[selykg]

Absolutely insane that this is what we've come to. It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. We are regressing this country so rapidly that we are likely to become one of those shithole countries the president so loudly proclaimed Haiti, El Salvador and others were.

[philistine]

The is exactly a move the people in power in those troubled countries will use to maintain control over government.

It used to be that the US government had pride in its own professionalism. The US is now acting like the countries it loves to destabilize.

[hnthrow90348765]

Well, Russia is destabilizing the US and winning which is why I think we're acting like that. And it seems all of our military and counterintelligence capabilities can't stop it. Too much offense, not enough defense, it seems.

[peppers-ghost]

I'm not even sure it's true Russia is doing this. I think our elected officials might just be really stupid on their own.

[inetknght]

They can be really stupid on their own and it can also be Russia who's got their buttons labeled and is pushing them as needed for the dance recital. Except the recital was 4 years ago.

[hnthrow90348765]

It's going to be difficult to get more of a smoking gun than a plan to drop sanctions and ceasing offensive cyber operations against Russia, as well as the US's lopsided Ukrainian peace deal and pulling financial support for Ukraine.

Russia has no military advantage against ours, so there is no reason to placate them due to a threat of war (nukes excluded here, unless Russia has rapidly outpaced us). The only thing that's left is the relationship between the leaders themselves.

If Trump were truly interested in isolationism, he'd instead have simply pulled support for Ukraine and not offered to be a part of negotiations, but many more things were offered for no obvious gain to us.

[gloosx]

>Russia has no military advantage against ours

Recent battle experience is kind of an advantage.

Russia is running a full-scale war against US and NATO weaponry in Ukraine for three years, studying it and refining its tactics.

What was the last battle for USA? Houthis in Yemen? Few airstrikes and limited engagements.

It is very naive to believe Putin doesn’t want to cripple the US economy or that war is not a real threat. The US is critically dependent on semiconductors, and TSMC is much closer to Russia than to America. Think it through.

[kasey_junk]

The US has perhaps the most battle hardened military in the history of the world. It’s had real combat deployments continually for going on 25 years.

At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness.

I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy, but battle experience is not a problem.

[3D30497420]

It would probably depend a lot on the type of conflict. The US would almost certainly have air-superiority, which would have a significant difference. Of course, air-superiority didn't "win" the US wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, but those were more guerilla-style wars with a somewhat (at least) hostile larger population. A US-Russia conflict would probably look pretty different. Or it would just go nuclear, in which case... well, so much for tactics.

[no_wizard]

And the Russians had to get re-enforcement from North Korea to bolster the bodies they’re losing to a significantly smaller force.

Western military tactics are still working well against Russian commanders, but they being simply larger population wise, can if they’re willing, win a war of attrition simply because the Ukraine doesn’t have the bodies or internal resources to fight forever. It’s the same strategy general Grant used to decisively win the US civil war

Putin really waited out the US election. For reasons I can’t seem to grok Trump wants to ally with the world’s dictators. He’s proven himself a reliable ally to Putin at this point.

Had Trump lost the election I imagine we would see Russia seriously considering or even starting its withdrawal from the conflict.

Back to the military bit again: there is no way the war in the Ukraine is showing anything other than how vulnerable and poorly aged the equipment of the Russian military is and how their tactics have not improved much if any since the 1980s

[brookst]

Can’t be sure, but wow does all of the evidence point that way.

[Cthulhu_]

They can, but they won't because nobody dares to stick their neck out for fear of losing their job. And that's been going on for decades, the slow dismantling (if there ever was any) of job and income security, to the point where the majority of Americans, including federal workers, are only one or two paychecks away from financial ruin. Nobody wants to lose their job.

Of course, if they get fired and there's nothing else for them to do, there will be uprisings.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Nobody wants to lose their job

There is almost zero causality in the U.S. government’s hiring and firing right now. Particularly relating to current conduct.

To the extent anyone has received job protection, it’s by getting politically fired and then seeking court protection.

So no, this is base cowardice and a lack of patriotism. Not rational action.

[hansvm]

> There is almost zero causality in the U.S. government’s hiring and firing right now. Particularly relating to current conduct.

The first firings were all people who knew a guy who knew a guy who wronged Trump. With that kind of retaliatory example, do you not think openly trying to course-correct would result in being fired?

[close04]

As a matter of personal character, the people who would be more likely to stand up and shout or protest vigorously in today’s situation are the people which society generally considers obnoxious and disruptive.

