The interesting thing is how easily a democracy can be abused. In some ways, though in a more limited manner, it reminds us of Germany in 1933 or 1930s. Now the orange mafia in charge is, of course, not 1:1 comparable; ICE kills citizens willy-nilly style but they are not as systematic in their overthrow of the US democracy as the N people were in the 1930s. But many elements are very much comparable, such as the orange mafia trying to stifle critical journalism. That's a transition to a more authoritarian system.
It much more like (imho) the period of time around the Gracchi brothers in the Roman Republic. Lots of corruption, where the corruption is "tolerable" by the masses and elites. One or two people pushing the corruption as far as possible and being reprimanded but not punished. The masses groaning but not buckling. It tracks even the politics of the time. Trump is a populist in his political platform. His supporters do believe he is draining the swamp. The same way the Gracchi brothers rode on a tide of populism while not being populists.
Nobody was shooting cruise missiles at the Yandex data centers. Seriously if you want to deny influence campaigns affecting US elections using a broad spectrum of influence ops, you also have to believe that advertising and PR doesn't work.
It's also not just happening to US elections, perhaps not even primarily to US elections. Brexit, AfD, Orban, etc. were all boosted with a strategic goal in mind.
You don't get modern discontent and populism (and the current president) without the expansive (at the expense of congress and the states) executive branch. You don't get the expansive executive branch without 1930s populists and FDR.
Obviously there's a lot more nuance and detail to it (the blame Nixon deserves being of specific note IMO) but the argument is there.
So I'd argue that both the means are bad and the end
Because people were (and still are) struggling and wanted something to change. Trump was the change candidate. Harris straight up said she wouldn't change anything.
The election was a rejection of stability.
At least, that's how people in the middle, who decide election results, saw things.
We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.
Those are my conclusions as well, though I want to note anyone who paid attention to her campaign rather than getting it second hand or third off of vibes would not have made the claim that she “straight up said she wouldn’t have changed anything”.
A lot of voters in the middle aren’t taking the time to understand why things seem to keep not changing (somewhat understandably so, but also unfortunately given the need for an engaged electorate in a healthy democracy). Both parties are being sticks in the mud, but one in particular is doing a lot more to keep change from happening than the other.
In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything. The point of democracy is to let the best ideas win, and part of that is being able to try those ideas out, and respond when they don’t work. Having a senate with two votes per state regardless of population, that are only replaced a third at a time, with an archaic but also recent rule that effectively requires 60/100 vote to pass almost anything meaningful, is just a recipe for failure.
End the filibuster as it is today. If you want a filibuster, force people to talk for it the way it worked for the first ~150 years of our country at least.
To be fair she was asked in an interview how she would differ from her predecessor and she totally choked. It was like she'd never even considered that was a question somebody might ask her. She just didn't have an answer.
We should go back to indirect election of senators. Something needs to represent the will of the states as distinct entities.
Having some slimy Mitt Romney types doing math about various state industries and interests when wording bills and trading votes would be a huge improvement over the equally slimy jerks we have now scheming up ways to serve their donors (who's interests correlate with the voters even less than the state's despite that bar being low to begin with) while leveraging abortion this guns that wedge issues to get re-elected despite screwing their voters.
The distribution of senators to states would also matter less if they weren't direct elected and therefore as beholden to party platforms and funding systems and whatnot.
> Something needs to represent the will of the states as distinct entities
Why? And why is indirect selection of senators better for that? Won't it just hand power to backroom operators at the state level, instead of the people of the state?
They hoped the vote will hurt liberals, blue states, trans people and others they hate and dont consider real. But not themselves. They spend years listening to hate and learning to wish to destroy, so they voted for candidate consistent with that.
And some simply found Trumpian corruption and abuse to be manly and cool.
>They hoped the vote will hurt liberals, blue states, trans people and others they hate and dont consider real. But not themselves.
Even if you work by the logic of respecting the median voter's position as legitimate and worthy of equal consideration by mere virtue of it being democratically held (a viewpoint I don't subscribe to), it seems as if the median voter got an own goal this cycle.
I'm trans. I'm also smart, wealthy, and live in America - an intersection of categories that essentially mean you can just do whatever you want in life. I've barely felt any of the consequences of the election because I can afford to move to somewhere where the legislative climate is more friendly, can afford to have a social life among people who are not hostile, and largely shrug off fuel and food inflation. I'm not feeling the consequences of the current regime half as bad as the people who voted enthusiastically for it.
Culture war is nonsense and nothing can ever supersede material conditions.
There is no solution to this problem other than electing a candidate who will raise taxes, fund infrastructure, and stabilise prices. I don't have optimism we'll get anyone like this on the national stage within the next decade.
Voters obviously bear ultimate responsibility, but there's a lot more going on than just "voters are responsible." If that were true, corporations and wealthy individuals would have no interest in injecting money into politics, but alas... they do.
He also said after last time he was done putting so much money into politics, and then recently just dropped around another $300 million promoting republican candidates.
You're supposed to regurgitate the Brandies "“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” statement.
You can never blame anything on propaganda and deliberate misinformation and manipulation of the public. And you have to assume all speakers have the same power and reach.
Unrestricted free speech in practice falls under what Anatole characterized : "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Elon can lie and propagandize at scale with impunity. But let's blame voters.
