‘The Coming Storm’

[toucana]

A 25 y/o member of Elon Musk’s DOGE team who had been given access to highly classified U.S Treasury payment systems has abruptly resigned Thursday after recently deleted social media posts were brought to  light by The Wall Street Journal. His posts advocated the repeal of the Civil Rights Act, the adoption of a “eugenic immigration policy”, and the proud declaration:

Quote

“Just for the record, I was a racist before it was cool - Normalize Indian hate”

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5289337/elon-musk-doge-treasury

Elon Musk has subsequently denounced the public identification of his DOGE aides on X and by The Wire as a “criminal offence” before conceding that an unknown number of his DOGE  appointees are software engineers associated with his companies X or SpaceX. So is exposing the identities and affiliations of these people Doxing, or the exercise of Free Speech ?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2025/02/04/doge-employees-identified-on-x--doxing-or-case-of-free-speech/

Meanwhile Pete Marocco the man recently put in charge of USAID by Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been identified as one of the rioters who stormed the Capitol in 2021. The USAID agency had previously been targeted on X by Elon Musk who declared it a “criminal organization”.

 

Edited Friday at 11:01 AM by toucana
Odd line break

[dedo]

Not sure what your question is.  If it is:  "Is there evidence that a major political storm is coming?"

I would say yes, there are multiple lines of evidence that a storm is coming, including what is going on in the US, and other countries.

What you noted in DODGE amounts to political extremism and suppression of dissent which is interesting coming from someone who tried to trumpet "freedom of speech" as his rational for making Twitter into a right wing platform that gave free reign to those that support genocide.

To quote myself:  "The infected are capable of any moral abomination, accusing others of what the infected does, lying about it every step of the way."  There is evidence of an infection in social norms, as evidenced by statistical data that shows that wars follow the same statistical distribution as forest fires.  Thus, "brush" builds up in social norms until, boom, the world burns -- unless the "infection" is treated.  I believe that extreme tribalism & a form of bullying or obsession with oppression of those perceived as vulnerable are the hallmarks, which explains in part going after USAID first.

There is the diagnosis given to Hitler of "DLD" or "dangerous leader disorder" marked by:  suppression of dissent, grandiosity, and extreme violence (internal or external).  It has been noted on another thread that this administration has met 2 of those.  Putin has met all three.

There is the Doomsday Clock, set at the closest setting to MN in history backed by an organization with their own journal and Nobel Laureates if that means anything.

There are nuclear threats pouring out of Russia although they have toned it down recently.

If you want to stray away from evidence that can be considered "science" to pseudoscience, then there is a new book about Nostradamus & Trump recently released that I only mention as it seems to suggest the Senate eventually removes him which may comfort someone a little.  However, even if a prophecy was true, which most here would deride, prophecies only show "possible futures" that could be changed with effort or self awareness.  I read somewhere that Hitler read about himself in Nostradamus but it did not change him unfortunately.  

So, in response to what I think is your question, yes there is evidence of a storm brewing.  We can hope that the institutions of the US will hold, and if there is a positive outcome, then whatever occurs will stimulate high level multidisciplinary problem solving to address the cause, before it is too late.

Edited Friday at 05:39 PM by dedo

[exchemist]

6 hours ago, toucana said:

A 25 y/o member of Elon Musk’s DOGE team who had been given access to highly classified U.S Treasury payment systems has abruptly resigned Thursday after recently deleted social media posts were brought to  light by The Wall Street Journal. His posts advocated the repeal of the Civil Rights Act, the adoption of a “eugenic immigration policy”, and the proud declaration:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5289337/elon-musk-doge-treasury

Elon Musk has subsequently denounced the public identification of his DOGE aides on X and by The Wire as a “criminal offence” before conceding that an unknown number of his DOGE  appointees are software engineers associated with his companies X or SpaceX. So is exposing the identities and affiliations of these people Doxing, or the exercise of Free Speech ?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2025/02/04/doge-employees-identified-on-x--doxing-or-case-of-free-speech/

Meanwhile Pete Marocco the man recently put in charge of USAID by Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been identified as one of the rioters who stormed the Capitol in 2021. The USAID agency had previously been targeted on X by Elon Musk who declared it a “criminal organization”.

 

🐐🎪

[CharonY]

6 hours ago, toucana said:

Meanwhile Pete Marocco the man recently put in charge of USAID by Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been identified as one of the rioters who stormed the Capitol in 2021. The USAID agency had previously been targeted on X by Elon Musk who declared it a “criminal organization”.

