This is what flabbergasted me back in the first TRump administration - when they ordered family separation, there were already people in place ready and willing o do so. Yet Trump’s victory came as something of a surprise – they hadn’t had time to stack the deck. Yet there was already a force that had no problem with this.
This is true in all countries to some extent. As I said a month ago:
The only difference between countries is how effectively or ineffectively they keep a lid on this impulse.
I try not to say it, because it sounds so pathetic, but why are so many people just mean?
Because average human nature is to be mean. A small outlier fraction of us are not.
Just like average human nature is to be incurious and unthinking and mostly stupid. A small outlier fraction of us are not.
For a long time the curious smart folks ran the economy to their advantage. And to some deree ran politics to their advantage. Which means their greater influence disguised their lesser numbers.
When the mean and stupid people get in power, we see how a world made in their image, not your or my image, works. It works badly and violently and thuggishly. And those folks are very comfortable in that milieu while being very uncomfortable in ours.
Ahhh… I have noticed this.
And I’ve noticed this, too.
…then the incurious, unthinking, and mostly stupid people (see above) are easy prey. Especially to a cult of personality.
Earlier this year, as President Donald Trump was beginning to reshape the American government, Michael, an emergency room doctor who was born, raised, and trained in the United States, packed up his family and got out.
Michael now works in a small-town hospital in Canada. KFF Health News and NPR granted him anonymity because of fears he might face reprisal from the Trump administration if he returns to the U.S. He said he feels some guilt that he did not stay to resist the Trump agenda but is assured in his decision to leave. Too much of America has simply grown too comfortable with violence and cruelty, he said.
“Part of being a physician is being kind to people who are in their weakest place,” Michael said. “And I feel like our country is devolving to really step on people who are weak and vulnerable.”
Michael is among a new wave of doctors who are leaving the United States to escape the Trump administration. In the months since Trump was reelected and returned to the White House, American doctors have shown skyrocketing interest in becoming licensed in Canada, where dozens more than normal have already been cleared to practice, according to Canadian licensing officials and recruiting businesses.
I know this isn’t the thread for the discussion, but I strongly disagree.
No tyranny has ever failed because it couldn’t find enough people willing to be brutal and tyrannical. There’s enough of them that the only limit is how many the government can afford to employ, not how many there are in the population.
This post concerns the new hire loyalty pledges for GS-5 (starts at $40,322 per year) and above. Candidates must answer the following questions, in writing, without using detectable AI: All the required essays have issues, but focus on number 3:
This is part of the authoritarian playbook. First you get rid of as many of the existing employees as you can. This was the DOGE remit. Then, maybe next year, you hire new regime loyalists to replace them.
Many of these jobs involve manual labor, such as firefighting. I question whether ideal candidates can write plausible answers to these questions, even if they want to. Maybe volunteers, at places like public libraries, will essentially write the answers for them. This could reduce the damage, a little, by having a smattering of normie applicants survive the process.
As for jobs that do require an ability to write well, the question becomes whether you can acceptably write answers without selling your soul. By parsing Trump’s executive orders, I suspect I could usually come up with something, job relevant, I agreed with, despite it sounding superficially Trumpy. But it would be tricky and take me a long time. Most non-Trumper applicants will be deterred.
Hell, I question whether Trump, or many of his advisors and supporters in Congress, could.
Even a trump loyalist would be hard -pressed to compose coherent answers to those questions. “Trump’s executive orders”? Are you fucking kidding me? What orders on what day of the week?
Better just to fall back on general suck-up stuff like, “All of Dear Leader’s orders and ideas are brilliant! I couldn’t possibly single out one. I love and worship all of them. Just as I love and worship him and would consider it a privilege to be allowed to lie down in a puddle so he may step on me to avoid getting his shoes wet. If they do get wet, I would happily lick the mud off of them.”
Now that will get you hired. Hell, probably get you a cabinet post or a federal judgeship.
Maybe I’m a little thin-skinned about this, but I have a bit of an issue with you categorizing people like firefighters as to whether they “can write plausible answers to these questions, even if they want to.”
Because, to me, that sounds dismissive, bordering on condescending. My father was a firefighter. My grandfather was a firefighter. My fiancée is currently preparing to start the fire academy, and she’ll be a firefighter in the same city as my dad and grandfather.
While I wouldn’t categorize my dad or grandfather as eloquent (the fiancée is another matter), they were both well-versed enough in bullshit to pass what I perceive the Trump loyalty test to be.
Again, maybe I’m too close to the topic, but it sounded a little insulting to my perspective.
Fair enough. It is not much of an excuse, but when I wrote the post, I was unsure whether firefighter was a good example.
I am ignorant concerning firefighting. It might be that the volume of difficult to read technical knowledge, that has to be integrated, is such that they are more likely to be able to write the essays than the average applicant.
I’m tempted to suggest an alternative occupation as an example, but I might be wrong about that also.
Nothing worth fighting over, guys. English composition and anilingus (much less actual job skills) only get a person so far. Cold hard cash under the table will be the ultimate job guarantee
An encouraging opinion piece:
Encouraging indeed. Thanks for that.
To whatever extent this perspective is accurate — and I’m skeptical, because the last few years have demonstrated that reality skews more toward pessimism than optimism, but I don’t want to harsh anyone’s hopefulness — it is happening due to relentless pressure and resistance. If progress is being achieved, this does not grant permission to relax; indeed, it is, rather, a signal to push even harder on obstruction and vehement protest.
Jay Kuo wrote a similar message from different angles this past Friday:
I’d like to think these were true, but I fear they are wishful thinking. I question, when in private with a ballot, how many folk who voted for Trump will choose the Dem candidate?
This is the wrong perspective and the wrong question, as I and many others have repeatedly pointed out. The political atmosphere in the US has become so polarized and venomously partisan that the mythical swing voter has effectively ceased to exist. Elections are won not by peeling supporters from the other side to yours; they’re won by convincing the other side’s supporters to stay home (or throw away their vote on some alternative protest candidate). Trump won 2024 in large part because Dems didn’t show up for Harris the way they did for Biden, and the hopes for Dems going forward lie not in getting lukewarm Trumpers to mark the D box but in convincing them Trump and the Rs aren’t delivering what they said they would, thereby depressing R voter turnout (while simultaneously offering something positive to keep up D voter participation). It’s a waste of time to imagine R voters going D at anything beyond fractional levels.