6 ms·

Wild to see a bloodless coup in action.

vizzier 2y ago
The worst part is, how do you even counter the injected rot? If they demand loyalty tests and infest your institutions how is it countered? do the other side also have to do the same (assuming they have the opportunity)? All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.
- bboygravity 2y ago
  How is this different from any previous president? Isn't the very reason that the puppets "need replacing" (according to the president) tell you that they are of the wrong (previous president's) political flavor? Honest question, I'm not from US, but on the surface it just looks like more of the same thing that has always been happening? Except with way more media attention?
  - frodo8sam 2y ago
    Depends on your perspective. Many people would consider someone like Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert, but Trumps people think he is very political and purge people like that. At the FBI they purge people who are probably quite competent and not particularly partisan but happened to work on Trumps case, which is mostly about sending a message I think not do much about finding the right employees to work at the FBI. This is very un American in my view.
    - trhway 2y ago
      >Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert Then why did Fauci lie to Congress and got the Biden's pre-emptive pardon?
      - jimkleiber 2y ago
        I think this is the person's point. Many people in the past would see Fauci as a prime example of someone who is just a non-partisan career government servant, while others, which it seems you and many people in the current administration, see people like him as overtly partisan and borderline evil. NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
        NekkoDroid 2y ago
        > NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal. I also really hate it, but it's becoming more obvious with time that they to some degree were necessary in this case. Ideally they wouldn't be needed or possible, but Trump and his administration seem to have multiple axes to grind with anyone in the government not directly subserviant to him.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        Not necessary, just out of fear. They capitulated to Trump's threats instead of standing up and fighting hard for principles.
        SauciestGNU 2y ago
        Sure, but Fauci should also not have to spend the twilight years of his very accomplished life defending himself from petulant fascists' revenge prosecutions.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        Yes, emotionally I'd agree. However, legally, I think it's a very slippery slope. What if Don Jr shoots someone dead and then Trunp premptively pardons him so no one can investigate the shooting? I think the hard part of enforcing the law is enforcing it equally, even towards those we love the most.
  - jimkleiber 2y ago
    I think it's the emotional flavor of it. Things in the US government tend to move more slowly and filled with less apparent vitriol and vengeance. This seems like a slash and burn and to hell with people if they don't more outrightly pledge loyalty. To me, at least.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    They are supposed to be manouvered out with slowpaced schemes and retire for family reason not be fired in the open. But ye it usually happens to some extent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowing-federal/2021/01/24/a495ae76-5c02-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowin...
  - jackjeff 2y ago
    I think it’s unprecedented for every FBI agent to fill up a questionnaire to admit whether they worked on a case where the president himself was an active participant.
    - whatthesmack 2y ago
      It's also unprecedented that a current president's administration would collude to charge the primary opposition of it in a presidential election across multiple jurisdictions, including with an unlawful special counsel appointment, yet here we are. To note, the president was only an active participant insofar as he asked people to remain calm and peaceful.
  - qqqwerty 2y ago
    These organizations consist of political appointees and civil servants. It is customary to replace all of the political appointees. Civil servants however have a lot of job protections and can only be fired for a limited set of reasons. Typically, a new administration would appoint new political appointees to the various departments (many of whom need to be confirmed by the Senate) and those appointees would then exert their influence on the department by shifting priorities around and they could even alter the hiring process to target more "aligned" individuals for the open civil servant roles. But they cannot just do a wholesale house cleaning. The high level purpose and the budget/size of the organization is determined by Congress and the political appointees are constrained by that. So this is in fact very different from how things normally work.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  One way is for the people in the other branches of government—Congress (legislative) and Courts (judicial)—to stand up for their branches and fight against the executive. The challenge is that people are more loyal to their political parties than their political branches, and the Constitution is built to check and balance branches, not parties.
  - rob74 2y ago
    Well, the supreme representatives of the judicial branch have just last year given the executive (=Trump) a blank check to largely do anything it pleases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)). So yes, the US is in big trouble...
    - cinquemb 2y ago
      Don't forget the repeal of the chevron deference too by the supreme court. Agencies have a lot less power now (at least from a judicial perspective). Big trouble indeed, but its clear that for certain actors, they are experiencing pain they haven't felt before under any administration...
      - kragen 2y ago
        As I understand it, this means that many regulations (CFR) are much easier to repeal now than to re-enact; it will take an act of Congress to restore executive power that is thus relinquished. But I don't have a very clear idea of why I think this, so maybe I'm misremembering...
    - jimkleiber 2y ago
      Yes, it saddens me to see one of the three branches almost capitulate to another. If there's gonna be any in-fighting, let it be amongst the branches.
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  Resist, resist, resist. If they want to go through with a coup like this, let them do it in the courtrooms. They're simply relying on a blitzkrieg of (often illegal) firing/purges, assuming that no-one will challenge them, or that any challenge will take so long that they're ineffective.
- hoseja 2y ago
  [flagged]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bozhark 2y ago
It won’t be.
- maeil 2y ago
  You're right, it won't be. This is the only positive thing I can currently see. They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance. Purely anecdotally from seeing a small part of military-adjacent tech, while most definitely voted for Trump and some of them will be MAGA-converts, most of them actually belived in that mission and won't be aligned with a proper dictatorship. They'll have to play it very carefully, keep elections but rig them just enough to make the outcome inevitable, to keep these people able to convince themselves it's still a democracy, boiling the frog very slowly. It might be preferable for them to actually accelerate things and go full Putin, there'll be a lot more active resistance that way.
  - stavros 2y ago
    > They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance. All the Europeans who have died revolting against totalitarian governments are rolling in their graves.
  - TrackerFF 2y ago
    Have you even watched international news for the past few years?
throwawaythekey 2y ago
What makes it a coup? Trump was elected on a platform of government reform and that's what he is doing.
- babyshake 2y ago
  If you are elected on a platform of a coup (illegal reform), it doesn't make what you do any more legal. Some of what Trump is doing is not illegal, but some of it appears to be illegal.
  - throwawaythekey 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Juliate 2y ago
      Hu… no, it is not « normal ». It displays a wild disconnect from the duties of the position (to protect the Constitution, among which).
      - throwawaythekey 2y ago
        > During his four years as president, Democrat Joe Biden experienced a sustained series of defeats at the U.S. Supreme Court... "I think it is the toughest series of defeats since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s had many New Deal programs declared unconstitutional," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-biden-historic-series-defeats-2025-01-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-bide... I'm not particularly trying to argue if it's good or bad, just that presidents often stretch the law to apply their agenda. I would tend to side more on the bad side, but it seems necessary due to senate dysfunction.
        Juliate 2y ago
        Doesn't make it more normal. Not sure what point you're trying to make.

