Comment by cynicalsecurity

Comment by cynicalsecurity 12 hours ago

64 replies

Let people believe it's deliberate sabotage. Unfortunately, in real life, minions of a dictator serve the dictator; they don't risk their live or safety for a noble cause. Any screw-ups are a result of gross incompetence that is typical for every dictatorship.

brunoqc 11 hours ago

Maybe because facism favor loyalty over competence.

  • zerocrates 6 hours ago

    Arendt:

    Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

    • potato3732842 an hour ago

      >Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

      Same reason unions always work hardest when fighting on behalf of the worst workers. If you go to bat for a man who can't do better elsewhere he'll go to bat for you in return.

      But wait, the situation is more complicated than that you say? Why yes, that's exactly the point. Two of us can play at the stupid smug oversimplification game.

      While the effect being described is real to an extent, distilling it to the point you did is useless because there is so much more nuance. Why assume the place was staffed with first rate talent to begin with? And even if there is a lot of first rate talent many will stick around because they don't care who they serve (people not like this don't tend to make careers in government TBH).

andsoitis 11 hours ago

Do you truly believe the US is currently a dictatorship?

  • culi 6 hours ago

    A man who tried to overturn an election is in power and is disappearing people on the streets without due process.

    The other day there was news about some ICE members who blew up the door to a family's home in order to detain a man. The man was a citizen. They knew that. They came to intimidate him because a few days earlier he tried filming their cars on a public street. That's just one example but these cases are only becoming more common.

    One thing that's clear is that if he tries to overturn an election again, he is way better positioned to succeed this time. ICE is now the 5th most heavily funded military in the world and the whole point of DOGE[0] was to centralize the government and fill only with loyalists.

    [0] NYT investigation recently proved there were little savings https://archive.ph/y5guv

  • vunderba 11 hours ago

    I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a dictatorship, but it’s definitely trending toward authoritarianism.

    Wasn't too hard to put together a quick graph of the past decade for the U.S. using the World Press Freedom Index (relative ranking and score) - an annual ranking of 180 countries published by Reporters Without Borders that measures the level of press freedom.

    https://imgur.com/a/4liEqqi

  • bdangubic 11 hours ago

    what is the US exactly currently if not dictatorship? is there a single thing “President” cannot do right now and if so who would be stopping him? so perhaps on paper US is not dictatorship much like Russia and China are not… We spend decades trying to fight these regimes and lost so much that now we are worse than them :)

    • nothrabannosir 8 hours ago

      > is there a single thing “President” cannot do right now

      Stand in the middle of fifth Avenue and shoot someone :)

      Have political enemies executed

      Get his face on Mount Rushmore

      Disband congress

      Disband the Supreme Court

      Keep Jimmy Kimmel off air

      Get Jon Stuart to shut up

      Get James comey indicted

      Get a national holiday named after him

      Etc.

      Even when we focus on things he tried to do, there is a lot he couldn’t. Let alone when you look at things he didn’t try to do.

      • bdangubic 8 hours ago

        we are 11 months in, please be patient while the process is taking place, be right with you with your list :)

        lots of these are of course also just a distraction to discuss at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner vs you know, other things

        • nothrabannosir 8 hours ago

          You said "right now". If you want to change to "will be able to do in the near future, before the end of his second term", that's a (slightly?) different list. But it's also a different comment.

          You said "anything", in the context of dictatorship. I only used items in this list which IMO you can reasonably say Putin, an actual dictator, can do. Right now. Except the first one! Because that was a joke, a reference to something he himself said he could do.

          If you want to change to "anything which has backroom deal importance, not just bread and games for the masses, but the real things, if you know you know", that's a (slightly) different list.

          But, it's also a different comment.

      • h33t-l4x0r 3 hours ago

        Well he did get Ellen Degeneris to self-deport

      • exasperaited an hour ago

        He has functionally neutered Congress. It is almost completely meaningless and it is operating without an independent Speaker.

        I think he could succeed in principle re: Mount Rushmore, to be honest. I think eventually people will cave in and agree to do it, and then they will just pray to cholesterol that they can wait it out.

    • chocoboaus3 10 hours ago

      The supreme court did just stop him for the moment putting the national guard into chicago

      • bdangubic 10 hours ago

        bookmark this for a few days and then come back to it… the story is “… for now” :-)

      • jibal 9 hours ago

        "rare setback"

    • billy99k 9 hours ago

      [flagged]

      • bdangubic 8 hours ago

        I hope you are just trying to be funny cause if you are it is good

        • consz 8 hours ago

          Not even believable conspiracy slop for 2023, let alone in almost 2026.

    • hattmall 9 hours ago

      It's pretty clear he can barely do anything policy wise. Limited tariffs and immigration / border stuff is pretty much all that he is getting done.

      • JKCalhoun 8 hours ago

        And killing so many sailors in South American waters.

