“Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.
I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, just like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?
That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on…”
"Gradually and then suddenly" is how it always happens, whether that's the collapse of democracy or the collapse of dictatorship. You can't take it for granted just because it hasn't happened yet. And that 'suddenly' almost did happen on January 6th 2021 if not for the moral courage of Mike Pence. That same moral courage will be absent this time around given the lesson they learned on that day. Appoint loyalists.
I don't think he cares? Seems like he's happy to fill the role publicly. It appears to be on purpose like a wrestler turning heel or a gamer drawing aggro on a mob. Society of the spectacle indeed.
Did you know that someone can tell lots of lies all the time. Telling a lot of lies all the time would look identical to transparency. Hell even just talking a lot about things that are true but are not at all important or your priorities would look like transparency.
Just because someone won't shut up doesn't mean they are telling you their true intentions.
Twitter requires an account to use, and when you sign up, you agree not to sue Twitter. In the United States, arbitration clauses are generally airtight. Even if you what Musk says is truthful and the whole truth -- and it's not -- those conditions alone are bad enough. That's not transparency.
Transparent ? He's just playing the same game that Trump - all smokes and mirrors.
He mastered the art of news manipulation and took it to the 21 century. And people are falling for it (I did too at some point). Tesla is one of the most secretive companies out there, and for a good reason. Musk is regularly saying outrageous lies, without any consequence. The FSD game has been going for 10 years. 10 YEARS.
Lookup Montana Sceptic case - the guy was exposing that Tesla was close to bankrupcy at the time (which Musk later confirmed). Musk, in all his transparency went after him, including threatening his boss.
The reality is that none of his companies are really profitable (yes I know, Tesla made some money in the past 3 years. They are valued as if they made 100x what they did), and all would be dead without government subsides.
He's regularly tweeting that he's cutting off funds that were congressionally approved by simply pressing "delete" on checks that are to be sent, which would be an extreme violation of federal law. It also contradicts everything else we're told where it's said that he has only "read only" access to the computer systems.
so if by "transparent" you mean "tweets all day about crimes he is committing, but we actually dont know if hes just bullshitting", then OK, overall, not that helpful!
Elon Musk has lied constantly about many things over the last 10 years and he is absolutely not trustworthy to unilaterally decide what is or isn't "government waste"
I don't think that Elon Musk can be singled out as the source of these changes, he's didn't just magically appear lur of nowhere and start doing what he's doing.
You can blame the MAGA for everything that is happening, but they literally said this is what they were gonna do. Over half of the US, implicitly said, "Given all of that, and Kamala, it really doesn't matter who is the president".
Reducing the number of polling places in districts that tend to not vote Republican causing very long lines for voting. When it takes hours standing in line, often outdoors in bad weather, it discourages voting. Add to that laws in many states that criminalize providing food or water to people in such lines and it is even more discouraging.
Prosecuting people for innocent mistakes while voting. E.g., Crystal Mason [1]. Or Hervis Rogers [2].
In the Rogers case he was convicted of burglary in 1995 and was in prison until being paroled in 2004. His parole ended in June 2020. He didn't know that he was ineligible to vote, and voted in the Democratic primary in March 2020. The Texas legislature did pass a bill in 2007 that required the Department of Criminal Justice to notify people who had been in custody of their voting rights situation, but Governor Perry vetoed it.
Texas attorney general Paxton had him arrested and prosecuted. Bail was set at $100000. Eventually the case was thrown out because the attorney general does not have the authority to unilaterally prosecute voter cases. He has to get approval from local country prosecutors.
In nearly all these cases the prosecutors are very disproportionately prosecuting minorities and women.
Same with processes to restore voting rights for felons. See Rick Scott's handling of petitions to restore voting rights in Florida [3].
> And please don't say voter ID, nobody is disenfranchised by voter ID.
There are in fact a lot of US adults without an ID that works for their state's voter ID laws and would have a hard time getting such an ID because of cost (monetary and/or time). Here's a relatively recent report on the number who lack ID [4].
Yes, I know that most state voter ID laws require there to be no cost or fee to obtain the ID from the state but there are often significant costs to obtain the documents required to apply for the ID. Furthermore the offices that can process the application are often far away from where the people without ID live, and only accept applications during limited weekday hours. That can mean having to take unpaid time off from work and finding a way to get to that office. In reality that all can add up to over a $100.
