In the past week or so, the courts have begun to try to set some boundaries on the Musk–Miller–Trump administration’s early blitz of recklessness.
. . .
This judicial review provides at least a small reprieve, hope that some of the administration’s most destructive impulses will be stopped. Or at least pared back. But even with the courts stepping up, and even with the reality of the administration’s ineptitude sinking in, this early Musk–Miller–Trump blitz remains very—maybe irreparably—damaging. Of course, there are a lot of moles to whack: the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are being dismantled at an alarming rate, and the court system is not known for being nimble. The administration is betting, perhaps rightly, that at least some of its thoughtless, lawless efforts will slip through the cracks.
But even if the courts caught them all—and even if every court facing each lawless escapade said, “Nope, that’s not a thing”—still the entire process would be doing serious damage to our institutions. Think of it as someone spoofing your identity and going on a shopping spree with your credit cards. Even if the goon gets caught, you still have to go store by store to argue that the fraudulent purchase wasn’t legitimate and hope the debt is forgiven. And all the while, perhaps long after all the debts are dealt with, the torrent of uncertainty kills your credit score.
I actually do.
We’re entirely fucked.
We’re going to spend the rest of our lives witnessing the enshitification of this nation. Even if we completely turn this crash and burn around, we’ll then spend the rest of our lives watching things being slowly rebuilt as traitorous Republicans continue to obstruct.
I don’t think a lot of Americans are grasping exactly how hard we fucked ourselves by refusing to responsibly inform ourselves even to a minimal degree.
As someone currently living in Canada, the US is badly fucking up a lot of it’s international relations too. I’ve heard several people here say that even if if the US unfucks itself right away (which it won’t), it’s still going to be a long time before things will be right again.
You don’t go around threatening neighbours and allies like this and then expect to be able to just walk it back overnight.
USAID was, more than anything, a means of positive international relations. It was a 2 prong approach of foreign aid and foreign good will. The mid 1900s US made a lot of fucking enemies, and USAID was one very solid method of trying to overcome the damage wrought by our government.
And now TB supplies – that were already paid for – are rotting in warehouses (among many other issues). Not only will that harm people, it will harm our reputation, AND increase antibiotic resistant TB, which will in turn affect the rest of the world including the US itself.
And that’s only one piece of the very large clusterfuck.
USAID was a great investment, a cheap investment that returned good value, even beyond things like lives saved and people brought out of poverty. In many ways it was being a good neighbor.
It would still be a great way to spend our money if we doubled it or tripled it or more
It was a great source of corruption too, we must be real at this point, end USAID is a joke and a stupid move but probably half of it was doing corrupt business with Americans money. Its not an easy subject
I very much doubt it, and the white house press secretary holding up a contract that was lawfully fulfilled as an example of fraud, is not going to cut it
I’m more worried about future fraud, if we really do continue spending the money but at personal whim and with no one to manage the process. A no-bid procurement order describing $400M of “armored Tesla’s” is a much clearer case of fraud, as-is firing inspectors and watchdogs for doing their job
We’re going to have TB outbreaks in the states. It’s already happening.
Yeah, even just kicking out these crazies isn’t a good fix because they’ve already demonstrated they’re more than willing to lie, cheat, and steal to hold on to or gain power.
The only justice I’d trust would need to come at the end of a rope, and it’d need to include a LOT of colluders at the very least in cells as well. That includes certain media organizations that helped enable this shit-show as well.
After all that, the American public needs to force better, including proper regulation and enforcement of public over corporate interests. While some of it has been astroturfing, the embedded cleptocracy and corporate interest in the Democratic party also needs to be fixed (or both parties turfed and new better choices), because “lesser evil” is not good enough.
Other countries should also take heed from the US situation. This is what happens when you continually tolerate the intolerable, and when your government is owned by a billionaire+ untouchable aristocracy with a corporate shield protecting them from consequences.
I would argue that America needs a whole new economic system. A big problem with what we had up to now, is that people are too poor, tired, unable to form communities, and lack the time to do all the things that are needed for a democracy. If you can’t afford the price of travel, shelter, food, and losing your job, you can’t visit Washington to protest, let alone long enough to make a difference with like-minded people.
The wealthy, on the other paw, can freely travel, network, and simply not worry about being ruined if they dare to do something beyond basic survival.
America needs an economic system that promotes agency of every single citizen. That means guaranteeing survival, ensuring enough vacation time to permit protesting, and decent wealth accumulation for the poorest American. Without that, it isn’t possible for the ordinary person to exert meaningful political influence.
You mean we should stop enslaving citizens to corporations yes? That is practically capitalist kryptonite.
I don’t believe anyone should be able to be worth billions if we actually value humanity.
Oh I know. I hate it because a) I love yall, Canadians, Danes, Germans opposed to the afd, etc. You’re our friends and neighbors and I’m horrified seeing people not treat you as such, but also b) we had a real good thing going and we’re never getting it back.
Indeed, could you simply annex all the Blue States?
We entirely are. Our lifetimes in this country will never see another good day of it.
a purge could fix it all tomorrow.
As much as I agree, it will take things getting a lot worse before people do anything like that. A lot of the most heavily armed are the ones who voted for this. The pickup full of hillbillies are still in the denial phase. They still think things won’t affect them, or that it’ll be temporary. They are all for “those people” taking the brunt of the actions right now. They’ve convinced themselves that only the “libtards” are affected, and they aren’t.
It’s going to take a deep hit to their way of life for anything more than peaceful protests and voting advocacy (which definitely fucking vote) happens.
You described the AmeriKan Taliban.
