It's called a "shadow government" in European (?) parlance[0], though not to be confused with the term "deep state". That is, the opposition basically prepares a shadow government to signal to the public that, despite not being power, they have the qualified personnel ready to go on day 1 if they come back to power. The down side for MAGA when firing all these workers in all these agencies is that it gives the opposition the opportunity to organize a "department in waiting" for every agency that is gutted by gathering the most-qualified of the fired employees.
But just another billionaire doing this instead of an organized opposition is not ideal, to say the least. ex 18F workers should get someone they trust more in the mix.
>when the Country needed Americans to call out the corruption
Just for the record, Trump tried to get the attorney general of the Southern District of New York to drop the case against the mayor of New York, a Democrat, in exchange for the mayor to give ICE carte-blanche to do what it wants in the city. So illegal was the requested action that seven people including the acting attorney general resigned immediately in sequence. Mind you, the acting attorney general was appointed by Trump literally three weeks before her resignation. And the resignations only stopped because Bove threatened to fire everyone in the office (30 odd people) if someone didn't accept. If that wasn't enough, and since some on the thread mentioned Soviet propaganda, Homan the border czar trotskies out Eric Adams on Fox News and forces him to applaud what ICE is doing, and then Homan proceeds to tell Eric Adams on national television that if he backs out that he Homan will be in his office right away and "up his ass".
That level of corruption would be choreographed nicely to Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre."
If you want to read two bad-ass resignations by Republican attorney generals, read Sassoon's and Hagan Scotten's resignation letters.
>US involvement forced Israel to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in 2005
Ah yes, history started in 2005. Let's talk post-2005 then. This was when Netanyahu, an elected leader of Israel, openly bragged about aiding and building up Hamas, a terrorist organization, in order to weaken the PLO's power. That is of course, until the chickens came home to roost. It would take a certain amount of delusion to claim that this was not the issue, but unoccupying a land unlawfully occupied was the problem.
The parent post is by and large correct, except for the right-hand man of Donald Trump stuff. Musk was indeed trying to buy influence, which is definitely not a "5D chess move" but simply common sense for extremely wealthy people if they can get away with it. He also wanted to ensure that he is always the center of attention and intended to use twitter as the marketing arm for his brand. He only wanted to back out once US and global economic indicators started going south and made his offer look ridiculously overpriced, and also made himself look like a sucker. And Musk does not like being the sucker. But his wanting to back out later doesn't cancel out his initial intentions. And once he was forced to buy it, he started playing high stakes poker and managed to turn it into a great investment for him personally by the end of 2024, becoming one of the most powerful men in the world in addition to being the richest. How long it will last might depend on how many consecutive presidential terms the Republicans can hold on to.
The righthand man for Trump stuff was never the intention initially. Musk went gaga for Trump rather late, he was a DeSantis supporter after all, with DeSantis launching his terrible presidential bid on Elon's twitter.
This is the correct answer. Trump won because of the current economy. Biden's margin over Trump in 2020 was double Trump's margin over Kamala. Democrats did better than expected in 2022 despite Republicans running with the same DEI garbage.
What's baffling is Trump seems to be fumbling the autocrat's handbook at first glance. There are existing autocrats still around that wrote the book on this. Purging the administrative state requires multi-term government domination. First, you're supposed get the economy or quality of life on track ASAP so you can cement your (or you successor's) seat at the top. Then you use the power the people voluntarily give you over multiple terms to dismantle any checks on your power while lining the pockets and minds of your base. After that, even if the economy tanks you've boiled the frog of resistance in such a way that no one can dethrone you. And then you start designing the opposition in such a way so that there's semblance of "political freedom" you can point to when people start whining about it.
Trump seems to be going about it in reverse. First feeding his base instead of focusing on the economy -- which is a higher risk strategy comparatively. But it hasn't even been a month yet so there is still time for him to start following the handbook properly.
>We grew up on hopeful sci-fi and will stick to it until our bitter end.
American optimism and hope did not derive itself from "hopeful sci-fi" or tech. The sci-fi and tech came in its superpower phase, post-WWII. American optimism preceded that by decades if not centuries, because its population believed--despite everything--that as country it always strove to act in a morally just manner both domestically and internationally. What's more is that this mythology, cause that's what it was, happened to be accepted by much of world as well. That accomplishment in persuasion exceeds any accomplishment in short-term innovation when the goal is to maintain a long-lasting empire.