If it was actually about election security and not intended to disenfranchise legal voters the voter ID laws would include provisions to make it easy to obtain ID without those burdens described above.
Here's a link to a comment that contains a dozen links with a lot more detail [5].
EDIT: I missed a disenfranchisement tactic. Election officials should go through the voter rolls occasionally and purge people who they have good reason to doubt are still eligible. But that can be turned into a disenfranchisement tactic by doing that just before an election possibly without trying to notify the purged voters that they have been purged so that the purged voters who are still eligible don't find out until it is too late to get back on the rolls in time to vote.
This is the part I'm curious about. Trump may be many things, but lacking transparency around his motives and actions is not one of them. As you say, he is doing basically exactly what he said he would.
So what I'm curious about is whether anyone who voted for Trump, and especially not the hard core MAGA folks but more the "The Dems suck, prices are too high" folks that shifted toward Trump in 2024 vs previous elections, are surprised/angered/scared by his actions. If so, what was their thought process?
I'm especially curious how they feel about Musk's role in all this. I just can't wrap my head around people that were "drain the swamp" nativists are cool with an unelected foreign-born billionaire having free reign, essentially unaccountably, to do whatever he wants to any federal department. If somebody told me in 2010 that this would happen in 2025 I would tell tell them that they are nuts. If the Dems had done anything 1/10th as egregious, Republicans would be apoplectic, and rightfully so.
> I just can't wrap my head around people that were "drain the swamp" nativists are cool with an unelected foreign-born billionaire having free reign, essentially unaccountably, to do whatever he wants to any federal department.
Go on Twitter or any other site that doesn't ban a certain flavor of discourse. Observe how much glee is being expressed towards negative emotions of others (such as "libs" or marginalized people). That's the point.
Again, I don't think that's really the whole story. For the 35-40% of the electorate that is hard core MAGA, sure, and for the smaller percentage of "terminally online" Twitter people, moreso. But for the folks who really were just unsatisfied with the direction of the country, didn't like the Dems, wanted to send a protest vote over Gaza, etc. - what are those people thinking/feeling?
I'm thinking the same thing that I was thinking when Biden was president, that Israel has corrupted our entire government. Nothing that's happening here even approaches what we've been enabling in Gaza, so if you weren't upset about that, it seems strange to be up in arms about what Trump is doing. I'd say it's a double standard that places way more value on the lives of Americans than those outside our borders.
> Go on Twitter or any other site that doesn't ban a certain flavor of discourse.
I just don't understand where people even get this idea. Is it the repetition and perpetuation of it that makes so many people believe it? We are and have always been allowed to have whatever opinions we wanted on any of the regular platforms, so long as it doesn't affect the rights of others (so there's a line at racism, calling for violence, and advertising for scams for example). There has never been a "flavor ban" unless one's flavor is KKK
> We are and have always been allowed to have whatever opinions we wanted on any of the regular platforms, so long as it doesn't affect the rights of others
If only it were that simple, because that's demonstrably not true. I'll give you a perfect example that was made clear by recent events.
Before last month, it was against Meta's rules to say that being LGBT was a mental illness. Similarly, you couldn't say people had a mental illness due to their religion.
But by this point I think it should be pretty clear that, in many respects, what we define as a "mental illness" is not some hard and fast rule, it's largely what we see as beyond the norm of socially acceptable boundaries at any given time.
I am gay. For someone else to have an opinion that being gay is a mental illness is a perfectly valid opinion, and it doesn't infringe on my rights (as long as they're not advocating for locking me up or whatever). I literally see no need to prohibit people from expressing the valid opinion that my being gay is a mental illness (I may think you're an asshole, but being a jerk certainly isn't banned on the Internet).
So when Meta announced their policy change to allow more "free speech", at first I was like "Ok, cool". I only became livid when I read the policy and saw that it's still against their rules to say people in "protected groups" have a mental illness except for a specific carve out for gay and trans people. F that. So I have to pretend all of the completely absurd religious nonsense about believing some sky fairy is out there and randomly does things like performing miracles (but for some reason never obvious enough to actually be miraculous) is not a sign of mental illness, but being gay is? Yeah, free speech my ass.
