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Wed, 29 Jan 2025 09:16:59 GMT

Illegal Immigrants and Morality: I'm reposting a comment (with a few modifications) I made on a friend's Facebook timeline. Someone had commented on his post with:

"The left would rather talk about the cost of deporting “ILLEGAL” immigrants, rather than the fact they shouldn’t be here to start with."

I thought it important to respond to this, not because of what "leftists" would or wouldn't want to talk about, but because of the underlying assumptions implicit in his comment that "ILLEGAL" is a judgment of immorality, implying justice counters those that are illegal.

So let's talk about whether "they" should be in the US or not. I'll start by asserting that there is nothing intrinsic in the nature of the world or moral law that states that any human, any tribe, has more rights to the Earth and its fruits than any other.

In fact, I would posit that it is immoral for limited groups of people to hog resources for themselves at the expense of others, resources they have access to only by accident of their birth.

A child born into poverty in America or elsewhere has as much right to a decent life as any child born into plenty in America or elsewhere.

Most Americans are descendants of people who invaded a continent, slaughtered and ethnically cleansed its inhabitants, enslaved millions of others, destroyed their cultures.

Now, somehow, they believe they have the rights to it, despite the reality that their forebears, the very foundation of the nation, disregarded these "rights" in other peoples.

Anyone who believes Americans "own" America and can declare it off-limits to anyone else ignore this history, the foundational philosophy of America, enshrined even in its founding document, the Constitution (3/5ths clause).

America was founded by theft, murder, and enslavement of people already on the land as much as by hard work.

If you disagree with this, we disagree at a moral level, not legal or logistical.

The logical implication of my position is that Americans are morally obligated to support people who come from places where they have much less favorable quality of life.

And yes, I believe such people are also morally obligated to contribute their best to American (or any) society through work, citizenship, and social contributions.

And all the data shows very clearly that immigrants EXCEL at this (paying taxes, working much harder than most native US citizens, etc).

They even decrease the crime rate on a per capita level because they commit less crimes. By most metrics, they are great citizens in everything but bureaucratic approval.

What makes them "illegal" isn't moral law, but transient power. What makes Uyghurs basically illegal in China? What made Jews illegal in Nazi Germany? What made Africans slaves in America?

What denied blacks, women, and Native Americans basic rights for hundreds of years in America (land of the "free")?

Power.

Who didn't have it, who held it, and what kind of people they were. Not morality. Not God's law. Power.

Therefore, terms such as "illegal" are relative to who is in power. Alcohol was once illegal, and moonshiners are mythologized in certain cultures for being "illegals" and making it.

Cannabis was once "the devil's lettuce."Jails in America are filled with (mostly black) men who may or may not have had or distributed it (the legal system has some very strong racial bias). Now GOP politicians are investing in it.

Slavery was for centuries LEGAL in America. Until about 100 years ago, 1/2 the US population was denied citizenship and basic rights and agency because of their birth status (women).

Until even more recently, million of blacks were denied a laundry list of freedoms for the same reason.

All of this was legal. And in fact, you were ILLEGAL if you opposed it and could get your rights taken away for doing so. Nearly a million people were slaughtered in the US Civil War for opposing these laws.

Therefore, a priori, in essence, LEGALITY is not a moral term, and therefore "ILLEGALITY" is not a term of immorality. As history shows, it can often be the reverse in a massive way.

I see the vast majority of immigrants coming to the US as people struggling in the areas they live and hearing a myth of "the promised land." A land flowing with milk and honey. A land that for years declared:

"Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

And put a giant copper statue in the harbor of its biggest city with those words written on it. A nation built by immigrants kidnapped and brought over who built the damn White House and Capital building.

A series of immigrants, all vilified when they came from Europe, for elsewhere, who literally built America's cities, cleaned them, fed us, and made America what it is today from infrastructure to culture.

That's what many struggling around the world see. We called them! And they came. And what do they find?

A system that is so biased against them that they have no possible legal way to immigrate within a reasonable portion of their lifetime (certainly not in time for their children).