Looking up and down this thread and there are people you would agree with about our situation being awful, while being extremely reluctant to blame a planned and coordinated influence campaign by an adversary. It amounts to calling our fellow citizens chumps, and that's rude.
The private sector, for slightly more benign reasons, and sometimes less benign reasons like keeping cigarettes from being blamed for cancer and emphysema, uses the same mechanisms to sell products. If that didn't work, nobody would pay for advertising and PR.
In a democracy where everyone has the right to vote, I think the “downside” that must be accepted is there will exist a spectrum of voters. Voters who only listen to sound bites, voters who mindlessly vote tribally, to voters who research, voters who understand second and third order effects. We also can’t assume we have total information of how the elected official will act throughout their term.
Even something as simple as, attractiveness mattering more in presidential candidates since the advent of television in homes.
At the same time, we had a system whose establishment largely looked down on middle class Americans who didn't go to college. Early to mid 2000’s through the great recession saw the middle class tighten, with no real improvement to healthcare or affordability (attempts were made but ultimately medical costs are still rising). Many middle class people rely on things like cheap gas, child care, and affordable heating among others.
Then you have a system whose leaders actively works to increase gas prices (regardless of EV incentives, you’re asking individuals to purchase new cars when a difference of 1 dollar in gas goes a long way), some states subsidizing green energy programs by additional taxes on oil and natural gas heating costs (just switch to heat pumps and take on a 0 interest loan for 10 years), and rising childcare costs partly due to regulations in childcare businesses.
Then you have someone who claims to be an outsider (he wasn’t), who clowns on the existing elites in debates, and makes vast promises. The other party doesn’t say anything about positive change they’ll bring, just that they aren’t Him. Why not try something different than the status quo over the last 2 decades?
With gas prices up, the Epstein scandal still unresolved, and another ME war, i think if many of middle America were told these would be the outcomes they would not have voted him in again.
We should have more empathy for our fellow Americans, and try to understand each other instead of assuming they want the worst for your side.
We (most of the world) also have to deal with well funded external government organisations constantly pumping out propaganda attempting to make sure we don't work together or have empathy/understanding of each other's views.
Push that through a media filter that optimizes for engagement and it's no wonder these things are happening.
Jan 6 alone was enough to make voting for Trump morally unacceptable. Voting for fear and money over the preservation of freedom is a classic moral failure and every one of the people who voted for Trump not only knows it, but pretends to make it a cornerstone of their political beliefs. If they use Epstein and gas prices as excuses, fuck them.
You assume those voters believe Jan 6 was an insurrection. Many of them don’t. Whether thats a fault of the media/bubble they’re in or gross naivety/negligence is a different discussion.
If you go with the presumption Jan 6 was a mob that got out of hand (not my position, just one of the perspectives), then the idea that he wasn’t able to enact his agenda due to the opposing party, coupled with the shenanigans of the other option (no democrat primary for Kamala being one, with democrat party having done similar in the past with Bernie), then claims that the democrats are spinning Jan 6 and risking another term with him seem more reasonable.
Whether I or you agree with those premise is separate from what the zeitgeist is for much of America
I can agree with your position based on the election on 2016. He was a wildcard, and truly nobody could know exactly how he'd act in office.
I can't agree with your position based on the election of 2024. We knew exactly who Trump was, and it was obvious the second term was only going to be more extreme and unhinged.
And this is where you have to admit that the Democrats just ran a terrible candidate in '24. You might believe she was the better choice but she just did not appeal to the middle, and you need them to win.
I do blame the Democratic party and Biden especially for the major shitshow that was the selection of a presidential candidate. Their hubris and corruption definitely continued to enable this walking disaster of Trump's second term. The Democratic Party has failed America over and over again in terms of actually selecting candidates the people want over people whose "turn" it is.
I also blame the people who voted for Trump for Trump getting elected. Ultimately its the voters who chose this disaster of a presidency, despite obvious signs.
The second term I think was largely handed to him given the Democrats had no primary for Kamala, and frankly were tone deaf with what the “other side”’s needs were in a candidate.
Politicians flip flop, or hopefully truly develop different opinions after experience/learning more.
Kamala came off as a piece of clay molded in the last minute to appease groups just for their vote. A good politician makes that “molding” process come off more naturally. Her and Walz did not really resonate with voters, they were just not Him.
And that is a lesson I hope democrats or a third party has learned that they can’t just reflectively say “I’m not Trump,” they need to show that through their principals, track record, and message of unity.
Hillary admonished trump voters, many of whom are middle class union/laborers. Biden claimed he was pro union then broke up the railroad strike. Kamala couldn’t hold a conversation without some sound bite failure (doesn’t make her bad, just not a politician) and wasn’t elected in any primary.
I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did, then provide a better option not just a different one
I totally agree the Democratic party has routinely failed the electorate.
> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did
I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.
I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.
These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.
Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?
Insider traded is expected not illegal in commodity trading.
The market is intended to support consumers and producers of the commodity and there’s no requirement for either of them to inform the market of their intentions or information prior to a trade.
If a coffee growers knows a blight is killing their crops they can buy millions of futures before informing the market.
You can use your own proprietary information (for example knowledge about a coffee blight) to trade, but you can't use information stolen, misapropriated and specifically "non public government information" - The Eddie Murphy rule:
The bar for insider trading is higher but it’s not missing. Governmental employees for instance have explicit laws about their behavior as insider trading in commodities.
