Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
This thread is intended as a fresh starting point for substantive, evidence-based discussion on Donald Trump, his political legacy and the enduring questions raised by the Mueller investigation and January 6 riot. The previous thread, sprawling over 800 pages, covered much ground but often veered into repetition, flame wars and rhetorical posturing. Here, we aim for clarity, rigour and engagement grounded in fact.
Some facts have been established in the meantime.
The Mueller Report: A Recap
Released in 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report was the product of a two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump. The report established beyond dispute that the Russian government mounted a coordinated campaign to influence the election’s outcome, primarily to Trump’s benefit. This involved both a disinformation campaign via social media (spearheaded by the Internet Research Agency) and the theft and release of Democratic Party emails via Russian military intelligence.
The report also documented over 100 contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian individuals, including meetings and the sharing of internal polling data. However, it did not conclude that these amounted to a criminal conspiracy under U.S. law, citing insufficient evidence and uncooperative witnesses.
The second volume of the report explored ten instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump, including his attempts to limit the investigation and pressure witnesses. Mueller did not indict Trump, citing Department of Justice policy against prosecuting a sitting president, but explicitly stated that the report did not exonerate him. Mueller referred the matter to Congress, framing it as a constitutional question rather than a prosecutorial one.
January 6: A recap
Since the events of January 6, 2021, a growing body of evidence—gathered through investigations, testimony, and official proceedings—has established several key facts about former President Donald Trump’s actions and involvement.
In the months following the 2020 election, Trump repeatedly and publicly claimed the results were fraudulent, despite being informed by his legal team, campaign advisors, and Department of Justice officials that there was no significant evidence of widespread voter fraud. Internally, aides confirmed he was aware that the claims lacked merit, yet he continued to promote them to the public. He also sought to involve federal agencies in this effort, including pressuring the Department of Justice to back his false claims. At one point, Trump even considered replacing the acting Attorney General with a loyalist who was willing to advance his narrative. This pressure campaign extended to Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump urged to block or delay the certification of the Electoral College results on January 6—an action Pence ultimately refused, citing constitutional limits on his authority.
On the morning of January 6, Trump addressed a large crowd near the White House, repeating his debunked allegations of electoral fraud and urging his supporters to “fight like hell” and march on the Capitol. As the Capitol was breached, Trump watched events unfold from the White House. Reports and testimony later revealed that he was initially reluctant to intervene, and during the critical first hours of the assault, he made phone calls not to halt the violence, but to encourage Republican senators to continue opposing the certification of the election results. Despite appeals from advisors and family members to publicly call off the rioters, Trump delayed releasing a statement. When he finally did, he issued a video telling the rioters to go home—while also repeating the lie that the election had been stolen and referring to the attackers as “very special.”
In the aftermath, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” making him the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. The Senate ultimately acquitted him. However, the matter did not end there. Congressional investigations and Special Counsel inquiries have since uncovered additional details, including evidence that Trump was involved in a broader, multi-pronged effort to overturn the election—ranging from the creation of false slates of electors to pressuring state officials and promoting baseless legal challenges. While he has not been criminally convicted for these actions - and with his releection probably never will, court filings and testimony continue to suggest that he was at the center of a coordinated campaign to subvert the democratic process.
After he left office, Trump continued to downplay the seriousness of January 6, even going so far as to glorify those imprisoned for their roles in the attack. In campaign appearances, he has referred to them as “patriots” and played musical tributes to them during rallies and issued a blanket pardon to over 1,500 individuals wo where charged or convicted in connection with the events at the Capitol.
A Polarised Reaction
Public and political reactions to the Mueller Report and Cogrnessional investigations fell largely along partisan lines. Trump and his allies declared total vindication, while critics pointed to the documented misconduct and pattern of obstruction as grounds for accountability. The same partisanship has been on full display in the previous Trump thread.
A New Conversation
We've left the Trump thread rage on for way too long. We've closed it, have established the above as fact and will delete any comment or argument denying it without substantial proof as the crackpot theory it is. As always, participants are encouraged to support claims with evidence, engage charitably with disagreement and resist the temptation of tribal thinking.
