I reject the mainstream argument from the liberals that trump is somehow getting played by putin or that putin has a video of him doing Epstein things.
I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. I don’t think putin has anything on him. I think he has identified that Putin is who he wants to be like and if anything, I think he has dirt on Putin to force him to help trump.
Because democracy and freedom are hindrances to his grifting. In authoritarian kleptocracies like Putin's Russia, they let you grift as much as you want.
I am also in the US and horribly disappointed in how our population let the world's stupidest and vilest people manipulate them into giving over control. I really had high hopes for America, democracies are really our best hope for the future.
But now I just want it to accelerate, we need the shit to really hit the fan so our population wakes up and realizes who the real enemies are, the putins and musks and trumps and millers and bannons... they are the beasts that stalk us in the modern age and need to be put down or taken away and the only way this will happen is enough people become uncomfortable enough that they forget the narratives and storylines that manipulate us so easily.
This kind of goes as a warning over what happens when a democracy isn't set up in such a way to prevent this thing from happening. Just getting rid of first past the post elections could've helped in preventing this and had given us a more balanced government that wouldn't have been so easily captured by moneyed interests.
As much as I hate to say it, I fully agree. We need something drastic to happen so that the population will open its eyes.
On a completely separate topic, I think states need to become a lot more independent from the federal government. I'm in NY for example and I've never felt prouder of my state than right now
Poor Ronald Reagan, his battle against the evil empire was lost by his precious Republicans. I bet Satan works in updates showing him how dedicated Trump is at glazing Putin's knob.
Regan helped usher this bullshit in...his lawyers were pissed that Regan couldn't do what trump is doing currently. These same lawyers, at least one was part of installing Bush 2 and I'm pretty sure he's a supreme court justice now.
This has always been their goal, Regan was a terrible president
From my country, it's just surreal to watch the lack of reactions from Americans. It looks like they mostly support the actions of the co-nazi dictators, a really bad picture to say the least.
Those that support Trump kinda do. These people are selfish enough to hate anyone else because their lives are kinda shit and they're too stupid to understand why. America has been headed towards this point for a long time.
The left is highly disillusioned due to DNC shenanigans to block any real progress on the real problem of inequality. So there is no opposition. It is a really bad picture to say the least.
People wanted Putin in at first too, no? Didn't he do the whole "I'm the strong man who will save everyone and only I can do it" kind of bs like Trump, then once in gutted everything in order to consolidate and maintain power also kind of like Trump?
I'm actually fairly ignorant on his initial rise to power, so please don't be too hard on me 😅
theres alot of ukrainians that collaborated with russia, or were part of the immigrated from the USSR era. we had one ukrainian math prof once, but she was nice and did not like russia, judging by the reaction when someone said russia and ukraine or the same.
I've been calling my congressman's office to angrily rant at his staff every other day for the past few weeks. I plan to do the same tomorrow and Ukraine will be the topic of my rant.
Not sure if it will do any good since he's a shithead Republican and probably doesn't care about my opinion.
ha. well I'm not evil, I care, and I haven't lifted a finger. why? cause the way it works here is money. if u want to do something, no matter how good or evil, you need a lot of money...
The crazy half is in control right now and there's not much we can realistically do. With the amount of Republicans who like the current situation and bootlickers who are indifferent protests or other means aren't likely to affect anything. Maybe if the US slides into another great depression public sentiment can shift enough to make a change but until then no one should be treating us like a rational country.
The crazy half is in control right now and there's not much we can realistically do.
That's defeatist. There is a lot that can be done. You could pressure your representatives to gum up congress so much with filibusters, and unnecessary votes to slow down what Trump can actually get done. You could join the democratic party with others and start demanding that they change from within. You could support local or internet grassroots campaigns who resist Trump. If the only thing you're going to do over the next four years is wait to vote Democrat again then there's not much you're realistically Willing to do.
Answering that directly would be a violation of rule #6.
What should the individual German citizen have done in the 1920s and 1930s to prevent the Nazis from rising to power and/or to resist them once they were in power? Cuz... that.
Their constitution has protections on their rights for just such a situation, so they should be quite aware of their rights and what they're capable of as a people.
Voted against it directly, voted against it indirectly in every smaller election I've been eligible for since 2016, phone canvassed against it, volunteer for local orgs that are targeted by it, and am vocal on and offline against the Nazi rhetoric currently taking over our government.
Why, am I only allowed to criticize evil if I've aimed a gun at it or something?
While China's military power is still growing and not yet on par with the U.S., its ability to shape global affairs through economic and infrastructural investments is undeniable. This raises the question: Is China the world's only superpower now?
The EU outranks China in terms of economical and political influence, exporting standards and even laws with market and soft power. Only took a couple of years until states all over the world started copying the GDPR, noone anywhere is producing phones without USB-C charging any more, and those are just prominent examples. And people don't even realise how big of an impact the CSDDD will have.
