Eh, I'm not going to dispute the validity of Cleek's Law, but ~everything Trump, et al, are doing has been an extremely popular idea with different segments of the right for thirty, forty years.
That goes for DOGE, both the idea of "drowning the government in a bathtub" and the specific cuts they made (eg, wrecking foreign aid), that goes for ICE, even the Iran War, which is widely regarded as the unpopular thing that might actually sink the administration, is something a solid 30% of the base has been salivating over since Reagan and are only upset that he hasn't "finished the job" yet.
If you think it's all purely reactionary you haven't been paying attention for the last 40 years.
But they didn't drown the government in a bathtub. They cut a bunch of tiny programs that they were ideologically opposed to, at a savings amounting to a rounding error. All of the things that could be counted as "big government" were left untouched, or expanded.
They didn't even pretend to reduce the size of government. They just engaged in some petty grudges.
Which is, as you say, exactly what his voters want. They just pretend that it's "small government", but it absolutely is not.
Unfortunately Americans remain too comfortable to bother with any serious push back. The destruction of democratic traditions in America will continue and the president will keep using the office to legitimise his scams.
Or at least, the tech-bro subset of the general population. It's possible that they're disproportionately vocal on HN, but I think overall it's a reasonably accurate presentation of that (narrow but powerful) demographic.
If the rest of the world stayed still, that's a hard "maybe". Since the rest of the world isn't, what we're actually watching is the "Western Flavor" of the Soviet collapse. The fact that these destructive policies are being repeatedly selected - over and over and over again - means that the collapse is systemic; indeed, this could even be seen as a part of a larger "End of the West" which kicked off with World War 1 and then the utter self-immolation of the secular colonial period in WW2.
Future historians, with the benefit of hindsight, will probably date the beginnings of the collapse[1] to 9/11, with the actual ceasing of the functional economic system somewhere around the 2008 econopalypse. COVID was something like our Chernobyl. I think Trump is, quite honestly, our version of Yeltsin: the buffoon who ends everyone's faith in "the system".
Americans should mentally prepare for an equivalent collapse in, well, everything, from public health to aviation safety. Of course, by the numbers, "you're already soaking in it".
[1] The American side of it, anyway. The larger end of the West, World War 1 is a logical place to draw the line, but honestly it started when Europe ran out of profitable/exploitive space on the map.
Post WW2, the US set up some fantastic levers of power that let it establish and maintain its hegemony at arms length: the United Nations and the UNSC. NATO. The petrodollar. Pax Americana could've gone on forever.
However, those levers of power are subtle enough that once the US voted ignorant jackasses into power, they wrongly thought that's just how the world is, they can do what they like, including -- critically! -- dismantling the levers of power.
It's like that image of the idiot sawing off the branch he's sitting on. How else can you explain the US trying to fuck up the UN and NATO?
A good proportion of the older generations still disdain or mock Germany as nazis-in-waiting. There may be an end to the damage done to their global reputation, but it's not here yet 80 years down the line.
> There may be an end to the damage done to their global reputation, but it's not here yet 80 years down
Let's not forget that in the early part of the 20th century, Germany was the powerhouse of mathematics and sciences such as physics and chemistry, to the extent that top scientists basically had to learn German (1) and/or study in Germany (2).
How long did it take Germany to recover that preeminent position?
> to the extent that top scientists basically had to learn German
That reverberates even toady -- I had a physics professor who who learned German precisely because he wanted to read some original texts written by Boltzmann. Apparently he thought he was missing some nuance in the translations.
just wondering, do you want the US to be hated "forever"? or what is it that you are arguing for?
i thought it was a fairly obvious statement that over the thousands of years of history, many bad things have been done, but after several generations, we are able to heal.
if you think that in the year 2200, the world will still hate the US because of today, i disagree.
the year 2500? i doubt the people of that time, excepting a few ancient historians, will even know it happened.
