More than 10 firms pay up to $100k a month for access to Truth Social posts
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I think one of the greater risks to a power like the U.S. is getting old enough where it's felt like things always were, and therefore always will be. When there is no-longer a grandparent at the dinner table who can even tell you when his grandparent at the dinner table spoke about the before times.
The "what changed in the 1970s?" meme graphs are the kinds of timescale for forgetting what is and isn't "normal" for your grandparents, and the Great Depression for your grandparents' grandparents.
Eternal growth? Nah.
Even the worst of times will be shortly followed by a recovery, soon enough you survive on savings? Pft.
The President surely wouldn't consider to order the removal of protesting veterans, with the Army Chief of Staff implementing this order with a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks, burning the belongings that the veterans had left behind after being cleared from where they had been protesting? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
Conscription? Concentration camps? These are also in the "grandparents' grandparents" timescale in the USA. Go back only a one more generation and you get lynching *postcards*.
Most Americans wouldn’t remember that, and yet we pulled, and continue to pull, an epic Hold My Beer in comparison.
What would it take to get a Million Man March again? One that occupied the lawn?
The whole Hunter corruption scandal in Ukraine + the laptop made it quite clear to me back then. And I can go on.
What was the absolute worst thing from the laptop?
Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspira...
Hunter Biden laptop controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...
2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_sca...
the only exception now is not the corrupt administration, but the one being the most inept and blatant at being corrupt as opposed to its predecessors
Just the crazy partisanism that's going on in the states blinds people to the fact that they are not ruled by one part of the other, but that the parties are the smoke and mirrors of the non-democratic, unelected, unaccountable, unseen actual govt.
Is there actually any good analogue for this era that caused a previous empire or great power to collapse?
> The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army (check), the health and numbers of the Roman population (check), the strength of the economy (check), the competence of the emperors (check), the internal struggles for power (check), the religious changes of the period (check), and the efficiency of the civil administration (check). Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes (check) and both endemic and epidemic diseases (check) drove many of these immediate factors.
Sure, and before COVID-19 pandemics often took years/decades to spread around the globe. Agriculture took thousands of years to develop; iPhones were invented twenty years ago.
Things move faster in a world of eight billion people who can get anywhere on the planet in 24 hours.
Based on what metric?
There are many episodes in Roman history that people would have experienced as decline or even collapse within their lifetimes, including multiple sackings of the city of Rome itself. But in most of those cases things actually did bounce back and the Empire continued to dominate. That's kind of the point I was making. Empires would seem to be far more resilient than contemporary observers would think if one only looked at Roman history. But the problem is that the Roman Empire is a bit of an outlier in that regard. Ancient cultures of Central America would be interesting to study there (there were far more than just the Mayas, Inkas and Aztecs, most of them relatively short-lived, hence good case studies for the question of collapse). Unfortunately much less is known about them than about Romans.
Go on? WW1 and its consequences?
Consider the Oppenheimer movie. The majority of physicists depicted there are people who left Europe around that time.
Also, let's not forget that the Trump admin is a problem of 2.5 years at most.
Trump has greatly stressed the safeguards in our system, but I don't think that he has broken them. That is actually an optimistic instead of a pessimistic signal -- an anti-statesman even in the highest office couldn't meaningfully damage the country.
His sentencing for 34 felonies was voided because the justices he personally appointed to run some of those safeguards decided he should be immune to them. Come on.
If he invades Greenland, the US not only loses all NATO allies, but may be at actual war (rather than merely trade war) with them; the Asian allies are also getting worried because of how he's interacting with China. This administration is also somehow managing to piss off Israel despite having gone into a war as a co-belligerent with them against Iran, also pissing off all the other American allies in the middle east, and the Iran conflict is currently making people question the benefit of even having the US as an ally in the first place because the US can't keep them safe from Iranian counterstrikes, but even more broadly the US don't seem to be able to keep Iran from charging tolls on Hormuz so everyone else with a similarly strategic strait may be wondering if they can do the same.
The administration also has problems with re-emergence of diseases due to a combination of cutting funding and chaos (e.g. while screwworm may have come back anyway, the government response was suboptimal), and in some cases actively promoting disinformation (e.g. vaccinations). It takes a lot more work to eradicate some disease than to keep it away.
And this is without any of the current, justifiable, concerns that Trump may use ICE or similar to interfere with even this year's elections, let alone the end of his term.
Trump may not kill the US outright in just this term, the ships of state are slow to turn let alone sink, but he may do a Great Leap Forward.
If you want a lesson in what to avoid to maintain dominance, it's internal conflict, that's what wrecked the European empire.
Good luck with that. Trump and Co will dig in. When they fall, there will be blood.
Yeah, we heard that about climate change, too.
We may be Cassandras, but that doesn't make us wrong.
Who is this supposed to be?
Not many people could name, or recognize the name of, any emperor from the last hundred years of the Western Roman Empire.
So I don't think Rome is a good analogue for the suggestion that the Trump era is going to kill the USA.
Most collapses start slow, and I tend to doubt this one is finished.
