Snyder - ‘The Logic of Destruction’

[Rideback]

Analysis of Trump fiscal policies
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/trump-tax-pr ... 1-trillion

[mister_coffee]

If you look around the AI world a bit, there is a lot of work being done on smaller models with a much smaller energy footprint. And there is plenty of room at the bottom to expand into.

My own bet is that in a couple of years we'll have commonly available AI tools that are approximately as capable as the very best models today that will easily run in a smartphone. In the meantime the state-of-the-art won't advance very far at all.

There has been this almost-religious belief amongst many in the AI world that if you throw enough compute power and data at the problem you'll spontaneously produce a general AI or a super-intelligent AI. We know enough now to know that cannot be the case and that throwing more compute power at this problem isn't going to improve the results.

That's actually nice because we can start actually working on realistic and practical applications for what we do know how to do. There are actually folks out there taking the baby steps on useful applications for this tech. Replacing tech support people with poorly configured AI chatbots is not a useful application. Nor is using AI to generate code.

[PAL]

Think of the pull on the grid for these centers. And the cost. Spending money on these centers instead of helping with those that might want to purchase a home, with the help of a down payment.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/opena ... bd78&ei=16

[mister_coffee]

We've been speculating what the consulting contract to fix the Treasury Payments System and ACH will be when they inevitably break it. Also what currency it will be paid in because I'm not so sure they would take US dollars at that point.

[just-jim]

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Meet your new un-elected, un-Constitutional leaders…..

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-doge- ... he-shadows
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[Rideback]

"A 25 year old has total control..."
https://newrepublic.com/post/191117/elo ... FyefTJwkjK

[Rideback]

Trump and Netanyahu presser,

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‪Chris Hayes‬ ‪@chrislhayes.bsky.social‬

Trump just said he’s calling for the full forcible transfer of all 1.8 million Gazans out of the strip and says “The US will take over the Gaza Strip”

Middle Eastern countries have already said they will not take the Palestinians from Gaza. But Trump maintains there's some prime real estate there just waiting for his hand to develop. Now he's pledging the US with our taxpayer $ will step in to make his dream come true.

https://bsky.app/profile/noahshachtman. ... fc3gfdjk23
"The US will own Gaza..."

[just-jim]

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[PAL]

Canada too.
This is the coup MAGA has always wanted. Elon Musk in charge.

[mister_coffee]

Apparently the tariffs with Mexico are "on hold" for a month.

UPDATE: Tariffs to Canada also "on hold".

[Rideback]

Financial Times:
'FT: Donald Trump has fired the first shots in what threatens to become a devastating trade war. The US president’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China will deliver an immediate shock to the North American and world economies. They imperil decades of progress towards economic integration that has boosted US and global prosperity. One absurdity is that these measures are entirely unprovoked in trade terms; they are being used as a coercive tool to further Trump’s domestic political agenda and extract concessions from American neighbours that may be beyond their power to give. Another is that the US will be one of the main victims — in the resulting harm to its own economy and its standing in the world.
The returning US president has touted various illusory explanations for his love of tariffs. They will, he says, restore America’s industrial base, replace income tax and pay off US debt. The ostensible motive for his tariffs this weekend is instead to curb the “major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs” including fentanyl. Trump’s threat of sanctions had, it is true, already prompted steps from Canada and Mexico to reinforce their borders. But these would no doubt have continued had the president chosen to stay his hand. And there are practical limits to what else they can do — especially Canada, source of only a fraction of the irregular immigration or fentanyl that crosses from Mexico.
The legal pretext for Trump’s move is questionable, too. He made use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, an executive authority that enables him to respond to extraordinary economic or security threats. Yet that law has not previously been used to enact tariffs. The courts and Congress ought to block them.
If they do not, the damage will be severe. Trump’s tariffs alone will quickly feed into higher US inflation and reduce growth. The justifiable retaliation will amplify the effects. Trump appears to be gambling that since his measures will hit Canada and Mexico even harder, given their greater dependence on trade than America, they will quickly climb down. But the US president is not just challenging the trade basis of their prosperity but provoking their pride as sovereign nations.
The unravelling of North American free trade and supply chains built up over decades will deal a severe blow to both US consumers and corporate America — especially oil refining, automobile production, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. Trump’s actions on China are less dramatic but look like a modest downpayment on more extensive plans to come. Together, the three countries account for almost half of US imports. The estimated $100bn in additional tariff duties will surely be dwarfed by the economic cost.
The harm to American diplomatic power is no less profound. From the 1980s, both Canada and Mexico set aside decades of scepticism to make a strategic bet on free trade with the US, culminating in the Nafta deal of 1994. The economic benefits, especially to Canada, have been plentiful. Both were coerced by Trump in his first term to renegotiate that deal. That the president is now riding roughshod even over the revised deal, the USMCA, sends a message America’s word cannot be trusted. Canada and Mexico should not leave Trump’s moves unanswered, but their response needs to be creative, co-ordinated and selective. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s former finance minister running to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, has proposed tariffs that would affect key constituencies supporting the US president, such as Elon Musk’s Tesla vehicles.'