So in each workplace most were already marginalized or learned to hide these traits for their benefit. There are way more people in the ‘flight’ than the ‘fight’ camp.

[bananapub]

Russia is surely involved, but it's pushing on an open door - there's a huge streak of the American right that actually wants this massive catastrophe to befall the US and for the US to become ungovernable and largely ungoverned.

[hedora]

Those people get their news from Russian propaganda outlets.

[bananapub]

no, they don't, this is a very dumb thing to think.

there's a medium sized chunk the American Right, which has now won, who unrelated to Russia or China or whatever actually want the US to become sci-fi dystopia of authoritarian christo-white-nationalism.

[ljm]

To say that Russia is destabilising the US basically takes the agency of the US out of the equation. Makes the US (the so-called greatest country in the world, so-called leaders of the free world) unaccountable for its own actions.

The US is destabilising itself with the help of Russia.

[philistine]

Bingo. Most americans are at the phase where they are trying to absolve themselves of necessary responsibility.

I don't have to pick up a sign to try and defend my country, it's Russia's fault.

I don't have to fight against my president to preserve democracy, it's Russia's fault.

[karmajunkie]

the first amendment has become a national security threat, it would seem…

[iwontberude]

People like to say that Obamas jokes about Trump got him to run. But I wonder if Obama never helped Ukraine keep their democracy if we still would have ours.

[_heimdall]

> It used to be that the US government had pride in its own professionalism

It used to be that voters actually cared about professionalism, principles, and critical thinking.

Campaigning on really any of those doesn't work these days, its not surprising that our government has those same shortcomings.

[palata]

> The US is now acting like the countries it loves to destabilize.

Ironically, it's destabilising itself on its own.

[jgilias]

That’s what the successful decades long Russian psyop would want you to believe.

I’m not talking primarily about agent Krasnov allegation from a top Kazakh ex-spook (though that is an actual possibility), but about the well known Russian influence operations by financing what used to be extremists (both far-right and far-left) across the West.

[palata]

Well, Russian psyop has brought the US to destabilise themselves on their own. The people elected Trump.

[iwontberude]

I mean it sorta gave Russia a reason to attack us in the only way they can. Their super power is corruption.

[anonzzzies]

Trump & Musk will walk out trillionaires, so they couldn't care less.

[Cthulhu_]

Trillionaires over the ashes, worth it I suppose.

And one day they'll get into an accident, run into the wrong person, or die of old age and then what? Their legacy will be AI generated gold statues and maybe their name on a building.

If they ctually used that wealth to advance the human race (on the ground, not a hypothetical but infeasible future on another planet) that'd be another matter. A percentage of Musk's theoretical wealth can solve every American's financial trouble, give them an education, and make the US great again. But that means giving some of it away and they may need it for... What, anyway? What does Musk use his money for besides buying companies and spawning babies against their will?

At least MBS (an autocrat whose wealth and country are one) spends his money on stupidly large building and opulence like The Line and whatnot, which will either make the UAE the center of world wealth and prosperity, or which will be interesting to archeologists in 2000-4000 years.

[anonzzzies]

> And one day they'll get into an accident, run into the wrong person, or die of old age and then what? Their legacy will be AI generated gold statues and maybe their name on a building.

But that's the problem of the 'capitalist west' (i'm not sure what is better or what would work); everyone is out for short term gain. Most people care about themselves and some of their close family/friends, but in the end, they couldn't give a flying f if the entire planet implodes when they die. We should be planning on a 2000 year timeline as humanity but instead we plan on 4-8 years instead. So far (but that might be reading the wrong propaganda), China seems to have a plan beyond 4 years and beyond Xi's life and not be in such a neckbreaking hurry of breaking everything over a few years more or less.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Trump & Musk will walk out trillionaires

Or in jail. We’re not at the coup stakes of life and death, but we’re also like two months into this Presidency. (For what it’s worth, Trump isn’t currently being coup-ish. That’s been left to the pretender.)

[anonzzzies]

Which is why they are pushing so hard/fast; they need to destroy the right things to make sure they cannot be stopped.

[jordanb]

It doesn't look like they're targeting the right things, given how much they've put into going after the FAA, NHTSA and NOAA. Not exactly dark-state power centers. Rather, they're people who've pissed of Elon specifically.

It seems like they're spending 30% of effort on the areas that are likely to foment a counter-coup and 70% of their time attacking groups they have personal beefs with.