      • bdangubic 8 hours ago

        you don’t need policy, policy is what his predecessors were doing and are now going “wait, we could have done whatever the F we wanted??! damn!!” :)

  • idle_zealot 11 hours ago

    It's not so simple a binary. We're definitely much less democratic than a year ago, and the bar was low then.

  • Loughla 11 hours ago

    I truly believe we're headed that direction. I've lived long enough to have seen a wide variety of presidents, both good and bad. This one is easily the worst one, in terms of bare naked power grabs.

    I believe Trump will manufacture a crisis before he's out of office in a bid to maintain control. I believe he will have learned from Bush Jr. that a simple war isn't good enough, and it needs to be a genuine emergency.

    I believe he'll do whatever he can to make that happen. Native born terrorist, or war with a close country, or absolutely over the top financial crash. Something awful that lets him invoke some obscure rule that lets him stay in power with congressional approval - he'll just skip the congressional approval part like he already does.

    • irishcoffee 11 hours ago

      This is one of those instances where I with hn had some kind of remindMe feature.

      • Loughla an hour ago

        I hope I'm wrong, but I legit believe that will happen.

        See you in about 2 years.

      • JKCalhoun 7 hours ago

        Hopefully it is not an instance where you won't need it.

  • vkou 11 hours ago

    How would the roadmap for turning a democracy into a one party dictatorship differ from the trajectory we are on?

    • rurban 4 hours ago

      Which democracy? The USA isn't one for decades already

      • vkou an hour ago

        I've no doubt that if we plopped you down in the middle of, say, modern-day Russia, you'd be able to observe a few important differences in the political organization of the two countries.

        Fewer than you would a year or nine ago, certainly, and a lot of people are working very hard on closing the gap.

        Democracy is a spectrum. There have always been significant flaws with American democracy, but you'd be mad to not observe significant, active regression and effort by the government to replace it with something else.

  • ourmandave 10 hours ago

    The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.

    If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.

    • sdenton4 7 hours ago

      I have very little faith that scotus will have any consistency in their decisions going forward - they seem to be nakedly political, and backing trump. If the elections swing the other direction (despite their aid in gerrymandering), expect them to cry about the power of the presidency and start rolling it back as fast as they can push decisions through the shadow docket.

    • kergonath 4 hours ago

      > The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.

      That sounds reinsuring, but it is completely false. The idea that the pendulum swings is just regression to the mean: sure, after a terrible president, the next one is likely to be less terrible. But there is nothing that implies that after a far-right regime will come a far-left one. In fact, if you look at History in various countries around the world, this seems very unlikely.

      > If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.

      Don’t count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to the centre. The American culture hasn’t changed that much and American leftists did not suddenly become competent at getting popular support.

      • Eisenstein 3 hours ago

        > But there is nothing that implies that after a far-right regime will come a far-left one. In fact, if you look at History in various countries around the world, this seems very unlikely.

        Looking at the history of left wing movements in countries post-WWII, can you think of a reason why they wouldn't be successful and far-right ones would? The Cold War may have been a factor.

        > Don’t count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to the centre.

        The center doesn't exist anymore. The right-wing has labeled the US Democratic Party as extreme left. There should be a term for 'forcing your opposition to materialize because you are unable to distinguish between propaganda and reality'.

    • watwut 4 hours ago

      > And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.

      They will find excuses to reverse. There will be some technicality, made up historical precense or some actually untrue fact about the world that wil totally make the situation different.

      Conservative heretage foundation group has outcome in mind ... and "opposition" is not their preffered outcome.

    • DANmode 9 hours ago

      Tell us more about the sane (“common sense”?) gun laws!

      I love these.

      • cyberax 8 hours ago

        I'd love to limit the semi-auto rifles like the infamous AR-15. Useless for hunting, useless for self-defense. In exchange for country-wide reciprocity for concealed carry and firearm transportation.

    • DANmode 9 hours ago

      > science based policy making

      One of my favorite trivia questions is: how long has it been since Congress has had staff scientists?

    • refurb 8 hours ago

      You act like Trump’s policies don’t have broad support with a majority of voters.

      • ourmandave an hour ago

        Polls can be capricious, but Trump's recent numbers with some groups have seen big drops.

  • rootusrootus 9 hours ago

    The country as a whole, no. But within the regime? Yeah.

  • [removed] 11 hours ago
    [deleted]
  • sneak 11 hours ago

    I’m still always surprised that there are adults who think it is not.

    The CIA, for example, is entirely above the law.

    • neutronicus 11 hours ago

      That's different from a dictatorship, though, especially if the CIA is not answerable to a supposed dictator.

      • dragonwriter 11 hours ago

        > That's different from a dictatorship,

        Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head of the CIA, unless the CIA is effectively answerable to some other authority despite not being answerable to the law, and then it is equivalent to a dictatorship by that higher authority.