What’s left to talk about? How to react. How it ends. Where we likely go from there. Where we should go.
If nothing else it's very clear we need to bring politics back to the dinner table. And not he afraid to talk about it in 'nonpartisan' spaces. You can ignore politics, but it never ignores you.
I highly recommend Anniversary https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12583926/
https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
https://scribe.rip/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-...
The problem for people like the author is that other more astute individuals [1] correctly diagnosed the issue over a decade ago. All it took was for her to have grown up in Poland and to be a clinical psychologist who knows how to spot malignant narcissism. The rest fell into place because human nature is so... predictable.
So while it's welcome for the author to finally catch up to the rest of us, it's a little late at this point. Also If people like the author had listened to more sensible people when they had started using the F word instead of dismissing them as hyperbolic, then we wouldn't be here.
Also this bit:
> Although Trump is term-limited, we must not expect that he and his MAGA loyalists will voluntarily turn over the White House to a Democrat in 2029, regardless of what the voters say—and the second insurrection will be far better organized than the first.
shows the author is still a step behind. The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded. It continued after Jan 6 for 4 years, as Trump waged an information war contending he was the true winner of the election, and also a war on the judiciary to evade accountability. In that battle he evaded all accountability, nullified the impeachment clause of the Constitution, and also gained "Presidential Immunity" from his appointees on SCOTUS. He also nullified Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding state or federal office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the US. Trump caused an insurrection, and yet somehow he was allowed to run and hold office again.
So the first insurrection was successful, the perpetrators got away with it, and they assumed total power over the government they attacked after evading judicial accountability and waging an information war on the population.
Anyway, next time there won't be a need for an insurrection, because the only reason there was one in 2021 was because plans A through G failed -- they couldn't get votes in Georgia, they couldn't overturn any state, they didn't win any court cases, they couldn't get people to go along with their "alternate electors" theory, and they couldn't get Pence to go along with the scheme. So they caused an insurrection as a last ditch effort to delay certification.
In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A. They've already purged everyone who did the right thing in 2021 from the party. So they won't need an insurrection because any Democrat that wins in Georgia will just be erased, as they've made sure to take state control over county election boards after county election boards there went against Trump's wishes in 2020.
Back in 2024 after reading project 2025 and about its authors and backers (federalist society, Thiel, Vance, other tech CEOs, Curtis Yarvin, etc) it was already clear that this was going to happen. I was already convinced that the only way out of this was a general strike and/or military coup, and it doesn't look any better now. I fear an Iran like crackdown is in the deck now.
If you redefine success to whatever you want, then sure.
> In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A
If you treat people as enemies, they’ll become one. The arrogance in the assumption that every Republican will allow Trump to get elected for a 3rd term might spite them into it.
Also perhaps worth noting that David Frum, former speech writer to Dubya Bush, writes for The Atlantic (and has been against Trump from the start: see his book Trumpocracy):
* https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-frum/
So we're not just talking about 'leftists' criticizing these actions and policies.
The split is currently between people who believe in and want a functional and equitable government, and those who are fine with a kleptocracy as long as they are personally the beneficiaries (or at least, the people they dislike suffer worse).
People like Frum were quick to notice this and get on the correct side of it. Unfortunately, there are not enough Republicans who feel the same way to make much of a difference.
Maybe he's grown a spine.
I really worry for the people in the US, but I'm hopeful it's hegemony is ending.
I think the real group behind this is people who are capable of sensing that this is wrong at least on some deeper level, but who are so complacent that they just want not to think about it too much. Maybe it's because they're in too deep, maybe they make too much money off of it to care, maybe their heels are too dug in on social issues for them to ever try to reconsider. Possibly a combination of any of the three.
If you are not American, it’s rather tiring to have every website and news outlet talk about it ad nauseum, and have it take over every subreddit and conversation. Americans get all uppity when you tell them that you don’t want that, as if their news are so important that they transcend categorisation.
I care. It’s important. It’s just not the right website.
