He won the popular vote. Afaics majority of America prefer to be ruled by the rich. Honest even DEM won, it can be seen as ruled by rich too. To not to be ruled by the rich, so much legislation change is required, I don’t think that’s feasible democratically/peacefully.
Winning elections does not mean they get to do whatever they want. There are laws, rules, and norms. When the Dems won, the Republicans did everything in their power to stop them from implementing their platform (some of that setting up the violation of norms, rules, and laws we see today).
Assuming I did my sums right, DT won by approximately 1.5%. Hardly a ringing endorsement. He got 31.59% of the voter-eligible (VE) population. I count active yes votes as for a candidate and non-voter passive no votes. Some non-voters support a candidate, but since they didn't vote, their non-votes count against each candidate.
%of ballots %of VE population
Democratic Kamala Harris Tim Walz 226 42% 75,019,230 48.34% 30.66%
Republican Donald J. Trump J.D. Vance 312 58% 77,303,568 49.81% 31.59%
voter eligible population 244,666,890
non-voters 89,278,948
> “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 5. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
> A week later, on July 11, Trump again took to Truth Social to further distance himself from the plan.
> “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote. “I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it. The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part. By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!”
> 37 ways Project 2025 has shown up in Trump’s executive orders
his policies and mates are wildly unpopular, so he just lied about it and then did it anyway. obviously people - and in particular the media - are extremely dumb for believing him, but it's not unreasonable, most politicians don't fully lie about nearly their entire policy program.
I’m watching the horror show of US politics unfold from Western Europe, where I know every outrageous step that Trump takes, unchallenged, will only empower and encourage those would-be dictators who are attempting to take over and possibly dismantle our political systems too. But to call this “important news” isn’t really a fair description. It’s an opinion piece, which at surface level (hopefully) echoes the opinions of many readers who are recoiling in horror about the apparent destruction of democracy before their very eyes; however it is also a propaganda piece from one extremist celebrity leader against another, probably just as selective in its facts as all the guff that comes from the “other side”. The solution to right-extremism is not left-extremism, the real question is how can we talk reasonable people at both ends of the spectrum back from the ledge and attempt to form a new era of collaborative politics that aims for balance and fairness?
Musk was on stage with Trump and said he wanted to slash spending and the US people voted them in winning every swing state. Not sure it's a good idea but that's what 'we the people' chose.
If the democrats earnestly cared about USAID they wouldn’t have painted a giant target on it by treating it as a slush fund for partisan pet projects.
Trump and Musk were crystal clear ahead of the election that they intended to stop exactly this type of partisan funding, and the public agreed at the election.
While I can appreciate there are some legal ambiguities around the specific techniques used to enact that mandate, the left appear to be attacking the mandate itself, which is undemocratic and risks creating the impression that they are attending to subvert the will of the public.
USAID is a key plank in the US overseas propaganda and regime change system. If moving further towards oligarchy [0] involves shutting that down and promoting global stability then it may well be worth it. Indeed, it'll be interesting to see if any evidence is uncovered that operations funded by it were also influencing the US. It is hard to see how they could operate without spreading domestic misinformation, we live in an era where communication networks are global.
Although given all the attention that Elon attracted its way it'll probably have to rebrand even if it does survive the Trump administration. It'll have the same problem as the National Endowment for Democracy in that too many people will know which names to keep an eye out for.
[0] In practice the US has always been quite oligarchic.
Someone always fills the void, in this case it would likely be China. USAID only gets $50 billion, that's hardly enough to control the world on the scale that I think you're saying is happening.
I'm very opposed to DT and Musk's operations for what I feel are reasons I've seen validated over time.
At the same time, I wholly agree about the CIA and USAID; my introduction was migrating several web systems for some USAID-funded groups which led me to look at what they were doing.
As far as I can tell, the groups just generally were doing what they were putatively trying to do, mostly education and disaster relief. Which seems to me to be much softer than, say, attempting the assassination of a Lamumba, Castro, or Sankara.
What gives me pause in celebrating what appears to be a rather large attack on the CIA is that I generally don't trust Trump, either his motivations or his political abilities, in dealing with these kinds of institutions.
