CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades | Hacker News Reader

CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades

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421 pointshelsinkiandrew233 comments

It is important to acknowledge and name corruption for what it is. It's just hard to continue to have novel reactions to it. It reminds me of an article I read once about cartel violence in Mexico, and how people typically become desensitized to the violence.

This is exactly why they want a televised execution.

I think this is the part that makes things aggravating. You can have all the rules, monitoring, surveillance you want, but it is all rather pointless if someone simply makes for the machinery to not apply to them.

Edit: And, if we accept that this is the default state, then lets dismantle the surveillance part. Might as well be free in that aspect, right?

I was thinking that with Trump's recent buying of diesel from Russia seemingly in contravention of a 2022 law banning energy imports from Russia, passed 100-0 in the senate. I mean what's the point of having laws if they are ignored?

I suppose so you can prosecute the administration for breaking the law.

The CFTC, since Trump, has become entirely corrupt. Note that the proliferation of sports gambling in prediction markets, which is explicitly illegal, largely exists because the CFTC refuses to enforce their own legal mandate against Kalshi and Polymarket.

It’s actually worse; when states try to shut down sports betting in prediction markets, the CFTC fights on behalf of Kalshi with the reasoning that only the federal government has the mandate to regular futures and prediction markets. And then they refuse to regulate!

The CFTC is supposed to have 5 chairs, with no more than 3 in the same party. The administration has gotten around this rule by simply removing 4 of the commissioners and then refusing to appoint replacements. In effect, the CFTC has only 1 republican chair and no opposite party representation. The level of corruption is staggering.

Not to mention that Trump Jr is an advisor to both Kalshi (YC19) and Polymarket.

> sports gambling in prediction markets, which is explicitly illegal

It’s a bit more complicated than that. The CFTC argues that under Dodd-Frank any bet on a future event that can have economic consequences is regulated by the CFTC.

It’s a bit silly because this obviously wasn’t the intention of the legislation, and it would also mean anyone betting outside a CFTC regulated exchange is in illegality. But it’s valid enough that The case will probably go to the Supreme Court.

It is an argument that is baldly non-nonsensical, but the Justice Department is not going to complain.

It's only a valid argument to this invalid Supreme Court filled with bribed judges, rapists, and racists.

It’s actually not more complicated than that: The Commodity Exchanges Act explicitly disallows gaming to be classified as a future or swap. See https://www.cftc.gov/IndustryOversight/ContractsProducts/ind...

This regime, as others like it, poses the constant question, “What are you going to do about it?”

And the answer is, largely, nothing.

It’s a shame, really.

Blame the people who put them in charge, voters

Why stop there? Why did voters vote the way they did?

Populism is historically both popular and destructive.

I'd argue FDR was a populist. It just depends on what kind of populism and to what end.

You don't get modern discontent and populism (and the current president) without the expansive (at the expense of congress and the states) executive branch. You don't get the expansive executive branch without 1930s populists and FDR.

Obviously there's a lot more nuance and detail to it (the blame Nixon deserves being of specific note IMO) but the argument is there.

So I'd argue that both the means are bad and the end

FDR had the folksy charm to directly address the public and acquired a lot of power, but in most respects he seems the opposite of a populist. He was a party insider with a complex technocratic response to the Depression voters believed actually worked, not someone who spent his time picking fights and arguing he needed more power to defeat enemies (or making complete fantasy promises like Huey Lewis), he picked up a broad voter coalition including lots of minorities he neither scapegoated nor actually defended, and was a conventional moderate for the time on foreign policy and [future] culture war issues. He was more radical and centralised than previous Presidents when it came to economic policy and the role of the executive, but it wasn't a shouty type of radicalism, especially not compared with how socialists and fascists elsewhere addressed the subject of the Depression...

Because people were (and still are) struggling and wanted something to change. Trump was the change candidate. Harris straight up said she wouldn't change anything.

The election was a rejection of stability.

At least, that's how people in the middle, who decide election results, saw things.

We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.

Those are my conclusions as well, though I want to note anyone who paid attention to her campaign rather than getting it second hand or third off of vibes would not have made the claim that she “straight up said she wouldn’t have changed anything”.

A lot of voters in the middle aren’t taking the time to understand why things seem to keep not changing (somewhat understandably so, but also unfortunately given the need for an engaged electorate in a healthy democracy). Both parties are being sticks in the mud, but one in particular is doing a lot more to keep change from happening than the other.

In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything. The point of democracy is to let the best ideas win, and part of that is being able to try those ideas out, and respond when they don’t work. Having a senate with two votes per state regardless of population, that are only replaced a third at a time, with an archaic but also recent rule that effectively requires 60/100 vote to pass almost anything meaningful, is just a recipe for failure.

End the filibuster as it is today. If you want a filibuster, force people to talk for it the way it worked for the first ~150 years of our country at least.

We should go back to indirect election of senators. Something needs to represent the will of the states as distinct entities.

Having some slimy Mitt Romney types doing math about various state industries and interests when wording bills and trading votes would be a huge improvement over the equally slimy jerks we have now scheming up ways to serve their donors (who's interests correlate with the voters even less than the state's despite that bar being low to begin with) while leveraging abortion this guns that wedge issues to get re-elected despite screwing their voters.

The distribution of senators to states would also matter less if they weren't direct elected and therefore as beholden to party platforms and funding systems and whatnot.

> Something needs to represent the will of the states as distinct entities

Why? And why is indirect selection of senators better for that? Won't it just hand power to backroom operators at the state level, instead of to the people of the state?

To be fair she was asked in an interview how she would differ from her predecessor and she totally choked. It was like she'd never even considered that was a question somebody might ask her. She just didn't have an answer.

She might've been a fine president and she might've actually changed some things. But even more fundamentally than whether she would've changed anything, Harris was a lousy campaigner with an ineffective track record as a politician. As you point out, catching a former prosecutor flat footed with an easy interview question is inexcusable. A last minute shove to the top of the Democrat ticket was burdened with all of that downside from the very beginning.

> In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything.

Isn't that cause and effect? In essence, what the US is showing is that the executive has so much power now that congress is largely obsolete.

If there was a better balance of power and less executive power, the only way the executive branch can get something done is to work with congress.

Obviously that doesn't work in all cases, conflict in particular. But in my experience that's where most democracies have drawn the line on executive power, basically for emergencies.

This basically. Change election after change election but nothing changes except the country keeps getting worse and more corrupt.

