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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

Holy shit.

So our monetary policy will be just set at the arbitrary whims of the president if this new scheme works.

Why does all of this feel like it's just sliding completely out of hand? Am I just being a doomer?

I find myself seeking out non-doomer people to read, since the doom and gloom doesn't really help, it's just demotivating. "Look for the helpers" and all that.

This outlet has some good things from time to time, like https://www.liberalcurrents.com/we-are-going-to-win/

That said, yeah this is really bad.

Not sure about that article. In the short term maybe you might get through this round, but the long term really doesn’t look good. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-stop-m...

I’m applying to jobs in Europe.

Who are your favorite non-doomer folks to read?

I thought this post was a good one on why doomerism is just a waste of time - featuring Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame:

https://bsky.app/profile/goldengateblond.bsky.social/post/3m...

Some accounts at random that tend towards "this all sucks really bad - however!"

https://bsky.app/profile/olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

https://bsky.app/profile/golikehellmachine.com

It's a particular and kind of peculiar attitude, because objectively "things ain't great" and it's really easy to dwell on that. But we also need some hope.

Lots of respected limits and lines on government power are just being casually broken, so I don't think you're wrong. Whatever's going to happen next it probably won't have the stability of the past.

Because it is, you are not. Checks and balances are at their limits (judicial branch), or non existent (Congress).

https://rall.com/2026/01/08/checks-and-balances-are-dead

I hope I turn out to be wrong, but the most convincing explanation I've seen for the "why" is that the 1945-2000 period was an anomaly, and now we're reverting to the mean: despotic governments, frequent wars for territory, and massive wealth inequality leading to powerful oligarchies as the only other important political players aside from the despot. This was the norm for the overwhelming majority of human history and perhaps it was massively hubristic to think we had escaped it for good.

Probably it coincides with the fact that the last people who remember WW2 are now gone.

None of us understand the devastation that a WW incurs.

With the added fun of nuclear weapons!

It's not the only anomaly. There was a previous period of long peace between 1815 and 1914, between the Napoleonic Wars and WW1.

This balance of power was carefully set up in the Congress of Vienna following the (first) defeat of Napoleon, and was ended by the ambitions of a Kaiser who desired the prestige of globe-spanning empire yet couldn't diplomacy his way out of a wet paper bag to realize that empire without bumbling into war.

It’s been completely out of hand for some time now.

Well, you see... he is part of the "un-elected deep state."

Clearly, that is a problem that needs to be solved.

I know you’re being sarcastic, but Trump was the person who nominated Jerome Powell as chair.

This move is public punishment for not falling in line.

Thank you for pointing this out. It is really interesting, the difference between Trump 45 and Trump 47.

I would like to add one quote to be logged on this website:

> "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," he wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016. [0]

- Trump's future Vice President, JD Vance

If we survive the fall of Pax Americana in the next few years, and journalists and historians are again allowed to operate in a free environment, I really hope that they get to the core of how we got from 45 to 47.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jd-vance-once-compared-trum...

The only reasonable conclusion at this point is that the fascists in the white house see their deep unpopularity, obvious loss of power in the near future (they have lost nearly every election in the past year by a landslide), and the Epstein files closing in. The obvious outcome will be at minimum jail and ridicule due to their continuous and obvious corruption, high crimes and misdemeanors like invading Venezuela, trying to invade Greenland, and sexual crimes against children. So they have to accelerate chaos to try and destroy law and order before it catches up with them and destroys them.

Its time to put up or get put down by masked goons.

"Has been set," not "will be set". We've been operating under the new scheme for months. Despite Powell's protestations, there was no evidence for cutting rates, and lots of evidence for doing the opposite. Unfortunately he gave in to Trump... but that obviously wasn't enough.

No, you’re correct. It’s more or less what happened in Turkey.

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