Trump's administration and Republicans in general in office are attempting to use the government shutdown as a way to "purge" many departments.

[cwebber@social.coop]

Trump's administration and Republicans in general in office are attempting to use the government shutdown as a way to "purge" many departments. And they're being explicit about it: they're planing on purging any departments they see as "left leaning" (ie providing social services), purge "left leaning" employees, and plan on consulting with the architect(s) of Project 2025 to execute this plan https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/oct/02/government-shutdown-trump-democrats-latest-updates

[cwebber@social.coop]

It's good that the Democrats didn't cave on the budget. But that doesn't mean that Trump and company get to do this.

It could backfire, if people push back. They're overplaying their hand.

But if there's not enough pushback, then we're really in trouble, because this will effectively be a second major purge of America's institutions. The DOGE wave was already bad enough.

[cwebber@social.coop]

I've been watching on Bluesky and fedi both, and I will say that I think there's been much less attention and alarms raised on the fediverse about how bad things are going.

Y'all the last week has been INCREDIBLY BAD, especially the meeting on Tuesday. Maybe I should make a thread about it. We are so beyond red alert right now.

EDIT: This isn't to say Bluesky is great and the fediverse isn't great. Y'all know I don't think that. It's me explaining why I'm raising more alarms today.

[firebreathingduck@social.vivaldi.net]

@cwebber

I saw a lot of coverage of Hegseth and Trump's speeches here.

Now I just need to remember who I saw it from, so I can recommend it to you.

But at least some corners of the fediverse weren't silent about this at all.

[socketwench@masto.hackers.town]

@cwebber My anthropology senses suggest that this is an audience difference rather than a disinterest. Alarm has filtered through on the federated feed, but fedi offers more compartmentalization than Bsky, so the panic doesn't virally spread as fast.

Worry on fedi *preceded* that on Bsky too, as soon as the meeting was announced. This suggests more intentionality in posting here, but also more clicktivism on Bsky.

At least, that's my read on the patterns I've seen.

[darnell@one.darnell.one]

@cwebber What is astounding to me is that they allowed the media (who they despised) to actually broadcast the meeting live to the masses: https://www.youtube.com/live/ZmPy_PHhyi8

That one feat is brazen to me, as it means that they are either cocky & naive, or believe they have enough “chess pieces” in place for the final checkmate.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@firebreathingduck Yeah, just less noisy than I would expect

[cwebber@social.coop]

@socketwench Yes, I don't mean to say that fedi is less politically oriented than Bluesky, but rather that I expected to see a stronger response than I did, and so I felt like I should write some things here.

[mainec@fromm.social]

@cwebber @socketwench one thing observed and so far attributed to my own two bubbles was more US ppl on bluesky, more European ppl on my fedi bubble.

As non US myself I found https://not-a-tech-bro.ghost.io/we-dont-need-no-water/ helpful to understand what's happening and paths ahead. So thank you for adding your perspective.

[socketwench@masto.hackers.town]

@cwebber Yeah...audience difference. I think the most interesting thing was how on BSky a lot of people performatively posted about being from an admin reviled "organization". And here people just kinda rolled their eyes at BSky collectively for it.

With a network's popularity, so does performativity. And a *lot* of USians thing that's the entirety of political engagement. More than one fedi post had better ideas.

[cwebber@social.coop]

@socketwench It's also just that more of the journalists covering these things are on Bluesky than they are on fedi, so more stuff gets boosted there.

There are a lot of thoughtful takes here though, the flavors are a bit different