But of course they're not just focusing on the powerless, they're also annoying the powerful enough that I don't see how it ends well for them.

[ben_w]

"Stopping" can mean many things.

Reaching the altitude of space is much, much, easier than reaching orbital velocity.

This meant that during the Global War on Terror, people had legitimate questions about if Al Qaida could damage the ISS. The answer then was "no", but amateurs reached the Kármán line in 2004, students in 2019, and the current altitude record holder is 143 km.

I suspect that it is well within the capacity of random drug cartels in the US, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Haiti and Jamaica to destroy a Starship during launch, if they so desired.

A functioning US government is a reason not to do that. Nobody in any of those countries will want to risk Musk asking Trump for a favour in the form of a USSOCOM operation.

Destroy the US federal government, and there may well not be an USSOCOM left afterwards. And so far, DOGE has shown zero regard for the value of who they cut, e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/02/doge-nucl...

[orwin]

The fact that Musk will probably end up like Hugenberg if nothing changes doesn't make me jump in joy. 2 of every 5 people living in the US don't deserve it (the fifth who voted against and the fifth who can't vote), and I'm quite sad that they will have to bear with it for at least a few months (it took 6 months for Hugenberg to lose his empire and power, but I don't see the long knives happening in the US in the future, so it might take longer). At least the week-long pogrom didn't get a pretty name this time and was quite limited thanks to activists and pissed of neighbours. USians are a lot of things, maybe too passive at times, but cowards they are not.

[csomar]

If the US collapses, Trump & Musk will be worth 0.

[palata]

Let's hope they go to jail before the US collapses.

[egypturnash]

"Krasnov" is doing exactly what the Russians hired him to do.

[readthenotes1]

"It used to be that the US government had pride in its own professionalism. "

The phrase "good enough for government work" has never been a positive in my lifetime.

But I'm sure the Dulles brothers were proudful...

[Larrikin]

Getting into government to make it worse to show that government is bad has been a pillar of the Republican party since Reagan. They just used to pretend about it.

[_DeadFred_]

Why? Current action is no different than when Private Equity buys a company. The American public asked for the government to be ran like a business, and sadly, this is how big money men in the USA run businesses. Take control, fire everyone, leverage everything to their gain, bankrupt, then walk away.

This IS what people voted for. American business practices applied to the government.

[pyrale]

> It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want.

I very much doubt this is what people want. But people aren't asked their opinion, and there's a difference between disagreeing and starting an insurrection to prevent a coup.

[lokar]

A lot of Americans have been getting screwed for 30 years and have little invested in the stability of the system.

[Volundr]

> have little invested in the stability of the system.

They think they have little invested in the stability of the system.

[alistairSH]

Exit polls from the November elections don't bear this out.

The lowest income voters trended towards Harris. As did the highest income voters. Trump's support lies solidly in the middle class.

If somebody is middle-income and thinks they aren't benefiting from a stable government and economy, I'm not really sure what to say... could we collectively do better? Absolutely. Is burning it all to the ground even remotely sensible? No, not even close.

[alabastervlog]

Tons of Trump's most-dedicated supporters appear to be able to afford very expensive trucks and boats and such, and to be able to do stuff like travel to DC to attempt a putsch in the middle of the work week. They're benefitting plenty from the stability of the system. Unfortunately.

[alistairSH]

It's been a core tenet of Republican ideology for as long as I've been politically aware (30+ years now). People voting for Republicans are absolutely aware of this - they either explicitly want it, or are willing to accept as a cost of some other policy. Maybe 2026 mid-terms will prove me wrong, but if there isn't a wholesale turn away from the Trump-led GOP, it's safe to assume they're explicitly ok with this stuff.

[Aurornis]

> It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want.

It is not what people want. The Trump administration’s popularity is already below 50%, and much lower among independents (around 30% depending on the poll).

Many people aren’t yet aware of what’s happening. A lot of the electorate is getting their news from filtered sources like Fox News or various far right media outlets. Joe Rogan has gone all in on praising Musk and Trump. People who get their information from Trump are being fed lies that are obvious to anyone not inside the bubble. They don’t know what’s happening because their heroes are telling them it’s all necessary and good.

When you start polling people on the actual actions taken, things being cancelled, and consequences the approval is very low.

