6 ms·

These people who work for this administration are all so grossly and maliciously incompetent.

by hn_throwaway_99 2mo ago

Varelion 2mo ago
Should be criminal.
- reverius42 2mo ago
  A lot of it is! We live in lawlessness (for those at the top) in the US.
  - piloto_ciego 2mo ago
    Man, this is the kind of thing I have been trying to tell people. It's unsettling to think about, but I'm like, "look, there are no rules now, it's all a negotiation, the only real laws are the laws of physics and the rules someone selectively enforces under the threat of violence." It would do us good if we remember this, because this sort of the basic state of nature that most people have lived under most of human history. I'm not saying this is how it should be, but a lot of people are still living in the pearl-clutched "but, that's against the rules!" despite there being basically no real rules for a decade. When people realize that it's all nonsense, it's going to get weird.
    - throwaway27448 2mo ago
      'The last decade has been the Democrats clinging onto the rulebook going "but a dog can't play basketball!" while a dog fucking dunks on us over and over' -@Arr
      - Varelion 2mo ago
        I love that analogy. Controlled opposition. A lack of action is the point.
        reverius42 2mo ago
        The Democrats are not controlled opposition; they do not secretly want the MAGA agenda and only pretend to oppose it. They simply don't have any power to stop it and are really bad at getting power to stop it. "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
        throwaway27448 2mo ago
        The MAGA agenda is just a tiny sliver of what the government actually does (albeit, a particularly culturally obnoxious sliver). On most economic and foreign policy the two parties are in emphatic agreement. The Democratic Party mostly exists to keep itself in power regardless of the state of the country—in this sense, it is emphatically controlled opposition. If they were effective opposition, half the party would be in prison right now.
    - hibikir 2mo ago
      There's entire books on developmental economics which explain how states create institutions that might appear to be rules based, but are ultimately just negotiation and favor. They get more money from developed countries and investors that don't look to deep, but ultimately the rate of growth is quite bad, because investing money in that kind of environment just has a poor rate of return. All well described, with experimental numbers and everything, for countries in Africa and Latin America. Little did people realize that no, you can also apply this to developed countries when they suffer sufficient degradation.
      - walrus01 2mo ago
        I know a number of immigrants from economically struggling developing nations with endemic institutional corruption who very clearly see what's going on when they look at the behaviour of people who are running US federal cabinet level departments. It's all quite familiar, just on a higher budget.
      - pjc50 2mo ago
        The US has long been a bit of a dual system, with the world-leading and technology and wealth coexisting with a lot of poverty, violence, and discrimination; but this seems to be the point at which it becomes fully Latin American. Could be considered "imperial rebound", from all the School of the Americas decades in which the US made Latin America more violent, right-wing, and less democratic for its own purposes, culminating in the invasion of Venezuela. I'm sure they'd have started on Cuba by now if Iran had gone as planned.
    - wahnfrieden 2mo ago
      Won’t matter as long as people have Netflix and Chipotle
    - lokar 2mo ago
      See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model)
      - piloto_ciego 2mo ago
        This is fantastically interesting, thanks!
      - Varelion 2mo ago
        Today, I learned.
    - BLKNSLVR 2mo ago
      We are _in_ the weird stage. The President is someone who has realised the nonsense, because people around him for his whole life have enabled and facilitated the nonsense in order to earn some of his dad's money. And now, instead of his dad's money backing him, he has the US' money, he's got a whole new cabal of enablers and facilitators, and a line as long as roughly 30% of the US population awaiting to fill any role they could get to feed off that fat pipe. But, yes, when this filters down, and it has started, there's going to need to be a significant amount of legislative strength shown in order to stop the wall from collapsing entirely.
