*former allies
It doesn’t matter if you guys somehow manage to get adults back in charge in the next 2-4 years. There is nothing stopping another Trump-esque person from being elected again soon after and tearing everything down again. Until you guys purge MAGA and can prove you are in no danger of a relapse, we simply can’t trust you.
It’s not just the US. The far right is gaining momentum in Europe too, and the same will sooner or later repeat there (and I’m guessing sooner). Only a civil war in both the US and Europe will fix this now. Anyone passing the blame and not being prepared to fight themselves is part of the problem.
We’ve always had these shitheads. I’m sure every country has some percentage of them. Something in the range of 15-20% of the populace, at least, will always go for something vaguely donvict-shaped. These are the deplorables that Hillary was talking about. There is a lot of mental illness combined with terrible values instilled in them as well as a very poor education and zero ability for critical thinking - and that spells trouble. I bet most Americans could not spot and name a logical fallacy if their lives depended on it.
You’d think when someone like Nixon resigned that he would have had 0% support. That was not the case. And before that, you had the Birchers…I’m sure donvict and others like to credit donvict with inventing “maga”, but he just walked in and slapped his name on this stuff - just like the rest of his “career”, he didn’t build anything. Whether it was the John Birch Society, or the teabaggers, or “maga”, it’s all the same bunch of horrible people acting in bad faith.
Until fairly recently, there was an opposition party instead of a controlled opposition party.
If you do call out a logical fallacy, people reply jn aLtErNaTiNg CaSe for some reason
This is what the majority wants, fuck the rest of the world let’s get ours. I think most americans could care less about whether another country trusts them or not. America has always been like this though, its just continuing a long history of selfish values, where people are judged by how much money they can accumulate.
American exceptionalism
The amount of soft power in the world the US has lost since the beginning of Trump’s first term is immeasurable.
China is celebrating Trump’s victory. Russia is seeing a return on their investments in Trump and Musk
Russian coverage is pretty fun as state-allowed news try to both ingrain the hatred of the West and celebrate this pack of leeches going full MAGA, sometimes in neighboring news pieces. And no, they don’t explicitly say they destroy the US and that’s the reason they cheer, they are just fanboying for them and their populism. Reading a couple of threads on local social media didn’t make me piece together how this even works.
Good. America is the aggressor internationally. Losing soft power is a net benefit for mankind.
If they lose soft power, what do they have to fall back on?
The limiting factor of American military action is neither will nor the number of adversaries. It is logistics. America will not suddenly be more prone to using violence when its soft power runs dry, because the core logistical challenge has not changed. In fact, the opposite will occur, having fewer methods to keep its allies from withdrawing support.
Noone?
The US has always been a piece of shit, and since WW2 has been the single biggest threat actor in the world. For a time, we managed to maintain a strong economy and generally cohesive body politic at home, but those have been steadily eroding. Any of the “good times” you can remember were at best, squandered opportunities to effect real changes that may have prevented the situation we are no waking up to.
Don’t forget this either:
We weren’t some benevolent force for good in WW2. People love pointing it out as if we proactively fought for good.
The Axis thankfully committed the greatest strategic blunder of the 20th century hands down and sunk our Naval fleet. They brought the fight to us. The US was quite fond of eugenics and practiced it in asylum before and after WW2.
We fought back. That isn’t being a hero, that isn’t coming to save the day. That’s self-preservation.
The closest we’ve ever been to the good guys was at our founding, and even that was complicated.
It is far far worse than this. Wealthy people in the US bankrolled the Nazi party. We created the problem. When the Nazi approached the nations of the world to take in the Jews before the final solution these same people lobbied to make sure no one would take them.
The German aristocracy bankrolled Hitler as well. It sorta sounded like you were implying that didn’t happen
To be fair: The US did join the European theater despite having their hands full across the Pacific.
Yeah the US joined late. I’m just saying that since then, the US hasn’t even done anything accidentally good.
The strong economy is a result of theft. The US has always been a piece of shit.
I’m not disagreeing but that’s a bold claim about the US economy. Please share your sources, I’d like a read.
I recommend reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States
Founded on slavery, and then you could argue that capitalism is inherently about theft. As someone else pointed out, banana republics.
Just Google “banana republics”
Lenin’s “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism” explains this precisely.
Must be the manual Lenin and Stalin followed… lest anyone forget that the USSR quickly, like within a year of the revolution, decided to be imperialist too.
The US is now the single greatest threat to Western societies.
Current US allies need to be forging stronger alliances outside of the US sphere of influence, begin removing US bases, and withdraw from intelligence sharing agreements such as Five Eyes.
With his reelection after all that happened, I didn’t see how anyone could argue we aren’t the bad guys. We’ve shat all over our own principles, and we aren’t supposed to threaten our allies or citizens.
The “he’s just joking” or “you’re listening to him wrong” has never been an excuse. The president is not there to “joke.” They have a responsibility to the American people. Not some, not even the majority, but all of us equally. It may have never done that, but it was supposed to be the goal.
They are dismantling all the things there for our protection with no replacement. They are threatening our allies for selfish reasons. It is clear who will benefit, and it is only the powerful and hateful. They would burn everything down for a dollar and feel no regret.
