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Why aren’t Democrats physically occupying government buildings?
I’ve been reading and watching a lot of left-wing content lately. A big topic of conversation is what exactly Democrats could do to slow down or stop Trump. The “mainstream” opinion is that Democrats can’t really do anything except sue, since they control zero branches of federal government. I disagree.
DC voted 90% for Kamala. Pretty much every federal employee is in danger of losing their job if Trump successfully consolidates power. They could collectively decide to simply not comply with Trump’s orders. He would have to blow all of his political capital on calling in the national guard while his allegedly illegal orders get litigated.
Look at this video from the other week purporting to show Congressional Democrats being “physically blocked” from entering the Department of Education. They aren’t even really trying to get inside. They could totally storm in if they wanted!
Has anyone chained themselves to their desk? Or better yet, to one of these mystical “servers” containing so much sensitive personal data? We saw more effective civil disobedience over Gaza than we are seeing over our own government.
I have two theories for this incompetence, but am eager to hear more:
All of the organizations and groups that typically organize and support these types of protests blew their entire budget on the presidential campaign. Then, money dried up as rich donors feared getting on Trump’s bad side.
After January 6, the Democrats focused their self-image around the idea of “procedure” and “doing things the right way”. This calcified to such an extent that anyone in a position of leadership is now incapable of forming and executing plans which do not conform with the collective PMC understanding of what is allowed or “proper”.
“Man carrying things” parodying the vibe change:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LWPhZu0EeXg
Then there was this posted by Cenk Uygur (the not so young anymore Young Turks guy):
https://x.com/cenkuygur/status/1892057431179477251
Didn’t have time to find the nyt story yet.
Pretty sure he is referencing this article. The Angle:
The last point is highlighted throughout.
There might be something to this. Channeling Scott from his "Dark Money in Almonds" piece, it's kind of remarkable how small amounts of money in politics make a big difference. Kamala's campaign was uniquely wasteful, but she still only spent a couple billion.
So I think there might be something to the USAID cuts being able to kneecap advocacy.
Let's say that $50-100 billion annually leaked from the federal government into partisan NGOs. That money might be earmarked for nonpartisan things, but it freed up other money for the NGO to pay protestors, buy ads on social media, etc... Even $1 or $2 billion spent on those activities might move the needle a lot.
Now, those same NGOs need every dollar they have to avoid laying off staff. The money for paid agitation is just gone, kaput.
I would just make a point that even modest cuts can paralyze many sorts of organizations.
A 10% cut in resources isn't just 'you can do 10% less.' While the deadwood theory of waste is that if you cut off the waste (and some small part of the good) the rest of the body can grow / work better, in a lot of contexts a 10% reduction in the ability of healthy parts of a system to operate creates complications for other, also, healthy parts. Due to how responsibility loads tend to flow (you hyper-specialize roles to certain people), this can create administrative/logistical chokepoints with non-linear effects.
To give a vague example, going from, say, 2 officials to 1 on Job X does not mean the 1 takes twice as long to do the same amount of work- it can mean 2.5x as long, since the burden-sharing between two allowed better efficiencies / redundancy / surge capacity / so on unavailable to the 1. Particularly when 'flat' requirements that apply to a administrative unit (at least 1 person from each directorate is represented at a meeting' are constant, which in turn takes up a larger % of the single person's man-hours.
Eventually the system may rebalance and be better, but depending on the compliance requirements for the remainder, you can sometimes cripple organizations by making them just barely able to sustain themselves, with little ability for organized efforts. Like a skeleton without muscle that was lost in the name of cutting fat, it can exist, but not necessarily move.
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I read you article
I partly understand the concern. Legislation may be much different from how it is described. Nevertheless "tax breaks for terrorists" is bad optics. Does any-one know the story behind this? The article discusses various groups
but doesn't join the dots on how accusations of "supporting terrorist organizations" could be weaponized against the groups mentioned. Perhaps there are other groups, not mentioned, that are more at risk?
Based on the groups involved and the act, my guess is that people in those organizations had some dealings with Palestinian charities. Being charitable, my guess would be that they did less than enough investigation into them, and are realizing that they might be in big trouble.
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