You can see the same thing playing out in Brazil

I would agree in principle, but from outside at least (I'm in Canada), BOY did President Trump and the accompanying cohort bring in some change. It's just... not even remotely change I would have personally sought. But USA's reputation, and relationship, with huge number of countries has changed significantly. This will have short and long term impact (positive or negative) on USA citizens - imports, travel, cost, employment and otherwise. The "new normal" of insance news, complete corruption, blatant lies from official sources, decimation and mistrust of both scientists and competent personnel, dismantling of regulations, completion implosion of the health department, etc... this feel like changes from the outside, but perhaps it's all business as usual and feeling the same on the inside :)

>this feel like changes from the outside, but perhaps it's all business as usual and feeling the same on the inside :)

Because many people in this country just go by vibes and don't really care what is happening.

We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.

We rolled dice well known to be unfair and lost. At some point, victim-blaming is the answer.

Nobody was shooting cruise missiles at the Yandex data centers. Seriously if you want to deny influence campaigns affecting US elections using a broad spectrum of influence ops, you also have to believe that advertising and PR doesn't work.

It's also not just happening to US elections, perhaps not even primarily to US elections. Brexit, AfD, Orban, etc. were all boosted with a strategic goal in mind.

Tbf trump has lost the popular vote more than he has won it. Voters picked Al Gore too… (and it seems likely that Florida was stolen)

They hoped the vote will hurt liberals, blue states, trans people and others they hate and dont consider real. But not themselves. They spend years listening to hate and learning to wish to destroy, so they voted for candidate consistent with that.

And some simply found Trumpian corruption and abuse to be manly and cool.

>They hoped the vote will hurt liberals, blue states, trans people and others they hate and dont consider real. But not themselves.

Even if you work by the logic of respecting the median voter's position as legitimate and worthy of equal consideration by mere virtue of it being democratically held (a viewpoint I don't necessarily subscribe to), it seems as if the median voter got an own goal this cycle.

I'm trans. I'm also smart, wealthy, and live in America - an intersection of categories that essentially mean you can do almost anything you want to do with your life. I've barely felt any of the consequences of the election because I can afford to move to somewhere where the legislative climate is more friendly, can afford to have a social life among people who are not hostile, can afford to pay out of pocket for every new medication of mine that gets banned off insurance, and largely shrug off fuel and food inflation. I'm not feeling the consequences of the current regime half as bad as the people who voted enthusiastically for it. If the goal was to obstruct or ruin my life for being a member of a given suspect class, then the goal failed.

Culture war is nonsense and nothing can ever supersede material conditions.

There is no solution to this problem other than electing a candidate who will raise taxes, fund infrastructure, and stabilise prices. I don't care what party they come from. I don't have optimism we'll get anyone like this on the national stage within the next decade - NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the closest I've seen yet to a candidate who espouses the positions I'd like to see in someone who is qualified to run for president.

Because approximately half of them have IQs under 100, and are relatively easy for malevolent actors to herd to the polls.

Yes, "both sides" do this, but Trump's party has refined it to a science with help from people like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, while the Democrats still rely on shoe leather.

Not an American, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but

I think Trump mostly happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Notice how many countries had the then opposition party win (or come much closer than usual) around 2023-2025. It didn't matter which side they were on, Poland went right -> center-left for example, so did the UK.

People in 2024-ish were very unhappy about their economic situation (which was mostly caused by pandemic disruptions, with the war in Ukraine not helping things), but was usually attributed to whoever was in power at the time. In the US, that happened to be the democrats, so that's whom people blamed.

This gave the GOP a trump card (no pun intended) which they played reasonably well. I think the Democrats could perhaps have made some hay there (by focusing on "evil capitalists" causing "fakeflation"), but the Republicans automatically started from a position of strength by not being in power at the time that particular disaster happened. Even so, the DEM focused mostly on race and not economics, which was a bad play at the time.

He was elected first in 2016. With that I think your whole analysis falls apart.

The Ukraine war also had a lot less impact on the us than it did in Europe. Europe was much more reliant on energy from Russia, and that was where the pain was in 2022/23/24.

The Supreme Court Citizens United decision that allowed money to flood into campaigns.

> Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.

- Elon Musk, June 5 2025 (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1930667528696828120)

Voters obviously bear ultimate responsibility, but there's a lot more going on than just "voters are responsible." If that were true, corporations and wealthy individuals would have no interest in injecting money into politics, but alas... they do.

He also said after last time he was done putting so much money into politics, and then recently just dropped around another $300 million promoting republican candidates.

Well after demonstrating shaky allegiance to the US and personal meddling in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, his companies are ripe for nationalization.

He's got a lot to lose!

> done putting so much money into politics

Will be done by the end of the year (tm)

You're supposed to regurgitate the Brandies "“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” statement.

You can never blame anything on propaganda and deliberate misinformation and manipulation of the public. And you have to assume all speakers have the same power and reach.

Unrestricted free speech in practice falls under what Anatole characterized : "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."

Elon can lie and propagandize at scale with impunity. But let's blame voters.

Looking up and down this thread and there are people you would agree with about our situation being awful, while being extremely reluctant to blame a planned and coordinated influence campaign by an adversary. It amounts to calling our fellow citizens chumps, and that's rude.

The private sector, for slightly more benign reasons, and sometimes less benign reasons like keeping cigarettes from being blamed for cancer and emphysema, uses the same mechanisms to sell products. If that didn't work, nobody would pay for advertising and PR.

In a democracy where everyone has the right to vote, I think the “downside” that must be accepted is there will exist a spectrum of voters. Voters who only listen to sound bites, voters who mindlessly vote tribally, to voters who research, voters who understand second and third order effects. We also can’t assume we have total information of how the elected official will act throughout their term.

Even something as simple as, attractiveness mattering more in presidential candidates since the advent of television in homes.

At the same time, we had a system whose establishment largely looked down on middle class Americans who didn't go to college. Early to mid 2000’s through the great recession saw the middle class tighten, with no real improvement to healthcare or affordability (attempts were made but ultimately medical costs are still rising). Many middle class people rely on things like cheap gas, child care, and affordable heating among others.

Then you have a system whose leaders actively works to increase gas prices (regardless of EV incentives, you’re asking individuals to purchase new cars when a difference of 1 dollar in gas goes a long way), some states subsidizing green energy programs by additional taxes on oil and natural gas heating costs (just switch to heat pumps and take on a 0 interest loan for 10 years), and rising childcare costs partly due to regulations in childcare businesses.

