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I know many of the people reading this will think I'm being hysterical. But there was a small voice in the back of my mind when the shutdown started wondering w
by slg 1y ago
I know many of the people reading this will think I'm being hysterical. But there was a small voice in the back of my mind when the shutdown started wondering whether that version of the American government would ever reopen and that voice has started to become much louder in recent days. Specifically the combination of this, the handling of SNAP benefits, and this all happening in November just seems intentionally designed to cause unrest. Families going hungry and/or unable to fly to spend Thanksgiving together feels like a perfectly orchestrated way to cause mass civil unrest that an authoritarian could use to seize power.
- actionfromafar 1y agoThat’s MAGA for you.
- koolba 1y ago[flagged]
- blensor 1y agoSince the democrats are not the ones in power at the moment, don't they have the bigger obligation towards the position of the people who voted for them. Which would be exactly the demand they are making right now. The party who is running the country does in theory have an obligation to all Americans, the opposition has an obligation to their own block.
- tonetheman 1y agoThe Republicans are literally starving poor people. People who are on SNAP who have less than 3k in their bank accounts. Hateful and incompetent is how most people would describe that.
- RickJWagner 1y agoBoth parties are to blame. About a decade ago, Tea Party Republicans were in the minority, they refused to approve the budget as the Democrats are doing now. At that time, Democrats accused the Republicans of ‘holding the government hostage’. Now the roles are exactly reversed. It’s games as usual.
- thrance 1y agoDemocrats refuse to vote the budget because the GOP removed almost all healthcare funding from it and won't compromise on that. If this budget passes as is, millions will die of preventable diseases. How is it on democrats?
- RickJWagner 1y agoIsn’t it true that the healthcare part only involves credits that were supposed to be temporary during COVID? Also, isn’t it true that the expiring credits are for people who earn more money than ACA allowed? ( In other words, the poor still get assistance.) Please provide receipts if there are other aspects to be considered.
- koolba 11mo agoYes it’s true that those provisions expired, the Republicans are not changing or removing anything, and it’s the Democrats that are demanding additional funding to replace the Covid era funding that is expiring.
- tzs 11mo ago> Isn’t it true that the healthcare part only involves credits that were supposed to be temporary during COVID? So? There's no rule that temporary things can't later become permanent. For example the Trump tax cuts from 2017 were supposed to temporary, expiring this year. The "Big Beautiful Bill" made them permanent. Also the healthcare part is not just letting temporary COVID era credits expire. It also includes cuts to Medicaid.
- pwthornton 1y ago22 million Americans benefit from the Affordable Care Act subsidies. I hardly think it is just some small number of socialists who care about this.
- noir_lord 1y ago42 million on SNAP as well. It’s tempting to assume they have a plan because we project rationality but I don’t think they do beyond chaos and hurt the people they don’t like.
- actionfromafar 1y agoThe plan is to make the midterms a Republican offer you can’t refuse, so to speak. One thing on the menu or the count, at least. Or something to similar effect. Why swear in any democrat in the house at all? They are antifa, that’s terrorists you know.
- jacquesm 1y agoAt some point it won't even matter if they have a plan. I'm comparing it to throwing a stone off a mountain. You might not achieve much, or you might start an avalanche and good luck trying to control that once it gets going. Then it's just gravity and mass and until that has run it's course you're along for the ride.
- actionfromafar 1y agoThe rules of the game have changed. The President has declared that it doesn’t matter what is in the bill - he won’t spend on anything in it he doesn’t like. Why negotiate with that?
- jcranmer 1y agoThe Republicans set the agenda and the rules in both the House and the Senate. They knew, before the shutdown started, that the bills they crafted would have to get 60 votes in the Senate to be enacted. And they also knew, before it started, what would need to be in the bills for them to get to 60 votes. And yet they chose to pass a bill which would fail to get 60 votes. And when that vote failed to get 60 votes, they chose not to enter into any discussions to alter the bill to get it to win more votes, but rather to try to pass the same bill again and again to get 60 votes. Indeed, some have even called for passing a larger bill that includes Democrats' aims and simply ignoring the enacted law, for adherence to the rule of the law is already absent in this administration. To blame this situation on the party with the least power at the moment is pure lunacy.
- ecshafer 1y ago[flagged]
- jacquesm 1y agoYou have your parties muddled up. The democrats are not in power.