People use the word "transparency" to mean different things. Here are the ways in which I think it's fair to say we're transparent about mod actions: (1) we explain the principles that we apply, frequently and at length; and (2) we're happy to answer questions, including about specific cases.
What we don't do is publish a complete moderation log. To understand why, it's probably easiest to look through my past answers about this at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... Here's one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234189.
In our experience, the current approach is a reasonable balance between the tradeoffs. It's true that we don't see all the comments like the ones you posted here, and we can't address what we don't see. It's also true that, as volume has grown, we've found it harder to reply to absolutely every question. But it's still eminently possible to get an answer if you want one—especially if you're asking in a way that signals good faith*.
(*I add the latter bit because some people use the format of "asking a question" as way of being aggressive and in such cases we may respond otherwise than by taking the question literally. That's pretty rare though.)
Transparent as you could ever hope for: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
The issue, of course, is that literally anything can be "political", and moreover by trying to actively avoid political discussions you sort of tacitly endorse the status quo.
It's a tough line to draw, and I'd be lying if I said where I knew where to draw it; HN is a fun forum specifically because the moderation is generally very good. They're not perfect but they do try and shut things down before they devolve into flame wars and personal insults. If there weren't aggressive modding, HN would devolve into 4chan or 8chan, and it wouldn't be appealing to me after the age of ~17.
If the answer is no then the risk that someone will flag the article increases dramatically. If the discussion environment isn't open and peaceful then how much more likely isn't it that people will just disengage, flag, and then move on.
My perspective is that a scale has tipped, a critical mass of people decided they want this sort of thing, and they got it. It wasn't rigged, it wasn't fraudulent, it was a democratic election. Critique democracy itself, or the criticism is incoherent. Make an argument for why a government should be disallowed from doing things that the voters want it to do.
Way more than half the country was disenfranchised in the last election. Best case scenario (and very unlikely scenario): blue sweep in the next elections and then massive electoral reform.
Over 152 million votes were cast, representing more than 64% turnout among those eligible to vote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...).
The USA has about 342 million people, and over 18% of them are age 14 or younger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...) and at least some of them are 15-17 (citation needed). So clearly, doing some arithmetic, there are fewer than 304 million adults.
Not only was "half the country" not "disenfranchised", literally a majority of adults actually voted (and this is not even considering that not all adults were statutorily allowed to vote in the first place).
If we can't agree as a people that the Constitution applies to everyone equally then it isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with fascism and must dealt with as such.
Others can work for immediate protest for release of the arrested.
Appeal to common values that they also have, and show how they are violating the religious values they profess.
Technically someone can make some app, that can easily help in getting the citizenship proof for an individual.
I am not from USA.
It's also hard to quantify how much the pandemic and inflation moved some voters away from Biden/Harris.
I think Dems will win big in the next election. The question is how long this lesson will last with voters.
Republicans are now defending straight-up murder in broad daylight by federal forces. I doubt there's anything that could change their minds at this point, they're too far gone.
The next chapter of America needs to be punishing anyone who was apart of these death squads and the officials who allowed it to happen. That's it. There is no statute of limitations on murder or treason. We can't make the same mistakes as we did after the civil war (leniency towards confederates and various compromises)
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...
They'd have to change the fundamental nature of business. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. The relationship between capital (owners/management) and labor is usually adversarial with "at-will" employment. Contrast in Norway, where businesses operate within a 3-way Agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) - a formal cooperation between the government, employers' associations, and trade unions.
Americans would have to change capitalism too. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
But even in this thread they don't want to do that.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-tr...
Hopefully old man won’t be around that long
Millions in the U.S. get "information" from a firehose of propaganda.
That defines the reality they see. Others perhaps just feel hopeless but... want to believe that our constitutional democracy somehow manages to hold on and rebound.
Slaves were brought here against their will.
Illegal immigrants snuck in against ours.
I'm guessing the existence of two sites, both rated [HIGH] for factual accuracy, give you a sense of outrage when you read accurate facts?
See Ted Cruz's remarks on Jimmy Kimmel: "[W]hen it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it."
Or Brett Kavanaugh on Lisa Cook: that Trump shouldn't dismiss her because "what goes around comes around [...] if there's a Democrat president".
