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Comment by mandeepj | Hacker News Reader

First of all, there's no such thing as "Department of War". A department name change is legal/binding only after it's approved by the Senate. Senator Kelly is still calling it DoD (Department of Defense).

> Mass domestic surveillance.

Since when has DoD started getting involved with the internal affairs of the country?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...

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The Senate??

Any law changing the name of the Defense Department would have to be passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President (or by 2/3 of both Houses overriding a Presidential veto). The Senate has no such authority on its own.

Right! I meant to write ‘Congress’, but mistakenly wrote Senate.

It's whatever what the people who have the power want to call it. What is written on a piece of paper is irrelevant if it is not acted upon.

If the rename gets struck down then they don't have the power. If it doesn't they have the power.

There are many dictatorships that built their power in the face of people claiming that they can't do what they planned because it was illegal.

Until they did it anyway.

This is fascism

I don't think many are doubting that. I'm not talking about the way things should be. I'm talking about the way they are.

This is normalization of fascism

Which is what naturally happens when fascists are in power.

I don’t know, to me it seems like their MO to make an announcement and not follow up on it. All the paperwork still says DOD, all the contracts are with DOD, there is no legal entity called DoW

I'd imagine the pentagon are more interested in the autonomous kill bot part than the surveillance part.

Well, Trump renamed it, and since Congress is now a subsidiary of the Executive Branch, it's the Department of War.

Resist. Continue calling it the DoD.

They've already spent millions on the name change. It's also the original name of the department. IMO it's a more honest name

It doesn't matter how much they've spent, nor what you think. Renaming it requires congressional approval, which they have not gotten.

www.defense.gov redirects to www.war.gov but I like how you refer to Wikipedia as the authoritative source to prove this functionally irrelevant and aggressive Reddit-style seething.

The talk page on the linked Wikipedia article arguing about logos is just as deranged. It's very important to realize there is literally nothing you—or anyone else—can do about this.

> It's very important to realize there is literally nothing you—or anyone else—can do about this.

What an utterly bewildering statement. So your suggestion is to suck it up, because we're all impotent anyway? The only thing that can bring authoritarian systems down is civil resistance.

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