Point being, in your comment you have basically made an arbitrary division between what "whatever opinions" are valid, and what counts as e.g. racism, and pretend that it's a clear line.
> Trump may be many things, but lacking transparency around his motives and actions is not one of them.
That's not the perception I have. Between changing opinions 180° for no discernible reason (besides reports/speculation of money changing hands, but it's not given as the reason so that's hardly transparent) and most actions being in the short-term interest only of himself, it doesn't strike me as though everyone is aware that voting for him is going to make their future worse (exceptions may include some of the ultra rich affected by the same short term gains as himself). What I hear on this side of the pond is that he also e.g. denies knowing the people who wrote project 2025 and the plan being ridiculous, then (I checked Wikipedia to see what came of it) "nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his administration" and it was found that "nearly two-thirds of his executive actions 'mirror or partially mirror' proposals from Project 2025." (Wikipedia, last paragraph of article lede on project 2025)
I'm curious how you see it, since you might be more into USA politics than me (most people are). Doesn't he change opinion most of the time and am I just hearing of the exceptions? Are his denials regarding project 2025 seen as obvious lies and thus deemed transparent that this open-secretly is the plan known to everyone? Or do you see it this way for another reason?
Sure, Trump flip flops all the time (in his previous term he negotiated the most recent trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that replaced NAFTA, touted it as a uniquely awesome trade deal, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/pr..., and now is the one ripping it up), and he lies every other word.
But my point is that behavior is completely predictable at this point, and if anyone is shocked by what he's done so far, they haven't been paying attention. Stuff like:
1. His extreme narcissism, and the fact that loyalty is a one-way street with him.
2. His desire for revenge
3. 0 respect for any governmental norms
4. His ability to bend (or break) the law to suit his needs. Since the Supreme Court granted him complete immunity for any official acts, and since it's so obvious that Congress are completely feckless at this point, he is essentially unconstrained by law.
When you ask "Are his denials regarding project 2025 seen as obvious lies and thus deemed transparent" I would say absolutely. But of course, when people are angry about the direction of things, they tend to want to believe the stuff they want to believe ("Trump will get in there and shake things up!") and minimize the things they don't ("Trump will shut down programs and departments I depend upon").
It basically comes down to ignorance. Most people don't have the time, inclination, and/or capacity to evaluate political platforms or the competence of individual politicians. They just decide based on heuristics or "vibes". Trump seems confident and strong. Harris doesn't seem to stand for anything much besides the status quo. They don't like that there was inflation under Biden, and Trump is the opposite of Biden. They don't necessarily like Trump's attitude, but figure they don't have to like him as long as he gets the job done. That's roughly the level of thinking that's happening, in the cases where there's much thinking at all, and people aren't just voting the way their friends, family, and neighbors all vote.
Basically this is a fundamental flaw of democracy, that you leave the most important decision in the hands of the median citizen, who has no particular aptitude for making it. Of course, other systems of government have their own flaws. Like Churchill said, democracy's the worst form of government, except for all the others. (Though I would argue that the particular structure of the American democratic system is especially flawed.)
There's no point in wondering this. Soros is swamp but Musk is not? There's just no rational, two neurons connecting there. It's just their side bad, my side good brainwashing.
I'm not in the Democratic party and had no role in defining their platform. What we are experiencing is 1/100th the pain the Democrats inflicted on Palestinians.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not trolling.
3 reasons come to mind -
1. There's a vast and profound difference between trimming inefficiencies ("cutting waste") and eliminating a valuable function. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
2. This entire administration and its main actors have given zero reason to assume what they are doing is in good faith. In fact, quite the opposite they have incited worry that their motivations are not honest.
3. They are doing this with a shocking lack of oversight, on their own terms.
1. The baby in this analogy is not defined objectively. Both sides disagree about which is the baby and which is the bathwater. I can see both sides here. For example, I think USAID is doing a lot of good work all over the world, but I also don't think a country with such a huge deficit should be spending money like that. Put on your own oxygen mask before you help those around you.
2. What type of actions/behaviors would lead you to believe this is being done in good faith? That seems somewhat hard to demonstrate when the other side almost universally assumes you never do anything in good faith.