In this case, it sounds like they were privy to information outside of their own corporation which would impact their corporation. That $100k sub to the president looks to be a two-way, wall(ed garden) street. I wonder how parasocial it is
Depends on who actually gets elected. A centrist candidate like Buttigeg/Ossoff/Harris/Newsom would almost certainly lead to no prosecutions. Someone with actual convictions like AOC or Ro Khanna might.
Fair. Although he seems to mostly target Trump, rather than the conditions that gave rise to Trumpism. Unless someone addresses that we’re stuck in a vicious cycle…
We might get someone like Obama again who "looks forward and not backwards"... a logic that would result in all crimes being ignored if consistently applied.
If prison was an option, it would have already happened. They will get away with it. Dems aren't going to be able to break this administration. They will just ignore congress. What will congress do?
I wondered about this so checked what happened to Joseph McCarthy. He was subject to a vote of censure in the senate, and became unpopular, but that was it. Of course he died shortly after of alcohol related conditions, so there's that..
There have already been rumors of some administration-wide pardon scheme but that'll probably fall on its face when put to the test, like almost everything else they do.
It's baffling to watch people destroy their reputations, careers and possibly risk their freedom for a chance to get close to power and pad their (possibly offshore/crypto) savings accounts. For as evolved as we pretend to be, we're really not very far beyond our "lizard brains" and a few missed meals away from mania. I was actually just thinking about Todd Blanche and the stupid games he's playing, flirting with contempt in a number of lawsuits. He's almost certainly got less time in the AG seat than Trump has in the president's and reality is going to slam into his brown nose very hard, sooner than later.
There are enough state level charges to be laid against these people that federal pardons can be made in effective. The JDs among them can also lose their licenses.
What makes you think the Democrats are going to do anything? They had multiple slam-dunk cases against Trump during the previous administration and they either did nothing at all, or slow-rolled the investigations and then gave them up when election season rolled around again.
They're simply in the oligarch level now. Everyone understands that they're above the law. Nowhere near enough Democrats are talking about the level of corruption clearout that would be required to bring accountability. Law enforcement are heavily compromised in the opposite direction. See the raid on Ilhan Omar, for example.
Techo-nobles benefit as well. Just ask Eric Holder and centi-millionaire Obama. If you can reach the latter in his mansion on the exclusive island for the wealthy, that is.
Ofc congresspeople should not be immune, but she is being investigated for the possibility that a relative who brought her to the US when she was a child (15) lied on her immigration paperwork.
It’s not clear to me how she’d be responsible for that and it’s also not clear to me what evidence they expected to turn up related to such an offense by raiding her home decades after the offense was alleged to have occurred.
I agree. But it’s pretty apparent that this is a case of political targeting. Elon and Melania Trump likely committed some level of immigration fraud as well.
The CFTC, since Trump, has become entirely corrupt. Note that the proliferation of sports gambling in prediction markets, which is explicitly illegal, largely exists because the CFTC refuses to enforce their own legal mandate against Kalshi and Polymarket.
It’s actually worse; when states try to shut down sports betting in prediction markets, the CFTC fights on behalf of Kalshi with the reasoning that only the federal government has the mandate to regular futures and prediction markets. And then they refuse to regulate!
The CFTC is supposed to have 5 chairs, with no more than 3 in the same party. The administration has gotten around this rule by simply removing 4 of the commissioners and then refusing to appoint replacements. In effect, the CFTC has only 1 republican chair and no opposite party representation. The level of corruption is staggering.
> sports gambling in prediction markets, which is explicitly illegal
It’s a bit more complicated than that. The CFTC argues that under Dodd-Frank any bet on a future event that can have economic consequences is regulated by the CFTC.
It’s a bit silly because this obviously wasn’t the intention of the legislation, and it would also mean anyone betting outside a CFTC regulated exchange is in illegality. But it’s valid enough that The case will probably go to the Supreme Court.
> The trading in question was eye-popping. In a two-minute window starting at 6:49 a.m. in New York on March 23, traders sold contracts equivalent to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate, more than 8.5 times the volume that had changed hands that time in the morning over the prior week. A similar increase in activity was observed in futures tied to the S&P 500, with contracts worth more than $2 billion in notional value traded — far more than would be expected in an otherwise quiet premarket session. Unusual volumes were also visible in natural gas and other futures markets.
> Those trades paid off 15 minutes or so later, when Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was reversing his threat to attack Iranian infrastructure unless the country re-opened the Strait of Hormuz.
Likely the entire purpose of the war is to create opportunities for corruption in my opinion.
Total corruption by the orange clown-thief and those around him benefitting from their heist here.
The only partially redeeming thing we will soon witness is that he will lose the upcoming elections, no matter how much he plans to cheat. The TechBros pissed off too many people and stole too much money in addition to that. All that money should be given back, directly to the people. The superrich should not be allowed to control and manipulate democracies in general, even though they are currently prepping up the eyeliner-boy as successor to the orange insanity clown.
The reason America is great is that even after electing such a corrupt president twice, the country still keeps running.
I feel the greatness of the American political system.
The counterfactual doesn't make sense. Which country would stop or grind to a halt after electing a corrupt president? I think almost all countries would keep running at a basically normal capacity until failure, yet that doesn't prove those countries have great systems.