Some facts have been established in the meantime.
The Mueller Report: A Recap
Released in 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report was the product of a two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump. The report established beyond dispute that the Russian government mounted a coordinated campaign to influence the election’s outcome, primarily to Trump’s benefit. This involved both a disinformation campaign via social media (spearheaded by the Internet Research Agency) and the theft and release of Democratic Party emails via Russian military intelligence.
The report also documented over 100 contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian individuals, including meetings and the sharing of internal polling data. However, it did not conclude that these amounted to a criminal conspiracy under U.S. law, citing insufficient evidence and uncooperative witnesses.
The second volume of the report explored ten instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump, including his attempts to limit the investigation and pressure witnesses. Mueller did not indict Trump, citing Department of Justice policy against prosecuting a sitting president, but explicitly stated that the report did not exonerate him. Mueller referred the matter to Congress, framing it as a constitutional question rather than a prosecutorial one.
January 6: A recap
Since the events of January 6, 2021, a growing body of evidence—gathered through investigations, testimony, and official proceedings—has established several key facts about former President Donald Trump’s actions and involvement.
In the months following the 2020 election, Trump repeatedly and publicly claimed the results were fraudulent, despite being informed by his legal team, campaign advisors, and Department of Justice officials that there was no significant evidence of widespread voter fraud. Internally, aides confirmed he was aware that the claims lacked merit, yet he continued to promote them to the public. He also sought to involve federal agencies in this effort, including pressuring the Department of Justice to back his false claims. At one point, Trump even considered replacing the acting Attorney General with a loyalist who was willing to advance his narrative. This pressure campaign extended to Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump urged to block or delay the certification of the Electoral College results on January 6—an action Pence ultimately refused, citing constitutional limits on his authority.
On the morning of January 6, Trump addressed a large crowd near the White House, repeating his debunked allegations of electoral fraud and urging his supporters to “fight like hell” and march on the Capitol. As the Capitol was breached, Trump watched events unfold from the White House. Reports and testimony later revealed that he was initially reluctant to intervene, and during the critical first hours of the assault, he made phone calls not to halt the violence, but to encourage Republican senators to continue opposing the certification of the election results. Despite appeals from advisors and family members to publicly call off the rioters, Trump delayed releasing a statement. When he finally did, he issued a video telling the rioters to go home—while also repeating the lie that the election had been stolen and referring to the attackers as “very special.”
In the aftermath, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” making him the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. The Senate ultimately acquitted him. However, the matter did not end there. Congressional investigations and Special Counsel inquiries have since uncovered additional details, including evidence that Trump was involved in a broader, multi-pronged effort to overturn the election—ranging from the creation of false slates of electors to pressuring state officials and promoting baseless legal challenges. While he has not been criminally convicted for these actions - and with his releection probably never will, court filings and testimony continue to suggest that he was at the center of a coordinated campaign to subvert the democratic process.
After he left office, Trump continued to downplay the seriousness of January 6, even going so far as to glorify those imprisoned for their roles in the attack. In campaign appearances, he has referred to them as “patriots” and played musical tributes to them during rallies and issued a blanket pardon to over 1,500 individuals wo where charged or convicted in connection with the events at the Capitol.
A Polarised Reaction
Public and political reactions to the Mueller Report and Cogrnessional investigations fell largely along partisan lines. Trump and his allies declared total vindication, while critics pointed to the documented misconduct and pattern of obstruction as grounds for accountability. The same partisanship has been on full display in the previous Trump thread.
A New Conversation
We've left the Trump thread rage on for way too long. We've closed it, have established the above as fact and will delete any comment or argument denying it without substantial proof as the crackpot theory it is. As always, participants are encouraged to support claims with evidence, engage charitably with disagreement and resist the temptation of tribal thinking.
Comments (1881)
I just did a search and there are 743 instances of you mentioning Biden on this public forum. I didn't read any of the posts listed but I assume they express some disapproval or objection.
