Trump

[PFVA]

The Department of Government Efficiency?

[KlaxonCow]

It's a cheap "Trump bad" joke, admittedly. But I liked it.

[KlaxonCow]

The Department of Government Efficiency?

The D.O.G.E.



It's a meme-ocracy. Government by lulz.

[funkstar]

2016 genuinely shocked me, and I struggled for a long time trying to understand what it was that went so wrong. Because, you know, clearly there’d been some kind of terrible misunderstanding, or political mismanagement, or failure of the system, or…

But, no. They want, really want, the twice-indicted, rapist, fascist felon in charge.

I’d be inclined to write the whole shithole country off as a failed state, making leopard-to-the-face jokes from the sidelines when the camps inevitably start filling with MAGA-hatted shitheads, too... Except for the fucking thing that this will affect everyone, won’t it.

Get fucked, America.

[KlaxonCow]

2016 genuinely shocked me, and I struggled for a long time trying to understand what it was that went so wrong. Because, you know, clearly there’d been some kind of terrible misunderstanding, or political mismanagement, or failure of the system, or…

But, no. They want, really want, the twice-indicted, rapist, fascist felon in charge.

I’d be inclined to write the whole shithole country off as a failed state, making leopard-to-the-face jokes from the sidelines when the camps inevitably start filling with MAGA-hatted shitheads, too... Except for the fucking thing that this will affect everyone, won’t it.

Get fucked, America.

The gist of the message of this video captures it:



People feel powerless. The economy has turned to shit and institutions aren't helping them - they're often the ones persecuting them, as the disabled and unemployed (which is NOT their fault, it must be remembered) are harassed to cost less in benefits.

The young will never own their own home. As that guy in Davos - who represents the elites and the institutions no-one trusts anymore - put it: "You will own nothing and you will be happy". Now, in fairness to that guy, in his own head, he probably meant it in a good way of "ownership is no longer a necessity to survival" but it feels like an Orwellian threat when you hear it, as if he's saying "you WILL own nothing and you WILL be happy about it... or else".

The cost of living crisis got so bad that even the reasonably-well-off middle classes started feeling the pinch - actually had to start considering sacrifice, which is an alien concept to most of them - but if you're on a lower rung of the socio-economic ladder then you've been living in a state of suspended animation, hovering over impending homelessness and destitution for years.

The system is not working. All around the world, the system is just not delivering for the average person.

Because the system doesn't realise that its failing and it continues doing its thing, of further cuts and gutting out of the public services we all depend on, to the point where things like the NHS really were on the precipice of total collapse, during the Covid pandemic.

And consider that Labour are in power now, but what is Starmer talking about? "Making hard decisions to fix the economy". So, basically more "austerity" under a different name?

Now, in fairness, I think that Starmer does have a bigger plan, which I actually agree with - we need to go "all in" on the green economy, because though the transition might be painful, the other side is a sun-lit paradise of permanently cheaper bills FOREVER, of not being held over a barrel by large energy companies, of energy security - and Putin's war has emphasised why we have to deal with that, pronto, as it caused "the cost of living crisis" and we have to make future repeats of that impossible, which is what a green economy, properly achieved, can give us.

But, right now, we've voted for the other guy and he's basically saying the same shit of "you must suffer for the good of the system" as well.

People are tired of this shit. I don't agree with them, as I realise there are fundamental elements of this system that we MUST preserve - we need to keep the basics ticking over or shit can get far worse than these people can possibly imagine (I know history - I know just how far down humanity can sink, how unbelievably low we all once were, that I don't think these people understand).

But they want to burn it all down, basically.

The current "system" is such a piece of oppressive shit that's causing them perpetual suffering that anyone offering to smash it all down and rebuild it - Brexit, Trump, the far right across Europe - is hoovering up the votes.

It has to be understood that, at the bottom of society, there are people who're at breaking point. They don't remotely care if the system fails because, for them, the system has failed them already. They are at the point where they're thinking "if it all crashes and burns, what difference does it make to me?". From their perspective, it has already crashed and burned, and they have absolutely nothing to lose at this point. So, indeed, from their perspective, smashing the system and starting again is a massively appealing prospect.

"Make America Great Again". Buses promising millions more cash to the NHS.

I'm not sure these people actually genuinely believe this stuff. But they're at the point of "fuck it, if we only get a tenth of what's being promised, that's still better than the shit I'm suffering now".

I do understand that, because I have a similar feeling about Starmer's "Green Prosperity Plan". I have immensely low trust that he's actually going to deliver a fraction of what's promised and needed.

Talk of investing billions into "carbon capture" and hydrogen - the former is bollocks that doesn't work (just the fossil fuel industry trying to create a way for themselves to continue existing when we need to retire them all) and, while hydrogen is a real thing, the logistics don't add up. It can't be used as a replacement for methane in heating homes - not without completely upgrading the entire gas network to a really, really expensive higher standard. Hydrogen is the smallest atom there is and it can leak out of the tiniest of holes, and it seeps into metals causing them to go brittle, so any pipes carrying hydrogen would need vastly more constant maintenance and replacement.

