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Trump Dictatorship and All Things Politics

LogGrad98 said:

'Union buster' bill that bans teachers, police from negotiating wages passes Utah House

kutv.com kutv.com
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I’d love to know how this is a solution to anything…

Other than to **** over public employees. Which is weird because the supermajority R legislature I’ve been told many many many times on this website is the working class party now. So why are they ****ing over fire fighters, police officers, and teachers?

I wish the very principled conservatives on this website who definitely aren’t MAGA could shed some light on this issue.
 
The early Medieval period in Europe is often referred to as the Dark Ages, the knowledge of the ancient classical world forgotten, learning pretty much confined to isolated monastic groups.

In some respects, our current era seems like another type of Dark Age.

Conspiracism becoming almost a default thinking mode among Right leaning Americans. Conspiracism as the triumph of irrational forces beating back human rationality. When the answers are not clear, start to think in terms of evil people(esp, liberals and anyone left of center) and secret agendas. Whatever you do, don’t recognize your own descent into nut job theorizing. When facts are at a minimum, your imagination is a worthwhile substitute. Hint: NO, it isn’t!!

But active imaginations in service to lies and irrational beliefs is in ascendency among Right leaning Americans.

So, from the perspective of what is accepted as knowledge, well, one can certainly argue we are in a 21st century Dark Age.

A Big Lie that likely forever damaged our free and fair elections, by sowing extreme doubt where, truly, we can least afford doubt to take over, and color all our conclusions regarding election results.

A concerted effort, The American based Heartland Institute comes to mind, to promote denial of climate change. To eliminate mitigation efforts in response to climate change.

Promote bogus science and claims, most prominent in the anti-vax movement, and poised to make the leading anti-vax proponent in America, RFK Jr, in charge of HHS in our nation.

The entire state of NJ enveloped in panic because “look! Drones! Drones everywhere! Are they space aliens?”(Yes, that is one theory)

Irrationality very much on the rise. Ignorance, anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-any authority in any discipline whatsoever.

I believe we can say, that those Americans believing that Trump is ushering in a “golden age of America”, are the very same people and groups(like the Heartland Institute) who are in fact ushering in a new type of Dark Ages.

Where Post Truth reigns. Where lies are equal in value to facts. Where Truth is whatever you say it is. There is so much ignorance and nonsense ascendent in our country, that we really are living in a “Dark Age of America”.

That’s not good. And creating two different political realities, through the willful creation of an alternative, not based in fact, reality, where Trump won in 2020, is elevating a fantasy as our new “history”.

Sorry, Trumpers, but eventually the Truth will win out, even if only after every single one of us are in our graves by then. I want to believe the moral arc of the human universe moves in the correct direction, and that fake histories do not triumph. And I don’t think promoting what amounts to a new Dark Ages is very bright…..
 
Dramatically increasing presidential power is one of the chief goals of Project 2025. And, since at heart, Trump is a wannabe mob boss, a wannabe dictator (he may have said “only on day one”, but what he really meant was “I will begin building my dictatorship on day one”) it really looks like every agency will be required to reflect Trump’s interpretation of….are you ready, lol….REALITY.

rollcall.com

Trump White House orders freeze on federal grants, loans - Roll Call

President Donald Trump's budget office on Monday ordered all federal agencies to temporarily block disbursement of grants and loans.
rollcall.com rollcall.com

The move is as broad as Democrats feared Trump’s orders to “impound” federal funds would be, former Biden budget official Bobby Kogan said.

“It seems to be far reaching and affect critical programs that Americans rely on, such as nutrition assistance for pregnant moms and newborns, money to keep our drinking water safe, and funding to ensure poor school districts can hire enough teachers,” said Kogan, who’s now with the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Kogan said the administration is likely to face lawsuits as a result, arguing the OMB pause violates both the the 1974 law restricting presidential impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress as well as various individual appropriations and authorization statutes.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement late Monday that Trump was “blatantly” disobeying the law by holding up funds to programs across the country.

“Donald Trump’s Administration is jeopardizing billions upon billions of community grants and financial support that help millions of people across the country,” Schumer said. “It will mean missed payrolls and rent payments and everything in between: chaos for everything from universities to nonprofit charities.”