I worry that even if he disbanded the CIA and FBI the function of the foreign and domestic secret police agencies will still need to be performed by someone or other, as they seem like the kinds of functions that a lot of folks have naturalized as being part of the modern capitalist state. And it may be the case that a modern capitalist state cannot work without its secret police.
In any case, it seems likely that whatever they replace these groups with, new institutions won't have the same cultural commitments as the existing groups, which at least have a pretense of supporting "US Democratic Principles". For all the internal contradictions that allowed those folks to justify commiting crime after crime, my feeling is that replacing them with some post-truth nihilists will result in the naked application of authoritarianism.
That's my worry, but hey, I get stuff wrong all the time and there are 3-5 points where my analysis could be off.
This is clearly a deliberate shock and awe campaign by Trump and his acolytes to cause as much chaos and damage as possible before they encounter resistance. Another objective is to likely bring a case about the constitutionality of the Impoundment act in front of a conservative supreme court.
What's sickening is that the norms might be permanently changed even if Trump and Elon are pushed back. The next president with an authoritarian bent will have plenty of precedent to justify similar behaviour.
When you cite an article by a very wealthy socialist, crying about oligarchy and a kleptocracy, you have no credibility from the outset. Further, I've yet to see anyone cite a Constitutional authorization for USAID. The US government is trillions in debt and spends massive amounts of our tax dollars on things for which there is no Constitutional authority. What is happening now isn't any of the things that folks here, in the media, and on the left are screaming. It's the exact opposite. And again, as history has shown, if Musk had been acting on behalf of democrats and had maintained the left wing Twitter echo chamber, he be hailed as the man that saved our "democracy". And BTW, the US is not and was never intended to be a democracy. It was founded as a republic though events have eroded that for more than a century.
Bernie Sanders if anything is a social democrat and certainly he is a poor man compared to Trump, Musk & affiliates.
His net worth is "only" 3 million dollars, if you serve half a century in Congress you could accumulate this kind of money (not to mention inheritance and royalties from all of the books he wrote).
What idea is that that a socialist needs to be poor? Is the Pope poor? Was Engels poor?
> Elon Musk and his unelected minions at DOGE have forced out officials at the Treasury Department and illegally shut down US AID – a program which, among other things, helps feed and provide medical help to starving and desperate children all over the world.
Unfortunately democrats should have thought about the consequences when they were pushing woke agenda, when they were too dumb and weak in external affairs, when they were busy dividing and polarizing society, waiting out instead of proactively solving hard problems and making hard choices.
They were investing in Trump’s popularity.
In similar way how communists and socialists were investing in hitler’s back in the days.
People were so fed up with all the nonsense and weak stupid leaders that they would fall for anyone with a tiny drop of sense, some patriotism and some balls.
That's simply not true, they all worked within the law. Trump has broken the law many times over just the past two weeks by exceeding his authority and completely ignoring the laws passed by Congress. Birthright citizenship, USAID, Firing people he can't fire, ignoring contracts, sending goons to take over the payments system; it has been hard for the judicial system to keep him in Check since Congress obviously is capitulating and burying their heads in the sand.
It’s quite clear with DNC sabotaging Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 and the way they handled 2024. Losing to Trump was an acceptable outcome compared to challenging the establishment.
Their whole schtick is based up "tell a lie often enough and most people will start thinking it's the truth". The vast majority of what they're doing has been unconstitutional and/or breaking laws laid out by Congress. There are also repeated lies over and over, "facts" made up on the spot, quoting tweets from psychos as if they're the gold standard for truth.
[+] [-] jimmydoe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] locopati|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rickydroll|1 year ago|reply
Assuming I did my sums right, DT won by approximately 1.5%. Hardly a ringing endorsement. He got 31.59% of the voter-eligible (VE) population. I count active yes votes as for a candidate and non-voter passive no votes. Some non-voters support a candidate, but since they didn't vote, their non-votes count against each candidate.
voter eligible population 244,666,890 non-voters 89,278,948https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024 https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-1...
[+] [-] bananapub|1 year ago|reply
it seems relevant that he just straight up lied a lot the whole time:
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/09/a-guide-to-project-2025/:
> “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 5. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
> A week later, on July 11, Trump again took to Truth Social to further distance himself from the plan.
