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This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means

This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many many years, to reward those who are in the favored status, and kill those who are disfavored. Decision making is random and capricious, just be sure to bribe those at the top with whatever favors you can.

nickff 5mo ago
This is also very foreseeable for an administrative state, and this slippery slope has been predicted for over a century. Rule by administrators (or bureaucrats) is just as opaque/unaccountable/corrupt, and as the extent of their power grew, it was inevitable that the political leadership would exploit the power (as has already happened many times before). It seems like nobody (at least on the liberal end of the spectrum) really cared about the arbitrary use of power when it was mostly left-liberals making the choices. The way to fix this is to reduce the power of the administrative state, not to just complain about Trump, but I have little hope of a real solution.
- mothballed 5mo ago
  NCI and NSF recipients getting a taste of what EPA, DEA and ATF was doing to the plebs all along with random "interpretations" and bad-faith presentations of them to judge and jury. Maybe that whole "the academics and bureaucrats are so smart we totally need to cede power from congress to the executive" wasn't such a bright idea after all. Of course, it's totally lost on the academic-bureaucratic class that the anti-intellectuals wouldn't hesitate to cut off their nose to spite their face by electing a president that would turn around and surprise pikachu the academics with the very machine they had helped build. Now that academics are losing their grips within the bureaucratic apparatus, suddenly they are deciding to rethink their strategy -- but it's not a coming to Jesus moment, but rather just a reactionary response.
  - pianoben 5mo ago
    Right! Naturally, our Congress is full of technical and administrative expertise and totally has the time, patience, and will to cleanly and carefully craft the wide body of regulation we've grown to require for a smooth and healthy and productive society. No reason for those awful technocrats to usurp such authority when we've got a capable and knowledgable legislative branch capable of doing the work just as well.
    - mothballed 5mo ago
      Don't worry, we're going to enjoy the fruits of your thought process real well and good -- the very last guy left in the House with any constitutional focus just got blasted out with the most expensive outside funding campaign against a rep in the entire history of the USA. It looks like the bureaucratic state is just getting on its next level roll, so enjoy the ride. A few of you may even realize in the coming years why the 10th amendment wasn't meant to just be an inconvenience to ignore. But I'm not dumb enough to think you'll believe my words, you'll only learn by experience.
      - mindslight 5mo ago
        I've been where you are. In your coming years you will realize that the bureaucracy had at least brought us stability, prosperity, and a modicum of protection against abuse from big business, the rough edges for small businesses and individuals near the edge of the law notwithstanding. Characterizing Massie's loss as an aspect of that bureaucracy is a mistake - Trumpism is a repudiation of the bureaucracy in favor of autocracy, while the all of the authoritarianism sticks around (or even grows!). Expect those rough edges to become much more arbitrary and capricious. And no, accelerationism or "I told you so" won't save you.
    - ceejayoz 5mo ago
      > Naturally, our Congress is full of technical and administrative expertise… Congress knew of that issue; for decades, Congress has delegated the nitty gritty to regulatory agencies, who employ said experts. SCOTUS, on the other hand, are the idiots you seek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Raimondo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra...
- rightbyte 5mo ago
  > Rule by administrators (or bureaucrats) is just as opaque/unaccountable/corrupt I don't agree. The division of power is most likely preferable. Otherwise the politician also become the beurocrat but way more arbitrary.
  - nickff 5mo ago
    When the administrators/bureaucrats (whatever your preferred terms are) have very limited and defined powers, I agree they are different. When the administrative powers become wide-sweeping and ill-defined, the powers are difficult to differentiate from those of the politicians.
    - albumen 5mo ago
      What you’re seeing is the result of the USA voting in a party and president that made it clear beforehand that they were going to install puppet civil servants to do their will. Most other developed countries have avoided this scenario.
      - kergonath 5mo ago
        It’s important that most of the civil service is staffed by permanent employees hired through a fair and well-defined process and not appointed for political reasons.
        mikeyouse 5mo ago
        It's equally important to note that the current administration is absolutely gutting those formerly non-political permanent hires and replacing them with apparatchiks. It's going to be very difficult to remove them all from office if this nightmare ever ends.
- sdenton4 5mo ago
  Going for whataboutism in the same week trump establishes a $2B find to pay off his cronies and tries to permanently exempt himself from taxes is laughable.
  - nickff 5mo ago
    My points are not whataboutism; I’m saying this was predictable, forecast, and inevitable. Whataboutism focuses on tangential (or unrelated) things.
