6 ms·

> And what's happening at CISA right now should terrify every American who depends on running water, electricity, and the ability to vote in free elections. Th

by dotdi 8mo ago

> And what's happening at CISA right now should terrify every American who depends on running water, electricity, and the ability to vote in free elections. The answer is right at the beginning. Current administration has the explicit goal to not have free elections going forward. It has been stated plainly, on TV. The rest is collateral damage, and an attack on critical infrastructure will be a good excuse to invade the next country, declare state of emergency or outright war and get rid of elections completely.

andsoitis 8mo ago
[flagged]
- perfmode 8mo ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=ice+outside+polling+locations&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=ice+outside+polling+location...
- jacquesm 8mo ago
  What makes no sense is to be able to observe the last 13 months and then to think that this is 'business as usual'.
  - andsoitis 8mo ago
    Did I imply “business as usual”? I don’t think so. At the same time, I actually think that characterization lacks usefulness. For instance, in some cases there’s clearly breaking norms (most poeple would porobably mostly for the worse, and in some limited cases for better). In other cases it is just more overt (or in some cases, more extreme) expression of typical American policy.
    - jacquesm 8mo ago
      You're smack in the middle of accepting the unacceptable because of normalization of deviance. None of this is 'typical American policy'. It is utter chaos, both internal and external. Your calibration point should not be Trump 1 but the Obama or Clinton administrations which were if not super popular at least competent.
      - andsoitis 8mo ago
        > You're smack in the middle of accepting the unacceptable because of normalization of deviance. To get a little personal, I will just say that you don't know what's in my heart or on my mind. To get back on point: > None of this is 'typical American policy'. Mabye you will say I'm being pedantic, but I think that's a categorically false statement. > Your calibration point should not be Trump 1 but the Obama or Clinton administrations which were if not super popular at least competent. Why cherry pick those two? What about more recent (Biden) or further back? I think you will find that there's a lot of things that are persistent over the last 250 years, including political violence, xenophobia, detaining people without due process, invading other countries, tarriffs, rhetoric that Europe should pay for its own defense, etc. To be clear, I'm not saying any of these are OK. There are also other positive dynamics that persist, like Americans pushing back and the administration needing to retreat and adjust.
        jacquesm 8mo ago
        > To get a little personal, I will just say that you don't know what's in my heart or on my mind. No but you are making statements here and those are indicative. > Mabye you will say I'm being pedantic, but I think that's a categorically false statement. That's your privilege. > Why cherry pick those two? Because the US economy and the US status in the world under those two sets of administrations was doing well compared to many of the alternatives.
- idiotsecant 8mo ago
  Not that the objective is institutional rot, nessessarily. More that this administration views institution as fundamentally unimportant.Its the curse of the maintainer. When things are going well bad management thinks that maintenance is a useless expense.
  - cucumber3732842 8mo ago
    >More that this administration views institution as fundamentally unimportant Politicians and their lackeys prioritize what makes them popular with the electorate. "Institutions" are not exactly something the electorate holds in high (relative to the recent past decades) esteem these days. And it's only gonna get worse as the boomers croak and are replaced by younger people who've seen institutions do a lot less good in their lifetimes.
    - idiotsecant 8mo ago
      The problem is that these institutions are still doing massively useful things. They've been doing them so long that they are invisible. People think the gains that we've made in air quality, consumer rights, labor rights, etc to infinity are natural features of the universe. They are not. They are hard fought and require focused, driven people to keep them. Institutions serve a useful function.
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
- hackyhacky 8mo ago
  > You really thing the adminstration's goal is for Americans to not have running water & electricity, Their goal is to stay in power at all costs. Again, they themselves have stated this plainly enough. If there is collateral damage to the American people as a consequence of their ambition, well, that's a sacrifice they are willing to make.
  - andsoitis 8mo ago
    > Their goal is to stay in power at all costs. How, then, do you explain their frequent retreat, e.g. on ICE, on tariffs, etc.? I think they are pushing very very hard on many fronts, but even they are limited by what Americans will allow and we see it as they fret and adjust when there’s strong pushback.
    - hackyhacky 8mo ago
      > they are limited by what Americans will allow Sure. The current administration is more message-focused than policy-focused. That's because most voters have no idea about policies, and know only how it's spun on Fox News. This fact makes it all the more frustrating that so many business and influential people are failing to push back when their voice could make a difference.
    - 5upplied_demand 8mo ago
      > even they are limited by what Americans will allow and we see it as they fret and adjust when there’s strong pushback. But that doesn't change their goal. They have openly stated what they want, the fact that courts have sometimes intervened or that fig leaves have been given doesn't change the long-term goal. Were they retreating on ICE when they said they want them at polling stations? It seems like an escalation to me.
      - andsoitis 8mo ago
        > But that doesn't change their goal. OK, let's assume that. Goal is one thing. How far they're willing and able to go (and hence be effective in getting that goal) is a different matter. That's my argument. The current adminitration has shown that their ego (adoration) is a limiting factor in what they're willing to do for power. To wit, top Republicans warn GOP will face midterm election ‘bloodbath’. Why bother caring? Is it just political theater?
- deaux 8mo ago
  It's a "theory". The term "conspiracy theory" is always bad faith. And don't try to "but they're theorizing that people are conspiring!".
  - andsoitis 8mo ago
