351–360 of 596 posts
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Ah yes, one piece of free speech justifies deleting the entire station.
I suppose you’d feel the same if Fox News said J6 was a legitimate political protest, right.
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> My view (maybe shared by GP) is that while Trump deserves a lot of the blame, he's just a figure head over the rest of the republican party. Exactly this. Debated at length in the 2016 election cycle and onward since. The Republican establishment didn't (and doesn't) love Trump as a politician, but they love that he puts them in power, and they have been trying to figure out how to reproduce that kind of popularity…
>their focus is on removing the teeth from congress I mean, without a constitutional amendment how can that be done?
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The executive branch has ignored the courts a few times, basically saying "What are you going to do about it?". I feel like it has to lead to a standoff of some group with guns saying they're following the courts/defending the constitution against another group with guns saying they're following the orders of the president (just like those Nazis who were "just following orders"). I need to print t-shirts with "Is it…
The President controls the most powerful military on Earth. What do the courts control? Where are their guns?
Anything smaller will just be someone which the police can deal with.
But coordinating thousands of people is hard, and any plan would leak easily and be discovered by that alcoholic wife-beating Fox News reporter. We might hear generals being fired or moved in the coming months/years of this regime.
If I had to put money whether I'd see scenes like this in DC: https://youtu.be/pF8gyC-XD-w , I'd have to consider whether American military people are brave or they'd just be "followers of orders".
Alternatively, maybe some governors will direct their national guard to defend against what they've deemed to be illegal action done by a federal organ. Hopefully the military will show restraint if being asked to shoot fellow Americans, but hey, if MAGA has also infected the military, maybe they'll see defenders of blue states as "woke-mind-virus-infected cowards" and gleefully shoot them.
Where's that book/article that says the US is already in the next civil war...
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> Trump is acting in opposition to the legislation that directs the executive to have its finger in more pies. is that so true? i don't doubt that in probably 10-20% of the cases this is so, but i would bet that in the vast majority of cases the legislation as written is flexible enough that picking an amount of action that is zero is within the bounds of the law. i am watching trump carefully for the moment when he…
I'm unswayed by that argument too, but I don't think it's an accurate characterization of what's happening. A government that arbitrarily withholds funds based on political favoritism is increasing its power, even if aggregate spending goes down because too many people weren't willing to do favors.
We need to acknowledge other authoritarian or authoritarian-lite practices that have gone under the radar for decades, like funding elite colleges (is that political favoritism?), or political influence through NGOs, or even "doing things for the greater good" through unaccountable NGOs like "broadband equity", where there is no explicit charter for the government to do such things.
The US is so weird right now. You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. Also arresting and trying to deport people for things that are not clearly crimes (newspaper op-eds, etc) and without due process. Very strange times. Right now I have some faith the…
> You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes. It’s important to remember that while the President issues the orders, there are other actors behind the scenes writing them for him. They have goals that go beyond a single man considering ideological crimes.
All dictators/authoritarians have a whole layer of very capable people under them that will implement orders from above without thinking about ethics or morality. But they will do a good job. Hitler had people like Himmler and Speer, Stalin had Beriya and many others (don't know names). The interesting thing is that these people will also do well in democracies. A lot of ex-nazis in Germany turned into good democratic people (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Filbinger). You also have these people in companies where for example layoffs are done in the most humiliating way.
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Education to the uneducated (or those who would prefer we remain uneducated in the face of power) can easily cast any education as "biased" against their purposes. Most people see through that for what it is, but an increasing population of Americans don't.
“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”
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Heh...it is so much worse than that. Trump has no idea what he is doing, it has been very clear in interviews. In the first admin, it was the adults in the room, the thing is, it's not yes men this time...it's the villians in the room. Trump is being handed EOs that he doesn't have a clue about. For all the talk about P2025 and denial of any relation to it, they have done roughly 50% of the actions in the project alr…
Exactly. Trump is practically illiterate and is being handed things to sign. His original ideas that were pushed back on by his advisors in his first term were a different sort of idea, things like, "Why can't we just force that country to do what we want, we're the USA, we're the most powerful, we could just bomb them."
Here he is asking the UK prime minister to read out a letter he'd been sent
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Was it this? On August 27, 2020, Natalie Escobar for Code Switch interviewed Vicky Osterweil about her book In Defense Of Looting. The segment was titled "One Author's Argument 'In Defense Of Looting'", and was subsequently retitled "One Author's Controversial View: 'In Defense Of Looting'". https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178... https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vicky-osterweil/in-...
Here's a link to the diff between first publication and today: https://www.diffchecker.com/CJz1Bn51/
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I'm pretty sure with Trump this time around it is much less the case. In his first admin there are endless stories of the "Adults" in the room keeping him in check. This time around he was sure to only fill his cabinet with yes men, so no one could keep him reigned in.
You're right that last time there were "adults in the room" trying to keep him in check. This time, however, he's often doing whatever Heritage/Project 2025 tell him to do. Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, John McEntee, etc.
I think Trump has only very vague opinions on most things. He is ok as long as people flatter his ego.
This is quite sad. PBS and NPR were jewels of the American system. The right-wing has latched on to the message that all public-funded media that isn't right-wing-biased is _bad_ and are trying to kill it everywhere. We are constantly fighting the same battle in Canada where the right-wing accuses media of being left-leaning, while most major news outlets are actually American-owned and slant right a lot of the time.…
The issue in Canada is that the CBC, despite having excellent journalists, investigative, local, and otherwise, and being an invaluable resource to many small communities, is overwhelmingly (but not entirely) biased in favour of one political party and whatever identity politics are currently the mainstay of their image. And it’s the party that nearly always campaigns on increasing their funding. I love(d) the CBC. I…
Sounds like there's an obvious way for any party to get good press from the CBC /s
The fact that you think "climate change" is an evidence of bias betrays your own bias.