Every time I hear people praise the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius I am reminded of the fact that he failed in his most important duty: To plan well for his succession.
The UK’s decline has taken centuries, though, and there are many events that one can point to. I think I agree with the grandparent’s comment about grandparents, about the arrogance of how things will continue to be a certain way.
Didn't the UK's empire notably collapse quite rapidly?
But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? More of a cultural hegemon / terrorist petrostate.
That's pretty fast, historically.
> But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no?
Sure it was/is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
Turns out the US has just been a bully all along with no real ability to project power sufficiently to actually wage a war where it matters. China and Russia have both had front row seats to this embarrassment and have surely come to their own conclusions.
After all that post cold war hubris and 'end of history' nonsense. To think that the West's the old communist foes might come out on top. I have a strong feeling that we aren't just witnessing the decline of US imperialism, but liberal democracy itself (or at least the neoliberal flavour of it). This is the decline of the Western empire - led by the US. And self-inflicted to boot.
Yes, this is just my opinion.
I don't think that's accurate. I'd put the peak of the British Empire at just before WW1 and the obvious end of it somewhere between independence for India, Wind of Change, and Suez.
You could point to errors made before then, and IMO the Potato Famine was so egregious it was probably a contributing factor to the invention of literal Communism, but I'd say the actual collapse began with the Pyrrhic victory of WW1.
Ragnarok is an existential issue mainly for the ruling class. Collapse is a change in the social order more than everything just suddenly being on fire.
E.g. We developed a nice little niche during the dotcom boom, and the subsequent bust was a goldmine for us. From my perspective the sole effect of that "collapse" were cheap Ducatis and Herman Millers on Craigslist.
What do you think the collapse of rome looked like to a farmer or blacksmith in some remote hamlet?
I would also deploy Adam Smith's "there is a lot of ruin in a nation". The US can withstand a few bad years provided it corrects.
I like to read Bret Devereaux (from the frequently HN posted https://acoup.blog/) takes on this in his Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/bretdevereaux.bsky.social)
In short the argument is: can the US still win in any sense?
I would have agreed until the Iran war, the US used up so much of the missile stock that even the army isn't fully intact anymore
That was plenty of reasons to take the country seriously! Also, the US has been the most powerful cultural exporter for a very long time. It’s still the case, whenever anything becomes huge in the US we get our local version in each European countries. Our far right parties are parroting American right politics, even copying the terminology as is
It's not all US, but as you said things start in the US and trickles down across the rest of the world, so that's also true for its decadence.
Lets start with movies: Most top grossing movies are still American based and centric. I was reminded of this recently when Obsession came out and I tried to get my German friends to watch it. They missed so many subtle 'Americanisms' in the movie that it really gave me a new perspective on how ingrained the culture is. 10 years ago living in Europe I was amazed at how much American music French people listen to and sing to. Even on random French shops its nothing but American music playing. I don't believe they suddenly switched to French music. (Is there some pop artist in France stealing the charts right now? Im curious to learn). And this is the country with Académie Française.
The Chinese are trying: Ne Zha 2 was quite nicely animated and it grossed an impressive amount but that seemed more like a one trick pony given that it really attracted massive Chinese audiences and they seem to know how important the film was. This is just an opinion but it was not a memorable film like I'd expect from a Disney classic.
Then there is food: Its fascinating how Luckin had its massive comeback and has forced Starbucks to retreat in China and other markets. Mixue might do something similar to chains like DQ and Baksin Robbins, (lets see what happens). I have yet to see the Chinese Mcdonalds but maybe its in the shadows waiting for the right moment like a lot of Chinese companies.
In terms of Gaming, it still seems like despite all the BS, the market is still treating Western game publishers as the gold standard (and mainly American ones at that). The market dynamics are different for Gaming vs others because gaming is so diverse. Maybe there isnt really a leader given the ease of competition. Same goes for music. Streaming seems like what the market wanted or else they would have stuck with physical media.
Enshittification is culture too, and it's certainly spreading.
"An army marches on its stomach"... If things at most soldiers homes aren't as good as they could easily be (financial prospects, opportunities..), maybe they don't have the same drive to fight with the same vision and discipline as they used to? I hope they will employ good vision and discipline.
Science is gradually getting gutted too...
The world order was reset after 1945 and designed largely by the US for the benefit of the US, particularly the financial system. People will often mistake cause and effect. A common one is the petrodollar. The US dollar isn't strong because oil is traded in it. No. Oil is traded in the dollar because of demand fo the dollar. The world oil market could switch to Euros or RMB tomorrow and the net effect would be that people would hold USD and trade it for whatever currency as needed and convert any such currency immediately back to dollars.
But underpinning this has been the appearance of integrity in the US financial system and, in particular, the Federal Reserve and the SEC. That trust and that system is being rapidly destroyed for a few billion dollars in personal profit. All of this was enabled by an ideological Supreme Court who invented out of thin air the concept of presidential immunity to make the president a king in a country that rebelled against a monarchy.