He’s saying the quiet parts out loud. We’ve been the bad guys for at least 70 some years (end of WWII, start of Korean war), if not longer (Mexican-American War), or even longer (original colonization of the US).
Saying the quiet things out loud was the first term. Now he’s full mask off and burning everything to the ground.
I’m not sure how to judge if we’ve always been bad or not. Colonizing was big through most of our history. Perhaps all I can say, is we’re bad at punishing the right people. We’ve refused to punish anyone with power, from the military killing natives and Mexicans, slaveholders, the Confederacy, the Business Plot, the Red Scare, segregationists, Nixon-Kissinger, Reagan-Bush Sr, and now our current leader.
We’ll cross the world to crush someone, but we’re afraid to punish our rich and powerful at home. That just lets the rot set in, and it’s gotten to the critical level.
The thing is, we cross the world to crush someone all the time in the interest of the rich and powerful at home. That’s a full feature of the American system, not a bug.
The president is not there to “joke.”
I wouldn’t even mind if the President was a funny guy.
Donald Trump is not a funny guy. I don’t think he even knows what a joke is
No, I agree with you. I put joke in quotes because his jokes are bully jokes like “maybe I’ll have to run for a third term” where it’s antagonist at best or a thinly veiled threat.
If the president wants to be a normal person now and then and add some humor, or especially some humility, that is a good thing. I feel it’s important that a president is treated as an at least somewhat common man and not a ruler.
I don’t think I’d enjoy the company of people that find Trump’s humor to be funny.
Do not disagree at all. It’s already happening anyway with all this Greenland/Canada nonsense.
They recently caught Trudeau on a hot mic confirming this is a precious metal play and he knows it. Same with Greenland.
Trump knows who those NJ drones belonged to, and he’s making moves for an aggressive China with no access to raw materials for electronics.
The drones were recently revealed to be authorized by the faa for “research”. They knew what they were at the time, yet didn’t say anything. I’m of the mind that the research was to psyop a.population to see how it would react.
Isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think?
It’s like globalisssssssssmmmmmm… when all you wanted is a fourth reich.
Isn’t it ironic? Yes, I really do think…
Apparently I need to invest in democracy to read more.
But yeah. When I was a young adult I thought the U.S. couldn’t do worse than W. Bush. Then the first Trump presidency, then another.
It’s becoming pretty clear that the U.S. is not reliable and could turn on its supposed allies at any moment.
We’re gonna have to put as much distance between the U.S., and us, as possible. Apparently that’s what some U.S. voters want amyway.
French-US relations are easy to understand when you realize that at the outset of WWII we offered to lend them a garden hose as their house burned down (literally that was the rhetoric). not only was it the least we could do, it was less than helpful. this after they fought with intense vigor in WWI. after their defeat thanks to a lack of support from the english speaking world, the French people still refused to be defeated, fighting with all manner of weird bullshit guns that sucked. then, after WWII was over, making fun of the French for losing became part of the national American identity even though we couldn’t even decide which side we were on at the start of the war.
France, rightfully, has never fully trusted us because of that shit. we even clowned on them in 2003 for not joining our idiot war in Iraq. these are ALL decisions France is surely feeling pretty good about. and do you know who they’re getting more and more aligned with? the Polish. do you know who also gets clowned on for losing early in WWII despite fighting with everything they had for longer than anyone anticipated and only lost because no one came to their aid? Poland. and the way we make fun of France and Poland comes straight from nazi propaganda. and they a also refused to simply be occupied. they put up stiff resistance efforts that possibly shifted the outcomes of the war by forcing Germany to devote resources they didn’t have to fighting a bunch of already defeated people.
meanwhile, what the fuck does America know? what the fuck does america do? do americans fight for their rights? not really. we hear something bad happens and at large go “something really must be done”
we are the worst friends to have, and France fucking knows it and treats us as such. sure they’ll buy our weapons when we’re allies, but they march to the beat of their own drum because they fucking see us. they know us. we have done nothing in the last 80 years to earn their trust. and right now they get to go to the other NATO allies and go “see?”
Welp I’m glad I’m Canadian. We have a pretty solid history with the French.
France: “see?”
Canada: “you need us to burn down DC again?”
America: yes.
just evacuate the citizens first. DC’s residents are victims of this system
Yeah.
At this point, I would enthusiastically applaud if you did
Bush was worse than Trump.
China must be fucking loving this. If it turns out Elon is an agent for them it would in no way surprise me.
He’s outwardly good buddy with Putin. I don’t think China is actually doing much to crack the u.s. from the inside, they’re just excelling domestically and being loud about it while Russia does the heavily lifting.
Russia, sure, but Trump is vehemently anti-China. Trump wants the war in Ukraine to end so that he could shift attention to China.
I’m starting to think China owns Musk though.
Elon works for the blyats, who don’t realize just yet that they work for Pooh.
Ah, our ancient enemy China, who hasnt been in a war in decades, and promotes international peace whenever the topic comes up.
The abusive oppressive China, where cost of living is lower and workers rights are stronger than americans’.
