It actually doesn't "align perfectly with project 2025," like project 2025 looks positively reasonable compared with the insane shit they're actually doing. E.g. project 2025 was literally like "work closely with congress to return USAID to the Trump I agenda" not "elon musk destroys USAID" - ThreadSky

bartenderhemry.bsky.social • 1 day ago

It actually doesn't "align perfectly with project 2025," like project 2025 looks positively reasonable compared with the insane shit they're actually doing. E.g. project 2025 was literally like "work closely with congress to return USAID to the Trump I agenda" not "elon musk destroys USAID"

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minerva1.bsky.social•1 day ago

This is a good example because what we’re seeing now looks more like destroying the federal government. Not remaking or reshaping it.

iriskogb.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Trump's rhetoric included larger unspoken generalities allowing him to become this alarmingly broad in his behavior.Sometimes it does feel like he was just talking and circumstances aligned with an opportunity for him to become super powerful,

iriskogb.bsky.social•23 hours ago

and to have the opportunity to act out his mean very angry nature.

brittexkavi.bsky.social•1 day ago

Right. It’s so much worse & Musk is calling the shots & has insane levels of access to essentially everything.

codycafe.bsky.social•1 day ago

If everyone changes their W-4 tax withholdings to exempt on their employee portal, no taxes get paid to billionaire subsidies. All installment payments from loans to subscriptions account for $3.3 trillion monthly globally. If everyone stopped paying, there would be no billionaires in 3 months.

sfaccountant.bsky.social•13 hours ago

That is absolute nonsense. You are not going to abolish billionaires by starving the government of tax revenue. If you could actually get mass action on this sort of scale (which you definitely can't) there are a thousand other strategies that would work better.

codycafe.bsky.social•13 hours ago

It’s a 2 pronged approach. WE, the US, stop paying taxes to the world’s most powerful military apparatus, & the world stops making installment payments along with us, billionaires would disappear. There is 2,700 billionaires with a combined wall of $14.2 trillion which most of it is not liquid.

amanmichel.bsky.social•1 day ago

Elon has just barged in and wrecked the place

temecularises.bsky.social•1 day ago

bananapantz.bsky.social•10 hours ago

I generally agree.

But there is a lot hidden in the "quiet words" eg deradicalization they're using here.

Plus "deep cuts in international aid" would not have been a happy outcome.

quallster.bsky.social•17 hours ago

https://youtu.be/Phay2W1XUTo?si=PsaR-NI6bfQypcvb

rcmasse.bsky.social•1 day ago

Did Elon just get really riled up to nuke USAID because it helps black people in South Africa or how did he even get it in his head to go down that path?

Btw the GOP must be destroyed

joea64.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Wild-assed guess, but there may have been a quiet, behind-the-scenes power struggle between the Thiel/Vance camp - which was all for OG Project 2025 - and the Musk camp, which Musk won. (Except for a couple of things like Munich, Vance has been real low-visibility since the election.)

joea64.bsky.social•10 hours ago

We do know that Trump has been regretting selecting Vance as his VP pick almost since he made the selection, which probably offered Musk an opening.

drugdrawer.bsky.social•18 hours ago

https://soundcloud.com/elonmusk2025/foolish-lames-me?si=3f1c824904904a85873cc26f0a0583c0&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

bartenderhemry.bsky.social•1 day ago

Like I'm sorry all the people saying "oh this is just project 2025" are really underselling it

chathamharrison.bsky.social•1 day ago

It's tricky because Project 2025 has already become shorthand for the Worst Possible Thing but it is demonstrably not

bartenderhemry.bsky.social•1 day ago

I mean say what you will about the tenets of project 2025 but at least it's a project

bornonagreenlight.bsky.social•1 day ago

chathamharrison.bsky.social•1 day ago

If Project 2025 is a demolition, Trump II is a landslide

adamgoodtime.bsky.social•23 hours ago

A massive out of nowhere sinkhole I would suggest

shimanti.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yep, it’s crazy to me that this is WORSE than Project 2025.