This is the moderate Republican position: no concern for the harm caused to people on the political left, only concern that they on the right might not get away with it. The MAGA position is, as this article shows, much worse.
Now imagine the people who don't want more housing (for some reason) end up burning all new houses being built in a state.
Now imagine crying about how the people who want the houses to be built to solve the problem are still wanting more houses to be built.
Turns out it's harder to solve a housing problem when the houses keep getting burnt down. Who'd have thunk?
My heart aches for the countless victims of this band of fascists in the executive branch.
This suggests to me there is some level of systemic intent (or at least ambivalence) with this administration's use of ICE's use of lethal force. It is beyond concerning. This admin is now very literally murdering us and will immediately try to justify it.
The US administration has always labeled any resistance against it as terrorism at least ever since 9/11. You might remember the justification of killing young Afghani males, who were posthumously labelled as terrorists. They drone strike an apartment complex and report 25 dead terrorists, conveniently omitting to report on dead children or women, because there were 25 males between the age of 15 - 25 among the dead. No evidence of terrorist activity required.
The only change is that the same justification is now being used within the US borders.
The dead are still, however, The Other, which is how it's being justified now as it was when the dead were foreigners in a war zone.
It's 100% the intent of this admin to use their secret police to drive fear and terror
Imperial boomerang. After enabling Israel/IDF which routinely just shoots unarmed people and officials on all levels simply justify it with "Terrorists.", and also routinely denies ambulance access to victims shots, it was only a matter of time until such and similar tactics come back home. Because politicians back home saw that the world was okay with it, so why not do it home.
People are supposed to defend their rights from far away, so that they don't have to defend them uncomfortably close when it's too late to avoid many casualties.
I think they are simply poorly trained people that are given free reign. The results are disastrous. They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing. I'm not sure how it's at the destructiveness scale at this moment, but these organizations can and it probably will get much worse as their internal culture morphs into more directly aggressive stance.
The shootings were incredibly dumb, and it's pretty much what one would expect when they create this kind of situation. Listening to the "Revolutions" podcast I realized situations like these are incredibly common all along history, you have armed people with tense spirits, a gun goes off and tragedy ensues. The most terrible part of all of this is the reaction of the authorities that lie, gaslight and support these people, get them off the hook and this reaction will only generate more violence and more deaths as ICE realizes they _really can_ act with impunity.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is a good analogue to what we are seeing with ICE. People empowered to be cruel.
And they are given the message (from the president!) they have absolute immunity, and instructed to regard the law as a set of nonbinding guidelines.
The Supreme Court played a role in this too. They made it harder to stop by halting the long-established precedent of nationwide injunctions.
The people pulling the trigger are still not blameless. They are murderers no matter how badly misled. Your common murderer is misguided too. That doesn't mean they are absolved. I don't think that's what you were saying, but it bears mentioning.
Jonathan Ross (the ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good) is an Iraq war veteran who has served in military and paramilitary units (National Guard, CBP, ICE) for over two decades. He intentionally engaged in a behavior that has been documented as far back as 2014 [1] to manufacture a reason to shoot the person in front of him.
Did he premeditate killing someone while getting out of bed that morning? Probably not.
Did he make the decision to kill Ms. Good in advance? No reasonable doubt.
[1] Even by CBP internal reviews, no less: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-border-agents-i...
They absolutely woke up thinking that. This is the happiest these monsters have been in their lives
Oh they absolutely fucking do
Maybe not explicitly, but I do think there's a selection bias towards people who do want to do that. If you know you can get away with exerting violence towards a group of people you don't like, then that career is going to be very appealing towards people who want to do that.
It's the same thing with priests and their abuse of children. It's not like being a priest turns you into a child-abuser. It's just that priests are in a situation that they're constantly surrounded by kids unsupervised, can live alone unmarried without anyone questioning it, and when they do something horrible and abuse their power then they're often just moved to another parish. Of course a job like that is going to be attractive to people who want to abuse children.