Top Democratic appropriators called the administration’s move “breathtaking” and “unprecedented” in a letter to Vaeth late Monday night, and said it would “have devastating consequences across the country.”

“We write with extreme alarm about the Administration’s efforts to undermine Congress’s power of the purse, threaten our national security, and deny resources for states, localities, American families, and businesses,” Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., and House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., wrote.
 
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Red said:
In some respects, our current era seems like another type of Dark Age.
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Recall our current president identified Democrats as “the enemy within”, going so far to claim they were a more dangerous enemy than any geopolitical adversary. If we are living at a time when a president, publicly claiming he wishes to unite Americans, yet at the same time identifying Democrats as “the enemy within”, then this isn’t a “Golden Age” in the making, people. If the message is our fellow Americans are our biggest enemy? That way lies Darkness, people, that is not the path to enlightenment. A president who says he wants to unify, while disowning half the country as “the enemy”, sorry Trumpers, that is simply not the path to a “Golden Age”. That is 100% delusional and a clear path to darkness and divisiveness. I don’t expect any Trumper to understand this, their “golden age” being erected on a foundation of hatred of their fellow Americans…
 
The Thriller said:
I’d love to know how this is a solution to anything…

Other than to **** over public employees. Which is weird because the supermajority R legislature I’ve been told many many many times on this website is the working class party now. So why are they ****ing over fire fighters, police officers, and teachers?

I wish the very principled conservatives on this website who definitely aren’t MAGA could shed some light on this issue.
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This is enlightening in today's political climate.

bigthink.com

Bonhoeffer's "theory of stupidity": We have more to fear from stupid people than evil ones

Bonhoeffer's "theory of stupidity" posits that we have more to fear from stupidity than evil. The latter is easier to defeat than the former.
bigthink.com bigthink.com

If you haven't read his original writings on the subject, it is worth a read. You can get to all of his letters and such online now if you google. But it strikes a particularly strong chord right now. It was part of our German studies when I got my degree.

Why are they going after the teachers' union? Because big republican politics say union bad, so all unions must die!! I mean the last thing we want is the lowest paid and one of the top 3 most important professions in society overall to get paid a wage that matches their impact and importance. They need to be kept at 1950's wages, amirite?

Oh, and it's probably about time we started watering our crops with Red Bull, right? Since we don't have Brawndo yet. And it's what plants crave!

Amazing how accurate Idiocracy was and how prescient now.
 
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Red said:
Recall our current president identified Democrats as “the enemy within”, going so far to claim they were a more dangerous enemy than any geopolitical adversary. If we are living at a time when a president, publicly claiming he wishes to unite Americans, yet at the same time identifying Democrats as “the enemy within”, then this isn’t a “Golden Age” in the making, people. If the message is our fellow Americans are our biggest enemy? That way lies Darkness, people, that is not the path to enlightenment. A president who says he wants to unify, while disowning half the country as “the enemy”, sorry Trumpers, that is simply not the path to a “Golden Age”. That is 100% delusional and a clear path to darkness and divisiveness. I don’t expect any Trumper to understand this, their “golden age” being erected on a foundation of hatred of their fellow Americans…
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He wants to unify by eliminating those who won't get in line, you know, fascist-style. Addition by subtraction. Get in line behind the dictator or be "left behind", whatever that ends up looking like. I know, maybe they could designate a few places for them to be brought to, where they can't hurt the movement, and be kept in line behind fences or something, somewhere we can concentrate them together. Almost like a summer camp! A concentration camp, if you will. It'll be fun!
 
Red said:
Dramatically increasing presidential power is one of the chief goals of Project 2025. And, since at heart, Trump is a wannabe mob boss, a wannabe dictator (he may have said “only on day one”, but what he really meant was “I will begin building my dictatorship on day one”) it really looks like every agency will be required to reflect Trump’s interpretation of….are you ready, lol….REALITY.

rollcall.com

Trump White House orders freeze on federal grants, loans - Roll Call

President Donald Trump's budget office on Monday ordered all federal agencies to temporarily block disbursement of grants and loans.
rollcall.com rollcall.com

The move is as broad as Democrats feared Trump’s orders to “impound” federal funds would be, former Biden budget official Bobby Kogan said.