    > The term "conspiracy theory" is always bad faith. Hard disagree. The term serves a legitimate purpose: distinguishing between evidence-based claims about actual conspiracies (which do happen) and unfounded or poorly-supported theories. Watergate was a real conspiracy. The tobacco industry really did conspire to hide health risks. But not every claim of hidden coordination is equally credible. Legitimate uses include describing theories that rely on unfalsifiable reasoning ("any evidence against it is planted"), highlighting lack of credible evidence for extraordinary claims, distinguishing speculation from established facts. Bad faith uses includ dismissing inconvenient questions without engaging the evidence, shutting down legitimate skepticism of official narratives, or using it as a thought-terminating cliche to avoid debate. Now, reasonable people can disagree on whether my characterization is in bad faith or legitimate. I think we could agree on that.
    - deaux 8mo ago
      No, the word has long lost that purpose. You unfortunately don't influence whether it has or hasn't. Once upon a time "gay" only meant "happy". You can claim "Well when I call a random person enormously gay, I just mean they're enormously happy", but it doesn't matter. You're in a community that uses English, not andsoitislish. For reference, I wish you were right, it would be great if indeed the word still served that purpose - but it doesn't.
- FranklinJabar 8mo ago
  Obviously, this doesn't require a conspiracy. But it's easier to rules over ashes than it is to build a functional country.
- ekidd 8mo ago
  > You really thing the adminstration's goal is for Americans to not have running water & electricity, thinking that will keep them in power? That makes no sense. The GP post literally said that the goal was not to have free elections, and that the other things you mention were collateral damage, or at worst something that could be exploited to further the main goal. You took their two examples of collateral damage, implied the GP thought those were the goal, and ignored his actual claim that the goal was to end fair elections. It's dangerous to pattern match what you read to something in your head, rather than paying attention to the claims someone actually made.
  - andsoitis 8mo ago
    > The GP post literally said that the goal was not to have free elections OK, let's assume that. Goal is one thing. How far they're willing and able to go (and hence be effective in getting that goal) is a different matter. That's my argument. The current adminitration has shown that their ego (adoration) is a limiting factor in what they're willing to do for power. To wit, top Republicans warn GOP will face midterm election ‘bloodbath’. Why bother caring? Is it just political theater?
- QuadmasterXLII 8mo ago
  Selection pressure can work like a conspiracy without anyone actively conspiring. Lots of people are just incompentent, not malicious. This made Hanlon's razor, "assume incompentence not malice," memetically fit in many walks of life, so it spread till millions of Americans followed it when processing news. As a result, incompetent politicians got more leeway to do malicious things. It turned out that in electoral politics, if you are already an a-hole, leeway to be evil without being called on it is more useful than compentence. Incompetence is hard to fake, so our electoral system now demands that you be both incompetent and an asshole to get elected. The only fix is to change the incentives, which means calling out malice in our politicians when it looks like malice, even if we can't prove that it's malice and not just incompetence, and ESPECIALLY even if the person is incompetent too.
  - jacquesm 8mo ago
    I've come to the conclusion that it is a distinction without a difference. It doesn't matter whether someone is incompetent or malicious, the outcomes are what matter so we may as well treat both the same: as malice. That solves a lot of problems and it will hopefully dissuade the incompetents from seeking office. Anybody who still behaves malicious then deserves what they've got coming to them. All of this pussyfooting is only making matters (much) worse.
KingOfCoders 8mo ago
"You will only have to vote once more. Then we'll fix it"
khat 8mo ago
Apparently that's where you stopped reading. If you continue reading, with a little be of logical reasoning and comprehension, you will learn that Plankey has been nominated by Trump, has bipartisan support, and even that Trump started the CISA agency. The only thing holding it up are 2 republicans and 1 democrat over some contract that probably has something to do with their buddies getting some contract deal. This isn't about "this administration", it's about your everyday political favors behind closed doors that has been happening since governments have been a thing.
- sheikhnbake 8mo ago
  That doesn't account for the ~1,000 employees being gutted from the agency and leaving a maliciously incompetent acting director in place. Both of which are directly caused by the current admin and won't be remedied by Plankey getting a confirmation, possibly for years.
- vlovich123 8mo ago
  For what it’s worth CISA built upon previous work in the DHS (basically rebranded NPPD as CISA) which evolved from NCSD which itself merged NCS and other cybersecurity teams in the wake of 9/11. America has been doing cybersecurity longer than any other country I think but presenting a rebranding as somehow something Trump is leading the charge on is a weird take.
ap99 8mo ago
> Current administration has the explicit goal to not have free elections going forward. Where do you get this from?
- vlovich123 8mo ago
  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/25/trump-2028-steve-bannon-comments/86897789007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/25/trum... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-laura-ingraham-future-voting_n_66a85c2ae4b0e33a3bb7cd36 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-laura-ingraham-f... Repeated statements by Trump and his circle claiming he’ll run in 2028. Statements by Trump that his supporters won’t ever need to vote again. That little insurrection they tried on January 6th 2021. Their current weaponization and staffing of ICE by people with questionable backgrounds and morals and deploying them against their political enemies under the pretext of illegal immigration (Texas has a bigger problem than Wisconsin For what it’s worth). Constantly praising dictatorial leaders like Putin and Xi while threatening and talking shit about Democratic allies. So whether or not metastasizes to that point, pretending like this concern has no grounding in actual actions taken and statements uttered is wild, because this playbook isn’t new and the intended direction seems more clear than not.
- tempodox 8mo ago
  Some people have eyes and ears.
- tencentshill 8mo ago
  Vibes, gut feelings, a general understanding of the history of authoritarian movements. But no, let's wait and see if He goes all the way.
- dkuntz2 8mo ago
  from the actual words said by the president???
  - array_key_first 8mo ago
    No no no you don't understand, he was joking. You see, when trump says something I like it's earnest, but if he says something that makes me look bad then he's joking.