So I already know that he's going to waste money on shit that ain't going to deliver. Billions that could, you know, have been given out to upgrade everyone's home insulation instead - which is the first thing we should be doing, as insulation reduces energy use for heating, regardless of what technology you're using to heat your home. Retaining the heat that we already have, and being efficient, is the first step. Particularly if you really do want everyone eventually using heat pumps - because heat pumps are a "slow heat" kind of technology, so insulation is important to making it perform as well as that which it is replacing.

But this gives me that understanding of what these other people are thinking. Do I trust Starmer? Not even a millimetre. I'm sure he's going to fluff the "green prosperity plan", as politicians always do.

But I get it. When Trump says he's going to "drain the swamp", is he actually going to do it? No chance. He's even more corrupt - an actual convicted criminal - than the "gravy train" arseholes he's replacing. But if you're thinking "burn it all down and start again", then his unreliable half-promise to start the process is tempting, even if you have zero trust he's actually going to do it. The alternative option on the ballot is "the status quo".

Basically, if the Devil was in the Presidential race, promising to smash everything to pieces and having zero plans for what comes after that, he'd win a landslide victory.

Because that's how a very large population of people, all around the world, are thinking.

It's really why Brexit happened. You can ask Leave voters and they're quite candid about it - it was a vote to smash the status quo. The establishment was convinced "Remain" would walk it, because why would anyone be so irrational as to vote against their own interests? But folks rushed to the polling booths to cast a massive "fuck you" vote.

I voted Remain, because I'm not sufficiently insane and angry enough yet to have reached "burn it all down" levels. But I do get it. I can't cast a "fuck it, burn it all down" vote myself, but I fully understand why the people who did, did that.

It's entirely true. This is not really "the rise of the right" - Trump is a lying idiotic moron, the Tories were so incompetent and corrupt over the last 14 years (blatantly so, that even fellow Tories eventually tired of their shit and couldn't defend it) and, during the last election, Dick Cheney was campaigning and voting for Harris because Trump is such an awful prospect. Dick fucking Cheney campaigned against his own side, looking at the prospect of President-elect Trump. Farage contradicts himself and keeps changing his mind about whether he is or isn't remaining in politics every 5 seconds.

It's not that the right are remotely good right now. Even those voting for them realise they're pathetically bad.

But a "post-war liberal consensus" has reigned since the war, with "neoliberalism" as its economic policy, and the left have gone up their own arseholes arguing amongst themselves about pronouns. That whole post-war system has just, for the average person, gotten worse and worse. They've just felt their economic prospects drying up.

The promise was an ever-bettering situation generation after generation. But while the Boomers are living it large, every generation after them has found things getting economically worse.

(A massive part of why I'm all for a "green prosperity plan" is that it is stable. Solar and wind farms kept going in the pandemic and Putin's war. Their cost didn't spike but carried on its trend of getting cheaper and cheaper. It's not possible for renewables to "spike" in their prices, due to geopolitics like that. It's a stable foundation - a lower floor below which we can't sink. Though folks will only react to and care for "cheaper bills", that stability is actually the more important attribute in the long term. And governments should have the wisdom to invest in it to make the transition now, so we have that stable economic resilience later.)

Folks want a revolution, basically. They want to burn it all down and rebuild it. And this feeling has been with us for decades and decades now, but it's reaching fever pitch with the ever-worsening economic situation people find themselves in.

We're reaching Jefferson's line-in-the-sand of "sufferable evil". If you don't know your Declaration of Independence the well, Jefferson talks about how people will suffer while evils are sufferable. May was pathetic, but we'll keep going with this system for now. Boris was pathetic, but we'll keep going. Liz Truss was a joke but, okay, if Sunak can come in and fix shit then we'll keep going.

It's actually incredibly wise of Jefferson to understand and recognise this. That people will actually tolerate a bit of "suffering" up to a point, but if you push it too far, those people "snap" and you've got a revolution on your hands:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Trump is a ridiculous choice. But I have the feeling that a lot of Trump voters perfectly know this - and that's why pointing out that he's a liar and a convicted criminal and all the rest of it didn't work because it's not that they're unaware of all of that. But they're voting "fuck it, burn it all down" and Trump then weirdly becomes the perfect candidate to smash it to pieces. A future President - if we ever have one - can build things back up again afterwards.

They see it as the only route towards the renewal of the entire system that they want.

The candidate that they want to vote for is the Joker. They want that destructive chaos that brings the system down. Smashes things to pieces, so it can be rebuilt better. And, from that perspective, Trump gets eerily close to that.

This has been brewing for a very long time. 9/11, the Arab Spring, Brexit, Trump.