“It seems to be far reaching and affect critical programs that Americans rely on, such as nutrition assistance for pregnant moms and newborns, money to keep our drinking water safe, and funding to ensure poor school districts can hire enough teachers,” said Kogan, who’s now with the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Kogan said the administration is likely to face lawsuits as a result, arguing the OMB pause violates both the the 1974 law restricting presidential impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress as well as various individual appropriations and authorization statutes.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement late Monday that Trump was “blatantly” disobeying the law by holding up funds to programs across the country.

“Donald Trump’s Administration is jeopardizing billions upon billions of community grants and financial support that help millions of people across the country,” Schumer said. “It will mean missed payrolls and rent payments and everything in between: chaos for everything from universities to nonprofit charities.”

Top Democratic appropriators called the administration’s move “breathtaking” and “unprecedented” in a letter to Vaeth late Monday night, and said it would “have devastating consequences across the country.”

“We write with extreme alarm about the Administration’s efforts to undermine Congress’s power of the purse, threaten our national security, and deny resources for states, localities, American families, and businesses,” Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., and House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., wrote.
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How long until it gets challenged in court, like all the others. One thing is for sure, this presidency will keep the courts tied up in litigation over their actions for the entirety of the 4-year term and beyond.
 
Red said:
The early Medieval period in Europe is often referred to as the Dark Ages, the knowledge of the ancient classical world forgotten, learning pretty much confined to isolated monastic groups.
Click to expand...
Totally false.

There’s No Such Thing as the ‘Dark Ages’​


As a medievalist, I’m asked all the time, “Why was it called the ‘Dark Ages?’” This phrase comes up a few times in history, and it means something different every time. “Dark Ages” usually refers to the 900 years of European history between the 5th and 14th centuries. Have you heard that this was a period of stalled advancements in science or culture?

That’s just a myth!

Who Started This Misunderstanding?​

The 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch is the best-known medieval source for the idea that the period in Europe from around 500–1500 was “dark.”

But that phrase was a specific gripe. Petrarch was complaining about the general quality of literature in his own specific time and place: Italy in the 1300s (which makes him sound like a snob).
A 1602 text by Caesar Baronius used saeculum obscurum (the dark age/century) to refer to the 10th and 11th centuries as lacking in surviving historical sources. But dark really just meant that he didn’t know a lot about the time.

Unfortunately, the term persisted and historians started using “dark” as a pejorative term to mean a period of superstition and stagnation in art, literature, and science. “Dark Ages” stuck, and so did the misconception that this was a period full of unenlightened people wandering around the dark..

Today, we’ve recognized the many advances of this period—including universities, mechanical clocks, and the printing press.
 
On day three of trumps presidency, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes – recently released from prison, where he was serving time for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol – was spotted eating lunch in a House office building after meeting with Republican lawmakers.

Stand back and stand by.

Sent from my OPD2203 using Tapatalk
 
America’s Golden Age? That’s laughable given the attacks on human knowledge, and the accomplishments of science. Clearly, this resembles the imposition of a new Dark Age..Whatever else we might say about Donald Trump, we can say he is an enemy of human knowledge. That’s quite a choice for Trump, and absolutely nothing good can come of it….Trump wants to usher in our darkest age, nothing “golden”about it….

Imagine: our president is an enemy of human knowledge! This is a renaissance??

www.vox.com

Researchers are terrified of Trump’s freeze on science. The rest of us should be, too.

Government support is essential to science. The Trump administration kneecapped it.
www.vox.com www.vox.com

Less than two days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Evangeline Warren, a sociology PhD student at the Ohio State University, logged into a professional development workshop alongside a hundred other young researchers. Just about everyone online was either employed by, or receiving grants from, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest single funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world.

Mid-presentation, a senior organizer interrupted, informing attendees that the NIH was no longer “allowed to do any external communication,” Warren said. Without further explanation, the video call ended.