We're living in times that will be written about in history books as the end of the post-1945 era, particularly with the Iran War. I, for one, called this the most disastrous US strategic defeat in the entire of US history and it's not even close back in April. And I stand by that.
There was a time when corrupt heads of state kept up appearances of not being corrupt. It was done in secret through layers of secrecy. That's gone now. The corruption is very much out in the open.
It's not to see this as anything other than China's rise to global prominence and the irony is they just had to do nothing while letting the US commit suicide.
It was a global order built by the US to place the US in positions of power and privilege in every way imaginable.
And the MAGA group looked at it and said "we are being taken advantage of! We have to spend a rounding error worth of money on food aid and Voice of America?! I don't want soft power, I want rock hard power!!!"
They looked at a game with unfair rules that were written by them to benefit them and said "this is unfair.... to me!" Then went about dismantling nearly a century of work that unfairly stacked the deck in America's favor.
The US-Israel-Iran War is an interesting inflection point. They pulled out of every soft-power play, putting every chip in on hard-power military strength and now they are getting wrecked by cheap drones and Iran just being willing to stick it out and not fold. Venezuela will probably go down as the point in which they believed their world view was winning, no need for any diplomacy, just go in and abduct the president and take the oil. Iran showed them the limits of that kind of thinking, if they were more introspective they could learn from it.
Iran isn't stupid, they know there's not much point in building massive arms factories to make complicated weapons. The factories will just get bombed, and the weapons will probably still be inferior. They can just sort of stand there, though. We don't have the appetite for a boots on the ground invasion, and even then they can just kind of wait til we leave and go right back to it. We don't really have a winning hand here without resorting to war crimes, and the costs of that vastly outweigh any successes. We'd be international pariahs to a degree that I don't think most Americans realize is possible.
Its really sad how the US has acted these past few years. Its an insult to the sacrifices of those that came before us. But time is long and it appears China has to do a lot of soul searching to see where they really want to be. I don't feel confident the more I look. They have serious problems that dont seem solvable anytime soon.
The WB/IMF playbook is to pressure or bribe leaders into taking on debt that forces policy changes. Somalia is the posterchild for this. They force the country to produce export crops and the result is the country ends up being unable to feed itself and then the currency inevitably collapses and the country can no longer service its debt. They did the same to Haiti and elsewhere. It's economic colonaialism. The WB/IMF are a tool for American foreign policy.
China offers a significantly better deal [1]. US influence ("exploitation") in Africa is fading [2]. It's such an issue that the US Africa Command is headquartered in Germany.
China's foreign policy is largely offering to build ports, airports, roads and power plants. You know, infrastructure that actually helps and doesn't just enrich the leader and drown the country in debt.
[1]: https://gga.org/china-vs-the-imf/
[2]: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-us-is-losing-africa...
No, that’s a canonical example of insider trading: acting on pre-release inside information before it’s made public; it doesn’t matter if it’s days, hours, or even minutes before it goes public.
People have been convicted for executing trades when they saw or handled earnings reports in-person hours before they’re released[1].
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/employee-securities-fil...
It's right in your own link, the filing-agent employee was convicted because he stole information he was contractually obligated to protect. Remove that obligation and there's no case. Truth Social owns the posts and is selling them with the source's blessing, nobody's stealing anything.
As much as I hate to say it, what they're doing with Truth social is very likely legal. The president does not have any contractual financial obligation to these companies, if he posts "everyone sell Intel, I'm going to regulate out of existence" to a group of people who paid him for this post early... there's no breach of contract anywhere.
Companies aren't saying "hey we want you to manipulate the market for us" — the president is just outright manipulating it, telling people he knows ahead of time, and reaping the profits that way. There's no fiduciary duty involved at all, so it won't be considered insider trading... you don't even have to believe me, this is literally how it's playing out...
This situation is completely untested by the courts.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11966
> Despite the attention insider trading attracts, legislators have not enacted a statutory definition for the offense.
But in any event; the sitting US president certainly has a “fiduciary duty” and responsibility to all Americans; whatever he’s doing now is not that.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-bill/203...
Seems pretty clear to me
And it becomes self-reinforcing, with people simping (to use that word again) for whichever thing they've invested in. I have serious doubts people actually believe in $product, but they believe other people will at the very least invest in it. And they all believe the masses are stupider (and have more money to invest) than they do.
Finally, it's the wild west. Regulation and consequences have failed, because the people enriching themselves are running the show now. At least in the US, but thanks to open financial ties, they can get money from more regulated countries as well.
I hate this obvious pay-for-access thing as much as anyone, but this isn’t going to define the US for the next 50 years. The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years.
As am I.
At a certain point, you get bitten enough times that you decide the angry cobra isn't a great pet. It may be really cool, sometimes! But sometimes it hurts you, a lot.
> If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care.
Some end this way, sure.
For an alternative, see Gaza.
That may well be, with one big difference.
Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.
How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments?
