by Will Bunch

The newest dystopian thriller that everyone is talking about these days is a little hard to swallow, even by Hollywood standards. The supervillain is an almost cartoonish sort: The world’s richest man with a drug habit, 11 scattered kids, and a penchant for sleeping on couches (if at all). With his posse of young male tech groupies, he uses his billions to first buy the political discourse, then a greedy puppet president, and finally, through him, the levers of government.
It’s almost too late when the masses learn the villain’s real purpose: To replace the flawed humanity of democracy with machines designed by an unaccountable tech elite. And the heroes of our story — a gaggle of activists, outsider journalists and mid-level politicians who realize the truth — are running out of time.

This unbelievable plot line is our reality, now playing out in Washington, D.C., and coming soon to a closed federal office or downsized university near you. The blitzkrieg by Elon Musk and his small cult of 20-something dude-bro minions against the federal government — crushing foreign aid and consumer protection, threatening the Department of Education and seeking a chokehold over the entire federal payment system — has left everyday Americans dazed and confused. And we’re just three weeks into the Donald Trump presidency that has enabled the $400 billion man.

The rapid onslaught by Musk and his pseudo-government agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has happened in a scattershot, unpredictable way that has also left the Beltway media in the dust. Few, if any, seem to understand what Musk, DOGE, or their hands-off patron in Trump truly want. It’s true that massive cuts in the programs that empower middle-class Americans will mean more money for things that Musk, Trump and their allies want, including more tax cuts for the super-rich and a large deportation army. But a community of folks who pay attention to Silicon Valley — the new center of power, not Washington — says the bigger idea is darker and much more sinister.

“This isn’t a spontaneous coup — it’s the culmination of a dangerous ideology that has been meticulously developed since the 2008 financial crisis, one that sees democracy itself as obsolete technology ready to be ‘disrupted,’“ a veteran Silicon Valley executive, Mike Brock, wrote in a recent essay, The Plot Against America. He explained: ”DOGE is not about efficiency. It is about erasure. Democracy is being deleted in slow motion, replaced by proprietary technology and AI models. It is a coup, executed not with guns, but with backend migrations and database wipes."
That’s dangerous, because most of us — voters, but also the media, Congress and other watchdogs — are much better at understanding a violent coup where cops are beaten and attacked, as on Jan. 6, 2021, than “backend migrations.” But longtime watchers say the dangerous techno-fascism behind Musk’s DOGE has a long-time patron in Musk’s ally and fellow South Africa-raised billionaire, Peter Thiel, and a key inventor: Curtis Yarvin.

A 51-year-old computer engineer and blogger with a following going back to the 2000s, Yarvin is unknown to most Americans but his radical ideas have grown deep roots in some MAGA circles. In many ways, his views are deeply problematic on issues like race — telling the New York Times last month that Black people were worse off in their freed years right after the Civil War than when they were enslaved, for example. But Yarvin’s bigger ideas about the failure of democracy and the need for a kind of monarch, or a dictator, with the value system of technological elites — cemented after the 2008 financial crisis — have gained admirers that include Vice President JD Vance.

“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia,” Yarvin wrote under a pseudonym in 2012. Yarvin and a circle of “thought leaders” in Silicon Valley and other far-right communities believe that democracy is a kind of inefficient mob rule, broken beyond repair, but that a high-tech-flavored “creative destruction” could replace it with a notion of better government through computer engineering.