Thou doth protest too much, methinks.
Intentionally going for division/polarization/vitriol?
[sup](division favors adversaries, collaboration favors the cooperators)[/sup]
[i]"No, Turd Sandwich is worse!"
"I can't believe you think that! Giant Douche is clearly worse!"[/i]
The silver lining was that at least the subject seemed to have subtlely changed. The children had started to realize that neither Turd Sandwich nor Giant Douche was a particularly appealing option - for they were a set of very special, philosophical children.
Alas, despite this profound insight, the die had already been cast. Someone was going to have to 'win' this argument, which usually entailed convincing the other side that they had better things to do with their time.
Poignant questions about how come there were only unappealing options would have to be answered, presumably, later.
The first post listed in the search for your mentioning "Biden" (743 instances) is your protesting his excessive use of executive orders...
Quoting NOS4A2
Yet you think "all forms of protest are stupid."
Oh, and:
It would be smart of you to protest Trump's excessive use of executive orders also.
Thanks to for another laugh. The hypocrisy (and unadulterated stupidity) are so easy displayed with the cult, if only one takes a little time to do so. Thanks for spending that 5 minutes. Gave me a chuckle at least.
I don't care, that just seems an odd double standard to raise.
I guess it’s an inside joke.
Your stoicism compelled you to spend time, search my name and Biden’s. I love living rent free.
Unfortunately that was 5 and a half years ago. I love how Trump is ramming this stuff down your throat. Three more years.
That took seconds, the hard part was deciding on an EO graph. And stoicism has been out for ages. I’m a Nietzschean now. Will to power, baby! :strong:
U.S. Orders Intelligence Agencies to Step Up Spying on Greenland (— Wall Street Journal · May 6, 2025)
France summons US ambassador over antisemitism claims (— Courthouse News · Aug 25, 2025)
Denmark summons US envoy over suspected influence operations in Greenland (— Reuters · Aug 27, 2025)
EDIT
Rumors will have it that the Trump administration has been doing crap in Alberta, Canada; though being rumors, they've become more credible
That was the labor secretary.
Okey dokey
Beyer: Trump Must Fire Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (— Don Beyer · Aug 28, 2025)
No sh¦t. And a few others. How much longer before RFK Jr gets a cab home? And a few others. Hold the administration accountable.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/investors-worry-trumps-intel-deal-kicks-off-era-us-industrial-policy-2025-08-27/
Nationalize everything!
(He'll either stay, or quietly be asked to resign for some reason they find plausible, is my guess.)
White House says ousted CDC director Susan Monarez was 'not aligned' with President Trump's mission (— ABC · Aug 28, 2025 · 1m:21s)
Quoting Leavitt
Make America Healthy Again
Monarez is better aligned with the slogan than Trump and RFK Jr together
Stephen Miller: The Democratic Party is a 'domestic, extremist organization' (Fox · Aug 25, 2025 · 5m:5s)
Well then, now that it's been broadcast by a government official, what will happen next (if anything)?
Stephen Miller Yells About American ‘Killing Field’ in Unhinged Rant (Daily Beast · Aug 26, 2025)
Stephen Miller rants about ‘killing field’ in Chicago as he appears to liken city crime to Cambodian Genocide (The Independent · Aug 26, 2025)
Taking Stephen Miller Seriously. And Literally. (Charlie Sykes · Aug 29, 2025)
Stephen Miler called Democratic Party a 'domestic, extremist organization' (just double-checking · Snopes · Aug 30, 2025)
Should be passed off as Trump-style ramblings, though I suspect some will pick it up.
What's your take?
Reichstag fire (— 1933)
Shelling of Mainila (— 1939)
Zersetzung (— 1970s—1980s)
"False positives" scandal (— 1988—2014)
Domestic Military Deployments after Trump v. United States (— Chris Mirasola · University of Houston Law Center · Nov 13, 2024 — Aug 19, 2025)
• The Kremlin backs Orbán (Hungary)
• Orbán (Hungary) backs The Heritage Foundation
• The Heritage Foundation pushes Project 2025
• The Trump administration and Project 2025 overlap
Both Trump/Vance and Orbán periodically whine and complain about Europe / the EU, for example. (As well as Putin.) While critique is welcome, crap has been seen going beyond that. Is there a momentum of sorts towards alignment of sorts (or attempted anyway)?
