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What you see as skepticism, others see as Hanlon's Razor[0]. The prevailing wind of incompetence has masked a lot of what you might rightly consider malice, but

What you see as skepticism, others see as Hanlon's Razor[0]. The prevailing wind of incompetence has masked a lot of what you might rightly consider malice, but in holding to a certain decorum or "wishing the best of people" there is a lot that could just be bungling. I'm certainly not saying you're wrong, a lot of dots connect and do look like malice, but there's a vast amount of data that supports incompetence. [0] Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. ( elsewhere and generously, incompetence ) https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Like the person you are responding too ... at what point does Hanlon's Razor become dull?
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  Note that malice and stupidity are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I say that dulled for me since the time the executive branch refused to appropriate congressional funds, lost several federal rulings on this and then continued to do so (the beef against Harvard and other high profile Universities is one of many recent examples). The "Big Beautiful bill" was the moment the razor completely broke in my mind.
zzzeek 1y ago
The motivation does not matter. It is the effect that matters, and also, it is well documented [1] that fascist dictatorships rely (again not in any pre-planned way, simply in how they emerge) on incompetence, sloppiness to achieve their end result - both to allow for wanton destruction, as well as to actually continue making people think none of this is intentional, as we are seeing here. That is, the skepticism we see here is the fascist playbook working as designed. Trump has no idea what a "fascist" is. He suffers from narcissism, and when you put narcissists in charge, you get fascist dictatorships as a result. That's why it's very easy to see that it's happening without having to psychoanalyze anyone. But because it happens in such a stupid way, people are constantly thrown off the trail as we see in this thread. You cannot credibly claim a US gov website just accidentally loses a specific chunk of the Constitution that specifically refers to all the parts of it that Trump is currently trying to break. It might be an accident that some overzealous kid was put in charge of the website, and it might be an accident that the removal happened in the first place, but the actual removal is clearly intentional on someone's part. If it stays up and does not get restored, that's also "incompetence, laziness" but it's also the effect of increased fascism. [1] https://www.newsweek.com/hitler-incompetent-lazy-nazi-government-clown-show-opinion-1408136 https://www.newsweek.com/hitler-incompetent-lazy-nazi-govern...
- Levitz 1y ago
  >If it stays up and does not get restored, that's also "incompetence, laziness" but it's also the effect of increased fascism. What if it gets restored in a matter of hours, like it has?
  - zzzeek 1y ago
    Because they are always testing what they can get away with
    - Levitz 1y ago
      So the rational explanation is somewhere along the lines of "someone ordered to remove a small section of the constitution of the US off a government website (not all of them) and monitored the response (through social media, I guess?) and then, when they confirmed it had been noticed, rolled it back" all of it having no actual legal effect whatsoever, because they are just testing the waters?
      - zzzeek 1y ago
        No the explanation is "create a culture of lawlessness and impunity, fill all positions with wildly unqualified and incompetent people, rev them up to 1000 with MAGA entitlement, and let them all go loose. Whatever becomes too hot in the press, ok fix that part but keep going " That's it , that's all it is . Pour plenty of cocaine and ketamine into the machine to keep it moving smoothly.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Like the person you are responding too ... at what point does Hanlon's Razor become dull?

johnnyanmac 1y ago
Note that malice and stupidity are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I say that dulled for me since the time the executive branch refused to appropriate congressional funds, lost several federal rulings on this and then continued to do so (the beef against Harvard and other high profile Universities is one of many recent examples). The "Big Beautiful bill" was the moment the razor completely broke in my mind.

zzzeek 1y ago

The motivation does not matter. It is the effect that matters, and also, it is well documented [1] that fascist dictatorships rely (again not in any pre-planned way, simply in how they emerge) on incompetence, sloppiness to achieve their end result - both to allow for wanton destruction, as well as to actually continue making people think none of this is intentional, as we are seeing here. That is, the skepticism we see here is the fascist playbook working as designed. Trump has no idea what a "fascist" is. He suffers from narcissism, and when you put narcissists in charge, you get fascist dictatorships as a result. That's why it's very easy to see that it's happening without having to psychoanalyze anyone. But because it happens in such a stupid way, people are constantly thrown off the trail as we see in this thread. You cannot credibly claim a US gov website just accidentally loses a specific chunk of the Constitution that specifically refers to all the parts of it that Trump is currently trying to break. It might be an accident that some overzealous kid was put in charge of the website, and it might be an accident that the removal happened in the first place, but the actual removal is clearly intentional on someone's part. If it stays up and does not get restored, that's also "incompetence, laziness" but it's also the effect of increased fascism. [1] https://www.newsweek.com/hitler-incompetent-lazy-nazi-government-clown-show-opinion-1408136 https://www.newsweek.com/hitler-incompetent-lazy-nazi-govern...

Levitz 1y ago
>If it stays up and does not get restored, that's also "incompetence, laziness" but it's also the effect of increased fascism. What if it gets restored in a matter of hours, like it has?
- zzzeek 1y ago
  Because they are always testing what they can get away with
  - Levitz 1y ago
    So the rational explanation is somewhere along the lines of "someone ordered to remove a small section of the constitution of the US off a government website (not all of them) and monitored the response (through social media, I guess?) and then, when they confirmed it had been noticed, rolled it back" all of it having no actual legal effect whatsoever, because they are just testing the waters?
    - zzzeek 1y ago
      No the explanation is "create a culture of lawlessness and impunity, fill all positions with wildly unqualified and incompetent people, rev them up to 1000 with MAGA entitlement, and let them all go loose. Whatever becomes too hot in the press, ok fix that part but keep going " That's it , that's all it is . Pour plenty of cocaine and ketamine into the machine to keep it moving smoothly.