As much as I agree, it will take things getting a lot worse before people do anything like that.
agree completely. we are as a nation and as a community too desperate or complacent to ‘take to the streets’ at this point. until fascism and austerity reaches one’s own doorsteps, most will wait and see and carry on with their boring daily routines.
that said, it will gradually change though, already has. it’s reached the doorstep of more people today than it did 10 years ago. what will be your personal breaking point? what is your neighbors breaking point? no one knows. I for one won’t be sitting back doing nothing until then. it’s time to talk to the neighbors friends and family and decide in advance as a community what we’re going to do before they drain us dry or drag off grandpa for re-education at Guantanamo.
A lot of the most heavily armed
sounds to me like we shouldn’t wait around for those guys to wake up. maybe some of us on the left should arm ourselves instead?
I’ve been sorting plans with family and friends as well. Unfortunately, most of my neighbors are idiots and bought it all hook line and sinker. When COVID started, the guy 2 doors down from me tried to say that the dew on our vehicles one morning was the AF dropping COVID from the tankers. I think I saw the moment the gerbil wheel in his head froze up when I told him I’ve seen them inside and out and that there was nowhere for some “bags of COVID” to be stored.
I have some firearms, but I’ve been making an effort to ready myself. I’ve been making sure I have short, mid and long range covered. Sights on and the sights adjusted properly. I hate, hate, hate how crazy that makes me sound, but I don’t trust these nut jobs at all when things get rough. I don’t have any option for leaving the country, and I don’t think I’d want to leave it to them anyway. I swore an oath many, many, years ago. I’m long out. My body is wrecked (mainly my nervous system), but I still take that seriously. Many others do as well. I can only hope that those of us who actually realize what it means are able to keep the corrupt from taking over.
If you expect being in a riot down the line, you might want to get some protective gear. I am thinking a forestry helmet - it has face plates, hardhat, plus earmuffs that you can raise or lower. Bonus points for not being fascist-tacticool style, and you can use it for practical work. While not good when compared to milspec gear, it should be enough to offer mild protection against nonlethal weaponry. I assume military gear would cost more and be tracked.
I don’t think a lot of Americans are grasping exactly how hard we fucked ourselves by refusing to responsibly inform ourselves even to a minimal degree.
This! Methods that lower general intelligence:
-
Content Streaming - its starts with Bluey
-
Gaming - iPads have replaced paper in schools, in car trips colourful gems pop instead of engagement with the world. Adults game the night away, streaming live. Kids aspire to be them.
-
Social media - Algorithms, echo-chambers, bots, keyboard warriors, content cencorship and manipulation, advertising, yuck.
-
Dating Apps
-
AI - We’ll become dependent and lower general critical thinking skills.
-
Legalisation of marijuana. - Its political support should be a concern. While it may be seemingly harmless at an individual level, there seems to be issues with mass use. How many users abstained from voting?
-
Underfunded, cookie cutter lower education. There is no flexibility for the diversity of people and development potentials. Teaching children non-denominational meditation and concentration, or helping them observe but reconcile simple contradictory expressions of duality in existence, would strengthen their conciousness significantly.
-
Over emphasis on technical STEM in higher-education without equally supporting the arts and philosophy.
-
Cultural over-emphasis towards individual monetary wealth over knowledge, spirituality or even concern for the wealth of those around them. Prevents empathy.
All of these focus on separating the individual from other individuals. The darkness does not want connected families or communities. It wants you to feel alone, helpless and willing to hand over your power.
We have all seen the US police force’s brutality under democratic law. How much worse could it be under authoritarian rule? My advice would be to immediately set up public meetings with local law enforcement at the officer level, start a collaborative dialogue and get to know each other, fast.
If you think Bluey lowers kids intelligence or “separates the individual from other individuals” then you’ve never watched Bluey.
It’s a great resource for teaching emotional intelligence to kids and empathises the importance of quality time with family. I don’t think you could have picked a worse children’s TV show example.
Also Bluey’s Aussie, not even made in the US.
Cocomelon would have been a proper choice for OP to argue. It’s sensory overload brainrot that causes addiction rather than any sense of morals.
You had me on your side until you went in on weed. Let’s focus on the bigger issue of alcohol addiction and drunk driving before we go after something less harmful.
Legalisation of marijuana
Ridiculous take.
What kind of new age crazy are you?
-
Far too many Americans will argue with you about how every single thing Trump and Musk do, is good. There is no way to change their mind and I am surrounded by them.
I just need to shout this into the void:
Fuck this fucking bullshit. What the hell is wrong with this country. I fucking hate this timeline.
blame democrats for not having a primary
No, blame the people who did this. Blame the people that voted for Trump.
The most blame goes to billionaires and allowing corporations to be people.
Most people that voted for this have been brainwashed heavily for many years by the super wealthy to think they want this.
It’s not an excuse but think about it: if our country had provided better over all education and actually kept the super wealthy and our media in check then this wouldn’t be happening.
We should have been fighting really hard to reinstate things like fairness doctrine and to have more news outlets that didn’t rely on ad revenue this whole time.
The problem with progress in the US is we are never able to focus on the most crucial issues first. There’s so many people and views etc. and everyone has different priorities. Rich people don’t have this problem because they all have the same driving goal: money.
So, there’s blame to go around but citizens pointing at each other is not going to fix anything.
There’s plenty of blame for everyone
Blame? They did what you did, vote for the better candidate. That chunk of people was bigger than the chunk who voted for the other side. Isn’t that what the US is all about since the 1780s? Blame should be given to the people who sat on their arses and did not vote. We all know there are more democrat aligned people than republican.
yes and also democrats for not having a primary
I think she would’ve won the primary anyway.
I think your country’s terrible voting and political system is largely to blame… Given that it’s so easy for an unelected official to sweep in and dismantle everything.
