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josefritzishere 1 days ago [-]
The administration seems to be pro-crime, which is very problematic.
vannevar 1 days ago [-]
Given that the President is a convicted felon who maintains that what he did was fine, and that he has pardoned thousands of unrepentant criminals, and that the vast majority of his party enthusiastically endorsed all this, I would say "pro-crime" is an understatement.
Kapura 1 days ago [-]
_strongly_ pro-crime
br0ceph 1 days ago [-]
on a daily basis the current US president commits treason against the people of the united states, which im pretty sure even presidential immunity doesnt protect against.
Just one of the shady dealings with foreign monarchies, laudering their bribes directly to the president thru billion dollar purchases of worthless crypto "assets" ala world liberty financial; should land the president and his entire family in capital punishment
SomeHacker44 4 hours ago [-]
I believe treason is literally defined in the constitution itself as taking up arms against the country. By that definition, I think there have been few to almost no treasonous people in recent decades.
red-iron-pine 23 hours ago [-]
don't forget Trump's 90 minute call w/ Putin on the 4th of July a few days ago
I don't understand why people keep using things like this as their examples.
JFK met with Khrushchev. Bush Senior and Reagan had regular contact with Gorbachev. It's not weird for heads of state to talk to each other.
What's weird is for Trump to be paying tax dollars to cancel energy projects because he doesn't like windmills or using the FCC to investigate media outlets who criticize him.
There are plenty of good examples to use that it makes no sense to resort to evidence-free innuendo.
ceejayoz 20 hours ago [-]
Because it's not quite the same; JFK et. al. weren't dumb enough to trust the Russians during those contacts. This administration, though…
> President Donald Trump’s special envoy broke with long-standing protocol by not employing his own interpreter during three high-level meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, opting instead to rely on translators from the Kremlin, a U.S. official and two Western officials with knowledge of the talks told NBC News.
> President Trump reportedly met late last year with Russian President Vladimir Putin without a translator or aide from his administration present.
snypher 18 hours ago [-]
>Trump ... Putin without a translator
House of Cards used this same setup just to highlight how untrustworthy the president was acting.
AnthonyMouse 20 hours ago [-]
This seems like the same class of complaining about something ridiculous. If Putin wants to lie to you about something, do you expect him to speak the truth in Russian and then have his translator tell you something else? What advantage would that have compared with lying to you in Russian and having it translated accurately?
ceejayoz 20 hours ago [-]
> If Putin wants to lie to you about something, do you expect him to speak the truth in Russian and then have his translator tell you something else?
Why not? The only other person in the room doesn't speak Russian.
AnthonyMouse 20 hours ago [-]
You expect Putin of the KGB to presume the person he's speaking to doesn't have a recording device or the ability to remember the words he used and have them translated by someone else later? And if he did think that, wouldn't that be an advantage to the US of doing it that way, to capitalize on the chance he lets his guard down? And if he did let his guard down and Trump failed to capitalize on it, what disadvantage would the US suffer from that compared with the situation where he knows there is a US translator in the room and doesn't say it to begin with?
ceejayoz 19 hours ago [-]
> You expect Putin of the KGB to presume the person he's speaking to doesn't have a recording device…
Yes, I absolutely expect that sort of security at such a meeting.
AnthonyMouse 17 hours ago [-]
You expect the Russians to strip search the President of the United States to check for a listening device when they know that person will be in the room to hear whatever is said anyway, and the US to agree to that?
ceejayoz 16 hours ago [-]
I would expect the Russians to monitor for active electronic devices.
ZeroGravitas 20 hours ago [-]
I think we're worried about the Trump administration lying about what they talked to the Russians about. A translator with loyalty to the USA might request what they heard.
AnthonyMouse 20 hours ago [-]
Which is an even more fanciful conspiracy theory since the objection was Trump not bringing his own translator, a person he could otherwise personally select for their loyalty to him.
> Only Mr. Trump, who has alternately contradicted his own narrative of what was said and complained about a lack of fair coverage from a meeting only four people witnessed, could permit Ms. Gross to tell anyone about what she heard. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump has asked her to do that.
