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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hitler disbanded the trade unions at the behest of heads of industries. Industry showed its gratitude with the 'Adolph Hitler Fund', to which the companies paid a % of turnover.
From 1933 onward 100 million reichsmarks were paid to Hitler every year, which would have made him a billionaire by today's standards.
Sure they did, the issue is they didn't have the money to make it happen. It would be very interesting to see who gave the most money to the Nazis. I am guessing US citizens were the largest contributor, but without any actual data it is just an educated guess.
This only goes to highlight how wealth inequality has created the environment for some of the worst atoricities. Why is it the wealthy seem to help start, fund, and benefit from all our modern wars.
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.
theft and technology, i would say.
I guess, if you call smallpox and pistols and slavery technology
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.
*former allies
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.
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.
We often joked about unstable "banana republics" with US Americans, but it's starting to become real awkward 😅