This is always a strange belief to hold when the current evidence is so overwhelming against it. The rest of the world and the people making decisions know that this administration will come to an end. Something about each new headline convinced a small number of people that this one event is actually the end of the entire country for the next 50 years, against all visible evidence
You've never seen a crime flick where the soon-to-be-murdered victim goes "I won't call the cops, I swear! Don't hurt me!"
Who's genuinely trusting US commitments right now? Our most stalwart allies sent troops to Greenland as a tripwire force! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arctic_Endurance
The Greenland drama was dumb, but there is zero reason to think it’s a next 50 years thing. Is the force even still there, or are they gone? Nobody takes the Greenland thing seriously already, and 50 years have not passed.
I don't trust a wood chipper or angle grinder or fireworks on the Fourth of July, so I'm extra careful around them. Doesn't mean I don't use them.
> Is the force even still there…
Yep.
Trust is a complex term. You can work and trade with parties you don't trust, like so many countries do already. But a process has definitely begun, and it will without any doubt have very real implications for the US.
>Nobody takes the Greenland thing seriously already
I can assure you that Denmark still takes this thing extremely seriously.
Unless of course you're hoping this is the outcome, that the bad behavior persists. In which case I'm quite confused on your position.
Trump 2 is a breakdown of the separation of powers and checks and balances that were supposed to give the US continuity. With that no longer functioning any deal you make with the US is really a deal with the current President which future Presidents may or may not honor.
It doesn't matter how reasonable the next President is because just electing a good President doesn't fix the underlying system. If other countries don't see that fixed so that another Trump cannot happen they will not consider the US to be reliable for long term things.
After all not everyone has Trump as President who thinks the only way to work with allies is to bully them. Will this particular thing going to define US for next 50 years? Probably not. Will countries say fuck it and stop working with US? Definitely not.
But will they ever have same amount of fear or trust or reverence for the US? Absolutely no.
That is now lost. While Iraq and Afghan war wasn't exactly a win for the US, the Iranians have shown that Americans can be had if cards(hands) are right. They now know Americans are completely blind to a president who would sell his mother for the right price and still defend him because they feel invincible and instead of offering a seemingly innocuous job to President's son like Burisma they can now blatantly bribe a jet, pay for access openly and no one in America will care because they believe they are infallible.
Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it.
Statements like this are worthless without examples. Surely you can provide some? Hard mode: Don't mention Pelosi or Clinton.
"Argue with me but don't mention these things that prove your side correct"
Is this satire?
If the cops drive past a mugging, observe, and then drive on past allowing the law to go unenforced, are they not just as corrupt as the robbers?
>If a rival political party takes power in 2029 and they decide to do nothing about this, are they complicit?
Like this really does read as: I still blame the Democrats for the crimes of the Republicans.
The ultimate authority here is the US voters and they have chosen poorly again and again. They are complicit for sure as they chose both to empower Republicans and tie the hands of the Democrats with impossible standards.
yes, they were. the USA if the Unionists has followed through on reconstruction looks like a utopia compared to now
Without JW Booth, maybe Lincoln would've broken the southern white aristocracy, and maybe Reconstruction would've succeeded. One man could've made the difference and finished the job.
Likewise, it's difficult to imagine any other con man so skilled and beloved (by a certain subset of the population) as Trump, and his singular abilities and predilections have potentially derailed the entire project of American empire - maybe permanently.
I think the irony here is you are presenting this like a complicated choice, when I would argue many people agree that the way the Union handled reconstruction was extremely poor.
So yes, it was very much the Union’s fault for not properly cutting the many heads of the hydra with great prejudice.
Edit: the Nuremberg trials are a fantastic blueprint for what to do, though. And that’s what was missing after the Civil War. The sentences handed out at Nuremberg aren’t necessarily relevant to the crimes committed by those in power today, but the cultural shift that materialized in Germany post-war is the type of cultural shift needed to counteract the damage of the current administration: against corruption, grift, and executive overreach.
Some would argue that the Nuremberg trials did not go nearly far enough, as there should also have been similar trials in all countries that collaborated with that regime during the course of the war.
That's why you see far-right parties nowadays spring up again and start to grain more influence. It could have been stomped out well enough.
Andrew Johnson pardoned almost all Confederate leaders, didn’t care about freeing slaves, and is one of the worst Presidents in history.
Yes, that probably means that the US has to utterly break in its political system before it can get any better, considering that the current election process favours a two-party stalemate (or one party controlling everything)
I’d prefer if the US doesn’t become like my native India where the previous government goes in jail when a new government takes power. Hopefully we just destroy the pardon and call the obvious self-enrichment here an abuse of government that we cannot fix with our devices and go forward.
Even if the rival party were to somehow control all 3 branches of government (which they will not), the voting records show a full 1/3 of American adults outright support this corruption (many of the cops themselves), and another 1/3 are willing to ignore it.
If you are in the 1/3 that does care about it, you are not going to have a good time trying to fight the other 1/3, many of whom make up the “law and order” department.
So the answer to both questions is a resounding no, because the world is more complicated than a comic book superhero movie.
This is well established in law.
https://nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-...
The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection, regardless of the challenges.
