• @Carrolade
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    14 hours ago

    Ah, I didn’t realize you were coming from a non-American perspective. I can’t speak for the usage of the term in other places, but here in America it was not in academic usage outside of discussions on conspiracy theories, where people in those circles would use it to refer to the part of the US government they suspected of orchestrating the assassination of JFK.

    Trump’s firings were not exactly unprecedented, either. Gerald Ford presided over an event that became known as the Holloween Massacre, where he did significant reshuffling within the DoD. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton also did their fair share of firings when they felt it was necessary. What made Trump special was the sheer hostility he demonstrated to the government he was supposed to be running, preferring to make decisions directly instead of delegating by frequently leaving leadership positions unfilled, and installing sycophants when necessary.

    The idea that there was some entrenched resistance to him is his propagandistic spin on the idea that our Separation of Powers restrain the President, preventing him from performing any actions that would be deemed illegal by Congressional law, of which there were many. Until the recent SC ruling that granted our President a king-like immunity anyway.

    He’s a professional salesman, though, it’s best not to fall for his bullshit and thinly veiled desire to run the country like a family business or cartel, with concentrated power in a single figure.

    • @BMTea
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      24 hours ago

      Trust me, we in this region know exactly what Trump means by “run the government like a business” - it means superficial transactionalism. I was living in the Gulf during his presidency, and everyone knew the Saudis were trying to buy him on the cheap LOL! In fact, that’s why some people in the region want him back, hoping that his unpredictablility, stubbornness, contempt and seeming aversion to getting the US into a war may actually lead him to snub Israel or at the least make it reconsider whether the US would follow it into a regional war. As it stands, I can’t blame them for thinking that. You cannot imagine the rage and anxiety that this latest massacre of Lebanese by Israel has created.

      • @Carrolade
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        14 hours ago

        Yeah, that’s unlikely when such a high percentage of his fanbase is Christian Nationalist, doing their best to fight back against their perceived evils in favor of Judeo-Christian rulership, while very conveniently forgetting that Islam is part of that same religious tree.

        They’re probably right that he wouldn’t follow Israel into a regional war, but I doubt Biden would either. Someone should remind them that despite Israel fighting many, many wars with US support, we have never deployed ground forces alongside them. We simply have no obligation to do so.

        Shooting down some missiles is one thing, sending arms sure, some drone strikes whatever, a lot of Americans still strongly support Israel and don’t mind all that. But putting our forces into ground combat would be broadly unpopular here.