True, but Dems made a terrible system even worse by refusing to hold a primary. When you add that in with liberals funding a genocide, promising to add fascist Republicans to their cabinet, and offering zero policies that people actually care about like free healthcare, it is painfully clear that Liberal capitalist politicians did everything they could to throw this election.
I’d like to cordially invite you to go fuck yourself.
We know. What we don’t know is why are all civil servants just rolling over, instead of applying simple sabotage.
It’s easy to volunteer other people, but these are civil servants who inherently believe in the rule of law by default. That programming in itself makes it hard to go against this lifelong belief in doing things by the book.
I hope they can do what they can to resist, but I also don’t believe this is on them either. If the former President in a position of power couldn’t put the brakes on this shit; if we as a society couldn’t put the brakes on this on November 5th… Well, my expectations are very low. Things will have to come crashing down hard until the apathetic and ignorant wake up, I suspect.
but these are civil servants who inherently believe in the rule of law by default. That programming in itself makes it hard to go against this lifelong belief in doing things by the book.
Most simple sabotage is doing things EXACTLY by the book… Civil servants often take shortcuts to expedite things. They should take ZERO shortcuts.
Elon toadie asks for a set of creds. Demand Toadie get all appropriate forms completed, first, and then demand documented procedure for obtaining those creds are followed TO THE LETTER. No rush jobs. No prodding the ticket holder for updates. Just exactly like the book says to do it.
Just an example.
This is called “work to rule” and it is one of the most classic kinds of industrial action, pretty much one step short of a strike.
It’s also one of my favorites.
It’s easy to volunteer other people, but these are civil servants who inherently believe in the rule of law by default. That programming in itself makes it hard to go against this lifelong belief in doing things by the book.
It also means risking their livelihood, which I expect in many cases is an even greater deterrent than an aversion to rule breaking.
How would sabotage help when destroying the government is Musk’s and Trump’s goal?
It slows them down. Which is what we can hope for, until people get a bit more organized into other forms of resistance.
The same reason most of us decline our ample opportunities for sabotage every day. Someone else should do it.
Well, that changes, the more people do it. And I am not going to brag here about what I’ve done, but at least once a day, I do something to put a wrench in a cog.
Whose saying they are all rolling over?
Their actions? How else do websites vanish? Whiy aren’t we getting livetracks on Elon’s location, or his toadies? Where are the server crashes?
Lmao, so you are asking “where are the server crashes,” in the same statement acknowledging sites have been removed. How often do you see server crashes of things that have been deleted?
No, I mean crashes if the Whitehouse web sites… or breaking the auth systems for Trump officials… or delaying fleet vehicle reservations for motorcades so they come up short, or have to cancel…
The only way these things can happen so fast is by civil servants just doing what they are told.
I imagine a lot of people just don’t want to go to jail. Considering there’s substantial criminal penalties (for everyone that’s not a billionaire) to take out a website or anything else you mentioned - that’s my guess.
There are myriad ways to take something offline, which is easily plausible as an “oops” moment. There are also myriad tarpits to send requests to.
My old job, if I wanted to totally de-rail a project? I’d push it over to the project management office, and then to the infosec office. Almost guaranteed, the project would fail, because of those two tarpits.
Get a special request? Schedule a meeting for 4 business days out. Spend 1/3 of the meeting catching up and socializing. Spend 1/3 pre-planning the next meeting. Spend 1/3 laying out all the issues needing to be solved, and “circle back” when we get “scheduling lined up”…
And then it gets restored from backup 20 minutes later while you look incompetent to your peers and supervisors.
If you really want to take it down you need to be systematically deleting or corrupting backups for several months; then take it down.
That requires destruction of govt property (up to 20 years in jail).
I’m a federal employee. You have no idea the stress my family and I have been dealing with since that motherfucker swore in.
A relative of mine is a state employee… he had two reports that’d applied for transfer to the equivalent federal departments… and those two have now withdrawn their requests.
I wish you the best of luck and I thank you for your contribution to public well being.
They wouldn’t have been hired anyway. We had people who were supposed to start on Monday, January 27th. On Thursday the 23rd, their offers were rescinded and we were told they wouldn’t be starting. I can only imagine. Of course they had already quit their previous job. Now what the fuck are they doing?
He didn’t swear in. Elon just showed up.
No, he bought his way in and probably holds dirt over Trump. This wasn’t random chance.
Dirt? Guy is a convicted felon, says and does monstrous things openly, and denies things he just did on video the day before. He promoted a violent attack on his own government. He is dirt, he lives dirt. Unless it’s a video of him literally beheading dozens of kittens, I can’t imagine it would give him any leverage. Not even sure if that would either sadly.
The scariest thing is that even if Musk or Trump were to film and upload themselves ritualistically murdering kittens, their followers would call it fake AI. There’d be nothing anyone could do or say to convince them otherwise, short of them witnessing the slaughter in-person with their own eyes (and even that might not do it.)
There’s no way that the release of so much generative AI last year, just before this election, was a coincidence. Fascists got this shiny new tool for denying reality, and now they’re free to dismiss photos and videos without question or repercussion.
Trump’s comment about Elon who “knows those computers very well” relating to voting machines makes me think that all the other crimes he did before are small fries comparitively to what Elon has on him/what Trump owes Elon.
Trump allowing himself to be openly cucked by Elon repeatedly is not something that he would just let happen without something big going on behind the scenes. Trump is a massive narcissist, and he is not afraid to tell people to fuck off normally if they steal his spotlight or slightly disagree with him. Just look at his last administration for plenty of examples.
The one thing Trump seems afraid of is Epstein related dirt.
That’s likely the dirt Musk holds.
The dirt is all public. Nobody cared.
