drawkward

Your goto analogy sucks. The USA is not trying to occupy Mexico.

NATO is a defense pact.

I see all 14

>the game that the left has played for decades

Can you give some examples, please?

Our system is based on laws, not morals.

>The "Fuck you, I got mine" mentality and short-termism has been festering for decades

...in American culture

As if neither Trump nor Putin has reneged on a deal before.

For fucks sake, who gives a shit about what Russia thinks? They suppress democracy and political opposition. They poison journalists outside of Russia. They jail and kill public interest figures. They kidnap and jail Americans on false pretexts.

Neither belonged to you in the first place.

>The market is clearly too stupid to vote against the rent seeking tech industry

looks at DOGE

Yep.

there is no good-faith interpretation of unconstitutional action.

I completely agree with you. However, the headline is obvious.

Nuke it from orbit; it's the only way to be sure

The problem with the "give Musk enough rope to hang himself" strategy is that this rope is:

-The American economy

-Multipolar global environment

-NATO

-NASA

-Nonpolitical employees of the Executive Branch

etc.,

and that these will all have to be severely broken or weakened before the backlash begins. Possibly, irreparably.

We have a Constitution that outlines specifics regarding rule of law and separation of powers, but apparently the men who wrote it did not go far enough in envisioning the ways in which money, power, and political parties can collude to moot these points.

Make no mistake: the Trump/Musk administration is absolutely in violation of the intent of the Constitution, aided and abetted by the Republicans in Congress and the SCOTUS.

The tech billionaire overlords want you to think that tech is by default apolitical.

It is not. Tech increasingly controls human lives, insofar is the way things are coded only allow for outcomes consistent with the codebase (whether intentional outcomes or not), that are dictated by the user's flow through the codebase. When you control a human life's outcomes, you are doing something explicitly political.

Every dollar flowing into X, Amazon, Meta is now a dollar that ladders up directly (Elon Musk) or indirectly (donations to Trump) to the current administration.

When anyone can donate unlimited amounts to SuperPACs--when money is regarded as speech--then everything with a dollar value is political.

Until political campaigns are funded by tax dollars, and capped at that level, everything that is touched by money, not just tech, is political.

Feelsbadman

>Are there any of his original supporters left to piss off?

Fans of Atlas Shrugged

America is a country of religious assholes. The pilgrims were kicked out of England because of their weird-ass insistence on founding their own churches, so they moved to the Netherlands, which at the time were a refuge for many English religious separatists. However, religious freedom was not enough! No, they wanted to found their own Godly country and evangelize to the natives of America, and also reap the economic benefits of an "uncivilized" land.

America:

-Selfish assholes? check! -Weirdly religious? check! -Entrepreneurial? check!

Trump solved the problem by just removing the funding! Checkmate, Libs! /s

I think "progress" has been used for justification of all manner of horrors.

Hmm...thats arguable.

But assuming thats the hook you want to hang your hat on, the guy in this post clearly had plenty of talent to beign with, and also many opportunities to develop it. Does he deserve all the opportunities? What entitles him? What entitles anyone to a scarce resource?

Bro literally has the keys to the kingdom.

Mussolini got the trains to run on time!

The job of a basketball team is to win.

A university's mandate is quite different.

But thats the question: what is fair? I would allege that Steven will be just fine, no matter where he goes to school, but that others would receive more utility from the scarce resource of elite higher ed. I think that doing nothing is unfair as it just perpetuates the existing biases of our society!

In other words: your claim of "unfairly advantages" is a moral one, and not at all objective.

At the cost to yet others, no?

Life is manifestly unfair. If Stanley can pull up his big boy pants and understand that important life lesson, he will be fine; he got a job offer at Google that normally requires a PhD, after all, right?

This is not the sword to fall on.

Why would we want to prevent our Russian and Chinese friends Cozy Bear and Salt Typhoon from participating in our elections? Jesus, Libs, you're so racist.

Yeah, to me, there is no benefit of the doubt. Musk supports AfD, which seems to this American about as Nazi a party is as legally allowed in Germany. He has, of course, reinstated all kinds of far right voice to his shitty little social media platform, while simultaneously banning anyone/anything he deems too woke. Then, bro pulls a full fledged Nazi salute on national TV.

I don't know if it is appropriate to call Musk a Nazi: that term is so rooted in a specific era and place. I would certainly call Musk a neo-fascist, just as I would call Trump a neo-fascist, and also the entirety of his cabinet:

-an EO declaring that Trump's interpretation of the law is the only valid one for anyone in the Executive Branch (https://www.jurist.org/news/2025/02/trump-signs-order-declar...)

-ex post facto vetos (by DOGE fiat) of money previously apportioned by Congress

-the abandonment of Ukraine, while carving it up with Russia for land and mineral rights, and lying about the causes for the conflict.

-the undermining of NATO and bolstering of Russia (https://www.ft.com/content/ac1dcb02-4c5f-4a36-935a-f7ef0a934...)

-firing of inspectors general (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/us/politics/trump-fires-i...)

-firing of election security teams (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/business/trump-foreign-in...)

-vows of retribution against political opponents and weaponization of the DOJ (https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/this-is-not-restoring-...)

This is an terrifying consolidation of power in complete violation of the intent of the American Constitution. Welcome to neo-fascist America.

That, to me, is quite telling.

Does this surprise anyone?

Truth right down the memory hole.

Guy is a serial liar; here is a danish astronaut calling out Musk's lies about the ISS-stranded astronauts:

https://x.com/Astro_Andreas/status/1892517170384392664

It was its own HN thread, but got flagged to death within minutes.

If truth mattered to Trump and Musk, they would not have been elected. This whole administration is built on lies.

The recession will be astounding, many people who have 401ks will not be able to retire; there will be no government benefits.

This is turning into forced austerity, like with Greece after the global recession. But for what? Anti vax sentiment? Trans women playing sports?

This didnt need to happen, but I will say also that the Democrats have a hand in this outcome by letting Biden run un-primaried, and not actually solving the economic woes of the working class, instead being captured by various activist groups.