AnthonyMouse 16 hours ago [-]
So now we can deduce what this is really about.
Translators are civil servants with security clearances, not reporters. When the leaders of Germany and Brazil have a meeting, they may say things they don't intend for China and everyone else to know about, and it isn't the translator's job to report what was said to the media. Unless they've witnessed something on the scale of criminality that they need to act as a whistleblower (in which case they wouldn't need anyone's permission), they should never be telling anyone what happened in the room since their job is to keep those secrets.
The media are fully aware of that, but they're being disingenuous and pretending that allowing a diplomatic translator to act as a media witness is a request anyone is likely to grant. Then Trump predictably responds to that by removing the translator from the room, so now they're complaining about that instead.
ceejayoz 16 hours ago [-]
> So now we can deduce what this is really about.
The fact that he can't keep his own story straight?
In either instance?
sbayg 19 hours ago [-]
Just because most of critics are brain dead morons doesn’t mean Trump is a great guy or above the same level of scrutiny shown to previous presidents.
AnthonyMouse 16 hours ago [-]
That was literally the point. People should stop making farcical complaints that discredit the critics. When you cry wolf every day, eventually the wolf comes.
ourmandave 24 hours ago [-]
When you view it through the lens of Graft First, everything makes sense. All the seeming stupidity, ineptitude, and hypocrisy is just to make a buck.
Governing doesn't even appear to be an afterthought.
I still haven't figured out how he's profiting from Trump Accounts yet. Kick backs I suppose.
kevin_thibedeau 23 hours ago [-]
The stupidity and ineptitude is still real. These are a gang of nepo-babies who have mastered the art of failing up.
bdavisx 21 hours ago [-]
>I still haven't figured out how he's profiting from Trump Accounts yet
I would guess that he could have been paid in many various ways (TrumpCoins anyone) by financial institution(s) that were set to benefit from the accounts. Have the trump crypto companies followed all of the KYC laws?
br0ceph 13 hours ago [-]
exactly, the trading kartels could kick back money, but also just funneling taxes into the market is a rising tide for the overall market
financetechbro 52 minutes ago [-]
Crime maxxxing
toyg 23 hours ago [-]
Strong for crime, strong for the causes of crime.
22 hours ago [-]
hightrix 23 hours ago [-]
This admin is pro-money. Anything and everything can be bought. Pardons, contracts, legal outcomes, you name it. Bribe trump and he'll do whatever you ask.
sandworm101 24 hours ago [-]
Pro rich people crimes. They remain very much against poor people who break the law.
jackb4040 24 hours ago [-]
Let's be honest, poor people in general.
ceejayoz 20 hours ago [-]
> They remain very much against poor people who break the law.
Plenty of those pardoned for their acts on Jan 6.
sandworm101 19 hours ago [-]
People with the time/money/energy to travel to DC for such things are not poor. They may claim poverty but the fact they made the trip, more often than not, evidences substantial disposable time/income.
It's even more nuanced than that. Vaguely, there are 3 caste buckets:
- A privileged state - for the rich and powerful to get away with crimes
- A normative state - for ordinary people whom experience more prosecutions
- A prerogative state - for poor and enemies whom experience arbitrary injustice and persecution for infractions or made-up crimes
mindslight 2 hours ago [-]
I'd say you're making a different framework. In the dual state framework, your privileged state/caste is just an aspect of the prerogative state. The dual state framework doesn't declare "which way" the illegality goes. I'd say that trying to define that directionality is already trying to impart normative state concepts (of illegality) onto the prerogative state.
Was Alex Pretti a victim of your prerogative state, and his executioners were merely government agents executing a state imperative? Or was he a victim of gang violence and his executioners were part of the privileged state? In the dual state framework, the answer is wu.
But don't let me discourage you from expanding upon your framework! It may be more effective at explaining some things. It just needs to be more substantial than trying to do a simple tweak in an HN comment.
skeledrew 24 hours ago [-]
To be poor is a crime.