[mister_coffee]

300 Canadian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBc-Cfodv10

[mister_coffee]

Will money be worth anything?

I'd argue that if a random foreigner has taken over the payments systems and proposes replacing them with some undefined software product money has stopped working. I'd further argue that if money has stopped working federal authority is for all practical purposes over.

Without money working it doesn't make sense or is even possible to pay your federal taxes. Nor does it make sense to expect that federal workers of any form (including the military) to do their jobs for very long.

So unless there is some extremely dramatic responses and changes in the next 48 hours I'd expect that to be where we'll end up. Although I don't know what those dramatic responses could even be. We've crashed the airplane and the aircrew is pulling random parts off the plane at the same time. It isn't immediately obvious how you fix it.

A good first step would be arresting Musk. But I don't know if that is even possible at this point.

[Rideback]

An explainer of what the ACH does
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/ach.asp

In a nutshell, if one were to 'follow the money' the ACH is the ultimate hub. And now it's under control of the world's richest man, who was not born in the US, got his citizenship under false pretenses, is operating the DOGE which has never been scrutinized nor approved as a govt agency, has no authority to make any of the moves that it has made since Trump came to office and is also overstepping the two Federal judges who have put a stay on the EO Trump issued regarding Fed'l employees.

The stats on unemployment alone the first quarter will be thru the roof.

[dorankj]

We’re not going to have enough tin-foil!

[PAL]

There has to be a will to fight back. Are we to just roll over? Synder is right. The Dems need to get on it. Well, they knew this was a possibility but no one believed it. Or the house of cards will come down and Trump supporters too. As Trump indicated today that there will be some pain.
You really think there would be a complete break up and successor states? Do we keep our money in the banks? Will money be worth anything?
Food. Very important. Buy commodities.

[mister_coffee]

One thing people are missing out on right now too.

Apparently Elon Musk or goons associated with Elon Musk siezed the federal payments system. Now one part of that system is obviously any and all payments made by the federal government. Giving Elon veto power over those payments is bad enough.

But it is likely much worse. Unimaginably so. The ACH (Automated Clearing House) systems are also ran largely and quietly through the federal government. That system handles all payments between banks, so basically every damned financial transaction in the country. So if Elon has grabbed that as well he can decide if your money is any good.

Why even bother putting us on a watch list when he can instantly bankrupt us?

Mr. Musk is trying to position X/Twitter as a replacement for the existing payment system. I don't think that is a coincidence.

[mister_coffee]

I suspect we will all be on someone's watch list at some time or another, though.

Bluntly, we are in a Jim Jones moment here. This is national suicide.

A few people I spoke to today thought the financial markets were likely to freak out on Monday, and that might cause the Administration to rethink this insanity. I am doubtful. Every other institution has failed to stop this and I find it unlikely that the stock and bond markets are going to succeed where so many others have failed.

Even if they did temporarily stop the march to destruction, there are at least 1448 more days of this and I'm doubtful we can manage to be so lucky and avoid catastrophe for that long. Especially against such determined maniacs.

If anyone would have said this was going to happen back in November they would have been accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Right now I suspect the very best case scenario will be a complete collapse of federal authority and the breakup of the United States into successor states. Hopefully that breakup would be at least partially peaceful.

[PAL]

Well, wow and great article. Canadians are booing the singing of our National Anthem at a sports event in Canada. Other countries may boo us too.
Oh well, we can just go in and take over with our military, right?
Elon is giving info to Michael Flynn. Isn't that nice.
What Snyder says is right. Patty Murray is on it. Write to her and any others. Rise and Resist.
I'm probably gonna be put on a watch list now.

[just-jim]

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Yale Historian Timothy Snyder’s column today…….lengthy, but very good.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-destruction?

What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. America exists because its people elect those who make and execute laws. The assumption of a democracy is that individuals have dignity and rights that they realize and protect by acting together.

The people who now dominate the executive branch of the government deny all of this, and are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation. For them, only a few people, the very wealthy with a certain worldview, have rights, and the first among these is to dominate.

For them, there is no such thing as an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions.

The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide them with services are conspirators within a “deep state.” We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes.

All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. The federal government has immense capacity and control over trillions of dollars. That power was a cocreation of the American people. It belongs to them. The oligarchs around Trump are working now to take it for themselves.

Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow.

Think of the federal government as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them.

The gap between the oligarchs’ wealth and everyone else’s will grow. Knowing what they themselves will do and when, they will have bet against the stock market in advance of Trump’s deliberately destructive tariffs, and will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they already own. But that is just tomorrow and the day after.

In general, the economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan’s ark. The self-chosen few will ride out the forty days and forty night. When the waters subside, they will be alone to dominate.