Anecdotally, I have some extended family who were very pro-Trump. One of them recently discovered that her job was funded through a federal grant, and now it’s likely going to be cut even though she doesn’t work for the government directly. They also discovered that one of their family members is covered by Medicaid through an avenue that’s looking like it will be cut. They went through a stage of disbelief, but now they’re in a phase where they’re sure everything will be fine and Trump will get it fixed. It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.

[silverquiet]

> It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.

I suspect that other scapegoats can be found to blame for their problems; as you say, their news sources will offer them all sorts of filters to deflect blame from the obvious source.

[xnx]

> I suspect that other scapegoats can be found to blame for their problems

Woke, Biden, DEI, Obama, trans, Hillary, Soros, gays, illegals, fluoride. Take your pick.

[martythemaniak]

> Take your pick.

Now now, there's no need to choose, you can just blame all of them all at once!

[CoastalCoder]

Sounds like the inspiration for a catchy but very dark Billy Joel song.

[brookst]

You forgot vaccines, education, NATO, porn, the courts, Canada, women, and renewable energy.

My biggest mystery is how these people have the energy to hate so many things so deeply. It sounds exhausting.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

They don’t hate constantly, only when thinking about politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

> The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies: Goldstein and the enemy super-state of the moment. In re-directing the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's governance of Oceania and toward non-existent external enemies, the Party minimises thoughtcrime and the consequent subversive behaviours of thoughtcriminals.

The only thing it gets wrong is the variety of Goldsteins.

[the_gipsy]

> It’s only a matter of time until they realize

It will be far too late. That's why they're going so fast. The damage comes with a huge latency. Perhaps America can be saved and this is nothing but a bump in the ride, I'm no Nostradamus, but this could very well be the end of the Free West.

[myvoiceismypass]

The checks and balances part no longer exists, so definitely feels like it’s over.

[inetknght]

> checks and balances part no longer exists

It honestly hasn't existed for decades.

[hedora]

States rights might save us.

If I was a governor of a blue state, I’d be strongly encouraging laid off government workers to work for my state. I’d also be working to eliminate the trade deficit (including federal taxes and spending) with rest of the US.

Why subsidize this crap if it’s not going to lead to economic prosperity, security, or even pretending the constitution still exists?

[dfxm12]

"States rights" is not going to save us. Conservative think tanks push "state rights" so hard because they know they can get overrepresented in state government via gerrymandering/voter suppression. Anything that slips through the cracks after that can be appealed to a higher court, up to SCOTUS, which they have made sure is full of judges sympathetic to them. A recent example would be SCOTUS overturning the Chevron doctrine and its possible effects on California's environmental rules.

[ModernMech]

I think California is doing exactly this.

[kamarg]

Sure it has but only when a Democrat is in office. Look at all the things that Biden/Obama were prevented from doing by the legislative and judicial branches.

[forgetfreeman]

Eh, there's latency in some places sure but a bunch of cuts are going to have rather obvious and seriously negative impacts on the financials around this summer's harvest, and the Ag lobby usually doesn't fuck around. It'll be interesting to see how farm communities are kept in the traces then.

[hedora]

Yeah; China’s counter-tariffs on ag start today.

Also, Ontario supplies half the US’s nickel, and is threatening an embargo. That’d shut down a bunch of our factories in short order. They could also cut off electricity supplies to the north, but I get the impression the US grid would mostly absorb that (probably thanks to investment in smart grids for renewables, ironically).

[JumpCrisscross]

> this could very well be the end of the Free West

Europe seems to be realising it must get its act together. Europe + Canada + the Americas have a hope in hell of containing America if it goes off the rails internationally. (When Trump & Musk tip the economy into recession it will be tempting to drum up a stupid war. My guess would have been Iran. But who the hell knows.)

[hedora]

They already allocated funding to deploy the military inside the US in border areas.

[anal_reactor]

The worst thing about being born in a rich country during prosperity is that every single issue is the worst problem you've ever faced in your life.

[selykg]

> Anecdotally, I have some extended family who were very pro-Trump. One of them recently discovered that her job was funded through a federal grant, and now it’s likely going to be cut even though she doesn’t work for the government directly. They also discovered that one of their family members is covered by Medicaid through an avenue that’s looking like it will be cut. They went through a stage of disbelief, but now they’re in a phase where they’re sure everything will be fine and Trump will get it fixed. It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.

