Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
Same reason unions always work hardest when fighting on behalf of the worst workers. If you go to bat for a man who can't do better elsewhere he'll go to bat for you in return.
But wait, the situation is more complicated than that you say? Why yes, that's exactly the point. Two of us can play at the stupid smug oversimplification game.
While the effect being described is real to an extent, distilling it to the point you did is useless because there is so much more nuance. Why assume the place was staffed with first rate talent to begin with? And even if there is a lot of first rate talent many will stick around because they don't care who they serve (people not like this don't tend to make careers in government TBH).
The CIA, for example, is entirely above the law.
Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head of the CIA, unless the CIA is effectively answerable to some other authority despite not being answerable to the law, and then it is equivalent to a dictatorship by that higher authority.
No it's not. I can commit all manner of illegal acts in my home unnoticed, that doesn't make me a dictator.
Then they got caught hacking congressional computers to delete evidence.
Nothing happened to them.
They are above the law. You are not.
One, source?
Two, this above reproach. Not above the law. They deleted the evidence, they didn't just blow the scandal off. (Historically, our IC was popular. Right now, it's the deep state. You're seeing political appointees at the FBI and CIA exert control.)
Analogies don't work when they aren't analogous.
My point is their actions are committed outside the law. They've just been able to avoid punishment by covering it up. What they are not is above the law, at least not in the long run. (There are absolutely short bouts where the CIA acts above the law overseas, and rare cases where it has done so domestically. But the fact that they're covering it up betrays that they're crafty bastards, not invincible ones.)
Being above the law is necessary but not sufficient to be a dictator.
We also don’t know enough about the internal politics of the CIA to assert much about the head of the CIA.
Anything else could blow the cover for next time.
To be exact, CNN reports that for the period Sep - Dec there have been ~30 boats destroyed in ~26 attacks, with at least ~105 deaths in these operations.
The US govt is of course claiming narcotics smugglers ("narcoterrorism") while others say they are not. The truth is probably somewhere inbetween, though who knows one which end of the spectrum.
What I think is maybe more interesting is the general pressure being applied to Venezuela by the US and the EU.
Stand in the middle of fifth Avenue and shoot someone :)
Have political enemies executed
Get his face on Mount Rushmore
Disband congress
Disband the Supreme Court
Keep Jimmy Kimmel off air
Get Jon Stuart to shut up
Get James comey indicted
Get a national holiday named after him
Etc.
Even when we focus on things he tried to do, there is a lot he couldn’t. Let alone when you look at things he didn’t try to do.
lots of these are of course also just a distraction to discuss at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner vs you know, other things
You said "anything", in the context of dictatorship. I only used items in this list which IMO you can reasonably say Putin, an actual dictator, can do. Right now. Except the first one! Because that was a joke, a reference to something he himself said he could do.
If you want to change to "anything which has backroom deal importance, not just bread and games for the masses, but the real things, if you know you know", that's a (slightly) different list.
But, it's also a different comment.
I think he could succeed in principle re: Mount Rushmore, to be honest. I think eventually people will cave in and agree to do it, and then they will just pray to cholesterol that they can wait it out.
I believe Trump will manufacture a crisis before he's out of office in a bid to maintain control. I believe he will have learned from Bush Jr. that a simple war isn't good enough, and it needs to be a genuine emergency.
I believe he'll do whatever he can to make that happen. Native born terrorist, or war with a close country, or absolutely over the top financial crash. Something awful that lets him invoke some obscure rule that lets him stay in power with congressional approval - he'll just skip the congressional approval part like he already does.
See you in about 2 years.
There is literally no such obscure rule, and a new Congress will be seated two weeks before the 2029 Presidential Inauguration.
Elections, and the compulsory ends of terms, inauguration of new Congresses, etc, happen on schedule without regard to any exceptional cases, including Civil War.
If he can get a majority of the Electoral College for a third term, and a majority in both houses of Congress in 2028, then things get much more complicated.
But there is no other path. Elections matter, and don't let anyone discourage you from believing that they don't matter enough to vote.
Fewer than you would a year or nine ago, certainly, and a lot of people are working very hard on closing the gap.
Democracy is a spectrum. There have always been significant flaws with American democracy, but you'd be mad to not observe significant, active regression and effort by the government to replace it with something else.
