# ...and now we see what is possible

Nov 6, 2024

Every 70 years America goes through a revolutionary transition. Washington, Lincoln, FDR, now?

The Republicans now control the Presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Is that everything? Does government power lie there, like we are told, or is it all secretly elsewhere? This is likely the best chance we’ll get to find out.

In retrospect, I’m very impressed with how Elon did the Twitter transition, and I’m grateful to have had a front row seat to that history. It made me reconsider how power works. He has an army of competent lieutenants, and he tasked them with doing a variety of things.

I regret not seriously trying to fix search, I didn’t really understand at the time what he was asking or why. I thought I was there to reverse engineer the mess of a codebase, while in reality just having people try to build features and seeing what breaks is a better strategy. I’m not very good at being a follower, I need to deeply understand why, and I’m sorry I didn’t until later.

I am much more conservative, whereas he seems to operate at the edge of leverage. Just look at how he went all in on this election. This is something I struggle with with respect to my own comparative lack of success. I am not all that open to risk, even when the downside isn’t close to life ending. While I believe very strongly in my ability to use a process and make continuous forward progress, it’s a slow process. I want to take more risk, but when I think it through my ideas for risk often just feel foolish.

I really hope Donald Trump understands the need for radical change of the US government (on the order of firing 80% of the people), and also understands that he can’t do it without Elon’s help. So that’s obstacle one, does Elon get free range to operate?

Even if so, this isn’t Twitter, and it may not work. I frequently think about if it’s possible to shut Google down, like does anyone have the ability to do this? Twitter was in a position where it could be purchased, no one is rich enough to buy Google. You could get a coalition of capital, but could you?

If you can’t shut it down, you don’t control it. While Elon could have shut down Twitter, can control of all three branches of government shut down the government? I’m not sure. And if not, where is the power actually?

It’s possible this will be another completely boring presidency. Stupid squabbles over normal stupid American Overton window things, and the same trillions of dollars going to the same people, just slightly more red.

It’s even possible that the Intelligence Agency Deep State shows up on your first day in the Oval Office, tells you who really runs things, and tells you what happens to you if you defy them. “Hello, we are the Deep State. Here are the bounds in which you can act. Step outside them, and we will kill you”

Which is another place the government differs from Twitter. As a state, they have a legitimate monopoly on violence, so is the deep state’s threat even wrong? “You just didn’t understand the President hasn’t actually been in charge for 60 years. Better for everyone that way. We have control of weapons that can end the world. We can’t trust something like that to the will of the people”

I’m not sure anyone really knows the answers to these questions. But if the Trump transition team reads this, I’d really really like to find out. The USGOV Files?

Will this be one of the historical once every 70 years administrations? I’ll know it is if the government budget is cut by over 50%. That shows you actually have power, and only then is it possible to make a new, good, government.