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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2899 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Yale history professor’s powerful, 20-point guide to defending democracy under a Trump presidency

I'm more worried than you and Odder, but I'll say this: most of the bureaucracy has civil service protections, so attempts to punish dissenters would be difficult, and at least the subset of it I have contact with really does care about doing the job they do and are perfectly willing to subvert any policies that get in the way of them doing it. I have heard funny stories about the Bush administration. Except for those that get defunded, government business is likely to proceed more-or-less as normal in spite (perhaps more literally than usual) of whatever horror gets appointed to nominally run things.





kleinbl00  ·  2899 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The two factoids I've seen lately :

1) Trump's cabinet has a combined personal wealth greater than the bottom 30% of the country

2) Trump's cabinet has the lowest education level of any cabinet in modern history, with the only doctorate belonging to Ben Carson.

They're going to do terrible shit by mistake, not on purpose.

user-inactivated  ·  2899 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well sure, but I don't think any politician has ever done terrible shit on purpose. I mean, I've read most of the writings of John C. Calhoun and he was both very well educated and thought he was on the side of the angels.

kleinbl00  ·  2899 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Put another way:

Dick Cheney did terrible shit on purpose... because his idea of "terrible shit" is the polar opposite of my idea of "terrible shit." Cheney was 100% convinced that the CIA was full of shit, that Iraq had WMD, and that the US needed to take the Middle East in order to preserve the American way of life.

Donald Trump isn't an idealist. He's not Marx, he's not Kennedy, he's not Mao, he's not Hitler. He could be Stalin. He could be Duterte. But he's a 70-year-old real estate developer whose political itch didn't advance to putting together a campaign until he was beyond retirement age.

Donald Trump doesn't think he's on the side of angels. He thinks angels are irrelevant. He won't do evil shit to be lionized by history because his idea of "historic" is large buildings with his name on them. He's going to do stupid shit because he has less interest and respect for politics than the average HOA member.

user-inactivated  ·  2899 days ago  ·  link  ·  
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