So Donald Trump Is Declaring War On US Cities Based On Fake Fox News Footage And Nonsense His ‘People’ Tell Him

a year ago by Curmuffin to c/politics

Who’s running the country? That question became terrifyingly urgent this weekend when the President of the United States admitted he was preparing to send US military forces into an American …

dhork 111 points a year ago

First of all, how is a site named "techdirt" always hitting the nail on the head with political commentary?

Should the United States survive this, there is going to need to be a serious reckoning over how we fix our institutions to protect against such horrifying abuses.

The problem is that our government was designed to put ambitious people in competing roles. Certain powers are controlled by Congress, others by the President, and still others by the Judiciary. Each branch has checks against the power of the other, and two of the branches ultimately have to answer to the people in elections. They assumed that each branch would seek to make sure that the other branches stayed in line, to preserve their own power.

But what happens when one movement co-opts all three branches, and now the branches refuse to rein each other in? Our Constitution has no answer for this. If any other President has pulled what Trump pulled today with his generals, he would have gotten impeached on the spot. Trump gets away with it, because the Congress and the Courts let him.

path: 0 19681610, hotness: undefined, score: 111, children: 14
givesomefucks 68 points a year ago

First of all, how is a site named “techdirt” always hitting the nail on the head with political commentary?

Because at nearly 30 years old it's literally one of the oldest news sites on the Internet...

And they expanded from just tech news decades ago?

Like, their CEO (who wrote this article) is the one that coined the term "Streisand Effect"...

They're kind of a big deal outside of just tech and have been for a long time.

path: 0 19681610 19681780, hotness: undefined, score: 68, children: 1
TowardsTheFuture 33 points a year ago

Not OP but… Huh, TIL. Would not have expected that.

path: 0 19681610 19681780 19682355, hotness: undefined, score: 33, children: 0
ryper 57 points a year ago path: 0 19681610 19682507, hotness: undefined, score: 57, children: 2
AnarchistArtificer 4 points a year ago

Haha, I just posted a reply with a link to the same article; I should have checked downthread first to see if anyone else had posted it. This piece is one of my favourite things I've read this year. I remember finding it so refreshing when it came out. Previously, I had read bits and bobs of good journalism from techdirt, but this sealed my respect for techdirt (and Mike Masnick).

Y

path: 0 19681610 19682507 19687363, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
grue 3 points a year ago

from the it's-the-only-real-story dept

path: 0 19681610 19682507 19685702, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
someguy3 28 points a year ago

I never understood how Hitler got such power until Trump came along. Then I realized it wasn't Hitler giving orders, it was that the people in the system wanted it. They wanted to give him their power.

path: 0 19681610 19683334, hotness: undefined, score: 28, children: 2
whereyaaat 6 points a year ago

Thankfully, the United States is nowhere as unified as Germany was leading up to World War 2.

path: 0 19681610 19683334 19684318, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 1
bufalo1973 3 points a year ago

Don't get it wrong. The "unity" in Germany was the result of "first they came for...". Hitler didn't win any fair election. Only after jailing all the opposing parties he won.

path: 0 19681610 19683334 19684318 19687668, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
samus12345 23 points a year ago

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

- George Washington

path: 0 19681610 19682575, hotness: undefined, score: 23, children: 0
AnarchistArtificer 11 points a year ago

"First of all, how is a site named "techdirt" always hitting the nail on the head with political commentary?"

One of my favourite things I've read this year was Mike Masnick's "Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)" . Even before things went to shit in the US, so much of tech journalism was trash because it refused to acknowledge that it doesn't make sense to talk about technology as if it somehow separate from society. The article I linked shows that Techdirt (or at the very least, Masnick) understands this.

You're right though, that it is gross how ostensibly politics journalism so often fails to make any meaningful political commentary. I appreciate techdirt, but I wish that we had more places doing political commentary like this.

path: 0 19681610 19687325, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 0
whereyaaat 9 points a year ago

But what happens when one movement co-opts all three branches, and now the branches refuse to rein each other in?

Luigi learns the shadow-clone jutsu.

path: 0 19681610 19684286, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
Brkdncr 4 points a year ago

But what happens when one movement co-opts all three branches, and now the branches refuse to rein each other in? Our Constitution has no answer for this

I think it does.

path: 0 19681610 19682801, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1
dhork 17 points a year ago

No, the Constitution doesn't, but this does

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

path: 0 19681610 19682801 19682874, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 0
baronvonj 3 points a year ago

Our Constitution has no answer for this.

