Exactly right. Revanchist politics lead to boom/bust debt cycles in government. One party spends way too much and hurts the citizens, the other party uses their mandate to fix the overspending as a pretext to subvert government controls and agencies, and slash and burn in a way that hurts citizens. And 95% of the population blindly, religiously even, suport this and yet don't feel at all responsible for the current state of affairs. "They did it!" seems like the new American ethos.

National debt growth rates by President:

* Clinton (D): +31% over 8 years

* Bush (R): +105% over 8 years

* Obama (D): +70% over 8 years

* Trump (R): +40% over 4 years

* Biden (D): +21% over 4 years

Simply untrue to suggest "one party spends way too much" or that the other's "slash and burn" is at all related to strengthening our financial situation.

But that's it. I don't think slash and burn is related to debt, least not directly. That was my whole point. It's revanchist escalatory politics on both sides. When more than a few democrats acknowledge the debt and talk about cutting, and when more than a few republicans talk about increasing taxes, we can make progress. Until then we'll get more partisanship and sctivism, which means more games with the budget and thus more volatility and inefficiency in Washington, to the detriment of all federal workers, but to citizens also. The parties and powers that be are the winners. Everyone else loses. Moderate politics and less change is better for most people on average, certainly better for institutional stability, which is the core issue with DOGE's chainsaw approach to belt tightening.

I don't disagree with most of this except the continued characterization of this as "belt tightening."

It demonstrably has nothing to do with "belt tightening." If it did, the GOP wouldn't need a $4 trillion increase to the debt ceiling.

I think most government workers including elected officials in both parties will be biased towards spending and granting themselves more power over time. I think if each party actively damages the other party's cherished institutions and programs (eg by creating policies undermining the defense industrial base, or undermining SNAP) it will require excess spending just to stand still. Each party is stuck rebuilding stuff every 4 years and nothing gets done for either party's agenda, at astronomical expense. Tragic, and obviously unsustainable. In a perfect world, liberals push spending on useful well run programs and conservatives resist foolish spending on fads and over zealous interventions and policy with little impact. We need that balance. We do not have it. As such, those that want to burn it all down will win, unless the left change their ways. (Moderates on the right are and forever will be outgunned by the more intelligent, typically wealthier Milton Friedman types.)

Must’ve just missed the ideology tests and purity purges under the previous admin. Could you link to some evidence?

Not the previous admin, but the previous "ruling ideology", i.e. illiberal leftist ideology (usually lumped under "woke", "progressive", or "cancel culture"), which was also authoritarian, intolerant, and involved purity tests that increasingly became impossible to pass. They just didn't have a lock-step candidate who won the executive branch.

This whole millennium so far has been a tick-tock of popular illiberal authoritarianism, and this is what it looks like when it wins.

Ah yes, the classic equivalent extremism of the blue hairs on Twitter (who hold approximately zero levers of state power) and the actual elected leader of the other party.

One extremist group says insane shit on TikTok, the other runs the FBI. The latter is totally a sensible response to the former.

I don't think they are equivalent. Neither is sensible, and the current situation is worse by at least one order of magnitude. I'm just claiming that the popular ideology of only a few years ago was leftist and had a heavily authoritarian slant. Despite the current ridiculous fight against "woke ideology" and "cancel culture", it's not like it didn't actually exist.

And it wasn't just extremist groups saying insane shit on TikTok. People were getting harassed through GitHub, issues were being brigaded, tons of big FOSS projects had some big CoC kerfuffle, then there were the master/slave, git master branch, whitelist/blacklist naming things, demanding renaming of projects, demanding people be fired, etc. Some of these things were reasonable, some were unreasonable, but it's incredibly disingenuous to pretend that it was just "One extremist group says insane shit on TikTok". It was a lot of people effecting a lot of real changes. Notably in FOSS, it was a lot of outsiders coming into a space and telling the people in that space how they were supposed to do their jobs, despite the outsiders not contributing anything other than judgement and not having any stake in it.

I definitely see some parallels, even if they aren't equivalent.

> And it wasn't just extremist groups saying insane shit on TikTok. People were getting harassed through GitHub, issues were being brigaded, tons of big FOSS projects had some big CoC kerfuffle, then there were the master/slave, git master branch, whitelist/blacklist naming things, demanding renaming of projects, demanding people be fired, etc

All of these things you've mentioned were done by private citizens, members of the general public, exercising their free speech, not elected representatives or anyone in the government. You've made an argument against Twitter.

I know that these were done by private citizens. I think you might believe I'm making a point that I'm not.

My point is these things existed and did have actual power. They had sway in private organizations, and even questioning them was enough in some situations to be fired. The current movement is reactionary, and was, like it or not, fueled by distaste for the previous push. A lot of people like to pretend like this came from nowhere, in reaction to nothing, and that's simply not true. People here are claiming that all of the current administration's claims are bald-faced lies, and that's also not true.

I'm a liberal. I've been complaining about the leftist authoritarian push for years, primarily because it was going to create fuel for a powerful right-wing reactionary movement. I'm pretty surprised by the force and extremity of the current situation, but I'm not at all surprised that it's happening.

But these things aren't connected! How is a government department randomly firing federal employees going to stop people asking for codes of conduct to stop sexual harrasment at conferences? Or is the idea simply that by seizing the national microphone, as it were, they're going to take over the discourse? Government as big reality show?

The connection is that the whole culture war is a big part of what got these clowns their votes. I know people who are pretty centrist, wavering on whether to vote for Trump because he'd deal with the "SJW stuff". People who agreed that police brutality against black people was an issue, but were mortified by many of the talking points and activities of BLM protesters (remember when people were taking hostages on college campuses? That was pretty recent).

It was really not long ago when "defund the police" was a contentious issue, and apologists were talking about how "no, they don't mean it literally, it's just to start a conversation", much like how Trump's handlers constantly have to twist his horrible words into something more palatable.

It's not disconnected, it's populism.

> My point is these things existed and did have actual power. They had sway in private organizations

This is called the marketplace of ideas

Sometimes the marketplace lets stupid things get some sway, and it is up to the marketplace (not the state) to push those aside

> A lot of people like to pretend like this came from nowhere, in reaction to nothing, and that's simply not true

No, I think people are "pretending" like the use of state power is not an appropriate reaction to "overstepping" within the marketplace of ideas, which of course is true. The vast majority of left-leaning people find the blue hairs goofy at best, which is exactly why they do not hold political power. I don't think anyone on the left is "surprised" by what's going on right now, FWIW.