by dotdi 8mo ago

andsoitis 8mo ago

[flagged]

perfmode 8mo ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=ice+outside+polling+locations&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=ice+outside+polling+location...
jacquesm 8mo ago
What makes no sense is to be able to observe the last 13 months and then to think that this is 'business as usual'.
- andsoitis 8mo ago
  Did I imply “business as usual”? I don’t think so. At the same time, I actually think that characterization lacks usefulness. For instance, in some cases there’s clearly breaking norms (most poeple would porobably mostly for the worse, and in some limited cases for better). In other cases it is just more overt (or in some cases, more extreme) expression of typical American policy.
  - jacquesm 8mo ago
    You're smack in the middle of accepting the unacceptable because of normalization of deviance. None of this is 'typical American policy'. It is utter chaos, both internal and external. Your calibration point should not be Trump 1 but the Obama or Clinton administrations which were if not super popular at least competent.
    - andsoitis 8mo ago
      > You're smack in the middle of accepting the unacceptable because of normalization of deviance. To get a little personal, I will just say that you don't know what's in my heart or on my mind. To get back on point: > None of this is 'typical American policy'. Mabye you will say I'm being pedantic, but I think that's a categorically false statement. > Your calibration point should not be Trump 1 but the Obama or Clinton administrations which were if not super popular at least competent. Why cherry pick those two? What about more recent (Biden) or further back? I think you will find that there's a lot of things that are persistent over the last 250 years, including political violence, xenophobia, detaining people without due process, invading other countries, tarriffs, rhetoric that Europe should pay for its own defense, etc. To be clear, I'm not saying any of these are OK. There are also other positive dynamics that persist, like Americans pushing back and the administration needing to retreat and adjust.
      - jacquesm 8mo ago
        > To get a little personal, I will just say that you don't know what's in my heart or on my mind. No but you are making statements here and those are indicative. > Mabye you will say I'm being pedantic, but I think that's a categorically false statement. That's your privilege. > Why cherry pick those two? Because the US economy and the US status in the world under those two sets of administrations was doing well compared to many of the alternatives.
idiotsecant 8mo ago
Not that the objective is institutional rot, nessessarily. More that this administration views institution as fundamentally unimportant.Its the curse of the maintainer. When things are going well bad management thinks that maintenance is a useless expense.
- cucumber3732842 8mo ago
  >More that this administration views institution as fundamentally unimportant Politicians and their lackeys prioritize what makes them popular with the electorate. "Institutions" are not exactly something the electorate holds in high (relative to the recent past decades) esteem these days. And it's only gonna get worse as the boomers croak and are replaced by younger people who've seen institutions do a lot less good in their lifetimes.
  - idiotsecant 8mo ago
    The problem is that these institutions are still doing massively useful things. They've been doing them so long that they are invisible. People think the gains that we've made in air quality, consumer rights, labor rights, etc to infinity are natural features of the universe. They are not. They are hard fought and require focused, driven people to keep them. Institutions serve a useful function.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
hackyhacky 8mo ago
> You really thing the adminstration's goal is for Americans to not have running water & electricity, Their goal is to stay in power at all costs. Again, they themselves have stated this plainly enough. If there is collateral damage to the American people as a consequence of their ambition, well, that's a sacrifice they are willing to make.
- andsoitis 8mo ago
  > Their goal is to stay in power at all costs. How, then, do you explain their frequent retreat, e.g. on ICE, on tariffs, etc.? I think they are pushing very very hard on many fronts, but even they are limited by what Americans will allow and we see it as they fret and adjust when there’s strong pushback.
  - hackyhacky 8mo ago
    > they are limited by what Americans will allow Sure. The current administration is more message-focused than policy-focused. That's because most voters have no idea about policies, and know only how it's spun on Fox News. This fact makes it all the more frustrating that so many business and influential people are failing to push back when their voice could make a difference.
  - 5upplied_demand 8mo ago