This will need a lot more time and hindsight to make general statements in terms of the wider picture.
Many citizens are not able to maintain their rights. Citizens are getting shot and killed by masked federal agents marauding through their neighborhoods. Americans who speak with particular accents or have specific skintones or frequent certain restaurants are getting harassed by police non-stop.
The billions diverted from the government (tariffs, Venezuelian oil, etc) to enrich his own family and friends probably won’t make a dent in the American economy.
America is so great , it can sustain the appetite of corrupt presidencies.
I heard there's now an epidemic of people dumping their spare change jars on the gas station counter to get the last drops of gas they can. This is what a collapsed country is like. This is what the USSR was like just before it officially disintegrated. The relatively wealthy tech bubble this website inhabits is shielded from it to a large extent.
A (fairly obvious) historical analogy is how the Roman Empire survived the reigns of maniacs like Caligula and Commodus. It's hard to ascertain how reliable historical sources are, but as presented, both of these emperors were at the least pathological narcissists, and at worst completely out of their minds. They each squandered an enormous amount of the Roman treasury on vanity projects and undermined Roman institutions and the rule of law. And yet, the Roman Empire survived both of them for centuries.
Like you, I'm impressed with how resilient the American economy has been over the past few years. The tariffs, the war, the incompetence and open corruption seem like they should have done a lot more immediate damage. What's disconcerting is that much of the damage is to America's long term interests. So much of America's greatness has come from attracting talent from all around the world into a stable lawful society. That's what we're losing.
inflation combined with little to no wage increase leading to total economic stall outside of the scope of any safety mechanisms, which precipitates an extreme cliff-face degradation of everyday life and commerce for citizens at every level.
or, another way : conditions that would lead to public rebellion en masse, which further stalls things past the economic strife.
And to head off at least one of the common denier objections, those deaths are reflected in the excess mortality figures, they’re not affected by how deaths were classified.
I.e., the number is not affected by how people were diagnosed, or how their cause of death was recorded. Claiming that there was a widespread trend of classifying unrelated deaths as COVID-19-related doesn’t affect that number at all. Here’s a CDC page about this: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/89507/cdc_89507_DS1.pdf
have you looked closely at the state of your institutions lately. 'The country keeps running' .. a large thing has quite a lot of momentum, it will travel quite far from that alone even if you do remove it's kneecaps.
This regime, as others like it, poses the constant question, “What are you going to do about it?”
And the answer is, largely, nothing.
It’s a shame, really.
The interesting thing is how easily a democracy can be abused. In some ways, though in a more limited manner, it reminds us of Germany in 1933 or 1930s. Now the orange mafia in charge is, of course, not 1:1 comparable; ICE kills citizens willy-nilly style but they are not as systematic in their overthrow of the US democracy as the N people were in the 1930s. But many elements are very much comparable, such as the orange mafia trying to stifle critical journalism. That's a transition to a more authoritarian system.
It much more like (imho) the period of time around the Gracchi brothers in the Roman Republic. Lots of corruption, where the corruption is "tolerable" by the masses and elites. One or two people pushing the corruption as far as possible and being reprimanded but not punished. The masses groaning but not buckling. It tracks even the politics of the time. Trump is a populist in his political platform. His supporters do believe he is draining the swamp. The same way the Gracchi brothers rode on a tide of populism while not being populists.
Blame the people who put them in charge, voters
Why stop there? Why did voters vote the way they did?
Nobody was shooting cruise missiles at the Yandex data centers. Seriously if you want to deny influence campaigns affecting US elections using a broad spectrum of influence ops, you also have to believe that advertising and PR doesn't work.
It's also not just happening to US elections, perhaps not even primarily to US elections. Brexit, AfD, Orban, etc. were all boosted with a strategic goal in mind.
Tbf trump has lost the popular vote more than he has won it. Voters picked Al Gore too… (and it seems likely that Florida was stolen)
Populism is historically both popular and destructive.
I'd argue FDR was a populist. It just depends on what kind of populism and to what end.
You don't get modern discontent and populism (and the current president) without the expansive (at the expense of congress and the states) executive branch. You don't get the expansive executive branch without 1930s populists and FDR.
Obviously there's a lot more nuance and detail to it (the blame Nixon deserves being of specific note IMO) but the argument is there.
So I'd argue that both the means are bad and the end
Because people were (and still are) struggling and wanted something to change. Trump was the change candidate. Harris straight up said she wouldn't change anything.
The election was a rejection of stability.
At least, that's how people in the middle, who decide election results, saw things.
We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.
Those are my conclusions as well, though I want to note anyone who paid attention to her campaign rather than getting it second hand or third off of vibes would not have made the claim that she “straight up said she wouldn’t have changed anything”.
A lot of voters in the middle aren’t taking the time to understand why things seem to keep not changing (somewhat understandably so, but also unfortunately given the need for an engaged electorate in a healthy democracy). Both parties are being sticks in the mud, but one in particular is doing a lot more to keep change from happening than the other.
In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything. The point of democracy is to let the best ideas win, and part of that is being able to try those ideas out, and respond when they don’t work. Having a senate with two votes per state regardless of population, that are only replaced a third at a time, with an archaic but also recent rule that effectively requires 60/100 vote to pass almost anything meaningful, is just a recipe for failure.