Like maybe he has a photo or two of Trump hanging out with Epstein? Or maybe records that make it clear Trump paid for prostitutes? Yeah, that’ll get em’
I’m pretty sure there are already public photos of drumpf and Epstein hanging out. He was even on the Lolita express if I’m not mistaken
Everyone holds dirt on Trump. That man hasn’t had a metaphorical shower in his life.
and probably holds dirt over Trump.
Possibly that Trump wasn’t legally elected and Elmo rigged the election for him. It would explain Trump’s servile attitude in the oval office earlier. Elmo’s fucking kid basically told Trump to STFU.
Parkrose Permaculture did an excellent video on that press conference and the dark implications of the child’s words. Jordan Lund removed my comment from politics because videos aren’t allowed. I’m beginning to wonder if this is denial or active aid.
Good luck homie
I don’t live in the US, but I did want to just say that as an outsider I appreciate the effort you are putting in, especially given the hostile working environment.
To add more context - I’m a federal employee who has received these Fork emails -
They always come out at night, usually ~ 8-9 pm Eastern. One came out on a Sunday night. So you show up for work the next morning and that’s what’s waiting for you. I’m convinced this is done on purpose, to fuck with us.
As Vought (perfect Bond villain name, right?) said:
“Put Them In Trauma”
They literally want to traumatize us. They hate us because for decades we’ve been the only ones to tell them no. No, Elon, you can’t fuck all kinds of shit up when you launch a spaceship. No, Elon, you can’t make the stock market go haywire because you were high and tweeted something stupid. No, Elon, you can’t make a deal with the Pentagon and then run to Putin and do something completely different.
Elon does not like to be told no, but Elon can’t go 5 minutes without acting like the entitled dipshit that he is, so here we are.
And so, ~ 2.5 million civil servants - scientists, healthcare researchers, USAID, engineers, doctors, etc etc, will feel his wrath because he can’t be told no.
I took a big pay cut for this job because I valued job security over money after growing up in a household where jobs were not guaranteed and my parents struggled. Finally I got there after trying for years, and now Elon has to throw a shit fit.
But it’s not about me - I’ll be ok, but many others won’t. And we won’t get it back without a lot of work, work that I’m not sure that we, as a country, are going to be willing to do. The brain drain and decades of knowledge capture will be lost forever. And that’s by design - now we can all go work for contractors with fewer benefits and no job security and help Elon to make even more money.
One of the Fork emails taunted us by saying that we should be happy to leave our low productivity jobs in government so that we could go work high productivity jobs in the private sector. (So funny!) I know that’s bullshit, but also I’m old enough to not let 4chan incels trigger me that easily.
I do worry about my younger/newer coworkers though, whose heads are spinning. So, I try to help them. I’m educating them about the union and hopefully giving them the tools to get through this and deal with what comes after in the best way possible, whatever that may be.
So the next time you have to go to some annoying government place with a long line and you’re tired and hungry and frustrated, please try to remember that whoever you end up coming face to face with may have just gotten another email trolling them and telling them what a piece of shit they are and they should resign from their jobs. Just give them some grace. Be kind.
Have you been passing around copies of “Simple Sabotage” and applying those tactics?
If no, why not?
This site is an amazing start! Glad it exists right now.
This is a great resource, and I hope it helps a lot of people.
My agency, and my job specifically, must be done right or people could get hurt. So things like renaming files or purposefully scheduling meeting conflicts aren’t options. I need to find specific bits of technical information to ensure a design is safe. I need to have meetings for safety reviews and make sure there isn’t anything that my group missed that could end up hurting someone.
I’m not saying these won’t be helpful to us in the future, if my agency’s current mission were to change in some way, but right now it’s the same as it was during the last administration. I will keep it in my back pocket though for when I feel it’s necessary.
Thank you!
Solidarity.
Deliberately sabotaging your job as a government worker (assuming you’re not working in a military industrial complex or enforcement job) plays directly into the right’s framing of government as inefficient. It’s important that public-facing positions be competent to foster public trust; after all, those positions are what conservatives dismantle first as pretext to abolish an agency. After public discontent sets in through first-hand experience dealing with understaffing, those public services become ripe for privatization.
I have an idea, normal thinking Americans do
I also have an idea of how many billions of dollars in lawsuits taxpayers will be on the hook for in the coming 25 years
It should come out of Trump, Musk, and Vought’s money.
So a narcissistic billionaire is indirectly ruling your country, without even being elected, and you guys are just cool with that?
Narcissistic billionaires have been indirectly running the country decades, why do you care now?
Nope. But in case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t really have much power to stop him.
Your second amendment was intended for precisely this scenario. Guess all those school shootings were for nothing.
Not personally and directly, no, but broadly, yes - I do know the irreversible damage they’re doing.
And here’s the real key to it all - none of it is accidental. The damage is the point.
Their goal is actually very simple - it’s to utterly destroy every aspect of the government that benefits the common people or inconveniences the wealthiest few, in order to convert it explicitly and entirely into a mechanism for protecting and expanding the privilege of the wealthiest few at the expense of everyone else.
And they announced it and fully laid out a plan ahead of time. This should come as a surprise to no one who is literate.
It burns my ass that some folks actually bought the whole “Trump doesn’t support Project 2025” bullshit. I cannot imagine being such a gullible, credulous moron.
Not just support it, but that he never even heard of it. (Then goes on to say that he doesn’t agree with it lol)
Don’t worry, they also think that you and I are gullible, credulous morons for believing in things like climate change or racial equality.
America is fundamentally broken
Majority of the population supports it. Anything else is pure cope.
Let’s assume you’re correct, and you got that fact from an actual survey and statistical analysis that has undergone peer-review. It really doesn’t come as a surprise that there are masses of people cheering on policies that work against their own interests.