    > even they are limited by what Americans will allow and we see it as they fret and adjust when there’s strong pushback. But that doesn't change their goal. They have openly stated what they want, the fact that courts have sometimes intervened or that fig leaves have been given doesn't change the long-term goal. Were they retreating on ICE when they said they want them at polling stations? It seems like an escalation to me.
    - andsoitis 8mo ago
      > But that doesn't change their goal. OK, let's assume that. Goal is one thing. How far they're willing and able to go (and hence be effective in getting that goal) is a different matter. That's my argument. The current adminitration has shown that their ego (adoration) is a limiting factor in what they're willing to do for power. To wit, top Republicans warn GOP will face midterm election ‘bloodbath’. Why bother caring? Is it just political theater?
deaux 8mo ago
It's a "theory". The term "conspiracy theory" is always bad faith. And don't try to "but they're theorizing that people are conspiring!".
- andsoitis 8mo ago
  > The term "conspiracy theory" is always bad faith. Hard disagree. The term serves a legitimate purpose: distinguishing between evidence-based claims about actual conspiracies (which do happen) and unfounded or poorly-supported theories. Watergate was a real conspiracy. The tobacco industry really did conspire to hide health risks. But not every claim of hidden coordination is equally credible. Legitimate uses include describing theories that rely on unfalsifiable reasoning ("any evidence against it is planted"), highlighting lack of credible evidence for extraordinary claims, distinguishing speculation from established facts. Bad faith uses includ dismissing inconvenient questions without engaging the evidence, shutting down legitimate skepticism of official narratives, or using it as a thought-terminating cliche to avoid debate. Now, reasonable people can disagree on whether my characterization is in bad faith or legitimate. I think we could agree on that.
  - deaux 8mo ago
    No, the word has long lost that purpose. You unfortunately don't influence whether it has or hasn't. Once upon a time "gay" only meant "happy". You can claim "Well when I call a random person enormously gay, I just mean they're enormously happy", but it doesn't matter. You're in a community that uses English, not andsoitislish. For reference, I wish you were right, it would be great if indeed the word still served that purpose - but it doesn't.
FranklinJabar 8mo ago
Obviously, this doesn't require a conspiracy. But it's easier to rules over ashes than it is to build a functional country.
ekidd 8mo ago
> You really thing the adminstration's goal is for Americans to not have running water & electricity, thinking that will keep them in power? That makes no sense. The GP post literally said that the goal was not to have free elections, and that the other things you mention were collateral damage, or at worst something that could be exploited to further the main goal. You took their two examples of collateral damage, implied the GP thought those were the goal, and ignored his actual claim that the goal was to end fair elections. It's dangerous to pattern match what you read to something in your head, rather than paying attention to the claims someone actually made.
- andsoitis 8mo ago
  > The GP post literally said that the goal was not to have free elections OK, let's assume that. Goal is one thing. How far they're willing and able to go (and hence be effective in getting that goal) is a different matter. That's my argument. The current adminitration has shown that their ego (adoration) is a limiting factor in what they're willing to do for power. To wit, top Republicans warn GOP will face midterm election ‘bloodbath’. Why bother caring? Is it just political theater?
QuadmasterXLII 8mo ago
Selection pressure can work like a conspiracy without anyone actively conspiring. Lots of people are just incompentent, not malicious. This made Hanlon's razor, "assume incompentence not malice," memetically fit in many walks of life, so it spread till millions of Americans followed it when processing news. As a result, incompetent politicians got more leeway to do malicious things. It turned out that in electoral politics, if you are already an a-hole, leeway to be evil without being called on it is more useful than compentence. Incompetence is hard to fake, so our electoral system now demands that you be both incompetent and an asshole to get elected. The only fix is to change the incentives, which means calling out malice in our politicians when it looks like malice, even if we can't prove that it's malice and not just incompetence, and ESPECIALLY even if the person is incompetent too.
- jacquesm 8mo ago
  I've come to the conclusion that it is a distinction without a difference. It doesn't matter whether someone is incompetent or malicious, the outcomes are what matter so we may as well treat both the same: as malice. That solves a lot of problems and it will hopefully dissuade the incompetents from seeking office. Anybody who still behaves malicious then deserves what they've got coming to them. All of this pussyfooting is only making matters (much) worse.