Trump’s tariffs (which are also likely illegal) are there to make us poor. Trump’s attacks on America’s closest friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous. As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that anything else is possible.

Deportations are a spectacle to turn Americans against one another, to make us afraid, and to get us to see pain and camps as normal. They also create busy-work for law enforcement, locating the “criminals” in workplaces across the country, as the crime of the century takes place at the very center of power.

The best people in American federal law enforcement, national security, and national intelligence are being fired. The reasons given for this are DEI and trumpwashing the past. Of course, if you fire everyone who was concerned in some way with the investigations of January 6th or of Russia, that will be much or even most of the FBI. Those are bad reasons, but the reality is worse: the aim is lawlessness: to get the police and the patriots out of the way.

In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge. It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else.

After we are all poor and isolated, the logic goes, we will be consoled by the thought that there is at least a human being to whom we can appeal. We will settle for a kind of anthropological minimum, wishful contact with the strong man. As in Russia, pathetic video selfies sent to the Leader will be the extent of politics.

For the men currently pillaging the federal government, the data from those video selfies is more important than the people who will make them. The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but anti-human. The people are just data, means to the end of accumulating wealth.

They see themselves as the servants of the freedom of the chosen few, but in fact they are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted.

The attempt by the oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal, unconstitutional, and more than a little mad. The people in charge, though, are very intelligent politically, and have a plan. I describe it not because it must succeed but because it must be described so that we can make it fail. This will require clarity, and speed, and coalitions. I try to capture the mood in my little book On Tyranny. Here are a few ideas.

If you voted Republican, and you care about your country, please act rather than rationalize. Unless you cast your ballot so that South African oligarchs could steal your data, your money, your country, and your future, make it known to your elected officials that you wanted something else. And get ready to protest with people with whom you otherwise disagree.

Almost everything that has happened during this attempted takeover is illegal. Lawsuits can be filed and courts can order that executive orders be halted. This is crucial work.

Much of what is happening, though, involves private individuals whose names are not even known, and who have no legal authority, wandering through government offices and issuing orders beyond even the questionable authority of executive orders. Their idea is that they will be immunized by their boldness. This must be proven wrong.

Some of this will reach the Supreme Court quickly. I am under no illusion that the majority of justices care about the rule of law. They know, however, that our belief in it makes their office something other than the undignified handmaiden of oligarchy. If they legalize the coup, they are irrelevant forever.

Individual Democrats in the Senate and House have legal and institutional tools to slow down the attempted oligarchical takeover. There should also be legislation. It might take a moment, but even Republican leaders might recognize that the Senate and House will no longer matter in a post-American oligarchy without citizens.

Trump should obviously be impeached. Either he has lost control, or he is using his power to do obviously illegal things. If Republicans have a sense of where this is going, there could be the votes for an impeachment and prosecution.

Those considering impeachment should also include Vance. He is closer to the relevant oligarchs than Trump, and more likely to be aware of the logic of destruction than he. The oligarchs have likely factored in, or perhaps even want, the impeachment and prosecution of Trump. Unlike Vance, Trump has charisma and followers, and could theoretically resist them. He won’t; but he poses a hypothetical risk to the oligarchs that Vance does not.

Democrats who serve in state office as governors have a chance to profile themselves, or more importantly to profile an America that still works. Attorneys general in states have a chance to enforce state laws, which will no doubt have been broken.

The Democratic Party has a talented new chair. Democrats will need instruments of active opposition, such as a People’s Cabinet, in which prominent Democrats take responsibility for following government departments. It would be really helpful to have someone who can report to the press and the people what is happening inside Justice, Defense, Transportation, and the Treasury, and all the others, starting this week.

Federal workers should stay in office, if they can, for as long as they can. This is not political, but existential, for them and for all of us. They will have a better chance of getting jobs afterwards if they are fired. And the logic of their firing is to make the whole government fail. The more this can be slowed down, the longer the rest of us have to get traction.

And companies? As every CEO knows, the workings of markets depend upon the government creating a fair playing field. The ongoing takeover will make life impossible for all but a few companies. Can American companies responsibly pay taxes to a US Treasury controlled by their private competitors? Tesla paid no federal tax at all in 2024. Should other companies pay taxes that, for all they know, will just enrich Tesla’s owner?

Commentators should please stop using words such as “digital” and “progress” and “efficiency” and “vision” when describing this coup attempt. The plotting oligarchs have legacy money from an earlier era of software, which they are now seeking to leverage, using destructive political techniques, to destroy human institutions. That’s it. They are offering no future beyond acting out their midlife crises on the rest of us. It is demeaning to pretend that they represent something besides a logic of destruction.

As for the rest of us: Make sure you are talking to people and doing something. The logic of “move fast and break things,” like the logic of all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize and create the impression of inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them.

What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. Sometimes self-government just means elections. And sometimes it means recognizing the deeper dignity and meaning of what it means to be a people. That means speaking up, standing out, and protesting. We can only be free together.
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