With the Age of Automation approaching, the current system is going to collapse. What those in rich "elite" positions don't realise is that some large sections of society are already feeling the transition pain. It's already stopped working for them. Their wages are vanishing, everything's getting more expensive, their job security has vanished... but they still need to feed their families.

We're in the midst of a revolution. A transition. The Internet has been trashing industries - music, movies, etc. - for a while now. Then AI is making it more personal - as artists and writers are being put out of work.

For some, the revolution has already arrived. Once your life is broken, then you have nothing to lose - bring on the revolution, let the walls fall. It can't get worse for me now. "Let's get through this and get to the other side as quickly as possible" is what an awful lot of people are feeling right now.

Trump is an insane choice.

But, on another level, it makes perfect rational sense, if your strongest desire right now is for your pain and suffering to end. One way or another, he'll help bring the whole fucking thing down. His misqualification as leader of the free world is, in fact, perfect. Guaranteed chaos. Pointing out how terrible he is actually helped secure more votes, because a total shit show that makes this broken system collapse is exactly what they actually want.

Viva la revolución!

[KlaxonCow]

"I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."

[Mat]

But a "post-war liberal consensus" has reigned since the war, with "neoliberalism" as its economic policy, and the left have gone up their own arseholes arguing amongst themselves about pronouns. That whole post-war system has just, for the average person, gotten worse and worse. They've just felt their economic prospects drying up.

Uh, in the UK, we're no longer running the post-war consensus that Nye Bevan and Clement Atlee created, and that's the problem.
Thatcher burned that down claiming that it was failing the country, when in reality, it was the oil crisis.
The post-war consensus in the UK resulted in massive investment in social housing, nationalised utilities and the creation of the NHS. Consequently, 30 years of stability.
And this is what the post-war consensus really meant:
Harold Macmillan, a Conservative PM, built more social housing than the Labour government.
All parties prior to Thatcher and her lies supported this pretty progressive, socialist approach.

I agree that neo-liberalism is the issue, but I don't agree with when it became the political norm.
That's all on Thatcher and every last government that's followed her.

Now if you're talking about the States, well, that's a different matter, but I suspect you're not, and I suspect you're exhibiting symptoms of that US cultural hegemony I referred to elsewhere.
But even then, while I know less about the US' relationship with neo-liberalism, I'm pretty sure it started with Reagan.
An interesting revelation is that if you go back and read about Nixon, today he would be perceived as a progressive.
That's how fucked the US political system has gotten.

[tufty]

I agree that neo-liberalism is the issue, but I don't agree with when it became the political norm.
That's all on Thatcher and every last government that's followed her.

Absolutely. Thatcher and Reagan, based on the Friedman and Stigler, circa 1976.

[PFVA]

The Department of Government Efficiency?

The D.O.G.E.



It's a meme-ocracy. Government by lulz.

I'm glad I'm retired and that everybody I knew is too, or old enough to do it.

Most likely there is panic going thru most public service areas.

Not to say that they may have a point. During Clinton Administration, I don't know afterwards during Obama's because I wasn't there government agencies doubled and tripled bureaucracy creating all kinds of jobs specially mid level management that was not necessary at all. And then there was private companies being hired to do this and that. Several of us always thought that was a rather expensive way of doing things.

I wish them luck but unfortunately I doubt very much that either Trump or Elon will be able of saving things. Most likely they will just privatise it even more, more companies to make a profit and less or lower quality services.

And minimising the general government to pass the bill to the States won't solve it*. The States will have to raise their taxes and the poorer states will get poorer than they already are.
______________________
* I heard that one on my national 8:00 am news. They said one of the ideas was to abolish the Education federal dept and leave Education up to the states. I don't know if it's true.

[PFVA]

Ow, and I just saw that the Republicans got the House too.

This is going to be 'fun'

Wake me up in 4 years.

[tufty]

It's gonna be all sorts of broken. None of it is about saving any money, it's about consolidating power, removing oversight, and making sure the handouts go to the right people.

Musk, the man whose companies are only viable because they suckle from the teat of US government, running "government efficiency". Not to mention the whole Project 25 thing ripping out career bureaucrats and replacing them with political loyalists. Sorry America, you're fucked.

[Mat]

I'm honestly thinking that at this point, it would be entirely rational for the UK and Europe to consider completely severing ties with them.

[F-ZeroOne]

Twitter. That’s the kind of “efficiency” we’re looking at here. Look how well thats gone.

Poland gets the Presidency of the EU early next week. Presumably their first act will be to change the EU flag to a giant middle finger pointed at Russia.

[tufty]

Twitter. That’s the kind of “efficiency” we’re looking at here. Look how well thats gone.

Well, to be fair, he's got it down from 44 billion dollars to 9 billion, that's a better than 75% cut.

[F-ZeroOne]

R.e. Poland, that should have read "early next year".