I keep hearing stuff like this, but it doesn't seem to be widespread enough to seem to matter, at least in my circle. There's this whole topic of conversation where there's this voter regret thing. I'm in Michigan, so there's been a few of these I've seen proclaiming the Muslim community are having regrets voting for Trump (it was a big thing around the election due to the whole Gaza situation, because voting for Harris was apparently not going to be enough). But I am worried I'm just seeing bullshit propaganda and these types of things aren't actually what's happening because everyone I've talked to seem to be content with the way things are going. It's incredibly weird.

[baggachipz]

They will always refuse to admit they were wrong or that they were duped. The reasons for hardships and failure will always be due to the group of "others" stymieing their progress. The enemy is both cleverly evil and simultaneously feckless. I know some trumpies and they think things are going swimmingly.

[Aurornis]

All of the news stories about unlikely Trump voters having regrets are just ragebait. Journalists can always find someone for readers to laugh at because they voted for someone who was openly against them, but that’s a different issue.

The real interesting voter regret is when the likely Trump voters start realizing that their guy isn’t who they thought. It’s not going to happen quickly because denial and rationalization can go on for a very long time.

I am starting to see it in some of the VCs and crypto people I know personally and follow on Twitter. The launch of the Trump memecoin went through a rationalization cycle where the crypto people tried to spin it as a good thing, but now nearly all of them have given up and agreed it was a bad move for crypto

One of the loudest pro-Trump VCs in my state has gone from being a cheerleader to asking questions about what DOGE is actually doing. The trigger for him was, strangely enough, Musk having public issues with the parents of two of his children. Something about realizing that he’s not a good family man and father finally broke his illusions of Musk as the perfect hero.

I think it’s little things like this that will start making people ask questions about their heroes. The more topics and agencies they get their hands on, the more people will be impacted and be forced to reconcile their reality with their imagined ideals of this administration.

[xnx]

> now nearly all of them have given up and agreed it was a bad move for crypto

It's not cool anymore when someone else is running the scam

[mattgreenrocks]

Yeah, I'm sick of the "I learned I was wrong the hard way" clickbait that's cropping up everywhere. We are past the time for that.

We need to be building a platform that houses the left and right in order to have a chance at standing up to this. This will be a real litmus test for the US: do we favor our tribal affiliations more than the country that enables us to have those affiliations? Or are we willing to put them aside for the greater good?

[epidemiology]

Crypto is a technology. Pro-crypto vs anti-crypto is just as stupid as pro-computer vs anti-computers.

We're seeing a moment now where the "pro-crypto" team is bifurcating (really this has always been true but it's more obvious now) into good crypto vs bad crypto. Or mission driven vs profit maximalising. Oversimplifications of a nuanced political, tribal landscape with many many sides but you get the idea.

Democrats being anti all crypto was clearly wrong, attacking the more legitimate parts MORE fiercely than the illegitimate parts. But the flip side is Trump's "crime season" as they call it in crypto twitter, which also sucks. Maybe some day we'll get crypto that is useful, profitable, and designed in a beneficial way. That day is not today.

[Octoth0rpe]

> I keep hearing stuff like this, but it doesn't seem to be widespread enough to seem to matter, at least in my circle.

It also hasn't fully hit yet. The layoffs are in progress, already awarded grant money is still paying salaries. 3-6 months is when the pain will really begin. Until then, I think a lot of people are still thinking that it either won't really happen to them, or that Trump will somehow make an exception just for their particular federal money pipeline.

[selykg]

I work as a software engineer in the non-profit sector, within education. It's going to be a wild ride as to whether I have a job or not in a year. We are (almost) entirely dependent on grants. The money we get that isn't from grants is tiny (like less than 1% of our total budget). We applied for a few government grants recently and it sounds to me like they are definitely not something we will be getting now so it's back to the private foundations we have to go to for funding. With all the mixups happening it's going to be interesting to see how private foundations pivot, will non-profits like ours see big grants or will we die because other areas are more important?

On top of that, I am no expert top of the job market software engineer. If I lose this job I am going to be competing against people significantly better than me because so many others have (or will) be losing their jobs. Basically, this is the potential beginning of the end of my career.

Thankfully, I think I'm okay through this year, and probably next... but after that, completely a mystery. And that's only because we have agreements for funding through 2026. There are no guarantees beyond that.

[alabastervlog]

Tons of voters reverse many of their positions if you explain the issues to them without using the labels they’re used to.

