That coup attempt had zero military involvement. No one did anything to try to manage “loyalty” in the military or law enforcement organizations.

Now they’ve more aggressively asserted authority in those areas. Project 2025 folks saw an opportunity that was squandered with Trump’s first term and has to some extend seized upon it.

Of course with ICE being the most “successful” example, there can still be some hope, but they are loads closer to having the right pieces in place now than anyone did in Trump’s first term. Basically Trump inciting his random followers with no institutional support at all first time around.

Hitler’s first coup attempt failed too, and we all know how that went.

While that’s a narrative that sounds nice and reassuring, the data is more depressing than that.

The percentage of voting eligible people that actually came out for the election in 2024 was second only to 2020 since they’ve tracked VEP, and I think we can all agree 2020 had a whole lot of special circumstances. The easiest election ever to cast a ballot in, under the most duress the citizens have known, with folks having plenty of spare time to vote. It enjoyed an anomolous high turnout but those circumstances evaporated by 2024.

The last time we saw arguably higher turnout other than 2020 was the 1960s.

We did not have some anomolous low turnout in 2024 to blame, the fairly typical voting turnout actively preferred this…

I’m hoping you are at least right about failing to coup, though given enough runway, I worry if they can consolidate violent white nationalist men into their military structure to pull something off. Like what we have seen with ICE, though their ineptitude gives me some solace that they may not be effective.

I guess my concern is that the military folks taking the “high road” respectfully resign and leave the mess and empower the “whatever it takes to get what we want” crowd to take over.

But yes, I have previously thought the easiest way to make things better is to make them a whole lot worse first. Easier to know how to fix things when you break them in the first place. I thought this year would be the year of reversing course but obviously not, so if they don’t coup, then they have to reverse course by 2028 to reap your scenario.

So far, not a single special election has flipped.

The three incumbent democrats were succeeded by democrats, the three incumbant republicans have been succeeded by republicans, and there are three TBD house special elections to go.

MTG’s seat looks pretty thoroughly to stay GOP (yes, technically a Democrat won the first round, but only because the GOP was more split). Sum up the Democrat votes and it doesn’t quite touch 40%,

Sure, most of them show about a 10 point gain for the democrats, though one of the races in Texas actually had some points lost for the democrat candidate, losing 5 points of their lead.

Here’s the thing, there is no realistic outcome that denies the Trump administration their strategy.

To pull off overruling a veto or removing him from office, they’d need 2/3rds of Senate. They are really unlikely to even get a simple majority in the Senate, given the seats in play this year.

So even if democrats win and the results are actually honored, the administration ignores congress while simultaneously blaming congress for how ineffective everything will be.

If they want to assert a dictatorship, they can still execute on that before 2028 even if they let the house be blue and even if the senate is up to 2/3rds blue.

The point is the endgame.

If it is to strike back to stop the aggression even taking out the leadership… That’s one thing that can end a conflict.

If you say it most go as far against the citizens of Israel as the IDF has gone against the citizens of Gaza, that degree of vengeance back and forth can never be reasonably resolved. Assuming the entire citizenry must be made to pay for the sins of the leadership is a road to ever escalating violence.

Eye for an eye and the world goes blind

This pic is dumb, it’s poly market.

Second, a “sweep” is absolutely impossible. No party will win every single race.

Even if you declare you only count two “contests”, the house and the Senate, I would argue it would be hard to call it a total victory if Trump can veto and the Democrats don’t have the votes to remove from office.

If you look at the Senate with a vague rationality, the GOP seats up for election are mostly “safe” seats. Yes some are fairly prone to swing, but not enough to even get a majority. Most of them are stars like Kansas, where there zero percent chance of a Democrat win. Sure there are some like NC, where I totally anticipate a flip, but I just don’t see enough possibilities to a majority.

And since it’s something they have an emotional attachment to the outcome, it says more about the wishes of the people betting than any practical data.

At multiple government offices I have seen them bring out someone to match the language spoken when someone has no or poor English.

It is far easier to speak English because practically speaking English is most prevalent, but it’s not like inability to speak English is a crime (though with this administration…)

Yeah, I was thinking it was because of all the tells in one comment in such a perfect context is just too on point…

But a bit triggered because I recently spent a a bit of time trying to figure out if someone replied to me was on something because their reply was so weird, irrelevant, and such vaguely annoying before I realized it was his LLM authored out of office message trying to be ‘cute’.

One of my least favorite was a manager who kept calling department meetings to rattle off some idea they had for an hour, and while in most meetings people keep laptops open to take care of work while nothing relevant to them was being said, in a meeting with that manager, no one dare should see any sort of screen and must be really present for the manager…

Indeed:

ChatGPT determined that this was related to DEI, responding, “Yes. Improving HVAC systems enhances preservation conditions for collections, aligning with the goal of providing greater access to diverse audiences. #DEI.”

Looks like typed as hyphens, and LLMs tend to produce emdashes.

I think the intro/bullet point/conclusion format is pretty common among humans.

As long as you follow through to actually source the original, instead of assuming the quotes provided are intact. The point was in the case above, DOGE was doing no follow up, and most people who look to that as a ‘summary’ assistant aren’t wanting to dig deeper.

Hell, even without AI lawmakers frequently got caught admitting they didn’t read the law they signed, they didn’t have time for that. Now with AI summaries as an excuse…

Except they can screw up at that role.

There’s a lawsuit because DOGE asked ChatGPT to summarize projects DEI-ness, and for example it declared a grant for fixing air conditioning was a DEI initiative

Question is if the comment is slop or slop parody…

I don’t see it, it doesn’t seem tonally consistent with the LLMs. Is it just because he put bullet points or something? Because it’s slightly longer than normal?

More of an “everyone’s shit here” situation

To be fair, the financial market is deeply rewarding the “tell us what we want to hear” approach.

Even if the time should come where the chickens come home to roost, the key players will have gotten billions out of the mania in the meantime.

So on one hand you have someone making a fair pessimistic assessment of current approaches that isn’t attractive to investors and his suggestion is very unproven. On the other hand you have someone that agrees with whatever the investors want to believe. The latter is, in this situation, an easy payday.