I think ICE is similar. I do think there are people who join ICE with genuinely noble intentions, like getting rid of cartels and whatnot, but the Trump admin has made ICE something extremely appealing to people who have worse intentions.
They literally just murdered someone in cold blood. Textbook execution without trial. And have some of the most powerful people in the world saying how brave they are and how great of a job they did executing their duty.
Their entire recruiting process has the effect of self selecting for the exact kind of person who is significantly more likely to shoot an unarmed nonviolent protestor.
If I recall correctly they even have notably higher salary and signing bonuses compared to similar agencies, which could be (decent pessimistically) interpreted as a way to hoover up more recruits with questionable moral bases. "Oh I really don't think ICE is doing the right thing, but oh boy sign me up for that cash baby".
https://www.kuow.org/stories/how-ice-grew-to-be-the-highest-...
That's some optimism right there.
this has never been the case either, unless you're listening to USian television/movies
It's been translated in English as Ur-fascism and is available online for free at the anarchist library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci....
Skipping ahead to the 14 properties, however, points 5, 7, 11, and 12 are probably the most evident in the present moment.
Protests are what Trump wants. He would like nothing better than marshal law and cancelling the mid terms. He has said so many times.
It's called being pro-rule of law.
You're not allowed to just shoot people in the back that are very obviously not a threat, even if their idiotic lack of proper training makes them feel like they're in danger. It's literally South Parkian "they're coming right for us!!!" -- BANG -- as justification for lethal force of an unarmed person in custody.
The mainstream media is not covering the many daily protests I see in my area, and hear and see from friends and family elsewhere. However, I do think the majority of Americans do not have the luxury (or fear of losing their job, and thus their healthcare, etc) to just walk out on their jobs or responsibilities, and the social safety nets here are limited (and being further cut by this administration).
I do think a general strike is the last chance at a non-violent resistance, but the oligarchs and powerful can weather that storm much more easily than the average American.
I believe this country will need massive investigations and criminal trials to heal. I am concerned with what happens in between, but this is reality as I see it.
Trump learned his lesson and pardoned every Jan 6 terrorist. If he leaves office, he is going to pardon every single person in his administration for anything they did from 2025-2029. There will be no investigations and no criminal trials. They all know this to be true.
Of course these all turned out to be grave miscalculations. I imagine that pattern will eventually play out this time too...
Like this VOX article surveying experts on fascism in 2015 and then revisiting in 2020:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21521958/what-is-fas...
> But there is still no state management of the economy here (as there was to a degree in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy). Trump is content to aid business by reducing government protections of the environment and of workers … and his economic policy is mainly just to let businessmen do what they want.
Well, we can check that one off the list with 2024 hindsight.
>He’s never actually done a Putin and tried to make himself a permanent president, let alone suggest any coherent plan for overthrowing the constitutional system. And I don’t even think that’s in his mind
And another one bites the dust.
Note that all the scholars who get very technical on what they want to call Fascist all compare him to Marcos, Erdogan, Milosovic. That's still not a good review.
The left was right too early. Whereas I, the enlightened centrist was right and just the right time.
Them winning absolute control over the country would be a disaster for their movement though. They'd turn to internal fighting, the entropy of victory and all that. And they don't seem terribly competent with governance, it would probably turn off a lot of smart people, so the country would lose a lot of its capabilities.
EDIT: Also, there are funny things going on with the political submissions. I think there is active interference going on, they get flagged almost immediately. This got flagged and unflagged in the space of a couple minutes, so thanks to the mod team they are letting it up, I think there is important conversation to be had here.
that would be after they've finished executing the undesirables?
I am quite amazed that the 2nd amendment people seem to be the ones that are cheering on the federal gestapo
"Rights for me, not for thee"
The brain drain was massive, both before the war, and even more so after. That didn't stop the peasant minded from supporting the Nazi regime though. They got to punish the people who they were told made them poor.
I live in FL, so I get to interact daily with people who are cheering for this crackdown, and have said the equivalent of "those rioters (protestors) should be put down in the street". I don't have much hope for where our country is headed.