The worst part is, how do you even counter the injected rot? If they demand loyalty tests and infest your institutions how is it countered? do the other side also have to do the same (assuming they have the opportunity)? All feels incredibly illiberal. I hope for the best that the oaths of office specific to these institutions hold.

bboygravity 2y ago
How is this different from any previous president? Isn't the very reason that the puppets "need replacing" (according to the president) tell you that they are of the wrong (previous president's) political flavor? Honest question, I'm not from US, but on the surface it just looks like more of the same thing that has always been happening? Except with way more media attention?
- frodo8sam 2y ago
  Depends on your perspective. Many people would consider someone like Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert, but Trumps people think he is very political and purge people like that. At the FBI they purge people who are probably quite competent and not particularly partisan but happened to work on Trumps case, which is mostly about sending a message I think not do much about finding the right employees to work at the FBI. This is very un American in my view.
  - trhway 2y ago
    >Fauci non-partisan and more of a competent career expert Then why did Fauci lie to Congress and got the Biden's pre-emptive pardon?
    - jimkleiber 2y ago
      I think this is the person's point. Many people in the past would see Fauci as a prime example of someone who is just a non-partisan career government servant, while others, which it seems you and many people in the current administration, see people like him as overtly partisan and borderline evil. NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal.
      - NekkoDroid 2y ago
        > NB: I really disliked the preemptively pardoning. Like really really disliked it and wish it were not legal. I also really hate it, but it's becoming more obvious with time that they to some degree were necessary in this case. Ideally they wouldn't be needed or possible, but Trump and his administration seem to have multiple axes to grind with anyone in the government not directly subserviant to him.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        Not necessary, just out of fear. They capitulated to Trump's threats instead of standing up and fighting hard for principles.
        SauciestGNU 2y ago
        Sure, but Fauci should also not have to spend the twilight years of his very accomplished life defending himself from petulant fascists' revenge prosecutions.
        jimkleiber 2y ago
        Yes, emotionally I'd agree. However, legally, I think it's a very slippery slope. What if Don Jr shoots someone dead and then Trunp premptively pardons him so no one can investigate the shooting? I think the hard part of enforcing the law is enforcing it equally, even towards those we love the most.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  I think it's the emotional flavor of it. Things in the US government tend to move more slowly and filled with less apparent vitriol and vengeance. This seems like a slash and burn and to hell with people if they don't more outrightly pledge loyalty. To me, at least.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  They are supposed to be manouvered out with slowpaced schemes and retire for family reason not be fired in the open. But ye it usually happens to some extent: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowing-federal/2021/01/24/a495ae76-5c02-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-trump-burrowin...
- jackjeff 2y ago
  I think it’s unprecedented for every FBI agent to fill up a questionnaire to admit whether they worked on a case where the president himself was an active participant.
  - whatthesmack 2y ago
    It's also unprecedented that a current president's administration would collude to charge the primary opposition of it in a presidential election across multiple jurisdictions, including with an unlawful special counsel appointment, yet here we are. To note, the president was only an active participant insofar as he asked people to remain calm and peaceful.
- qqqwerty 2y ago
  These organizations consist of political appointees and civil servants. It is customary to replace all of the political appointees. Civil servants however have a lot of job protections and can only be fired for a limited set of reasons. Typically, a new administration would appoint new political appointees to the various departments (many of whom need to be confirmed by the Senate) and those appointees would then exert their influence on the department by shifting priorities around and they could even alter the hiring process to target more "aligned" individuals for the open civil servant roles. But they cannot just do a wholesale house cleaning. The high level purpose and the budget/size of the organization is determined by Congress and the political appointees are constrained by that. So this is in fact very different from how things normally work.