Much more importantly, what's your take, anything to see here? (Could be faces in the clouds.)
So we're seeing the march of the United States into an authoritarian dictatorship, day by day.
Read on for the details.
And per tradition, I’ll ask, what’s the people of the US doing about it?
We can’t blame narcissistic psychopaths for their attempt at seizing power, but we can criticize the people for not removing such people from positions of corrupt power.
People saying that this isn’t possible are essentially enablers of these people to wield their power without consequences.
For instance, the troops deployed in LA was judged to be illegal. If a presidential order and actions on those orders are illegal, then US Marshalls should arrest Trump. Simple as that really. That’s how non corrupt governments handle people who abuse power.
Yet, since that’s not happening, then the people are responsible for upholding the laws of the nation. Maybe the people should remove him from power by force then? Some would argue that this would be similar to Jan 6, but it’s not, since it’s based on the fact that Trump has acted illegally against the constitution and that the systems of government are unable to uphold that constitution. In that case, there’s no other choice for people than getting their hands dirty and out all the people involved with this corrupt takeover and abuse of power.
A democratic leader who acts illegally has revoked their contract with the people of that democracy. That person should be taken down by force if necessary. How else would the US survive as a democracy than to protect itself from those who want to destroy democratic systems?
There’s a point when these people can’t hide behind the fact they were elected democratically. Almost all dictators were ”voted” for democratically. Would people stand in the middle of Nazi Germany’s peak and honestly defend Hitler for being democratically elected after he seized power and created an authoritarian regime? I don’t think so.
No, it's not. Trump is immune. Even before SCOTUS established this (and before they became corrupted), the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel had determined that a sitting President cannot be indicted. So the only way Trump can be held accountable is if he were impeached and removed from office.
The House of Representatives is controlled by Trumpists. They publicly rationalize everything he does. So although a judge determined Trump's action was illegal, Trumpist Congressmen say the judge got it wrong. It will be appealed, and they will continue to say the courts got it wrong unless and until SCOTUS affirms it.
How everything became the culture war
[sup]— Michael Grunwald · POLITICO · Nov 3, 2018[/sup]
Much of the article aged fairly well.
, how far does the immunity go?
All the way until impeachment + conviction by Congress?
Trump's "Fifth Avenue" sequel
[sup]— Axios · Jan 9, 2024[/sup]
Possible Exxon business for lifting of sanctions (which apparently matter to Putin):
Exclusive: US and Russian officials discussed energy deals alongside latest Ukraine peace talks
[sup]— Reuters · Aug 26, 2025[/sup]
Does Sullivan's accusation hold up?
Trump threw away America’s relationship with India just to PROTECT his family’s business interests with Pakistan — a move he says makes US allies like Japan & Germany wonder if they can TRUST Washington at all.
[sup]— MeidasTouch via Megh Updates · Sep 2, 2025 · 1m:32s[/sup]
Ex-US NSA Jake Sullivan Accuses Trump Of Sacrificing India Ties For Family's Business With Pakistan
[sup]— CNN-News18 · Sep 2, 2025 · 5m:47s[/sup]
If this...stuff is true, then...corruption of sorts, though I doubt the Trumpets care.
Immunity applies to any acts that are part of his official duties. For example, he can't be prosecuted for illegally firing people, illegally withholding funds from universities, or violating the Posse Comitatus Act (ordering the National Guard to enforce the law). He's done all these things.
He could have been convicted for his 2020 election fraud, when he wasn't in office. He was indicted for this, but it was dropped when he became President because (it has been decided years ago) any prosecution would interfere with his official duties.
He could certainly be impeached for any of the crimes he's committed, and it Dems control the House after the 2026 elections, they may do that. GOP won't, because Trump controls them. Regardless, even if impeached, he won't be convicted because it requires 2/3 of Senate.
