The thing that really gets me is that civil society did actually do a god job of deterring the worst acts of the Trump administration in his first term and now all these fancy fucks are walking around like they're helpless.
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Well, who takes Mike Pompeo's or Bill Barr's calls any more?
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They’re not helpless, they like it.
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Feels like the business leaders and media owners were in on it this time compared to thinking they could make money opposing him last time.
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I kept saying, he spent the first term wearing everybody down and now there's just nothing left to resist with
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The most disheartening yet unsurprising thing of the current moment for me is the massive levels of elite capitulation.
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no court or congress to run to has a lot of institution shook
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I think thats unfair.
Why were the CECOT people released, for example?
There is lots of lawyering going on here that has not breathed its last breath.
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📌
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It’s the SCOTUS turn that did everyone in. Once they allowed masked feds to grab people off the street and ship them to a black site with zero due process, it was over. Trump could grab their children off the street and have them in Sudan in 48 hours and no court would stop it.
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And like legislative minorities here are basically irrelevant it's the civil society groups here who can make republicans squeal but just... haven't
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It was mostly Trump's appointees who blocked him. Plus the Supreme Court blocked some of his actions A Trump appointee is a collaborator at best, but collaborators can drag their feet and reduce the damage
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TBF the Supreme Court literally letting him do whatever he wants has had a huge effect. Not only are they allowing him to get rid of people that could slow him from the bureaucracy, they are letting him run the govt like a mafia operation. Hard to stand against the weight of DoJ and SCOTUS
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You’re leaving out that so many of Trump 1.0 political appointees had some degree of concern about traditional governance and put some sand in the gears for worst excesses. Project 2025 assured that wouldn’t happen with devoted Trump lackey the key characteristic of 2.0 appointments
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Because once Trump won the PV last year that really changed things psychologically.
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Been thinking about this too. Last time not a week went by without a group of establishment notables speaking out and trying to block bad stuff from happening. This time? Crickets.
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Many did that at significant personal risk, only to have voters but him right back in office. I think they decided fuck it, time for the voters to reap the whirlwind.
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It’s because they have come to see reactionary fascism as the inevitable end result of society, and have abandoned the idea that they can successfully combat it, and so have resigned themselves to a lifetime (from here on) as supplicants who can lay prostrate enough to avoid the swings of the blade.
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What I don’t get is what elite institutions are doing caving left and right when he’s tanked his approval rating down to the 30s. He’s become as loathed as Biden was in 6 months but elite institutions and corporate America act as if he’s a leader with a commanding hold on the public.
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He's greasing the right people this time. He's playing the Game. Sure, he'll throw them overboard the moment their usefulness ends, & the country will be destroyed in the process, but no one thinks about hangovers while the party is rocking.