It has several:

  1. We vote them out of office
  2. Constitutional amendments
  3. Constitutional convention

All of them require We the People to be actively engaged in the process.

path: 0 19681610 19688766, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
NJSpradlin 37 points a year ago
path: 0 19682293, hotness: undefined, score: 37, children: 4
bear 25 points a year ago

Wild. I'm amazed that people can see this extreme rhetoric and act like nothing is wrong, or that things will probably be okay if we don't "overreact".

path: 0 19682293 19682425, hotness: undefined, score: 25, children: 2
9limmer 11 points a year ago

Don't think there are many left in the middle going about their day like nothing is wrong. Red regions like what is happening, and blue regions are torn between don't take the bait and can't sit around doing nothing. Those who don't like what's happening are kind of screwed no matter what they do. There are no good options when MAGA has seized so much power and Dems are responding so meekly.

path: 0 19682293 19682425 19683749, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 0
Xanthobilly 6 points a year ago

Heaps of denial and a hope this will reverse course on its own (it won’t).

path: 0 19682293 19682425 19683491, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
Drusas 1 point a year ago

Trump is the one who said that.

path: 0 19682293 19687637, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
panda_abyss 36 points a year ago

But the auto pen was a problem.

path: 0 19682157, hotness: undefined, score: 36, children: 1
driving_crooner 25 points a year ago

Trans girls on high school basketball teams are the ones destroying the country.

path: 0 19682157 19682557, hotness: undefined, score: 25, children: 0
Reasonable_Guy 29 points a year ago

In any sane administration this would be grounds for removal via the 25th amendment. Does he literally need to be comatose before anyone there starts pushing this?

path: 0 19682583, hotness: undefined, score: 29, children: 4
Curmuffin 16 points a year ago

As long as he's able to speak, even if it's in tongues or babytalk, his sycophants and hangers-on will claim he's firing on all cylinders.

path: 0 19682583 19683324, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 2
toomanypancakes 8 points a year ago

Don't worry, with AI he doesn't even need to be alive to be used as a puppet.

path: 0 19682583 19683324 19683994, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1
Sassinake 3 points a year ago path: 0 19682583 19683324 19683994 19686488, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
givesomefucks 1 point a year ago

Sure...

But this still ain't new. Lil Bush thought he was legitimately going after WMDs, it was Cheney who knew that was all bullshit.

Similar things was going on all while Reagan was munching on Jelly Beans.

Hell. It's a bipartisan issue at this point, you can't tell me with a straight face Biden knew what was happening or was making decisions.

People close to him would verbally tell him something, and either he'd forget it or latch onto it for a weird amount of time.

You're right to be pissed off, just wrong to think it's recent.

path: 0 19682583 19684139, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
WhatGodIsMadeOf 19 points a year ago

Go after the entities that manipulate trump. He's not a mastermind, he's a puppet. Understand the game and understand that the nation as a whole is simply a tool for the elite players of "the game" to use for their agenda. The politics are an illusion. they can do the same manipulative things to Democrats or any other organization that holds any sort of control or power. The ideology of the image of what America used to be isn't real, it's a marketed brand for naive people to buy into. It isn't a lifestyle of authentic genuine humanity.

We are watching a collapse and the extremes they are willing to go to in order to maintain control of what, in all the godliness of the natural universe and humanity, is not theirs to control or own. Their actions are the manifestation of fear and evil. Don't let your reactions to them be based on the same fear or else it will probably lead to more evil.

path: 0 19682318, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 4
Xaphanos 6 points a year ago

re:puppet

I've been saying this for a while. He's senile with dementia but also a political mastermind?

path: 0 19682318 19682489, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 2
Assassassin 9 points a year ago

I've only seen right wingers saying he's a mastermind. The left just says that he's senile and demented or evil and lawless. He's doing the shit in the open with minimal statecraft or political finesse.

He's a tyrant fascist through and through, but he's not all that smart, he's just willing to brazenly ignore any rules that get in his way because consequences don't apply anymore. Republicans think this makes him a skilled politician, but he's just a bull in a china shop.

path: 0 19682318 19682489 19684127, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1
Xaphanos 3 points a year ago

I think he is greed embodied. He does what he is paid to do. Doesn't care if it's fascist or anarchist. He's an empty suit saying what he's been told to. He is perfectly self serving and no more. He's in this position to keep the puppeteers out of the spotlight with plausible deniability. AKA - the patsy.

path: 0 19682318 19682489 19684127 19687660, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
Hackworth 1 point a year ago
path: 0 19682318 19682482, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
VitoRobles 8 points a year ago

Last year, conservatives were complaining about the budget.

This is really expensive.

path: 0 19682734, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1
someguy3 8 points a year ago

Silly goose, the budget only matters when the Dems are in.

path: 0 19682734 19683363, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0
sp3ctr4l 4 points a year ago

I mean yes, but we already knew that Trump is barely literate, hates reading, and just watched TV all the time in his first admin.

In that sense... yes, duh, this is nothing new at all, why do we think he literally just appointed a bunch of Fox News show hosts into his cabinet?

path: 0 19683913, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
politics
politics

@lemmy.world

login for more options
31469
34159
9454

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
  3. No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
  4. No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News

• World News

• Business News

• Political Discussion

• Ask Politics

• Military News

• Global Politics

• Moderate Politics

• Progressive Politics

• UK Politics

• Canadian Politics

• Australian Politics

• New Zealand Politics

go to feed...