Summary
Elon Musk claims his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is shutting down payments to federal contractors, including a Lutheran charity, asserting it is eliminating corruption.
This suggests DOGE has access to Treasury’s payment systems, though officials have not confirmed the extent.
Senator Ron Wyden warned that DOGE may interfere with Social Security, Medicare, and government contracts.
Musk also called USAID “a criminal organization” that should “die,” amid DOGE’s growing influence over federal financial operations.
At what point do we declare this a coup? This isn’t what even the most diehard conservatives out there voted for, I don’t understand how this isn’t considered a hostile takeover.
It’s stressing me out to no end. I think the average person doesn’t even know this is currently happening.
Very rural area dweller, here, two towns over doing errands. Just spoke with an elderly Mango Mussolini voter/Faux News consumer who already regrets his choice… I commented it’s time to stop voting to hurt others and vote for taxpayer dollars to help the common people, rather than billionaires. He agreed.
Not to shit on the guy too hard, but it’s a bit late on that front. I hope he’s around/remembers the next time someone courts his vote.
Me too.
I don’t follow politics. I voted for trump because it was badass when he said fight fight fight. Elon’s a genius, I’m sure he’s gonna make it better.
These are real takes I’ve heard out there in the world.
It’s being censored.
It doesn’t even need to be. So many of my friends have already decided to tune out completely because they’re sick of hearing about the nonstop shit.
Hungarian here, whose face got eaten by the leopards.
Political illiteracy is a serious problem, and so is the access to information. They actually thought the crime rates were up, because the very few news outlets they’re exposed to likes to uplift a few cases with scary headlines, often making anniversary reports on some crimes. They actually thought, that the opposition was “too far-left”, because pundits told them so, and they learned in school the real nazis did evil things for the sole sake of evil, thus people that say they want to eliminate crime, and have crime statistics must not be far-right.
This is not for to excuse their behavior, but to explain it. Maybe can even lead to an end of this cycle.
Fucking yes.
All conservatives at the tables with all these nazis asking who voted in all the nazis.
At this point your party has folded. Keep saying “but not meeeee, I’m a real conservative!” All you want.
They’re in too deep to admit how badly they obviously fucked up. Shit is gonna have to actually reach the ugly bitter end, leaving them no other possible explanation to try to hide behind. In the meantime, this must be what it felt like for the citizens of Rome as it burned.
It is not until it affects them on a personal level they make that realization. That is how far the empathy of the average conservative voter reaches.
Well, in essence and at its purest level the difference in thinking between Leftwing and Rightwing is the difference between “I want people to have a better life” and “I want to have a better life”.
All the political complexity above that comes from the different possible ways to achieve either end and from how one end partly overlaps with the other (i.e. for many a general improvement of people’s lifes gets translated into a personal improvement).
So yeah, conservatives are just “What’s in it for me” types who believe in a different method to maximize their personal upside than the Fascists. In fact many American-style Liberals (the political version of “Liberal” in the US, not to be confused with those who believe in the actual Liberal Ideology) are also rightwingers who believe in yet another method for personal upside improvement.
Not even that. The difference is between “I want people to have a better life (objectively speaking).” and “I want to have a better life (as compared to those people).” As long as their lives are better when compared to those people, the conservatives are satisfied. Even if everyone’s lives, including their own, get objectively worse.
I was going to say I partly disagree and that the “those people” element depends on the Society (i.e. different in different countries) but after thinking about it, I actually agree that wanting to be “comparativelly better” rather than better in absolute is a pretty general thing for rightwingers everywhere, and what changes in the countries I lived in is mainly they way they go about doing it (i.e. in England that overwhelmingly materialises in people spending a lot of time and effort in keeping those below them in the “prosperity ladder” from climbing up, whilst in The Netherlands there’s a lot less of that).
So, yeah, thanks for pointing that out.
And here I am, too damn poor to afford a fiddle…
When this happens in a developing country we laugh at their politics.
When it happens in America, no one bats an eye
Americans still think their country is somehow different even though it’s still a developing country in many respects.
Disintegrating. Crumbling.
Not just country nations, reminder the regions with the strongest identities are either the oldest, important, or Mormon. We are very much kn the same state the late western Roman empire was in, where they had African Romance, Brithonic Romance, and Gaulic Romance we have Californian, Texan, and Northestern the east coast tracks to eastern Mediterranean.
USA is the new banana republic.
Oh no I am absolutely laughing at America
Now, it is happening right now: https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-destruction
This is exactly what they voted for and they’ll fucking do it again.