- bodiekane 5mo ago
  Where do you imagine the power goes when you've taken it away from "the administrative state"? I can totally understand an argument that says a certain administrative function was not working well and needed to be fixed. But if you're just suggesting destroying these institutions, what fills that power vacuum other than the far worse situation we're seeing unfolding now?
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > Where do you imagine the power goes when you've taken it away from "the administrative state"? Congress. The courts have clumsily dismantled the administrative state. But there are more options than an unchecked executive and unaccountable unelecteds.
    - exe34 5mo ago
      Congress still has all the power granted to it by the constitution. They chose not to use those powers, because the republicans support the orange turd.
      - nickff 5mo ago
        Congress has been delegating huge amounts of power to the administrative state (via the Executive Branch) for longer than Donald J Trump has been alive.
        exe34 5mo ago
        Any powers that congress delegates, they can pull back.
- nielsbot 5mo ago
  The current path is replacing bureaucratic power with unchecked executive power which is the opposite of what you want. Bureaucrats who must follow the rule of law is what you want.
  - JCTheDenthog 5mo ago
    >Bureaucrats who must follow the rule of law is what you want. Under Chevron we had the opposite of that: bureaucrats who had ridiculously wide latitude to make their own rules. What we actually need is for congress to take back control instead of passing all power and authority to the executive branch.
    - pocksuppet 5mo ago
      Congress always had the power to remove delegated power from an institution if it didn't like how that institution was performing. It's also had the power to disband the executive branch regime at any point since January 20. Everything that is happening now is happening with the complete approval of Congress.
      - JCTheDenthog 5mo ago
        Correct, and congress hasn't been exercising that power for the better part of a century now. The War Powers Resolution was 1973, for example. I don't know what the exact solution is, but something needs to change in the structure and incentives of congress to incentivize them to exercise power again. Eliminating the filibuster and drastically increasing the total number of representatives seem like the best ways to me, but I'm open yo other possibilities.
        nielsbot 5mo ago
        Money out of politics
        pocksuppet 5mo ago
        Nobody should be incentivized to exercise power for the sake of exercising power. They should be incentivized to exercise power to change things they don't agree with. And they already have that incentive. And they are already using it. What is there to change?
gwerbin 5mo ago
To be fair, this has been a long time coming, and a lot of forces have been committed over decades to finally make this kind of thing possible. You're just seeing the next phase of the plan unfolding.
- wat10000 5mo ago
  After listening to way too much Rush Limbaugh 30-some years ago, little of what's happening has been surprising, although that doesn't stop it from being distressing all the same.
jorblumesea 5mo ago
The US is trending towards a Russian style oligarchy and these latest moves are just one of a wider pattern of trying to suppress academia, freedom of speech, personal freedoms.
- pocksuppet 5mo ago
  > The US is a Russian style oligarchy FTFY. From the outside, people can easily see it.
  - DANmode 5mo ago
    Even Russian people? Anyway, I wonder what comes after the USAA.
    - cyberax 5mo ago
      As a Russian national: no, the USA is not yet at nearly the same level of corruption. The main bulwark against Russianification is not the Congress or the SCOTUS, it's the true federative nature of the US. States have a lot of very real autonomy and they limit the amount of corrupt overreach.
      - DANmode 5mo ago
        Watching their effectiveness against Google closely. As are many, I’m sure.
      - vkou 5mo ago
        States have autonomy on paper. In practice, it turns out otherwise.
        cyberax 5mo ago
        States absolutely have autonomy. And not just on paper. And a lot of it is just in the amount of friction that the federal government can get. E.g. Trump sent ICE goons to MN and now he's embroiled in dozens of lawsuits because of that. Yes, he probably will win most of them eventually, but they all take time and energy. With a lot of negative PR along the way.
nielsbot 5mo ago
> always be on very very good terms with leadership Not a guarantee either.. just a hope
TrackerFF 5mo ago
We can go even further: One hallmark of fascist regimes is selective enforcement. They start with making laws and rules so opaque and convoluted that pretty much anyone will break them at one point. But they will be extremely selective on when they enforce them, and who they go after. EDIT: But, as someone will probably point out, convoluted laws / bureaucracy does obviously not automatically mean fascism or corruption. Lots of weird laws are there to cover all sorts of edge cases.
- 317070 5mo ago
  Not sure if it matters, but that is at least not true for nazi-style fascism. In there, they had a very strong rule of law for most people. But, there was a dual, a parallel system where there was no law at all, it operated outside of the legal system. You could win a trial and be exhonorated, only to be taken away by the gestapo at the door of the courtroom. It was important for the nazis to keep businesses running, and have most people continue their lives without noticing major changes. Most people would not come into contact with the second system, and barely knew it existed. But if you entered the second system, you often would not come out alive. This way, they could transit into an authoritarian system without hurting the economy. They knew this and planned it, and it turned out to be correct.
  - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
    If you can be whisked off to a separate system where you don't have legal rights, you by definition don't have rule of law. Literally the singular, most core principle of the concept is that all persons are equal under the law, whether they are royalty or Jewish. "Strong rule of law for most people" is an inherently contradictory phrase.
    - 317070 5mo ago
      If you want to read more: the concept is called "the dual state" [1] after the eponymous book [0] I agree that the phrase is somewhat contradictory, but it is the best way to describe what was going on. As long as you were within the confines of the normative state, you experienced a rule of law. But as soon as you stepped into the prerogative state, anything could happen. So a "rule of law", except that it didn't apply to everybody, but only to most people. And importantly, the existence of the prerogative state is mostly hidden when you're in the normative state (so unlike a king, which everybody knew was outside of the law) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dual_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dual_State [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model)
qsera 5mo ago
>This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. Seriously, is there any other kind?
hn_throwaway_99 5mo ago
> Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. This is what is so hard for me to handle, and it really feels like I'm grieving a death. Because no matter what happens, even if some things eventually get better, I feel like the US as I knew it is dead - there is simply no coming back from the fact that it's been laid bare how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would sell out to completely destroy our Constitutional principles. I had to laugh when I read a title on the Washington Post today, "President Trump faced a wall of opposition from Senate G.O.P. lawmakers, in part over his plan to create a $1.8 billion fund to reward his allies", with of all people Susan Collins in the header image. Lol, I'm sure she'll release a statement saying how she's "very concerned" and end up doing nothing anyway.
- epistasis 5mo ago
  The primary system means that nobody with any principles is left in the Republican Party, unfortunately. But not all is lost. Many are very eager for the reins of power to come back and for laws to be enforced. Sure, the Trump regime may tell itself that it's immune from tax audits ever again, but that's not legal and as soon as the force of law is back there are many eager attorneys with high principles that will be hired back into the DoJ and enforce the law. We saw this after Nixon's lawlessness too. Those who abetted Nixon in breaking the law were disbarred. Prosecutions will come. Trumps's key mistake is thinking that his popularity doesn't matter anymore. It does. It means that people with morals and ethics can legally gain power and legally enforce the law. If Trump was at 60% popularity, I would be singing a different tune. But at 35% popularity and 60% unfavorable, there is appetite left in our democracy to remain a democracy and to go after the crooks. Even if a good 30% of that unfavorable opinion is just about people's own pocketbooks rather than the principles of law and democracy, that's enough for those who care to actually enforce law. Be concerned, but be ready tk supppprt those who will correct the course of our ship.
  - dividedbyzero 5mo ago
    I wonder, is there an appetite left to remain a democracy, or more like an appetite for an autocrat who pays a little more attention to the façade and doesn't go out of his way to offend even his most loyal followers?
kergonath 5mo ago
> No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Exactly. That’s why dictatorships are so adverse to the rule of law, despite many (notably the macho-nationalist ones) being ostensibly for "law and order". > Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. Yes, it is sad. It’s Hungary all over again, just with a world-spanning blast radius.
- pseudohadamard 5mo ago
  "Nazi Germany was not a straightforward totalitarian system. It retained some vestiges of the rule of law, chiefly in matters of business, so that the capitalist economy had the basic rules it needed to keep going. But the prerogative state - Hitler's political machinery - enjoyed 'jurisdiction over jurisdiction'" - Ernst Fraenkel.
mystraline 5mo ago
> Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. We've been in this for much longer, but its been unevenly distributed. I seem to remember a certain Biden saying to his billionaire donors "Nothing fundamental would change". I remember Obama saying "Hope and Change", when it was 'keep gitmo open', drone strikes, and destroying 1fa via Wikileaks. I remember Bush's "Mission Accomplished", and 25 more years of war in the sandbox. Of course, weapons manufs got bank. Now the corruption is just more brazen. Its in everyonea faces now, and not kind of hidden. I dunno, being in the sunlight just shows how much a farce this shithole of a country is. And yeah, most is. Drive in any rural states or areas, and the poverty will hit you hard. We're a 3rd world kleptocracy with liberal 1st world sploches in major cities.

