Anthropic irks White House with limits on models’ use

Dictatorial suggests a "ruler with total power". The US has three branches of government. That hasn't changed, ever.

Two of them jump at the command one the other one, one out of fear (because he has ended the careers of every rep that has crossed him), and the other has been packed with life-time-appointment sycophants who put loyalty to the cut over anything else.

Russia (or literally any other dictatorial tyre pyre) also has three branches of government and a token opposition, for all the good it does.

Just because you have a nice piece of paper that outlines some kind of de jure separation of powers, doesn't mean shit in practice. Russia (and prior to it, the USSR) has no shortage of such pieces of paper.

That's a ridiculous take. Seriously outlandish. The US has always had and continues to have three working branches of government. That is a factual statement because it is indeed a fact.

It’s not a fact, because it depends upon a subjective interpretation of the word “working.” Some might argue, for example, that if the President can cow Congress into subservience, then the three branches of government are no longer in balance with each other, and thus the constitution is no longer “working” as intended.

The definition of dictatorial government is either a single person or a small group of people. So there being three branches of government doesn't necessarily prohibit a government from being a dictatorship if they are all working together to enact their authoritarian control without constitutional limits.

But really this is just pointless semantics. It doesn't matter what it is called it is still a problem.

Technically (and legally) the USSR also had the same three branches of government; just all controlled by the same party.

It can be true that the constitution is not working as intended, AND the US is a far cry from a country like Russian in terms of it operating as a constitutional republic / democracy. It is not subjective to say the US is more of a democratic country than Russia.

The power of the purse is currently being usurped by the executive branch with no pushback from a republican congress, armed forces are being deployed to American cities, media corporations are being forced to have admin installed bias police, due process is a joke, museums are being forced to remove information the admin find objectionable. You can bury your head in the sand if you like but there are plenty of us who won’t.

I always think it's funny how people who have strong opinions based on nothing love to out themselves by just repeating that something is fact. clap clap We're all convinced, for sure! ;)

How do you explain Trump unilaterally renaming the Ministry of Defense, without legislative approval? Is it a “working branch” if their constitutionally granted power is easily sidestepped?

It's straight out of Charlie Kirk's playbook.

I think Russia was being used as an extreme example. It wasn't being lauded as a model nation, far from it.

Do you mean the Department of Defense? The U.S. doesn't have ministries.

Maybe not yet, but the current US president has lauded authoritarian Hungary as a model for the US.

Rome wasn't built in a day, you don't go straight from 2024 to throwing people out of windows overnight.

But you get there by doing exactly what's being done on a daily basis.

Depends on how he cows them into subservience. If he uses the threat of electoral defeat for opposing him, that's totally legitimate. If he uses his position as commander in chief to threaten them with force, that's different.

I couldn't care less because it has always been and always will be the department of war whether or not the letterhead says "Department of Defense."

the dod was not officially renamed to the dow. that would take an act of congress. he gave it a secondary title.

It does not matter how. The fact that he is able to do it at all illustrates a design weakness. Until recently, Presidents chose (consciously or otherwise) not to exploit that weakness. It doesn’t mean the weakness wasn’t always there.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly and crassly decided in favor of the current administration; among their decisions one to elevate the president above the law, and a carte Blanche for gerrymandering with a footnote that that is against the spirit of democracy.

The congress is dominated by the republicans, who have given up on every last shred of dignity and turned themselves into yes men that will approve anything Trump says, from a justified invasion of Greenland to how unnecessary it would be to publish the Epstein files.

And the executive branch currently hunts down government employees with an unsuitable personal opinion, takes jet plane bribes from foreign leaders, and tries to eradicate slavery and the Native American genocide from museums and school books.

Tell me about those three branches again. Right now, they have been perverted into a single tool to carry out the whims of an egotistic asshole backed by a powerful group of conservative activists.