Wasn't too hard to put together a quick graph of the past decade for the U.S. using the World Press Freedom Index (relative ranking and score) - an annual ranking of 180 countries published by Reporters Without Borders that measures the level of press freedom.
If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.
I love these.
I'm not a 1A guy, I think that for instance people with a history of domestic violence shouldn't be armed (that is what I would cite as "common sense"), but this statement really damages your credibility. Of course semiautomatic rifles are useful for both hunting and for self defense. They are effective weapons. That's the problem.
Whut? How the fuck did you make that jump?
AR-15 rifles are useless for hunting. They are too small to reliably kill large game (deer) and too large for small game (rabbits). Sure, they're fine for coyotes, but if you're buying an AR-15 to hunt coyotes, then you should just stop.
AR-15s are also useless for self-defense. They are too bulky for indoor use, and the bullets can penetrate multiple walls. A regular semi-auto handgun is far superior if you're looking to protect yourself against domestic violence.
It's useless for hunting, but you identify circumstances it's useful in. You say it's useless for self defense because it's bulky, I've heard a hundred people say it's ideal because it's easier to be proficient with a rifle than with a pistol.
Say whatever you want, but when you make absolute statements like that, it damages your credibility. That's my feedback for you.
Could you describe a specific scenario one of those hundred people might be imagining?
So a shotgun then?
Or post a link to a tiresome comment sections where it's been done countless times.
But until 2A is amended there's nothing we can do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...
That’s why I love the conversations.
One of my favorite trivia questions is: how long has it been since Congress has had staff scientists?
That sounds reinsuring, but it is completely false. The idea that the pendulum swings is just regression to the mean: sure, after a terrible president, the next one is likely to be less terrible. But there is nothing that implies that after a far-right regime will come a far-left one. In fact, if you look at History in various countries around the world, this seems very unlikely.
> If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.
Don’t count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to the centre. The American culture hasn’t changed that much and American leftists did not suddenly become competent at getting popular support.
Looking at the history of left wing movements in countries post-WWII, can you think of a reason why they wouldn't be successful and far-right ones would? The Cold War may have been a factor.
> Don’t count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to the centre.
The center doesn't exist anymore. The right-wing has labeled the US Democratic Party as extreme left. There should be a term for 'forcing your opposition to materialize because you are unable to distinguish between propaganda and reality'.
In western democracies, I can think of a couple. For example, the wave of left-wing intellectualism that was prevalent up until the 1980s got somewhat lost and lost contact with the lower classes, which left an opening for far-right populists.
> The center doesn't exist anymore. The right-wing has labeled the US Democratic Party as extreme left.
You’re right. In that frame of reference, it might indeed regress to the far left, but that would still be slightly to the left of Bill Clinton. The US don’t strike me as having a particularly strong left-wing culture and I don’t see it appearing any time soon.
> There should be a term for 'forcing your opposition to materialize because you are unable to distinguish between propaganda and reality'.
I don’t think the word exist, but the concept proved very useful to a lot of dictators.
They will find excuses to reverse. There will be some technicality, made up historical precense or some actually untrue fact about the world that wil totally make the situation different.
Conservative heretage foundation group has outcome in mind ... and "opposition" is not their preffered outcome.
The other day there was news about some ICE members who blew up the door to a family's home in order to detain a man. The man was a citizen. They knew that. They came to intimidate him because a few days earlier he tried filming their cars on a public street. That's just one example but these cases are only becoming more common.
One thing that's clear is that if he tries to overturn an election again, he is way better positioned to succeed this time. ICE is now the 5th most heavily funded military in the world and the whole point of DOGE[0] was to centralize the government and fill only with loyalists.
[0] NYT investigation recently proved there were little savings https://archive.ph/y5guv
Undocumented immigrants can be detained and deported by the U.S. government but they are still legally entitled to due process.
What is happening is aggressive enforcement and detention that can feel like “disappearing,” but it is not the same thing as extrajudicial abduction in the legal sense.
When people use the word "disappeared" they usually mean families temporarily can't find someone after detention, detainees are transferred far aways, no lawyer automatically assigned, communication is difficult, deportation happens very quickly. While this is real harm, it is not the same phenomenon as disappearance under international law.
The U.S. is aggressively detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants under civil law, sometimes with minimal process and poor transparency — but not through secret, extrajudicial disappearances. Due process is thinner than for citizens, enforcement can be opaque and traumatic, but this is not the same as "vanished" outside the legal system.