My eyes rolled so hard they literally flew out of my head and knocked a wall off the back of my house when I saw your example to justify “hundreds of billions of dollars of waste” was an opinion piece on the $500 toilet seat from 1986.
Spoiler alert: if you read the next few years of news it’s revealed that those stories are almost uniformly exaggerations and misrepresentations driven by Reagan era people who wanted to starve the beast.
Political lies drummed up to justify cutting vital services under the pretenses of “fighting waste”.
You can do whatever you want. I won’t be caught dead cheering for a fascist who wants to rollback civil rights just to give him a fair shot in case he makes a prudent budget cut. Which he won’t, because his platform has openly covered that they want to cut education, healthcare, and science.
But hey, at least you gave the fascists a fair shot despite their open plans for evil, right?
It’s well known that government agencies spend way more than they need to in order to keep their funding the next year. Spending needs aren’t consistent every year, so they try to smooth over the differences by purpurchasing things before EOY or retaining staff they don’t technically need in case their spending needs are higher next year.
That’s stupid and wasteful. I don’t know how wasteful, but I do know there’s an incentive for an agency to expand its budget. It may not come in the form of $500 toilets, but you don’t have to look any further than the TSA to find excesses.
fascists
Trump is no more a fascist than Harris is a communist. I don’t like rhetoric like this, and I urge you to stop with the name calling. I absolutely don’t like Trump and I like his base even less, but I do not believe he’s a fascist, but he is a populist nationalist, which is its own brand of dangerous.
Regardless, I already voted against him twice and can’t do much to stop him, so the best thing is to discuss ways he can use his position for good.
Do you actually know what a fascist is or do you think it’s just a synonym for Nazi?
Harris has never advocated for the communal ownership of the means of production.
People who worked with her don’t describe her as a communist.
There isn’t serious debate about if she’s actually a communist or if she just gets really close to the definition.
a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy
Is that the definition of fascism, or trumps former chief of staff explaining why he thinks trump is a fascist?
I trust the former head of the joint chiefs of staff, Trump’s former chief of staff, and any number of academics to know what fascism is than I trust you, a person who’s worried about being uncivil to someone who wants to put people in camps.
Like, take a step back and think about what you’re doing. You’re saying it’s insulting and wrong to call a far right populist leader who attempted a coup to stay in power, who has threatened to use the military to bring places that disagree with him into line, who calls his political opponents “the enemy from within” and who calls them evil and their criticism of him illegal a fascist. Even if you don’t see how just that snippet of his behavior warrants the label, why on earth would you care if someone like that was insulted?
We were discussing how he could use his position for good. He could fucking fail at everything he tries to do and leave the country no better and no worse than it is today.
I’m not gonna sit here and jerk the guy off in the hope that he fails at fascism so hard that he somehow deports musk and enacts MAGA-care for all to spite Obama.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna175198
https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/current/thought-leadership/2024/10/is-trump-a-fascist/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/dispatches/what-does-it-mean-that-donald-trump-is-a-fascist
Do you actually know what a fascist is
Yes, fascism is all about sacrificing individual rights for the benefit of the state, using the military to crush opposition and any “undesirables” along the way.
That doesn’t describe Trump, yet that’s what the left throws around to try to discredit him.
How Democracies Die (2018) looks at actual fascist regimes and compares them to Trump. I agree that there are significant concerns here, but I think there’s an alternative explanation: Trump is merely a narcissist and has no agenda. Everything makes sense through that lens:
- rhetoric courting the radical right - they were the most rabid supporters
- Jan 6 - he stood by because they were fighting for him
- nationalism - if America is “great,” so is the President
- populism - again, he wants to be in the news
His actual policies have not been consistent with actual fascism though. He didn’t attack abortion, gay/trans rights, or racial minorities despite a willing base, the most he did was some rhetoric about states rights and pushing for expansion of the southern wall/fence. He didn’t increase aggression militarily toward any of our enemies, his tariffs were pretty mild, etc. He paid lip service to his base, but his main focus was tax cuts and deregulation, which are populist moves that don’t benefit the state at all.
So no, I think the term “fascist” is being thrown around to try to discredit him, which failed because it’s inaccurate. Trump is certainly dangerous, but not because he’s fascist, but because he’s narcissistic and his ideas suck.
I trust the former head of the joint chiefs of staff, Trump’s former chief of staff
Sure, but just know that they have an axe to grind as well, so they have a strong incentive to exaggerate. Again, what they say is troubling, but fits with Trump being a narcissist more than a fascist. He
Harris has never advocated for the communal ownership of the means of production.
Exactly, yet that’s the term the right throws around to try to discredit her.
You’re saying it’s insulting and wrong to call a far right populist leader who attempted a coup to stay in power, who has threatened to use the military to bring places that disagree with him into line, who calls his political opponents “the enemy from within” and who calls them evil and their criticism of him illegal a fascist.
I’m not saying it’s merely insulting, I’m saying it’s inaccurate. If you step away from social media for a second and actually talk to some Trump supporters (not the crazies that paint their trucks or don Q anon nonsense) and read some quality journalism that’s not just spinning the news against Trump, you might get a different perspective. I live in a very red state that’s generally opposed to Trump (dead last in the 2016 primaries, MAGA candidates largely lost), and when I ask people, they say he’s distasteful, but they want him to reduce illegal immigration, reduce drug trafficking (esp. Fentanyl), cut spending and taxes, and hurt China. They don’t care about “culture war” nonsense, they support Ukraine and want the war to end, and they support Israel but think they’ve gone too far in Gaza and want the war to end.
attempted a coup
The evidence I’ve seen is that the Jan 6 rioters arrived at the rally with a plan already, and left the rally early to prepare. I have seen no evidence of direct collusion between Trump and those groups. The clear evidence I’ve seen is Trump trying to abuse loopholes in the law to overturn what he thought was a stolen election (i.e. narcissism), but not doing anything outright illegal. That’s sill not great, but I don’t think it’s an indicator of fascism.
threatened to use the military to bring places that disagree with him into line
Yeah, that’s just saber rattling rhetoric. He has given zero info on what that means, nor has he (AFAIK) mentioned it after winning the election. I think it was just an outlandish statement to rally his base.
calls his political opponents “the enemy from within”
And the same happens in the other direction.
He can say things are illegal, but that doesn’t make them illegal. He doesn’t create the law, he merely enforces the law. We’ll see how far the other branches of government let him take things, but I highly doubt he’s actually interested in subverting democracy, he just wants to stay in the news cycle.
I’m not gonna sit here and jerk the guy off
Neither will I. I think he’s dangerous and do not support him whatsoever, but I’m also not going to make up lies to smear him. I’ll applaud any good moves he makes to hopefully encourage more like it (he’s a narcissist after all), and deride any bad moves he makes.