      - BrenBarn 2mo ago
        We're going to need more than just "legislative strength" within the framework of our existing government, because this has shown that that framework is inadequate. I don't see a path to true recovery without a Nuremberg-style process in which essentially everyone who held any position of authority in this administration is called to account, in a manner that does not assume that that process must be done in accordance with pre-existing laws. As a simple example, it will require ignoring the Supreme Court ruling that the president is immune to facing consequences for "official acts" he has taken. Most likely it will require ignoring or scrapping the Supreme Court entirely.
      - Varelion 2mo ago
        I fear I do not believe the US has that legislative strength, nor the will to build it. I want to believe that justice is still possible, but big E's island, and the lack of any justice has crushed any optimism out of my soul. I do not see how a prosperous future is possible for my family, so long as that future is in the US.
sublinear 2mo ago
[flagged]
- macintux 2mo ago
  Do not “both sides” this level of corruption and incompetence.
- mrtesthah 2mo ago
  Following the law is not a matter of partisan politics.
  - zmgsabst 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - UncleMeat 2mo ago
      Where are these quotas?
      - zmgsabst 2mo ago
        Quotas were rules illegal in 1978. I listed them as one of a sequence of continued (and later ruled illegal) bigoted practices, over time. > 1978 — Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) — The UC Davis School of Medicine admissions program violated the Equal Protection Clause with the institution of quotas for underrepresented minorities. However, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s concurring opinion deemed diversity in higher education a "compelling interest" and held that race could be one of the factors in university admissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unit...
- ajross 2mo ago
  What's the counterexample of significant funding withdrawn by democratic administrations because of "possibly conservative" language in the output? "Tone deaf" seems not to be capturing the essence of the malfeasance here.
qsera 2mo ago
[flagged]
- sunshinesnacks 2mo ago
  Over-correcting from too much competence? Can’t tell if that’s what you meant (presumably sarcastically) or if you mean over-correcting from too much previous attention to DEI…
  - qsera 2mo ago
    Competence does not require correction. It is when there is too much stupidity going on that * Even large number of fairly average people can see it happening... * large number of fairly average people tries to correct it and overshoots the target, because you know, they are a large number of average people.. The cycle continues... I won't go into specifics, because read the above.
    - jasonlotito 2mo ago
      > Competence does not require correction. Correct, which is why an even larger number of fairly average and intelligent people are wondering why we are correcting. > It is when there is too much stupidity going on Exactly. There is too much stupidity going on in government right now. Exactly. > I won't go into specifics, because read the above. Because you don't want to get corrected?
      - qsera 2mo ago
        He he he he he he.....
        wtfwhateven 2mo ago
        Grow a spine.
        qsera 2mo ago
throwaway27448 2mo ago
They are quite competent at causing enough chaos for those with inside knowledge and wealth to exploit.
- slater 2mo ago
  And for the next administration to be left holding the bag, teeing it up for another round of "see? SEEEE???? they're terrible at the economy!!" if a Democratic president wins the election
  - gmueckl 2mo ago
    The next presidential campaign should narrowly focus on the long term effects of existing policies if not corrected and direct blame with name dropping. There is no more moral high ground in this fight. The ugly needs to be pinned on the current administration in way that it can never be removed again. But of course the Democrats will try to keep their heads high and try to float over all of this mess instead of throwing the dirt back that gets flung around. It's not working anymore.
  - locknitpicker 2mo ago