And so many of them, having come so far, through so much, often giving up all they had to get to the US for a better life, enter anyway with the hope to become legalized at some point. For the powers that be to approve them.

And for this many label them criminals and want to treat them as immoral and deserving of punishment.

I find their stories more inspiring than many privileged native citizens who take their plenty for granted, who appear to have nothing but hate and negative labels for people seeking to better their lives and the lives of their families.

And America is shooting itself in the foot with this (something it's been doing a lot of the last 40 years from coddling the rich until we have a variable caste system to education).

The US has the equivalent of the Saudi Oil fields in people power, a river of possibility and energy flowing in. People who will work harder than many native citizens (history and contemporary studies show this), people who will fuel America's future.

We should be embracing them, funding their training and integration into society.

People are our greatest resource. We have put down those already here (poverty and struggle in the land of plenty so that the rich can funnel money from workers to shareholders) and turn away those that are journeying thousands of miles and knocking on our doors.

Now Trump wants to forcibly deport those who made that journey (bet the original native tribes wished they had the power to declare European invaders illegal and deport them!). ~15 million.

This is larger than many of the worst ethnic cleanings in history. It's going to either sputter and fail (like his wall in term 1) or turn into something much, much worse.

And it's the opposite of what we should be doing morally and practically. We're just too blinded by propaganda to see it. They are eating our pets, after all.

And if anyone thinks this is the zenith of migration issues, climate change would like a word!

In the next 50-100 years, as more and more places with billions of people become less and less habitable, people are going to leave. YOU might leave if you had the unfortunate accident of being born in the wrong place (and who knows, perhaps America will suffer that fate).

They will be coming to other places by the 100s of millions (rather than suffer or die where they are). It will make current immigration issues seem like kindergarten.

And they are right to do so. Can any of us tell these people with a straight face looking at our own children that they should suffer poverty, malnutrition, threats of death from war or authoritarian regimes, that it's WRONG for them to leave?

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is considered an UNALIENABLE right in America (or used to be). People will go to places where they think they can find that.

People in already better off lands do not own those lands - they were by random chance graced to be placed there. It was not earned. It cannot be earned.

And practically, America will either learn to assimilate and nurture migrants, or it will go to war with them. Those are the options, and right now in America, those in power are choosing war.

Rather than seek mutual benefit from their arrival, strengthening the nation, building, America is doing the one thing that it still does best as a nation: destroy.

And one reaps what one sows.

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 10:33:48 GMT

"Are We Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?" NYTimes, by Kim Lane Scheppele and Norman Eisen

This is too important to be behind a paywall. I link a free version of the article are the end.

Authors: Professor Scheppele teaches sociology & international affairs at Princeton & worked in Hungary as a researcher at the Hungarian Constitutional Court. Mr. Eisen is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution & served as the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.

OpEd: Since Donald Trump’s election victory, we have witnessed striking accommodations to his narrow win and mandate, what has been called “anticipatory obedience.”

Are we sleepwalking into an autocracy? We hope not, and would be glad if the threat does not materialize.

But as close observers of people and places where democracy has come under pressure and occasionally buckled, we see creeping autocracy as a distinct and under-discussed possibility.

We know well other nations, including Hungary and Poland, where leaders have steered policies that lead to a backsliding of democracy.

We see eerie similarities between what transpired in those countries and what Mr. Trump and his transition team have already done and promise to do.

Fortunately, we also have examples of countries that have pushed back on threats to democracy, and we can learn from them.

The Trump transition has featured the rapid-fire appointments of several cabinet officials who are both unqualified and potentially dangerous to the security and health of the American people.

The transition has also included a flurry of actual and threatened libel actions against critics, followed by several media executives and owners caving in.

Business leaders with economic interests dependent on the federal government have also made nice with the president-elect, who has threatened to use his regulatory power to pick favorites.

In a second term, Mr. Trump’s actions may be even more dangerous. He is now following the playbook created by Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, who after losing and then regaining office moved his country from a democracy into an “illiberal state,” as he put it.

It was one of the faster collapses of a robust democracy on record.