ButlerianJihad 7 hours ago [-]
You know, I wasn't raised poor but I was mentally ill from the very beginning, and somehow I always identified/sympathized with the poor more than anyone else; perhaps I aspired or expected to be poor, and poor is what I became.
When you're poor, you can't help but be immersed in rebellion and discontent. Every song on the radio, every free TV show, every buddy at the dive bar is talking trash about your leadership and the powers that be. There was never any way for me to avoid the voices that hated everything I stood for, from the beginning, and basically being immersed in rebellion led me to intense self-hatred and a losing/denial of my own identity, as if I ever had it.
And that's really problematic for the poor of today, who can get really immersed in global geopolitics, and exposed to all sorts of social media glurge, and being poor, they cannot really find escape from the "free to consume" media at every turn, and so the poor tend to be couch-potatoes who are fed by the television sets and YouTube and Facebook feeds, and eventually most of us drown in lies, and fake news, and bitter rebellion against every authority.
sharts 22 hours ago [-]
Every administration caters to its donors.
dabraham1248 20 hours ago [-]
I mean, _kinda_? This kind of reflexive both-sides-ism works to obfuscate the _huge_ difference in scale, _and_ the occasional, small-but-real attempts of mostly democrats to do something about it.
Now, if the democrats had more big donors than republicans, maybe they wouldn't? But that's a counterfactual that we can't know. But we do know that Bush 1 vetoed a soft money limit passed mostly by democrats, and that Clinton pushed for one, but didn't get it done.
McCain-Feingold passed the Senate with 48 out of 50 D votes (96%), and 11 of 38 R votes (29%) (and one I (100%)), the House with 198 of 210 D (94%), and house, 41 out of 217 R (19%), 1 out of 2 I (50%). Then it was a mostly R appointed Supreme Court that gutted it. Then a _more_ R appointed court that has continued to whittle it down.
For all that the Democrats don't go far enough, there is a _huge_ difference between the parties on this.
Kapura 22 hours ago [-]
damn, maybe we should limit how much people can donate? oh, that already exists, just not for corporations? cool. cool cool cool.
cyanydeez 21 hours ago [-]
being pro-crime is being pro-american, now.
ck2 23 hours ago [-]
Trump Inc is a white-collar crime family which is why he pardons every white-collar crime they can find
BTW you know those classified records he took to Mar-a-lago that almost put him in prison?
They were all the records about his family businesses, it's documented, they were unique investigation records and he was trying to end all investigations
expedition32 15 hours ago [-]
Only if you support Trump. Americans seem to have no spine or ego so bow down to your god emperor I suppose.
burnt-resistor 10 hours ago [-]
Many average Russians and Americans share the features of indoctrinated learned helplessness. They live on their knees and are unwilling to face reality because their lifestyle and/or salary may depend on it.
complianceowll 22 hours ago [-]
Let's not pretend: we haven't had an anti-crime president in a while.
I was once brainwashed and my thinking was, "If only 'my' side could take control, this country would be utopia." 15+ years later, here are some truths I've realized:
- It sounds conspiratorial to say, "they want us to absolutely hate each other because that's the only way the party keeps going for the corrupt politicians", but when you think about it, it's 100% true. We may disagree on abortion, but do we disagree on preserving our great nature, lakes, rivers, and the purity of our environment? No. We all agree that is something good. Yet, federal, state, and local governments sell out our communal beauty for filthy lucre.
- We all agree that instead of unnecessary wars, that money could instead be put towards infrastructure, development, healthcare, education, creating more opportunity for the next generation. Instead, the status quo never changes regardless of which party is in office.
- We all agree that our food should not poison us. Yet government makes it basically illegal to raise livestock and grow produce and sell it to your neighbors. Big pesticide agriculture for the win. The peasants must eat glyphosate.
- We all agree that our country and its benefits must be primarily for its citizens. Yet politicians insist on handouts to grow their voter base while our people are homeless, replete with mental health problems, and struggling.