End the filibuster as it is today. If you want a filibuster, force people to talk for it the way it worked for the first ~150 years of our country at least.
To be fair she was asked in an interview how she would differ from her predecessor and she totally choked. It was like she'd never even considered that was a question somebody might ask her. She just didn't have an answer.
We should go back to indirect election of senators. Something needs to represent the will of the states as distinct entities.
Having some slimy Mitt Romney types doing math about various state industries and interests when wording bills and trading votes would be a huge improvement over the equally slimy jerks we have now scheming up ways to serve their donors (who's interests correlate with the voters even less than the state's despite that bar being low to begin with) while leveraging abortion this guns that wedge issues to get re-elected despite screwing their voters.
The distribution of senators to states would also matter less if they weren't direct elected and therefore as beholden to party platforms and funding systems and whatnot.
> Something needs to represent the will of the states as distinct entities
Why? And why is indirect selection of senators better for that? Won't it just hand power to backroom operators at the state level, instead of the people of the state?
This basically. Change election after change election but nothing changes except the country keeps getting worse and more corrupt.
You can see the same thing playing out in Brazil
We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.
We rolled dice well known to be unfair and lost. At some point, victim-blaming is the answer.
Because approximately half of them have IQs under 100, and are relatively easy for malevolent actors to herd to the polls.
They hoped the vote will hurt liberals, blue states, trans people and others they hate and dont consider real. But not themselves. They spend years listening to hate and learning to wish to destroy, so they voted for candidate consistent with that.
And some simply found Trumpian corruption and abuse to be manly and cool.
>They hoped the vote will hurt liberals, blue states, trans people and others they hate and dont consider real. But not themselves.
Even if you work by the logic of respecting the median voter's position as legitimate and worthy of equal consideration by mere virtue of it being democratically held (a viewpoint I don't subscribe to), it seems as if the median voter got an own goal this cycle.
I'm trans. I'm also smart, wealthy, and live in America - an intersection of categories that essentially mean you can just do whatever you want in life. I've barely felt any of the consequences of the election because I can afford to move to somewhere where the legislative climate is more friendly, can afford to have a social life among people who are not hostile, and largely shrug off fuel and food inflation. I'm not feeling the consequences of the current regime half as bad as the people who voted enthusiastically for it.
Culture war is nonsense and nothing can ever supersede material conditions.
There is no solution to this problem other than electing a candidate who will raise taxes, fund infrastructure, and stabilise prices. I don't have optimism we'll get anyone like this on the national stage within the next decade.
> Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.
- Elon Musk, June 5 2025 (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1930667528696828120)
Voters obviously bear ultimate responsibility, but there's a lot more going on than just "voters are responsible." If that were true, corporations and wealthy individuals would have no interest in injecting money into politics, but alas... they do.
He also said after last time he was done putting so much money into politics, and then recently just dropped around another $300 million promoting republican candidates.
> done putting so much money into politics
Will be done by the end of the year (tm)
Well after demonstrating shaky allegiance to the US and personal meddling in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, his companies are ripe for nationalization.
He's got a lot to lose!
You're supposed to regurgitate the Brandies "“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” statement.
You can never blame anything on propaganda and deliberate misinformation and manipulation of the public. And you have to assume all speakers have the same power and reach.
Unrestricted free speech in practice falls under what Anatole characterized : "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Elon can lie and propagandize at scale with impunity. But let's blame voters.
Looking up and down this thread and there are people you would agree with about our situation being awful, while being extremely reluctant to blame a planned and coordinated influence campaign by an adversary. It amounts to calling our fellow citizens chumps, and that's rude.
The private sector, for slightly more benign reasons, and sometimes less benign reasons like keeping cigarettes from being blamed for cancer and emphysema, uses the same mechanisms to sell products. If that didn't work, nobody would pay for advertising and PR.
Single-choice voting one of the least effective forms of democracy.
In a democracy where everyone has the right to vote, I think the “downside” that must be accepted is there will exist a spectrum of voters. Voters who only listen to sound bites, voters who mindlessly vote tribally, to voters who research, voters who understand second and third order effects. We also can’t assume we have total information of how the elected official will act throughout their term.
Even something as simple as, attractiveness mattering more in presidential candidates since the advent of television in homes.
At the same time, we had a system whose establishment largely looked down on middle class Americans who didn't go to college. Early to mid 2000’s through the great recession saw the middle class tighten, with no real improvement to healthcare or affordability (attempts were made but ultimately medical costs are still rising). Many middle class people rely on things like cheap gas, child care, and affordable heating among others.
Then you have a system whose leaders actively works to increase gas prices (regardless of EV incentives, you’re asking individuals to purchase new cars when a difference of 1 dollar in gas goes a long way), some states subsidizing green energy programs by additional taxes on oil and natural gas heating costs (just switch to heat pumps and take on a 0 interest loan for 10 years), and rising childcare costs partly due to regulations in childcare businesses.
Then you have someone who claims to be an outsider (he wasn’t), who clowns on the existing elites in debates, and makes vast promises. The other party doesn’t say anything about positive change they’ll bring, just that they aren’t Him. Why not try something different than the status quo over the last 2 decades?
With gas prices up, the Epstein scandal still unresolved, and another ME war, i think if many of middle America were told these would be the outcomes they would not have voted him in again.