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As we have seen in others democracies, autocracy is not built out of the whims of a leader but only becomes entrenched when it has been certified by legalism — exploiting legal means to serve autocratic ends.

After Mr. Orbán paid his third visit of 2024 to Mar-a-Lago in early December, and after revelations that Mr. Orbán’s people were involved in influencing policy in Mr. Trump’s second term, Mr. Trump’s affinity for the Orbán playbook should not be surprising.

Mr. Orbán used law as a weapon against Hungarian democracy. When he came to power in 2010, he unleashed a pack of laws designed to bring the courts to heel and to scare the media and political opposition into submission.

He consolidated power in an ever-expanding Office of the Prime Minister, bypassing his cabinet & giving orders directly to the bureaucracy, which he had reconstructed by changing the civil service law to fire those not already on his team & elevate allies to key positions.

Mr. Orbán’s rise to power was accompanied by the aggressive use of libel actions to drain the resources of critics and to chill the aspirations of new challengers. He packed the courts with loyalists.

Mr. Trump promises to do much the same, including through his embrace of Project 2025 ideas and their proponents, many of whom are populating his administration. Project 2025 lays out a 180-day playbook for capturing government quickly, using legal tools.

The plan envisions a bulked-up White House Office and Executive Office of the President embracing a unitary executive theory that “it is the President’s agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies that operate under his constitutional authority.”

Project 2025 then relies on reinstating Mr. Trump’s 2020 executive order creating Schedule F, which permits the reclassification of civil service positions as at-will jobs so that the president can remove bureaucrats who are not on his team.

Even before Mr. Trump’s appointees have entered their designated offices, however, Mr. Trump and his admirers have launched libel cases and threats of criminal investigation to intimidate journalists and political opponents, just as Mr. Orbán did.

ABC News just settled one such case for $15 million rather than risk the cost and Trumpian ire of defending its journalist.

Mr. Trump has made no secret of wanting to weaken the landmark Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, which creates a high bar for proving libel against public officials.

(In 2014, Mr. Orbán’s government changed the country’s libel law to make it easier for public officials to win libel cases after a constitutional amendment nullified the Hungarian Constitutional Court decision to the contrary.)

By entering office with a blitz of legislation and outrageous policy proposals in 2010, Mr. Orbán divided the opposition.

Those who cared about media freedom embraced one set of initiatives; those who worried about judicial independence started another; still others focused on prisoners and migrants.

Crucially, the opposition only rarely united when faced with attacks on multiple fronts.

Mr. Trump is already using this tactic of flooding the zone with legal challenges designed to divide and conquer his opposition. His political opposition may be next. Strongly united during the presidential campaign, it must take care not to splinter.

Some are prioritizing the coming fight against mass deportations; others are doubling down on trans rights;

attorneys are focusing on protecting the Justice Department from bringing wrongful prosecutions against Mr. Trump’s political opponents (and responding if it happens);

former judges are focused on judicial decision-making and appointments if the rule of law comes under attack.

But the unified purpose and energy that dominated the presidential campaign must be maintained, making political opposition resistant to a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Lessons from other attempts at autocratic takeover provide more guidance for democratic self-defense.

In Poland, where the Law and Justice government also cemented its power by law using the Orbán playbook, masses of Polish citizens went to the streets demanding protection of the judiciary.

When the next election neared, opposition parties set aside their differences to establish a campaign that focused on the threats to constitutional democracy. They won, albeit narrowly, in 2023.

But the Polish electoral victory also shows how hard it is to un-entrench a government that has entrenched itself by law.

With the holdover Law and Justice-affiliated president blocking new legislation with his veto and the packed Constitutional Tribunal overturning other initiatives,

the government that ran on a platform of restoring democracy can barely make headway and is already falling in the polls because it looks ineffective.

The lesson Poland teaches us is that would-be autocrats can be pushed back if the opposition is united, but also that a country stands a better chance of recovery if it blocks autocracy before it becomes legally entrenched.

As in Poland, Mr. Trump was able to solidify a clear majority at the Supreme Court during his first term, and its rulings contributed to the delay for any possible reckoning by a federal court for his conduct.

In Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro ruled like Mr. Trump with whim and revenge, the 2022 election narrowly toppled him, after he cast doubt on the process.

But because Mr. Bolsonaro, like Mr. Trump, did not fully entrench himself by law in his first term, the still independent Supreme Federal Court was able to disqualify Mr. Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years,

and the still-independent federal prosecutors are now examining overwhelming evidence that he had planned a coup.

Here, too, however, democratic recovery depends on crucial institutions remaining independent and not packed with loyalists during the period of attempted autocratic capture.

Defenders of democracy will have to stay united, focusing on ensuring that checks and balances remain intact and that crucial democratic watchdog institutions elude capture.

Otherwise, America will indeed find itself sleepwalking into autocracy.

Link to free article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/opinion/trump-democracy-autocracy.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.pU4.x6An.U\_mm8A0x\_kMB&smid=url-share

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 17:58:02 GMT

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "On Stupidity" https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/12/bonhoeffer-on-stupidity/

(from “After Ten Years” in “Letters and Papers from Prison.” Bonhoeffer was a leader in the Confessional Church in Germany and was hanged to death on April 9, 1945 by Hitler’s Nazis just days before the Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated.)

///////BEGIN ESSAY

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.

Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears;

facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one.

There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.

We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.

We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability.

And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.

It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions.

Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.

It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail.

Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords that have taken possession of him.

He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.

This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity.

Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.

This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly.

The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance.

It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.

END ESSAY///////

I'll just anticipate critiques on his "God" clause. Yes, it could be seen as stupidity to turn to an authority, seeming perhaps to contradict his statement on religions. He clearly has an idea of a real God of truth, not a human construction of religions and ideologies. That nuance aside, the rest I think is powerful and timely.

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 19:49:54 GMT

From the opening of "China Girl", 2019

ATTACKS SURGE IN SOUTHWEST

Fueling President Suite’s call to Congress for expanding domestic counterterrorism programs, the spate of terrorist violence in the nation continues to accelerate. Major attacks on United States federal officers and national infrastructure in the last month have seized headlines and overtaken the administration’s scandals and debates over executive authority.

The epicenter of the violence again centered in the Southwest. The May 5th bombing and destruction of the Memorial Bridge spanning the Colorado River near the Hoover Dam significantly escalated the terrorist target profile. A convoy of thirty immigrant transport container trucks was halted by the devastating explosion. In the ensuing chaos, guerrilla fighters emerged from the sands, attacking the convoy and abducting hundreds of detainees. Two subsequent attacks, one on another convoy in Arizona, the second on an immigrant detainment camp in Nevada, have led to substantial disruptions in federal efforts to establish a national highway pipeline to deport illegal immigrants.

“President Suite wants eleven million people shipped out of the country,” noted Arizona governor Fred Johnson. “That’s not going to happen anytime soon if these terrorists keep blowing up the roads and bridges along the way.”

To date, no organization has claimed responsibility, although rumors in immigrant communities persist of a mysterious figure called El Marcado. Local, state, and federal law enforcement have been stymied to discover anything about this domestic Che Guevara, while President Suite has been highly critical of ICE division leaders and Homeland Security’s leadership.

“Former president York was a terrible leader,” Suite declared at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona over the weekend. “Just terrible. Now we have to clean up her mess. She picked weak people. Too many currently in Homeland are because of her. They’re soft on terror. Her appointments. They’re soft on crime and terrorists invading from the border. We’re not safe until things change.”

Democratic leaders have accused the president of using the attacks as an excuse to purge law enforcement agencies of career agents and to staff the departments with political operatives.

“We’ve seen what’s he’s done with the FBI his first term to quash the investigations into his alleged criminal activity,” said representative Damon Rolf, Democrat of Massachusetts. “Now he’ll use these attacks as excuses to do the same with the rest of Homeland. We’re approaching a frightening place in America, one-party rule and executive overreach like we’ve never seen before. The government is unrecognizable.”

