How absurd. It’s not about creating fear. It never was.

Right. And the fines will continue, lol.

Even when they had the slogan, it was, don’t be evil. That’s a very low bar, because it’s relative to other tech companies. As long as they were less evil than Microsoft, they could pat themselves on the back.

If the goal were actually not to do evil, they would have to look at each individual action and consider whether it’s ethical. That’s something they have never done and of course they’re not going to start doing it in the future.

Ignoring people with power does not negate their power. Don’t confuse powerless online trolls with powerful societal figures. Please, please don’t.

Not really though. He’s lying about leaving, of course.

We all know Musk is lying. He doesn’t plan on leaving. There’s too much power.

What’s kind of amazing is that so many articles don’t point this out in the title or the first sentence. I really wonder why. When you know the person is a liar and they are in a situation like this, with a strong motive to lie, why in heck would you not make that the subject line?

Or, if you want to be polite about it, you could write a headline that says something like “Musk supposedly considering retiring, but actions speak louder than words”.

Exactly. There’s no way he would leave, there’s too much power.

Oh, he won’t leave. I don’t believe it for a second. There’s too much money and power. He is going to milk the insider connections for as long as he can. But he might adjust his position to try to get the pressure shifted to others.

Of course there was some good legislation along the way. Nobody is denying that. But the crisis we face now is there because the Democrats decided to ignore the danger. It really is that simple…

You can start with Citizens United. You can talk about the Dems after 9/11, the illegal drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, how the Dems celebrated the human rights violations then, which leads us to El Salvador today. You can talk about stacking the courts, which was a plan publicly announced in the 90s, that the Dems never seriously tried to stop, leading to the current Supreme Court…

If you want to say, “Well, the Dems are less evil,” then great, many people partly agree. But that’s not good enough. They fucked us all over by not stopping the Republicans from doing really horrible shit, even though we all knew what was coming. Maybe in a few years we can write on Biden’s tombstone “Not quite as evil as Trump.” Would that make anyone happy? Is that something to be proud of?

No, my friend, you’re wrong. The Washington Democrats do make it worse. They (most of them) are willing participants in making life worse for the average American, and they know it, and they don’t care.

Oh no, I entirely disagree. The majority of Washington Democrats are right in the corporate center. They aren’t working to make life better for the average person. If they were, why didn’t they seriously push for universal healthcare, raising the minimum wage, or regulating big banks and other monopolies?

(I know, you’re going to say the Republicans stopped them, but everyone who actually remembers when the Democrats had the majority knows better than that. But even if we’re mistaken, like our memories are entirely false, that would only show that the Democrats have the power to stop Trump right now, which they’re failing to do… Either excuse only goes to prove the aforementioned claim.)

I would still take blocking progress to the left over concentration camps every time

Um, blocking progress to the left was a major step in creating the concentration camps. That’s how it works, my friend. We’ve been saying this for several decades. Maybe one of these days the message will get through… Not today, though.

The courts made him immune for official acts, but there is an interesting and relevant legal question of whether his actions here qualify as official. There’s a reasonable argument that kidnapping people in direct violation of a court order is not an official act.

If you look at absolute immunity as it applies to judges, you do find edge cases that are somewhat similar to this one. Absolute immunity doesn’t cover everything, and the only way to find out what it covers is to go to court.

Your conclusion doesn’t make much sense, does it? You’re saying that voters in Ohio and Florida are single issue voters, and that one issue is guns? I just don’t believe it. But if you have some data to support your claim, by all means.

No he won’t.

I think you made that mistake of ending your sentence too quickly. Maybe you meant to say it would not have an impact on Trump’s actions over the next week or two. But in general, quite obviously it would have a huge impact.

That’s not to say that democracy would prevail. Nobody knows that. But the impact would have been real. And if you disagree with me, then why are we here in the first place? I think we’re here because we all know that the ruling would have a gigantic impact. It would have clarified the fact that Mr. Orange has effected a coup d’etat. That’s different from saying that he would be stopped, of course, but if you think there’s no possible way to make the situation better than why are you bothering to write here in the first place.

Some of what you said makes sense but the problem is their position will never get stronger. They will never have more marshals than they have right now. And there will be fewer people in the military that support them in the future, because Trump is working hard to replace many military leaders. And they know all of this, which means they are cowards or they believe that Trump should be the dictator that he currently is.

Actually prosecuting a sitting president was always nearly impossible. The immunity thing has to do with what happens after the president is no longer in office, doesn’t it? Also, he only has absolute immunity for official acts. So then the question is what constitutes an official act.

And realistically the Supreme Court will eventually reverse itself, assuming that the democracy somewhat survives another decade, which is a good question. Because their ruling about absolute immunity just made no sense. But even if you think it did make sense, there are so many cases that have to go to court to be resolved. If the courts rule against a specific action and the president reads the court order and then does the bad action anyway, does it count as official? I think we can argue that it doesn’t, because the courts specifically clarified that it’s not allowed. But the president’s attorneys would argue the opposite. So then it has to go back to the Supreme Court.

Assuming Trump stays in good health long enough to leave the White House, I think it’s unavoidable that the above situation will occur.

Well, he’s tried to remove Harvard’s statuses, but that’s going to go to the courts very soon. And I have no idea how that’s going to play out… It’s not Harvard against Trump, it’s every university in America against Trump.

/s/probably/definitely