We should have more empathy for our fellow Americans, and try to understand each other instead of assuming they want the worst for your side.
We (most of the world) also have to deal with well funded external government organisations constantly pumping out propaganda attempting to make sure we don't work together or have empathy/understanding of each other's views.
Push that through a media filter that optimizes for engagement and it's no wonder these things are happening.
Jan 6 alone was enough to make voting for Trump morally unacceptable. Voting for fear and money over the preservation of freedom is a classic moral failure and every one of the people who voted for Trump not only knows it, but pretends to make it a cornerstone of their political beliefs. If they use Epstein and gas prices as excuses, fuck them.
You assume those voters believe Jan 6 was an insurrection. Many of them don’t. Whether thats a fault of the media/bubble they’re in or gross naivety/negligence is a different discussion.
If you go with the presumption Jan 6 was a mob that got out of hand (not my position, just one of the perspectives), then the idea that he wasn’t able to enact his agenda due to the opposing party, coupled with the shenanigans of the other option (no democrat primary for Kamala being one, with democrat party having done similar in the past with Bernie), then claims that the democrats are spinning Jan 6 and risking another term with him seem more reasonable.
Whether I or you agree with those premise is separate from what the zeitgeist is for much of America
I can agree with your position based on the election on 2016. He was a wildcard, and truly nobody could know exactly how he'd act in office.
I can't agree with your position based on the election of 2024. We knew exactly who Trump was, and it was obvious the second term was only going to be more extreme and unhinged.
And this is where you have to admit that the Democrats just ran a terrible candidate in '24. You might believe she was the better choice but she just did not appeal to the middle, and you need them to win.
I do blame the Democratic party and Biden especially for the major shitshow that was the selection of a presidential candidate. Their hubris and corruption definitely continued to enable this walking disaster of Trump's second term. The Democratic Party has failed America over and over again in terms of actually selecting candidates the people want over people whose "turn" it is.
I also blame the people who voted for Trump for Trump getting elected. Ultimately its the voters who chose this disaster of a presidency, despite obvious signs.
The second term I think was largely handed to him given the Democrats had no primary for Kamala, and frankly were tone deaf with what the “other side”’s needs were in a candidate.
Politicians flip flop, or hopefully truly develop different opinions after experience/learning more.
Kamala came off as a piece of clay molded in the last minute to appease groups just for their vote. A good politician makes that “molding” process come off more naturally. Her and Walz did not really resonate with voters, they were just not Him.
And that is a lesson I hope democrats or a third party has learned that they can’t just reflectively say “I’m not Trump,” they need to show that through their principals, track record, and message of unity.
Hillary admonished trump voters, many of whom are middle class union/laborers. Biden claimed he was pro union then broke up the railroad strike. Kamala couldn’t hold a conversation without some sound bite failure (doesn’t make her bad, just not a politician) and wasn’t elected in any primary.
I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did, then provide a better option not just a different one
I totally agree the Democratic party has routinely failed the electorate.
> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did
I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.
I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.
These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.
Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?
"The populism will continue until morale improves"
The unrest will get more and more pronounced until affordability improves
https://wallhop.io/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2...
The text readability here is terrible compared to the original formatting... would suggest fixing that if you're pushing this.
Link works great for me on a mac. Not sure about Mobile
Forget the IRS. America can balance its budget going after and fining these illegal trades and traders. MAGA!
(edit: /s but not about making the government some money off this corruption)
Insider traded is expected not illegal in commodity trading.
The market is intended to support consumers and producers of the commodity and there’s no requirement for either of them to inform the market of their intentions or information prior to a trade.
If a coffee growers knows a blight is killing their crops they can buy millions of futures before informing the market.
You can use your own proprietary information (for example knowledge about a coffee blight) to trade, but you can't use information stolen, misapropriated and specifically "non public government information" - The Eddie Murphy rule:
https://www.akingump.com/en/insights/alerts/the-eddie-murphy...
The bar for insider trading is higher but it’s not missing. Governmental employees for instance have explicit laws about their behavior as insider trading in commodities.
In this case, it sounds like they were privy to information outside of their own corporation which would impact their corporation. That $100k sub to the president looks to be a two-way, wall(ed garden) street. I wonder how parasocial it is
These guys are all going to end up in prison at this rate. Dems are currently predicted to win next election no?
Maybe a mid-level scapegoat or two will go to prison. Definitely not the ones at the top. God bless America
Depends on who actually gets elected. A centrist candidate like Buttigeg/Ossoff/Harris/Newsom would almost certainly lead to no prosecutions. Someone with actual convictions like AOC or Ro Khanna might.
I will laugh and then cry if the left puts up a candidate that is (again) alienating of the working class.
Enough of the voter base will cut the nose to spite the face
Which candidate(s) would that be... and why?
Ossoff does not really seem like a centrist on this point. He's pretty vicious about the whole Trump criminal organization.
Fair. Although he seems to mostly target Trump, rather than the conditions that gave rise to Trumpism. Unless someone addresses that we’re stuck in a vicious cycle…
He's even better than you thought, then. Here's a post from a week ago (and a common refrain in his writing and speaking):
"I get why people voted for him. Because even before he came on the scene, American politics was coin-operated.
Money goes in, favors come out. It’s been running on corporate money, secret money, billionaire money. Both sides.
