US politics

[Gus Mears]

Was being glib. No, i don't think western Europe is going to be invaded, but I would worry about the fringes. It's much more likely to be as you say, Pat. Add to the list Taiwan too.

 

Edited November 6, 2024 by Gus Mears

[BomberPat]

the thing that worries me now is less Trump as much as the people around him - that was a concern the first time around, but he was erratic and unmanageable enough, and the people around him too self-interested and busy backstabbing one another, for many of them to really take hold (not to downplay the horrible things his administration did manage to push through). 

This time around, though, Trump seems completely out of it - I don't like to do the "diagnosing people from afar" thing about his health, but there's clearly something not quite right; even by his own standards he looks like shit and never makes sense. I don't know whether he's exhausted, whether it's age and mental decline, or whether he just doesn't care about any more - I've long assumed that he's fundamentally lazy when it comes to the day-to-day work, and spent so much of his life surrounded by yes men that the actual legislative work of being President was probably extremely difficult and frustrating for him, and that the only reason he's doing it again is because there's money behind him and because he wants to win rather than to actually serve another term.

But the people he's surrounded with this time are horrific. If anything happens to Trump, we get JD Vance, and fuck that. God knows what additional powers and access he's going to give to Elon Musk. And while I don't believe that he will actually give RFK Jr. any control over public health, the fact that it was even in the conversation is insane, and what happens will be a measure of where RFK Jr. really stands - if Trump recedes on a promise and Kennedy abandons him, then he's still an awful prick, but at least has some semblance of ideology, whereas if RFK Jr. stands by Trump regardless, he's the guy I see standing in the next four years. And that scares me a lot more than Donald Trump.

[Ronnie]

39 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

surely he just makes a case to the Supreme Court that term limits are unconstitutional, they strike them down and he runs for President until he dies.

It's hard to envisage anybody adjudicating that part of the Constitution is unconstitutional! The Supreme Court cannot amend the Constitution: it determines whether laws are constitutional, not the Constitution itself, which, by definition, always is.

39 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Mind you he has been telling his supporters in his speeches that if they vote for him this time they will never have to worry about voting again, so perhaps there won't be any more elections.

I think there's an easier explanation to that one: he's a bragadocious salesman who tells the most outrageous lies. "Give me another term and I'll fix everything. America will be GREAT AGAIN." He's selling a vision that these people who are voting because they're angry and he's their wrecking ball won't need to lash out again because life will be perfect.

That's not to say that if he could wangle it he'd desist from the opportunity to a lifetime appointment but it seems unlikely to me that he thought, at the point of opening his mouth, he'd tell everybody that, with their help, he could end the Republic. 

Edit: Ugh, horrible thought: even if he had outright said that, how many Trump voters would that have dissuaded? I can't help but think that it would've been music to the ears of the cult.

Edited November 6, 2024 by Ronnie

[FLips]

And that's the whole ball game.

[Mr_Danger]

Relax guys, I’m sure Trump just promised to do all that mad shit just to get in to power. He can’t make any meaningful change from the outside. 

[Carbomb]

The Russians are unlikely to invade Europe under Putin. The narratives we've had over the last ten years or so have distorted something that a lot of people have lost sight of: Putin is actually very pro-West. He's probably the most pro-Western leader Russia has had - it's his biggest opponents who are virulently anti-West: Zyuganov of the Communist Party, and Slutsky of the ultra-nationalist LDPR. Yeltsin and Putin introduced a lot of pro-Western reforms to Russia during the 90s, following Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's narratives of having Russia become part of a "Greater Europe". Yeltsin had a whole gang of Chicago School economists come over to essentially restructure the Russian economy - the kleptocracy/mafiocracy we see is the result of that. And you may recall that we politically didn't give a fuck about Putin until about 2012, letting his oligarchs buy up all sorts of assets here.

Putin is currently where he is because the West has spent the past 30 years or so effectively rejecting Russia as an ally, and continuing to push for NATO expansion when Russia told them "You don't need it any more, we're on your side now". There eventually came a point when Putin just went "fuck it, they don't want us", started pushing to conduct oil deals in roubles, and basically started taking Russia in the opposite direction, right into the arms of China.

Trump is very much a fangirl for Putin, so there's a possibility that he'll make nicey-nicey with Russia, and that may soften Putin's stance. It will lead to a collapse for the Ukraine, and that is fucking horrendous, but in the wider picture, it's more likely to bring Russia "back into the fold", so to speak. Of course, that all depends on whether or not Putin thinks Trump will get to stay in power, or that Trump's successors will take the same approach.

God, that made for depressing typing. I know the world is run by psychopaths, but it's another thing to actually write it out.