The standards for the Republicans is...there are literally zero standards. Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable, and somehow Americans convince themselves that if the Democrats don't (usually because they can't) do anything about it, clearly the Dems are the real problem, so it's time to vote Republicans. Just bizarre stuff.
I could give infinite examples where the slightest thing is a massive story about Democrat action or inaction, while every day is a new low in what the shit-pile that the modern Republican party gets away with. Benghazi is still constantly cited by the right, while Trump...Jesus Christ, every day is a thousand times worse. Astonishing levels of corruption and stupidity is just another Tuesday now.
It's amazing. Every framing somehow shifts like this.
How do you figure? The previous Dem president literally promised, "nothing will fundamentally change" and that's exactly what happened.
We have a faux democracy / uniparty of capital interests where one "side" manufactures consent for the other.
rightwardRatchet++;
Biden was speaking to the people who ended up bankrolling Trump when threatened with slightly increased taxes, and who are going to dump billions into the midterms. When you're in a country that wavers around 50/50 every election (even when the choice is between competent government or a spectacularly incompetent shitshow of grifters, pedos and thieves), yes, there are limits to what you can realistically do in one election cycle.
In any case, it's actually hilarious that rhetoric like this "oh well actually the Dems are to blame because they haven't stopped them yet" is precisely why Republicans are gung ho in fighting against ranked choice ballots. A secret they've learned is to field some fringe bullshit candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Kanye, and so on, and they need the sort of idiots that vote for idiots like that to be throwing away their votes because "it's a uniparty of capital". Ranked choice ballots -- real democracy -- would threaten that.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2026/08/07/worlds-wealthiest-ma...
Trump has repeatedly claimed ranked choice ballots are "corrupt", and House Republicans have repeatedly tried to ban it. Do you want to know why? Protip - it's because they rely on incredibly stupid voters.
Or why they forced a widely unpopular Dem candidate instead of having an actual primary last time around (not that they've shown they can even run a fair primary)?
edit to add:
> Ranked choice ballots -- real democracy -- would threaten that.
This is not the magical fix you think it is, since other countries with >2 parties suffer from the same systemic rot of revolving door politics, monopolistic corporate media, etc.
Let's be real here - when people do the "both parties are the same", usually citing some chickenshit bullshit like you just did, they're almost always a terrible person who just loves Trump but won't just admit it.
Just own it, man.
No, the standard for Dems is "don't rock the boat". The Right moves things further to the right, the Dems don't let them go back to the left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...
Note that Repubs have a more solid group than Dems in the Senate, because Dems have to win states with more compromising candidates like Sinema/Manchin/Lieberman/Fetterman/etc, whereas the Repub states are solidly Republican.
Just see how Repubs were able to stymie Democrat Supreme Court Justices, and how many they were able to install.
I would urge you strongly not to let yourself be this consumed by this kind of thinking. This is a distorted view of your fellow man - however accurate _some_ of it may be about _some_ people - regardless of their political affiliation. This kind of thinking is exactly how we got to where we are now and persisting in it will almost certainly get us more extreme reactions.
that said, the Republican establishment has proven itself unworthy of the office and should be shown the door in the next election cycle - in decimating fashion. So much so that it should cause a complete recalibration of that party.
It was seeing a black guy, and then possibly a woman, and then possibly a black woman get to the top that got us where we are now. The message is clear, don’t disrupt up our image of the hierarchy, or else we will support the worst of the worst, as long as they maintain the order.
It’s amazing how much corruption is occurring for so little money. A million dollars a month is peanuts for such clear graft.
Now, prosecution immune, he can access the remainder of the market.
I think this is one big reason why bribes are commonplace in India at all levels while they are reserved only for the most profitable of endeavours in the US - enforcement. Consequently, the relative pricing matches that.
I suppose one realization is that a corruption index could look at the price of the cheapest government corruption as a proxy for how widespread it is.
But that is the real response. All politicians do some things that you disagree with, so even if you hate some of their behavior, you can still end up supporting them if on balance their policy decisions are more aligned with your interests.
Generally, I accept slight dissonance with politicians on matters of policy. I don't think it's okay to accept politicians blatantly breaking the law and sneering in the face of culpability.
There's very little incentive to engage with the topic in an intellectually honest way. Most would prefer to only contribute in a way that paints their team in a better light.
I guess that's why any political topics should be avoided on HN. Even with perfect moderation, one can't avoid the biases of individuals selecting when to or not to contribute to a discussion.
How on Earth do you imagine that a forum like this would discuss things like AI regulation without discussing politics? Beyond just regulation, there's inflation, tariffs, copyright, immigration... All of these things affect tech workers every day. A forum without politics is an absurd fantasy.
Could really keep going forever. There's no point in listing all the crime or norms that have been destroyed. Maybe it's good that someone is exploiting all the edge cases and treating our country as a game to be won. I don't see it that way. I love my neighbors.
I'd rather see $1 billion lost to graft than $100 billion lost to bad policy. But I'll admit, Trump's flagrancy makes it hard to ignore.