The American public education system is a disaster that can barely teach basic adulting, let alone critical thinking or identifying untrustworthy reporting. Add in how most of the past century has been nonstop propaganda about how showing compassion to anyone outside your family is socialism, and socialism is communism, and communism is the antichrist. Now, throw in a heaping dose of social media and viral misinformation where the loudest person making the most emotionally reactive claims gets the most attention and positive reinforcement.
It’s really no wonder that a majority of people are metaphorically, ritualisticly throwing gasoline onto a tire fire while complaining about the toxic fumes that surround them. They literally lack the skills to know any better.
Keeping in mind it’s a majority of the voting population. Millions sat out that didn’t in 2020. Millions more don’t show up consistently because they’ve been systematically conditioned into apathy or forced to jump through hoops they can’t prepare for like voter id laws or polling stations being shut down. Same issue - they lack the media literacy or just reading comprehension in general at times.
No, the majority of the voting population accepted Trump’s lies as truth. That doesn’t mean they support what’s happening, it means they were credulous enough to believe that it wouldn’t happen.
Wallowing in mistruths about your fellow voters may feel good, in a righteous anger sort of way, but it will blind you to the real opportunities for resistance that exist and can be exploited if enough people try.
They want you to be demoralized. Why are you doing their work for them?
I’m not demoralised, I just don’t need copium.
With 96% of the vote in, Trump has, according to the Associated Press, 49.97% to Vice President Harris’ 48.36%, or 76.9 million votes to 74.4 million.
Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
Most of the country shifted to support Trump, even in safe blue states most people shifted right:
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5198616/2024-presidential-election-results-republican-shift
I’m sorry but please stop spreading copium misinfo
Google greg palast 2024 election and read his information on voter suppression.
You’re only talking about the votes that were counted. There were millions of people that voted and had their ballots rejected due to right wing shenanigans.
Look up vote challening in Georgia in partcular.
This is “voter fraud” and “stop the count” and “count them all” tier copium. Why do I need to Google some conspiracy theory of yours when I have the facts right here?
Vast majority of Americans supported Project 2025, supported trump and voted for him. Do you have any actual information to dispute these facts?
79 is a vast majority of 340?
To them Trump is the resistance dummy
Um no. Trump was elected by something like 32% of the population.
That is hardly the majority. It’s a vocal minority of assholes who reliably vote.
It’s the majority of the registered voters as demonstrated in my other comment, cheers.
That would be the lie they are pushing. He doesn’t “have a mandate” and a minority group of the placrual population votes for this.
The problem is Trump voters aren’t literate.
And there are a lot of them.
They are all acolyte of the Curtis Yarvin cult. Scumbags all of them
If they wanted to reduce spending in a meaningful way, they would at least look at the defense spending
The U.S.A. is done. Such sabotage by Trump, Musk and MAGA takes decades to recover from. 40 to 50 at least; rebuilding the civil service, amending all the laws back to normal, fixing the Supreme Court, probably needing Constitutional amendments. This easily echos for a hundred years.
Yup.
It will take decades of scraping and clawing things through Congress to get back what we’re going to lose in a few short years. Assuming our government is even recognizable by the end of this.
If you have the means, it may actually be time to make another country home. If you don’t, you need to come to terms that you will probably spend the rest of your life living in a declining nation where your rights are threatened.
Honestly theres a good chance that the US may collapse, its tied pretty thoroughly to capitalism which is also showing signs of hitting its end point. Its possible that within the next four years even that the US will be 50 individual countries with the federal government no longer existing. The very problems that are allowing Trump and Musk to wreck shit is the same type of problems that collapse empires, and theres no American equivalent to Russia for the USSR or Serbia for Yugoslavia.
What do you think the chances of this happening? I hope it does. America is a cancer on the world. Even before drumpf and president Elon fuck
Depends how much Trump and Musk fuck with the states. If they continually piss off the bigger or blocks of states you could see one or two declare independence, that could cause a cascade of states declaring independence like with the former Soviet Republics. But its also possible that the states just start ignoring the federal government which eventually loses its authority.
The idea that america was fine until MAGA sabotaged it is absurd and reductionist.
Do you not think 2016 America was better than America today?
Not particularly. Especially if you are brown.
I mean, did we all forget Occupy happening in 2008? And the Obama admin sending in jackboots to clear everyone out, so profits can get back to shareholders?
Obama wasn’t POTUS until 2009.
Occupy? With its main spokesman Tim Pool? No, I haven’t forgotten.
That Tim Pool?
Yep.
In comparison to what we’re probably going to be left with for the rest of our lives, what we had before MAGA will seem like a fucking utopia.
Anyone who thinks the US, post 9/11 as utopia, by most any measure, is looking at things through Rose Colored Lenses.
Slowly degrading since what Nixon?
If’s been being eroded for a long time, but just recently it’s become fragile enough to be unstoppable at any level.
Hasn’t it been thoroughly sabotaged by Reagan already? Not to say that Trump can’t do a fine job setting the rubble on fire, but i concur that the US has been a mess for quite some time.
I don’t see anybody saying everything was fine. That doesn’t mean no room existed to get much, much worse.
Even if they get rid of pedo-Don, Fox will tell them everything that went wrong is because of Clinton and the woke and they will be like “YeAh dAMn woke-dei-sjw-blm dEsTroyIng ma cUntrY”.
It’s over. That’s the consequence of decades of under-educating their citizen and raw capitalism. The only question that remain is how much of the world down they will bring down with them.
Yeah, that’s why Murdoch and Co should also be punished to the extremes. They knowingly pushed false information over and over. The U.S. should sue them for 50 trillion in damages without allowance of Bankruptcy. A simple get the fuck out of our country to all those who participated or stay and experience for yourself what you did to so many working class people.
