This Needs Fixin'

Can we please have no more arguing that Musk needs to stop coup-ing because breaking the State will hurt people?

They already know it will hurt people.

For many of them, hurting people is actually the goal.

They don’t actually care (or even know) about the historical discourse on the role of the State, or even very much about the actual U.S. legal system.

They only know that the system is expending resources for things that they don’t like, and they want to stop that.

They don’t know what’s “illegal” any more than they know what’s “socialism”.

When they say a department is “corrupt” they just mean that it does things they don’t like.

They’re … uncomplicated … that way.

So when a journalist writes that USAID being shuttered means that millions of people will go without mosquito netting in Africa, they don’t think “oh no; we should fix that”, they think “good; we shouldn’t be paying for that anyway”. It needs to be said, because it’s true, but it’s not going to stop them.

The breakage is the point.

What has stop them (or there’s no United States anymore) is continually pointing out (by journalists in the press and by lawyers in the courts) how what they’re doing is actually illegal.

It is illegal for Musk and His Minions to have access to the core computer systems of the Treasury; it’s illegal for Trump to fire an Inspector General without 30 days notice; it’s illegal for “DOGE” to hook up their own servers inside government offices.

Yes, shuttering USAID is stupid and will hurt people but being stupid and hurting people that way is not itself illegal. Musk taking control of USAID’s computer systems, stopping payments and locking the staff out of the building is illegal.

The fact that it’s illegal is what makes it a coup.

Musk did not win any election, and was not properly appointed to any legal administrative role that would allow all these shennanigans. His Minions are not legally credentialed for anything they have access to. The Inspector Generals were not legally fired.

They could, potentially, have done all of these things legally; really. They got enough votes in the right places and that’s how this system works: you win the elections, you get a chance to change the laws.

The Republican party did win the Presidency and majorities in Congress in the last election; they do in fact have the ability to legally shut down USAID. They’d have to do it by changing the actual law that governs USAID, but they could do it.

But they didn’t and that’s why they must be stopped.

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