I'm generally libertarian or classic liberal, so I agree with maybe 70% of Republican policy and 30% of Democratic policy (assuming those are the only two choices), but lately that's been shifting closer to 50/50.
What's objectionable about Democrat policy from the "libertarian or classic liberal" perspective?
Militarized police is definitely one of the areas I disagree with Republicans on, along with abortion restrictions.
As for thought crimes, it's a toss up IMO, but I view Democrats as more likely to try to legislate against them.
I'd like federal government to be a whole lot smaller with more things being left up to state and local governments, so that's why I tend to side with Republican policy more often, but they're not much better either.
If you pursue freedom, and individual liberty and are a US citizen, there's no way to consider GOP policy as providing more freedom or liberty. The only 2 areas I can think of where they even claim to be for freedom is: guns and freedom for corporations.
Then there's literally everything else: being a woman, not straight, not white, not Christian, an income tax payer, a property owner near an unregulated corporate entity, a person who likes sane people to have access to semiautomatic long guns, a person who enjoys drugs, a person who wants to buy or sell sex, ... etc
Some examples:
- Starting a war with Iran even after being warned about consequences including the Strait of Hormuz and having the US in a worse position now than before.
- Deciding to end birthright citizenship, allowing race-based stops, and a slew of unconstitutional actions that are helped along by a GOP-appointed SCOTUS majority. This includes rulings under shadow docket so they don't have to explain themselves.
- Literally pretending the 2020 election was stolen and creating legislation like forcing states to provide voter data and targeting election results in a very partisan way.
- A hodgepodge of tariffs that seem to change at the whim of Trump and exert significant complications downstream including inflation.
- Undermining public funding of US research in the sciences in what seems to be an unconstitutional manner. Examples include withholding granted funds based on political interference.
- Completely politicizing DOJ and many other critical government departments to the point that even conservative career government employees resign noting politicization of their offices. This is one reason we see such obvious corruption -- because the watchdogs can't investigate let alone prosecute people favored by this administration (e.g., Epstein files).
- Degrading US health care policy substantially with RFK Jr and bad appointments in a number of positions.
All of the above are well-supported by court cases, investigative reporting, and even official declarations by this administration. What happened to the fundamental belief in the GOP of executive restraint, state vs fed power, fiscal discipline, free-market trade, rule of law, and democracy?
Can you name those policies? I see the most corruption and least accountability of "public servants" that I've ever seen. It is blatant corruption and the party in power, the Republicans, are fully supporting it.
That said, there are definitely Republicans here. They come out of the woodwork when the topic of government waste is brought up.
I'm far from being one of those myself, but I imagine the argument would be that any regulation one could propose to address this is bound to be worse than the problem itself, in terms of chilling effects on legitimate speech and commercial activity.
I don't really care about this country being a ""global leader"" in an industry, but not having to compete with the whole world for my job is sweet.
Thanks to Trumps policies reducing the amount of international students and workers visas, I was actually able to both get accepted into a grad school I never expected and land and a job straight out of college.
Turns out supply and demand also applies to labor, whodathunk.
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did You deserved it.”
If a President is so corrupt that he is selling access for what is loose change for him - I mean what is $100k when he is getting $400million jet - their local offices will also feel comfortable nickel and diming them for small access. A trip to DMV will turn into "You want your driving license? That'll be $50 extra for me on top of the administrative fees". This is the reality of life in some low trust third world countries. Now coming to America!
But in the meantime lets celebrate equivocating and whataboutism.
I imagine these companies were already spending some amount on crawlers that would poll every N milliseconds to get an edge on some market-moving post. In turn I imagine Truth Social were also spending more serving this bot traffic.
Truth Social making $1M a month from it — a rounding error in Trump’s fortunes — doesn’t seem like a world-ending catastrophe.
Trump has done many bad things to erode trust in our institutions and government. When compared to him trying to overturn the results of an election, this too seems like a rounding error.
I have never voted for Trump, either in a primary or general election. I disagree with him strongly on much of what he does. I would describe myself as conservative, but definitely not MAGA. I'm what was Republican 10 or 30 or 50 years ago, not what they've turned into.
How can I defend this (pay for early access)? I don't. I oppose it.
For those without the power to change reprehensible institutions, invoking this level of tribalism only further entrenches those with power because we remain powerlessly bickering with each other rather than uniting.
Those who seek power seek it to: 1. Enrich themselves and their family 2. Wield it to achieve their means
The "pay to play" is rife everywhere. The contractors who get a sweet deal from local / fed government, the competition is stifled. The senators who make 10's of millions on insider information. The imminent domain cases where property is seized so corporation / donor can make millions. The "futures market" where insiders use their knowledge of product release date to swindle money for ordinary folks. The crypto scams, lotteries, casinos, street vendors, telemarketers, info-mercials, self-help gurus, snake oil sales, lemon peddlers, and more.
The truth is that the human system has not deviated far from the imposed hierarchy of feudalism / monarchy, we have only become better at concealing it, making it more potent in some ways. Power, corruption, opportunism, and greed are part of our nature. In an extremely large population with a democratic veneer, the levers of power become diffuse an ineffable, until they are blatantly shoved into our face.
