Posted by rbanffy 4/15/2025
It will go down as the most successful assault on America since 9/11 once the true scale of the damage is understood.
Not only will Musk be able to tap into it for years but foreign governments.
Why are people being deported for no crimes or for far lesser crimes?
But those agencies cannot do anything if an elected/named official decides to work for an adversary, since those agencies are under command of the elected/name official.
That's why democracy is beyond the scope of those agencies.
Those agencies are "fences" to protect a teenager from doing mistakes. But it cannot protect the teenager from setting himself on fire.
In my view, democracy was always vulnerable if the people or elected official can be convinced of whatever.
My understanding was that they routinely do their work far outside of the law. Because such agencies have demonstrated a willingness to violate the constitution of the US, lie to both congress and the president, overthrow the democratically elected leaders of sovereign nations, perform acts of torture, rape, human experimentation, assassination, etc. it seems odd that they'd suddenly shy away from taking any action now.
"Supporting democracy" in Latin America always meant anti-communism, even to the extent of ending free elections.
> And Berulis noticed that an unknown user had exported a "user roster," a file with contact information for outside lawyers who have worked with the NLRB.
Possibly looking for lawyers for Trump to target with EOs or blackmail.
Given all of Musks actions, he is probably wanting to destroy any agency that went against him, because he truly believes he is the humanities savior and his companies are doing things the right way.
First the "average" american is softly but ideologically committed to liberalism¹ & democracy as fundamental values. From that perspective the mind kind of recoils from accepting this. If this is really what's happening, what does civic obligation demand of me? How does that reconcile with my inability to keep my family safe in the face of a motivated & powerful state that wishes to harm me through them? Easier to believe this isn't what is happening, I don't need to take action yet. A powerful example of motivated reasoning.
Second a significant part of the userbase here, as with the general population, supports some or all of these actions. Simple as.
¹ Like in the traditional sense, ie "a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law" from wikipedia.
People support what they claim to do doing and are naive enough to believe they are doing what they say without asking questions about why they seem to be going out of there way to avoid transparency or providing any real evidence to their claims.
But when they start doing stuff like tarrifs for no reason what so ever, to the point where even Musk thinks its stupid, the situation is sad more than scary. US has lost its edge for literally nothing in return.
The Republicans are basically still at the mercy of the economy - Trump backed of tariffs real quick when Japan started selling off US debt on the cheap. So I don't think its going to get levels of Saddam Hussein authoritarian. But time will tell.
The thing is, just like in Russia, smart people will know when to leave, and will leave, which is good. As soon as it becomes economically better to work in EU, you will have lots of talented people immigrating there which will bolster their economy.
Part of me is sympathetic to them because a lot of these people are people who live privileged lives and have never before been in any political pressure. These people have previously been able to just detach from politics because they knew, no matter what, they would end up on top. And now, that assumption is no longer true and they have the enter a world that a variety of minority groups have already been living in. They have to face the reality that politics isn't just something on the TV, but something that affects their lives.
B) You can’t know if someone is here illegally if they don’t have a way to challenge that claim. They could easily abduct you or anyone else and ship you off without allowing you to challenge it in court