nickff 5mo ago

This is also very foreseeable for an administrative state, and this slippery slope has been predicted for over a century. Rule by administrators (or bureaucrats) is just as opaque/unaccountable/corrupt, and as the extent of their power grew, it was inevitable that the political leadership would exploit the power (as has already happened many times before). It seems like nobody (at least on the liberal end of the spectrum) really cared about the arbitrary use of power when it was mostly left-liberals making the choices. The way to fix this is to reduce the power of the administrative state, not to just complain about Trump, but I have little hope of a real solution.

mothballed 5mo ago
NCI and NSF recipients getting a taste of what EPA, DEA and ATF was doing to the plebs all along with random "interpretations" and bad-faith presentations of them to judge and jury. Maybe that whole "the academics and bureaucrats are so smart we totally need to cede power from congress to the executive" wasn't such a bright idea after all. Of course, it's totally lost on the academic-bureaucratic class that the anti-intellectuals wouldn't hesitate to cut off their nose to spite their face by electing a president that would turn around and surprise pikachu the academics with the very machine they had helped build. Now that academics are losing their grips within the bureaucratic apparatus, suddenly they are deciding to rethink their strategy -- but it's not a coming to Jesus moment, but rather just a reactionary response.
- pianoben 5mo ago
  Right! Naturally, our Congress is full of technical and administrative expertise and totally has the time, patience, and will to cleanly and carefully craft the wide body of regulation we've grown to require for a smooth and healthy and productive society. No reason for those awful technocrats to usurp such authority when we've got a capable and knowledgable legislative branch capable of doing the work just as well.
  - mothballed 5mo ago
    Don't worry, we're going to enjoy the fruits of your thought process real well and good -- the very last guy left in the House with any constitutional focus just got blasted out with the most expensive outside funding campaign against a rep in the entire history of the USA. It looks like the bureaucratic state is just getting on its next level roll, so enjoy the ride. A few of you may even realize in the coming years why the 10th amendment wasn't meant to just be an inconvenience to ignore. But I'm not dumb enough to think you'll believe my words, you'll only learn by experience.
    - mindslight 5mo ago
      I've been where you are. In your coming years you will realize that the bureaucracy had at least brought us stability, prosperity, and a modicum of protection against abuse from big business, the rough edges for small businesses and individuals near the edge of the law notwithstanding. Characterizing Massie's loss as an aspect of that bureaucracy is a mistake - Trumpism is a repudiation of the bureaucracy in favor of autocracy, while the all of the authoritarianism sticks around (or even grows!). Expect those rough edges to become much more arbitrary and capricious. And no, accelerationism or "I told you so" won't save you.
  - ceejayoz 5mo ago
    > Naturally, our Congress is full of technical and administrative expertise… Congress knew of that issue; for decades, Congress has delegated the nitty gritty to regulatory agencies, who employ said experts. SCOTUS, on the other hand, are the idiots you seek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Raimondo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra...
rightbyte 5mo ago
> Rule by administrators (or bureaucrats) is just as opaque/unaccountable/corrupt I don't agree. The division of power is most likely preferable. Otherwise the politician also become the beurocrat but way more arbitrary.
- nickff 5mo ago
  When the administrators/bureaucrats (whatever your preferred terms are) have very limited and defined powers, I agree they are different. When the administrative powers become wide-sweeping and ill-defined, the powers are difficult to differentiate from those of the politicians.
  - albumen 5mo ago
    What you’re seeing is the result of the USA voting in a party and president that made it clear beforehand that they were going to install puppet civil servants to do their will. Most other developed countries have avoided this scenario.
    - kergonath 5mo ago
      It’s important that most of the civil service is staffed by permanent employees hired through a fair and well-defined process and not appointed for political reasons.
      - mikeyouse 5mo ago
        It's equally important to note that the current administration is absolutely gutting those formerly non-political permanent hires and replacing them with apparatchiks. It's going to be very difficult to remove them all from office if this nightmare ever ends.
sdenton4 5mo ago
Going for whataboutism in the same week trump establishes a $2B find to pay off his cronies and tries to permanently exempt himself from taxes is laughable.
- nickff 5mo ago
  My points are not whataboutism; I’m saying this was predictable, forecast, and inevitable. Whataboutism focuses on tangential (or unrelated) things.
bodiekane 5mo ago
Where do you imagine the power goes when you've taken it away from "the administrative state"? I can totally understand an argument that says a certain administrative function was not working well and needed to be fixed. But if you're just suggesting destroying these institutions, what fills that power vacuum other than the far worse situation we're seeing unfolding now?
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > Where do you imagine the power goes when you've taken it away from "the administrative state"? Congress. The courts have clumsily dismantled the administrative state. But there are more options than an unchecked executive and unaccountable unelecteds.
  - exe34 5mo ago
    Congress still has all the power granted to it by the constitution. They chose not to use those powers, because the republicans support the orange turd.
    - nickff 5mo ago
      Congress has been delegating huge amounts of power to the administrative state (via the Executive Branch) for longer than Donald J Trump has been alive.
      - exe34 5mo ago
        Any powers that congress delegates, they can pull back.
nielsbot 5mo ago
The current path is replacing bureaucratic power with unchecked executive power which is the opposite of what you want. Bureaucrats who must follow the rule of law is what you want.
- JCTheDenthog 5mo ago
  >Bureaucrats who must follow the rule of law is what you want. Under Chevron we had the opposite of that: bureaucrats who had ridiculously wide latitude to make their own rules. What we actually need is for congress to take back control instead of passing all power and authority to the executive branch.
  - pocksuppet 5mo ago
    Congress always had the power to remove delegated power from an institution if it didn't like how that institution was performing. It's also had the power to disband the executive branch regime at any point since January 20. Everything that is happening now is happening with the complete approval of Congress.
    - JCTheDenthog 5mo ago
      Correct, and congress hasn't been exercising that power for the better part of a century now. The War Powers Resolution was 1973, for example. I don't know what the exact solution is, but something needs to change in the structure and incentives of congress to incentivize them to exercise power again. Eliminating the filibuster and drastically increasing the total number of representatives seem like the best ways to me, but I'm open yo other possibilities.
      - nielsbot 5mo ago
        Money out of politics
      - pocksuppet 5mo ago
        Nobody should be incentivized to exercise power for the sake of exercising power. They should be incentivized to exercise power to change things they don't agree with. And they already have that incentive. And they are already using it. What is there to change?