- We are all anti-abuse-of-authority, yet our politicians foment extreme ideological views like "Support all law enforcement" or "Defund the police" instead of simply reforming law enforcement in ways that make sense like getting rid of qualified immunity, making it illegal for an officer to serve in another county or state when terminated for misconduct.
I could go on, but our problem in America is systemic. We could completely transform this country if we just put our disagreements on pause for 5-years and solely focused on those that we agree on.
solid_fuel 21 hours ago [-]
This urge to defend the indefensible and “both sides” the most corrupt administration in American history is exactly the problem. Go take a look in the mirror.
sculper 19 hours ago [-]
Worth noting that the commenter you're replying to is only LARPing as a centrist. The comment history of his other (now-banned) accounts are directly at odds with some of the "truths" he claims to have realized.
That’s very often the case with these guys. No one can seriously look at the modern political landscape in the United States and seriously claim that both parties are effectively the same, or even that they both bear equal responsibility for the terrible state of government.
The Republicans have been in the business of scrapping the US for parts since the 90’s, it’s just accelerating. At worst, the Democrats have been ineffective opposition and overly captured by corporate interests.
complianceowll 3 hours ago [-]
The democrats believe in killing babies. The democrats reject the science and deny that there are only two genders. The democrats support genocide. The democrats constantly, time after time, refuse to punish the evil doer and allow them to go free, resulting in crime-ridden cities where many times, innocent children and other bystanders, end up getting killed at random because your democrats refuse to be hard on crime in the name of being anti-racism. Nice try though!
Sabinus 13 hours ago [-]
But why is he obfuscating so much? What motivates one to lie about their own politics for so long?
complianceowll 2 hours ago [-]
I don't lie about my own politics. Saying that makes you feel better about yourself. I've followed politics closely and have evolved greatly in my thinking, but the average hive mind cannot comprehend nuance, resulting in people like you that believe "if only my party had power, all would be well". When your side wants to you stand for Ukraine, you do it. When they want you to talk about gender, you do it. When they want you to talk about an affordability crises, you do it. But it never comes from you. These talking points never surface in a grassroots manner because people fail to think independently and objectively.
The fact that you are not able to have real nuance in your beliefs is a huge indicator that your beliefs live in the realm of ideas and concepts and not reality.
mindslight 2 hours ago [-]
It's a cope, and it follows the dynamic reactionary talk radio has been using for decades - get people riled up about the system in general, cool them off just enough to go vote Republican, and then leverage their having made that choice to rationalize why it was somehow justified. Rinse and repeat.
(I'm coming from a centrist libertarian position here, not a partisan one)
complianceowll 2 hours ago [-]
Nah, you're just as partisan as anyone else. I would be libertarian if the world was all sunshine and rainbows, but after years of seeing how the world actually works, views tend to change. Before, I would have unconditionally voted against any form of welfare. Now, I've seen that government does what it wants when it comes to pouring money into wars, the defense industrial complex, subsidies for their cronies. So now, if I had to vote on subsidizing education or healthcare, f it -- I'm doing it. Because I'm done tightening my belt so that government and big business can squeeze out every last penny for themselves.
What we've had in this country for the longest is a two-party dictatorship. No options. No real structural change, regardless of who is in office. I don't think both sides are equally bad.
mindslight 1 hours ago [-]
Note I said centrist libertarian. I think the Libertarian party, along with much of "libertarian" thought, has been captured by rightist fundamentalism - effectively turning it into crypto-fascism. But I continue to consider myself libertarian as I believe that individual liberty is still the most appropriate yardstick and framework by which to evaluate and analyze systems.
Your "unconditionally voted against any form of welfare" is what I call rightist fundamentalism. I figured out long ago that merely saying "no" to everything makes it so that politically soft targets (ie services that benefit citizens) take damage, while politically hard targets (eg defense industrial complex) continue unimpeded. So I'm right there with you on the heuristic of voting for subsidized education or healthcare in the face of having massive deficit budgets regardless. If I were given the choice I would much prefer sound monetary policy, but as that never seems to be an option then squeezing citizens while pouring trillions into corporate welfare and war is utter foolishness.