And when members of Congress aren’t fundraising from lobbyists and corporate PACs, they’re trying to dodge getting bombed by these super PACs.
Spectacular wealth buys an ever greater share of power over our national affairs. And this corruption is why nothing works for ordinary people."
Oh absolutely not. They’re going to end up very rich!
Probably not, if the previous administration, when they had full control, is useful precedent.
We might get someone like Obama again who "looks forward and not backwards"... a logic that would result in all crimes being ignored if consistently applied.
A big part of why we are at where we are is that January 6 was our Beer Hall Putsch. Like the Germans, we failed to put a stop to it.
If prison was an option, it would have already happened. They will get away with it. Dems aren't going to be able to break this administration. They will just ignore congress. What will congress do?
I wondered about this so checked what happened to Joseph McCarthy. He was subject to a vote of censure in the senate, and became unpopular, but that was it. Of course he died shortly after of alcohol related conditions, so there's that..
Or, like, Nixon.
The relative lack of consequences there enabled this go around.
Nixon resigned, and was pardoned. Many of the conspirators were convicted and served prison time.
With Reagan and Iran-Contra, Reagan was never charged, most officials were pardoned, and only one person served any jail time.
With Bush (43) there were no consequences for any of it. Not he war under false pretenses, not the domestic spying, not the torture.
And with Donald Trump (45) a single judge recently appointed by Donald Trump held up legal proceedings until he was elected President, again.
> Nixon resigned, and was pardoned.
Yes. That's deeply bad precedent.
Roger Ailes founded Fox News, explicitly, to avoid a recurrence of even that minimal level of consequence.
There have already been rumors of some administration-wide pardon scheme but that'll probably fall on its face when put to the test, like almost everything else they do.
It's baffling to watch people destroy their reputations, careers and possibly risk their freedom for a chance to get close to power and pad their (possibly offshore/crypto) savings accounts. For as evolved as we pretend to be, we're really not very far beyond our "lizard brains" and a few missed meals away from mania. I was actually just thinking about Todd Blanche and the stupid games he's playing, flirting with contempt in a number of lawsuits. He's almost certainly got less time in the AG seat than Trump has in the president's and reality is going to slam into his brown nose very hard, sooner than later.
There are enough state level charges to be laid against these people that federal pardons can be made in effective. The JDs among them can also lose their licenses.
So the election will be meaningless. Expect bad things in November.
The CFTC’s refusal to do anything useful serves both parties.
What makes you think the Democrats are going to do anything? They had multiple slam-dunk cases against Trump during the previous administration and they either did nothing at all, or slow-rolled the investigations and then gave them up when election season rolled around again.
You might want to have a look at what happened to Iran-Contra. Or indeed, the current President's conviction in a New York court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_trial_of_Donald_Trump...
They're simply in the oligarch level now. Everyone understands that they're above the law. Nowhere near enough Democrats are talking about the level of corruption clearout that would be required to bring accountability. Law enforcement are heavily compromised in the opposite direction. See the raid on Ilhan Omar, for example.
Techno-feudalism has many practical applications that benefit techno-royals.
Techo-nobles benefit as well. Just ask Eric Holder and centi-millionaire Obama. If you can reach the latter in his mansion on the exclusive island for the wealthy, that is.
>>See the raid on Ilhan Omar, for example.
I don't think congresspeople should be above the law. If she committed immigration fraud she should be convicted and deported.
Ofc congresspeople should not be immune, but she is being investigated for the possibility that a relative who brought her to the US when she was a child (15) lied on her immigration paperwork.
It’s not clear to me how she’d be responsible for that and it’s also not clear to me what evidence they expected to turn up related to such an offense by raiding her home decades after the offense was alleged to have occurred.
Now do Elon
I agree. But it’s pretty apparent that this is a case of political targeting. Elon and Melania Trump likely committed some level of immigration fraud as well.
And they did it as adults.
Democrats are corrupt as fuck too, don’t be fooled.
Btw, we're talking about 800 million dollars:
https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/flurry-of-suspicious-...
https://archive.is/njzLB
The CFTC, since Trump, has become entirely corrupt. Note that the proliferation of sports gambling in prediction markets, which is explicitly illegal, largely exists because the CFTC refuses to enforce their own legal mandate against Kalshi and Polymarket.
It’s actually worse; when states try to shut down sports betting in prediction markets, the CFTC fights on behalf of Kalshi with the reasoning that only the federal government has the mandate to regular futures and prediction markets. And then they refuse to regulate!
The CFTC is supposed to have 5 chairs, with no more than 3 in the same party. The administration has gotten around this rule by simply removing 4 of the commissioners and then refusing to appoint replacements. In effect, the CFTC has only 1 republican chair and no opposite party representation. The level of corruption is staggering.
> sports gambling in prediction markets, which is explicitly illegal
It’s a bit more complicated than that. The CFTC argues that under Dodd-Frank any bet on a future event that can have economic consequences is regulated by the CFTC.
It’s a bit silly because this obviously wasn’t the intention of the legislation, and it would also mean anyone betting outside a CFTC regulated exchange is in illegality. But it’s valid enough that The case will probably go to the Supreme Court.
It’s actually not more complicated than that: The Commodity Exchanges Act explicitly disallows gaming to be classified as a future or swap. See https://www.cftc.gov/IndustryOversight/ContractsProducts/ind...