There was a time when many thought Nazi Germany was the most innovative and advanced entity in the world. Yet, even at the time, no one who believed that would care to immigrate to Nazi Germany for that reason. The same would be true if China became the most technologically advanced country in the world.
It is the man-child delusion of the broligarchy to claim that American optimism is (was) rooted in technological advancement.
Here's a take that I came across which I'd like your views on if possible:
When the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act were created, people asked the government to enforces these acts. Whatever you think of merits of DEI, the government decided to create DEI in order to enforce the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities act.
The problem is because they decided that DEI would be the mechanism to do this with, once DEI is rescinded the question is: If you're not going to enforce the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act through DEI, which mechanism do you plan to use to enforce them? According to this take, once DEI is rescinded there is no mechanism to enforce the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act anymore.
I'm pretty sure that most leftwing and rightwing people will agree that out of 3 millions government workers it's not entirely unlikely that there would be some some valid cases of discrimination against minorities and those with disabilities. The claim is that, whether DEI sucks or not, there is no avenue to contest racism and discrimination in government hiring anymore.
The Civil Rights Act and related topics are part of the US Code (laws) [1] and are completely unrelated to DEI. The legal redresses available for discrimination have not changed whatsoever.
The Civil Rights Act is exclusively about equality of opportunity and requires affected employers hire without regard to race, religion, and other protected classes. So for instance universities using racial quotas was deemed unlawful precisely because of the Civil Rights Act.
DEI stuff was in a very different spirit that really ran against the ideals of the Civil Rights Act. For instance it compelled affected organizations to specifically endeavour to hire based on the race and other characteristics of applicants. It's not entirely clear to me why it wasn't tossed immediately as being in violation of the Civil Rights Act.
DEI is a way to avoid disparate impact liability. Such laws / precedent is derived from the Civil Rights Act (VII). So it is quite the opposite. It also means that disparate impact liability will return without DEI / race quotas so unless the new administration also gets rid of disparate impact and the civil rights act this whole thing will end up right back where it started.
This is why disparate impact tends to cause institutions to drop skills based testing entirely. In theory, proof that the test is relevant to the job is supposed to be a defense against allegations of disparate impact. But in practice the courts have rarely accepted that line of defense.
I know that but there is the law and then there is the law in practice. Legal council at companies have been telling them that DEI race quotas was the safe option.
> Whatever you think of merits of DEI, the government decided to create DEI in order to enforce the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities act.
This part is foundational to the rest, and it's straightforwardly untrue. The government agency which most often enforces these two laws is called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which remains active under the new administration; the new acting chair has given no indication that she intends to stop enforcing the Civil Rights Act or the ADA.
The "Equal Employment Opportunity executive order" predates the EEOC and doesn't affect its responsibilities.
The EEOC doesn't depend on a quorum for routine enforcement actions. As the last article describes, what it can't do without a quorum is make new rules or issue new guidance, but the new administration will most likely reestablish a quorum soon because there's some existing guidance they'd like to revoke.
The double whammy may come when people realize, if they haven't already, that the "do no evil" guy (Paul Buchheit) and--at the individual level--many of the "enlightened" angel investor old guard have one by one decided that the current admin and broligarch movement is actually the lesser of two evils. PG being one of the few remaining holdouts, at least for now.
I thought his "rant" was refreshing. I know the "woke" term from the last 5 years, but it apparently has a much longer history. Both PG and myself dont like the fact that it's so badly defined (while being heavily discussed).
In my view the woke crowd did a lot of performative gestures w/o event attempting to really solve the underlying problems. PG also believes that way.
The woke crowd does not actually discuss things: you are labelled a fascist, racist, transfobe, anti-semite or biggot before you can even make your point. So I've stopped discussing with them and stopped caring for being called these names.
> you are labelled a fascist, racist, transfobe, anti-semite or biggot before you can even make your point. So I've stopped discussing with them and stopped caring for being called these names.
This is being severely co-opted by the alt-right to the point that people become apologists for Elon Musk doing multiple literal Nazi salutes at the US presidential inauguration.
