Anger, despair, and defiance from a voice within the US federal research system

https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r294

by yunque • 1 year ago

44 23 1 year ago

taylodl2• 1 year ago

This administration has adopted a blitzkrieg approach, fully aware that our system of checks and balances requires time to respond. Their apparent goal is to inflict as much damage as possible before legal challenges can be mounted. Notably, Congress seems complicit in this blitzkrieg, and it appears they have employed Musk as their patsy. I wonder what Musk thinks of this role?

When this is all over, we must seriously consider a Constitutional Convention. It's been 236 years since the Constitution was ratified and adopted, and Trump has exposed significant shortcomings. The next iteration of the Constitution should focus on imposing limits on the executive branch. As a single individual, a rogue president can cause substantial harm in a short period.

goatlover3• 1 year ago

Musk likely has his own motivations. Who calls a Constitutional Convention? Would would you need both parties to agree? Does it take a majority of the states to make it happen? There is an amendment process, but a new Convention would go beyond that. Seems difficult to get the red and blue parts of the US to agree on anything that substatial.

throwway120385• 1 year ago

I would do that if the delegates were actually interested in ratifying something that serves everyone rather than entrenching the power in the hands of a few people. I don't trust the Republican Party as it is organized today to do that, based on the actions of their president and their senate and house.

Der_Einzige2• 1 year ago

The last thing that we want is a constitutional convention.

The american populace just gave trump and right wing authoritarianism a "strong" democratic mandate (don't act like ~2% isn't HUGE in modern elections). He's actually getting more popular in the face of his current "deconstruction of the nation state". You might try to meme this away as "political honeymoon" but I'm sure that this is durable.

https://abcnews.go.com/538/trump-popular/story?id=117620918

https://www.vox.com/trump-administration/395804/trump-mandat...

Right now, if you hold a constitutional convention, you're getting to get a whole lot of the sheep further voting for wolves, and you can kiss everything you love about "liberalism" goodbye from existing within the united states.

Americans hate empathy, compassion, precieved "beta" weakness, and helping our allies. We also learned this election that Mexican immigrants really hate immigrants from the rest of south and Latin America, and that those same Mexican immigrants hated precieved "wokeness" so much they'd literally mass abandon catholocism and mass convert to evangelical Protestantism over it. The American people want a boot on their face to lick. The people will vote for Trump's agenda. Democrats are in shambles with zero real leadership and no path forward.

derbOac• 1 year ago

So for one thing, the popular vote differential was less than 2%:

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024

It's also not that large historically speaking:

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5094602-a-landslide-jus...

Also, his popularity has been dropping, even among voters who voted for him:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-approval-rating-slip...

Finally, a lot of voters seem to be disapproving of what he's doing even if they don't disapprove of him. DOGE is becoming unpopular for example, even among people who support Trump.

I agree with your skepticism about a constitutional convention, but I also think something of that scale is necessary. I don't see how the US can continue on this path with blatant disregard for the constitution.

From my perspective, the problem currently isn't with the US constitution per se. The problem is people ignoring it. Maybe that's part of the same problem, but it seems to me any legal system breaks down when everyone is ignoring the law.

tzs• 1 year ago

49.8% of the popular vote is not a mandate.

moshun• 1 year ago

If you’ve read Project 2025, which is the blueprint being followed to the letter, you know this administration intends to fully dismantle US government and it’s democracy as quickly as possible. Ideally, so fast there is no time to mount a defense, resistance or even general understanding that it’s happening.

Purges of anyone who would object in the government, open defiance of any checks and balances, mass arrests, full penetration of nearly every significant and highly secure digital infrastructure, and the head of state literally referring to himself as the king.

In any other country, we would call this a coup.

Tadpole9181• 1 year ago

When this is all over

I really wish I shared the optimism. Trump is talking about taking over USPS directly. The new head of the FBI just announced he wants to send agents after "legacy media". We had an EO saying the president is the sole arbiter of truth in the Executive and installs Apparatchiks into each department for overseeing compliance. And then the official white house communications channel said "long live the King". Republicans are looking at lifting the term limit for him.

In 2020, Trump directed a mob to overthrow the US government to prevent the ratification of an election he lost. In return, SCOTUS granted him absolute immunity for "official acts" that they get to define on an arbitrary basis.

I really think it's over this time. He once told an audience of Christians that if they voted for him, they never had to vote again. Yeah...

hiddencost• 1 year ago

I think secession is likely the only way out.

kelipso4• 1 year ago

I find it really hard to be sympathetic when these same people silenced voices on the right for years and now they complain that the same thing is being done to them.

tokai• 1 year ago

You have no way of knowing if the Anonymous medical researcher here is not right wing themselves.

kelipso4• 1 year ago

Isn't the likelihood insanely low like 10%? Maybe since it's a government researcher the likelihood is higher.

This thought calls into question why conservatives should even support academia in general, especially liberal arts academia, which shuns conservative thought like the plague while having massive influence upon the culture. At least STEM has measurable value.

bananapub2• 1 year ago

it really is just amazing how Americans are mostly sitting around watching their country and it's position in the world be dismantled by a bunch of drug-addled lunatics who plan to enrich themselves and advance their very stupid and malicious little hobby horses.

bananapub2• 1 year ago

another post about the descontruction of the American state and in particular the government-funded research state that produced the entire fucking tech industry of which we are part, flagged.

seriously, dang, why are you doing nothing about the concerted attack on HN?

jauntywundrkind• 1 year ago

It shouldn't be zero cost to suppress discussion like this. That some people find such deep topical hackery discussions convenient, and that they can flag with impunity to their heart's content, is a disgrace.

Flagging should absolutely have to be public, at a bare bare minimum.

Anger, despair, and defiance from a voice within the US federal research system

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