    > And for the next administration to be left holding the bag, teeing it up for another round of "see? SEEEE???? they're terrible at the economy!!" if a Democratic president wins the election The damage the Trump administration is doing/has done is nothing that any future administration can undo. The relationship with NATO members alone is unsalvageable.
    - k12sosse 2mo ago
      "Y'all trash people" - The world, to summarize
  - M95D 2mo ago
    They should not canditate. Let a comedian do it instead, like UK did with Count Binface.
walrus01 2mo ago
It's easier to understand if you consider they might literally be agents of a foreign government.
- hamper653 2mo ago
  Never see malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation.
  - conception 2mo ago
    They are making hundreds of millions of dollars on the grift. They seem quite comptent.
    - hamper653 2mo ago
      [dead]
    - no-name-here 2mo ago
      Hundreds of millions dramatically undersells what happened in Trump's ~first year back in office: Trump personally made $3 billion during his 2nd term's 1st year. [1] 19-year-old high school graduate Barron Trump earned $150 million dollars. [2] Also, Trump's children stand to profit from a $1.6 billion mining deal that Trump cut as president this term - 'Kaz Resources'. [3] Also, "The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr." - 'Vulcan Elements'. [4] Also, "Trump’s Sons Land Massive Pentagon Deal as They Flaunt Corruption" via "Powerus" a company founded last year and which merged with a golf club in March. [5] The Trump family cryptocurrency company received a $500m investment by the Emirati royal family, before the Trump admin announced that the Emirates would be allowed to import enough Nvidia AI chips to build the largest AI campus outside the US. [6] Edit: As alluded to by walrus01, "The double life of Jared Kushner, mixing business with politics as emissary for his father-in-law Donald Trump … Ivanka Trump's husband has a career as an unofficial diplomat and a master dealmaker, juggling billions and focusing his activities on the Middle East and Near East. His latest coup, carried out with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, was the $55 billion acquisition of video game giant Electronic Arts." [8] While Trump and his family have made billions during Trump's first year back as president, for an example of how Republicans treated Biden family finances: in 2018, while Biden was out of office, Biden received a check from his brother with "loan repayment" written on it for 200K. Despite that Biden was not in office then, and the small amount (compared to not just thousands or even millions, but billions that Trump and his family have made in Trump's first year back in office), 5 years later, in 2023, Republicans were still investigating that $200K loan repayment. [7] [1] https://theweek.com/politics/donald-trump-presidency-wealth https://theweek.com/politics/donald-trump-presidency-wealth [2] https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/how-did-barron-trump-earn-150-million-at-just-19-inside-his-fortune-empire-article-152972790 https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/how-did-barron... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/world/europe/trump-lutnick-sons-kazakhstan.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tlA.QWdO.XiSpRVQrxZi3&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/world/europe/trump-lutnic... [4] https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-deal-white-house https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-de... [5] https://newrepublic.com/post/209840/donald-jr-eric-trump-military-deal-mining-company https://newrepublic.com/post/209840/donald-jr-eric-trump-mil... [6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/trump-uae-crypto-deal https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/trump-uae-cr... [7] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/31/politics/fact-check-evidence-comer-biden-james-200k-check https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/31/politics/fact-check-evide... [8] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/10/07/the-double-life-of-jared-kushner-mixing-business-with-politics-as-emissary-for-his-father-in-law-donald-trump_6746194_19.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/10/07/the-dou...
mdp2021 2mo ago
(And/)Or maybe uncaring ("psychotic", technically speaking) exploiters of the system of incentives... "Conformists".

