trump is doing everything he can right now to convey that his regime is tyrannical. he is doing nothing to convey to anyone that this is to their benefit. this is not a typical approach for authoritarians.
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At the end of the day I think what's going on is that Trump understands he doesn't really have a future. He just has a present and he wants to cash in now.
Because, as he promised, 'vote for me and you'll never have to vote again'. He doesn't need their future votes because there will be no free and fair elections, like in Russia.
It's like he's counting on his partisans to puff out the "that's not really what he means, the bad stuff is all the woke left trying to drag him down". Which is then protected by the impossible task of objectively describing his admin actions and not sounding crazy.
Sure, he loathes being mocked and is probably the only sentient being who can endure the ceaseless praise of the heavenly host, but goddamn he also loves to hurt people. Revels in it.
Yeah, I think we’re really gonna test that LBJ line and see magas celebrate their quality of life decreasing as long as he’s hurting the people they want him to hurt more than he’s hurting them.
The libs have never been so owned. Perfect time for them to break Social Security in a way that will only be recoverable by a Democratic administration.
The treatment of Columbia is also conveying a strong message, to anyone smart enough to see it, that compliance won't bring relief -- so you've got nothing to lose fighting with everything you've got
a crackdown is what an authoritarian does when the normal mechanisms of state repression don't work anymore! when the military fires on the people, that's more likely to be the end of a regime than the beginning.
Yes but he is profoundly stupid and vengeful. He wants to order the national guard to put down a protest in a liberal city soooo badly.
He's too stupid & baleful to realize he's basically pulled off the authoritarian shit & most Americans have no idea. He *needs* to see libs physically owned on TV
Sorry, I chose words poorly. I was thinking more along the lines of cresting a Reichstag moment that would justify an attempt to curtail civil liberties across the board.
If they can generate real reaction, then a Reichstag event will be believable.
I don't think this is Trump's plan, not because it isn't a solid plan, but because I don't give him credit for having a plan that grandiose.
I genuinely believe that he's avoided real consequences for so long that he's simply stopped accounting for them. It's "behave like a fascist, get pellet".
Look at the El Salvador fiasco as the dynamic in a microcosm. He deports a bunch of Latino residents of the US to a foreign concentration camp without trial despite a judicial order to the contrary, his base goes wild, and at least *for now*, the judge is confined to ineffectual squawking.
When this is your life, over and over, at the largest scale and for the highest stakes, I have to imagine after awhile you just stop believing you're actually in a jam, and from there it's a short step to no longer believing that even the basic authoritarian playbook applies to you.
While I agree that's true for Trump, it's not true for the people around him. This time around he has a high-power group of people who funded his campaign and point him where to go next. Elon Musk and (through JD Vance) Peter Theil and Marc Andreessen. Stephen Miller.
They have the plan. Trump gets his pellet for doing what they want. But, when they don't need him anymore, when they've used him to create the conditions they need, he will be gone.
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I don't think the other Republicans think that they can stay in power forever regardless of elections ... but he does.
He's too stupid & baleful to realize he's basically pulled off the authoritarian shit & most Americans have no idea. He *needs* to see libs physically owned on TV
If they can generate real reaction, then a Reichstag event will be believable.
I genuinely believe that he's avoided real consequences for so long that he's simply stopped accounting for them. It's "behave like a fascist, get pellet".
This is a good read on the historical context of what Musk, etc. want: https://bylinetimes.com/2025/03/18/musks-doge-is-inspired-by-pro-kremlin-monarchists-and-1930s-technofascism/