> “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote. “I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it. The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part. By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!”
whereas, now https://www.politico.com/interactives/2025/trump-executive-o...:
> 37 ways Project 2025 has shown up in Trump’s executive orders
his policies and mates are wildly unpopular, so he just lied about it and then did it anyway. obviously people - and in particular the media - are extremely dumb for believing him, but it's not unreasonable, most politicians don't fully lie about nearly their entire policy program.
[+] [-] tzs|1 year ago|reply
49.8% is not a majority. Did you forget that there were more than two candidates?
[+] [-] jayloofah|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] soerxpso|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] FearNotDaniel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sershe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] scarab92|1 year ago|reply
Trump and Musk were crystal clear ahead of the election that they intended to stop exactly this type of partisan funding, and the public agreed at the election.
While I can appreciate there are some legal ambiguities around the specific techniques used to enact that mandate, the left appear to be attacking the mandate itself, which is undemocratic and risks creating the impression that they are attending to subvert the will of the public.
[+] [-] cbare|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] roenxi|1 year ago|reply
Although given all the attention that Elon attracted its way it'll probably have to rebrand even if it does survive the Trump administration. It'll have the same problem as the National Endowment for Democracy in that too many people will know which names to keep an eye out for.
[0] In practice the US has always been quite oligarchic.
[+] [-] bagels|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] markhahn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|1 year ago|reply
Hungry, shelterless people desperate for medicine are not good for global stability. There are about 100 million refugees on the planet.
[+] [-] EasyMark|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] scarecrowbob|1 year ago|reply
At the same time, I wholly agree about the CIA and USAID; my introduction was migrating several web systems for some USAID-funded groups which led me to look at what they were doing.
As far as I can tell, the groups just generally were doing what they were putatively trying to do, mostly education and disaster relief. Which seems to me to be much softer than, say, attempting the assassination of a Lamumba, Castro, or Sankara.
What gives me pause in celebrating what appears to be a rather large attack on the CIA is that I generally don't trust Trump, either his motivations or his political abilities, in dealing with these kinds of institutions.
I worry that even if he disbanded the CIA and FBI the function of the foreign and domestic secret police agencies will still need to be performed by someone or other, as they seem like the kinds of functions that a lot of folks have naturalized as being part of the modern capitalist state. And it may be the case that a modern capitalist state cannot work without its secret police.
In any case, it seems likely that whatever they replace these groups with, new institutions won't have the same cultural commitments as the existing groups, which at least have a pretense of supporting "US Democratic Principles". For all the internal contradictions that allowed those folks to justify commiting crime after crime, my feeling is that replacing them with some post-truth nihilists will result in the naked application of authoritarianism.
That's my worry, but hey, I get stuff wrong all the time and there are 3-5 points where my analysis could be off.
[+] [-] arunabha|1 year ago|reply
What's sickening is that the norms might be permanently changed even if Trump and Elon are pushed back. The next president with an authoritarian bent will have plenty of precedent to justify similar behaviour.
[+] [-] karmakurtisaani|1 year ago|reply
- wait for the mass protests, use them as an excuse to strengthen the police and/or roll out the nazi boys to attack opposition
- create a fake terrorist attack to justify full blown police state
- flood the media with conspiracies and lies so that no one can tel the truth anymore
- create and fund a controlled opposition
Some of these worked for Hitler, others for Putin. I hope it doesn't go to this in the US, but the pace of things suggests otherwise.
[+] [-] Blackstrat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alkyon|1 year ago|reply
His net worth is "only" 3 million dollars, if you serve half a century in Congress you could accumulate this kind of money (not to mention inheritance and royalties from all of the books he wrote).
What idea is that that a socialist needs to be poor? Is the Pope poor? Was Engels poor?
[+] [-] suraci|1 year ago|reply
Pfft, among other things
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aristofun|1 year ago|reply
They were investing in Trump’s popularity.
In similar way how communists and socialists were investing in hitler’s back in the days.
People were so fed up with all the nonsense and weak stupid leaders that they would fall for anyone with a tiny drop of sense, some patriotism and some balls.
[+] [-] 2-3-7-43-1807|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] EasyMark|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tarsinge|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] doubledamio|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] markhahn|1 year ago|reply
It's less fait accompli than humpty-dumpty.
[+] [-] EasyMark|1 year ago|reply