Real World Crisis 🌎
IRS Chief Vows Revenge After Being Ousted by Elon Musk’s DOGE
“I’m just trying to do my goddamn job. They have no idea who they picked a f—king fight with.”
"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me."
-George Orwell, 1984
I used to think we were headed for 1984, but I feel we’re more in Brave New World territory. In 1984, no one exactly chose it. In Brave New World, we welcomed it, like how we are willing to pay a lot of money to carry tracking devices in our pockets because the tracking device is also entertaining, or we’re willing to slog through capitalism because we can get ripped on the weekend, etc.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."
I’ve always taken issue with compare the dystopias of brave new world and 1984, and especially with those who choose to bristle at and fear the Huxlean world more than the Orwellian. It shows a clear misunderstanding of fascism as an ideology, and how material forces, and state powers, actually act on people in societies. I guess it comes down to 1984 being more of a historical fiction of a society that hasn’t happened yet and it’s dominants political machine, while bravery new world is properly science fiction. I’m not saying that we don’t have issues with the little black sadness rectangles we keep in our pockets, just that the more pressing matter is the current operating governments that tie people to the rat chamber on a regular basis.
I read 1984 as a young teen, it was my favorite book. Decades later, around 2012 I read it again and then read Brave New World for the first time.
No book has made me cry after reading it, save that one. The crushing realization, even in 2012 that it was where we were heading really broke me. Imagine, even then I had no idea.
Both are reductive of We, which was written by one of the activists in the same circle as Mayakovsky during the Russian Futurist era that preempted the Bolshevik Revolution. Elon's companies, aesthetic, and even his dating history has strong parallels to one of the main characters.
Well, yeah, I didn’t mean it so absolutist. Idk,
I see us at a tipping point between the two. In BNW, trying to express a true self in connection with nature was at least a possibility. Now, it gets you marked in Elon’s database for a rat cage. I think we weren’t ready for the face cages, so many and so fast. A lot of us sit at a scary choice to repress aspects of our true, happy selves we’ve expressed publicly to continue, or whether to embrace masking and a split self again, like conceding to a personality disorder, to survive while knowing it will still destroy us, trapped at the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy. (Idk that’s just my kinda bummer opinion that still hopes if enough of us can stay the course in being our authentic selves instead of going back into hiding, we can overcome this, pls don’t come at me lol)
So much work to show up with money, take all the credit, fire the original founders, then completely neglect the role to put every digit in every American orifice they can discover, trying to get that next "shiny thing" bump. Super hard to walk directly through doors your Emerald Mine money opens for you. /S
He literally walked into a position of immense governmental influence entirely unelected and without any form of checks or balances. Who knows where that position and his overwhelming influence over the current president of the US leaves him in 4 years.
I think we all need to stop believing that he’s so rich. I think he has income problems and that’s why he’s so hellbent on making sure no one can audit him, investigate him, or anything else.
I suspect its less having the money and more that there's something big that happened and is under an NDA, or something that could happen. One of the primary things he's done is shut down any investigations into his companies.
All his money comes from borrowing against Tesla stock that is insanely overvalued. He couldn't actually cash out any significant amount of it or it would tank the company. He has massive loans because he fucked up and got forced to buy Twitter which is now next to worthless. Harris puts taxing unrealized capital gains in her platform and next thing you know Elmo is jumping up and down like a clown at Trump rallies and Twitter turns into a full on propaganda machine.
That's the guy we're letting rampage through our federal government right now.
And without any legal power to do so but they went along with it anyway. People Musk's computer club boys said "yOu'Re fiReD" to, stopped showing up to work. Why? That's one of the big mysteries around this thing, the fucking servile deference these assholes were shown.
You got it. After a certain point, more money doesn’t provide the hit it once did. Power is the next level up. Like moving from prescription meds abuse to hard drugs.
I think there is a third level... envy. The money, the power, the women... it's all to make other wealthy people envious. They want to be included by the true elite, but they dont have the personalities or the social skills to mingle with the old school upper class. Like when Trump wanted to be accepted by NFL owners but was rejected, so he helped start another league to compete with the NFL... and he got destroyed... again.
I think you've said something really deep here. Wouldn't it be just... something to see... if the world's richest man burned through all his money trying to feel like the world's most powerful?
He's a ketamine junkie narcissist who thinks life is just a simulation. He's the richest man in the world and he wants to play games. He's a threat to humanity and needs to be in jail.
He truly believes that being born a billionaire makes him smarter than literally everyone else on the planet, and that he’s doing us all a favor but we’re too stupid to recognize it.
I used to watch those sorts of horror movies where people go about defeating the monsters only to snap out of it and realise they actually just murdered all their friends. And i'd wonder how someone could be that detached from reality they genuinely couldn't see THEY were the one being the monster
I guess when you see it playing out in real life, you finally realise people can absolutely be that deluded
It's quite a few things I guess, humans are not rational creatures by nature you kinda have to smash it into them at a young age.