In some ways I'm glad because its only through a constant vigilance and resetting the public vigilance that these kind of things can be controlled to any degree. Its an entropic force, seeping into the system at all times, only kept at bay by the disdain of the populace and fear in the hearts of the ruling elites.
Its definitely not a Republicans only phenomenon, the list on both sides of the aisle is embarrassingly long. But due to how our political system is setup, and human psychology, little will change by voting. People are tribal, and only have two choices in the matter, both of which are usually power-seeking corrupted. The prisoner's dilemma is giving the US a life-sentence.
Thanks for sharing this. It's a deep insight for me. I did not understand how the same people that were deeply skeptical about the state, ended up being so quiet when the state's corruption became flagrant and blatant. But this line of thinking makes a lot of sense.
In fact, the corruption is what the voters want, to show that they prioritize their group (white, men, rural, rich, benefactors, whatever helps you identify with the “winner” etc) at the expense of others.
One of the easiest and most assured paths to success, wealth, a comfortable life, influence, significance, and security, is by playing the power game. Hence, it will attract those who seek those ends, and discourage those who let beliefs, values, morals, or other similar concerns interfere with their own acquisition of power.
Its only inevitable then that the most corrupt players will eventually ascend, as they continue to amass money and power in such a system. Believing that the real difference is voting for "the good guys" and that will cause wide-sweeping change is probably what Tea Party voters thought in the early 2000s before they morphed into MAGA.
Given that about a third of the voters are fully in support of this, and likely about similar numbers are oblivious, I expect that nothing will be done about it once this admin goes out of power.
Maybe a few people will be made scapegoats to pacify the third that want justice (likely low level/weak ones), but the top level of perpetrators will be untouched and keep most of the loot.
Over the past few years, China has quietly purchased more than a billion barrels of oil from Russia and Iran at a discount in CNY rather than USD, pushing it into newly created strategic stockpiles that would be necessary for closure of a different Strait. After putting a strategic foot on the neck of refined product exports, they are now functionally acting as the largest part of the world's crude reserves, smoothing demand so that the global price does not spike and crash the global economy & global trade. If China was to keep up its normal buying cycle over the past few months, we would have easily seen >$200 oil. Instead, oil is a third that, and it's not even the limiting factor - refinery output drops on diesel from Ukraine's Kinetic Sanctions campaign are having a more significant bottleneck on petrochemicals right now than Hormuz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkA0bkb6ZO0
Say what you like about the motivation, this is a form of global leadership of the sort that America used to specialize in, and every drop of oil traded in CNY rather than "The Petrodollar" weakens the USD as the anchor currency.
The founders seem to have imagined that Congress (as a whole) would have an adversarial relationship with the President. But they failed to foresee the levels of partisanship we have today which have resulted in ~half of Congress being very closely allied with the President.
When the US was less divided, things like ethics or morals or even just not openly breaking the law mattered a lot more. Now, people (at least, the people who vote the most) care more about "is my party in power", and either don't know about or disregard everything else. I include "don't know" because if all you listen to is Fox news and social networks feeding you ideas that you already agree with then you can easily be completely unaware of things like this.
There's just no one with the power plus willingness to do so.
The US is over.
(for some reason this attracted a downvote? Obviously Republicans are never going to impeach a Republican President? I cannot imagine why you would think they would?)
I figure if I can get over a hundred people to sign up with me at $1K a month, I pass along the info, they save money, and I profit.
Amidoingitrite?
<JK, but, wow, what a time we're witnessing.>
And thats just one that got called out. Grift is kind of the new normal sadly.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/07/trump-teleprompter-a...
I remember someone getting into trouble for taking a trips in government vehicles. A time when scandal would cause people to stop being in politics...Seems quaint.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-23-mn-2062-s...
I don't know if it is still a thing, but in the world of penny stocks and crypto there used to be subscription pump and dump channels, where influencers would charge $x / month, and coordinate pumps. "Signal" channels, as they were named.
This can't be too different. If not even more straight forward insider stuff.
Either that, or it is just another way to bribe your way closer to Trump.
Business idea for Trump: Sell access to his Truth Social posts, but bake in some latency. Those that pay most, will get to see the posts first (via API). Then after X minutes of posting the posts will go live for everyone to see. How fast you want to see the post between publishing and public access, depends on how much you want to pay. The less latency, the more you need to pay.
The seller is trying to push upfront sales by suggesting “These guys are doing it, and if you want to keep an edge you need to too”, (and journalists wanting to write about how corrupt this shit is are eagerly picking this up and boosting the signal by writing these sorts of articles).
In 5-6 months I suspect the consumer number to be down to 1-2 from the original batch, and those who are still paying will probably be doing so because the fact that the contract exists will probably slip through the cracks.
I suspect, having worked in this space for quite a while, that this specific data, faster, is useless and that there are other signals that indicate something is coming before it ends up on social media (esp TS).