> No real structural change, regardless of who is in office
Except there was a huge structural change in 2024, with the blessing of autocratic authoritarianism by the voters (following its creation and approval by the supreme council and congress during 2016-2020). That is what you're ignoring and supporting by continuing to both sides here.
Pre-2016 administrations (and even Trump 2016) were not "dictatorships" - rather they were bureaucratic authoritarianism. That bureaucracy had at least kept the exercise of authoritarian power constrained and predictable.
complianceowll 3 hours ago [-]
Let me guess: "Your" side is the one that will "really" make a change because this time........drum roll.....it's different.
I took a look in the mirror and loved what I saw.
eunos 1 days ago [-]
> criminal case against Abbott Laboratories over contaminated baby formula
In Communist China they would be shot
ourmandave 24 hours ago [-]
They also disappear you for selling books critical of the Party, so it's a two edged katana.
Ex-HK bookseller Lam Wing-kee, detained by China in 2015, dies in Taiwan at 70
Hey, here in America, sometimes CEOs get shot as well.
briffle 21 hours ago [-]
Here in America, if you or I get shot, a detective gets assigned the case along with 30 other cases on their desk. When a CEO gets shot, the largest city assigns an unlimited number of police to the case to find the person...
Kapura 1 days ago [-]
not by the state, however. important distinction.
morkalork 1 days ago [-]
Now that justice by official channels is closed, one wonders if a grieving parent will seek it out by unofficial means
garyfirestorm 1 days ago [-]
Parents could file a class action? RICO?
How is this any different from organized crime?
jyounker 22 hours ago [-]
It will take a bit more in general. I don't think we're at the point of Blair Mountain yet, but if things don't change, then it's coming.
red-iron-pine 23 hours ago [-]
rarely
JumpCrisscross 24 hours ago [-]
> here in America, sometimes CEOs get shot as well
No, they don't. The UnitedHealth dude who got shot had a CEO title, but Thompson was ultimately a middle manager.
The actual CEO of UnitedHealth Group–the one who signs off on its financial statements and fields quarterly calls–and the billionaire owners were fine. Which explains, in part, why nothing changed after the shooting.
AnthonyMouse 22 hours ago [-]
You're implying that something would have changed if a different person was shot instead. Structural problems don't work like that. The individual players have the incentives created for them by the system. To change it you need to change the game, not the players.
pavel_lishin 4 hours ago [-]
It would have changed if healthcare CEOs kept getting shot.
One getting shot is an anomaly; if one were being shot every week, then the system they operate under would be different.
(To be clear: I am not advocating for changing the system in this way. A world ruled by vigilante justice is not a good world to live in.)
JumpCrisscross 19 hours ago [-]
> You're implying that something would have changed if a different person was shot instead. Structural problems don't work like that
It would have sent the message its sender (and his supporters) intended to send. Instead, both sides got a convenient totem. Luigi's supporters get to pretend he was effective. The billionaire class got to consolidate power here and there by pretending he was more than a one off, and by pretending he was competent.
AnthonyMouse 17 hours ago [-]
You're still implying that it could have accomplished something if the target was someone else. Nobody involved with that company is the central pillar of The System the crumbling of which would allow the true revolution to finally come.
ButlerianJihad 7 hours ago [-]
That depends on whether the baby formula was destined for the domestic market to nourish good Chinese babies, or whether it was destined for export to the foreigners, right?
tracker1 24 hours ago [-]
This is just more than a little fucked up... I think we've "limited" liability way too much in terms of corporations... it's the investors that are meant to be protected, executives and board members are not meant to be immune. And I do think in the worst cases, the death penalty should be on the table.
edit: to be clear, IMO, corporate power is an expression of govt power, which should be minimized.
dd8601fn 20 hours ago [-]
At some point the broad strokes of libertarianism became exactly what we expected.
Naked corruption and public harm, without consequences.
tracker1 16 hours ago [-]
I'm literally talking about libertarian values and that we aren't getting consequences because they aren't followed.
Libertarians aren't generally in favor of limited liability. Read it again, slower.