The US will suffer from this era on the international stage for generations, in a completely self-inflicted blow. Its continued existence as the present-day USA is by no means guaranteed, either.
Present-day Germany isn't Nazi Germany; I certainly hope people will hate Nazi Germany forever.
Japan and Germany made it illegal to put the evil assholes in power. The US will do no such thing, we're going to keep voting for the evil assholes and every attempt we make at progress will simply be undermined and undone.
I don't see a way out of this without a fundamental transformation of the US. At the very least that looks like a Constitutional convention, repeal of FPTP and the electoral college, maybe even changing to a parliamentary system without a powerful executive. At worst it looks like civil war. Nothing on a lesser scale than than that is going to suffice. Expecting to simply return to normal with a vote for blue and pretend this never happened isn't going to work.
As if Trump was the first to print trillions and start a new war. Americans are so enchanted by their 2 party duopoly, it's not even funny. Bizarre how people view reality.
You mean they didn't save 25 trillion dollars a year from the 7 trillion annual spend?
I cant believe they would lie about this ... i am sure that this is a totally isolated case and they have been straight forward and honest about everything else.
The DOGE refund cheque is due to arrive any day now.
They'll just extend the forecast horizon when questioned:
"Oh, those projections were over the life the expected costs,forecast out 10/15/20 years into the future. Everyone knows this is how you calculate such savings..."
The goal wasn't to save money, but to destroy the administrative capacity of the government. And to eliminate programs Musk, Trump and their cronies disliked, while circumventing the legal procedures.
Of course it didn't save any money, and it was obvious from the start that the numbers they put out were entirely fictional.
people were saying this literally as the cuts were happening, we need to get over the delusion of powerful men knowing something the general population doesn't
If there's a government watchdog left, then Trump, Musk, DOGE, etc... haven't done their jobs. They are all too incompetent to even do a proper work of destruction. Or did someone fail to bribe them right?
Last night a jam was canceled in Brazil: "bee-conservation musical". People say it's a waste of US tax payer funds (USAID), but they don't understand the real cost. 600 people are now suffering from PTSD and attending survivor therapy after being deprived of the bee-conservation musical. Our homeless can wait, the "bee-conservation musical" must go on.
And all you techno futurist republicans voted for this. And you’ll do it again cuz money or whatever.
But now they have "startup experience" and can fuck up even worse the next time.
The right's platform has devolved into, essentially, "whatever owns the libs"
Eh, I'm not going to dispute the validity of Cleek's Law, but ~everything Trump, et al, are doing has been an extremely popular idea with different segments of the right for thirty, forty years.
That goes for DOGE, both the idea of "drowning the government in a bathtub" and the specific cuts they made (eg, wrecking foreign aid), that goes for ICE, even the Iran War, which is widely regarded as the unpopular thing that might actually sink the administration, is something a solid 30% of the base has been salivating over since Reagan and are only upset that he hasn't "finished the job" yet.
If you think it's all purely reactionary you haven't been paying attention for the last 40 years.
What you describe is the definition of reactionary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary
But they didn't drown the government in a bathtub. They cut a bunch of tiny programs that they were ideologically opposed to, at a savings amounting to a rounding error. All of the things that could be counted as "big government" were left untouched, or expanded.
They didn't even pretend to reduce the size of government. They just engaged in some petty grudges.
Which is, as you say, exactly what his voters want. They just pretend that it's "small government", but it absolutely is not.
The amount of damage inflicted by this admin will take over a generation to assess, if circumstances are stable enough to do so.
Unfortunately Americans remain too comfortable to bother with any serious push back. The destruction of democratic traditions in America will continue and the president will keep using the office to legitimise his scams.
Even worse, way too many people are still actively supporting this. That can even been seen in the HN commenting crowd
> the HN commenting crowd
That set also contains elements who will swear that LLMs are conscious, so it does not mean as much as we might want it to.