I’m not sure “they could have known, but didn’t bother to learn, and instead voted based on Fox News and talk radio and podcast and Facebook post bullshit” is enough to say they didn’t vote for this. If it is, that’s… kinda usually the case.

[evan_]

> voters reverse many of their positions if you explain the issues to them without using the labels they’re used to

…and that reversing lasts until the next time they turn on their TV and get reset by Fox News. I used to see it all the time with my parents. Now I just don’t talk to them much.

[dartos]

It may not be what people want now, but it is what people voted for.

People voted for tariff and massive day 1 changes and federal cuts.

People wanted a loud strong man president who makes deals.

These actions ARE what people (who voted) wanted… people just didn’t think about the outcome

[realo]

Which people?

I hear that it is the same people who voted Donald last time who voted Donald again this time. No others voted for him.

The issue seems to be that many people who are not trumpists did not vote at all.

Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that if everyone who could vote actually did vote, then Donald would have lost.

So ... maybe he won, but i hardly think he represents the majority is US citizens.

[dartos]

> Which people?

The 51% of voters that voted for him… (correction: 49.8%)

> I hear that it is the same people who voted Donald last time who voted Donald again this time. No others voted for him.

This is wrong. There were more republican voters this time around than last time.

> The issue seems to be that many people who are not trumpists did not vote at all. Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems that if everyone who could vote actually did vote, then Donald would have lost.

This is a constant issue in the US. Low voter turnout causes seemingly unpopular candidates to win.

Go out and vote, people. Please.

> So ... maybe he won, but i hardly think he represents the majority is US citizens.

Never said it did. But if you don’t voice your opinion when it matters, then your opinion literally doesn’t count.

So, the American people voted for trump and this administration. Either through their vote or their inaction.

[alabastervlog]

> The 51% of voters that voted for him…

Nitpick: 49.8%

[CoastalCoder]

The isn't meant as any kind of defense regarding Trump or his supporters, but it seems under-discussed to me:

The Democrats offered a really bad alternative (Biden) for most of the campaign season. Even if you liked his politics, there was (IMHO) legitimate reason to question his mental competence.

My guess is that Trump would have lost if the Democrats had fielded a less-bad alternative.

[dartos]

Both times trump won, this was true. The DNC is just allergic to putting forward candidates that people want to vote for.

Kamala really ran a campaign like someone trying to lose.

[pyrale]

> It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.

"If only the Tsar knew"

[gryfft]

> They went through a stage of disbelief, but now they’re in a phase where they’re sure everything will be fine and Trump will get it fixed.

Ah, straight from denial into that other stage, more denial

[devinprater]

Yes, this is how blind people who voted for Trump are. Surely they can't get rid of the ADA...

[dfxm12]

This is what Trump campaigned on though. This is what he said he'd do. Did people vote for Trump because they thought he was a liar?

[SketchySeaBeast]

But isn't that how Trump campaigned and ran his first presidency? He vomits a stream of random garbage and, if you like him, you pick through it to find the half digested bits you like while ignoring everything else. His opponents do the opposite but, to be fair, it seems like a perfectly reasonable stance to listen to what a person says and assumes they might actually do what they are promising to do.

His "charm" is that he won't do 3/4 of what he says, the difficulty is figuring out which quarter he is going to enact.

[masfuerte]

> Did people vote for Trump because they thought he was a liar?

Yes! I know apparently smart people who voted for Trump because they thought that his more extreme rhetoric was merely intended to wind up the left. Like the first time he got elected. Except that this time he had a plan.

[jgilias]

How could they fall for it. I mean, even during the first time it was obvious that he actually meant it, as he did try to enact all the crazy bullshit. The only saving grace was adults in the room around him. Now all the adults are gone.

[alabastervlog]

IGs and others stopped him from doing some of the worst and dumbest stuff.

This time he (illegally) fired a bunch of them right out of the gate. The Heritage Foundation wasn't caught off guard (and a bit out in the cold) by his success this time, and backed him with a plan. They did it out in the open, the recruiting and a whole lot of specifics about what they wanted to do and how they were going to do it. It wasn't even close to a secret, you could literally go download and read documents, watch interviews of key figures in front of friendly audiences, that kind of thing.

With the Vance pick, you could also easily spot the Yarvin influence & connections and make some guesses about some things. When Elon started worming his way in, it was clear that side of it wasn't just going to be in the head of a VP who can't personally do much, but was going to have traction.

