[techapple]

Two things concern me:

First thing that Trump did was fire the inspector generals whose job it is to provide over site.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/25/politics/trump-fires-inspecto...

And the second is the rethinking of impoundment, that Trump can decide what money to spend and not spend(which is in contrast I think to recent decisions like the end of Chevron deference that says the executive should not in fact be making their own decisions separate from what Congress decided.

I think there’s a lot you can say about how inefficient our government is, but a some point, if your saying our government is terrible and it should be completely rethought, taking power away from congress and enshrining it in the president. Even if it’s a good idea, isn’t that a coup? Like coup’s don’t always end badly, sometimes they replace bad things with better things. But if your like the whole government sucks and we need to replace it, and we’re going to do so outside of the normal process of passing laws and changing the constitution, that seems coup adjacent at least?

[noduerme]

I mean, there is no question that a lot of people who voted for Trump would prefer a King or a Dictator to a President. They let that be known. And for whatever weird reason, they trust this guy to be the king. And that is not American, not in the America I grew up in. (But maybe it is what they always wanted in the South). Now that they have it, I guess the question is whether our laws and courts and congress will stop it if it gets out of hand.

One thing I think Republicans and Democrats agree about is that Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. One could see the corruption in the previous administration and, eventually, you can't help seeing it in whatever is happening now. The one hope is that Americans are not used to corruption, the way that people are in many other countries. Most countries I've lived in accept total corruption from their government as a daily fact. But Americans are still outraged by it. They don't accept it as normal.