Radiorum

It's not up to me to give you your education. It's not up to me to write you a book. Get out of your bubble and educate yourself.

Trump is a homegrown, American fascist. Philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco, drawing on his personal experiences growing up in Mussolini’s fascist Italy, as well as extensive research, penned the influential essay “Ur-Fascism” or “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt” His insights on fascism – the features of fascism: 1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.” 2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.” 3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.” 4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.” 5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.” 6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.” 7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.” 8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” 9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.” 10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.” 11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.” 12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” 13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” 14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Wow, you reveal how far you have fallen, and how muddled your thinking is, when you call attempts to maintain legality in the US and prevent Trump from crowning himself a king “lawfare”

I’m not sure why you think a wrong-headed ideological backlash is grounds for plunging the scientific community into chaos, that the cries of the uninformed justifies stopping the science. In fact, you are revealing the weakness and the wrongness of the position – in your estimation, science should bend to the will of hysterical ideologues. In any case, that position is a total ruse. How to explain cutting in half the workforce at The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a world-renowned scientific agency, providing research funding and weather monitoring? How to explain that under Trump’s new directives, travelling for international meeting or even joining a call with Canadian counterparts has become impossible for some U.S. government scientists? Canadian ecologist Aaron Fisk says he recently tried to set up a virtual call to discuss plans with American colleagues, including a government scientist, around sampling fish. "We tried to have a quick meeting with one of our collaborators … and they were denied access," Fisk said. Trump has taken a wrecking ball to American science in what amounts to an existential threat on its future. His orders have even resulted in censorship of terms like “biodiversity” and “social justice” There is a broad scientific consensus on climate change, but American scientists are banned from using the term??

This is false (I notice you rarely cite your sources). In fact, 57 % of Americans felt the charges were politically motivated (the word "purely" is yours - and is not reflected in the poll) - 93% of Republicans and 17% of Democrats. This does NOT prove the charges were politically motivated, only that Republicans fall for Trump's BS. In any case, there is no logical connection between this and the steps Trump is taking now to effect regime change in the US. By your logic, a criminal should be entitled to take over the system that held him accountable.

The evidence tells me otherwise.

Oh, so , science is being decimated in the US because scientists use the term cisgender. Oh, okay. Tell me again who is the rational ones?

if you can't see the difference, I can't help you

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the responsibility for enforcing that financial companies obey consumer-protection laws, previously split between six regulatory agencies, was concentrated in one agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (C.F.P.B), which brought consumer protection—regulation, supervision, and enforcement—under one roof. Created to defend the interests of mortgage holders, savings depositors, credit-card holders, and anybody else who was obliged to deal with banks and other financial companies, the CFPB has been shuttered by Trump and Musk. A week ago, Elon Musk tweeted, “CFPB RIP.” Why would Musk want to fire the financial cop on the beat? The cop that has found more than twenty-one billion dollars in fraud and scams, and scooped up that money and returned it directly to the people who were cheated. Musk claimed that slashing spending and downsizing the federal government is necessary to prevent the United States from going bankrupt. But the CFPB budget is only about 0.01% of federal spending. Oh, there is this: Closing the CFPB will hurt the very people Trump promised to safeguard, but it will sure help Musk.

If you think this is what it is about you are sorely mistaken. There has been a war on science from the Right for a long time, and Trump just upped it to a nuclear war.

Well, you can be sure Putin and autocrats around the world are cheering the dissolution of USAID. They are in fact exploiting the chaos Trump overall is creating. One of the biggest cheerleaders of the effort has been Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a longtime Trump ally who has for years waged his own campaign against nongovernmental organizations and independent media, particularly targeting those that receive U.S. funding. On social media and on state radio last week, the Hungarian strongman celebrated Trump’s gutting of USAID and claimed that the agency had backed organizations that wanted to “topple” his government. Putin kicked USAID out of Russia in 2012 for promoting groups that promoted democracy and human rights. The US is giving up its leadership role in the world as the defender of democracy, which seems to coincide with turning its back on democracy at home.

Trump seeks to overturn the Constitution, Supreme Court precedent, and long-standing federal law in order that he may abuse presidential power. Abusing federal funding is illegal and it's even more corrupt that he is doing this to bully and coerce.

So, what about those farmers, eh?

