The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.'
Now, you can make limited inroads to block executive actions with the courts, but even when SCOTUS was friendly to the anti-Trump cause, when that's done to advance an unpopular (majority-disapproved-of) agenda, it is usually a hollow and temporary victory. To get the policies you want, you need to win over voters. That's the part the DNC seems to be completely unaware of. You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting. You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values. The DNC has taken a position of "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.
The left won't be competitive in elections until they learn what it is, why it results in alienation of people who would otherwise support them, and find a way to escape it.
The difference I think, is that the purity spiral on the left encompasses the entire party. If your perspectives are too moderate you are shunned from the entire hemisphere of politics and often suffer a barage of name calling (e.g. bigot) from your own 'side'.
On the right, this is far less often the case. The right is significantly more tolerant of people who fall outside of purity definitions. For example, the majority of republicans are pro-life, but co-exist with roughly a third of republicans who are pro-choice.
In contrast, most Democrats will not tolerate a pro-life member under any circumstance.
I believe the problem is that people need to learn how to feel loved. To realize that even our enemies are trying their best and most likely care about us a lot more than they would ever admit. Both sides struggle with this. People on the current left tend to just resign and give up on the relationships. People on the right tend to seek vengeance.
It's a big problem for the left because numerically they are now the minority of voters, but are still trending away from the center, and shedding their more moderate members.
It's a complete social poison pill in the city to have voted a certain way. Have had the same look of "how could you be that dumb" from people ranging from strippers to lawyers.
All I want is love and belonging, not sure how to feel love when I've heard the word "barbarian" to describe certain types of people. Not sure how to feel love when men's loneliness and suicide problems aren't being prioritized
Yeah, the hurt turns into anger sometimes, but yes, I need them too. For me to exist, my opposite has to exist, and I should love us both.
- Imagine if the president allowed Jeff Bezos to reprogram the Treasury’s payment system as if it were an online shopping cart.
- Picture the president authorizing Sam Altman to treat the federal payment system maybe as a live AI experiment.
- Envision the president allowing Larry Page to run the Treasury system.
- Imagine Mark Zuckerberg not only with the power to update federal payment rules, with access to all U.S. taxpayer data. Incredible coincidence Musk runs, privately, a social networking site...
I dont include an example with Palantir...Because some of the 19 years old bros working with the Musk team, were interns at Palantir. So I am just going to assume Thiel has all the info on all US citizens now...
No concerns with conflicts of interest, no vetting, no official role because...People voted for the current president? When did voting become a blank check?
Call it whatever you want, the fact of the matter is that you have an unelected private person, who happens to be the richest person on earth, taking control of federal agencies. I don't think anyone should consider this silly, as nobody thought it was silly when MAGA tried to actually stage a literal coup by force 4 years ago.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~
The last years have made it very clear that's exactly how you win. You seem to be under the impression that the democrats, not MAGAs, are unhinged in their rhetoric.
Valerie Jarret was UNELECTED. OMG OMG /s
See how dumb it sounds?
Because if people in the middle can be so damn gullible to vote for a criminal who said:
"I don't care about you, I only want your votes",
like Trump because he promised good economy I don't know how anyone can conclude that the issue here is with democrats and not the people's lack of critical thinking.
It's a bit late to correctly point out that focusing on demographics as you voter base is stupid and that it's interest groups you should focus on (as this should've been done in 2008 after Obama's victory), because this isn't a race between two sane candidates.
Name calling typically results in people viewing you as immature.
If the left ever want to reclaim the respect of voters, they need to lose this bad habit.
The left don't have to any soul searching to do when again the so called middle literally voted for a man who to their face told them that he doesn't care about them he just wants their votes, who yes is a criminal that has swindled, lied and now rug pulled.
The problem can be, someone can feel attacked even if the other person is treating them in a very kind and loving way, because they think it's fake.
On the contrary, someone could receive verbal and physical abuse and still not feel attacked because they maintain faith in their and the other person's good intentions.
So I think it's more about changing the behaviors of the person on the receiving end than on the giving end.
If this was true, Trump wouldn’t be president. Either that, or America doesn’t see an issue with immaturity.