The terror attacks have tracked ICE deployments and removal missions to secure and detain undocumented immigrants. These large-scale governmental raids have increased in number, performed in accordance with last summer’s Presidential Security Decree. The new laws, drafted by the Republican-controlled Congress over staunch Democratic opposition, provided forty billion dollars for border wall construction and ten billion in additional discretionary funds, much of which has gone toward what some have called a “militarization” of ICE and related border security forces.

“President Suite is declaring war on legal and illegal immigrants,” said recently elected Senator Anastasia Ortega-Cruz of New York. “Are we surprised that someone is returning fire?”

Calling her comments anti-American, Florida Rep. Mark Graf fired back. “The young Senator is crossing a line, giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States. More than ever, we see the need to curtail the reckless rhetoric of the radical Left that endangers our soldiers and law enforcement officers. That is why I will be voting to introduce the Patriot Speech Act to criminalize seditious and otherwise anti-American rhetoric. Enough is enough. We’re under siege. Under attack. In times of war we have to line up behind our leaders and the flag or be revealed as traitors to the United States.”

Director of Homeland Security Kiltss Neerijnen escalated tensions with Mexico by blaming the recent violence on foreign meddling.

“These terrorists are well trained and equipped. They demonstrate high level, professional, state-sponsored skills beyond anything we have seen before. You can rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to determine if they have received help from outside the United States. As the president has warned, any such meddling by our neighbors will be considered an act of war, hostile to the United States, and will be dealt with accordingly.”

Mexican president Miguel Ángel Garcia Gonzalez sought to defuse tensions in an international statement following Neerijnen’s press briefing.

“Mexico remains a staunch ally of the United States,” his letter began. “We condemn these acts of violence and terrorism. We assure the United States president and the world that our nation has had no hand in such deplorable actions in any manner whatsoever. We hope that our long history of cooperation and peace will reassure the American public of our continued friendship and support.”

He reiterated his country’s recent hardline stance on returnees, however, vowing to keep the border closed to alleged undocumented migrants.

“While the United States builds a wall between our two countries to protect its sovereignty, Mexico cannot accept millions of planned returnees who are verified only by the government of the United States. Until such a time as a mutually agreed upon treaty can be established, one in which we are allowed to determine who is and is not a Mexican citizen, the border to human traffic will remain closed.”

The recent closing of the border to everything but commercial traffic has enraged Washington and, particularly, President Suite. Opinion polls in the United States show a majority of US citizens oppose Mexico’s actions.

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 11:18:38 GMT

Dying of not surprised. https://wapo.st/3CAYf8F

"The most striking example would be Russ Vought, whom Trump is leaning toward appointing to lead the White House budget office. Trump has named at least four other nominees who are credited by name in Project 2025, a product of the conservative Heritage Foundation."

"Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “border czar”; John Ratcliffe, Trump’s planned nominee for CIA director; Brendan Carr, his selection to head the Federal Communications Commission; and Pete Hoekstra, Trump’s selection for ambassador to Canada."

"Homan, Hoekstra and Ratcliffe were listed as contributors to Project 2025’s 900-plus-page manifesto. Carr wrote an entire chapter on the agency that Trump now wants him to run."

"One of the groups that advised Project 2025, America First Legal, is led by Stephen Miller, a former top Trump aide whom Trump has now picked to return to the White House as assistant to the president, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser."

“Donald Trump spent months on the campaign trail lying to voters about the clear ties between his campaign and the wildly unpopular Project 2025 agenda,” Alex Floyd, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.

“Now, he’s finally showing his hand and picking a Cabinet full of Project 2025 lackeys to help him implement his dangerous and extreme blueprint.”

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 11:06:29 GMT

Trump is opening the door to hell and the monsters are walking through. They are putting people in place who will break the imperfect structures in place and replace them with authoritarian nightmares. A thread.

To begin, let's meet some of the currently proposed cast of characters, less than two weeks after the election was decided.

Pete Hegseth, Defense Secretary: A war criminal defender, vehemently anti-DEI (code for racist), and anti-women-in-the-military ex-soldier banned from duty, in his words, because "leadership deemed that I was a white nationalist." Fox News host. Sexual assault accusations.

