Comment by frigg
Comment by frigg 3 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by frigg 3 days ago
[flagged]
> You Americans voted for this
A thin majority in an election with a poor (and/or constrained) turnout in a lop-sided nonsense of an electoral system with disproportionate weightings voted for parts of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
The 2024 election had historically high turnout. The 2nd highest turnout since 1968, the 7th highest since 1932.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president.
Voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent (below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020).
So 31.8 percent of the eligible voters in the USofA voted for Trump in the 2024 elections, most eligible voters didn't vote for Trump.
Eligible Voters aside, an even greater percentage of people in the USofA didn't vote for Trump being too young or otherwise disenfranchised.
Of those that did vote for Trump it's a leap to say that all of them voted to fire the chief government records keeper, to empower DOGE to gut departments, etc; like Brexit, many of those who voted for it had no real idea what they had voted for.
In the campaign Trump ran to avoid jail he repeatedly stated he wasn't aware of the Project 2025 playbook, that he would be all things to all people. People who voted for Trump voted for what they heard, what they thought he promised.
Most of the citizens in the USofA did not vote Trump, not all of those voted to gut the government, the sciences, foreign aid, etc.
Did you mean to respond to another comment? I was responding specifically to the claim that election turnout was low. As I said, it’s the 2nd highest since 1968 - 2020 was indeed the higher year.
Like Brexit, people who don’t like what’s happening come up with all sorts of convoluted explanations for why democracy doesn’t apply when their position loses. It seems to regularly boil down to “people who don’t vote the way I would like are too foolish and were tricked or brainwashed and if only they were enlightened they would vote my way.” I don’t think this is a winning message but we seem to be doubling down.
It's straighforward in all democracies to point out that people claiming that bad policy enactment "is what most people wanted" are making a false statement.
It is very rarely what the minority that voted directly for a specific party of candidate wanted. That's just a dull bald fact, not at all convoluted.
Not quite a majority, but a narrow plurality:
49.8% Trump, 48.3% Harris
Though you could include the .49% that voted for RFK (you'd maybe need to decide which side to add Jill Stein Green and Libertarian candidate too).
Even completely ignoring the dubious ethics invoked - a lot of non Americans will get worse outcomes than the US because of this. Given the work that has been cancelled so far, some of those non Americans are likely already dead.
That’s a bold statement. US is a young country. Empires that lasted longer by 5x have been consigned to the dust bin of history with nary but an oral tradition to remember them. If looking at americas military capability is any indication it is already in steep decline especially with regards to its seeming inability to not crash or destroy million/billon dollar hardware purely based on incompetence and short staffing. Its inability to prosecute an illegal war in the ME (occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan) is also a great example of the lack of exceptionalism exhibited by americas armed forces and their inept leadership.
Reference please! To my knowledge DOGE has not uncovered any obvious cases of financial fraud. Every example of their cost-cutting that I've looked at (and I've dug!) has been lawfully congressionally appropriated funds being spent according to guidelines from the previous administration making reasonable interpretations of the congressionally passed budget. The new administration forbids spending on initiatives related to increasing diversity, equity, or inclusiveness or decreasing climate change, as well as disapproves of most kinds of foreign aid. None of this is fraud.
They claimed to discover .. yes, but they're essentially too young, dumb, and inexperienced to understand the oddities in the data .. the 100+ year old peole are a result of COBOL NULL entries for people with no birth record dates (which is a real thing in 300+ million people), etc.
Also:
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million
The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team appears to include an error.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
DOGE is not a trustworthy reporter, they are incentivised to make big, bold, bullshit claims.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
You're brainwashed. They're robbing you of essential services and you're still going "yeah, go on!!".
Notice how they only go after things the common man might benefit from? Surprisingly DOGE uncovers no waste whatsoever in the many billion dollars military contracts.
What do you think will happen to your country when the ban on medicaid takes effect? Will the millions that rely on it simply die? Do you even care or are you totally void of empathy?
It's not the government's job to take money from Paul to give to Peter. I fundamentally object to this. I take the view of Austrian economics. IMO, all the corporate monopolies we have today are caused by excessive government money printing, weaponizing the people's money against the people. How about having empathy for the worker, the value creator, who has been robbed of money and, worse, opportunities as a result of government-backed corporate monopolies and regulatory moats?
You can't imagine how bad things have been for some of us.
You are gravely mistaken. How is the extensive union-busting, deregulation, wage theft and general disregard for worker protections going to help you?
Musk and Trump's class interests are diametrically opposed to ours, the real value-creating workers. They want you to work more for less pay. Watch you and your loved ones' situations dégrade over the next few years, and reconsider your position.
Not gonna lie, sitting here in a collapsing and feckless Europe, I'm supper jelly.
Nationalistic flamewar isn't ok here, regardless of which nation you have a problem with or how right you are or you feel you are.
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN generally. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
(Fortunately your earlier comment history seems fine, so this should be easy to fix.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html