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Comment by 5upplied_demand | Hacker News Reader

Can any of the administration's defenders explain to me how this is actually a good thing and not the exact thing people were warning about a year ago?

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No they cannot. They don't offer real arguments, they make pre-textual arguments and they bullshit. (bullshit in the formal Harry G. Frankfurt sense of the word.) If an argument they make suits them, they will stand by that argument. If an argument ends up not suiting them, they will readily discard and fabricate a different justification.

So many years of dealing with this administration, and people are still attempting to point our hypocrisy and hold people to standards with regard to principle, past statements, character, etc. None of it will work here.

I agree. I'm not trying to point out the hypocrisy, it is obvious to anyone watching. I am more interested in testing the limits of how people will justify actions to themselves and others. It is fascinating to see the twisting happen in real time.

> “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

Anyone know where I can buy/borrow an ebook version of "Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate"? Can't find it anywhere.

amazon sells a kindle version for ~$6. looks like deadtree copies retail under $10 online (or ~$17 from PRH). IA has it but it's covered under their stupid pseudo-library false scarcity bargain so you might have to get in line. if you're okay with physical, i bet your local library has it.

otherwise... can't check from work, but perhaps anna's archive/slsk has you covered?

Your local library can get it through ILL.

Openlibrary has a scanned copy in French and English it seems:

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1161327W/R%C3%A9flexions_sur...

https://limewire.com/d/78gwF#5ggn4AJCfX

"Musk says he'll fix the corrupt Democrat-run government and reduce two trillion in spending and given his track record I have no reason not to believe him."

Real quote from a friend when this whole thing was going down.

Given his track record, spending should be at four trillion now, right?

> A young programmer asked if he should go work for DOGE, or whether it would end in disaster. I told him that it would at least be interesting, and that if he was worried it would end in disaster, that was all the more reason to take the job. Maybe he could help prevent that.

https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1888555241055948981

I guess this aged like Windows Me

I'd switch friends.

Given his track record of raising ever more money on idealistic claims only to deliver less and less... I think he delivered exactly as expected

Musk's goal was never to reduce government spending or waste. It was to get unrestrained access to government spending data to serve his own goals.

It's a conspiracy theory - I don't have any real evidence to support it, but I tend to believe it.

Musk's primary goal was to kneecap the federal agencies investigating him and his companies:

- himself: SEC, FEC

- Tesla: NHTSA, EEOC, NLRB

- Xitter: CFPB

- Neuralink: FDA

- SpaceX: DOD, DOJ, EPA, NASA, FAA

[0] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-03-27/elon-musk-...

What does he say now?

Americans love their conmen.

People can be wrong or caught up in a movement. That's fine.

It's the way they react when proven wrong that's the most relevant. What does your friend say when confronted with the reality of DOGE and the general amateurism and incompetence of the Trump admin?

I’m not sure the unsanctioned actions of an individual are the best attack that someone could make on the Trump administration.

I don’t believe anyone here if they say that is honestly a standard that they held through previous administrations.

I think there are plenty of ways to criticize Trump without abandoning my own principles.

SO you're not defending the administration, you're just attacking everyone who does attack it. Nice.

That person's actions were only possible because the administration explicitly decided to put that much unchecked power into poorly vetted individuals.

> poorly vetted individuals.

Interesting choice of words and application when discussing gripes against entire administrations.

Why is it interesting?

Why does this admin get a pass from you for their employees actions?

You wouldn't hold a Democrat admin responsible for the broad competence of their appointees and direct hires?

I would. I’m saying, that you didn’t.

The Trump administration is 100% responsible for setting up the conditions where this kind of breach is effectively inevitable. They created "DOGE", staffed it with (among other specimens) teenage hackers with established records of malfeasance and names like "Big Balls"---presumably without any serious attempt at checking backgrounds and/or responding appropriately to any findings---and (by many accounts I've seen) granted them the authority to demand root level access to government systems without auditable logging or any other record of their actions. There appears to have been effectively zero oversight within "DOGE" itself, and the organization evidently failed to accomplish its stated goals by an enormous margin. AFAIK The Trump administration never publicly acknowledged any of this or took any visible steps to investigate the allegations.

If I was aware of any remotely comparable precedent in any recent administration, I would certainly criticize them for it. But the "DOGE" episode was so far beyond the pale that I can't think of anything else like it.

If you enable reckless behavior, you are even hyping it I believe you are responsible for this behavior too.

> If you enable reckless behavior, you are even hyping it I believe you are responsible for this behavior too.

Are the people mad at ICE complaining that immigration was perhaps a little too lax under Biden’s admin, and possibly creating a situation where so many people felt inclined to vote for the Mass Deporations Guy?

Is there retroactive anger for Biden Admin? Note that I’m talking about a conservative voter’s right or wrong stance on the popular-at-the-time migrant caravans and not the actions of a specific person in a mid level position.

Not that I’ve seen, ymmv.

From my point of view, people are angry at ICE not mainly because deportations exist, but because of the methods being used, and those methods are clearly encouraged from above. Who else would be responsible, if not the policymakers themselves?

You can argue about whether immigration was a real problem or mostly fearmongering. In that case, any realistically achievable level of deportations under the previous administration would probably have been dismissed as insufficient anyway so the outcome would the same. But if policymakers deliberately loosen rules, they can be blamed for the consequences.

It is no different from weakening medicine purity standards and then acting surprised when people die. In that case, responsibility clearly falls on the people who made the policy too.

It may sound blunt, but assigning blame is a normal part of politics. Politicians are there to make decisions, and they should be praised or blamed for the results.

> the best attack that someone could make on the Trump administration.

It doesn't need to be, nor should we measure things against eachother by their ability to be used as an attack. We should measure this on it's own, based on what has happened.

In this case, an agency created by the President's Executive Order, that reports directly to the President made significant personnel and security access changes. There have been many security issues coming from that new personnel and department. If this doesn't fall on the administration, what does?

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