RFK Jr. DHHS Secretary: Conspiracy theorist, anti-science, preparing to gut the FDA, NIH, and likely global health efforts. Racist theories of COVID resistance (Chinese and Jews, of course). AIDs denier who believes COVID is a bioweapon. Vaccines cause autism proponent.

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State: Climate change denier, Obama care repealer, opposes net neutrality, pro-Israeli settlements. Million $ recipient of NRA money. Opposes marriage equality and abortion even in rape and incest.

Matt Gaetz, Attorney General: A sexual predator (preemptively sought Trump pardon), holocaust denier inviter, January 6th denier (it's ANTIFA!).

A very bad list goes on and on with anti-queer politicians, opponents of teaching the truth of race in American history (aka on the right, "critical race theory"), anti-immigrant, pro-immigrant family separation, and on and on.

This should not surprise. They have a radical agenda they have promised to enact. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, although disavowed during the election after intense criticism, is clearly their roadmap.

This is seen from what Trump and advisors talk about to the number of people associated with that document who are part of his team. Trump's dystopian language about America, immigrants, government, and the world could only be "solved" by extreme action.

These appointments will be people glad to do the things decent and reasonable people won't, even those who might be sympathetic to the ideology. The man who pardoned war criminals will happily take a butcher's knife to the DoD and soon assert control over it.

Similarly with pubic health, immigration, monetary policy, etc. With Trump's stranglehold over the GOP, the Congress will likely fall into place for his policy agenda (or face the consequences - and there are few independently minded Republicans left, anyway).

People sometimes act surprised at the appointments. The only surprising appointment would be of a non-extremist to a position of power in any area they care about. In other areas positions will be cut or staffed with cronies and sycophants.

The foundation is being laid.

It's also not rocket science. There are too many sad examples of authoritarian groups in history and how they seize and maintain power and enact their agendas.

Fascist, authoritarian, dictatorial, left, right => the words don't matter because once politicized, the words lose meaning. But the ideas are quite simple and common-sensical.

Such political movements don’t simply challenge the political order - they dismantle and reshape it entirely, leaving lasting damage to the structures of democracy and rule of law.

When such groups seize power, the initial assault targets the norms and principles that form the bedrock of democratic governance.

It's not a "coup" in the traditional sense — it’s initially an erosion, facilitated by legal maneuvers and manipulative rhetoric, which snowballs into an avalanche once they acquire the power needed to really take a sledgehammer to things.

Step 1: Undermining Institutions.

One of the first moves involves attacking independent institutions that act as any kind of check on executive power — courts, legislatures, media, oppositional political groups, influential individuals. Consider the Weimar Republic.

Hitler’s (democratically elected) National Socialist Party exploited legal mechanisms (Reichstag Fire Decree, Enabling Act) to neutralize opposition, the judiciary and parliament, consolidating total control.

The Nazi's did not invent this. They weaponized and modernized tools long known and utilized in history.

Frighteningly, in the US a lot of the post-9/11 erosion of rights (in the name of security) are already in place or can be easily re-activated, from surveillance to the declaration of US citizens as "enemy combatants" who lose most rights.

There's the option of the president to order extra-judicial assassinations (thanks, Obama) and use military force domestically (already promoted by Trump, legally justified by this team and influencers by the Insurrection Act),

The instruments for suppression are in place, laid down by both Democratic and Republican Administrations. Historical protections or those made in response post-9/11 laws will almost certainly fall in the face of fear-based propaganda about the "enemies within" etc.

Step 2: Eroding the Rule of Law.

Such leaders and groups will bypass laws to suit their agendas, either by rewriting constitutions or enacting sweeping legislation. Putin’s Russia is a modern example: constitutional amendments, voter suppression, and strategic use of state resources entrenched power.

His "managed democracy" narrative hides the decay of legal protections, as dissent is criminalized and the courts act as enforcers of the regime’s will rather than guardians of justice or the desires of the populace.

Step 3: Weaponizing Polarization.