Then you have someone who claims to be an outsider (he wasn’t), who clowns on the existing elites in debates, and makes vast promises. The other party doesn’t say anything about positive change they’ll bring, just that they aren’t Him. Why not try something different than the status quo over the last 2 decades?

With gas prices up, the Epstein scandal still unresolved, and another ME war, i think if many of middle America were told these would be the outcomes they would not have voted him in again.

We should have more empathy for our fellow Americans, and try to understand each other instead of assuming they want the worst for your side.

"The populism will continue until morale improves"

The unrest will get more and more pronounced until affordability improves

Jan 6 alone was enough to make voting for Trump morally unacceptable. Voting for fear and money over the preservation of freedom is a classic moral failure and every one of the people who voted for Trump not only knows it, but pretends to make it a cornerstone of their political beliefs. If they use Epstein and gas prices as excuses, fuck them.

You assume those voters believe Jan 6 was an insurrection. Many of them don’t. Whether thats a fault of the media/bubble they’re in or gross naivety/negligence is a different discussion.

If you go with the presumption Jan 6 was a mob that got out of hand (not my position, just one of the perspectives), then the idea that he wasn’t able to enact his agenda due to the opposing party, coupled with the shenanigans of the other option (no democrat primary for Kamala being one, with democrat party having done similar in the past with Bernie), then claims that the democrats are spinning Jan 6 and risking another term with him seem more reasonable.

Whether I or you agree with those premise is separate from what the zeitgeist is for much of America

I simply don't believe that any substantial number of voters think January 6 wasn't an insurrection. Trump openly spoke for a full month beforehand about how he was going to overturn the election, and continues to this day to insist that he should have been allowed to. People who claim it was a protest that got out of hand are not confused, naive, or in a media bubble; they're just lying.

My college educated father said J6'ers were just tourists. He denied there was ever a noose involved. I had to send photos.

The media bubble is something these people seek out. They avoid sources that offend them. They don't go to original sources or seek first hand accounts. When confronted before they get the talking points their responses are rational, then after receiving orders they'll pivot on a dime.

It's not a different discussion. Ultimately the only way you wouldn't understand that Jan 6 was an insurrection supported by the president is through motivated reasoning, driven by their fear of all the rest of the nonsense and desire to put their hope in a strongman to fix it. Given the stakes, this continues to be morally unacceptable.

We (most of the world) also have to deal with well funded external government organisations constantly pumping out propaganda attempting to make sure we don't work together or have empathy/understanding of each other's views.

Push that through a media filter that optimizes for engagement and it's no wonder these things are happening.

I can agree with your position based on the election on 2016. He was a wildcard, and truly nobody could know exactly how he'd act in office.

I can't agree with your position based on the election of 2024. We knew exactly who Trump was, and it was obvious the second term was only going to be more extreme and unhinged.

And this is where you have to admit that the Democrats just ran a terrible candidate in '24. You might believe she was the better choice but she just did not appeal to the middle, and you need them to win.

I do blame the Democratic party and Biden especially for the major shitshow that was the selection of a presidential candidate. Their hubris and corruption definitely continued to enable this walking disaster of Trump's second term. The Democratic Party has failed America over and over again in terms of actually selecting candidates the people want over people whose "turn" it is.

I also blame the people who voted for Trump for Trump getting elected. Ultimately its the voters who chose this disaster of a presidency, despite obvious signs.

The second term I think was largely handed to him given the Democrats had no primary for Kamala, and frankly were tone deaf with what the “other side”’s needs were in a candidate.

Politicians flip flop, or hopefully truly develop different opinions after experience/learning more.

Kamala came off as a piece of clay molded in the last minute to appease groups just for their vote. A good politician makes that “molding” process come off more naturally. Her and Walz did not really resonate with voters, they were just not Him.

And that is a lesson I hope democrats or a third party has learned that they can’t just reflectively say “I’m not Trump,” they need to show that through their principals, track record, and message of unity.

Hillary admonished trump voters, many of whom are middle class union/laborers. Biden claimed he was pro union then broke up the railroad strike. Kamala couldn’t hold a conversation without some sound bite failure (doesn’t make her bad, just not a politician) and wasn’t elected in any primary.

I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did, then provide a better option not just a different one

I totally agree the Democratic party has routinely failed the electorate.

> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did

I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.

I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.

These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.

Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?

A problem many people have with Democrats is they think that they're condescending, smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.

Perhaps the many, many comments in this thread, going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests, could be understood for what it actually is, which is that.

There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests. People vote based on what they think will make their life better. The quality of a person's life has a massive number of interrelated variables that are hard to tease out.

Someone might decide that their quality of life will be improved by having better jobs or doing something about the extractive corporate sector that makes it almost impossible for normal people to thrive. They might also try to improve their lives by trying to make other people besides themselves feel humiliated and outcast in society since they are sick of being those people. In fact they might decide that's only thing they can change since that first thing isn't on the agenda of either party.

In all cases people get to decide what they care about and what they think their life improvement chances are by whatever metrics they pick. They are right about their preferences by definition. That's inherent to democracy.

> Democrats [are] condescending, smug assholes...going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests,

Totally. No one likes an asshole. But assholes can be right. What's a kinder label than "misinformed" for someone who rejects the truth because of its source?

There's no truths or untruths here. Just preferences and values. Some people care more about some things than others. People vote based on if their life is getting better or worse and who seems most focused on changing that if it's getting worse.

> There's no truths or untruths here. Just preferences and values. Some people care more about some things than others

This is easily disprovable. People care about gas prices. They were unhappy with gas prices under Biden and said so loudly. They voted for the candidate that increased them even more.

Reason: ignorance and misinformation.

Outcome: voting against one's own declared interests.

I'm not denying preferences exist. But preferences are shaped by lies. They easily lead to outcomes contrary to those preferences.

What you're saying is just factually incorrect. They had a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency. Prices went up much faster and more painfully under Biden than under Trump.

So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.

Turns out things didn't happen that way but that's a different criticism. You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.

> So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.

So they made the ignorant choice at choosing the candidate who teed up the highly inflationary environment and enacted policies which driectly drove the inflation. Like, the $450B in cash handouts and the near trillion dollars in forgiven PPP loans with zero enforcement. Loans which his family directly abused.

> You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.

No, I'd expect people to not make stupid choices. Anyone actually paying attention would understand Trump is bad for the economy long term. But here we are.

