What's Going on at the FBI?
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What's Going on at the FBI?
1–10 of 189 posts
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#2Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#3J. Edgar Hoover ran the US for decades and was more powerful than any president. His successor, far less powerful, is in a power struggle with the richest man in the world and a political party that controls all three official branches of government.
The situation looks unpredictable.
It may be worth rereading Mike Lofgren's essay from 11 years ago, before Trump's first campaign, in which he tries to apply the Turkish concept of the "derin devlet" to analyzing the workings of the US government, and why Obama's administration had accomplished so little of what it promised: https://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#4Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.
The worst part is, how do you even counter the injected rot? If they demand loyalty tests and infest your institutions how is it countered? do the other side also have to do the same (assuming they have the opportunity)?
All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#5Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.
[deleted]
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#6Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.
It won’t be.
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#7[deleted]
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#8It's wild to think I'd ever say this, but the next four years will be the stress test of the strength of US institutions against an authoritarian president. If they survive the next four years, they will likely survive pretty much anything.
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#9Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.
The worst part is, how do you even counter the injected rot? If they demand loyalty tests and infest your institutions how is it countered? do the other side also have to do the same (assuming they have the opportunity)? All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.
How is this different from any previous president?
Isn't the very reason that the puppets "need replacing" (according to the president) tell you that they are of the wrong (previous president's) political flavor?
Honest question, I'm not from US, but on the surface it just looks like more of the same thing that has always been happening? Except with way more media attention?
Re: What's Going on at the FBI?
#10Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.
It won’t be.
You're right, it won't be. This is the only positive thing I can currently see. They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance.
Purely anecdotally from seeing a small part of military-adjacent tech, while most definitely voted for Trump and some of them will be MAGA-converts, most of them actually belived in that mission and won't be aligned with a proper dictatorship. They'll have to play it very carefully, keep elections but rig them just enough to make the outcome inevitable, to keep these people able to convince themselves it's still a democracy, boiling the frog very slowly. It might be preferable for them to actually accelerate things and go full Putin, there'll be a lot more active resistance that way.