The pretty much gutted USAID already with planned layoffs of all but a few hundred employees (out of about 10,000) https://apnews.com/article/trump-usaid-layoffs-7e0a159d8a419c4c9388ab02e8259f23

 

And there are calls from Trump to shut it down entirely. If the void is not filled immediately, it will be catastrophic for a lot of people. And what they probably do not understand is that many of these projects are also protecting the US (and their interests). The simplest example includes public health help to contain HIV, ebola and other pathogens. But since they are probably going to shut down monitoring and support for other countries to do monitoring, we'll never now.

[toucana]

56 minutes ago, dedo said:

Not sure what your question is.  If it is:  "Is there evidence that a major political storm is coming?"

There were a couple of thoughts behind my post. “The Coming Storm” was a popular catch phrase of the QAnon conspiracy theorists in USA, as documented in a book by British journalist Gabriel Gatehouse who was the former International Editor of the BBC Newsnight program.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453235/the-coming-storm-by-gatehouse-gabriel/9781785948152

But I was also thinking of another quotation attributed to the philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) who wrote ”This storm is what we call progress” when discussing Paul Klee’s ‘Angelus Novus’ (1920) - a haunting painting which Walter Benjamin owned - in his final essay “On the Concept of History” (1940) shortly before he committed suicide when facing capture by the Nazis.

https://hyperallergic.com/829171/whats-behind-the-angel-of-history-annie-bourneuf-paul-klee-angelus-novus/

Quote

Writing about this painting, Benjamin conjures up the image of the Angel of History. For him this figure symbolizes the inevitable and irrepressible drive of progress, the storm in which we are all caught up. This storm propels us blindly forward and leaves a traumatic and cataclysmic wreckage in its wake.      https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/this-storm-is-what-we-call-progress/

 

The phrase seemed to capture the nihilism of the current right-wing extremism at work in US politics, which having spent years decrying ‘The Deep State’ now seems determined to instantiate the profoundly undemocratic despotism it once pretended to denounce.

[TheVat]

10 hours ago, toucana said:

Elon Musk has subsequently denounced the public identification of his DOGE aides on X and by The Wire as a “criminal offence” before conceding that an unknown number of his DOGE  appointees are software engineers associated with his companies X or SpaceX. So is exposing the identities and affiliations of these people Doxing, or the exercise of Free Speech ?

That anyone would ask that suggests an odd shifting of political norms (sometimes called the Overton Window here).  I mean, it is essentially asking if it's okay for the public to know who is hired by an administration that half of them voted for.  Not all that far from leaders who form secret squads of enforcers, something most of my countrymen used to easily identify as fascism.  The notion that DOGE can be a government agency outside the Constitution is horrifying.  But we're all growing accustomed to being horrified.

[MigL]

11 hours ago, toucana said:

Elon Musk has subsequently denounced the public identification of his DOGE aides on X and by The Wire as a “criminal offence”

Musk has no f**king clue as to what is criminal , and what is legal.
He's one of those( along with many others in current American government ) who believes they are above such things because of their wealth, and the power American idiots have voted to give them.

Elections have consequences.

[CharonY]

That is the issue with folks with virtually unchecked powers due to their wealth. They also assume they are better than everyone else and cannot imagine being accountable to laws or anything else.

I imagine that normal folks do not offer a horse to someone in exchange for sexual acts. Allegedly (and settled). During a flight. Just saying.

[StringJunky]

16 hours ago, CharonY said:

That is the issue with folks with virtually unchecked powers due to their wealth. They also assume they are better than everyone else and cannot imagine being accountable to laws or anything else.

I imagine that normal folks do not offer a horse to someone in exchange for sexual acts. Allegedly (and settled). During a flight. Just saying.

It seems that rich people's  past transgressions come home to roost in the end. The only way out is to die before it all blows up in public. Thinking of Sean Combs (Puff Daddy), Ghislaine Maxwell and many other actors and rappers, especially who are currently or recently under public and judicial scrutiny. Ultimately, people don't know when to stop being naughty until it's too late. They, mostly, didn't reach the highest echelons of society by being honest.

Edited 11 hours ago by StringJunky

[exchemist]

18 hours ago, TheVat said:

That anyone would ask that suggests an odd shifting of political norms (sometimes called the Overton Window here).  I mean, it is essentially asking if it's okay for the public to know who is hired by an administration that half of them voted for.  Not all that far from leaders who form secret squads of enforcers, something most of my countrymen used to easily identify as fascism.  The notion that DOGE can be a government agency outside the Constitution is horrifying.  But we're all growing accustomed to being horrified.

A lot will hang on what remains of the independence of the judiciary, to stop this shit. Some welcome signs so far, but the problem is speed of reaction. Project 2025 is trying to move too fast for the courts to keep up, and to keep everyone off balance.
 

A blitzkrieg approach.