These people who work for this administration are all so grossly and maliciously incompetent.

Varelion 2mo ago

Should be criminal.

reverius42 2mo ago
A lot of it is! We live in lawlessness (for those at the top) in the US.
- piloto_ciego 2mo ago
  Man, this is the kind of thing I have been trying to tell people. It's unsettling to think about, but I'm like, "look, there are no rules now, it's all a negotiation, the only real laws are the laws of physics and the rules someone selectively enforces under the threat of violence." It would do us good if we remember this, because this sort of the basic state of nature that most people have lived under most of human history. I'm not saying this is how it should be, but a lot of people are still living in the pearl-clutched "but, that's against the rules!" despite there being basically no real rules for a decade. When people realize that it's all nonsense, it's going to get weird.
  - throwaway27448 2mo ago
    'The last decade has been the Democrats clinging onto the rulebook going "but a dog can't play basketball!" while a dog fucking dunks on us over and over' -@Arr
    - Varelion 2mo ago
      I love that analogy. Controlled opposition. A lack of action is the point.
      - reverius42 2mo ago
        The Democrats are not controlled opposition; they do not secretly want the MAGA agenda and only pretend to oppose it. They simply don't have any power to stop it and are really bad at getting power to stop it. "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
        throwaway27448 2mo ago
        The MAGA agenda is just a tiny sliver of what the government actually does (albeit, a particularly culturally obnoxious sliver). On most economic and foreign policy the two parties are in emphatic agreement. The Democratic Party mostly exists to keep itself in power regardless of the state of the country—in this sense, it is emphatically controlled opposition. If they were effective opposition, half the party would be in prison right now.
  - hibikir 2mo ago
    There's entire books on developmental economics which explain how states create institutions that might appear to be rules based, but are ultimately just negotiation and favor. They get more money from developed countries and investors that don't look to deep, but ultimately the rate of growth is quite bad, because investing money in that kind of environment just has a poor rate of return. All well described, with experimental numbers and everything, for countries in Africa and Latin America. Little did people realize that no, you can also apply this to developed countries when they suffer sufficient degradation.
    - walrus01 2mo ago
      I know a number of immigrants from economically struggling developing nations with endemic institutional corruption who very clearly see what's going on when they look at the behaviour of people who are running US federal cabinet level departments. It's all quite familiar, just on a higher budget.
    - pjc50 2mo ago
      The US has long been a bit of a dual system, with the world-leading and technology and wealth coexisting with a lot of poverty, violence, and discrimination; but this seems to be the point at which it becomes fully Latin American. Could be considered "imperial rebound", from all the School of the Americas decades in which the US made Latin America more violent, right-wing, and less democratic for its own purposes, culminating in the invasion of Venezuela. I'm sure they'd have started on Cuba by now if Iran had gone as planned.
  - wahnfrieden 2mo ago
    Won’t matter as long as people have Netflix and Chipotle
  - lokar 2mo ago
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model)
    - piloto_ciego 2mo ago
      This is fantastically interesting, thanks!
    - Varelion 2mo ago
      Today, I learned.
  - BLKNSLVR 2mo ago
    We are _in_ the weird stage. The President is someone who has realised the nonsense, because people around him for his whole life have enabled and facilitated the nonsense in order to earn some of his dad's money. And now, instead of his dad's money backing him, he has the US' money, he's got a whole new cabal of enablers and facilitators, and a line as long as roughly 30% of the US population awaiting to fill any role they could get to feed off that fat pipe. But, yes, when this filters down, and it has started, there's going to need to be a significant amount of legislative strength shown in order to stop the wall from collapsing entirely.
    - BrenBarn 2mo ago
      We're going to need more than just "legislative strength" within the framework of our existing government, because this has shown that that framework is inadequate. I don't see a path to true recovery without a Nuremberg-style process in which essentially everyone who held any position of authority in this administration is called to account, in a manner that does not assume that that process must be done in accordance with pre-existing laws. As a simple example, it will require ignoring the Supreme Court ruling that the president is immune to facing consequences for "official acts" he has taken. Most likely it will require ignoring or scrapping the Supreme Court entirely.
    - Varelion 2mo ago
      I fear I do not believe the US has that legislative strength, nor the will to build it. I want to believe that justice is still possible, but big E's island, and the lack of any justice has crushed any optimism out of my soul. I do not see how a prosperous future is possible for my family, so long as that future is in the US.

sublinear 2mo ago

[flagged]

macintux 2mo ago
Do not “both sides” this level of corruption and incompetence.
mrtesthah 2mo ago
Following the law is not a matter of partisan politics.
- zmgsabst 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - UncleMeat 2mo ago
    Where are these quotas?
    - zmgsabst 2mo ago
      Quotas were rules illegal in 1978. I listed them as one of a sequence of continued (and later ruled illegal) bigoted practices, over time. > 1978 — Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) — The UC Davis School of Medicine admissions program violated the Equal Protection Clause with the institution of quotas for underrepresented minorities. However, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s concurring opinion deemed diversity in higher education a "compelling interest" and held that race could be one of the factors in university admissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unit...
ajross 2mo ago
What's the counterexample of significant funding withdrawn by democratic administrations because of "possibly conservative" language in the output? "Tone deaf" seems not to be capturing the essence of the malfeasance here.

qsera 2mo ago

[flagged]

sunshinesnacks 2mo ago
Over-correcting from too much competence? Can’t tell if that’s what you meant (presumably sarcastically) or if you mean over-correcting from too much previous attention to DEI…
- qsera 2mo ago
  Competence does not require correction. It is when there is too much stupidity going on that * Even large number of fairly average people can see it happening... * large number of fairly average people tries to correct it and overshoots the target, because you know, they are a large number of average people.. The cycle continues... I won't go into specifics, because read the above.
  - jasonlotito 2mo ago
    > Competence does not require correction. Correct, which is why an even larger number of fairly average and intelligent people are wondering why we are correcting. > It is when there is too much stupidity going on Exactly. There is too much stupidity going on in government right now. Exactly. > I won't go into specifics, because read the above. Because you don't want to get corrected?
    - qsera 2mo ago
      He he he he he he.....
      - wtfwhateven 2mo ago
        Grow a spine.
        qsera 2mo ago

throwaway27448 2mo ago

They are quite competent at causing enough chaos for those with inside knowledge and wealth to exploit.