3. This is the fault of our government structure since always and specifically our Congress over the last many decades, which has ceded more and more of the actual running of government to unelected civil servants who technically fall under the umbrella of the Executive branch. If we wanted to prevent things like this from being done, we should've had an actual civil service ala the UK, which although it falls under their Executive branch, it is not unilaterally controlled by it (e.g. the Civil Service Commission prevents the PM from just doing whatever he wants).
As a secondary note, oversight in this case seems somewhat hard to achieve, given the usual problem of "who watches the watchers?" If you think some part of the government is performing poorly and that this is systemic, who do you trust to provide oversight that might not themselves have ulterior motives to preserve the status quo?
Everyone deserves a presumption of good faith by default. But Trump has a long history of dishonesty and lawbreaking, culminating in an attempted self-coup in 2020. At some point, he doesn't deserve a presumption of good faith anymore. And he passed that point a long, long time ago.
This is perhaps the single biggest disconnect I see between Democrats and Republicans right now. To Democrats, Trump is "the man who attempted a self-coup", and everything he does is viewed in that light. Whereas Republicans seem to think that it just wasn't a big deal that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
How exactly did Trump attempt a self-coup? What words or actions (on his part) would you say qualify for that description?
There were all sorts of bad intentions on the part of the rioters/coupers/whatever on January 6th, but AFAIK there is very little evidence to indicate these people were directed by Trump in any meaningful way.
The fundamental definition of a democracy is that the candidate who wins the election, gets to be in power. Trump lost the 2020 election, yet tried to stay in power. If Trump had succeeded at staying in power despite losing the election, then America would no longer have met the definition of a democracy. Therefore, Trump tried to overturn American democracy.
Do you recognize that Trump tried to overturn American democracy? If not: which part of the above paragraph do you disagree with?
In your comment, you seem to be referring to the fact that Trump didn't specifically call for violence on Jan 6. Depending on how exactly you define "coup", you could argue that Trump didn't personally attempt a coup, but rather Trump's supporters attempted a coup on his behalf while he cheered them on (and subsequently pardoned them). I think this is an irrelevant technicality; if Trump's supporters' attempted coup had succeeded, then American democracy would be just as dead as if Trump personally committed the coup.
Returning to the original topic: If you consider Trump's entire conduct around the 2020 election (as well as his extensive history of other dishonesty and lawbreaking) do you genuinely believe that the Democrats still owe Trump a presumption of good faith?
Because that is just a lie to give cover for their real goals. Which is nothing less than a coup. Musk and DOGE have absolutely no legal authority to stop payments authorized by congers and no right to access the federal payment system.
Because the current cuts are basically like that joke about the person looking for their lost keys where the light is better instead of where they lost the keys.
Because it’s happening outside of any legal oversight. One man is telling you “this is waste and fraud and abuse”, and you’re just supposed to believe it.
There also happens to be lots of historical precedent to this kind of aggressive purges that aim to install loyalists in government, not least Germany in 1933.
(Nazis also made a big deal out of stopping “sexual deviants.” Studies of trans people and their history were the first books they burned. And now the CDC in USA is removing that information everywhere they can. A strange coincidence.)
IMO, I think they're really just glorified accountants being propped up by a mix of Musk's ego and the left's seething hatred of Musk and anything trump touches:
Because of Trump's history. Trump attempted a self-coup in 2020 by trying to overturn the election. This attempt was foiled because many judges, public officials, etc. resisted it, including many Republicans. Now Trump is back in power, and Democrats are very nervous about anything that looks like "Trump packing the government with loyalists" or "Trump trying to gain more power over public officials", because that would make it easier for Trump to attempt a future self-coup.
In short: Framing this as "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" is assuming good faith, but given Trump's history, he doesn't deserve a presumption of good faith.
(Secondary to that: There's a difference between "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" versus "shutting down entire functions of government without a replacement". Look at Musk trying to shut down USAID, for example. If Musk wanted to "cut waste, fraud, and abuse", that would mean "reforming USAID to achieve the same outcomes while spending less money". Instead, Musk is proposing to eliminate USAID entirely. Even if not for the self-coup angle, that's clearly not just "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse". Foreign aid is established by Congress, and only Congress has the constitutional authority to eliminate that aid.)