gwerbin 5mo ago

To be fair, this has been a long time coming, and a lot of forces have been committed over decades to finally make this kind of thing possible. You're just seeing the next phase of the plan unfolding.

wat10000 5mo ago
After listening to way too much Rush Limbaugh 30-some years ago, little of what's happening has been surprising, although that doesn't stop it from being distressing all the same.

jorblumesea 5mo ago

The US is trending towards a Russian style oligarchy and these latest moves are just one of a wider pattern of trying to suppress academia, freedom of speech, personal freedoms.

pocksuppet 5mo ago
> The US is a Russian style oligarchy FTFY. From the outside, people can easily see it.
- DANmode 5mo ago
  Even Russian people? Anyway, I wonder what comes after the USAA.
  - cyberax 5mo ago
    As a Russian national: no, the USA is not yet at nearly the same level of corruption. The main bulwark against Russianification is not the Congress or the SCOTUS, it's the true federative nature of the US. States have a lot of very real autonomy and they limit the amount of corrupt overreach.
    - DANmode 5mo ago
      Watching their effectiveness against Google closely. As are many, I’m sure.
    - vkou 5mo ago
      States have autonomy on paper. In practice, it turns out otherwise.
      - cyberax 5mo ago
        States absolutely have autonomy. And not just on paper. And a lot of it is just in the amount of friction that the federal government can get. E.g. Trump sent ICE goons to MN and now he's embroiled in dozens of lawsuits because of that. Yes, he probably will win most of them eventually, but they all take time and energy. With a lot of negative PR along the way.

nielsbot 5mo ago

> always be on very very good terms with leadership Not a guarantee either.. just a hope

TrackerFF 5mo ago

We can go even further: One hallmark of fascist regimes is selective enforcement. They start with making laws and rules so opaque and convoluted that pretty much anyone will break them at one point. But they will be extremely selective on when they enforce them, and who they go after. EDIT: But, as someone will probably point out, convoluted laws / bureaucracy does obviously not automatically mean fascism or corruption. Lots of weird laws are there to cover all sorts of edge cases.