LocalH 19 hours ago [-]
"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law."
mmooss 22 hours ago [-]
Ironically, it's not just the ineffectuallity of the DOJ (intentional, in that case), it's the ineffectuality of the political competition, the Democratic Party, to hold the GOP accountable.
The Dems inability to cash in on these things is so absurd that people just accept it: The Trump administration and GOP are letting a company get away with contaminating baby formula. That should be repeated by the Dems from now until the end of time. Everyone should associate Trump and the GOP with it.
But as always, the Dems will not make Trump and the GOP pay any price, no matter how awful events are (and this one is hardly the worst), and so why would they stop doing these things?
Part of the duty of the political competition is to hold the other party responsible. It is also very obvious and basic self-interest.
getcrunk 21 hours ago [-]
Yea things like this make more sense when you model the Democratic Party mostly as controlled opposition for the actual uniparty outside of a handful of instances
lubujackson 21 hours ago [-]
Yup. Once you realize neither party actually cares about any of the top debated political issues (individuals do, but the party doesn't) but they thrust them in everyone's face day in and day out BEACUSE the country is divided neatly in half and they are emotionally charged: abortions, LGBT rights, gun control.
Let the plebs wear themselves out so money can be extracted and power can be used without any fuss.
ChrisLTD 22 hours ago [-]
The Supreme Court gave Trump immunity, stymieing Democratic attempts at holding him accountable for crimes he was accused of in his first presidency. Holding him accountable this time would require some workaround for the Supreme Court.
lux-lux-lux 19 hours ago [-]
Why not just ship him to CECOT? Official acts bro
mmooss 14 hours ago [-]
That is legal accountability. I am talking about political accountability: When Trump or the GOP do something awful, the Democrats are unable to score points on it. In the reverse situation, the GOP is very good at it.
When the GOP screws up, they should be losing votes and reputation. The Dems have failed to do that.
throwawaypath 21 hours ago [-]
>The Dems inability to cash in on these things is so absurd that people just accept it
All the Dems have to do is kick the DEI/woke, open borders, etc. contingent out of their party and "cashing in" will commence.
mmooss 14 hours ago [-]
All Dems have to do is abandon their principles and priorities, and conservatives will like them. I don't think that will work.
> open borders
You tip yourself off as someone consuming political propaganda. Nobody of any prominence or influence in the Democratic Party advocates or has advocated for 'open borders'. The only place I hear that is from people who watch Fox News, etc.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/05/europe/putin-trump-call-indep...
or that time multiple US congressmen were forced to spend the 4th in Moscow
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/395719-gop-senators-visi...
JFK met with Khrushchev. Bush Senior and Reagan had regular contact with Gorbachev. It's not weird for heads of state to talk to each other.
What's weird is for Trump to be paying tax dollars to cancel energy projects because he doesn't like windmills or using the FCC to investigate media outlets who criticize him.
There are plenty of good examples to use that it makes no sense to resort to evidence-free innuendo.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/russia/russia-ukraine-war-trum...
> President Donald Trump’s special envoy broke with long-standing protocol by not employing his own interpreter during three high-level meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, opting instead to rely on translators from the Kremlin, a U.S. official and two Western officials with knowledge of the talks told NBC News.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/427505-trump-put...
> President Trump reportedly met late last year with Russian President Vladimir Putin without a translator or aide from his administration present.
House of Cards used this same setup just to highlight how untrustworthy the president was acting.
Why not? The only other person in the room doesn't speak Russian.
Yes, I absolutely expect that sort of security at such a meeting.
> Only Mr. Trump, who has alternately contradicted his own narrative of what was said and complained about a lack of fair coverage from a meeting only four people witnessed, could permit Ms. Gross to tell anyone about what she heard. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump has asked her to do that.
Translators are civil servants with security clearances, not reporters. When the leaders of Germany and Brazil have a meeting, they may say things they don't intend for China and everyone else to know about, and it isn't the translator's job to report what was said to the media. Unless they've witnessed something on the scale of criminality that they need to act as a whistleblower (in which case they wouldn't need anyone's permission), they should never be telling anyone what happened in the room since their job is to keep those secrets.