If you believe there's any cutting of waste, you are woefully misinformed. This is a kleptocracy. The only thing that will happen here is mass looting of the public purse by the wealthiest and the elimination of any form of progressive taxation or wealth redistribution to those that aren't wealthy.
If we were really concerned about waste, the first and only place to look is the $1T+ we spend every year on the military.
>It has been a kleptocracy for decades and they've been looting all of us with no resistence or accountability.
And yet, the average life in US has gotten better and better under democratic rule, while worse under republican rule.
The problem with people like you is that you are so bought into a narrative of "government bad" that any sort of mistake or non optimal that the government does is seen by you as corruption.
And then when you have people like Musk, Rogan, Hotz, and other prophet wannabes that amplify that messaging, it solidifies that in your mind and you move become farther and farther from reality, until you are solidly in MAGA land where anything liberal is automatically bad, even if your side does the exact same thing.
There is a shitload of government bloat and inefficiencies, but these things need to be trimmed over a long period of time, not by Musk style of breaking things without giving a fuck about what he breaks.
Most of the metrics that matter have gotten worse over the past decades. Under both democrats and republicans. Education, physical and mental health, cost of living, healthcare costs, wealth inequality, I could go on.
When you see all the smart people like Musk, Hotz, Andreesen, Ackman, getting involved and changing their minds, maybe it's time to reconsider your priors too.
People like Musk and Andreesen getting involved are evidence that you're about to see fraud and overreach that concentrates power and resources in their hands instead of the American people. No matter what you think about Trump and whether he's actually trying to do a good thing, those people getting on board are not a good sign.
Here is the problem. You say this like a blanket statement, because you are parroting a popular talking point, but they and you intentionally leave it blank, because to any counter anyone gives you, you always have a response.
For example, I can say "well more people are graduating with college degrees", to which you reply "well the degrees are worthless because the actual education sucks". To which I reply "well data clearly shows that people with college degrees are making more money", to which you reply "yea because its all just fake money, those people aren't doing anything of value". To which I reply "yes but money still gets exchanged and economy keeps on going", to which you reply "but this is not sustainable"
So now, its not that education has gotten worse, you just think that the education is not correct for what you personally believe the future society is going to require. But you will never state that point directly, because you know it makes you sound dumb since you have no way to actually prove what the future society will look like.
>cost of living
Not really. Houses have gotten more expensive, but thats a supply issue. Average cost of living for the same standard has gotten better - you get more things for about the same money after inflation. Lots of places you don't need a car to get around, remote work is a lot more prevalent, saving people a shitload of money, and access to goods and services has gotten better (Amazon delivers to a lot of places now, giving access to acceptable quality goods for low prices)
>wealth inequality
So perhaps the worlds richest man shouldn't have power over the Treasury?
The other stuff has issues, but again just because there are issues doesn't mean you have to tear it up.
This is what I mean, you just repeat these talking points without any sort of critical thinking. Its the actual "woke" mind virus that they ironically talk about - it feels good to believe that you know what the actual problem is and think that you know the right solution. But you don't and neither to they.
And penultimatey, here is the real thing to think about. Both Musk and Hotz are very much into AI/ML. They both understand that their brains are neural networks. They both understand that to have a well performing neural network, you need to have good training, and specifically discriminant training on errors. A neural network cannot point out its own errors. It needs an external source. With humans, this looks like conversation with opposing side where you end up either reinforcing what you know because you are able to show factually that the other person is wrong, or changing your own beliefs and views when the opposite happen.
But none of them do that. They just like to preach ideology without ever anyone challenging it. They get facts wrong all the time, make baseless predictions that hardly ever come true, and never own their mistakes. Badly trained neural networks.
So in the end, they are literally the exact thing they hate - "woke" people preaching in their echochambers. Horseshoe effect. Or alternatively, they are just straight up lying to the likes of you and anyone gullible enough, so that they can gain more power. Those are the only 2 possibilities.