Warren’s experience was hardly unique in the first week of Trump’s second term. Hundreds of scientists flocked to Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter alternative, to report sudden, vague cancellations of long-scheduled meetings about government-funded science. These delays piled on top of a broader freeze on federal health agency communications issued by the Trump administration last week. In the past few days he has called for the US to stop working with the World Health Organization, suspended public reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and banned travel for Health and Human Services staff — all without explanation.

While briefly pausing communications during a presidential transition is normal, indefinitely disrupting the grant process like this is unheard of, according to several researchers at the NIH and NIH-funded universities. Rescheduling work meetings with a lot of moving parts would be a logistical nuisance for anyone. But when the memo comes from an administration that has repeatedly threatened to take down federal science agencies, a canceled meeting can feel more like the first step in a broader attack on public health and higher education.
 
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Speaking of the golden age, there was a another mass shooting, the guardian sites it as the 20th this year, not bad given that its the 29th of January.
 
Hard to keep track with all the decisions of our “unifying” president….

www.thebulwark.com

Move Fast and Break the Government

A blizzard of regulations; a power grab over federal funds; and the hollowing out of our nation’s public workforce. It’s just week two.
www.thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com

The breakneck speed of Trump’s orders could quickly turn into an acute constitutional crisis, with the executive branch essentially usurping the power of the purse from the legislative body. Certainly, it has already had profound political and psychological effects. Federal employees described utterly dispirited workplaces, where paranoia is creeping in. There is a belief that the new administration is set on turning the government into a tool for Trump and searching for the pretext to fire anyone unwilling to go along. It did not go unnoticed that the statement from the DOJ official announcing the firings on Monday noted that “Acting Attorney General James McHenry made this decision because he did not believe these officials could be trusted to faithfully implement the President’s agenda” (emphasis ours).

But it’s also not hard to see how the tremors being sent throughout the government could hurt Trump in the long run. It starts with small examples of over-compliance with the vague orders that the administration has to walk back, like the Air Force removing videos honoring the Tuskegee Airmen from training materials because they believe those videos violated the administration’s anti-DEI push. They move to larger problems, like prison guards who are responsible for securing ISIS militants no longer turning up for work because their salaries have been cut. And then they become disasters on your watch, like infants dyingbecause water was cut off in the foreign aid freeze.

That’s the thing about moving fast and breaking things. Sometimes you end up breaking things you wish you hadn’t and can’t repair.
 
Red said:
America’s Golden Age? That’s laughable given the attacks on human knowledge, and the accomplishments of science. Clearly, this resembles the imposition of a new Dark Age..Whatever else we might say about Donald Trump, we can say he is an enemy of human knowledge. That’s quite a choice for Trump, and absolutely nothing good can come of it….Trump wants to usher in our darkest age, nothing “golden”about it….

Imagine: our president is an enemy of human knowledge! This is a renaissance??

www.vox.com

Researchers are terrified of Trump’s freeze on science. The rest of us should be, too.

Government support is essential to science. The Trump administration kneecapped it.
www.vox.com www.vox.com

Less than two days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Evangeline Warren, a sociology PhD student at the Ohio State University, logged into a professional development workshop alongside a hundred other young researchers. Just about everyone online was either employed by, or receiving grants from, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest single funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world.

Mid-presentation, a senior organizer interrupted, informing attendees that the NIH was no longer “allowed to do any external communication,” Warren said. Without further explanation, the video call ended.

Warren’s experience was hardly unique in the first week of Trump’s second term. Hundreds of scientists flocked to Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter alternative, to report sudden, vague cancellations of long-scheduled meetings about government-funded science. These delays piled on top of a broader freeze on federal health agency communications issued by the Trump administration last week. In the past few days he has called for the US to stop working with the World Health Organization, suspended public reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and banned travel for Health and Human Services staff — all without explanation.

While briefly pausing communications during a presidential transition is normal, indefinitely disrupting the grant process like this is unheard of, according to several researchers at the NIH and NIH-funded universities. Rescheduling work meetings with a lot of moving parts would be a logistical nuisance for anyone. But when the memo comes from an administration that has repeatedly threatened to take down federal science agencies, a canceled meeting can feel more like the first step in a broader attack on public health and higher education.
Click to expand...
Trump said he loves the uneducated.
 
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