Creating and exploiting societal divisions is a well-known tactic. Leaders stoke fear, portraying political opposition not just as rivals, but as existential threats. Example: Turkey’s Erdoğan has polarized society along ethnic, religious, and ideological lines.

By painting his critics as enemies of the state, he justified purges of the judiciary, academia, and military after the failed coup of 2016, effectively cementing his authoritarian grip.

Trump has clearly gone a good ways on this route with his rhetoric (e.g., political opponents a "enemies within", the press as "enemy of the people").

Step 4: Normalizing Extremism.

A hallmark of these regimes is their transformation of the political spectrum, making extreme measures seem "reasonable," or at least "normal." This suppresses debate and allows an authoritarian agendas to proceed unchecked, steamrolling any discussion.

Step 5: Institutionalizing Power.

Authoritarian regimes codify their changes, making it difficult to reverse the damage even if power shifts. Hungary’s Orbán has strategically rewritten election laws and constitutional rules, creating a system designed to keep his party in power.

A facade of democracy persists, but the competitive, pluralistic system is hollowed out and sets the stage for further consolidation of power.

Once authoritarian movements have reshaped a government, it can take generations to rebuild trust in institutions and restore the democratic order.

The post-authoritarian transitions of Spain and Argentina illustrate this struggle, with both nations needing decades to address the trauma and systemic damage inflicted during their authoritarian periods.

History shows that democratic erosion is a slippery slope — often justified in the name of “stability,” “security,” and “cultural preservation.” Making country X great again. Yet, the cost is the very freedom and pluralism that democracy seeks to protect.

I write this because seeing the worst possible outcomes is a way to prepare for them and to fight against them. Even many opposing Trump criticize such an approach, seeing it overblown and delegitimizing to political movements.

However, history has many examples of democratic institutions falling to authoritarianism. America is not exceptional except in its own collective consciousness. Listen to what Trump and his allies are saying they want for America and what they plan to do.

They are not hiding it. And if they are comfortable discussing such draconian extremism publicly, imagine what they could be planning that they are still keeping under wraps.

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 11:01:51 GMT

To begin, let's meet some of the currently proposed cast of characters, less than two weeks after the election was decided.

Matt Gaetz, Attorney General: A sexual predator (preemptively sought Trump pardon), holocaust denier inviter, January 6th denier (it's ANTIFA!).

The foundation is being laid.

It's also not rocket science. There are too many sad examples of authoritarian groups in history and how they seize and maintain power and enact their agendas.

Fascist, authoritarian, dictatorial, left, right => the words don't matter because once politicized, the words lose meaning. But the ideas are quite simple and common-sensical.

Such political movements don’t simply challenge the political order - they dismantle and reshape it entirely, leaving lasting damage to the structures of democracy and rule of law.

When such groups seize power, the initial assault targets the norms and principles that form the bedrock of democratic governance.

Step 1: Undermining Institutions.

The Nazi's did not invent this. They weaponized and modernized tools long known and utilized in history.

Step 2: Eroding the Rule of Law.

Step 3: Weaponizing Polarization.

By painting his critics as enemies of the state, he justified purges of the judiciary, academia, and military after the failed coup of 2016, effectively cementing his authoritarian grip.

Trump has clearly gone a good ways on this route with his rhetoric (e.g., political opponents a "enemies within", the press as "enemy of the people").

Step 4: Normalizing Extremism.

Step 5: Institutionalizing Power.

A facade of democracy persists, but the competitive, pluralistic system is hollowed out and sets the stage for further consolidation of power.

Once authoritarian movements have reshaped a government, it can take generations to rebuild trust in institutions and restore the democratic order.

They are not hiding it. And if they are comfortable discussing such draconian extremism publicly, imagine what they could be planning that they are still keeping under wraps.

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 10:32:18 GMT

As a basic researcher who has applied for, received, and reviewed government funded research over a 30+ year career in science in both the US and Germany, I'd like to say something about the tsunami of destruction set to ransack the US NIH.

First, let it be noted, until it happens, it is only promises by the Trump administration. This means it is possible that, like Trump 1.0, dysfunction, incompetence, and mercurial decision-making will hobble momentum to enact their plans.