Decrying wokeness a week later in a meandering essay is about 8 years too late for the "well actually, some people do go too far with it" discussion. He could have written it at any point within the past decade, but doing it only after a change in who holds the purse strings is obviously just realignment for personal gain.
You should indeed stop talking to people who only throw around pejoratives, but this doesn't mean we should discredit all related cause for alarm. Calling the richest man in the world a duck because he's walking like a duck isn't woke. Pretending otherwise is some emperor's new clothes nonsense.
> Decrying wokeness a week later in a meandering essay is about 8 years too late
I did not look at it like this. What you are saying is that PG timing for the woke article is like Zuckernerd who suddenly wears a gold necklace over his sweater while he announces the DEI positions are absolved and the tampons will only be put on the ladies' rooms. They are just blown by the winds, and take little stance of their own in this.
Still I found it a really good write up. And maybe PG is in a position where he has to lean in with DEI-nonsense in order to achieve his business goals.
> but this doesn't mean we should discredit all related cause for alarm.
I think racism got worse lately (i'm in the EU), because the wokies put is much more on the agenda. We were closer to not bothering at all with color, now it is again a topic on many agendas.
Also "bodily autonomy" and "informed consent" used to be values we all (ok, except the baby-circumsizers) subscribed to. The C19 hit and the wokies' alarmism pushed "bodily autonomy" and "informed consent" in to the trashcan. I was an enemy of the wokies for not taking it. The govt stood by them and called the unvaccinated "dirty" and "anti-social" and "grandma killers".
And dont get me started on the push on young people to reconsider their gender.
Personally I believe that all capitalists (the owner class) shift to fascism when that's the best way to protect their interests. I never believed they were nice to begin with.
I have more problem with the US' military support for a nation that clearly commits a genocide. This is not a nazi salute, this is actually genociding. It was the genocide (and pharma tests on undesirables) that made the nazis so evil; not the nazi salutes.
Rightwing snowflakes are a thing, yeah. Bill Burr for one loves to roast them, as he did recently using the LA fires.
Elon threw that salute because his man-child ego took a massive beating with the H1B rightwing in-fighting, when the white nationalist wing of Maga started screaming bloody murder at him and Vivek. It's a bullied kid trying to get back in the good graces of the extreme wing of Trump's base. This virtue signaling to your friends and then declaring it to be sarcasm or comedy when called out by your foes goes back to WWII times. [0]
That being said, pg has been consistent on the woke stuff since back in the day. He wrote an essay called "What You Can't Say" over two decades ago, for god's sake. His timing on this essay was unfortunate. Although there's never a good time to publish stuff like this. He's also one of the lone "pro-Palestinian" VCs left out there, for what it's worth.
"What You Can't Say" was silly back then, and is still silly now. Here's a guy with a huge online following, multiple channels for speaking his mind and getting his message out, yet complaining about a need to self-censor and that you can't say what you want. It reminds me of the "I Have Been Silenced" cartoon[1]. He also doesn't even list a specific example of something he wants to say but "can't." It's left up to our imagination.
> He also doesn't even list a specific example of something he wants to say but "can't."
That's because he's making the general point that in every era there is always something "that can't be said" that then later becomes accepted in another era, and therefore people should strive to find truths that are as "era independent" as possible. He specifically mentions Galileo, pre-Civil War South, and Germany in the 1930s. I'm sure you can imagine a few things "that couldn't be said" in those environments or eras. The essay was written in 2004, when it wasn't unheard of of people were getting fired for their various takes on 9-11 and the wars on terror either, so I doubt it was hard for a reader to "imagine" some examples to understand the point.
You said in your comment above that he's "out there ranting about wokeism like a lot of them now, he's losing the plot", as if his stance is a new thing. I was just pointing out that his stance is not new.
I'm not aware of the relationship between wokeism and his stock portfolio. He wrote the first essay when YC was not even around.
And as a happy coinless worlder I'd much rather use my free will to prevent you from enabling systems being built that could endanger my free will and that of my progenies' in the future, and will exercise said free will to encourage government officials--on a case-by-case basis when necessary-- to ban said trash.
But just another billionaire doing this instead of an organized opposition is not ideal, to say the least. ex 18F workers should get someone they trust more in the mix.
[0] https://www.yourdictionary.com/shadow-government