In explaining what Yarvin has also called “turbocapitalism,” Suzanne Schneider in the UK’s New European wrote: “The engineers...represent the triumph of instrumental reason in our new century. They fetishize efficiency and understand the democratic state as an impediment to the sort of ‘progress’ they desire.” Ultimately these ideas were adopted by billionaires with the power in an age of unlimited campaign spending to change America like Thiel, who notoriously wrote in 2009 that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Ideas from this extreme-right intelligentsia spent the last 15 years morphing, remarkably, into reality. These include controlling the flow of information (Musk buying Twitter for $44 billion in 2022), a Yarvin 2022 proposal called “RAGE” for Retire All Government Employees (thus, the DOGE-led push for mass resignations and firings of the federal workforce), and the more recent Silicon Valley embrace of cryptocurrency as a tool to disrupt the institutions of a comatose democracy. Now, Musk’s DOGE team is racing to replace the fired or locked-out civil servants with generative artificial intelligence in what a TechPolicy Press writer calls “an AI Coup,” because it “concentrates power with those who understand and control this system’s maintenance, upkeep, and upgrades.”

Normally, these fringe ideas would have stayed about 3,000 miles west of Washington, quarantined in their wealthy California bubble, but a perfect storm put this nightmare on the brink. For one thing, a majority of rank-and-file voters also lost faith in government as well as the institutions that support civil society, if perhaps for different reasons. Even more importantly, the anti-democratic ideas of Yarvin and Thiel found both an even wealthier ally in Musk and also a front man in Trump, the bridge with an ability to seduce MAGA voters, even as he agreed to cede enormous power to billionaires, in a Faustian bargain to gain four more years in the White House.

Trump’s “red Caesar” techno-monarchy is actually just high-tech tyranny. Government by AI isn’t more efficient, just inhumane, and it’s also a lie, because the real decisions aren’t actually being made by computers, but by the corrupted humans who program them. And their unbridled faith in Silicon Valley elites is often an excuse to govern America with the same foundations of white supremacy and misogyny that thrive in the tech world. The humans who pretend in the ethical purity of AI really just want more obscene wealth for themselves and the same impunity for their crimes that Trump has granted himself.

The masses of American people need to understand that we are already pawns in their experiment, and that a small band of billionaires and their disciples played the cruelest hoax of using a democratic election on Nov. 5, 2024, to push the start button on their program to end democracy. Humanity needs to fight back quickly, before their AI algorithm decides that on Nov. 7, 2028, your vote doesn’t matter at all.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

DOGE will Kristallnacht the IRS . . .macht uns frei!!

It’s not will, they already did

Here’s AIs view of the South Afrikaner
https://youtu.be/Zdsd522YzPQ?si=R1M18-OSCfkULp7L
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Worrrd . . .

Maybe use your own thoughts and words........even if it's hard

[QUOTE=detbuch Certainly not befitting of the constantly high quality vective that gushes daily from the lips of Democrats.

Ah, Musk . . . if only you were perfect . . . sort of like Biden, or Harris, or Schumer . . . et al.[/QUOTE]

Sackless hypocrites says it all and cannot be repeated enough.:crying:
We may have to rename TDS....as it doesnt cover the complete emotional and mental breakdown of grown men.

This what they are reduced to.......sniveling crybabies...making hitler comparisons means they are idiots. They have tried everything else to stop him and nothing has worked. Its all they have left and makes them look stupider everytime.

I guess then a simple question is, under Trump is the country moving more towards Hitler or a representative democracy.

I’ll wait.

Oh look, he can cut and paste misinformation. Most of those examples of “rampant waste” are either wrong or or simply policy decisions spun out of context. Nothing bad about investing to cultivate stability and western values. It makes the world safer and ensures American leadership.

Edit…it “did.”

If you really want to eliminate waste start with the hundreds of billions spent to service the debt on tax cuts for the top 1%.

Towards Hitler? Are you really this stupid? Ill wait....nah ...nevermind.
Hitler is all you got left in your toolbag.:rotf2:

You didn’t answer the question.

Reading comprehension problem.......you are regressing fast

Your question suggest you have no clue what hitler did......I dont answer stupid questions.

I didn’t think you would answer.