But living in china means to be a slave who can’t speak freely so fuck that country, right?!
We’ll forgive them, eventually, once they return to sanity. But we’ll never trust them again. It took more than fifty years for Germany to be fully accepted as a normal country again. It’ll take at least as long for the US.
Idk one Trump term could be considered an anomaly, a stress test to our systems to see if we could fix them to be stronger. We didn’t. Now we’re on round 2 and speed running alienating our allies.
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Climate change will affect other countries a lot more then it will affect europe and us. So no it won’t stop anything.
When the Atlantic current collapses, it’s going to royally fuck Europe’s climate, and probably the U.S. Nobody is getting off this train, and we are slowly inching ourselves off a cliff toward extreme westher events all the time instead of just sometimes. Should be fun.
It won’t be great but it countries that are rich now will be fine-ish. Anyway there is no off-the-cliff, nations and states won’t disappear, so whatever grudges we collect will go with us into the future.
The EU and US regularly lose their minds over a few thousand refugees. What do you think will happen when millions of climate refugees start moving?
They will get killed, somehow you forgot that both world wars were waged in europe with tens of millions dead. Benevolent overlords of today will quickly return to genocidal masters of yesterday.
The amount of civil unrest that’d cause would cause the situation to be far from fine. The US and EU like to pretend like there’s some magic money-fuelled forcefield that protects them, but millions of desperate people fighting for their lives can cause a lot of damage if pushed into a corner like that.
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Why do you think the assholes that profited off destroying the world are now pushing anti-migrant rhetoric? So the plebs demand weaponized borders and protect them from the people whose homes will be unlivable soon instead of turning against them.
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You fail to realize that rich countries with a lot of resources now will become even more rich and they aren’t going anywhere. Yes they will lay down and die, causing minimal discomfort to people in rich countries.
You think people will just lay down and die?
Well yea, they tend to do that once they’ve caught some sharpnel
spoiler
I’m not wishing for or happy about conflict just morbidly aware of how this will play out between well equiped countries, and countries that will be collapsing.
JFC.
We often joked about unstable “banana republics” with US Americans, but it’s starting to become real awkward 😅
Orange Republic?
You’re dead to us. Sorry.
Sadly the Republicans can’t locate their spines as they are invertebrates.
Why is there anyone who allies with imperialists? Shame on them
Other imperialists.
Cause they ran their own empires in a previous time. They all still fuck around in their old colonies shit too.
Old?
That picture is a gift for Photoshop.
Oh no! We better call out the leftist and centrist Tone Police and get some lectures on civility, because I think rawstory.com might be drawing some connections between donvict and Russia and we cannot have that!
If our allies are gonna get butt hurt after 1 bad date after 70+ years of dating then they ain’t allies to the American people who are suffering. They are allies to what our government can do for them. This makes them look a certain way more than it makes us look bad.
American exceptionalism everyone.
This isn’t a bad date, it’s assault.
Europe is America’s pet.
And dipshit Euros are too dumb to realize it without Trump threatening to take territory. Biden told them to sit and cut off Russian oil at a huge cost to their economies, and they did like a good obedient boy. This dating analogy implies some autonomy, of which there is none. When Europe finally starts resisting, America will put on the shock collar.
One trump term is a bad date. Two is a pattern of dangerous behavior.
Two is “hey wait, I pay for everything and all you do is lie on the sofa and bitch that I’m not doing enough.”
The rest of the world deserves Trump 2.0 far more than the average American.
Also,
Trump and Elon are literally European agents (yes, Elon is Euro in every aspect but place of birth, and the Trump-Putin connection needs no further explanation) who have invaded the American government, neither of those two are homegrown.
Two is “hey wait, I pay for everything and all you do is lie on the sofa and bitch that I’m not doing enough.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better Boomer->Millenial toxic masculinity example before. I guess I could just use an image of Married With Children, but this feels more poignant.
The rest of the world deserves Trump 2.0 far more than the average American.
And here’s some American Exceptionalism, man, what a goldmine for sociopathic quotes.
Trump and Elon are literally European agents (yes, Elon is Euro in every aspect but place of birth, and the Trump-Putin connection needs no further explanation
hahahah, ‘Elon is Euro in every aspect except the things that would make someone European’.
Have you ever been told ‘no’ or that you haven’t done a good job ever in your life, or are the women too nervous that you’ll backhand them for that to happen?
Please tell us more about how the American people have it worse than Palestinians, Haitians, half of Africa and half of Central America.
Get to fixing it. What’s stopping you all??
the CIA mostly
The French literally burn their country down anytime cuts to social services or tax increases are proposed. They literally can’t stand to budget for foreign aide like the US has done for decades
This is what happens when your population is educated about history, and when your country has a history of resistance.
It’s what happens when the past 80 years of your country have been spent entirely subsidized by America’s gross paternalistic attitude to the “Old War.” Western European institutions cannot stand on their own without the bleeding of American capital/labor
Bro the euros don’t even fit defenses anymore. When Ukraine broke mfs sent blankets and helmets. They think we are cooked and don’t want to be our friends anymore lol
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