I don't know why you're getting pushback and downvotes on this, it's factual.
Have we ALSO lost track of facts people? Are we the same as the ones who made this all go to shit, unable to separate facts from feelings? USA isn't just "a superpower" it's THE superpower, it's the wealthiest nation on earth with a military force larger and more advanced than all other nations put together. What do you call that?
THIS is why it's such a huge deal that we all fucking let the dumbest, evilest people in the world take the controls. Are you really just so nihilistic and self-obsessed that you're willing to discard the largest and most powerful democracy on earth because you feel jaded and cynical because "America bad?"
Dude, clean your room. Seriously, this is our home, this is where we live. LETS FIX IT.
True, true! For now. I really hope US will reverse its current direction. A superpower needs both military strength and global influence through aid and presence. While the U.S. has cut foreign aid and withdrawn from international agreements, China is expanding its influence - especially in Africa.
Im honestly scared. I’ve been hopeful towards every election, but that hope is gone.
The left has been surging in polls but I’m fearing a cdu+afd government.
& it took 1 month, to-the-day, for Trump to resolve to that position, too.
There's 44 MORE months until the purported "election" which Trump would have, to elect his-replacement, right?
The Trump/Putin/Orban/Millei/LePen/AfD/Farage/etc. global-alliance is going to be OWNING this world's-determination, shortly, unless SOMEBODY among the various "political parties" grows some SPINE, immediately.
What "Interesting Times" to be living-in..
( yes, that refers to the Chinese curse: "may you live in interesting-times". )
When are americans using the second amendment to overthrow this dictator? I mean its what they sacrificed all these children for right? To be able to "defend" their democracy. I always called it bs, now they have a chance to proof it
Yeah. The "plan" was for Ukraine to refuse the horrifically bad deal. But, instead, Zelenskyy et al understood they are in a fight for survival and would rather be free beggars than slaves and breeding stock to putin.
Unfortunately, trump was going for the latter so he had to make up new excuses to eventually join russia's side in the war.
And I think you're seeing this ending up a whole lot differently than I am. I think Trump and Putin carved up Ukraine in their phone call. That Russia isn't going to allow any troops but Americans into Ukraine to secure the "negotiated peace", that they will threaten to fire on any NATO country that sets foot in Ukraine except for the Americans. Russia will keep what they invaded and took plus some, the US will get to rape Ukraine of it's rare earth minerals in the rest using Ukranian ports to export them to the US under the guise of reparations for aid given in the last 3 years. That's how I see it playing out. Europe is going to have to decide how important Ukraine is to it, and given European history, they talk a big game, but when it comes down to it, they'er going to decided to protect their own borders, rather than forcing their way into the meat grinder between the US and Russia.
Nope, Putin will not allow American troops in Ukraine. Trump is only president for 4 years. Trump gave Putin Ukraine and he probably promised Trump some modest personal monetary concession. That's it. That's how cheap of a whore the POTUS is.
The problem here is that the US doesn't need Ukraine for any of those things. They have their own deposits. The problem is that the US or Ukraine and everyone else does not have any significant capacity to process these minerals -- China does. You're not building a rare-earths refinery in Ukraine during a war or occupation -- too easy of a target. So unless the US builds such a beast at home, it's entirely irrelevant what Ukraine has or otherwise.
Furthermore, as a nervous Canadian, I worry about the same stupid rhetoric being used on us. We don't produce rare earths, because we don't process rare earths. But damn do we have a lot of potential deposits. Trump only sees the value of the potential deposit and not the actual produced products. It's boneheaded but they don't care.
The joke is, there is no rare earth deposits that can be immediately used or it will make sense to exploit. Minerals were just a pretext to gove muskovites everythong they want, problem is it probably won't work, due to trump and his stellar teams being even dumber then everyone expected them to be.
I agree with everything you wrote, but I don't think they carved up only Ukraine in that phone call. At least all of Europe, possibly the entire world.
When I went to Greece, I was surprised to see footage of the war on TV. In the US we'd never see anything like this. We are really isolated from the reality of what is going on in the world and the consequences of our actions. This makes it easier for our government to create policy that is wrong and immoral.
When you say footage, do you mean like actual combat footage?
If so I think that's excellent.
You are absolutely right the US is completely isolated from the reality of unpleasantness that is often in the world, often because of us.
Our only exposure to real evil and violence is in movies and TV and everything else is 'tastefully' censored.
So we debate policy like war and diplomacy completely isolated from the actual reality that those policies create.
That's true to some extent, but the EU did announce they were preparing their biggest aid package yet. The unconfirmed number was €700B which works out at about €1500 per citizen and I am all fucking in on that if it's true.