It opens the door for Democratic administrations to do the same to vendors for their own political reasons.
That’s ultimately why Ted Cruz spoke out about the Kimmel cancelation. It doesn’t take long until those powers are turned against you.
back
8 comments
No it doesn't. As with so many other things this administration does, this door was not open. They bashed through it anyway.
Either way, you can walk through the door after. Unless we reseal it legislatively. Resetting norms may be a lost cause at this point.
It depends on the door. Norms are one thing, but these folks went beyond norm violations quite a while ago. If someone is going to ignore the actual law and do whatever they want until the Supreme Court calls them on it, changing the law doesn’t help.
Also, I’d like think that at this point “Trump got away with it” does not set a new norm.
I think we should really judge governments by their actions and stop labeling them democracies, if they do such things that don't look like democracies at all.
They will rename it The Free Democratic Republic of America.
We already do that, but we're just selective about it. After all, how many modern autocratic nations identify themselves as undemocratic?
I love when a Republican does something awful the response is "but what about if Democrats do that same awful thing to us!" as opposed to discussing and admitting that the Republicans did something awful.
The only way you convince Republicans it’s awful is by reminding Republicans power can be abused in both directions.
How I wish this was true... Every single time we experience something (and of course lately it feels like a daily experience) I would be in a discussion at some point with a Republican and would come with super-solid counter-examples like "imagine 2029 and President AOC doing ____" - it just never works...
The democrats don't tend to abuse power back. The SCOTUS ruled presidents have immunity for prosecution for official acts, while Biden was president. He did nothing with the power.
I legitimately wish the Democrats were half as radical as Republican propaganda makes them out to be, then at least we might get something out of it before the inevitable right-wing purge.
I think you're misinterpreting the discussion here. Democrats are precommitting that they are going to do the same awful thing; when the time comes, I will be contacting my legislators demanding that they do to OpenAI or SpaceX whatever is done to Anthropic now. It's outrageous that Sam Altman would step in to try and benefit from the political persecution of his main competitor and we must ensure that he regrets this.
Oh. Before your comment I completely misunderstood "Democratic administrations". I understood it to mean administrations of countries that are democratic, not an US administration that is dominated by the Democratic party.
I think a good play by the Democrats would be to say that if they get into office they're going to investigate all these deals as potential bribery, fraud and corruption and that any business leaders that appeared to benefit from contributions might be prosecuted. That would be a laugh, I'd love to see how quickly the excuses start rolling in.
And then don't be surprised when even more money flows to their opponents.
Bold of you to assume Democrats are going to be allowed to govern again.
Yeah, now that this door is cracked open, it's now possible to decapitate SpaceX, which is at least as natsec-critical as Anthropic. The owner is a drug addict, has business interests in China, and is a Russian sympathizer (recall all the restrictions on Ukraine using Starlink), which all together is way stronger evidence for SCR designation than anything Anthropic has done. They're quickly going to come to regret opening this can of worms, but what else is new.
Trump isn’t planning on ever leaving office before his death. His sycophants will just say yes in the hopes of unconditional pardons. They know they’ll never hold a position of power again so they’re grabbing everything they can while they can.
> That’s ultimately why Ted Cruz spoke out about the Kimmel cancelation. It doesn’t take long until those powers are turned against you.
Meh, I think it's entirely asymmetrical in this era. Democrats aren't good for much, but they're very good at respecting norms.
Trump is willing to do completely unprecedented, vindictive, and malicious things because he's so popular with so many people who are either checked out, nihilistic, corrupt, or just completely unconcerned about the concept of good governance.
It's not a pendulum where there's some super-corrupt Democrat waiting in the wings to do the same things upon their enemies, this really is the Republican party openly embracing kleptocracy and lawlessness.
Like gerrymandering, I have the strong suspicion that Trump voters won't be incentivised to vote for norm respecting leaders until a Dem does very Trumpian things to their side. I'm thinking firm 2nd Amendment reform enforcement with a rapidly resourced federal agency. Then, standards will be rapidly rediscovered.
What people seem to refuse to accept is that democrats won't have another chance, any time soon. It's done and gone. Count one or two generations, at a minimum, under the new Epstein class regime, before people may try to rise.
If democracy in the US falls apart, it will take an event of World War 3 scale to fix this.
But thinking of it, your estimate might still hold under that premise.
As a European, I have still hopes for the US though. The western world is already reorganizing itself without the US in the center, but we and the world in general still need the US as being more of an ally than an adversary (at the moment, it's more of an adversary to the western world, sadly).