However, Trump 2.0 so far has shown itself to be a very different beast. It is far more organized and structured by people who are not Trump and have been working for decades to remake the United States into their dystopian, far-right vision.

Therefore, it is very likely that this administration is going to be a lot more organized and effective in achieving their stated goals.

On the health and health science side, it is clear that Trump and those who surround him are anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-data, anti-logical reasoning, and motivated by dark-ages ideas of truth and approaches to finding the truth.

RFK Jr. is a great example of this. And if he is indeed appointed to head the US DHHS, he claims he will dismantle the FDA and NIH and construct entities for the pursuit of health science and approval of drugs according to his own views of things.

I would recommend at this stage believing him.

And before saying more, I want to note that having participated in peer review, grant writing, grant management and administration, basic research, etc., I can say that indeed, the NIH and FDA do very much need improvement.

The litany of sins is long and well documented. Powerful scientists (almost always older) have used their power and influence to stake claim to the majority of research funding while younger scientists (what few now stay in science) are starved.

Kennedy is correct to note that pharmaceutical companies have for decades exerted far, far too much control over drug approval (the opioid crisis is the product of this, but there are so many examples). Left-leaning Dems have always harped on this.

Generally, inefficiency, fear of truly novel science, internal politics etc. => there is a lot to improve.

However, blowing up the current setup and installing a horde of Kennedyesque conspiracy theorists, anti-science wackos, and snake-oil salesmen is not the way to go, if that needs to be said. A lumbering, compromised system will go straight to hell in a deplorable basket.

And while I certainly blame MAGA first and foremost for what is coming, I also blame the power brokers at FDA and NIH and beyond: their hubris, greed, and insular behavior has provided an ill patient in need of treatment. And the quacks are circling.

If Kennedy follows through on his promises to gut 600 positions at NIH (from leaders to office workers), and replaces them with the kind of people he believes are fit to do science, it will become a mockery of anything it ever aspired to be.

Health science in the US was already dying. Heads of lab have been struggling to find qualified postdocs as US education falters.

Talented and bright students see the economic and career reasons NOT to go into US science, and foreign talent dries up as other nations build up their own programs and who also fear an increasingly hostile US culture.

I can see little way the biomedical research effort in the US is not wounded and setback decades, perhaps never recovering its former glory. Despite its many problems, the list of amazing contributions to knowledge and medicine that have come of it is awe-inspiring.

And what is happening at DHHS is going to be the pattern across US governmental programs from DoJ to EPA to DoE and DoD etc. A group of some of the worst people in America, with regressive ideas, bad morals, steeped in ignorance, will remake America in their dark image.

As always in these types of "revolutions," it will be the more vulnerable who are hurt while the powerful, generally speaking outside of a few token beheadings, will do just fine.

I know so many hardworking scientists who have sacrificed economic benefit (science pays poorly and very late in the game, gutting people of building financial futures), damaged personal lives, and who labor hard and long on difficult topics to benefit humanity.

The right-wing shroom trip of "rich researchers" is as absurd as it is offensive. Nearly every scientist I know could make far more money in other industries and has lost a lot in their dedication.

They struggle against scientific elites who have indeed rigged the game in their favor. Great research time and again is not funded for the masses of scientific serfs. They keep working because of their commitment to knowledge and its application.

We frankly don't deserve them.

If the US science ship goes down, and it's looking bad, these amazing people will take the brunt of it. At best they'll have to shut down research, fire scientific staff, pursue the flawed ideas that the new Middle Ages elites consider worthwhile.

But many will lose their jobs (or salary, as it depends on grants). The politicization of academia by the right will also lead to many losing funding or jobs for political reasons.

This will decimate science at colleges and universities (outside of a rich few). And, most critically, the young will see even more reason to abandon science.

Of course, there will be many who will see opportunity. Those in sync with those coming to power.

I don't have much to say on that except that the anti-intellectual nature of the far-right gives a high probability of failure of the enterprise just as such irrationally has historically in research.