- phantasmish 1y agoPlus Trump's fighting in court to keep from having to release (as very fucking clearly required by law) SNAP funds that are already allocated by congress for exactly this kind of situation. Whatever your opinion on the rest of this, that part's certainly, 100%, on him personally.
- tdb7893 1y agoI'm a Democrat (well, nominally at least) but they clearly need some people from both parties to fund the government. Democrats won't vote for a "clean" bill and Republicans won't negotiate. The crazy thing is people predicted the shutdown in the spring and the government still drove the boat straight into this iceberg.
- koolba 1y ago> The crazy thing is people predicted the shutdown in the spring and the government still drove the boat straight into this iceberg. The Democrats also had ample opportunity to extend the bonus Covid era subsidies when they controlled all branches of government. They could have included in the overall reconciliation funding bill that bypassed the filibuster. Not doing so was deliberate.
- hibikir 1y agoThere were a variety of things they didn't predict, including the fact that the executive branch would believe that they have the right to not spend the money congress appropriated to do things. This is the real crux of the shutdown: Negotiations where you demand some spending in exchange for votes are unlikely when the other side can refuse to spend the money, so ultimately there is no credible basis on which to even begin negotiating.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 1y agoThe sooner things become intolerably broken in the U.S. the better off I think the rest of the world is. The U.S. kind of scares me right now. So much power, wielded by deeply incompetent, broken, and evil people. And those who aren't those things are demonstrably too weak to do anything about it. I have a sense that things will only improve once they hit an intolerable low. And the longer it takes for that to happen, the more normalized it will become for all of those people. Basically: I really hope the current regime boils the water too fast.
- slg 1y agoI can't deny that and maybe would even agree with that as an abstract theory, but I just can't stomach the amount of misery and death that would come along with this to ever use a word like "hope" to describe that outcome.
- themafia 1y agoThat this is happening is an indication that power has been seized already. What do you think their goals with the power are? To make your life miserable? No, clearly, all they care about is the wealth and it's profits. Which they're already swallowing whole. You _already_ live in their prison.
- fzeroracer 1y agoWell, there's one critical flaw which is that Trump is also fucking up with the military. A lot of military members are going unpaid, and many more are going unpaid and their family isn't receiving snap benefits. An authoritarian trying to seize power without the backing of the military is bound to lead to failure, and even though money is being funneled into ICE enmasse they're an untrained legion of goons with little access or ability to use actual military equipment. If push comes to shove we're not going to get an authoritarian takeover, we're going to get a military coup. Unless they wake up and realize they need the guys with the hardware to do their whole fascist takeover thing.
- an0malous 1y agoICE is being paid
- fzeroracer 1y agoICE is effectively just a government-paid gang designed to harass immigrants and any citizen they think is a bit too uppity. They don't have any actual power to do things like holding down a city or enforcing martial law without the aid of the actual military or national guard. They have guns but not THE guns.
- actionfromafar 1y agoA bigger budget can fix that.
- an0malous 11mo agoThey raided a building in Chicago with a Blackhawk helicopter
- pkulak 1y agoDidn’t they illegally take funds from the CIA to pay the military and ICE? It seems to me like this is ideal for them. They break the law to pay for the stuff they want, let everything else rot. Why the Democrats have allowed this is beyond me.
- legitster 1y agoOne side abhors "the government" and actively took an axe to the agencies and programs that the other side cared about. The result is that neither party have any sort of active investment in the current status quo.
- AaronAPU 1y ago[flagged]
- slg 1y ago[flagged]
- AaronAPU 1y ago[flagged]
- slg 1y agoThere is a reason I started my first comment the way I did. For Trump's entire time in politics, there have been people trying to communicate the type of person he is and the plans he has for the US and there have been people like you who have said we're overreacting. It doesn't matter what actually happens. I could probably list dozens of examples, from the overturning of Roe v Wade to the violence of ICE, of times we have been told that our predictions were detached from reality until they eventually became reality. At this point if you can't recognize that the lines of acceptable political behavior have constantly been pushed under Trump's control, then I doubt you will ever admit it.
- therobots927 1y ago[flagged]
- AaronAPU 11mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 11mo agoPlease email us (hn@ycombinator.com) if you want moderator attention. I can't work out what this comment means. I.e., is someone using information about you from elsewhere on the web to attack you on HN? If so, that's bad, but we need details/evidence, which is why it's best to email us.