jimkleiber 2y ago
One way is for the people in the other branches of government—Congress (legislative) and Courts (judicial)—to stand up for their branches and fight against the executive. The challenge is that people are more loyal to their political parties than their political branches, and the Constitution is built to check and balance branches, not parties.
- rob74 2y ago
  Well, the supreme representatives of the judicial branch have just last year given the executive (=Trump) a blank check to largely do anything it pleases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)). So yes, the US is in big trouble...
  - cinquemb 2y ago
    Don't forget the repeal of the chevron deference too by the supreme court. Agencies have a lot less power now (at least from a judicial perspective). Big trouble indeed, but its clear that for certain actors, they are experiencing pain they haven't felt before under any administration...
    - kragen 2y ago
      As I understand it, this means that many regulations (CFR) are much easier to repeal now than to re-enact; it will take an act of Congress to restore executive power that is thus relinquished. But I don't have a very clear idea of why I think this, so maybe I'm misremembering...
  - jimkleiber 2y ago
    Yes, it saddens me to see one of the three branches almost capitulate to another. If there's gonna be any in-fighting, let it be amongst the branches.
TrackerFF 2y ago
Resist, resist, resist. If they want to go through with a coup like this, let them do it in the courtrooms. They're simply relying on a blitzkrieg of (often illegal) firing/purges, assuming that no-one will challenge them, or that any challenge will take so long that they're ineffective.
hoseja 2y ago
[flagged]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bozhark 2y ago

It won’t be.

maeil 2y ago
You're right, it won't be. This is the only positive thing I can currently see. They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance. Purely anecdotally from seeing a small part of military-adjacent tech, while most definitely voted for Trump and some of them will be MAGA-converts, most of them actually belived in that mission and won't be aligned with a proper dictatorship. They'll have to play it very carefully, keep elections but rig them just enough to make the outcome inevitable, to keep these people able to convince themselves it's still a democracy, boiling the frog very slowly. It might be preferable for them to actually accelerate things and go full Putin, there'll be a lot more active resistance that way.
- stavros 2y ago
  > They could've easily pulled it off without resistance (i.e. bloodshed) in most of Europe, but in the US the indoctrination of US exceptionalism regarding "freedom" and "democracy" from an early age results in a non-negligible number of people who would actually put their lives on the line for this and willing to take part in active resistance. All the Europeans who have died revolting against totalitarian governments are rolling in their graves.
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  Have you even watched international news for the past few years?

throwawaythekey 2y ago

What makes it a coup? Trump was elected on a platform of government reform and that's what he is doing.

babyshake 2y ago
If you are elected on a platform of a coup (illegal reform), it doesn't make what you do any more legal. Some of what Trump is doing is not illegal, but some of it appears to be illegal.
- throwawaythekey 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Juliate 2y ago
    Hu… no, it is not « normal ». It displays a wild disconnect from the duties of the position (to protect the Constitution, among which).
    - throwawaythekey 2y ago
      > During his four years as president, Democrat Joe Biden experienced a sustained series of defeats at the U.S. Supreme Court... "I think it is the toughest series of defeats since Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s had many New Deal programs declared unconstitutional," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-biden-historic-series-defeats-2025-01-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-bide... I'm not particularly trying to argue if it's good or bad, just that presidents often stretch the law to apply their agenda. I would tend to side more on the bad side, but it seems necessary due to senate dysfunction.
      - Juliate 2y ago
        Doesn't make it more normal. Not sure what point you're trying to make.