It's going to be a long 4 years.
We basically won't have a CDC in 2028. Aaaaaaaah!
[I]"...questions, outlined under the administration’s Merit Hiring Plan, ask candidates how they would “advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities,” and to name “one or two executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you,” and how candidates will help implement them if hired."[/i]
--
https://marylandmatters.org/2025/08/25/opm-trumps-hiring-questions-mandatory-to-ask-but-optional-to-answer/
And he keeps trying to use the military for domestic crime issues. I wonder if that will feel normal in 2028.
As in so many matters, the permission granted in those orders is contingent upon whether or not Congress resumes the power granted to it by the Constitution. The illegality of ignoring existing statutes is not enough, although a helpful stumbling block going forward.
My prediction: he will not send troops to a city, like Chicago, because that would be a blatant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. He can, and will, send the National Guard to places like New Orleans - where the Governor invites him, since the law allows it. He will then blame Democratic governors for not inviting him and letting their crime rates continue. The whole thing is political theater. This cannot solve a city's crime problem because it can only be temporary. At best, crime will be down temporarily.
But Trump is Hitler, and America is becoming fascist!
I agree. I'm just trying to see the point. Trump says crime is out of control in DC when the statistics say the opposite. He then sends in the National Guard. Whether this is the point or not, it gets people used to the idea that a military body is rightly used for domestic issues.
What do you think the goal is?
I'm sure that's true, but the control he presently has isn't so much his doing. People flocked to him with lists of supporters to plant in government jobs, like project 2025? You think I'm overthinking it?
Yes…. and if people oppose the idea of this being actual rising fascism, they’re delusional. I’m still waiting for people to ignite some actual rage in opposition to all of this. There still not enough of anti-fascist rage going around. Instead, people, even on the side of criticizing Trump and his followers, treat them as a sort of legitimate political side.
But I find it pretty simple; whenever the democratic mechanism gets dismantled and the laws and regulations doesn’t work on a leader who abuse his power for whatever reason, he and his loyalists should be removed, with force if necessary. And if it can’t be done by the agencies meant to protect the nation, then it’s up to the people to do it instead.
I’m still waiting for the people to rage enough that it starts to become dangerous for Trump and his loyalists. Because that could fuel political actors in opposition to take much stronger action and not fiddle around without actual opposition.
But maybe they’re holding back because they want Trump to screw things up enough to win the mid term. And then when they have that power we will see that rage come down on Trump harder than we’ve ever seen on the US political stage. Well, one can only hope that’s the long game they’re playing. If not, then the people itself will need to do something.
The majority of the population doesn't care about (what can be characterized as) legal technicalities, they simply want action that achieves the results they desire. For this reason, I truly wish the center and left would focus on the aspects of Trump's actions that are illegal and unconstitutional, and remind everyone on why the "technicalities" matter - rule of law is critical to our system of government.
I'll give one blatant example. The administration has been denying due process rights to individuals it chooses to deport. Abrego Garcia is the most stark example. He was arrested and deported (in defiance of a court order) based on flimsy evidence he's a gang member. They have consistently claimed he's a horrible criminal, and attacked the left for coddling him. When they finally acceded to court intervention, they fished for what other charges they could pin on him. They took the unprecedented, and absurd, action of working a plea deal with a man who accused Garcia of human trafficking (bringing undocumented workers into the US). Plea deals are typically made with low level guys in a criminal organization to make a case against the higher-ups. In this case, the plea deal was made with a higher up to get Garcia - the lowest level guy in the (alleged) activity.
There's many more instances. Generally, reporting (on the left and center) mentions the illegality, but indirectly trivialize it by criticizing the policy, the morality, and painting a sympathetic view of the victim. Reporting on the right typically ignores the illegality (often criticizing the judges who rule this way) and stresses how great it is to get rid of illegals.
The importance of rule of law is a non-partisan issue, and more stress on Trump's attack on rule of law should be placed. His die-hard supporters will never care, but the other 20% of Republicans would probably care if it were made clear to them.