Fair. Though that’s likely a reflection of the general population
Or at least, the tech-bro subset of the general population. It's possible that they're disproportionately vocal on HN, but I think overall it's a reasonably accurate presentation of that (narrow but powerful) demographic.
"Unfortunately Americans remain too comfortable…"
I suspect this too will change.
We may get to a point where we'll refer to the Great Depression as Great Depression I.
We'll see change then. It happened last time.
If the rest of the world stayed still, that's a hard "maybe". Since the rest of the world isn't, what we're actually watching is the "Western Flavor" of the Soviet collapse. The fact that these destructive policies are being repeatedly selected - over and over and over again - means that the collapse is systemic; indeed, this could even be seen as a part of a larger "End of the West" which kicked off with World War 1 and then the utter self-immolation of the secular colonial period in WW2.
Future historians, with the benefit of hindsight, will probably date the beginnings of the collapse[1] to 9/11, with the actual ceasing of the functional economic system somewhere around the 2008 econopalypse. COVID was something like our Chernobyl. I think Trump is, quite honestly, our version of Yeltsin: the buffoon who ends everyone's faith in "the system".
Americans should mentally prepare for an equivalent collapse in, well, everything, from public health to aviation safety. Of course, by the numbers, "you're already soaking in it".
[1] The American side of it, anyway. The larger end of the West, World War 1 is a logical place to draw the line, but honestly it started when Europe ran out of profitable/exploitive space on the map.
I think you'll eventually find that the United States has lost much of its credibility and goodwill forever.
Post WW2, the US set up some fantastic levers of power that let it establish and maintain its hegemony at arms length: the United Nations and the UNSC. NATO. The petrodollar. Pax Americana could've gone on forever.
However, those levers of power are subtle enough that once the US voted ignorant jackasses into power, they wrongly thought that's just how the world is, they can do what they like, including -- critically! -- dismantling the levers of power.
It's like that image of the idiot sawing off the branch he's sitting on. How else can you explain the US trying to fuck up the UN and NATO?
> Pax Americana could've gone on forever.
Hubris is the undoing of all empires. And hubris is basically entropy for humanity.
> How else can you explain the US trying to fuck up the UN and NATO?
At least cynically, there is nothing ignorant about it, it is intentional undermining probably for personal gain.
for awhile, sure. but we can look at japan, germany, etc. and recognize that it wont be "forever".
edit: woops, i guess everyone apparently still hates japan and germany and will hate them forever, too. does everyone still hate spain?
A good proportion of the older generations still disdain or mock Germany as nazis-in-waiting. There may be an end to the damage done to their global reputation, but it's not here yet 80 years down the line.
> There may be an end to the damage done to their global reputation, but it's not here yet 80 years down
Let's not forget that in the early part of the 20th century, Germany was the powerhouse of mathematics and sciences such as physics and chemistry, to the extent that top scientists basically had to learn German (1) and/or study in Germany (2).
How long did it take Germany to recover that preeminent position?
Its a trick question: they did not recover it.
1) https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-did-german-b...
2) e.g.
> In 1926, Oppenheimer left Cambridge for the University of Göttingen to study under Max Born; Göttingen was one of the world's leading centers for theoretical physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Early_ca...
> to the extent that top scientists basically had to learn German
That reverberates even toady -- I had a physics professor who who learned German precisely because he wanted to read some original texts written by Boltzmann. Apparently he thought he was missing some nuance in the translations.
I'd really prefer not to learn the "don't put evil assholes in power" lesson the way Japan and Germany did.
They're basically brand-new countries.
i hope that it is obvious i am not saying that...
my point was that a couple generations is usually enough to heal most animosity, assuming the offending events cease
certainly in a thousand years, ~no one will remember.
A couple generations plus a flattening of most major cities, and the deaths/imprisonment of the leadership responsible.
The second half never happened to Japans leaders despite being responsible for many atrocities in the region at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideki_Tojo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Military_Tribuna...
punishment of those responsible, sure.
i dont think flattening of most major cities is a requirement...