Putin is getting such great value from Trump. It’s clearly the best deal ever.
a century of “Red Scare” has made you believe that everything evil in the world is russian.
While such a simplistic worldview might help you retain sanity in this world, if you look closely, it is the opposite of helpful, as it prevents you from seeing things as they are, and taking effective action.
Red Scare refers to the Commies under the bed fantasies of the Cold War. Russia hasn’t been communist/socialist since Yeltsin. Russia is now a mafia kleptocracy. And mafia Russia is a hostile foreign power. Opposition to Putin and Russian criminality is not a red scare thing because communism isn’t what’s the problem or the source of opposition to Putin’s Russia. It’s Russian mobsters who all report to Putin, who also owns and controls Trump and much of the GOP
I don’t think russia controls Trump or the GOP.
Years of mindless propaganda is what lead to you believe Russia’s very obvious involvement in tampering with US election is simply people buying into outdated cold war tropes.
I only see one country bragging about influencing U.S. election outcomes, and it’s not Russia. You guys constructed Pepe Silvia-level theories about Russian influence and ignored the domestic corporatocracy and entire U.S. empire in favor of the media’s chosen explanation of “Russian influence”. As the saying more or less goes, nobody is immune to propaganda, including you. Modern propaganda narratives include accusations of propaganda leveled at the propaganda narrative’s scapegoats.
If it was that easy to send the country into ruin then we were already done.
Stop the hysteria. Let Trump dig his hole. And maybe throw some support behind candidates that aren’t soulless, self serving, establishment liberals.
That hole he is digging is for the dead bodies. We should be shutting stuff down instead of standing by
I think your assessment is optimistic.
… you are implying that “people will try to make things return to normal in the future”.
But i think that take is misinformed.
Progress on Earth is coming to an end, and as a direct consequence, demand for human labor is plummeting, and that makes wages drop. (Consider the labor market is a market and the human effort is the traded good, and a decreased demand makes prices go down. And prices are wages.) That is the major cause for the increasing “working poor” phenomenon.
If you want to improve worker’s living condition, you have to advocate for Universal Basic Income (UBI). Wages alone will not be sufficient in the future to retain an acceptable quality-of-life.
Let me update my take on this:
I understand you Americans are all so “hard work is the major content of my life” like. And that is fine. If you think that you can fix your labor market, do it. Though if you ask me, progress on Earth can not continue. There is neither quantitative nor qualitative growth that would lead to mass employment of most of the population.
The long-term plan for humanity that I see is that humans will develop spaceflight and go to Mars. There will be lots of space and technological challenges that will demand a lot of human labor-input, and that will keep the wages up, the people working and in full employment, and probably have a few other side-effects. However, future progress cannot meaningfully happen on Earth. I want to be clear on that.
Looks at the rising habitability of northern Canada, Greenland and Russia as an alternative the inhabitability of equator nations, due to climate change
Would this be considered an opportunity for progress?
What’s annoying is the US cable/social media incessantly jumps right to the Trump/Musk framing of things.
The US AID shutdown has led to food aid stuck at ports as populations that rely on it starve.
A report on Monday from Paul Martin, the USAid inspector general, found that close to half a billion dollars’ worth of food was rotting because of confusion surrounding Mr Trump’s freeze last month.
How many americans have heard about the consequences of Trump’s actions? 1%? How many have heard about Elon’s vague and baseless claims that US AID is a big fraud? It seems every Republican I know has heard that.
The answer, of course, is for the remaining USAID staff to just ignore conflicting instructions and just give the food away. Federal workers need to understand that the job they have is not secure whether they obey or not.
While I agree that would be ideal, I suspect a lot of the services that let them process that food out to who needs it are unavailable.
The federal workers that I know are doing everything they can to get everything that’s been spoken for out to the recipients ASAP. If food is rotting, I suspect it’s because it can’t be moved.
We had their playbook with p2025 and did nothing. They started enacting it, and we still do nothing. We could have shock-and-awed them right back with prepared lawsuits and movements blow for blow, and nothing.
The DNC and their non-spoiler neoliberals are still getting their sweet sweet oligarch bribe checks, so all is right with the world as far as they’re concerned.
They’re literally more defensive about any actual leftwing movement to get them to defend the people from the murderous capitalists destroying us and the planet for short term profit.
We either need a populist to steal the DNC’s machine from them as they’re kicking and screaming like Trump did the RNC, make a 3rd party, the best option have a hot revolution starting with Wall Street, or accept this hell as we sleepwalk into oblivion.
Blue no matter who is rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. I voted for Harris out of some harm reduction, but the capitalists are the problem and own both parties. Republicans revel in the cruelty and are simply louder about it. Democrats will support your freedom to be LGBTQ… As you die in the gutter of poverty, exposure, and capital defense force brutality. Here have an affirmation ribbon to use as a blanket and/or snack in your cardboard box as they support the industry denying the claims for the nerve damage that made you lose your shitty subsistence job when your treatment would cut into their profit expectations.
Both parties support the “Freedom” of the rich to toss capital batteries they broke into the trash when they’re no longer of use to their bottom line. Freedom without social responsibility is a rampage.
This is not the Democrats fault. It is the fault of those that voted for Trump. The knew exactly what he was, and still voted for him. They wanted this.
I’m suspect of posts that blame Democrats, are these posts put up by paid shills?
WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW IS THE FAULT OF TRUMP, AND HIS MAGA FOLLOWERS!!!
Pelosi defends lawmaker stock trades, citing ‘free market’ https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775
The fascists are worse. I voted Harris with a funeral dirge in my heart out of harm reduction, but make no mistake, all we’ve been arguing for half a century is the rate of decline. A little slower under neoliberals, a little faster under Fascists.