Yes, there is historical data about prices moving after TS posts, but what I’m arguing is paying to get it ‘faster’ may not be worth anything if you can achieve that same end (knowing something is happening) through previously established channels.
Literally
This is a lot cheaper of a bribe than i.e. the gold plaque Tim Apple gave to Trump too.
It’s less directly beneficial than most people think it will be.
This isn’t some penny stock group. It’s the president of the USA who has command of the largest army in the world and signals his intentions to make governmental moves with a large impact on the markets via these posts.
Again, question as someone who doens't live in the US so I am not used how you can profit from this. I guess it may be because a war may impact the market and you can invest (or the opposite) with this, but in my mind bombing Iran wouldn't move the market by much (the consequences would, but by then everyone is on the same page).
Thank you!
Place a Kalshi bet on the outcome of something that a Truth Social post just settled?
Short a company he's about to bash?
Are there anything else of "value" on Truth Social. I haven't signed up for Truth Social, but is there actually anything else going on, besides Trumps post. Would any company have any reason to be on the platform, if Trump wasn't?
The first post they received after this system was turned on, was Trump literally posting "GREEN CANDLES. BEAUTIFUL GREEN CANDLES!!!"
This is an informal stock market term for asset values having a good day (or good minute, for that matter), with stock movements measured on a "Candlestick chart". This is a... not an admission, but a brag, that this is in fact an insider trading service, and that people who follow this insider trading service are going to make a lot of money. This is Trump announcing that he has rigged the stock market and you need to buy in right this moment if you want to remain competitive.
I am cautiously optimistic about this in some ways? Historically, the one thing you do not do in America is touch the money. There's now a hundred trillion dollars of capital that have an incentive for the lights to go out in the White House and to turn back on with JD Vance in a different seat.
Trump does something > We react with "ooh no, orange man bad" > Dust settles > Get amnesia and continue our lives > And the cycle repeats
Wait, what? Clean energy investments, from the Trump admin? Sounds like a protection racket.
Where was the outrage when Pelosi and several members of congress were buying and selling stocks and front-running key legislation being passed that directly affected certain stocks in question? That sort of corruption was largely (and deliberately) ignored.
Now we have lead it to the point where corruption like this is allowed because no one was caught in the first place.
To quote what Pelosi said herself when asked about this conflict of interest: "We’re a free market economy, They (law makers) should be able to participate in that.” [0]
Essentially she has green-lighted said corruption, which she and others (except for AOC) have zero integrity even when both Trump and them are just as corrupt.
[0 ]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/16/nancy-pelosi-federal-lawmake...
"But one should not succumb to the illusion that with an analysis of the fundamentals of the capitalist mode of production that everything decisive has already been said about capitalist societies"
Michael Heinrich, Introduction to the three volumes of Capital
We got a lot of the things Marx was calling for. Of the 10 point plan near the end of section 2, we got:
- "2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." today's rates look "heavy" by the standards of the 1848, even if we've also seen it decline somewhat from the peak.
- "3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance." not fully of course, but inheritance tax is absolutely a thing in a way it wasn't in 1848, and was one of the contributors to the decline of country estates in the UK.
- "5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.", again, clearly not as described, but the central banks do now direct how much credit costs for all the other banks, and financial regulation has changed hugely since then (even if some of this has also been falling away as quickly as the rich think they can get away with it).
- "6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State." has been on-and-off in the intervening time depending on where and which technology: the Royal Mail/USPS; I'm not quite old enough to remember the end of British Telecoms' monopoly on UK phones. For transport, likewise, depends on the specifics, does the British Highways Agency or American Federal Highway Administration count? Motor vehicles (let alone aircraft) came quite some time after the Manifesto was written, the tech of that era was shipping and canals, railways existed but the big boom hadn't happened yet. British Rail was a nationalised thing when I was young. Deutsche Bahn is still state-owned, but on the other hand British busses are private and I don't know how to think correctly about how British bus routes are run/bid for/regulated.
- "7. …; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan." (trimmed a bit I'm not sure about), Superfund site cleanup?
- "9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; …" (trimmed the absolutely-not part), this seems correct, given how industrialised farming is?
- "10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c." - done so hard we don't even want to trade with places that don't do it
Remember, the form of capitalism that Marx et al were fighting against was laissez-faire, which basically died with the Great Depression. It's not the form of mixed economics we have today which we still call "capitalism".
There's no blueprint for what Communism will be like. There is just this vague idea of some administrative entity that would replace distribution by the market IIRC
That period is defined as starting about 100 years ago, after WW1. 100 years later the "late stage" capitalism outlived communism in USSR and China.
"But one should not succumb to the illusion that with an analysis of the fundamentals of the capitalist mode of production that everything decisive has already been said about capitalist societies"
Michael Heinrich, Introduction to the three volumes of Capital
This isn’t capitalism, it’s pure unfettered and uncontrolled greed.
Hi, Europe chiming in here. We still have proper democracies combined with capitalism, and life is great here.
But hey, if you don't like capitalism, go to some country where they don't have it, like North Korea or Cuba.
Hard to understand if this is something actually unlawful or something people don't like.