His voters who are now like "WTF?" need to sit down and have a serious think about how they got conned by someone who was standing under a neon sign with a flashing arrow pointing down at him that read "I am conning you! Signed: Donald Trump". Like I'm not sure it even counts as a con, it was so transparent.

[jgilias]

Totally agree. It’s like, I get the hard core MAGA voters. The smart ones knew exactly what they are voting for, and they’re now super elated. The not so smart ones just voted for the movement, and their leader, unlikely to be disappointed by anything he does (read Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt).

Everyone else… yeah.

[VBprogrammer]

I enjoy reading the comments explaining how the whole Trump / Vance meeting with Zelensky spat was some epic move in 3D chess.

Meanwhile Trump isn't even able to keep phrases like "rare earth minerals" correct in his head (repeatedly calling them "raw earth"). To be honest 90% of the meeting was him waffling on about how this news organisation was brilliant (because they give him a softball question) and this one was going bankrupt because their rating suck (because they asked a difficult question). You could see Zelensky trying to keep himself from rolling his eyes.

[bananapub]

he lied over and over during his campaign, e.g. telling people he had no idea what Project 2025 was and that he wasn't going to do any of it.

voters are very very dumb for believing him, but he did lie.

[dfxm12]

I don't think voters are dumb. The more I talk to Trump voters to understand why they voted how they did, the more it becomes clear that they knew he was serious when campaigning on taking rights away from and making life harder for marginalized people in America, and this is what they voted for, everything else be damned.

[tatersolid]

Every Trump voter I know wanted exactly one thing: lower taxes. That’s it, at whatever cost. That’s the Republican base.

[dfxm12]

In some cases, like some small business owners, people living in some states with higher than average taxes, people paid more in taxes during his first term, due to his tax plan limiting deductions. Additionally, the next administration froze tax increases for people making under $400k. Harris campaigned on this as well.

Again, I don't think people are stupid. I do think they'll say one some things in mixed company to hide their racism.

[piva00]

It can't be only attributed to ignorance, you see many comments here on Hacker News defending it with vitriol I had never experienced on this forum even during Trump's 1st presidency.

Somehow Americans have really bought into it, the lies, the disinformation, the destruction. I cannot understand, the moving targets shift (CRT, immigration, DEI, cancel culture, wokeness, whatever is next) so it isn't about them whatsoever, they are just the distractions being fed to gather support, there's something else much deeper and darker broken in American society that became so obfuscated by these distractions to the point where I have absolutely no fucking idea why half of the country seems to hate everything that brought the USA to the position it had on the global stage.

Perhaps it's just hubris after a very long period of quasi-absolute power, seems like power corrupts not only individuals but whole nations.

[AnimalMuppet]

We know that Russia has run a very long, very extensive disinformation campaign against the west. It might be expected that that extends to HN. Not everything posted here is someone's actual opinion. Some of it is deliberate propaganda and attempts to manipulate.

That's hard to accept, given what HN was once. The difference between ten years ago and last year was noticeable; the difference between last year and this is much starker.

You're in a war, even here.

[acdha]

Russian propaganda isn’t magic: rather, the people crafting it are very adept at finding and exploiting existing fault lines and the areas where the major American media and tech companies can be exploited to amplify a message. They aren’t doing anything which, say, Rush Limbaugh wasn’t doing in the pre-Internet era, and it’s not like they aren’t just part of the larger disinformation sphere.

What they did was see the way 9/11 reset what was allowed in mainstream American discourse, and that as conservatives moved into a tightly-managed bubble they were also willing to give up the idea of verifiable facts in favor of what felt right. That created a big weakness for a patient adversary as they didn’t need to try to get people to trust, say, RT but rather pick which existing voices to quietly support or try seeding ideas to.

I think it’s better to treat them like a catalyst or the accelerant on a fire where they didn’t start it but they both made it worse and might not have much control over it at this point.

[piva00]

I've become used to check those users comments and, unfortunately, a lot of them have been posting on HN for many years, even before Trump 1.

It can be Russian disinfo but it's definitely not only that.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yeah, it's kinda disheartening to be honest.

That being said, the writing was on the wall in 2016, the first time Trump ran, HN (and the anglosphere internet in general) took a sharp dive down in quality, and Covid made it all worse.

I just try to remember that the printing press caused a lot of wars, but over the longer term it lead to a better world.

[explain]

> The Trump administration’s popularity is already below 50%

Just under 50% of the population voted for President Trump, so it's a given that "already" the popularity is below 50%.

