Comment on Sam Bankman-Fried is angling for a pardon from Trump
Armand1@lemmy.world 5 days ago
The requirements to get pardoned under the current administration are:
- Be white
- Be rich or high profile
- Be generally aligned with the right
- Claim your incarceration was politically motivated (it almost never is)
Your crime does not matter. Trump will accuse foreign refugees of being drug dealers and violent criminals, then pardon drug dealers and violent criminals if they were white and high profile enough (Google Ross Ulbricht as an example).
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
It’s gotta be authoritarian right though… I can’t see a pro-immigration, pro-choice, pro-gun, anti-tariff, anti-corruption (generally pro-freedom, that thing republicans pretend to like) libertarian getting anywhere with trump, it wouldn’t surprise me if a tankie got along better given they’re into most of the things trump likes
Armand1@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I disagree. Most of the people Trump has pardoned, helped or gotten along with are libertarians.
They’re millionaires / billionaires who hate taxation and regulations because it gets in the way of their ruthless means of making money.
Trump is more than happy to help them to do that. He runs the government like a quid-pro-quo crime syndicate where you can buy yourself favours, including getting out of jail.
His authoritarianism only targets the poor; whatever scapegoat-du-jour the far-right hate today (trans, LGBT, minorities, immigrants); and anyone that tries to protect them.
He needs votes to stay in power, and since he can’t appeal to the left because everything he does is diametrically opposed with them (regulation, social spending, taxation of the rich) he has to pander to the far-right to keep a majority. Even if he is likely more right than far-right himself.
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
There’s a difference between libertarians and republicans looking to make more money. Most of the supposedly anti-taxation anti-regulation billionaires just want less tax for them and fewer regulations for their business; everyone else and especially imported products can be taxed more to give the billionaire’s company more subsidies, and regulations to prevent competitors from growing or starting up is even more welcome. Even when it comes to personal freedoms, they don’t care and will gladly support the government in reducing those freedoms if it earns them some sway.
This all goes directly against the libertarian principles of government non-intervention in the free market people’s personal lives, both of which are vastly more important than just reducing taxes, which supposedly comes as a side effect later (even if in reality taxes would probably stay the same as you’d need to provide more assistance to low income people)
This isn’t to say that libertarians are necessarily noble or right or whatever, just that saying it’s about reducing taxes and giving power to corporations is buying in to the direction that corporations are trying to move the ideology in
theangryseal@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Also this. I doubt he will forget it.
youtu.be/ya6-_OA4As0?si=Km7flbD0KOXeZ381