slater 2mo ago
And for the next administration to be left holding the bag, teeing it up for another round of "see? SEEEE???? they're terrible at the economy!!" if a Democratic president wins the election
- gmueckl 2mo ago
  The next presidential campaign should narrowly focus on the long term effects of existing policies if not corrected and direct blame with name dropping. There is no more moral high ground in this fight. The ugly needs to be pinned on the current administration in way that it can never be removed again. But of course the Democrats will try to keep their heads high and try to float over all of this mess instead of throwing the dirt back that gets flung around. It's not working anymore.
- locknitpicker 2mo ago
  > And for the next administration to be left holding the bag, teeing it up for another round of "see? SEEEE???? they're terrible at the economy!!" if a Democratic president wins the election The damage the Trump administration is doing/has done is nothing that any future administration can undo. The relationship with NATO members alone is unsalvageable.
  - k12sosse 2mo ago
    "Y'all trash people" - The world, to summarize
- M95D 2mo ago
  They should not canditate. Let a comedian do it instead, like UK did with Count Binface.

walrus01 2mo ago

It's easier to understand if you consider they might literally be agents of a foreign government.

hamper653 2mo ago
Never see malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation.
- conception 2mo ago
  They are making hundreds of millions of dollars on the grift. They seem quite comptent.
  - hamper653 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - no-name-here 2mo ago
    Hundreds of millions dramatically undersells what happened in Trump's ~first year back in office: Trump personally made $3 billion during his 2nd term's 1st year. [1] 19-year-old high school graduate Barron Trump earned $150 million dollars. [2] Also, Trump's children stand to profit from a $1.6 billion mining deal that Trump cut as president this term - 'Kaz Resources'. [3] Also, "The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr." - 'Vulcan Elements'. [4] Also, "Trump’s Sons Land Massive Pentagon Deal as They Flaunt Corruption" via "Powerus" a company founded last year and which merged with a golf club in March. [5] The Trump family cryptocurrency company received a $500m investment by the Emirati royal family, before the Trump admin announced that the Emirates would be allowed to import enough Nvidia AI chips to build the largest AI campus outside the US. [6] Edit: As alluded to by walrus01, "The double life of Jared Kushner, mixing business with politics as emissary for his father-in-law Donald Trump … Ivanka Trump's husband has a career as an unofficial diplomat and a master dealmaker, juggling billions and focusing his activities on the Middle East and Near East. His latest coup, carried out with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, was the $55 billion acquisition of video game giant Electronic Arts." [8] While Trump and his family have made billions during Trump's first year back as president, for an example of how Republicans treated Biden family finances: in 2018, while Biden was out of office, Biden received a check from his brother with "loan repayment" written on it for 200K. Despite that Biden was not in office then, and the small amount (compared to not just thousands or even millions, but billions that Trump and his family have made in Trump's first year back in office), 5 years later, in 2023, Republicans were still investigating that $200K loan repayment. [7] [1] https://theweek.com/politics/donald-trump-presidency-wealth https://theweek.com/politics/donald-trump-presidency-wealth [2] https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/how-did-barron-trump-earn-150-million-at-just-19-inside-his-fortune-empire-article-152972790 https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/how-did-barron... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/world/europe/trump-lutnick-sons-kazakhstan.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tlA.QWdO.XiSpRVQrxZi3&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/world/europe/trump-lutnic... [4] https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-deal-white-house https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-de... [5] https://newrepublic.com/post/209840/donald-jr-eric-trump-military-deal-mining-company https://newrepublic.com/post/209840/donald-jr-eric-trump-mil... [6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/trump-uae-crypto-deal https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/trump-uae-cr... [7] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/31/politics/fact-check-evidence-comer-biden-james-200k-check https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/31/politics/fact-check-evide... [8] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/10/07/the-double-life-of-jared-kushner-mixing-business-with-politics-as-emissary-for-his-father-in-law-donald-trump_6746194_19.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/10/07/the-dou...

mdp2021 2mo ago

(And/)Or maybe uncaring ("psychotic", technically speaking) exploiters of the system of incentives... "Conformists".