because it's positive.

  If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

  -- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

thanks for the pointer. I looked up AFL vs John Roberts, and the lawsuit seems straightforward and has a reasonable basis.

https://reason.com/volokh/2025/05/04/america-first-legal-fou...

"The suit was prompted by the refusal of the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office to respond to AFLF's FOIA requests for copies of communication with the offices of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Hank Johnson, two legislators who have worked overtime to stir up ethical allegations against sitting Supreme Court justices. The Judicial Conference and Administrative Office rebuffed the requests on the grounds that each are exempt from FOIA."

"The basis for AFLF's suit is that the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office are not part of the judiciary, but are instead executive branch agencies subject to FOIA. According to AFLF, neither entity is a "court," and insofar as each has other responsibilities, including the promulgation of rules governing federal courts and responding to Congressional inquiries, each is an "agency" under FOIA."

Someone with a hacker mindset and domain knowledge might want to understand the subtext of the case, which is more important.

I don't think I'll convince you otherwise, but those interested can read this counterpoint to the Reason link with more background and detail: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-ally-steph...

there was no information at your link that I didn't glean from the original article. I'm not an idiot, I can conceptualize the current-day-political divide wrt the issue, the same divide that has been in a tug of war my entire life, and also that the court may itself be influenced by that, but it's still an interesting issue, as are all issue wrt separation of powers.

I was raised in a very left wing family where pulling on the rope was required, it's in my blood.

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