America's Dangerous Movement Toward Oligarchy, Authoritarianism and Kleptocracy
20 comments
·February 6, 2025jayloofah
FearNotDaniel
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?
cbare
Yep, I agree with ya. Whoever moderated that away is lame.
karmakurtisaani
The whole broligarchy thing seems to appeal to a part of HN, possibly because of it's origins in the tech bro scene.
tim333
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.
markhahn
Their ethic is to win by any means. The purpose of shock-and-awe is to change the facts on the ground, before and institutional guardrails can engage.
It's less fait accompli than humpty-dumpty.
jimmydoe
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.
arunabha
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.
karmakurtisaani
If they want to follow the usual play book, the next steps would be:
- 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.
SubiculumCode
What Trump is doing to NIH..I have never felt more abused.
wahnfrieden
[flagged]
suraci
> 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.
Pfft, among other things
roenxi
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.
bagels
Elon is a lying fraud. I'm pretty skeptical about any claims of fact that come out of his expedition.
markhahn
Sure, aid is propaganda. How do you get to regime change?
roenxi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter... - the general pattern for the US-backed coups is propaganda->protests->revolt. USAID seems to be providing the funding for the early phase, if not the entire pipeline to a colour revolution.
suraci
https://web.archive.org/web/20210120110125/https://www.pando...
lol, karma is a bi*ch
MattGaiser
> involves shutting that down and promoting global stability
Hungry, shelterless people desperate for medicine are not good for global stability. There are about 100 million refugees on the planet.
roenxi
"That thing you [defunded] isn't important to me; it's the [regime change] unit. It makes shoes for orphans... nice job breaking it, hero."
~ GLaDOS, Potal
Your basic point is a bit off. A lot of those refugees are because of the destabilisation the US is responsible for. If there is a cover organisation for something terrible and it does a little good in the process it is still terrible. Take that line could justify an entire invasion because they secure peace for the survivors.
The real outrage here is Bernie Sanders defending the organisation. They should have sent in someone who isn't trying to brand themselves as principled, maybe Schiff.
Hope this stays up, possibly the most important news to appear on HN today. Edit: Flagged off in 3 minutes...