Indeed. The problem is and has been for awhile that the "other team" is not willing to purposefully acquire and wield power. They seem to have a very confused view of what politics actually is, to the point where it's not clear if what they are doing even qualifies as politics.
There are abundant ways to wield power even when not in direct control of branches of government. For example, the unions that are suing to stop some of this have hundreds of thousands of members. They could shut down just about anything they want and wield enormous amounts of pressure.
Air traffic controllers could stand in solidarity to fellow fired federal workers and ground every airplane in the country indefinitely. Teamsters could completely immobilize Tesla, SpaceX, and everything else Elon Musk cares about in hours.
If you don't like my examples, come up with your own, but these concepts aren't fantastical at all they're just core ways to wield power in society. The Scandinavian countries do stuff like this all the time it's not even a relic of the 1930's or something.
There is a power struggle to determine what our society's goals are, how it accomplishes those goals, and for the benefit of whom. The "MAGA" side has a clear conception of this concept, and they're trying to grab as much power as they can get away with.
There is a massive amount of power that could be brought to bear against that. There always is whenever it's an attempt at rule by rich oligarchs, as they're always wildly outnumbered.
Their next move - and the Rubicon none of us can uncross - will be defying the court orders that are inevitably issued to stop the flagrant criminality
Once they defy those, it’s done.
The enforcement of federal laws including court orders requires the Trump justice department to act. And his first moves (naturally) were to fire all oversight people, install extremist hardcore loyalists at the top, and fire anyone underneath who was not equally loyal. Anybody who thinks any other administration has done anything remotely comparable in the modern era is just uninformed
All of us should take a moment to acknowledge all the Peter Thiel-adjacent folks in this community who drove us directly to this moment
That's what worries me the most despite generally agreeing with the goals of DOGE.
The Supreme court has only a few armed police, basically no teeth. There is nothing really holding the executive to listen to them, and the legislators won't check any fouls either. There is surprisingly little beyond tradition to stop them going off the rails.
Indeed. The collapse of the "mos maiorum", the unwritten set of social norms, was a big part of what dragged the Roman republic to collapse.
Norm violations have a way of accelerating in a tit-for-tat way, because once your opponent does it you will lose if you don't respond in kind. This didn't start here, and it definitely won't end here.
"All of us should take a moment to acknowledge all the Peter Thiel-adjacent folks in this community who drove us directly to this moment"
This is why this community in particular needs to be talking about these things instead of flagging them as irrelevant to the hacker ethos, as if we don't have direct responsibility for what's going on right now.
"Move fast and break things" is a culture we promulgated. Yes, me, you, everyone commenting here. The people we looked up to for years - mentors and thought leaders - are the ones planning and directing this effort. Hackers apparently are the ones implementing it. If we want to talk about it in our cultural terms, these guys are imo acting like black hats and we need to grapple with that.
Clearly we as a community are not ready for these conversations, but flagging them and burying them isn't going to make the need for them go away.
Yes my main takeaway from the musk flagging discussions on here is that tech people are no where near capable of taking responsibility for their central role in this mess. If I call all my sins "politics", say discussing politics is off the table, then magically you can't say anything bad about me!
It's because there's this pernicious meme throughout the tech world that political aloofness is a sign of intelligence. It was pathetic years ago and repugnant today.
Wow, haha. A real one. Never imagined I'd see a comment like this in the wild. I do think it's a stretch to, say, blame the community, but what breaks my head is how everyone is acting like this is normal? Kids going in and Ctrl-F'ing "dei" and "gender," deleting the former and replacing the latter with "sex." Making false claims about government spending about things that have been online for years and available to see... Never realized what a cult was until now!
Agreed, except I am more on jwz’s side with regard to the “hackers” here. Despite the name and occasionally intelligent discussion, HN isn’t really about hacker culture. It’s about Silicon Valley venture capitalism, with hacker-relevant topics largely used for tech cachet and recruitment. Real hackers are, on the whole, aligned with anarchism and socialism and are generally incompatible with SV culture. They would certainly want nothing to do with Thiel’s ridiculous politics.
The only reason Brown v. Board of Education was enforced was because the President sent troops from the 101st Airborne Division to ensure black children were able to go to school.
"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
The thing is, even if Trump said something similar, I think we'd still keep going about things in the same ho-hum way we are now. Left-wing newspapers will have headlines, Fox will have nothing, and Democratic congresspeople will have some kind of protest. Maybe there will be marches in a few big cities.
I honestly think nothing will rise to the level of an actual crisis until the military is ordered to do something that some percentage of officers refuse to comply with.
Trump ignoring court orders is the last straw, really. And he's doing that today. We have a president hell-bemt on destroying America, and no, that isn't hyperbole. I'm not sure how you think we'll have business-as-usual with the dismantling of the US government.
> I'm not sure how you think we'll have business-as-usual
Are you seeing general strikes? Chaos in the streets? Democratic congresspeople being successful at stopping anything? The Supreme Court stepping in?
No, none of those. Trump went and had fun at the Superbowl last night, and some editorials wrung their hands over Vance saying that Trump doesn't need to obey the courts. Most people in the country are ignoring what they see as some typical partisan bickering.
The administration need not defy court orders. Federal judges can be impeached and removed, with loyalists installed. Already, there are enough Trump-appointed judges on the bench where it won't take long for a judgment in the administration's favor to be reached.