They would then be forced to admit their own illegal and unconstitutional actions. Trump has almost always won his Supreme Court cases during his second term. In July it was reported that the U.S. Supreme Court granted all 15 of President Donald Trump's emergency applications since April.
The rule of law has been a thorn in the sides of Trump’s opponents, so it would be a little comical to hear them opine about the rule of law now.
There are close to 400 cases against the Trump administration, and a majority are pending. He's likely to lose a large number. I'll mention a few.
His coercion of law firms who support liberal causes (like Perkins Coie) is unprecedented, and will not survive the court challenges.
His multiple violations of the Impoundment Act.
His executive order on "Birthright Citizenship", in direct defiance of prior SCOTUS rulings.
The issue is broader than violating the law. He may have the legal authority to punish career DOJ lawyers for prosecuting cases against Jan 6 criminals, while treating the criminals as heroes - but it certainly is inconsistent with rule of law.
His politicization of the DOJ is unprecedented. They have lost much of the independence they've had since Watergate. It's appalling that his "former" defense attorney (Todd Blanche) has the role of deputy AG, but is still actively working to protect Trump, as in his sham (quid pro quo) interview of Gislaine Maxwell. The DOJ also filed a frivolous lawsuit against Maryland Judges, because Trump didn't like some rulings.
The DOJ's treatment of the Epstein files seems largely based on protecting Trump, including the performative request to release the irrelevant Grand Jury Testimony - which the judge called them out on.
These are just a few things off the top of my head. I eagerly await your damning facts that demonstrate similar or worse behavior by Democratic administrations.
You just listed, nearly verbatim, a bunch of lawfare complaints from anti-Trump plaintiffs and lawyers, which you imply are “damning facts”, even though they haven’t been ruled on.
You know what has been ruled on? Biden’s agenda and a series of progressive causes, much of which have been deemed unconstitutional and unlawful by the highest court in the land.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-dealt-biden-historic-series-defeats-2025-01-18/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/10/us/charlie-kirk-shot-utah
Sounds about right.
We should arm conservatives so they can defend themselves.
https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/northern-utah/political-activist-believed-shot-at-utah-valley-university-speaking-appearance
:mask:
https://nypost.com/2025/09/11/us-news/gun-charlie-kirk-shot-with-revealed/
Personally, I would remain skeptical of such engravings as it would be the perfect cover for more sinister suspects, such as the cartels or some foreign-influence operation, who may be trying to goad the reactionaries into action.
I saw that. That's crazy. I'm a bit of a fanatic so I have no doubt he'll actually be on a beach in Belize after a facelift and tan sipping cocktails delivered by scantily clad maidens until he no longer remembers what memories are. Just my take.
Also, this has nothing to do with Trump. Remember, all the enemy can do is distract you to throw you off mentally. And your post seems to be a fairly sufficient example of said phenomenon.
“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” Trump said in a letter that he sent to Brazil’s president, who is widely known as Lula, and posted to Truth Social on July 9.
Trump’s letter went on to tie Bolsonaro’s prosecution and de Moraes’ social media rulings to the tariffs he’d later impose: “Due in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market), starting on August 1, 2025, we will charge Brazil a Tariff of 50% on any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-brazilian-products-tariffs-bolsonaro-rcna222534
:clap: Brazil has a functioning judicial system. Good to see. May he rot in prison, that piece of shit.
Wasn't the US supposed to be the beacon of light for free democratic societies in the world? Trying to install it in other nations by the means of anti-communist wars...? Fighting for the "good".
...how's that going? :sweat:
I'm thinking some of that divergence can be attributed to the history of their foreign support/influence. Seoul went democratic/humanitarian/aspiring, Pyongyang went militant/crazy, etc.
EDIT
HDI: North Korea, not South Korea
Yes, but one needs to also ask, if nothing was directly influenced, could the entirety of Korea have come out leaving behind authoritarianism and not being divided? The probable reason for why they went so far in either direction might be because outside influence pushed the country to that extreme divide.