walmsley.bsky.social•1 day ago

Project 2025 took a pretty politics-as-usual approach to USAID because Project 2025 was a serious project to build a durable autocracy and "have Big Balls nuke USAID by manually turning off the payments system" is not conducive to that goal

n3rdykttn.bsky.social•1 day ago

its also i think called "acceleration" where the government moves too fast and ends up completely collapsing. The reason we can't go in and cut so fast is due to communication and clear lines of it are hard to get fast. With so much uncertainty it will cause some collapse

n3rdykttn.bsky.social•1 day ago

we can only hope it only hurts the upper class the most. the low class will bear the brunt of it, but hardly is the ground floor of a building that collapsed in worse condition than what was above it (ie: the working class the foundation vs the top floor president and rich)

malthusiantrap.bsky.social•1 day ago

Right - they were supposed to test run impoundment on something really unpopular or something that at least conservatives could plausibly think to be unconstitutional. Project 2025 did not call for Musk doing a Leroy Jenkins.

blandphilosophy.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yeah, I think there would be a little less blood rage.

jsamdrolet.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Yes, the Heritage/P2025 Faction is based at OMB and has done some stupid stuff but nowhere near what Musk and DOGE are doing.

silverknyaz.bsky.social•23 hours ago

musk is clearly inspired by the P2025 vision but doing it all in the most slapdash, stupid way possible

but also vought and the freaks taking over OMB aren't actually geniuses either, they merely appear as much by relativity

jsamdrolet.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Yeah, they were the ones behind the grant freeze early on, which was also stupid and destructive.

davidjorgonson.bsky.social•1 day ago

It was marginally smarter but Project 2025 also wanted to fire 50% of federal employees in a year. So that would always look like taking a meataxe to the same state capacity they need for an authoritarian regime or mass deportations.

walmsley.bsky.social•1 day ago

what they are doing has ramped up the noise and aggression in a way that is very worrying in the short term but very likely locks them out of any kind of lasting victory

bananapantz.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Yeah, I don't see a massive difference between the two approaches on substance, but definitely in tactics, or at least what they were willing to say ahead of the election.

P2025 also wanted some way to send sweetness to preferred regimes and anti-China.

martin509.bsky.social•1 day ago

The best way of putting it I've seen is that absolutely none of this is in a state of thermostatic equilibrium, it's all wildly unstable and doesn't represent a workable end state

conjurial.bsky.social•1 day ago

it certainly raises the odds of failure but I think it also raises the odds of a more outright dictatorial government compared to Orbanism

conjurial.bsky.social•1 day ago

if you go really hard and *don't* flame out, you've learned there aren't really any constraints

walmsley.bsky.social•1 day ago

they've pissed off too many of the power bases they'd need for that to work. I think the odds of *someone* being dictator are way up compared to 2024, but it's not going to be Trump

conjurial.bsky.social•1 day ago

I think Elon thinks it'll be him but he's forgetting that Hitler was not blitzed out of his mind all the time in 1933, that came later

walmsley.bsky.social•1 day ago

"Trump gets couped when he tries to invade Canada and we end up with American Kemalism" is a non-negligible tail outcome, for instance

conjurial.bsky.social•1 day ago

any coup that actually does happen would probably also go to great lengths not to look like one. less tanks in the streets and more increasing turmoil suddenly culminating in Trump/Vance resigning and maybe the speaker of the House changing shortly before

anagramdoe.bsky.social•1 day ago

hope you're right

various-threnodies.bsky.social•1 day ago

Musk and Trump are not smart & they are surrounding themselves with people who are not smart. I am not going to try to predict the future but that's not a recipe for success

annabellelecter.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Unfortunately, the population is not smart either.

pandapanda57.bsky.social•18 hours ago

If you grew up in a conservative Christian home, none of this should be a surprise. I grew up around adults who spent a lot of time on their hands and knees, begging God to send them someone who would get all of that started. I never thought it would actually happen. The right votes 🤷🏾, regardless.

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