- Marshferm 1y agoYes, exactly. I second this. Time to repeal the president before this gets terrible.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoThe process of repealing a president (impeachment) is a political process. Republicans could do it at any moment, so every day they don't is an endorsement of what the president has done, continues to do, and even what he threatens to do.
- Marshferm 1y agoRepealing a dictator is extralegal. This country is founded on the principle of being able to spot the pretexts (tariffs, terror-driven deportation, selective refugee status of whites fleeing black majorities, dissolving of social nets, rampant corruption) to monarchy-authoritarian leadership. It will happen all over again here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I... We're all migrants here, we're really the enforced guests of Native Americans whose land we occupy.
- thrance 1y agoThe current DNC is waaay too weak and uninterested in pushing back against Trump for this to realistically happen. They are complete enablers of this slow fascist takeover. Your only hope now is for the democrats to experience a "tea party" of their own, and have actual leftists take the reins before 2028. Seems highly unlikely now.
- Marshferm 1y agoIt’ll be extralegal, think non linear/chaos.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoFor me, I wonder if Congress will ever reopen. I wonder if the trench warfare in Congress has gone so far that it will destroy itself rather than compromise.
- epolanski 1y agoI don't buy it for few reasons. 1. The budget doesn't include some insane, unvotable measure. I don't hold any sympathy for either of the parties, but as an external it seems that the majority and the president have been voted on top of repealing the affordable care act and the opposition is weaponizing the budget on topics that voters have already expressed themselves against. 2. Being unable to spend or spend vacations with family are not things that historically lead to unrests. So imho, no, Occam's razor suggests me this is simply business as usual, but with the usual increasing polarization and extremism we're seeing all around the world.
- rasz 1y ago>voted on top of repealing the affordable care act Its much more stupid than this. People voted MAGA to get rid of Obamacare, but same dont even realize it IS the ACA. Jimmy Kimmel Live did whole bit around that in 2017 and it still holds true today.
- thephyber 1y agoMaybe. But having 10%+ of all Americans panicking after missing a few meals is also enough to topple a country. There’s not a whole lot that can unify the different political factions of the US, but going hungry gets people focused on necessity and to deprioritize the shallow / vapid aspects of politics. Arguably it’s China’s governing body’s biggest single fear. I currently think this government shutdown is unlikely to do that to the US because politicians have had lots of practice making each shutdown less impactful for most Americans, but the longer we go, the more likely we are to find some high value thing the US government does that Americans don’t want to live without.
- epolanski 1y ago> Arguably it’s China’s governing body’s biggest single fear. Why China's? What you said is true in any corner of the globe.
- thephyber 1y agoChina is the world’s most populous country with an autonomous governing body that doesn’t always respond to the voice of the people. And their leadership knows that multiple previous Chinese governments were toppled after the people were famished.
- epolanski 1y ago> Chinese governments were toppled after the people were famished In imperial china it's a cultural/religious thing. Famines always represented a sign that the ruling party wasn't wanted "by the skies" anymore. In any case, ain't nobody ever gonna starve in modern china.
- disgruntledphd2 11mo agoI can't see any rational politician letting this go beyond another two weeks. I can't imagine keeping people away from their families over Thanksgiving is gonna work out well for anyone. But then, maybe they're not rational.
- mrtksn 1y agoTwo weeks ago, the German state funded publisher Deutsche Welle published a video making a case about the possibility of Donald Trump actually being a Russian asset: https://youtu.be/JmEtx-EmYtc https://youtu.be/JmEtx-EmYtc I would be speechless if a conspiracy theory comes true, and the American state is actually captured by the Russians. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish it, but as a fan of the series The Americans, it will be epic..
- thrance 1y agoNah, he's swung back and forth on Ukraine at least 4 times now. Russia certainly did help Trump get the White House, what with the propaganda and all, as they correctly foresaw how terrible he would be for the American Empire. But he does not receive his orders from Putin, that's ridiculous. He's just cruel and stupid.
- xethos 1y agoAgreed, but bluntly: what's the effective difference for Russia? They can't give direct orders, but they also don't have the rest of the world calling foul [about an illegitimate American leader, as we ignore Ukraine for a moment]. I'd say Trump not being an explicit asset gets them 90% of what they're after, with almost no downsides