The media are fully aware of that, but they're being disingenuous and pretending that allowing a diplomatic translator to act as a media witness is a request anyone is likely to grant. Then Trump predictably responds to that by removing the translator from the room, so now they're complaining about that instead.
The fact that he can't keep his own story straight?
In either instance?
Governing doesn't even appear to be an afterthought.
I still haven't figured out how he's profiting from Trump Accounts yet. Kick backs I suppose.
I would guess that he could have been paid in many various ways (TrumpCoins anyone) by financial institution(s) that were set to benefit from the accounts. Have the trump crypto companies followed all of the KYC laws?
Plenty of those pardoned for their acts on Jan 6.
Some presumably lived near and didn’t have jobs.
- A privileged state - for the rich and powerful to get away with crimes
- A normative state - for ordinary people whom experience more prosecutions
- A prerogative state - for poor and enemies whom experience arbitrary injustice and persecution for infractions or made-up crimes
Was Alex Pretti a victim of your prerogative state, and his executioners were merely government agents executing a state imperative? Or was he a victim of gang violence and his executioners were part of the privileged state? In the dual state framework, the answer is wu.
But don't let me discourage you from expanding upon your framework! It may be more effective at explaining some things. It just needs to be more substantial than trying to do a simple tweak in an HN comment.
When you're poor, you can't help but be immersed in rebellion and discontent. Every song on the radio, every free TV show, every buddy at the dive bar is talking trash about your leadership and the powers that be. There was never any way for me to avoid the voices that hated everything I stood for, from the beginning, and basically being immersed in rebellion led me to intense self-hatred and a losing/denial of my own identity, as if I ever had it.
And that's really problematic for the poor of today, who can get really immersed in global geopolitics, and exposed to all sorts of social media glurge, and being poor, they cannot really find escape from the "free to consume" media at every turn, and so the poor tend to be couch-potatoes who are fed by the television sets and YouTube and Facebook feeds, and eventually most of us drown in lies, and fake news, and bitter rebellion against every authority.
Now, if the democrats had more big donors than republicans, maybe they wouldn't? But that's a counterfactual that we can't know. But we do know that Bush 1 vetoed a soft money limit passed mostly by democrats, and that Clinton pushed for one, but didn't get it done.
McCain-Feingold passed the Senate with 48 out of 50 D votes (96%), and 11 of 38 R votes (29%) (and one I (100%)), the House with 198 of 210 D (94%), and house, 41 out of 217 R (19%), 1 out of 2 I (50%). Then it was a mostly R appointed Supreme Court that gutted it. Then a _more_ R appointed court that has continued to whittle it down.
For all that the Democrats don't go far enough, there is a _huge_ difference between the parties on this.
BTW you know those classified records he took to Mar-a-lago that almost put him in prison?
They were all the records about his family businesses, it's documented, they were unique investigation records and he was trying to end all investigations
I was once brainwashed and my thinking was, "If only 'my' side could take control, this country would be utopia." 15+ years later, here are some truths I've realized:
- It sounds conspiratorial to say, "they want us to absolutely hate each other because that's the only way the party keeps going for the corrupt politicians", but when you think about it, it's 100% true. We may disagree on abortion, but do we disagree on preserving our great nature, lakes, rivers, and the purity of our environment? No. We all agree that is something good. Yet, federal, state, and local governments sell out our communal beauty for filthy lucre.
- We all agree that instead of unnecessary wars, that money could instead be put towards infrastructure, development, healthcare, education, creating more opportunity for the next generation. Instead, the status quo never changes regardless of which party is in office.
- We all agree that our food should not poison us. Yet government makes it basically illegal to raise livestock and grow produce and sell it to your neighbors. Big pesticide agriculture for the win. The peasants must eat glyphosate.
- We all agree that our country and its benefits must be primarily for its citizens. Yet politicians insist on handouts to grow their voter base while our people are homeless, replete with mental health problems, and struggling.