The flags on any type of post like this are absolutely ridiculous. Glad the mods are at least for now letting this one stand.
They are very relevant to the current state of affairs in America, with respect to tech, immigration, startups, and the hacker ethos
Monarchs are in place without democratic support, so they have little incentive to be popular (though not unpopular either). Not being involved in politics often results in them having a distant concern for their subjects. They rarely instigate policy making. Doesn't sound like Trump.
Flagging this: that’s fascism.
However, this past year has been extreme. Seeing how everything related to Musk and DOGE was removed, for example, was extraordinary.
Anyone who thinks this forum lives up to its rhetoric is simply flat wrong. This place is now a testament to the effectiveness of clever censorship.
Telling people what should or shouldn't be done: that's fascism.
The only question now is will the people be able to stop the takeover before it’s too late.
Will the US say "Wait a minute, things went too far, now that he's gone we need more checks and balances before another President tries to repeat what just happened" like when they added term limits to the Constitution after FDR, or some of the post-Watergate limits imposed on the Presidency?
Or will Trump's redefinition of government power become normalized, like the redefinition of government power that happened with the Patriot Act, TSA security theater, NSA spying on US citizens, etc. after 9/11 that was justified as anti-terrorism? Those policies were never unwound even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over, Osama bin Laden is dead, and there have been no more attacks on that scale.
I'm sure if a Democrat is elected in 2028, all of a sudden a lot of people are going to remember that they don't want a unitary executive. A lot of people who are currently cheering on the administration.
First up, I don't think the republican party moderates in 2029. The Trump mentality is the new normal and I believe republicans are just going to keep trying to be as fascist as possible as long as possible. We've learned that there are basically no limits on a corrupt presidency and I really fear what that will mean for any future republican president.
But secondly, I'm afraid that Democrats aren't rising to the occasion. They aren't putting forward meaningful reforms or changes to address the fascism. In terms of ICE, a lot of them are trying to put forward meaningless reforms like "let's give them more training" or "let's put their names in a QR code". The entire agency needs nuremberg style trials at this point and some Dems want to give them a weekend meeting with HR.
These two facts scare the shit out of me. Because, my fear is we will see a repeat of 2024 in 2032. Assuming we have free and fair elections, I can see a Democrat becoming president in 2028, doing nothing to address the systemic problems exposed by trump, and ultimately a new republican will be voted in in 2032 because people are sick of nothing getting better under democrats. And that 2032 republican president will ultimately know they can do everything Trump did and they'll be cheered on by the base.
Democrats need to be messaging about real positive changes they'll make.
LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation
https://profrjstarr.com/the-psychology-of-us/the-need-to-be-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrage_porn
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/09/768489375/how-outrage-is-hija...
https://theconversation.com/outrage-culture-is-a-big-toxic-p...
The US was supposedly ruled by a fascist in 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/books/review/jason-stanle...
There was also supposedly fascism coming in 2016: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/this-is-how-fascism-comes...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626...
And yet we had elections in 2020. So whatever, it was clearly not authoritarian fascism because we had free elections that the authoritarian fascist was ousted in. So what I think I experienced there was semantic satiation with the word fascism.
EDIT: To clarify position vis a vis reply, I am simply saying that I have heard the word 'fascism' so much I don't really react with any sense when someone says it. It's like hearing 'rape' or 'spying' on Hacker News. I assume it means "I was shown a banner ad for toothpaste after searching for toothpaste". In other contexts those words have negative valence of great significance. In this context, I just glaze over.
Likewise, the word 'fascism' from a left-leaning outlet could be anything from the end of medicare subsidies to a drone strike on an Islamic fundamentalist general to charging fares on a train.
Just sharing how I feel about it. It does not have that emotional strength that it originally felt.
2015: You're overreacting!
2016: You're overreacting!
2017: You're overreacting!
2018: You're overreacting!
2019: You're overreacting!
2020: You're overreacting!
2021: You're overreacting!
2022: You're overreacting!
2023: You're overreacting!
2024: You're overreacting!
2025: How could we possibly have known things would have gone this way?!
