There is an ongoing argument in the US that a person was elected, therefore everything they do after that has the blessing of the electorate. Funny thing though, the people don’t really have a crystal ball to see into the future how their elected official will decide betray the country in the name of a “mandate”.

These policies are cargo cult echos of what would have worked in the 1990's. Perot was right. But you can't simply put the toothpaste back in the tube, right? In the reality of the 2020's, these policies merely bring economic destruction and subsequent consolidation. It's the same exact class that ran the "free trade" con of the past thirty years, now on to their next ruse.

There is a reason Grump is called "nation builder" in China - that is where the creative part of creative destruction is happening.

And it is not really applicable to the crux of my point! The corporate class championed some actions, which are now resulting in more "consequences" that continue to benefit themselves? Who would have thought?!

And also, why is the refrain always "Obama, Obama, Obama" ? I didn't vote for that guy either.

This is better than the alternative: Kakala was promising you to protect the workers all the while being asleep at the wheel with millions of illegals across the border.

So your opinion, while interesting, is irrelevant. (Mine is too, FWIW). You just disagree with the electorate.

I'm not particularly interested in engaging with your "Kakala ... illegals" security blanket. Harris was at least going to continue flying the plane (regardless of my not liking its destination), rather than being the gremlin on the wing bringing it down. That so many people voted gremlin just shows how out of touch and entitled we've become. Surprise, it's a long way down - enjoy the Chinese century that you're enthusiastically ushering in, I guess.

As the old saying goes: Don't blame me, I voted conservative.

True, but Trump is a dictator because why? Because you disagree with the 77,304,296 people who elected him? Because he cracks unfunny jokes about running for re-election? Because he's corrupt? We've had corrupt Presidents before, but a dictator to me is someone who won't leave office. We do have a precedent of, despite the Jan. 6 looney toons (that he encouraged) trying to stop it, and despite all his dumb baseless lawsuits, Trump hopping on the helicopter and handing over power as scheduled. To me, that's the clear dividing line between an egomaniacal clown and a dictator.

I don't agree with a LOT of his 'policies,' (honestly sometimes describing his whims as policies is overstating it) but I would say the specific one being discussed here is not one of those open-and-shut dumb ideas. There are plenty of unemployed software engineers right here in the U.S. right now, and any US businesses saying they need H1Bs for most of those roles are full of crap.

The Anthropic thing is the same: we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether the designation as a supply chain risk is legitimate based on Anthropic's policies and actions, but Hegseth is such a vain, insecure clown that any decision like this is suspect.

In short, Trump may not have achieved his dream of dictatorship, but he runs the parts of the government he has control of like a dictator would, and this has done terrible damage to the federal government's legitimacy.

I think one of the core issues here is that reactionary media has been creating this exact kind of reputational/institutional damage for decades (cf Obama is going to take your <blank>). So reactionaries don't see the damage as a new thing, but just something more like "now it's finally happening to them too". Of course the reality is that the former was mostly corporate propaganda (based on some legitimate concerns, but propaganda nonetheless), while now Grump is actually destroying our institutions. Which, if seen, is further rationalized by things like "they were corrupt anyway". Of course this is decidedly not a "conservative" position, but they've been mainlining the kool aid for a long time.

  it's more common for a dictator to come to power through a revolution, military coup, or civil war

> Can you really say this with a straight face about trump?

On this particular issue? Yes. On immigration and trade specially, Trump seems to be genuinely far more in tune with domestic labor than any president since Carter. It's a big reason why he was elected.

Since Reagan until Trump, the political class of both parties seemed quite happy to aggressively ignore the interests of domestic labor, in favor of ideology peddled by capital-aligned economists.

I mean that, you're either saying he wasn't democratically elected, or that this move doesn't help domestic labor. The first is objectively false, and the second is covered in the most basic college economics courses.

You realize the courses don't stop at basic, right?

It is well-established that immigration (legal and otherwise) is good for the economy overall. Skilled immigrants are good for US businesses.

https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/permanent-residency-rule...

Immigrants start businesses at twice the rate of native-born Americans.

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116727/documents/... (page 1, though the citation has gone down the memory hole)

Some immigrants are complementary to native-born American workers rather than being in competition.

https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2...

Immigrants spend money and grow the market for goods produced by native-born Americans.

All these things are good for domestic labor. There is no reason to believe immigration is bad for American workers. Not everything is zero-sum, and that's basic economics.

This is immigration to staff augmentation body shops that are doing $150k/yr programming jobs with the company taking 25% off the top. It's not "immigrants starting businesses," it's not "the economy overall" it's targeting immigration suppressing the wages of a specific sector.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/10/30/kamala-har...

Corporate political donations and opinions should be outlawed

> Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the narrow majority that limits on independent spending from corporations and other outside groups equate to limiting their speech and thus violate the First Amendment.

So basically corporate donation is corporate opinion is protected under the First Amendment