Wars and pandemics that begin on the other side of the world cause inflation.

When "smug asshole Democrats" explained why this wasn't Biden's fault, given that it happened on the other side of the world, they got called "smug assholes".

Enacting tariffs and waging war also causes inflation. Tariffs were a campaign promise - zero omniscience required.

And gas wasn't this expensive in 2022. So you're wrong about that.

> There's no truths or untruths here.

"They're eating the cats and dogs!"

> smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.

Trump literally said he could say the stupidest things to his supporters and they'll still cheer. Trump is a smug asshole who thinks he's better than his supporters, talks down to them, lies to their faces over and over, and knows they'll support him because they literally see him as God's anointed one.

Now do the other guys. That's the problem here. We have two competing elitist political parties. They unite on their agreement that capital should rule everything and everyone, and disagree on a bunch of other stuff.

Tell me again about how this applies to a candidate showdown like James Talarico versus Ken Paxton.

> There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests.

This is truly as nonsensical opinion as people always choose healthy choices. People can absolutely make self destructive choices. A smoker choosing to smoke isn't making a good choice, but to you they couldn't possibly choose something against their interests. It would be in their interests to stop smoking, but they're unable or unwilling to make that decision.

You're almost there.

Now see if you can figure out why self-destructive choices can be rational at times?

Can you formulate a hypothetical where smoking is a rational decision? I can.

> self-destructive choices can be rational at times

It's not a rational choice. It's choosing to make the irrational choice.

A drug addict choosing to shoot up isn't making the rational choice. It's a choice we can examine on why they made that choice, but it wasn't reason that drove them to make that choice.

Thinking Trump is the anointed one isn't a rational decision. Voting for Trump to get rid of corruption isn't a rational choice. Voting for a rapist in the middle of a big pedophile ring isn't the rational choice at fighting the pedophiles.

The largest problem with America is a strong culture of believing that my ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge.

This is because 35% of the country identifies as rejecting all science and asserting the belief that the earth is 6000 years old because they explicitly believe a "plain reading" of the bible trumps all

https://news.gallup.com/poll/647594/majority-credits-god-hum...

This statistic is at a historic low

The believe that the earth is 6000 years old or "Young", a belief that is explicitly taught in hundreds of private schools funded through school voucher programs that only hand little timmy very special textbooks that assert that scientists are evil and trying to keep them from gods light.

This belief requires you to not learn how science works. It requires you to reject empiricism entirely. It requires you to believe that science in general is an evil cabal directly in league with satan to make you stop believing in god. It requires you to believe that democrats are in league with these satanists to "brainwash" your good little god fearing kid in school, so you should put him in a private school where he won't be brainwashed because instead he will be taught the truth of god, which is to just do whatever the Pastor and his leaders say, and don't think.

How would you describe a belief that says that technology and technology companies will improve people's quality of life and that the people who run them should be given more power and authority within our culture as a result?

If this was why you voted for Trump you once again failed to pay attention. If anything this administration is down to let billionaires and their tech corporations do whatever they want to do, far more than the administration actually starting to make regulations and antitrust proceedings.

Yet another example of "voting against your interests" due to massive amounts of ignorance.

Trump owns a social media company. The leaders of the other big social media companies backed his run to the tune of nearly $300M dollars.

What about when what someone cares about and votes based on turns out to not even exist?

There was a lot of campaigning in 2024 based on completely made up claims. Many voters voted based on that, even though they thought the other candidate was better on other issues they cared about.

That only works to a point.

I, and the other poster, are beyond that point. I've actually had it said that it's our fault (liberals) that things are like this, because we are refusing to engage and that we "owe" conservatives the opportunity to listen and understand their argument.

That we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!". Apparently you can take your baby home, come back a month later, and say "Nah, changed my mind on this one", who knew?), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.

That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".

The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.

So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".

"Maybe I need to put more effort into why they think or feel that way?" That won't work, because I'll be the only one doing so. You'll note that it's never framed as a matter "maybe they should think about why people think what they're saying sounds absolutely ridiculous". There's no effort on critical reasoning or discourse that will work there, because it's not grounded in reason in the first place. And when that comes up, crickets. But no, "keep going high", keep working on empathy for people who actively celebrate LE shooting people, and for a President that will say from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, quote, "My kids are insider trading all the time".

Single-choice voting one of the least effective forms of democracy.

I totally agree. Presidential elections have 2 (viable) parties, so voters are really only able to express 1 bit of information.

Individual people may have nuanced takes on politics when you talk to them. But it all gets compressed down to 1 bit on the ballot: left or right? Red or blue?

I wish we had a system with more parties, like they do in many other countries.

I blame the 'both sides are the same' non-voters that did their best to discourage voting for Kamilla.

Have you heard of manufactured consent?

The interesting thing is how easily a democracy can be abused. In some ways, though in a more limited manner, it reminds us of Germany in 1933 or 1930s. Now the orange mafia in charge is, of course, not 1:1 comparable; ICE kills citizens willy-nilly style but they are not as systematic in their overthrow of the US democracy as the N people were in the 1930s. But many elements are very much comparable, such as the orange mafia trying to stifle critical journalism. That's a transition to a more authoritarian system.

It much more like (imho) the period of time around the Gracchi brothers in the Roman Republic. Lots of corruption, where the corruption is "tolerable" by the masses and elites. One or two people pushing the corruption as far as possible and being reprimanded but not punished. The masses groaning but not buckling. It tracks even the politics of the time. Trump is a populist in his political platform. His supporters do believe he is draining the swamp. The same way the Gracchi brothers rode on a tide of populism while not being populists.

how his supporters genuinely believe he is ridding the government of corruption is a contradiction so plain and bare that it begs a psychological study.

It's amazing what a little bit of propaganda can do to a system of government.

I mean, the simple explanation is that they aren't being honest with the rest of us. The next simplest is that they are incredibly fucking stupid if they thought that this was the lesser of two evils.

It's motivated reasoning, he's hurting the right people and that is all that matters to them. They will sacrifice anything to put the "Other" in their place.

It's no different to when impoverished white men insisted that letting black men be "equals" in a philosophical sense was worth dying for. When you are so pathetic, so stupid, so inept and impotent and just unspecial, sometimes you will do whatever it takes to pretend to be special.

Projection is what they do all the time. Remember when they kept crying about "Identity politics"? They can't process their self consciousness.

America is a mental health wasteland.