[NilMostChill]

Voting population.

I'm not just being pedantic, it's an important distinction.

[weakfish]

50% of the voting population, not general population

[Brybry]

USA 2024 population was ~340.1 million (census estimate).

156,302,318 voted (~63.9% of ~244 million eligible voters, extrapolated)

77.3 million voted for Trump (~49.8% of voters).

So that's ~31.6% of eligible voters or ~22.7% of the US population.

[troyvit]

Welp, maybe those eligible voters who didn't vote will remember next time that not voting is the same as voting for the winner.

[Brybry]

I didn't vote. I have various (bad) reasons:

- I live in a deeply partisan state where the outcome was predetermined: a disproportionate amount of those who didn't vote would have to vote in the opposite of those who voted (if I lived in a different state the pressure to vote would have been greater)

- I lack an easy means to get to my polling location and my state makes absentee ballots difficult to get

- I would have probably also needed to do some ID stuff (my ID is currently expired, for reasons)

- Registering to vote puts my name/address/registered party/etc onto easily searchable public websites like https://voterrecords.com/

My reasons aren't great but they're reasons. If there was less friction to voting I would have voted, as I recognize it's an important civic duty.

[troyvit]

I was pretty flippant and your reply makes it clear that there's a lot more going on than the apathy I was hinting at. Anybody who cares about democracy should look at those reasons very seriously to see what we can do better (polling locations, difficulty with absentee ballots, privacy issues to say the least).

[sockp0pp3t]

Speaking of Rogan, did you listen to the Mike Benz episode? If Benz is gaslighting you have a point, but if Benz is truthful, then you don't.

[RobRivera]

The rules of this forum dictate that participants can't make claims of astroturfing, so I won't make that claim.

On a related note, I find it interesting that your comment is being downvoted while contributing to the dialogue productively.

Inference is left as an exercise to the reader.

[CoastalCoder]

Wouldn't that be an example of brigading, rather than astroturfing?

Or is brigading considered a kind of astroturfing?

[RobRivera]

Depends, brigading can be organic or artifical. Artificial brigading from a campaign of controlled accts would be proper astroturfing.

[alsoforgotmypwd]

America is a third-world country because people stopped caring, stopped reading, and fell for a cult.

[dataangel]

This what a huge chunk of HN wanted! HN was all aboard the Trump train for years and the mods admonished anyone being too critical of other users for it, it's when I wrote off most of the people here as morons.

[matthewaveryusa]

That's a bit harsh. Maybe a bunch of political juniors thinking the system needed a rewrite by a bunch of folks foreign to the system. Don't write it off, it could work. Probably not though

[consteval]

It's in an inexperienced engineers blood to demand a full rewrite. I mean, it's just so tempting. Learn from our mistakes, a build a system that solves them! Then, we don't have to wade through the crud on top of crud on top of crud to get simple things done!

But, anyone who has ever been through such a rewrite knows they're usually more trouble than they're worth, and no matter what, you will lose A LOT. Doesn't matter how thorough you are or how many requirements you capture. Most are lost to the ether, never again to be seen... until the exact moment you need them.

[pastor_williams]

[citation needed]

[selykg]

For what it's worth, while I don't agree with the moron bit of what OP said, I have felt like I have seen HN leaning more pro-Trump. And it does also feel like saying anything critical of him can be heavily downvoted. There really does appear to be a large contingent of pro-Trump people on here, at least in my experience. I don't have citations, just my own experience, so, obviously take it for what it is.

[brookst]

Pay attention to usernames. There are some pro-Trump, pro-Russia people here, but honestly not that many. Maybe six or eight, total. They just tend to post 50 times each in any thread that touches on the subject.

[dfxm12]

Capital is inherently conservative and this is a website focused around venture capitalism. It makes sense that more than average this website's users/staff would lean towards more conservative politics than a random sample of Internet users. This should be even more clear when you read pg's essays. Of course this has an effect on the moderation, including voting/flagging.

[droopyEyelids]

I’ll never forget the Great HN Vote where everyone decided to get on board the Trump Train

[Octoth0rpe]

OP didn't say a majority. It's hard to deny that a sizable portion of the tech community is made up of ancap techno-libertarian types; and that the dismantling of the US government is their dream.

[pseudalopex]

Saying a group was all aboard a train is not a common way to indicate a minority. And they said they wrote off most of the people here.