Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

idk I have the feeling a lot of strange people are gonna be coming out of the woodwork soon, one thing about Trump is he's not just radicalizing his own base here

Weird dark times ahead for sure. But it can be easy to forget how many weird dark times we’ve had, as a country and a species. It’s always weird dark times somewhere.

My sister sat across the sofa from me last fall and was so sure that his tariffs were a bluff, that they would never be imposed

What does she say now?

do any of you think that fascism is actually coming, is close, already arrived? i'm not sure what people think it looks like, but when it's "how is he doing it? that's not allowed! that's clearly against the law!" and it keeps happening and no one seems to be in a position to put up effective opposition

I think people referring to the law is interesting, because I think a key component of fascism is the absence of law, the explicit pursuit of order without law (rather than "law and order"). That power should reside in the man not in the office

still maintain that Democrats should be hammering "President Musk" nonstop - dual purpose of highlighting that Trump handed over the powers of the office to a billionaire who creeps people out and makes Trump feel weak. He's not smart enough to use Musk as a fall guy for a failed coup but he is dumb enough to be mad that people credit Musk for attempting a coup and not Trump.

Also, for republicans richer=smarter, so musk is defacto the smartest guy in the room.

I think people referring to the law is interesting, because I think a key component of fascism is the absence of law, the explicit pursuit of order without law (rather than "law and order"). That power should reside in the man not in the office

― anvil, Monday, February 3, 2025 5:06 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

For a chillingly quick education in the rise of fascism; read ‘M son of the century’ by Antonio Scurati about the rise of Mussolini from WW1 to the murder of Giacomo Matteotti in 1924 (also you can curse the lack of English translations of the latter two books).

From the co-opting and collaboration of the industrial oligarchy and the reliance on an angry, violent, militarised and dispossessed working class; there’s a lot of parallels. Order without law is a very apt phrasing.

Hey, I just finished the chapter in Francois Furet's The Passing of an Illusion depicting Mussolini's consolidation of power. He "remained a dictator who had escaped from the control of the governing classes and justice." The major causes of fascist dictatorship: "first, the success among the masses of the fascists' ideological preaching, which lent credibility to their pretention to govern; and, second, and even more important, the Fascists' political autonomy. What was surprising was not that they compromised with the bourgeoisie but that they remained independent of it."

I am surprised Trump is ceding so much power to Musk to clear out the bureaucracy. I knew he was going to do this but I thought it would be Heritage Foundation appointees leading the effort and doing it in a less chaotic way.

In a way maybe this is better. Musk might screw up and fail to execute the project 2025 vision

I have a neighbor who works at USAID , I know others who work at other fed agencies. I guess we have to hope that when Schumer and Dems get back from their weekend off and meet at 3 pm et they will get on this Musk stuff.

Meanwhile Musk tweeted : We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent a letter on Monday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demanding answers for why the so-called Department of Government Efficiency was granted access to the federal payments system, giving Elon Musk and his team a powerful tool that could be used to track and potentially limit government spending.

From NY Times

God I loathe the NYT. They are doing so much water carrying for Musk just by framing the data breach as "a powerful tool that could be used to track and potentially limit government spending" instead of "massive amounts of personally identifiable information that is legally prohibited from being shared with them."

otm

The federal employees I know do not tend to be gun people
― Dialysis Den (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, February 2, 2025 11:57 PM (yesterday)

I could see a lot of former fed employees getting into politics real quick though

xp And like, the DOGE spokesperson saying on Twitter that "no classified information was accessed" should obviously never be printed unless the next sentence is "Unlike information that is kept secret for national security interests, Social Security Numbers and other sensitive PII stored in the federal payment databases is not considered classified."

Trump did an Executive Order earlier granting lots of people security clearance, so nothing to worry about

FYI the DOGE spokeswoman is married to Stephen Miller.

Lolll

checks out:

In 2012, she was involved in a scandal when she was caught destroying hundreds of copies of the school's newspaper, after it endorsed an opposing student government candidate.

My sister sat across the sofa from me last fall and was so sure that his tariffs were a bluff, that they would never be imposed

What does she say now?

― anvil,

she'll say mexico backed down and trump is powerful and good (if the news this morning about mexico sending national guard troops to the border and the tariffs being delayed is accurate), and if that's not true, she will say that it's inevitable that mexico and canada are about to be dominated under trump's pressure. if they never do, that will become someone else's fault

Not bad if true:

https://bsky.app/profile/marklemley.bsky.social/post/3lhbmwfn2qc2n

Dude's a Stanford Law guy so I suspect he'll bring some heat.

From the Wall Street Journal (this is all I could get pre-paywall):

Democratic Senator Says He Will Stall Trump Nominees Until USAID Is Back
Schatz said he would hold up Trump’s diplomatic confirmations

WASHINGTON—Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said he would place a “blanket hold” on all of President Trump’s State Department nominees until his administration’s attack on the leading foreign-assistance agency ends, a move that threatens to stall Trump’s ability to get his foreign-policy team in place.

