On the off chance other Americans were unaware of this: Other countries are democracies too (and many are better functioning)
> because private citizens can voice their disagreement
I'm not sure that's true anymore in the US. At least not without fearing repercussions.
I'm from the UK, everyone I've met in the NHS has good intentions but the system itself means the standard of care is very poor. I have no option to go elsewhere with my £'s if a receptionist is extremely rude to me or a doctor won't listen.
Not to say the US system is perfect, just that adding even more government intervention (and associated plunder) by making healthcare universal, is perhaps not the answer.
In the UK, private healthcare is very much an option if you have the £.
IMO universal healthcare is awesome as the final safety-net that provides critical care, no matter your financial or employment situation. Yet it doesn't need be the only option. If businesses or people with money want to pay more to get care faster from private sector, that's okay too. It's how the system works here in Finland.
* private is good for better rooms, more scenic views, personalised spa like service and near immediate access to non life essential procedures
* public keeps the majority of people alive and triages procedures, you can get overnight heart stent surgery for free if required, might have to wait a few months for non critical knee surgery.
That whole intro is whack, really;
There are many things that I or Anthropic or most of you would look at as mass domestic surveillance, that are legal, and it is DoW’s position that it’s their job and duty to do everything legal to protect our country, including those things.
Some other Americans (there is some overlap) also think that the US is so large and diverse that essentially its States are their own countries and the US is more like its own continent, and talking about the American _nation_ or even _country_ is meaningless. It is a union of States (though it is rare that someone argues that the US is not a country).
North Korea is officially a republic, but it's closer to a hereditary, absolutist monarchy in practice. The UK is officially a constitutional monarchy, but in practice not all that much would change, if they demoted the royal family.
It's AI narrated, but at this point if I heard Zvi's actual voice I think I would be confused. It's really well done, and uses different voices for each new person being quoted. It also has really good narrated image descriptions.
Zvi's articles are literally exhaustively long,l - before I was able to listen to them I got tired trying to read the whole thing. Now it's my favorite way to keep up with AI.
"I am 100 years old and my young wife's lover has discovered Claude Code. I am allowed to sit in the cuck seat whenever he pleases my wife. But what really energizes me is to watch him code: He is sitting in the programmer's cuck seat watching Claude Code work and I am sitting in the meta cuck seat watching him watch Claude. It keeps me awake at night. This isn't just evolution;;;it's revolution!"
(See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47282777 for the marketing inspiration)
More fundamentally, it's hard to convey just how much better a government that wages wars but ostensibly says that they're bad is than a government that gleefully does so. I'll take a flawed democracy that partakes in immoral operations over an openly-imperialist autocracy any day of the week -- as should we all!
I welcome the de-1984-ification of governmental functions.
Its clear that Trump wants to be at war, with their interventions, so, why not?
I'm sorry, but I think both parties would actually agree on the fact that Trump is doing a lot of "out of the ordinary" for an American president.
No other president after WWII has reduced federal workforce by >8% (DOGE), and then rehired a bunch. No other US president ordered the capturing a head of state (Venezuela) and framed it as a law enforcement action. No president has ignored congress or the constitution like Trump has (tariffs, ICE, Greenland).
He uses executive orders a lot more than previous presidents: ~209 per year in his 2nd term. The next highest are Truman (113/year), Carter (80/year) and Kennedy (75/year).
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
only congress can change the name.
They actually don't. The official name is still the Department of Defense and only Congress can approve a real name change.
The Trump Executive Order just gives the department permission to use the Department of War name without actually changing the name of the department from the Department of Defense.
That said, despite being anti-Trump I'm fine with calling it the Department of War, it seems a lot more honest.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by a hollow promise from Trump at this point.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by a hollow promise from Franco at this point.
Maybe they didn't have clean hands?
I keep thinking what's the psychology behind this that makes it work and if they are mostly in on the act or if they really rely on many "useful idiots" like their political opponents keep suggesting.
The discussion around useful idiots became concerning for me as I'm learning to respect people even in the most "don't look up"-like situations, trying to understand their individual motives without judging them. The main problem in political discussions, I figured, is the fact that we have 2-3 groups we try to fit people into.
Wow, I made that digress quickly :)