- We are all anti-abuse-of-authority, yet our politicians foment extreme ideological views like "Support all law enforcement" or "Defund the police" instead of simply reforming law enforcement in ways that make sense like getting rid of qualified immunity, making it illegal for an officer to serve in another county or state when terminated for misconduct.
I could go on, but our problem in America is systemic. We could completely transform this country if we just put our disagreements on pause for 5-years and solely focused on those that we agree on.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=complianceowl
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=owlcompliance
The Republicans have been in the business of scrapping the US for parts since the 90’s, it’s just accelerating. At worst, the Democrats have been ineffective opposition and overly captured by corporate interests.
The fact that you are not able to have real nuance in your beliefs is a huge indicator that your beliefs live in the realm of ideas and concepts and not reality.
(I'm coming from a centrist libertarian position here, not a partisan one)
What we've had in this country for the longest is a two-party dictatorship. No options. No real structural change, regardless of who is in office. I don't think both sides are equally bad.
Your "unconditionally voted against any form of welfare" is what I call rightist fundamentalism. I figured out long ago that merely saying "no" to everything makes it so that politically soft targets (ie services that benefit citizens) take damage, while politically hard targets (eg defense industrial complex) continue unimpeded. So I'm right there with you on the heuristic of voting for subsidized education or healthcare in the face of having massive deficit budgets regardless. If I were given the choice I would much prefer sound monetary policy, but as that never seems to be an option then squeezing citizens while pouring trillions into corporate welfare and war is utter foolishness.
> No real structural change, regardless of who is in office
Except there was a huge structural change in 2024, with the blessing of autocratic authoritarianism by the voters (following its creation and approval by the supreme council and congress during 2016-2020). That is what you're ignoring and supporting by continuing to both sides here.
Pre-2016 administrations (and even Trump 2016) were not "dictatorships" - rather they were bureaucratic authoritarianism. That bureaucracy had at least kept the exercise of authoritarian power constrained and predictable.
I took a look in the mirror and loved what I saw.
In Communist China they would be shot
Ex-HK bookseller Lam Wing-kee, detained by China in 2015, dies in Taiwan at 70
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/03/g-s1-131904/ex-hk-bookseller-...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/...
No, they don't. The UnitedHealth dude who got shot had a CEO title, but Thompson was ultimately a middle manager.
The actual CEO of UnitedHealth Group–the one who signs off on its financial statements and fields quarterly calls–and the billionaire owners were fine. Which explains, in part, why nothing changed after the shooting.
One getting shot is an anomaly; if one were being shot every week, then the system they operate under would be different.
(To be clear: I am not advocating for changing the system in this way. A world ruled by vigilante justice is not a good world to live in.)
It would have sent the message its sender (and his supporters) intended to send. Instead, both sides got a convenient totem. Luigi's supporters get to pretend he was effective. The billionaire class got to consolidate power here and there by pretending he was more than a one off, and by pretending he was competent.
edit: to be clear, IMO, corporate power is an expression of govt power, which should be minimized.
Naked corruption and public harm, without consequences.
Libertarians aren't generally in favor of limited liability. Read it again, slower.
The Dems inability to cash in on these things is so absurd that people just accept it: The Trump administration and GOP are letting a company get away with contaminating baby formula. That should be repeated by the Dems from now until the end of time. Everyone should associate Trump and the GOP with it.
But as always, the Dems will not make Trump and the GOP pay any price, no matter how awful events are (and this one is hardly the worst), and so why would they stop doing these things?
Part of the duty of the political competition is to hold the other party responsible. It is also very obvious and basic self-interest.
Let the plebs wear themselves out so money can be extracted and power can be used without any fuss.
When the GOP screws up, they should be losing votes and reputation. The Dems have failed to do that.
All the Dems have to do is kick the DEI/woke, open borders, etc. contingent out of their party and "cashing in" will commence.
> open borders
You tip yourself off as someone consuming political propaganda. Nobody of any prominence or influence in the Democratic Party advocates or has advocated for 'open borders'. The only place I hear that is from people who watch Fox News, etc.