Point being... if the US would have leveraged diplomatic power through trade agreements and aid... the carrot rather than the stick... might we have had much more peaceful transitions to democracies in the world?
Subsequently, would the US have become an actual force for good? A nation that wouldn't be involved with military and getting criticized and instead through its economic power have actual soft power to influence without stepping on the freedom of each nation it involved itself in.
Sweden was long a great diplomat between nations in conflict, per capita I think we have more diplomats that made a difference in the world than most other nations. But we didn't have the economic power, so we could only act as mediators. If we had the economic power of the US, maybe we would have been able to change much more than the US which produced the consequences of fracturing nations, destroyed people, cultures and giving rise to terrorism.
Americans will probably be paying more for their coffee as a result of this ruling since you're asking.
South Korean workers return home after ICE raids at US Hyundai factory
[sup]— Reuters / Australian Broadcasting Corporation · Sep 12, 2025[/sup]
South Korean workers detained in US raid arrive home
[sup]— BBC · Sep 12, 2025[/sup]
Americans in other countries might want to self-identify as Canadians or something.
I'm sure Canada, Mexico, Europe, whoever would welcome such investments.
Earlier:
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Sep 7, 2025
There was a conflict-ridden momentum.
Do you think it was realistic for a single Korea to remain fairly uninfluenced + thrive, perhaps analogous to South Korea / unlike North Korea?
Technically possible sure, but realistic?
:100:
empathy (uninfected) vs stupidity (MAGA-virus)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1012974 :fire:
addenda to https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1012352
Quoting NY Times
This, from the President who pardoned more than a thousand felons convicted of looting the Capital Building on 6th January 2021. The hypocrisy of this administration knows no bounds.
The only people who believe there are organizations that would fund violence against conservatives are people like Kirk, who believed Jews are attempting to eliminate all white people by importing non-whites. So it appears the cabinet is being motivated by conspiracy theories, to no one's surprise.
https://apnews.com/article/fani-willis-appeal-georgia-supreme-court-trump-7be50feee272612484490b53592e7e08
The hopes and dreams of the anti-Trump brigade lied with the corrupt because their hopes and dreams were corrupt.
So basically, "I'm right, anyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong." This is cognitive dissonance. A metaphorical demon of sorts. The brain will believe anything it's told from an early age. Why do you love your mother and your father more than a random woman or man off the street you've never seen before? Surely, they're fine people deserving of love, too.
Ah, the path to truth is not for most. I doubt it is for you. You remain useful and serve a purpose. But, the path is there. If you have the will for it. Be warned however, it is not for the faint of heart. Many men die an agonizing death attempting to pursue it.
While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical FACT that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the Far Left.
[sup]— Vance · Rapid Response 47 · Sep 15, 2025[/sup]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1967652535679721576[/tweet]
The killing of Charlie Kirk is part of a grim pattern of political violence in America. This is what the data show http://econ.st/4gwVO6Y
[sup]— The Economist · Sep 16, 2025[/sup]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1967966886320050373[/tweet]
Worse than casual bullshitting. To be called out.
What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism (archive·today 2024Oct24, archive·org 2025Sep11)
[sup]— National Institute of Justice Journal · Jan 4, 2024[/sup]
I can see why they wanted to "review" it.
Vance lied straight to everyone (2025Sep16) in typical Trump style.
Miller has taken it up as well. (2025Aug24, 2025Aug30)
Johnson, too? (2025Sep8)
They reached the point of "Put up or shut up" for everything they say some time ago.
Trump sues ‘degenerate’ New York Times for $15B
And the irony that the extreme right have been crying about the "woke left" and their cancel culture, but are now not only doing the very same thing by firing people who haven't even said anything extreme, but also, as a state, threatening a private company into silencing one of their talkshows.
Is it ok to call Trump, Maga and his people fascists now? Is it properly aligning with the textbook definition? Or will people still debate the true nature of Trump and his people and followers?