NOTHING CAN IMPROVE until our government knocks our oligarchs down to size. Both parties are very well paid by the oligarchs to defend them from us. The oligarchs are running the asylum because both parties let them.
Republicans having no meaningful opposition on the shape and priorities of the economy for so long made them this bold. Every cycle in most of our lifetimes, both parties have been marching rightward. I fully expect next cycle for neoliberals to advocate “more humane” concentration camps in their never ending March to the new middle, already deep into fascist crazy town.
The shills left the day after the election. The people that remain are useful idiots who refuse to accept the consequences of their actions.
This is not the Democrats fault.
No blame goes to the Dems at all?
None?
Not even any blame for running bad campaigns, with bad candidates? Three times in a row? No blame for relying on “Not Trump” as a campaign strategy? No blame for insisting the economy is grand, even though all the voters are saying otherwise?
The Blame on the Dems is that they NEVER pushed their use of their power to anywhere near the limits. Pure, unadulterated cowardice.
I am light years from a bOtH sIdEs person. I’m a harm reduction Harris voter. But it’s safe to say that both parties are different flavors of shit at this point.
Some. But it’s not equitable.
“You can lead a horse to water, but can’t make it drink.”
For months, people tried to warn others about p2025, and were ignored. For months, tried to warn others that tariffs would actually make the economy worse, but were ignored. For months, people warned others that Fuckface 45 would be worse for Gaza, but were ignored.
The fucking 3rd party / protest / non voters are also to blame.
Guess what, it’s the politicians job to get the horse’s head into the water. If they fail to do that they were either incompetent or didn’t work hard enough. You should go find Chuck Schumer’s words from the mid 2010s where he says he doesn’t mind losing blue collar votes.
You are showcasing either malicious revisionism or media illiteracy. D pledged unconditional military aid to Israel. There’s nothing that indicates that they would have been better for Gaza than Fuckface 45-47. If there was they should have ran on that as their platform. There’s no such thing as a little genocide. There either is or isn’t. If you can’t understand that after all this time, then you might be suffering from manufactured consent poisoning.
Right, that D platform to continue the ethnic cleansing, forcibly evict Palestinians to surrounding states and turn their homeland into a tourist area for personal enrichment
That’s literally what was happening for the whole time under Biden?
What do you think Hind died for thanks to Bidens missiles and dollars.
For years, we were warning the Dems that they need to represent the working class, and they chose instead keep representing their campaign donors.
So, who is ar fault again?
I always find it very telling when people get mad at those who decided that they couldn’t stomach voting for genocide, instead of getting mad at the party that ran on a pro-genocide platform.
I hope they get what they voted for.
You get the govt you deserve.
Poor Democrats. They’re only a ragtag group of activists that are the largest political party outside of Asia with billions of dollars at their disposal! What leverage do they have? /s
The paid shills aren’t the only ones saying that D isn’t doing anything. D is saying they’re not doing anything. Critically reexamine your unquestioning loyalty and need to give them the guac guac at every turn.
Please, before you suspect anybody of being a shill, read carefully what’s written. He described what the Democrats are doing. And you say it’s not the Democrats fault! What?
It’s apparently true: The people who voted for Trump are responsible for Trump being in power.
And nobody claims otherwise. But Trump becoming president has an economic backdrop that goes a long way back. It’s rooted in the neoliberal economic model that become popular in the 1960s and had taken over the whole world by the 2000s. It took the chains off of capitalism that workers united in Unions and parties had imposed on it. Because the old Social Democrat parties who people obviously trusted due to their history suddenly sided with the capitalists, everybody was caught on the wrong foot. Many fell for the lies that were peddled for why public services suddenly had to be privatised and made them their own fetish.
Since then a massive amount of wealth has been shifted to the capitalists while social services eroded. And now many people just feel completely left alone. Because they are. And they suddenly see the world as a place of dark forces, where everybody has to fight for themselves, where scamming people is a viable business model, where truth is a concept from some other time. Yeah, so some people say the Dems have their fair share in all this, because they sold out to the capitalists, thereby creating a feeding ground for fascists like Trump.
On the other hand OP was mostly saying how despicable the Dems are acting right now. So yeah.
why even bother focusing on this? “it’s this guy’s fault!” ok. so what? it will be four years if we even get a chance to vote again. the only thing we should be talking about is resistance.
You got midterm elections coming up. Also local elections. One could argue that the success of R comes from the fact that they bid their time, slowly but surely spreading their fascist poison via local elections. The presidency isn’t everything!
The presidency isn’t everything!
if trump gets his way, it actually is. the time to think about how we’ll do it next time has past.
By the same logic, if trump had his way, what makes you think you’d be able to vote for a new president?
that’s exactly what i’m saying. the time to think about electoral politics has past. it’s time to think about [redacted].
The Democrats just want more gay, trans, PoC concentration camp guards.
Homeless camps are the new concentration camps.
We had their playbook with p2025 and did nothing.
Liberals ran out their strongest champions
- Chuck Schumer
- Richie Torries
- The Cheney Family
- The UK Labor Party campaign staff
- Ted Cruz’s former chief of staff at the Lincoln Project
- Some very reputable and trustworthy staffers from AIPAC
And spent over $1B of donor money in order to tell people that only
Joe BidenKamala Harris can Beat Trump, after a no-contest primary. A full year of campaigning. They brought Jeff Flake up as a surprise guest for the DNC!You can’t reasonably call that nothing. It felt like less than nothing.
Beltway Democrats are nothing if not out of touch. They’re the kind of people who would run a youth voting rally for Zoomers and then trot out Joan Baez as the special musical guest.
At least they brought war criminal Dick Cheney on board, that made sure they would be completely useless.
How dare they show they have support of both sides of the aisle!
Yeah gotta make sure the war criminals know Democrats are on their side…
A truly idiotic idea.