A lot of these people are to this day holding a grudge about that black man. It's taught to entire generations of southerners still that the south didn't revolt to protect the institution of slavery, despite every document of the south stating such in plain english, because the alternative, as the confederacy plainly stated and feared publicly during the close of the war, was to recognize how awful a person you were to be willing to die to keep human beings as some other random white mans property and believe that god wanted that to be the case and to believe that you were inherently better than black people for zero reasons.

People in these worldviews have to start inverting reality at an extremely young age, and so they are well equipped to continue that in adulthood. These are the people that are desperate to have an external reason to be failures. To have something to blame. It's funny, because I don't get that. I'd rather things be my fault, because then I can change that. But these people genuinely struggle to accept that being wrong is normal. People like my brother who insist "I am never wrong" at the age of 40 as an alcoholic who blames not getting into a good college on "affirmative action", as if he could even compete with the average black kid in college. He's as smart as me at least, but because learning requires you to accept your own fallibility, he refused to engage with it, or he refused to accept that he struggled from ADHD, which he refuses to treat because he wants to believe stupid anti-mental-health stigmas despite direct evidence from family members that it fixes problems. He flew a confederate flag on his truck in high school, insisting "Heritage not hate". In fucking Maine (Woo Chamberlain!). As a Frenchman who had his culture erased by the literal KKK. Who shares family names with black people in Louisiana because of the previous time his culture was erased by the British before the US existed.

When I was 12, his young son was first getting into public school. He knows very little about the world, so he didn't realize how shitty school lunch had gotten since he paid attention to it in the 90s. So he blamed poor school lunch on Michelle Obama. This led him to assert that "All Democrats should be shot", to multiple family members who are democrats. In front of his house with more firearms than kitchen utensils. At least he takes gun safety seriously with his kid.

They just want to be proud but the only way for them to do that is to utterly reject reality and ensure there is a strong enough underclass for them to feel superior to. It's pathetic.

[delayed]

Where it gets worse is about a month ago he literally sat giving an interview at the WH where someone asked about insider trading and he said "My kids are insider trading all the time now".

Not even denying it, admitting it and proud of it.

It's not unique to democracy, any power structure can be abused by those who manage to seize the reigns. It's possible that a democracy could produce a system with limited power structures and diffuse responsibilities if its constituents desired such.

About the tested in less than 1 month. I have my doubts about democracy surviving.

> And the answer is, largely, nothing.

There's a two-year delay baked into the system. If the house flips (and it almost certainly will), the house will be able to investigate these things.

I expect fireworks.

We have to hope for a changing approach from the dems. They dragged their feet on prosecuting Trump and his cronies before out of an attempt to return to normal.

I've become cynical enough to expect the opposite at this point, which likely means reality will settle somewhere around the midway point.

It appears that one party has settled into reckless disregard for democratic and social norms because they can rest assured that the other party is feckless and only cares about "returning to normal" rather than holding anyone accountable or ensuring the harm can't be repeated. They're probably right.

All of this is thanks to the winners-take-all voting system which entrenches two parties and prevents any meaningful consensus to be reached at a national level. I think where the US is at now is inevitable given the voting system in place.

77 million voters voted for Trump after he'd shown them exactly who he was. I don't think you can blame the voter sentiments and information environment that leads to that outcome on the voting system.

A fragmented party system driven by Parliamentary coalition building might actually mean less accountability, since right-leaning independents and ex-Republicans disgruntled at the erosion of democratic and social norms under Trump suddenly have to worry about actual socialists being part of the alternative, and options that genuinely aren't MAGA to vote for who in practice will need to ally with MAGA

> I expect fireworks.

Me too. Fireworks of "We have to move on" and "We have to reach out", etc.

Don’t forget, “We are very angry” and “The law clearly says that they cannot do this”.

Followed by some congressional subcommittee making a demand from another Federal entity for an explanation by a firm date. Under threat of making the exact same demand again if they don't answer it satisfactorily.

And Susan Collins will furrow her brow.

Really? How many times can Democrats take power and shrug their shoulders and mostly do nothing before you stop expecting fireworks?

I expect proactive pardons.

I'm sure there will be, but perhaps the saving grace is that a lot of financial crimes contain a criminal as well as a civil component, and people can only be pardoned for criminal offenses.

So, if the Democrats have any modicum of backbone and integrity(doubtful), they might not be able to jail anyone but they would be able to claw back illegally gotten funds, sometimes at a 3x multiple

>> and it almost certainly will

I would love to know where you got this analysis from. Hopefully not from polling or CNN. I think we all learned a lesson from using those data points.

The best indicator for this is the futures market. It never lies.

The futures market (or at least the ones I was watching) predicted that Donald Trump would lose both of the presidential elections he ran in (especially the first).

That should serve as a simple existence proof that the futures market CAN and does sometimes "lie".

> I expect fireworks.

I expect fireworks as well, as in flashy, noisy but nothing real accomplished.

Certainly hope that there will be accountability, and maybe there will be some, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Post-Watergate there was some accountability and laws were changed. Campaign finance laws were introduced. Other laws to limit presidential power. But those laws have subsequently been eroded and weakened and here we are with an imperial presidency again.

I hope you're correct, but suspect you'll be disappointed.

Even if the House and Senate flip, majorities will be slim enough to prevent anything major. Certainly unlikely we get any impeachment trials in the Senate, though I'd love to see Hegseth get tossed out.

Prior to recent Supreme Court decisions many regulatory agencies and things like the Justice Department were independent agencies that could provide some check on executive branch abuses. But that is gone now.

Congress can perform investigations, but without the President's signature they cannot take actions that have the force of law. Impeachment cannot remove any official from office without 2/3 support in the Senate. Congress CAN refuse to fund some activities, but the administration has been ignoring existing legal restrictions on spending.

So no, Congress won't take any meaningful action to reign things in for at least two years, regardless of who wins the election unless we also overthrow the government in some way.

"“What are you going to do about it?”"

Curious what you think should be done.

No offense, but often when I see this kind of comment there's a call for… unspecified action?

These guys are all going to end up in prison at this rate. Dems are currently predicted to win next election no?

Oh absolutely not. They’re going to end up very rich!

Depends on who actually gets elected. A centrist candidate like Buttigeg/Ossoff/Harris/Newsom would almost certainly lead to no prosecutions. Someone with actual convictions like AOC or Ro Khanna might.

Ossoff does not really seem like a centrist on this point. He's pretty vicious about the whole Trump criminal organization.

