Under the pretext of incompetence is the administration simply engaging in destroying the US economy to create a fortress situation in collapse that allows implementation of military jurisdiction? Clearly, there's a program running with an endgame.
I'm less sure that there is an endgame. Seems more likely to me that it is being run as a reality TV show where the idea is to maintain a high level of viewer engagement.
And no-one is thinking that the only reason reality tv shows don't end in disaster is because it is a tv show, i.e. an artificial and contained/constrained environment.
The implementation of fascism was both across the board (legislation, edict, mass-firings, academic overthrow, consolidation, regulation, financial, trade, etc) and highly coordinated in a radically sped-up timeframe that had been planned by hundreds of people carefully sequestered in secrecy that launched day-one. That's not reality TV in the slightest. It's revolution or counter-revolution. M Gessen in contrast states it took Putin 10 years to do what Trump did in 6 months.
Not only is there a carefully designed endgame, it's so well hidden in pretexts within pretexts, that journalists, opposition, even political theorists can't for certain declare it, except that it's overthrow.
1. Chaos - it’s good for kleptocracy, and is a denial-of-service attack on our attention
2. The appearance of something being done. Dems represent the status quo, people are sick of the status quo. Something appearing to happen is better than the status quo for a lot of people. Biden deported ~2x more people in 2024 than trump has so far. ICE raids are a performance.
3. Like everything else they do, it’s a shakedown. You want protection from the raids and the chaos? Come kiss the ring of your local maga don.
I agree, but add that the mass expansion of ICE with bounty hunters, freelancers from the white nationalists with fewer deportations indicates that's freikorps into SS quasi-state paramilitary outside the legal checks.
It’s a reign of terror. Nobody knows who or what will be next on the chopping block. The only hope is to lick Trump’s boots to get an exemption. His gang practically holds the whole country hostage for ransom. Their tactics are working (in their own perception), why would they need an endgame?
1) As much as JD Vance and his puppetmaster wishes they were the president, they are not. The tech fascism isn't happening, just regular kind. What you're seeing here with the "deregulation" is just a big fat scoop of plain corruption. Give Herr Führer a nice golden trinket and he deregulates your industry or tariffs your competitors.
2) While they are deregulating heavily, there's absolutely zero sense of "Small Government" going on. You need only look at the oppression of groups like LGBT people. There's no bigger government than controlling which toilets people use or inspecting the genitals of children if they want to participate in sports.
And outside of LGBT rights, just look at the whole situation around Israel. Literal secret police going around arresting people for non-violent protest and simple thoughtcrime.
It’s such a bummer. These oppressed people have been through enough already. Really felt like we were making progress and then these aholes just dumped it down the drain.
Fascist governments often empower superficially private organizations, including giving them power over functions previously done by the state while also blurring the boundaries between state authority and private organizations; that’s just the basics of fascist corporatism.
> Usually fascist gov enlarges the state but in this case they’re shrinking it to loyalists controlling the tech.
Privatization and increasing state authority are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, fascist regimes in the 20th century were very notable for their intense privatization.