> I also wonder whether these people were hired by Musk on purpose or he’s just a clueless imbecile who was duped by people who saw an opportunity to further their own goals.
This is a more interesting question to ask of some of the historic government waste the department is theoretically supposed to be tackling and the people who authorised wasteful government spending.
In Musk's case the unqualified young people in question are hardly in a position to persuasively argue they have a sophisticated grasp of workplace norms, government finances and auditing practices, and their Twitter edglordism is nothing that he wouldn't do himself so I don't think they've slipped by some thorough vetting process.
I’m amazed at the mental gymnastics I’m witnessing from people trying to defend 100% of what’s happening.
When people were criticizing the age of the people on the team, the narrative was that they are young and energetic adults and that it’s offensive to bring their age into question.
As soon as one of them (age 25!) was discovered to have written some blatantly racist remarks, the narrative flipped to pleas to forgive them because they’re just kids.
Not to mention how quickly this all went from shining a light on the situation to insisting that we blindly trust claims of corruption with no evidence or even independent review.
It’s all so absurd to watch. Regardless of where you fall on the political side, the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy is so blatant that you can’t possibly ignore it unless you’re resigned to being so hyper-partisan that anything goes as long as it’s done by your team.
They have a competent skin tone and sex. All these questions about "competence" and "merit" come up if a woman or black person have a professional career but look at recent hires for DoD head, Andreessen Horowitz partner, or DOGE and you see what they really mean
> As soon as one of them (age 25!) was discovered to have written some blatantly racist remarks, the narrative flipped to pleas to forgive them because they’re just kids.
Yeah, you just made that up. The "narrative" about the 25-year-old's remarks was not based on his age. This is the narrative, from JD Vance the vice president himself:
"Here’s my view:
I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.
We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.
So I say bring him back.
If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that." [0]
Obviously the operative line is the central one about not rewarding journalists who try to destroy people, "Ever". That means regardless of who the target is or their age.
>intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy is so blatant that you can’t possibly ignore it
"forgive them because they're kids" sounds like a pretty accurate paraphrase of "I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life"...
It's interesting that JD Vance should invoke that defence considering this particular "kid" with a fondness for racist edglordism was tasked with the responsibility of firing tens of thousands of other people...
And it "I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life" was the entire thing JD said that would matter, but it's not everything he said.
You're literally just deleting the important part of the message to pretend a supporting comment is "the narrative".
It's hypocritical intellectual dishonesty to pretend JD's point was something other than what it obviously was.
If this is your argument, don't be surprised when people look up the facts, note that you're dishonest this way, and tune you out.
The stance that we should never reward a journalist for “trying to ruin someone’s life” seems effectively to mean that we should never hold people accountable for their own words or actions, if those are reported by a journalist?
What if we didn’t worry about whether we’re “rewarding” the journalist, and just evaluated people’s actions and deeds when we decide how much public trust we want to extend to them?
> If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.
Saying things like "Normalize Indian hate" and "I was racist before it was cool" are statements that pretty well support a "bad dude" classification, especially in the context of a role where he'll be responsible for firing people and removing "DEI hires." Even if you agree (with Musk, Elez, etc.) that DEI is a problem, hiring a self-avowed racist to deal with it seems pretty idiotic.
Calling him "a kid" is also pretty disingenuous. He was 24 or 25 when he made those posts, hardly a kid. And they weren't ancient history, they were last year. I'm also for forgiveness if time has passed and people show that they deserve it, but it isn't ruining his life to hold him accountable to things he said last year, as an adult.
Nothing I said was inaccurate, and the fact that Vance also whinges about journalists accurately reporting the publicly expressed views of a person in a position of responsibility does not change the fact he referred to the twentysomething who resigned from that position as a "kid" somehow more deserving of a government job than the thousands of blameless individuals he was originally tasked with firing.
I appreciate that people who concur with Vance's objection to journalists reporting the truth are going to tune me and most things out, but that says more about your own lack of intellectual honesty than anyone else's...
> Obviously the operative line is the central one about not rewarding journalists who try to destroy people, "Ever". That means regardless of who the target is or their age.
Does that apply to politicians or billionaires as well? Considering Musk's history of doing that?
On a more general note, if it's racist remarks everyone is coming out with "lets forgive them", "they were young", "lets not destroy people because of some innocent remarks", but god forbid they say something that is being perceived as "leftist" ... burn them!
> and yet the absolute frustration is that there is nothing that anyone but the judiciary system can do.
Why would there be? The people hired Trump to be the CEO, the CEO hired Musk (personally, I think it is mostly to serve as a distraction while real personal/political goals are handled elsewhere), but regardless, any government only works when most leaders (and voters) have mostly good intentions.
It is not feasible to have a check and balance on every decision, everything would grind to a halt.
The United States isn’t supposed to have a “CEO” in the sense that a corporation does. For countries, that job description is called a “monarch”, and the Constitution is specifically designed to make sure we don’t have one.
The difference in job duration isn’t the point I was making. The President is merely the head of three equal branches that are supposed to keep each other in check, and has significant limits on his/her powers. A CEO has essentially limitless powers as long as they have the job.
As one obvious example, a CEO controls the company budget. A President can merely suggest a budget to Congress.
It’s more like Trump is the chairman of the board of directors representing shareholders interest (voters, loyalists, contributors) and Musk is the CEO.