The reason people are calling this a coup is not (only) because they disagree with what Trump/Musk are doing, but because their actions are illegal. A president is still expected to follow the rule of law and respect separation of powers. If there are no more checks and balances, then it's a coup. If Congress decided to allocate budget to something, the president should not ignore this. The legislature is losing its power.
As far as I know, the chevron deference ruling makes it easily arguable that these agencies don't necessarily have any legal standing anyway.
The 8 month buyout was completely legal, Clinton did the same.
I actually find it highly unlikely any of this is illegal, it's just completely unbearable to anyone who is part of the bureaucracy. But prove me wrong. Show me the legal opinions.
The 1995 buyout offer was passed by Congress and signed by Clinton.
https://clintonwhitehouse6.archives.gov/1995/04/1995-04-04-p...
Seven restraining orders. Seems like lots is not legal.
The current administration replaced the head of an agency and had that agency shut itself down. Shutting yourself down is clearly not a power given to any federal agency, so by the very policy you're citing either the judicial or executive branch must act to allow such a move.
Instead, our cheeto in chief decided that those other branches don't actually need to do any of that pesky work and it's a lot easier if everyone just does what he wants.
There's a word for that style of governance.
Shutting down an agency like USAID require congressional approval, but was done by executive order.
Withholding congressionally approved funding for government agencies is illegal.
Sharing sensitive documents from the fiscal service with (Doge) team members who do not have the appropriate security clearances is illegal.
Giving Elon Musk an unofficial seat and allowing him unfettered access to the entire federal government without any congressional confirmation is illegal and basically amounts to setting up a shadow government.
The list goes on...
At this point any discussion on HN about Trump delivering his campaign promises (which got him a resounding electoral victory) seems to be filled with elitist rage ("Every single IT board I'm on") and thus is just proving his point.
This is the blowback for the medical overreach of the covid years, for the 1984-esque re-labeling of open gender- and race-based discrimination as DEI, for basically shaming every opposing view as
> evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists
and many more transgressions.
I'm saying this as a non us citizen working in a sector in Europe that is very likely to get absolutely clobbered by Trump. The blame is simply to put at the losing side.
Them denying the merit of their loss, the lack of any introspection and instead just one-upping their everybody-i-disagree-with-is-hitler mantra is at least comforting in the sense that I know they shouldn't be in charge.
Then he certainly didn't say that he was going to dismantle the US government with Elon Musk outside of any legal framework (or I missed that). And even if he did, that wouldn't make it okay either.
> You win in a democracy only by convincing the very reasonable middle that you share their values
I feel like you haven't paid enough attention, this isn't a democracy anymore but a mixed regime, convincing opponents is still necessary but isn't enough to influence power anymore.
Look at Hungary if you want some indication of how it's going.
He's a conservative, and Project 2025 was from other conservatives.
You would expect there to be some overlap in policy perspectives because of the ideological overlap. It doesn't necessarily mean he's taking orders from the heritage foundation.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky
The guy who won did exactly all that
And what on earth did Trump do to convince the “reasonable middle” that he shares their values?
Who are these reasonable people who decide that Kamala spends too much time insulting people, so they’re better off voting for Donald Trump?
Sources requested for this statement, made unilateral with no evidence.
> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.
A single person, who somehow owns multiple major companies with, clear conflict of interest, is not a coup? What? He & his "engineers" reportedly have access to American citizen information. Where's the required oversight by Congress? I get trimming the government, but let's talk about it in the open rather than relying on his word and his word alone.
> You don't win by insulting, by dunking on the other guys on ~Twitter~ bluesky, or by protesting.
Would you say that to Tea Party folks who widely protested Obama? What? This makes no sense. Didn't they also insult Obama and his birth? Or anyone who voted for Obama? Whataboutism.
Frankly, I feel you are delusional and have bought into the ruse of the current news cycle.
> "Everyone not already in our tent is evil, fascist, dastardly white supremacists," but to their chagrin, their current tent is under 50% of the voting public and it isn't growing.
Trumps share of the vote was <50% via https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024pres...