The rich these days, and in many periods throughout history, really don't interact with the world the same way as everyone else, and whilst a lot of us have to think and work hard just to afford and feed ourselves, they just don't understand the issue. If they want something, they can generally just get it easily, their only sacrifice is potentially time, which they have in abundance compared to everyone else. Take elon for example bitching that people don't wanna effectively live in the office at work, for him that's easy to put in 70 hours of work a week (not that I think what he does is actually taxing but it's not the point) the average person would have to do that 70 hours, plus potentially another 20+ hours of cleaning, maintenance, cooking, childcare, driving, etc etc. Musk does none of that, he has people to do that for him, plus, he can take a break whenever he feels like it without the fear of losing everything. I'm pretty sure that the only reason he wants to be at work is that's the only time anyone will actually hang out with him and he's not crushingly lonely...
Sorry for Offtopic, but - I don't know any movies like that and the concept sounds cool ... Share a good one? Also this sounds like a good concept for a VR horror game lol
For games, the Dead Space release for wii had an entire opening prologue that sees you fighting against necromorphs and insane crew, only to reveal at the end your player character was actually the one who snapped and killed everyone else.
Also i don't know if i'd say it's stellar, but Shrooms from 2007 has a final act that very much goes down this route.
Because there is a black hole where is heart should be.
It’s actually very sad, in a way. He doesn’t have real friends, he doesn’t feel real affection for his family, the only way he can gain anything resembling true happiness is by collecting life milestones that are wholly empty without people you care about to enjoy them with.
This is why taxing billionaires out of existence is not only good for society, it's good for the billionaires.
Just as a drug addict doesn't understand that drastically reducing their drug intake is actually good for them, billionaires will never accept that taxing them back into mere millionaires will bring about massive positive changes to both their lives and ours.
Him and Trump would be out of a Greek fucking tragedy if they weren't.... them.
They're so desperate for the cool kids to like them, and they're some of the most unlikeable people who have ever lived. The only people who like them (without being paid) are schmucks and booger-eaters and it eats them up inside.
Which again, would be sad if it was anyone else. I hope they both wake up more miserable every day.
Some people do like Trump though (for whatever reason), but absolutely no one likes Elon. MAGAs only like him because Trump likes him and everyone else hates him. It really is kind of tragic that he wanted to be liked so badly and he could never have that.
I would NEVER become a billionaire. Once I hit like $50 million I would cash out and live quietly on a beautiful island somewhere with golf courses. Who needs all that stress?
I’m pretty sure my “fuck off money” amount is just over $10M. Just enough to sustain my current life reliably and comfortably while doing whatever real work I felt like doing.
Anything more than that would go to giving other people a better life.
100k in actual money free for spending - I legit would not know what to do with. That's currently three times the money I have in total without bills paid in one year lol
If I became a billionaire I would go from town to town renovating public schools, funding libraries and food banks and hospitals... it's how I was raised. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked.
I think because they realize that they have everything they could ever want/money to buy everything they could ever want but they’re still unhappy and pathetic, and ~shockingly~, money didn’t fundamentally change the way they see themselves. For most of us, the pursuit of more money is something that, for better or for worse, keeps us moving. More money can help ease the burdens of everyday life expenses, more money can allow for more free time to rest and do the things we actually want to be doing, etc. But what about when you have more money than you could ever possibly conceptualize and you still feel shitty?
It could be simple self-fullfilment, like most narcissists do. He has already accomplished having all the money, being famous like a rock-star, making the babies. Whats left? Destroying the mightiest power on the planet? Now thats something!
He gets off on torturing the poors he grew up in apartheid South Africa using people as no less than cattle so he never got the chance to learn empathy
He thinks he is the richest and most important person on the planet.That his money can buy him into anywhere he desires and especially into the greatest country the United States and its White House. He has lost 100 billion dollars so far because of it and has no issues with the losses because he wants more govt contracts and fame. He just squandered all of Bill Gates net Worth. Idk who did his IQ test but so far he is a bullshit con that got lucky on investments. Both him and Donald are dumbasses.
I think the only thing rich people can get out of life other than doing whatever they want is power. Unfortunately the easy path to power is saying fuck you to normal people and making the vast amount of people uncomfortable to some extent. It's a strange human emotion that seems to happen to super rich people. I'd make make all my friends rich and ride jet skis and help the poor but that's a crazy idea.
I wish the IRS was larger by an order of magnitude and sole job to go after the 1%. The 1% is the greatest cause of all of our problems. It is time they start to feel that reality.
It was. They had a division to go after the rich tax dodger back in the 1990s. Lobbyists got their pet politicians to shut it down in a ‘cost cutting’ exercise despite it being in more in back taxes than it cost to run. The place I read about it presented it as poor government management where they don’t look at the big picture but it is far more likely that they knew exactly what they were doing and it was pure corruption to spare their large donors a larger tax bill.
What if all political donations went into the same pot. Then they are divided up equally between all political parties? All donations must be made by a certain date. Put rules in place to stop over creation of parties to game the system. Is this a bad idea?
Even more recently the Biden administration had increased the staff and they had just begun holding the rich ducks responsible
Now the felonist in chief and his pet doggy have eviscerated the new hires and will no doubt be directing the IRS to go after the poors for that 34$ they miss calculated on their return
All we need to eradicate poverty is roughly 177 billion dollars. We get 175 billion just by guaranteeing the 1% pays the existing taxes they owe. No new taxes needed.