> i dont think flattening of most major cities is a requirement...
Both of your chosen examples went through exactly that as part of their reputational change.
i can go dig up other examples of countries that did bad things which are forgiven now, if you'd like.
Like the Confederacy?
Wait, bad example.
just wondering, do you want the US to be hated "forever"? or what is it that you are arguing for?
i thought it was a fairly obvious statement that over the thousands of years of history, many bad things have been done, but after several generations, we are able to heal.
if you think that in the year 2200, the world will still hate the US because of today, i disagree.
the year 2500? i doubt the people of that time, excepting a few ancient historians, will even know it happened.
"forever" is a long time.
You don't get to decide how you're hated is the point.
> do you want the US to be hated "forever"?
No.
What I want and what I get don't always match up.
The US will suffer from this era on the international stage for generations, in a completely self-inflicted blow. Its continued existence as the present-day USA is by no means guaranteed, either.
Present-day Germany isn't Nazi Germany; I certainly hope people will hate Nazi Germany forever.
Japan and Germany made it illegal to put the evil assholes in power. The US will do no such thing, we're going to keep voting for the evil assholes and every attempt we make at progress will simply be undermined and undone.
I don't see a way out of this without a fundamental transformation of the US. At the very least that looks like a Constitutional convention, repeal of FPTP and the electoral college, maybe even changing to a parliamentary system without a powerful executive. At worst it looks like civil war. Nothing on a lesser scale than than that is going to suffice. Expecting to simply return to normal with a vote for blue and pretend this never happened isn't going to work.
I certainly hope that the US finds a less destructive way of changing their reputation than Germany did.
the hit to practically all its spy programs will set it back years
Easily a decade
As if Trump was the first to print trillions and start a new war. Americans are so enchanted by their 2 party duopoly, it's not even funny. Bizarre how people view reality.
You mean they didn't save 25 trillion dollars a year from the 7 trillion annual spend?
I cant believe they would lie about this ... i am sure that this is a totally isolated case and they have been straight forward and honest about everything else.
The DOGE refund cheque is due to arrive any day now.
Who ever claimed these numbers? Wtf.
They'll just extend the forecast horizon when questioned:
"Oh, those projections were over the life the expected costs,forecast out 10/15/20 years into the future. Everyone knows this is how you calculate such savings..."
DOGE was never about saving money, it was about cutting aid to the poor.
Accelerationism more like. Not just cutting aid to the poor.
Suspect this was flagged for being obvious.
Oh, it saved money for someone all right
Great context, thanks for adding it
I won’t be surprised when the GAO’s budget is cut next as retaliation for this embarrassing report.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49204510
No problem just find more. It’s pretty easy.
It probably saved money for some very special companies.
The goal wasn't to save money, but to destroy the administrative capacity of the government. And to eliminate programs Musk, Trump and their cronies disliked, while circumventing the legal procedures.
Of course it didn't save any money, and it was obvious from the start that the numbers they put out were entirely fictional.
Its purpose was not to save money but to disable government regulation of capital.
Specifically on Musk, that directly benefited his companies
WOW YOU DONT FUCKING SAY?????????
This was fairly obvious from the start.
"No shit" everyone else says
Aaaand flagged
people were saying this literally as the cuts were happening, we need to get over the delusion of powerful men knowing something the general population doesn't
If there's a government watchdog left, then Trump, Musk, DOGE, etc... haven't done their jobs. They are all too incompetent to even do a proper work of destruction. Or did someone fail to bribe them right?
Last night a jam was canceled in Brazil: "bee-conservation musical". People say it's a waste of US tax payer funds (USAID), but they don't understand the real cost. 600 people are now suffering from PTSD and attending survivor therapy after being deprived of the bee-conservation musical. Our homeless can wait, the "bee-conservation musical" must go on.
(Europeans: this is sarcasm)