It is an argument that is baldly non-nonsensical, but the Justice Department is not going to complain.
It's only a valid argument to this invalid Supreme Court filled with bribed judges, rapists, and racists.
Not to mention that Trump Jr is an advisor to both Kalshi (YC19) and Polymarket.
Corruption?
> The trading in question was eye-popping. In a two-minute window starting at 6:49 a.m. in New York on March 23, traders sold contracts equivalent to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate, more than 8.5 times the volume that had changed hands that time in the morning over the prior week. A similar increase in activity was observed in futures tied to the S&P 500, with contracts worth more than $2 billion in notional value traded — far more than would be expected in an otherwise quiet premarket session. Unusual volumes were also visible in natural gas and other futures markets.
> Those trades paid off 15 minutes or so later, when Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was reversing his threat to attack Iranian infrastructure unless the country re-opened the Strait of Hormuz.
Likely the entire purpose of the war is to create opportunities for corruption in my opinion.
Total corruption by the orange clown-thief and those around him benefitting from their heist here.
The only partially redeeming thing we will soon witness is that he will lose the upcoming elections, no matter how much he plans to cheat. The TechBros pissed off too many people and stole too much money in addition to that. All that money should be given back, directly to the people. The superrich should not be allowed to control and manipulate democracies in general, even though they are currently prepping up the eyeliner-boy as successor to the orange insanity clown.
The reason America is great is that even after electing such a corrupt president twice, the country still keeps running. I feel the greatness of the American political system.
The counterfactual doesn't make sense. Which country would stop or grind to a halt after electing a corrupt president? I think almost all countries would keep running at a basically normal capacity until failure, yet that doesn't prove those countries have great systems.
This will need a lot more time and hindsight to make general statements in terms of the wider picture.
It'a not abt whether it keeps running. It's whether its citizens are able to maintain their rights.
Many citizens are not able to maintain their rights. Citizens are getting shot and killed by masked federal agents marauding through their neighborhoods. Americans who speak with particular accents or have specific skintones or frequent certain restaurants are getting harassed by police non-stop.
the comment specifically said whether it keeps running
I think it’s sarcasm. In other counties such corruption would trigger revolution, and the political system would grind to a halt
We're still running in the same sense that Wile E. Coyote is still running when he goes off the cliff. Eventually we'll collectively look down.
The billions diverted from the government (tariffs, Venezuelian oil, etc) to enrich his own family and friends probably won’t make a dent in the American economy.
America is so great , it can sustain the appetite of corrupt presidencies.
Just don't look at how the bottom half is doing!
I heard there's now an epidemic of people dumping their spare change jars on the gas station counter to get the last drops of gas they can. This is what a collapsed country is like. This is what the USSR was like just before it officially disintegrated. The relatively wealthy tech bubble this website inhabits is shielded from it to a large extent.
A (fairly obvious) historical analogy is how the Roman Empire survived the reigns of maniacs like Caligula and Commodus. It's hard to ascertain how reliable historical sources are, but as presented, both of these emperors were at the least pathological narcissists, and at worst completely out of their minds. They each squandered an enormous amount of the Roman treasury on vanity projects and undermined Roman institutions and the rule of law. And yet, the Roman Empire survived both of them for centuries.
Like you, I'm impressed with how resilient the American economy has been over the past few years. The tariffs, the war, the incompetence and open corruption seem like they should have done a lot more immediate damage. What's disconcerting is that much of the damage is to America's long term interests. So much of America's greatness has come from attracting talent from all around the world into a stable lawful society. That's what we're losing.
What would be your definition of not running? It's like when someone says "We survived Covid!". Yes, you might have but thousands of others died.
>What would be your definition of not running?
inflation combined with little to no wage increase leading to total economic stall outside of the scope of any safety mechanisms, which precipitates an extreme cliff-face degradation of everyday life and commerce for citizens at every level.
or, another way : conditions that would lead to public rebellion en masse, which further stalls things past the economic strife.
the type of thing 1780s France saw.
It’s way worse, the accumulated covid deaths in the US was above 1.1M in 2023
And to head off at least one of the common denier objections, those deaths are reflected in the excess mortality figures, they’re not affected by how deaths were classified.
I.e., the number is not affected by how people were diagnosed, or how their cause of death was recorded. Claiming that there was a widespread trend of classifying unrelated deaths as COVID-19-related doesn’t affect that number at all. Here’s a CDC page about this: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/89507/cdc_89507_DS1.pdf
Eventually though, the built in resiliency will be destroyed. Public services got gutted by DOGE and a bunch more called it quits.
And in the end, that is the game they are playing. Starve the beast (aka, the US government) until not much more than the military remains.
And weaken the brass, Russia style, until the military is just the personal Army of the King.
Please tell me there's an implied /s there somewhere.
have you looked closely at the state of your institutions lately. 'The country keeps running' .. a large thing has quite a lot of momentum, it will travel quite far from that alone even if you do remove it's kneecaps.
unless you dropped the '/s' ?
Russia also "keeps running". The floor is a long way down, doesn't mean it's a good idea to go in that direction.
And consider North Korea, which Trump explicitly stated was a model for him:
“[Kim Jong Un] speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/15/trump-north-korea-...