You just don't get it. The US is forfeiting their leadership role in the world of science. I wonder who will assume it now. … research funding being slashed, staff being told to quit and key programmes being withdrawn, for example: US science in chaos as impact of Trump’s executive orders sinks in

They lie both about what they are doing and their intention. It's called the "DOGE hoax." Elon Musk is a newbie to government, but I’ll pay him the compliment of assuming that he’s studied the federal ledger in enough detail already to have grasped the truth of Riedl’s points. If so, he must know that DOGE’s work is futile—as a fiscal project, except on a very modest scale. Trying to put a meaningful dent in overspending by gutting outfits like USAID is like trying to pay off one’s student loans by scaling back on lattes at Starbucks. The math won’t math. But DOGE isn’t a fiscal project. It’s an ideological project. And from that standpoint, it’s been pretty successful.

Lol, you quoted the liars!

You're the one who made the claim. Link yours.

the question of scientific autonomy and public oversight is an important one. Restrictions on scientific autonomy should only come into play to make sure the science causes no harm. Restrictions should not be put on science for ideological reasons.

It's not about hate. People who criticize the actions of Trump and Musk and DOGE have a real and valid concern that what we are witnessing is a coup designed to engender regime change in the US. if it was waste they wanted to rout out, why did they first fire all the Inspector-generals whose job it is to find waste? Because that was never their intention. They want to make the Executive branch above the law, as Trump's and Musk's attacks on any judges who rule their actions illegal make clear. Musk's lies are well documented, but the MAGA crowd are so blinded by the propaganda Trump and Musk spew. And yes, DOGE is a hoax, too Elon Musk is a newbie to government, but I’ll pay him the compliment of assuming that he’s studied the federal ledger in enough detail already to have grasped the truth of Riedl’s points. If so, he must know that DOGE’s work is futile—as a fiscal project, except on a very modest scale. Trying to put a meaningful dent in overspending by gutting outfits like USAID is like trying to pay off one’s student loans by scaling back on lattes at Starbucks. The math won’t math. But DOGE isn’t a fiscal project. It’s an ideological project. And from that standpoint, it’s been pretty successful.

The people who told you that lied.

Yeah, I know, Zuckerberg has gone full-on MAGA. But let’s be real here. What Trump and Musk want is the freedom to lie. For example: And it seems Musk has only recently discovered that the US has a Constitution, if his post of “If any judge anywhere can overrule us, we no longer live in a democracy!” is any indication.

@blackbird I don’t want to derail this thread too much, only to state that we can find barbaric behavior amongst all peoples, including at the state-sanctioned level. That the Natives of the long past could be ruthless to their enemies is true, but this inclination is not limited to Indigenous peoples. It is a universal hallmark of humanity.

Trump’s levels of corruption and dishonesty are unprecedented. Even his Executive Orders are dishonest. Consider one example: Executive Order 14149 – Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship (January 20, 2025) which in part states: Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans' speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting "misinformation," "disinformation," and "malinformation," the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government's preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate… The Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of executive departments and agencies, shall investigate the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years that are inconsistent with the purposes and policies of this order and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken based on the findings of the report. What these “remedial actions” consist of is not clear, but it sounds like a threat. But what is the truth? Last June - The U.S. Supreme Court handed a major victory for the Biden administration Wednesday, throwing out a lower court ruling that had placed major restrictions on the ability of government officials to communicate with social media companies about their content moderation policies. … a stark repudiation of two lower courts in the South, and their eagerness to embrace conspiracy theories about alleged government coercion of social media companies. Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that neither the five individuals nor the two states who sued … presented (any) proof to back up their claims that the government had pressured social media companies like Twitter and Facebook into restricting their speech. "Unfortunately," she said, the Fifth Circuit court of appeals "relied on factual findings that are "clearly erroneous." For instance, she said, the plaintiffs who brought the case maintained that the White House had bombarded Twitter with requests to set up a streamlined process for censorship requests. But in fact, she said, the record showed no such requests. Rather, on one occasion a White House official asked Twitter to remove a fake account pretending to be the account of Biden's granddaughter. Twitter took down the fake account and told the official about a portal that could be used in the future to flag similar issues. "Justice Barrett went out of her way to stress that facts matter and that lower courts in this case embraced a fact-free version of what transpired between officials in the Biden administration and Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies," But we know very well that facts do not matter to Trump.

To say that somehow Trump's actions are the fault of the Democrats is preposterous in the extreme. Trump is a force within himself. His actions are unprecedented. Trying to steal an election with fake electors? Unprecedented. Trying to concentrate all power in the executive branch? Unprecedented. Psychologically manipulating a cult following? Unprecedented. (Unless you count Huey Long.)

In Trump's giddy reach to concentrate all power in the Executive branch, he has paid no attention to the effect of these massive cuts at home in his "slash-first, think-later" approach. And the worst part is, the damn Republicans do not speak up. What will it take for Republican legislators to speak up and say "Don't destroy my state's economy?"