[FLips]

You have to wonder who or what the Democrats will concede and sacrifice to get back into power if necessary too. They clearly failed on some big topics and pushing them at the next election would likely cost them again.

BBC currently doing an interview with an immigrant from Venezuala and she's like "our guy won" and despite being questioned about why she would vote for him in spite of everything, she's basically boiling it down to "I wasn't bothered personally so fuck everyone else". Completely obvlious to the target on her own back.

Tell me again these people aren't idiots.

 

[Sergio Mendacious]

Trump is just going to appoint himself interim president at the end of the term.

[organizedkaos]

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

This is an interesting point. Trump has dominated the Republic Party to the point that he basically is the Party. Without him they have nothing.

Yeah I think the maybe possibly silver lining is that I don't think they can make a new Trump.  He's been in the public eye for years with a certain identity that was then established over and over using a reality TV show that was on for years. It's not like FOX news just pushed him hard for a couple of years, it's decades of culture here. His "charisma" can't be replicated without spending 10 seasons of a show making that "charisma" look like charisma. It's why everyone else using his playbook does just come across p weird whereas Trump seemed teflonny.

Maybe you could've done it with Elon Musk but I think whilst he's been presented as "smartest guy in the room" to people who might believe that he doesn't have the Trump "man of the people" thing (yes these are all nonsense but the point is to understand why people see it as such not just point it out as nonsense) and also I don't know if he's eligible?

[Carbomb]

2 minutes ago, organizedkaos said:

Maybe you could've done it with Elon Musk but I think whilst he's been presented as "smartest guy in the room" to people who might believe that he doesn't have the Trump "man of the people" thing (yes these are all nonsense but the point is to understand why people see it as such not just point it out as nonsense) and also I don't know if he's eligible?

Elon Musk isn't American-born, so unless they change that law, it's unlikely he'd be a candidate. If they did change the law, I'd imagine he'd have to deal with Schwarzenegger, and I don't think he wins that popularity contest.

28 minutes ago, FLips said:

BBC currently doing an interview with an immigrant from Venezuala and she's like "our guy won" and despite being questioned about why she would vote for him in spite of everything, she's basically boiling it down to "I wasn't bothered personally so fuck everyone else". Completely obvlious to the target on her own back.

Puts me in mind of that infuriating woman who was on the news here, being interviewed at a food bank, saying she was going to vote for Johnson "because he's getting Brexit done". 

[organizedkaos]

  Yeah, I assumed that might be the case with Musk and was being a bit lazy with not googling, cheers

26 minutes ago, FLips said:

Tell me again these people aren't idiots.

 

They're experiencing a different reality right? Now that might be because they're gullibile idiots, it might be because people get their news from biased source, it might be because we see the world we want to see. But that's the point, different models of reality. People voted for Republicans because they were afraid Democrats are a thread to their democracy, people voted Democrats because they were afraid Republicans were a thread to their democracy.  I haven't seen that interview but I've certainly seen anti immigrant sentiment within communities of immigrants. That's why the whole "we're only against the bad ones" works, no-one thinks they're the bad ones.

Obviously you're not speaking to them and what's said here doesn't have to be indicative of how one might speak in  a cross party conversation but yeah I do feel we have to try and understand how to reconcile the increased seperation in people's reality tunnels and I've generally found telling people they're lesser doesn't much encourage reflection or change

[mim731]

So if Trump drops dead, JD "SofaFucker" Vance is in charge? Fucking hell. 

 

59 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Slutsky

No, you're laughing in the most juvenile way possible, definitely not me. Grow up. 

[Merzbow]

6 minutes ago, mim731 said:

So if Trump drops dead, JD "SofaFucker" Vance is in charge? Fucking hell. 

Wouldn't be surprised if that's Peter Thiel's plan all along..

[Sphinx]

Telling people they're lesser doesn't, but what does? Facts are boring, bravado and entertainment and fiction isn't. The lust for power and looking out for number one is built into the fabric of the US. 

With a clearer mind, and ideally, yeah I'd say that we need to get to a point where we can talk to those of differing views and truly listen without lining up a retort and to not turn it into 'winning' a debate. But I can't see where that happens with him as a cult of personality and social media echo chambers on both sides, and I don't get the feeling the gentle approach to trying to understand each other is going to achieve anything other than embolden and give more platforms to these knobheads.

The fucking state of it.

[organizedkaos]

Oh yeah, i've no fucking clue what the route forward is I hope smarter people can figure it out, especially because I do think we're possibly on this path (more likely so, as others have said, with Trump and the US left on defence likely changing conversations)