[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

HoosierDaddy, on 28 February 2025 - 08:42 PM, said:

It's not Christian to wish ill on others. But I find it very damn hard to not hope they all get blown to hell by a bomb.

Old boy missing trump in Pennsylvania might be one of the greatest what ifs ever.

Might've just gotten us technocratically competent and comparatively subtle "lawful" evil (if Republicans could've still subbed in DeSantis) rather than (technocratically) incompetent brazen chaotic evil. On the bright side of the burgeoning garbage fire, it might be much easier for hypercompetent technocrats---AI-powered or otherwise---to seize power from discredited human democracy. Especially if much of government function is given over to tech companies, AI, and (if they have time enough) robotics.

Plus in a sense Trump's Making America Medieval Again (or MAMA):

Quote

Historian Jon Meacham [on] MSNBC[...]

"Take us back. Is this more like a Teddy Roosevelt imperialist approach? Is this William McKinley? Who does this remind you of [Trump's] world view when it comes to power politics?" asked MSNBC host [...]

[Meachem responded:] "It's older than that even, it's almost medieval and Renaissance… This is a royal house with a kingdom who bases relations on personal connection, personal feeling… and basically the transfer of assets. It's very autocratic, very straightforward. I mean, let's be honest. It's kind of, I don't want to say refreshing, but the president is being very clear here," Meacham said.

"So one of the things that I think is really important here is to remember that we are now living — to shift from a historical metaphor to a cultural one — we're now living in the Sopranos, right? This is a protection racket.

https://www.alternet...raine-zelensky/

OTOH some of the chaos is intentional---part of flooding the zone with frothing dicing shit, like an accelerating fast-forward projectile asshole slot machine---and Trump's apparent genuine derangement may make him more effective at it (if still less effective than someone hypercompetent simply feigning the same effectively).

Of course Putin iirc seized dictatorial power without these particular types of chaos (or appearance of disarray and confusion from the aspiring dictator's own spewage)... but Trump is partly following his model:

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Trump didn't campaign on cutting cancer research and foreign aid any more than he did on threatening to annex Greenland and Canada or lifting sanctions on Putin's dictatorship and extorting Ukraine. What these things have in common is that they provoke conflicts with allies, which then allow him to distinguish the truly loyal.

[...] The Putin model [for transitioning from democratically elected leader to dictator is] to

Spoiler

weaken any state institution that might defy him and to build state power back up only when he had total control.

[...] These are not the acts of people who expect to lose power any time soon, or ever. They are racing to the point where they will not be able to afford to lose control of the mechanisms they are ripping up and remaking in their image. What such people will do when they believe that mounting a coup is the lesser risk to their fortunes and power cannot be predicted.

[...] stopping Putinization—the looting by cronies, the centralization of authority, the moving of decisions into unaccountable private hands—is the vital matter of the moment.

The Putinization of America - The Atlantic

When I told my elderly mother that Republican congresspeople are afraid MAGA might kill them if they insist on voting against Trump, she asked why they're not afraid that people will kill them for voting as Trump and his ilk decree. I find it hard to imagine Democratic leadership promoting stochastic terrorism, death threats, and assassinations---not even via dog whistle and ironic plausible deniability. But consider the reaction of many on the internet to the assassin Luigi. Cutting Medicaid to constituents who need it to survive may be enough for more Luigis to leap up from the shithole garbage inferno... and then perhaps a very civil war (in the sense of civilians with lots of guns, explosives, poisons, and large vehicles) will start.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: Yesterday, 09:21 PM