Fair. Although he seems to mostly target Trump, rather than the conditions that gave rise to Trumpism. Unless someone addresses that we’re stuck in a vicious cycle…

He's even better than you thought, then. Here's a post from a week ago (and a common refrain in his writing and speaking):

"I get why people voted for him. Because even before he came on the scene, American politics was coin-operated.

Money goes in, favors come out. It’s been running on corporate money, secret money, billionaire money. Both sides.

And when members of Congress aren’t fundraising from lobbyists and corporate PACs, they’re trying to dodge getting bombed by these super PACs.

Spectacular wealth buys an ever greater share of power over our national affairs. And this corruption is why nothing works for ordinary people."

He at least seems to recognize the stakes, while the Schumer and Pelosi wing of the party (most of the party) simply do not. It's literally barbarism or democracy, and barbarism is currently winning, and if your opponent is a white supremacist fighting hard on the side of barbarism, you gotta say that plainly. Ossoff is one of the few democrats who will say it. He has the benefit of his opponent being particularly odious in his ties to literal Nazis, and the base he has to serve including a lot of black people who understand what a white supremacist looks like.

I will laugh and then cry if the left puts up a candidate that is (again) alienating of the working class.

Enough of the voter base will cut the nose to spite the face

Which candidate(s) would that be... and why?

Newsom because he is backed by oil wealth, has suspicious connections to PG&E, and has delivered (some of?) the highest electricity rates in the country.

There's only one Democrat I simply will not vote for, because they transparently serve the oligarch class, and it seems like the one the Democratic establishment wants to nominate for president in 2028 (that candidate is Newsom, if it weren't obvious). A man who grins while destroying everything a homeless person owns is a monster who should never be allowed into any position of power. I don't know if the working class, in general, understand who Newsom is, but he's clearly not for the working class, and at least some of them will figure that out in a general election. He's the kind of California Republican that runs as a Democrat so he can win statewide in California.

California voter here. If Newsom wins the primary I will campaign for the Republican.

But please note that he's pre-emptively declared he won't run if Kamala runs[0]. He even admits this is because they're both backed by the same groups and share the same donor network[1]. So there's at least one more Democrat you simply should not vote for.

[0]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/gavin-newsom-sa...

[1]: Quote from above article: "The governor said he would not want to force a contest against the former vice president, noting that the two share many political allies and supporters."

Yeah, I had to hold my nose to vote for Harris, and I don't look forward to the continued dominance of that wing of the party. The good thing about Harris running instead of Newsom is that she's less likely to win the nomination. I hope primary voters are as fed up with the corporate Democratic party as the country in general is.

Next election is midterms, not presidential.

I see what you did there - "only people with conviction might get convictions"

The CFTC’s refusal to do anything useful serves both parties.

So the election will be meaningless. Expect bad things in November.

You might want to have a look at what happened to Iran-Contra. Or indeed, the current President's conviction in a New York court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_trial_of_Donald_Trump...

They're simply in the oligarch level now. Everyone understands that they're above the law. Nowhere near enough Democrats are talking about the level of corruption clearout that would be required to bring accountability. Law enforcement are heavily compromised in the opposite direction. See the raid on Ilhan Omar, for example.

>>See the raid on Ilhan Omar, for example.

I don't think congresspeople should be above the law. If she committed immigration fraud she should be convicted and deported.

I agree. But it’s pretty apparent that this is a case of political targeting. Elon and Melania Trump likely committed some level of immigration fraud as well.

And they did it as adults.

Do you think Trump was politically targeted?

No. The guy literally had boxes of classified materials in his house and refused to return them [edit: also lied that he had returned them all] when asked politely.

OK, but you know Biden did more or less the same right? And just didn't get prosecuted because the prosecutor said he was too far gone mentally.

>OK, but you know Biden did more or less the same right?

No he did not.

Biden had some leftover documents that he turned over when told to. That is normal. It is quite literally part of secrets management to expect some stuff ends up uncontrolled and have processes and plans to recover it.

Trump had a secret stash of literal nuclear secrets in his meeting place with pretty much anyone willing to pay him, and denied having them, refused to turn them over, and denied everything again when he was finally raided and they found all that shit. People like you still insist somehow that this wasn't absurd on it's face.

Trump is the most sued president because Trump historically gets sued by everyone he talks to because, as he has literally told you to your face, that's his strategy, abuse everything and force it to go through the courts, because then you can bend those rules and slow down problems.

I don't think your account of what happened with Biden is accurate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_classified_documents...

It's a bit much to say "he turned them over when he got caught". Yeah. no doubt.

It's literally in the first sentence of the article you posted. "attorneys for Biden discovered classified documents" and contacted the authorities. How does that mean "got caught"? Your own attorneys can't "catch" you.

" Biden's personal attorney said on January 21 that the Justice Department discovered six items containing classification markings during a consensual search of his home the previous day, some of which dated to his tenure in the Senate; investigators also seized some of Biden's handwritten notes from his vice presidency."

"On November 22, 2022, Biden's attorneys discovered the first set of classified documents in a locked closet...they reported them that day".

If you're in possession of a calendar, you will notice that November 22, 2022 is actually before January 2023. You might also note the "consensual search" in your own quote.

So a normal person might conclude that the Justice Department called Biden after he reported on himself, and said "We see you said you had some documents, so maybe you forgot some more? Can we come search with you?" And Biden maybe said "Good idea."

> And just didn't get prosecuted because the prosecutor said he was too far gone mentally

So...was Trump also too far gone? That means he shouldn't be president now.

Or did he do the same thing while being of sound mind? That means it wasn't a politically-motivated prosecution.

Logically it can only be one of these two. Tell me which one is right.

The Biden prosecutor is a registered Republican. The Trump prosecutor is an independent. You tell me who's more likely to be politically motivated.

>>So...was Trump also too far gone? That means he shouldn't be president now.

I dunno, but I don't think it got in the official report like it did for Biden.

And the argument isn't "Biden took the documents home because of Alzheimers". The argument is "Biden took the documents home when in control of his faculties, but his Alzheimers was too far gone for him to be prosecuted."

I'm asking you about Trump. Is he mentally unfit to be president now or was the prosecution actually politically valid?

And I notice you still haven't addressed the differences between the two cases. I've found most people of a certain political persuasion never do because it's too inconvenient for their narrative.

In one case, a guy was asked to return documents the authorities knew he had, he didn't and then had to be served a search warrant to retrieve them.

In the other, a guy found documents himself, told on himself and consented to a voluntary search to look for more.