Any democrat who is paying enough attention to vote doesn’t just not give a shit about the esteem of the right.
They revile those esteemed by the right.
When a fascist supports you, like Dick Cheney, you’re on the wrong side of history.
What I don’t understand is that no one is stopping this from happening. They’re all just letting it happen. Perhaps because they are afraid to lose their jobs but at what cost? I’ve lost all hope for this country and I wish to God I could move. Oh well.
I think a lot of humans are having this thought anyways: “We are all fucked. There is no future for many/most of us”, and therefore, people have no reason/motivation to fight.
What would a vision of the future be, in your eyes? Where do you see yourself in 40-50 years?
A believe a lot of blue politicians actually agree with Trump and what him to push things through where when things go to shit they can then try to blame Trump and still run for re-election and the sheep will still vote for them.
you have to make leftists understand that the only answer is violence. we have to say this over and over until it finally clicks. the people are the last line of defense.
You don’t include the Dems in “the left”, right?
that’s a complicated answer.
practical answer: yes
idealistic answer: no
EDIT: i think the most important answer for right now is that it doesn’t matter. this situation will not be resolved through voting. the mid terms might help alleviate the problem, but that’s a long time from now and things could get a lot worse if people don’t pull their heads out of their asses now.
What’s stopping you. Cmon man, let’s go
What can you do if your boss that the president puts in charge fires you?
You can assume you’re already going to be fired since you don’t align with the program so white not ring the alarm bells as much as you can? Film it. Livestream it. Anything for God’s sake.
I have so many ideas about it, before it even began. Good luck to you all, may we survive this next fascist cycle
Everyone who perceived the Harris pivot as “playing to lose” has ideas about it. We’re over-represented on Lemmy as compared with the voting public. The Republican party has been sufficiently horrifying for sufficiently long, that there is an entire generation of voters who “lean left”, but have no idea where to even begin actually holding their party accountable for things.
In 1984 Jesse Jackson had his Rainbow Coalition, but they gave us Walter Mondale. The same thing happened with Bernie in both 2016 and 2020. In the USA there is a capitalist part and a fash party, and no room is permitted on the stage for anything other than tightly controlled powerless opposition.
I am not American. I have no say in it except godspeed
After surviving the last 4 years Americans have proven they can survive anything.
Lol what? US has had far less inflation than the rest of the world while also passing and staring huge infrastructure projects and semiconductor fabrication.
Another asswipe Ivan. The Russian infantry is accepting applications. Don’t worry, the NATO tungsten will greet you.
Another armchair general who seems more inclined to see others suffer than to advocate for peace. Perhaps they should consider directly engaging in the conflict in Ukraine if they truly believe in such an approach.
I already served and faced the fucking Soviets. We had peace in Europe until two asswipes, Vlad and Cadet Bone Spurs, decided to cooperate to further weaken Ukraine and create a rift within NATO. Carry on licking the sweat off of Putin’s nut sack and join the Russian infantry. Nobody in Europe, with a sane mind, would allow the Russians to occupy Europe again.
Why did Russia invade Ukraine?
Working as a federal employee comes with a set of golden handcuffs. You trade in a decent salary for retirement at the end. Firing people, or even asking them to leave for less than 10 months salary (maybe) is a huge Fuck You to those who have already sacrificed years of time. When you started your career- you couldn’t possibly predict something like a Trump train coming along to piss all over your life’s plans.
Who the fuck, with any level of competence, would ever want to apply for a federal position after seeing this shit show?
Who the fuck, with any level of competence, would ever want to apply for a federal position after seeing this shit show?
That’s the point. Musk et. al. are foreign assets with orders to weaken NATO and the US at all costs. They are successfully accomplishing their orders. And once the US’s economy has spiraled and collapsed, the USD will no longer be a trusted currency used for global trade. Then it’s BRIC’s time to shine. That’s their dream, at least.
How are they going to get past the fact that there are half a dozen currencies better position to subsume the dollar than any of theirs?
Musk is his own asset. He doesn’t need to be a foreign one to fuck shit up, that’s just a side business for him
People are still thinking in 20th century. The 21st century tech oligarchs are more powerful than nations. They control digital infrastructure. The ones who own social platforms can incite civil unrest. They control the algorithmic knobs of the population.
It’s literally in your face how obvious it is. Musk has Trump cowering at the Resolute desk. The most powerful seat in the world.
I think people must be in denial. Trying to justify with some other reasonings other than what is. Musk isn’t an asset. It isn’t a side business. He’s taken over the world superpower. Nation states aren’t the highest theater anymore. It’s tech oligarchs.
The 21st century tech oligarchs are more powerful than nations.
No, they aren’t. At least not most nations.
Unless a 21st century tech oligarch is able to pinpoint their enemy’s position to within 10m, and send a Drone Strike to take them out? Then no.
Because right now, Trump could rid us all of Elon, should he choose, with merely an order.
Do you know about Curtis Yarvin and the so-called “network state” plan they are in the late stages of realizing? I don’t think BRICS is the endgame of the tech oligarchy.
Who the fuck, with any level of competence, would ever want to apply for a federal position after seeing this shit show?
People with enough money saved to outlast shitshows, who also intend to accept bribes.
Yeah, this along with so many other things they have already done are going to cost us a shit load of tax dollars. We’re going to have to pay market rates or above or offer sign on bonuses to get anyone willing to work for the fed again.
Actually, a Trump type person has been predicted for the last 25 years. The rise of populism was evident clearly for all to see in 2007, and only got stronger.
35 years. Look up Some More News’s video from 2020 about how 80s and 90s pop culture tried to warn us about the absurdity of a Trump presidency and how important it is to not let people like that in power.
Fools who think Daddy will be proud of them?