By the way..... You know that you are an embarrassment to the fine patriot in your avatar....dont you? Ill wait:wave:

Are you flirting with me? :heybaby:

Yes....I think we could at least be friends...without benefits

Marsh doesn’t grasp the irony as he says Hitler is all you have, when after a couple of threads and all these posts, he has only one thing to say. That one thing of course has nothing to do with the policy being discussed at the time, or the EA being stopped by the courts we are posting about, its only more of the same insults and venom. Like i said before he is a one trick pony, if only the weather was as predictable as his next response. Even if you pose a simple question he isn’t capable of an intelligent response, it’s insults, venom and deflection the mini me MO.

:wave:Heres GS trying to get his nose between my butcheeks again....didnt want to disapoint you:angel:

doesn't move me enough to really care in the grand political schemes of legislation that uphold or destroy the constitutional integrity of our system of government.

So what did Trump do in his first term to fix the above?


I have not heard the Musk version of this … nice cop out

How about this one

Hegseth says Biden’s IRS targeted him for a#^&‘sham’ audit
The defense secretary posted an undated IRS notice on social media. He offered no evidence that it was politically motivated.


Yep, conveniently after musk gets access to the IRS database.. telegraph in the future

Ah, Musk . . . if only you were perfect . . . sort of like Biden, or Harris, or Schumer . . . et al.

Last time I checked they were elected

Trump and Musk having a joint circle jerk on Hannity. I’m starting to question which one was elected.. either way Hannity is gonna give both of them a hand job… they’re not gonna get any hard questions no, they’re gonna answer any are both gonna monologue and they found all this stuff without providing any information

You have several
Sackless hypocrite
TDS (project much)
I haven’t seen an original thought from you in this thread, just claims that others are deranged about Trump while demonstrating that you’re deranged by him.
Kinda hypocritical, honestly I don’t care if you have a sack or not.

The felon and his co-president are currently engaged in a disassembly of the current government.
Claiming that it now consists of unelected bureaucrats
Hint pre Trump it had the fewest employees since the 70s
Their group of unelected bureaucrats are doing a number of things which are illegal and or unconstitutional.
They have now switched their claim to be that Musk is not in charge of DOGE.
So now we have a bunch of Musk followers and their bots installed in government led by who?
It’s been a little over three weeks that the FFOTUS and FElon have been in power and people are starting to realize what they are doing.
You might also figure it out, but you seem like that guy who’ll have a Trump tattoo on his back.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Tattoos are nonexistent in my family....a big family. But keep ass huming like the other fools

Deep thoughts
 

[QUOTE=Rmarsh;1247784]Looking for an original thought.
Are these the sum total of your beliefs?

No i got tons more for you to stew about... i wrote it and stand by everything ...its not cut and paste like your original stuff.
I am your new obsession?
You guys hang on my every word...don't ya. Thanks for your thorough research...you sure you didn't miss one?

This country's move to Lenin and Stalin and Hitler and Robespierre and the Kaiser started with the Progressive movement in the late 19th century and was put in high gear during the FDR administration and has dribbled, off and on, continuously since then with the rise of our administrative state.

The DOGE kind of stuff is the only serious attempt to begin dismantling that unelected administrative grip that has gotten a stranglehold on our representative democracy.

^^^^^this guy^^^^^
I'm bright enough to let him debate....he's mopping the floor......with common sense.
My approach has been less sensitive to.... feelings.

You two aren’t too bright are you?

The DOGE kind of stuff is the only serious attempt to dismantle that unelected Administrative state.

By using an unelected. musk. And questionable legal theories.

Even though republicans control the white house senate and the house..

And yet somehow, Republicans can’t seem to provide legislative ideas or solutions they resorted to the use of executive orders, which they all screamed were authoritarian and illegal and unconstitutional

Funny seeing people who claimed the they love the constitution but will fully ignore it when it’s convenient.