Mens rea is an important variable to the chances of conviction. Juries can easily be convinced that honest mistakes happen; especially when the person who made the mistake turns themselves in.

>>I'm asking you about Trump. Is he mentally unfit to be president now or was the prosecution actually politically valid?

Those two statements don't follow on from each other. I realise there is this big push to claim Trump has alzheimers now because it was an effective attack on Biden (due to being true) but it's not sticking with Trump. You may not like him, you may disagree with his decisions, but he's still as much Trump as he ever was.

>>In the other, a guy found documents himself, told on himself and consented to a voluntary search to look for more.

Yeah, when the Justice Department says "We'd like to check your house for classified info" saying "Nah, we good" is definitely an option.

> Those two statements don't follow on from each other

Then you can't follow logic, sorry.

He had the documents, didn't report them, and refused to return them. That's fact, not commentary. He either did those things with a sound mind or without. That's logic.

Given these things, there are only two possible deductions. Criminal behavior that was deservedly prosecuted or unfitness for office today. Unless you believe he was crazy at the time, then became sane.

> Yeah, when the Justice Department says "We'd like to check your house for classified info" saying "Nah, we good" is definitely an option.

Well it was definitely an option one of these two guys used. Because he knew had people like you to call it "politically motivated" regardless of the facts.

The guy who cooperated was a sitting President at the time. He could've easily invoked executive privilege or some other BS. We know what the current guy would do.

Ofc congresspeople should not be immune, but she is being investigated for the possibility that a relative who brought her to the US when she was a child (15) lied on her immigration paperwork.

It’s not clear to me how she’d be responsible for that and it’s also not clear to me what evidence they expected to turn up related to such an offense by raiding her home decades after the offense was alleged to have occurred.

Now do Elon

What laws do you think Elon has broken?

He lied on his immigration forms which is a declaration under penalty of perjury. He was a paid employee without legal authorization to work in this country. He also failed to maintain his non-immigrant student status.

These are all willful acts by an adult.

Half the congress would be in jail for insider trading if this was taken seriously.

Imagine I just inserted the "Your terms are acceptable" meme here.

But seriously - insider trading should be straight to jail for a politician, at any level or party.

Techno-feudalism has many practical applications that benefit techno-royals.

Techo-nobles benefit as well. Just ask Eric Holder and centi-millionaire Obama. If you can reach the latter in his mansion on the exclusive island for the wealthy, that is.

Maybe a mid-level scapegoat or two will go to prison. Definitely not the ones at the top. God bless America

I wondered about this so checked what happened to Joseph McCarthy. He was subject to a vote of censure in the senate, and became unpopular, but that was it. Of course he died shortly after of alcohol related conditions, so there's that..

Or, like, Nixon.

The relative lack of consequences there enabled this go around.

Nixon resigned, and was pardoned. Many of the conspirators were convicted and served prison time.

With Reagan and Iran-Contra, Reagan was never charged, most officials were pardoned, and only one person served any jail time.

With Bush (43) there were no consequences for any of it. Not he war under false pretenses, not the domestic spying, not the torture.

And with Donald Trump (45) a single judge recently appointed by Donald Trump held up legal proceedings until he was elected President, again.

> Nixon resigned, and was pardoned.

Yes. That's deeply bad precedent.

Roger Ailes founded Fox News, explicitly, to avoid a recurrence of even that minimal level of consequence.

We might get someone like Obama again who "looks forward and not backwards"... a logic that would result in all crimes being ignored if consistently applied.

A big part of why we are at where we are is that January 6 was our Beer Hall Putsch. Like the Germans, we failed to put a stop to it.

Democrats are corrupt as fuck too, don’t be fooled.

No one thinks that there non-zero corruption in the Democratic Party. but we're at point where things like environmental policy, foreign relations, military alliances, tariffs, wars, and a whole bunch of actually important issues are being decided by how much Trump can extract from the arrangement.

Maybe they're just really good at hiding it, but I don't really remember a time under any administration when we could say something like 'as a country we're now supporting Russia and abandoning Ukraine and our traditional allies in Europe because they offer much better bribes'.

we should be going after corruption by anyone, its extremely corrosive. I don't understand why if that's a concern why we're supposed to be ok with turning it up to 11. Not only outright personal deal making, but the active replacement of foreign governments, state and local officials with people who know how to play that game properly.

What have you got to even begin to claim an equivalence here. Pelosi's stock trades? Biden's sleazy son?

There have already been rumors of some administration-wide pardon scheme but that'll probably fall on its face when put to the test, like almost everything else they do.

It's baffling to watch people destroy their reputations, careers and possibly risk their freedom for a chance to get close to power and pad their (possibly offshore/crypto) savings accounts. For as evolved as we pretend to be, we're really not very far beyond our "lizard brains" and a few missed meals away from mania. I was actually just thinking about Todd Blanche and the stupid games he's playing, flirting with contempt in a number of lawsuits. He's almost certainly got less time in the AG seat than Trump has in the president's and reality is going to slam into his brown nose very hard, sooner than later.

There are enough state level charges to be laid against these people that federal pardons can be made in effective. The JDs among them can also lose their licenses.

Also, civil infractions can claw back ill begotten gains at a 3x multiple, and you can't pardon those

What makes you think the Democrats are going to do anything? They had multiple slam-dunk cases against Trump during the previous administration and they either did nothing at all, or slow-rolled the investigations and then gave them up when election season rolled around again.

Nothing's going to change with the Democrats in. The authoritarianism will be done but behind the scenes much more.

Remember the whole system is filled with institutionalists who believe following in the program, no matter who sets the standards.

We need to focus on systemic change rather than populism.

If prison was an option, it would have already happened. They will get away with it. Dems aren't going to be able to break this administration. They will just ignore congress. What will congress do?

Even worse they (the GOP) is just lighting everything on fire now and leaving it in a dysfunctional state on purpose. Because they know for the next two years voters will just start blaming the Dems for everything that goes wrong. Trump will say "I would fix it but the radical left Democrats are too busy persecuting me. High gas prices are their fault, and Zelensky's etc"

What's happening in Brazil right now should give people pause about thinking that an interregnum with someone left-ish in power trying to restore normality will reset things to a saner state.

These are people totally willing to burn the crops and salt the fields. Trump could die tomorrow and a thousand heads would pop up looking to benefit from the anger and resent.

Exactly. Almost be better if Dems lost. Now they will be a ignored, and a target for blame, an excuse.