KingOfCoders 8mo ago

"You will only have to vote once more. Then we'll fix it"

khat 8mo ago

Apparently that's where you stopped reading. If you continue reading, with a little be of logical reasoning and comprehension, you will learn that Plankey has been nominated by Trump, has bipartisan support, and even that Trump started the CISA agency. The only thing holding it up are 2 republicans and 1 democrat over some contract that probably has something to do with their buddies getting some contract deal. This isn't about "this administration", it's about your everyday political favors behind closed doors that has been happening since governments have been a thing.

sheikhnbake 8mo ago
That doesn't account for the ~1,000 employees being gutted from the agency and leaving a maliciously incompetent acting director in place. Both of which are directly caused by the current admin and won't be remedied by Plankey getting a confirmation, possibly for years.
vlovich123 8mo ago
For what it’s worth CISA built upon previous work in the DHS (basically rebranded NPPD as CISA) which evolved from NCSD which itself merged NCS and other cybersecurity teams in the wake of 9/11. America has been doing cybersecurity longer than any other country I think but presenting a rebranding as somehow something Trump is leading the charge on is a weird take.

ap99 8mo ago

> Current administration has the explicit goal to not have free elections going forward. Where do you get this from?

vlovich123 8mo ago
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/25/trump-2028-steve-bannon-comments/86897789007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/25/trum... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-laura-ingraham-future-voting_n_66a85c2ae4b0e33a3bb7cd36 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-laura-ingraham-f... Repeated statements by Trump and his circle claiming he’ll run in 2028. Statements by Trump that his supporters won’t ever need to vote again. That little insurrection they tried on January 6th 2021. Their current weaponization and staffing of ICE by people with questionable backgrounds and morals and deploying them against their political enemies under the pretext of illegal immigration (Texas has a bigger problem than Wisconsin For what it’s worth). Constantly praising dictatorial leaders like Putin and Xi while threatening and talking shit about Democratic allies. So whether or not metastasizes to that point, pretending like this concern has no grounding in actual actions taken and statements uttered is wild, because this playbook isn’t new and the intended direction seems more clear than not.
tempodox 8mo ago
Some people have eyes and ears.
tencentshill 8mo ago
Vibes, gut feelings, a general understanding of the history of authoritarian movements. But no, let's wait and see if He goes all the way.
dkuntz2 8mo ago
from the actual words said by the president???
- array_key_first 8mo ago
  No no no you don't understand, he was joking. You see, when trump says something I like it's earnest, but if he says something that makes me look bad then he's joking.