Hypocritical doesn’t even describe you 2. I’m going with delusional.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

In the Dark Ages if bad things happened and you had no wealth or land you had two choices, become a slave to a member of the ruling class or an outlaw.
Everything since then has been Progressive.
Musk and his fellow oligarchs would gladly reinstitute feudalism and be the ruling class, see Curtis Yarvin.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

When did you realize biden had dementia? You haven't answered.....my expectations are very low in your case

The Progressive movement was in response to the rise of corporations.
John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company came to control 90-95% of oil refineries in the U.S.
Journalists, such as Ida Tarbell, exposed the nefarious methods used by John D. Rockefeller to push out honest competitors.
The government responded to harmful corporate behavior through the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which sought to limit large corporations’ ability to fix prices and exclude competition. Under the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, the Sherman Act was vigorously enforced through over 40 antitrust suits.

Never mind that since the 1970s almost all of our small businesses have been decimated by corporate agglomeration to the detriment of our middle class, today we have Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, Google….
And Musk has effective control of our government while FFOTUS with his obedient MAGA followers in Congress think they can control him.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

The mandate??

Gallup data from late January showed that Trump has historically high disapproval numbers for so early in the term (48 percent this year, and 45 percent disapproval in 2017).

No other president is close. (Biden was at 37 percent in 2021)

And if you add in his co-president it’s worse
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

You still think the guys got dementia? The guy who passed pass legislation in four years then Trump did.. and played republicans at every turn…. and now you’re a medical expert. Let media’s Fox told you and you believe it.

And for the record I never wanted Biden to Run. For a 2nd Term

And he was 82 years old. And walked like one. You and others need to make up your mind

Was he a Napoleon of crime? Ya know the crimes you claim existed but never found. Or a demented old fool. You and republicans just changed his diagnosis to fit your lie



Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Kentucky’s underwater 12 people dead

Where are all the Republicans yelling where is FEMA or where is The President . Why is he ignoring Republicans.. hypocrisy at it’s finest..

This is why I called Republicans cowards and hypocrites they are unable to hold anybody to the same standard. They tend to hold other presidents of United States. Who aren’t republicans
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

The mandate?? The house Republicans has a smallest margin in their history..

Republicans know their base anre idiots. all they have to do is be lied to then they believe every word that’s spoken . Even after they have been shown it’s a lie
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Yeah, let’s go back to a time where four men controlled most of the wealth in this country. Maybe my youngest son can finally put down his Xbox controller and get that job in the mill he’s always been after :rollem::rollem::rollem:

For #^&#^&#^&#^&s sake

Article I, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, according to Chuck Grassley and the other Republicans serving in the Congress:

"All Powers to complain but only to complain herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States."
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Actually today’s population is roughly 3X what it was in 1910 so we could make it a dozen rather than 4.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jim Walton, Rob Walton, and Jensen Huang are worth 2 Trillion and that’s a greater concentration of wealth than at any time in American history.
In the past fifty years these same people have gained control of retail, housing, healthcare, media, heavy industry and manufacturing which they offshored.
Left alone they will set it up so our children will be born in a hospital they control, attend a for profit school, rent a home, get information from an entity they control, get food from a corporate farm they control, bank with an entity controlled by them but at least it won’t be socialism.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

I see that now Bannon is a RINO or would he be a MAGAINO?

Bronx bodegas are selling "loosie" eggs because of soaring MAGA prices

Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

And this all under the regime of the Progressive trend in our political system. How can this be? Are Progressives actually human? And capable of being paid off? Are they hypocrites, power mongers, Pretenders who grow rich at the trough of political power? Some of the Progressive grunts that took to the streets and protested early on may have been poor, but I don't know of any Prominent Progressive ideologue, early or current, or Progressive politician who is poor or "middle class. They seem to do quite well, much better than most, in their quest for some unattainable human equity.

Beyond filling their pockets and accruing power, I don't know what these grand Progressives do for the "middle class", or even the poor other than barely functional gifts.

On the other hand, the Rockefeller and Amazon and Tesla types create actual affordable products and jobs and wealth which can all be taxed to enrich the Progressive types.