Generally, you are correct about one thing, and that is mental health. The reason why these people have power is because when people, especially young men, don't have anything in their life to feel proud about, they tend to attach themselves to an ideology. It works like this for both left and right, again horseshoe effect. The physiological reason why some college students feel the need to go to Pro Palestine protests and justify Hamas acts of terror, ignoring the reality of the situation, is the same reason why you feel the need to call Musk smart. So this is definitely problem that needs to get solved. But not by anyone on either end of the horseshoe.
Go read Trump's sovereign wealth fund announcement from today. The plan is to take all the money from the tariffs (and other unspecified actions he takes, probably including the stuff DOGE does), and then spend it on private investments of his choosing.
So, he's already announced you'll be paying 10-25% tax on all imported goods moving forward, and that he'll personally loot the revenue.
They just create new accounts. But anyone who thinks sending home all the inspector generals is cutting waste/fraud is clearly arguing in bad faith. Unfortunately, I've argued this was the case well before the election -- but everyone told me, "only Trump seems to know this is about grocery prices!".
If Biden created a branch of the government called "Freedom, Liberty, and Happiness for America" with enormous funding and filled it with his allies and sycophants with dubious goals, would you say its critics are "against freedom and liberty"? Why would anyone be opposed unless you hate America?
You're reading an extremely biased view on the topic by perusing the comments. Anything that seems slightly non-left-leaning is generally dismissed and ridiculed here.
Decrying a billionaire unelected oligarch putting his greasy fingers on the inner workings of the entire American society is not necessarily liberal. Constitutional conservatives certainly can’t be happy about that either.
Elon Musk is the quintessential Silicon Valley poster child, who believes his limited domain knowledge is enough to fix all of the world’s issues. No surprise that people that think alike and populate this corner of the internet, wouldn’t see no problem there.
What he’s doing is technically and formally a coup. See how Mussolini took power in Italy.
If you can’t see that, you’re definitively part of the problem.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with (such as for ideological battle). We ban such accounts and it will eventually get your main account banned as well.
The person I responded to asked an honest question, and I gave an honest answer. You can feed the entirety of HN into AI, and it would come to the same conclusion: it's not a secret.
But I wasn't aware that ideological battle is off-limits. It seems like every thread is full of it, so it's hard to walk away with that impression.
The reason for a separate account is because proposing ideas that don't fit the HN mainstream can result in people trying to track you down and "punish" you for having opposing views. Unfortunate, but that's where the world is.
That's far from the case, and keeping things that way is critical to HN's future. Even now, when we're at a high-water mark because of the political externalities, it's far from the case.
It may be the case that people inclined to do ideological battle on the internet are more likely to overestimate its presence, simply because that's where their attention goes.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Please don't post like this, and please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN. The guidelines say:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Since this topic is as divisive as it gets, so your comments on it should be at maximum thoughtfulness and substantiveness right now.
Dang, as much as I understand the point, what's happening is of the utmost gravity, and ignoring it or pretending that these people can be reasoned with is like giving them a free pass. Especially explicitly trolls account like the one attacking me first. I am certainly passionate about the topic maybe more than average, and I'm certainly more political than what this community might want to be. Nonetheless, my name is out there and I'm not really hiding or trolling, just expressing strong views.
I understand and respect that HN thinks this won't lead to good conversations, and will just try to avoid the blood-boiling responses.
Yeah there a difference between popculture fiction written by hollywood with the intention to make a profit, and an essay by an actual philosopher intending to explain the workings of the real world.
I guess what im saying is that I agree that art is political, but some art is more rooted in reality and others are further from it. Why not make an art reference thats more relevant to reality to convey the argument?
Are you unaware that Harry Potter is about a Facist takeover of the wizarding world by people who insist on genetic purity and believe that mixed breeds and non-wizards should be wiped out, and done primarily by a nonviolent coup of the governing body of the wizarding world?
The Handmaid's Tale, a good book, you should read it sometime. Harry Potter is also interesting in that it tells a lot about its author and her world view.
Hilariously naive? Are you aware that fiction writers are usually demonstrating something about the real world? Have you ever read a thought experiment? Do you discount blueprints because they're not made from concrete and steel? Get outta here.
This is like a Christian quoting scripture to an atheist, there are real world parallels of current events to draw from which carry substantially more weight.
I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, just like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?
That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on…”
- The Handmaid's Tale