317070 5mo ago
Not sure if it matters, but that is at least not true for nazi-style fascism. In there, they had a very strong rule of law for most people. But, there was a dual, a parallel system where there was no law at all, it operated outside of the legal system. You could win a trial and be exhonorated, only to be taken away by the gestapo at the door of the courtroom. It was important for the nazis to keep businesses running, and have most people continue their lives without noticing major changes. Most people would not come into contact with the second system, and barely knew it existed. But if you entered the second system, you often would not come out alive. This way, they could transit into an authoritarian system without hurting the economy. They knew this and planned it, and it turned out to be correct.
- applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
  If you can be whisked off to a separate system where you don't have legal rights, you by definition don't have rule of law. Literally the singular, most core principle of the concept is that all persons are equal under the law, whether they are royalty or Jewish. "Strong rule of law for most people" is an inherently contradictory phrase.
  - 317070 5mo ago
    If you want to read more: the concept is called "the dual state" [1] after the eponymous book [0] I agree that the phrase is somewhat contradictory, but it is the best way to describe what was going on. As long as you were within the confines of the normative state, you experienced a rule of law. But as soon as you stepped into the prerogative state, anything could happen. So a "rule of law", except that it didn't apply to everybody, but only to most people. And importantly, the existence of the prerogative state is mostly hidden when you're in the normative state (so unlike a king, which everybody knew was outside of the law) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dual_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dual_State [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model)

qsera 5mo ago

>This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. Seriously, is there any other kind?

hn_throwaway_99 5mo ago

> Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. This is what is so hard for me to handle, and it really feels like I'm grieving a death. Because no matter what happens, even if some things eventually get better, I feel like the US as I knew it is dead - there is simply no coming back from the fact that it's been laid bare how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would sell out to completely destroy our Constitutional principles. I had to laugh when I read a title on the Washington Post today, "President Trump faced a wall of opposition from Senate G.O.P. lawmakers, in part over his plan to create a $1.8 billion fund to reward his allies", with of all people Susan Collins in the header image. Lol, I'm sure she'll release a statement saying how she's "very concerned" and end up doing nothing anyway.

epistasis 5mo ago
The primary system means that nobody with any principles is left in the Republican Party, unfortunately. But not all is lost. Many are very eager for the reins of power to come back and for laws to be enforced. Sure, the Trump regime may tell itself that it's immune from tax audits ever again, but that's not legal and as soon as the force of law is back there are many eager attorneys with high principles that will be hired back into the DoJ and enforce the law. We saw this after Nixon's lawlessness too. Those who abetted Nixon in breaking the law were disbarred. Prosecutions will come. Trumps's key mistake is thinking that his popularity doesn't matter anymore. It does. It means that people with morals and ethics can legally gain power and legally enforce the law. If Trump was at 60% popularity, I would be singing a different tune. But at 35% popularity and 60% unfavorable, there is appetite left in our democracy to remain a democracy and to go after the crooks. Even if a good 30% of that unfavorable opinion is just about people's own pocketbooks rather than the principles of law and democracy, that's enough for those who care to actually enforce law. Be concerned, but be ready tk supppprt those who will correct the course of our ship.
- dividedbyzero 5mo ago
  I wonder, is there an appetite left to remain a democracy, or more like an appetite for an autocrat who pays a little more attention to the façade and doesn't go out of his way to offend even his most loyal followers?

kergonath 5mo ago

> No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Exactly. That’s why dictatorships are so adverse to the rule of law, despite many (notably the macho-nationalist ones) being ostensibly for "law and order". > Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. Yes, it is sad. It’s Hungary all over again, just with a world-spanning blast radius.

pseudohadamard 5mo ago
"Nazi Germany was not a straightforward totalitarian system. It retained some vestiges of the rule of law, chiefly in matters of business, so that the capitalist economy had the basic rules it needed to keep going. But the prerogative state - Hitler's political machinery - enjoyed 'jurisdiction over jurisdiction'" - Ernst Fraenkel.

mystraline 5mo ago

> Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. We've been in this for much longer, but its been unevenly distributed. I seem to remember a certain Biden saying to his billionaire donors "Nothing fundamental would change". I remember Obama saying "Hope and Change", when it was 'keep gitmo open', drone strikes, and destroying 1fa via Wikileaks. I remember Bush's "Mission Accomplished", and 25 more years of war in the sandbox. Of course, weapons manufs got bank. Now the corruption is just more brazen. Its in everyonea faces now, and not kind of hidden. I dunno, being in the sunlight just shows how much a farce this shithole of a country is. And yeah, most is. Drive in any rural states or areas, and the poverty will hit you hard. We're a 3rd world kleptocracy with liberal 1st world sploches in major cities.