Probably not, if the previous administration, when they had full control, is useful precedent.

Btw, we're talking about 800 million dollars:

https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/flurry-of-suspicious-...

Forget the IRS. America can balance its budget going after and fining these illegal trades and traders. MAGA!

(edit: /s but not about making the government some money off this corruption)

Insider traded is expected not illegal in commodity trading.

The market is intended to support consumers and producers of the commodity and there’s no requirement for either of them to inform the market of their intentions or information prior to a trade.

If a coffee growers knows a blight is killing their crops they can buy millions of futures before informing the market.

The bar for insider trading is higher but it’s not missing. Governmental employees for instance have explicit laws about their behavior as insider trading in commodities.

You can use your own proprietary information (for example knowledge about a coffee blight) to trade, but you can't use information stolen, misapropriated and specifically "non public government information" - The Eddie Murphy rule:

https://www.akingump.com/en/insights/alerts/the-eddie-murphy...

In this case, it sounds like they were privy to information outside of their own corporation which would impact their corporation. That $100k sub to the president looks to be a two-way, wall(ed garden) street. I wonder how parasocial it is

Corruption?

> The trading in question was eye-popping. In a two-minute window starting at 6:49 a.m. in New York on March 23, traders sold contracts equivalent to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate, more than 8.5 times the volume that had changed hands that time in the morning over the prior week. A similar increase in activity was observed in futures tied to the S&P 500, with contracts worth more than $2 billion in notional value traded — far more than would be expected in an otherwise quiet premarket session. Unusual volumes were also visible in natural gas and other futures markets.

> Those trades paid off 15 minutes or so later, when Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was reversing his threat to attack Iranian infrastructure unless the country re-opened the Strait of Hormuz.

Likely the entire purpose of the war is to create opportunities for corruption in my opinion.

Total corruption by the orange clown-thief and those around him benefitting from their heist here.

The only partially redeeming thing we will soon witness is that he will lose the upcoming elections, no matter how much he plans to cheat. The TechBros pissed off too many people and stole too much money in addition to that. All that money should be given back, directly to the people. The superrich should not be allowed to control and manipulate democracies in general, even though they are currently prepping up the eyeliner-boy as successor to the orange insanity clown.

The super rich control the democrats too, I wouldn’t expect very much to change. They will focus on moving forwards not back, charge a few low level guys, and revert ~10-20% of what Trump has done.

https://wallhop.io/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2...

The text readability here is terrible compared to the original formatting... would suggest fixing that if you're pushing this.

Looks great on Firefox Android, not sure what you're seeing.

Link works great for me on a mac. Not sure about Mobile

https://wallhop.io/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2...

The reason America is great is that even after electing such a corrupt president twice, the country still keeps running. I feel the greatness of the American political system.

Eventually though, the built in resiliency will be destroyed. Public services got gutted by DOGE and a bunch more called it quits.

And in the end, that is the game they are playing. Starve the beast (aka, the US government) until not much more than the military remains.

And weaken the brass, Russia style, until the military is just the personal Army of the King.

The counterfactual doesn't make sense. Which country would stop or grind to a halt after electing a corrupt president? I think almost all countries would keep running at a basically normal capacity until failure, yet that doesn't prove those countries have great systems.

This will need a lot more time and hindsight to make general statements in terms of the wider picture.

It'a not abt whether it keeps running. It's whether its citizens are able to maintain their rights.

the comment specifically said whether it keeps running

Many citizens are not able to maintain their rights. Citizens are getting shot and killed by masked federal agents marauding through their neighborhoods. Americans who speak with particular accents or have specific skintones or frequent certain restaurants are getting harassed by police non-stop.

I think it’s sarcasm. In other counties such corruption would trigger revolution, and the political system would grind to a halt

Please tell me there's an implied /s there somewhere.

The billions diverted from the government (tariffs, Venezuelian oil, etc) to enrich his own family and friends probably won’t make a dent in the American economy.

America is so great , it can sustain the appetite of corrupt presidencies.

Just don't look at how the bottom half is doing!

I heard there's now an epidemic of people dumping their spare change jars on the gas station counter to get the last drops of gas they can. This is what a collapsed country is like. This is what the USSR was like just before it officially disintegrated. The relatively wealthy tech bubble this website inhabits is shielded from it to a large extent.

have you looked closely at the state of your institutions lately. 'The country keeps running' .. a large thing has quite a lot of momentum, it will travel quite far from that alone even if you do remove it's kneecaps.

unless you dropped the '/s' ?

Russia also "keeps running". The floor is a long way down, doesn't mean it's a good idea to go in that direction.

And consider North Korea, which Trump explicitly stated was a model for him:

“[Kim Jong Un] speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/15/trump-north-korea-...

What would be your definition of not running? It's like when someone says "We survived Covid!". Yes, you might have but thousands of others died.

>What would be your definition of not running?

inflation combined with little to no wage increase leading to total economic stall outside of the scope of any safety mechanisms, which precipitates an extreme cliff-face degradation of everyday life and commerce for citizens at every level.

or, another way : conditions that would lead to public rebellion en masse, which further stalls things past the economic strife.

the type of thing 1780s France saw.

It’s way worse, the accumulated covid deaths in the US was above 1.1M in 2023

And to head off at least one of the common denier objections, those deaths are reflected in the excess mortality figures, they’re not affected by how deaths were classified.

I.e., the number is not affected by how people were diagnosed, or how their cause of death was recorded. Claiming that there was a widespread trend of classifying unrelated deaths as COVID-19-related doesn’t affect that number at all. Here’s a CDC page about this: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/89507/cdc_89507_DS1.pdf

We're still running in the same sense that Wile E. Coyote is still running when he goes off the cliff. Eventually we'll collectively look down.

A (fairly obvious) historical analogy is how the Roman Empire survived the reigns of maniacs like Caligula and Commodus. It's hard to ascertain how reliable historical sources are, but as presented, both of these emperors were at the least pathological narcissists, and at worst completely out of their minds. They each squandered an enormous amount of the Roman treasury on vanity projects and undermined Roman institutions and the rule of law. And yet, the Roman Empire survived both of them for centuries.

Like you, I'm impressed with how resilient the American economy has been over the past few years. The tariffs, the war, the incompetence and open corruption seem like they should have done a lot more immediate damage. What's disconcerting is that much of the damage is to America's long term interests. So much of America's greatness has come from attracting talent from all around the world into a stable lawful society. That's what we're losing.

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