Raskin, Van Hollen, and Beyer are apparently Doing a Thing at USAID at 1.

Before throwing the tomatoes can we at least note that they're at least trying? They can protest and investigate but they don't have a lot of power to compel the uncompellable

well, that's all you can hope for, right? like I get the tools at the Dems' disposal are limited right now, but...we all saw what the GOP did when Obama had a mandate, a much larger one than Trump does now in fact. maybe they don't have much power now, but I strongly suspect they will win big in 2026 and 2028 (as they may need to, given how much Trump will put his finger on the scale), and the voters need to know they're actually serious about unfucking this country and defending trans people along with every other minority he's targeting. stop with this "the people want bipartisan solutions" thing, even the imaginary family in Schumer's head has got to be fed up with this

lol wait, so now Rubio claims he is "acting director" for USAID?

can't believe the CIA is so weak they won't even take out a tweaker billionaire to protect their slush fund

you don't need an exploding cigar or headache gun that drives him to suicide, precisely zero people would be surprised to wake up to the news that Musk ODed

looks like tariffs on Mexico are off for now since they agreed to send 10000 more border agents. of course, as it turns out, this is just something Biden negotiated a while ago

xp
"We're secretly replacing Musk's ketamine with fentanyl ..."

Are we supposed to be pro-USAID now?

Today's executive orders are amazing btw.

> Trump also expressed interest in acquiring Ukrainian rare earth minerals in exchange for more American aid to the war-torn nation.

As the plan is to subsume USAID is under State then yeah, Rubio.

CIA's needs are adequately hidden in the Defense budget (which no one is coming for). Plus, as noted above, no one is going to stiff Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed, etc.

Etaeoe, the #resistance may entail some strange bedfellows in these times.

> Trump also expressed interest in acquiring Ukrainian rare earth minerals

Why because they interesting

lol wait, so now Rubio claims he is "acting director" for USAID?

Very Alexander Haig.

I am expecting some territorial pushback from heads of departments against Elon snooping around and shutting things down.

I am expecting some territorial pushback from heads of departments against Elon snooping around and shutting things down.

I mean, bureaucratic territory pissing is a constant in any administration.

it sure does feel like Dems have joined GOP voters in thinking this country just isn't worth saving

Parker Molloy doing her best to sound alarms: https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-media-is-missing-the-story-elon

Think about what's already happened: A billionaire with extensive business interests in China now has access to sensitive national security information. A man who publicly mocks federal workers can now monitor their emails and computers. Someone who treats government agencies like hostile takeover targets has gained control of the systems that deliver Social Security checks to elderly Americans and food assistance to hungry children.

This isn't just about destroying the administrative state — though that's certainly part of it. It's about replacing government accountability with private control. When Musk's team tells federal workers they should seek "higher productivity jobs in the private sector," as reported by Wired, they're telling on themselves. The goal isn't to make government more efficient; it's to transfer its power and resources to private hands.

Democracy requires public servants who answer to the people, not to billionaires. It needs civil servants who can't be fired on a billionaire's whim. It requires systems that distribute public resources based on law and need, not private interests. Instead, we're watching the systematic dismantling of these democratic safeguards, carried out by someone who treats the Constitution like terms of service to be rewritten at will.

> Trump also expressed interest in acquiring Ukrainian rare earth minerals

Why because they interesting

Hey, mineral collecting is serious business.

It’s all just so far beyond how bad I expected it to be. The shock hasn’t fully sunk in.

Ending OSHA being floated now too, not an executive order (yet) but Rep. Andy Biggs from Arizona introduced a bill to do so. Not even hiding that they don't just want people poor, they want them dead too.

Anything radical that involves Congressional votes to pass is aspirational rather than a serious threat. It's the breadth of preemptive unilateral executive actions, whether legal or not, that's the flashing Drudge siren.

i expect that before the term is over, the fecklessness of the democratic party (and their real lack of powers, in terms of numbers and their ability to persuade normal people that they care about their wellbeing) will create a vacuum that will be filled with citizen violence, which trump and his regime (they are fascists, start calling them what they are) will compare to jan 6, "this is the real jan 6", etc

xp - Agreed, I just hope someone is keeping track of all of these "mask off" moments of what they'd really like to accomplish.

Hey, the left also wants a day of love. Is that too much to ask?

(they are fascists, start calling them what they are)

and sorry, pet peeve, but if you're one of those pedantic people who refuse to say "fascist" because it's not playing out the way it did with mussolini, invent a new word and use that one. say SOMETHING to differentiate this what you thought was normal

(same with genocide and gaza. call it ethnic cleansing, invent a new word, just stop ignoring it)