In the past week or so, the courts have begun to try to set some boundaries on the Musk–Miller–Trump administration’s early blitz of recklessness.
. . .
This judicial review provides at least a small reprieve, hope that some of the administration’s most destructive impulses will be stopped. Or at least pared back. But even with the courts stepping up, and even with the reality of the administration’s ineptitude sinking in, this early Musk–Miller–Trump blitz remains very—maybe irreparably—damaging. Of course, there are a lot of moles to whack: the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are being dismantled at an alarming rate, and the court system is not known for being nimble. The administration is betting, perhaps rightly, that at least some of its thoughtless, lawless efforts will slip through the cracks.
But even if the courts caught them all—and even if every court facing each lawless escapade said, “Nope, that’s not a thing”—still the entire process would be doing serious damage to our institutions. Think of it as someone spoofing your identity and going on a shopping spree with your credit cards. Even if the goon gets caught, you still have to go store by store to argue that the fraudulent purchase wasn’t legitimate and hope the debt is forgiven. And all the while, perhaps long after all the debts are dealt with, the torrent of uncertainty kills your credit score.
The U.S.A. is done. Such sabotage by Trump, Musk and MAGA takes decades to recover from. 40 to 50 at least; rebuilding the civil service, amending all the laws back to normal, fixing the Supreme Court, probably needing Constitutional amendments. This easily echos for a hundred years.
If it was that easy to send the country into ruin then we were already done.
Stop the hysteria. Let Trump dig his hole. And maybe throw some support behind candidates that aren’t soulless, self serving, establishment liberals.
That hole he is digging is for the dead bodies. We should be shutting stuff down instead of standing by
Putin is getting such great value from Trump. It’s clearly the best deal ever.
a century of “Red Scare” has made you believe that everything evil in the world is russian.
While such a simplistic worldview might help you retain sanity in this world, if you look closely, it is the opposite of helpful, as it prevents you from seeing things as they are, and taking effective action.
Years of mindless propaganda is what lead to you believe Russia’s very obvious involvement in tampering with US election is simply people buying into outdated cold war tropes.
I only see one country bragging about influencing U.S. election outcomes, and it’s not Russia. You guys constructed Pepe Silvia-level theories about Russian influence and ignored the domestic corporatocracy and entire U.S. empire in favor of the media’s chosen explanation of “Russian influence”. As the saying more or less goes, nobody is immune to propaganda, including you. Modern propaganda narratives include accusations of propaganda leveled at the propaganda narrative’s scapegoats.
Even if they get rid of pedo-Don, Fox will tell them everything that went wrong is because of Clinton and the woke and they will be like “YeAh dAMn woke-dei-sjw-blm dEsTroyIng ma cUntrY”.
It’s over. That’s the consequence of decades of under-educating their citizen and raw capitalism. The only question that remain is how much of the world down they will bring down with them.
Yeah, that’s why Murdoch and Co should also be punished to the extremes. They knowingly pushed false information over and over. The U.S. should sue them for 50 trillion in damages without allowance of Bankruptcy. A simple get the fuck out of our country to all those who participated or stay and experience for yourself what you did to so many working class people.
I think your assessment is optimistic.
Yup.
It will take decades of scraping and clawing things through Congress to get back what we’re going to lose in a few short years. Assuming our government is even recognizable by the end of this.
If you have the means, it may actually be time to make another country home. If you don’t, you need to come to terms that you will probably spend the rest of your life living in a declining nation where your rights are threatened.
Honestly theres a good chance that the US may collapse, its tied pretty thoroughly to capitalism which is also showing signs of hitting its end point. Its possible that within the next four years even that the US will be 50 individual countries with the federal government no longer existing. The very problems that are allowing Trump and Musk to wreck shit is the same type of problems that collapse empires, and theres no American equivalent to Russia for the USSR or Serbia for Yugoslavia.
The idea that america was fine until MAGA sabotaged it is absurd and reductionist.
I don’t see anybody saying everything was fine. That doesn’t mean no room existed to get much, much worse.
Slowly degrading since what Nixon?
If’s been being eroded for a long time, but just recently it’s become fragile enough to be unstoppable at any level.
Do you not think 2016 America was better than America today?
Not particularly. Especially if you are brown.
I mean, did we all forget Occupy happening in 2008? And the Obama admin sending in jackboots to clear everyone out, so profits can get back to shareholders?
Obama wasn’t POTUS until 2009.
Occupy? With its main spokesman Tim Pool? No, I haven’t forgotten.
That Tim Pool?
Yep.
Hasn’t it been thoroughly sabotaged by Reagan already? Not to say that Trump can’t do a fine job setting the rubble on fire, but i concur that the US has been a mess for quite some time.
In comparison to what we’re probably going to be left with for the rest of our lives, what we had before MAGA will seem like a fucking utopia.
Anyone who thinks the US, post 9/11 as utopia, by most any measure, is looking at things through Rose Colored Lenses.
… you are implying that “people will try to make things return to normal in the future”.
But i think that take is misinformed.
Progress on Earth is coming to an end, and as a direct consequence, demand for human labor is plummeting, and that makes wages drop. (Consider the labor market is a market and the human effort is the traded good, and a decreased demand makes prices go down. And prices are wages.) That is the major cause for the increasing “working poor” phenomenon.
If you want to improve worker’s living condition, you have to advocate for Universal Basic Income (UBI). Wages alone will not be sufficient in the future to retain an acceptable quality-of-life.
Let me update my take on this:
I understand you Americans are all so “hard work is the major content of my life” like. And that is fine. If you think that you can fix your labor market, do it. Though if you ask me, progress on Earth can not continue. There is neither quantitative nor qualitative growth that would lead to mass employment of most of the population.
The long-term plan for humanity that I see is that humans will develop spaceflight and go to Mars. There will be lots of space and technological challenges that will demand a lot of human labor-input, and that will keep the wages up, the people working and in full employment, and probably have a few other side-effects. However, future progress cannot meaningfully happen on Earth. I want to be clear on that.
Looks at the rising habitability of northern Canada, Greenland and Russia as an alternative the inhabitability of equator nations, due to climate change
Would this be considered an opportunity for progress?