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8 comments
Two things concern me:
First thing that Trump did was fire the inspector generals whose job it is to provide over site.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/25/politics/trump-fires-inspecto...
And the second is the rethinking of impoundment, that Trump can decide what money to spend and not spend(which is in contrast I think to recent decisions like the end of Chevron deference that says the executive should not in fact be making their own decisions separate from what Congress decided.
I think there’s a lot you can say about how inefficient our government is, but a some point, if your saying our government is terrible and it should be completely rethought, taking power away from congress and enshrining it in the president. Even if it’s a good idea, isn’t that a coup? Like coup’s don’t always end badly, sometimes they replace bad things with better things. But if your like the whole government sucks and we need to replace it, and we’re going to do so outside of the normal process of passing laws and changing the constitution, that seems coup adjacent at least?
First thing that Trump did was fire the inspector generals whose job it is to provide over site.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/25/politics/trump-fires-inspecto...
And the second is the rethinking of impoundment, that Trump can decide what money to spend and not spend(which is in contrast I think to recent decisions like the end of Chevron deference that says the executive should not in fact be making their own decisions separate from what Congress decided.
I think there’s a lot you can say about how inefficient our government is, but a some point, if your saying our government is terrible and it should be completely rethought, taking power away from congress and enshrining it in the president. Even if it’s a good idea, isn’t that a coup? Like coup’s don’t always end badly, sometimes they replace bad things with better things. But if your like the whole government sucks and we need to replace it, and we’re going to do so outside of the normal process of passing laws and changing the constitution, that seems coup adjacent at least?
I mean, there is no question that a lot of people who voted for Trump would prefer a King or a Dictator to a President. They let that be known. And for whatever weird reason, they trust this guy to be the king. And that is not American, not in the America I grew up in. (But maybe it is what they always wanted in the South). Now that they have it, I guess the question is whether our laws and courts and congress will stop it if it gets out of hand.
One thing I think Republicans and Democrats agree about is that Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. One could see the corruption in the previous administration and, eventually, you can't help seeing it in whatever is happening now. The one hope is that Americans are not used to corruption, the way that people are in many other countries. Most countries I've lived in accept total corruption from their government as a daily fact. But Americans are still outraged by it. They don't accept it as normal.
One thing I think Republicans and Democrats agree about is that Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. One could see the corruption in the previous administration and, eventually, you can't help seeing it in whatever is happening now. The one hope is that Americans are not used to corruption, the way that people are in many other countries. Most countries I've lived in accept total corruption from their government as a daily fact. But Americans are still outraged by it. They don't accept it as normal.
As someone watching and following all this from across the pond in Europe: This looks like a fucking coup alright.
Noted.
What's odd is the extremely quiet, almost supine mood in the country. Particularly where I live, in Portland, which I would have expected to be in full swing with protests against every single one of these absurd executive orders. Instead, I listened to two old hippies at a bar tonight who both had trans children, making bitter jokes about how at least their kids were evolving while everything else was going backwards. There's a feeling of total defeat, absolutely no center to organize around. "That's what all the idiots wanted," one of them said. And that was the end of the conversation.
I heard a similar resignation from British friends, after the Brexit vote.
I wake up thinking, if it is a coup, then surely they can't do this!
And then I think, of course they can, they just did it. Who the hell is going to stop them?
What's odd is the extremely quiet, almost supine mood in the country. Particularly where I live, in Portland, which I would have expected to be in full swing with protests against every single one of these absurd executive orders. Instead, I listened to two old hippies at a bar tonight who both had trans children, making bitter jokes about how at least their kids were evolving while everything else was going backwards. There's a feeling of total defeat, absolutely no center to organize around. "That's what all the idiots wanted," one of them said. And that was the end of the conversation.
I heard a similar resignation from British friends, after the Brexit vote.
I wake up thinking, if it is a coup, then surely they can't do this!
And then I think, of course they can, they just did it. Who the hell is going to stop them?
Paranoia and conspiracy theory is central to post WW2 American politics. The Republicans do it, the Democrats do it. It's easy to see the other side doing it more than ones own. This article shows that the right wing thinkers do this too to justify or legitimise their theories. (And we can see their opponents engaging in paranoia and conspiracy theories against them as a reaction)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_Americ...
Us vs them is how politics works in the USA. In reality (realpolitik) I imagine there's more cross party compromises and people who see nuance but the public face is totally oppositional and people are caught up emotionally. I wonder if realpolitik is changing too.
Paranoia stops thought. It's a mind killer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_Americ...
Us vs them is how politics works in the USA. In reality (realpolitik) I imagine there's more cross party compromises and people who see nuance but the public face is totally oppositional and people are caught up emotionally. I wonder if realpolitik is changing too.
Paranoia stops thought. It's a mind killer.
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That being said: Is there not something slightly overblown about this blowing up the way it has in the past few days? It feels a lot like a narrative, one of many that exaggerates the events taking place and frames them as a coup. Maybe it is a coup. I'm just too far in a bubble of people screaming that it's a coup to know whether it is or whether it's just a realignment typical of a major handover of power.