Can you recommend any good resources to learn more about this at a high level? I was just thinking about it this morning. What if we looked at all the money Jeff Bezos "earned" over his lifetime, and instead had that money go to the people who did the actual work. How much difference would that have made?
And the harsh reality is that this is the last we'll ever hear of this chief... Remember a MASSIVE goal of Project 2025 is to LITERALLY just ignore the law. Just keep moving.
That’s what civil war is. It’s either he can do what he wants or he turns out the guns and claims power against everyone “for causing chaos”. We see this exact process occur in many other countries
Apropos of cheering for the IRS, Tracers in the Dark by Andy Greenberg is a phenomenal book about the underworld of crypto and the law enforcement agents working to take down some of the most heinous sites/content imaginable. An IRS agent, Chris Janczewski, and his team are the stars of probably the most disturbing investigation in the book; you can read a long excerpt on Wired. (If you get hit with a paywall, here's the archived version.)
Don't fuck with these guys. They're not afraid of anything.
ya and usually when I hear never mess with the IRS it’s not the richest man in america messing specifically with the chief of the IRS lol seems like a bad idea
Man, a fully functioning IRS would be top tier shit in the fight against this horseshit we are dealing with now. But this sounds like it's going to be interesting.
Krasnovs been defunding the IRS since 2016 unfortunately. I worked on corporate international tax, they have been not paying their taxes at least 10 years. I worked on some... things, and after leaving that job I know a large portion of IRS was laid off.
That was 10 years ago and they were already stretched thin.
To be fair, if the IRS was properly funded and staffed (like Biden was trying) they would be able to target billionaire tax evaders much easier. Why do you think Trump and Elon want to do away with the IRS? So then and their oligarch buddies can continue to evade their responsibilities to society.
The IRS is actually the good guys. They try to keep corporate tax monkey business in check but unfortunately because of attitudes like yours and years of defunding it's really difficult. They also do a good job overall.
Honestly, I don't really hate the IRS or even dislike them tat much. They're just government employees that implement the rules and taxes created by congress, I do mostly hate congress though. They're hamstrung in so many ways its crazy. And everytime I knew people who were insanely bad with taxes because they just were, not malicious, the IRS was really super reasonable and lenient. Helpful even.
I'm personally placing my hatred where I think it belongs more, Trump, MAGAts, lobbyists, republicunts, and morons like that.
Fuck MAGA
Why? In a well functioning society we should take civic pride in what our taxes do.
We don't live in that society, but if anything Elons fuckery has resoundingly demonstrated just how essential to some people the meager funds we give really are.
I want to fund USAID sending packages of food to starving kids.
I want to fund ebola prevention.
I want to give farmers subsidies to grow crops for famine struck nations.
I don't want it going to bombs in Gaza. That's for fucking sure.
Unfortunately, he’s was in the first wave of what’s to come. In 4 years he will be one of literal hundreds of thousands of civil servants who just found themselves unemployed. Maybe they should have listened and not voted for that clown, then maybe this place wouldn’t be a goddamned circus.
She was one of the good people. She should still be in the agency. God Damn Elon Musk. God Damn Comrade Krasnov. God damn his puppet master, Putin. God Damn all MAGAts.
Can't wait for our new, mega, super NOT the irs department to be privatized and made into an efficient machine that will saddle every American under the 1% with "freedom debt" for their entire lives. Plus interest.
This lady is a class act! I know people that know her and she is smart. She is a leader. I hope this works out for her. She is only guilty of telling the truth. This administration is full of liars. They hate truth.
Maybe now the irs will finally be motivated to go after the ultra ruch instead of poor and middke class. They saud it was more efficient, but if it leaves the ultra rich with enough funds to buy their way into a pretend political position that allows them to destroy the government (not to mention nerf the irs even more) it maaaaay actually be less efficient to go after the poors instead of the richies? Ffs
Reminds me of the movie lean on me when Joe Clark kicks the fire chief out of the school and Clark says (to the effect) 'That fire chief is saying right now that black bastard can't throw me out of this school. Y'know where he's saying it? In the parking lot.'
Has anyone from DOGE come up with an answer to under what authority they think they can fire people? It's a made up department. Why not just ignore everything they do and say?
Quite frankly, I have no idea how the fired folk are controlling their rage. People just can’t find a new job and move on in all instances. I would spend the rest of my life putting a target on somebody’s back whom I held responsible. But that’s just me.
people in senior positions should just simply refuse to be fired by doge/elon. … Doge doesn’t pay their salary… If they try to trespass you film it and spread it all over the news.
He might believe in the mission of the IRS, and that taxes are important to the integrity of the country, like structurally. Or something. Did you ever think of that you American nitwits?
Hell, yes! my kind of a guy, hell or high water, let’s get down and boogie, let’s fight it out! I hope this guy tears Elon apart, but Elon’s got a lot of money, this guy is gonna have to play dirty pool.
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u/WatchingTrains 27d ago
Why would someone with a history of dodging taxes dismantle the IRS? Maybe we’ll never know. Really makes you think tho. 🤔