That's actually how partisan Americans think (as others in other countries). Partisanship has taken such a firm grasp over the discourse. If you do care about freedom of speech and other rights of the individual, democracy or the rule of law, sooner or later the partisans on both sides of the political aisle will hate you and dismiss you. This is because the loyal partisan supporter simply cannot be critical about his or her side.
Quoting Jimmy Kimmel
ABC cowardice on display — good grief that's weak. (Loss of independence integrity?) From the looks of it, Trump managed to not directly violate the law in this case, at least not openly as far as I know.
Over on Fox News, the old "life unworthy of life" was aired, but hasn't received much attention from high-ups, be it leadership or government.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1966878449290649676[/tweet]
Quoting someone
This earns President Trump a space on Mount Rushmore.
[sup]— Trump · Robert F. Kennedy, Jr · Nov 9, 2024 · 6m:36s[/sup]
Did P01135809 then go ahead to implement half of his accusations?
[I]"Disney's ABC announced it is taking Jimmy Kimmel's late night talk show off the air indefinitely following comments he made about Charlie Kirk's suspected killer. During his Monday monologue, Kimmel said: "The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." Following his remarks, the Trump-appointed chair of the FCC publicly pressured ABC to punish Kimmel — and suggested the commission could move to revoke ABC's affiliate licenses. Several celebrities and free speech groups condemned ABC, while President Donald Trump, a frequent critic of Kimmel, praised the decision."
--[/i]https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/18/business/timeline-jimmy-kimmel-suspension-vis
I remember. Also, so-called “election denial” was verboten. Anti-Trump pressure campaigns even got the president removed from the largest social media platforms, along with vast swaths of his supporters. That’s why I don’t care too much about the victims here, and their cries ring rather hollow. This is what you get.
This is very sad that you don't understand my ideas.
As far as I know, currently Trump is planning an invasion into Venezuala. It is possible that Putin will start using again his nuclear threats; and it will cricial important for Trump to tell some information to the Russians. If Trump makes some posts or videos for the Russians, many Russians will watch them. Currently many Russians sympathize with Trump, including those who support Putin, because Trump is homophobic, and the homophoby is a sacred element of Russian state ideology. This gives Trump a chance to start lowering the rating of Putin in Russia; when the rating of Putin will become smaller, very soon a general will ovethrow him.
Trump must carefully and politely tell the Russians that the USA has a lot of nukes, incliding the ones at submarines, and the USA will nuke the Russian cities if Putin starts nuking other cities. I hope that eventually the majority of Russians will start hating the Z-activists, pro-war minority which is responsible on all the horrors of current war, and this minority will eventually go to prisons for their crimes.
Charlie Kirk and The Hate Speech Algorithm (— Evey Winters · Sep 18, 2025)
Net summary is escalating anti-gay rhetoric.
I think the point is that we need to take a good look at stochastic terrorism and judge whether Charlie Kirk was getting more and more practised at this art. Isn't stochastic terrorism what Trump is accused of in relation to the Jan 6 event?
So the free speech absolutist makes an exception, when it entails retaliation by his side; a retaliation that's an order of magnitude worse because it entailed explicitly political speech, and threats to misuse the office of the FCC to inflict that punishment*, and threats of expensive lawsuits
If retaliation (in spades), is acceptable, then you should be fine if there were to be counter retaliation from the left. But obviously, you have no principles.
______
*Amazingly, even Trump sycophant Ted Cruz denounced the threat.
Fascinating analysis! I'm also not sure exactly what to make of it, other than that this seems to be a promising methodology and that her general observations of Kirk seem to have an objective basis.
But I'll focus on one statement I think problematic:
"There’s almost no way he wasn’t aware of his impacts during his lifetime."
Of course there's ways he could be unaware! First, it's not something Kirk would have been interested in, so he might not have given it a thought. Alternatively (or in addition), he may have had an point of view that's an idealization of NOS4A2's: free speech absolutism and holding speech blameless no matter how extreme it is. Such a perspective would deny any relationship between one man's speech and another's actions. Arguably, the statistics are evidence against that point of view, but anything short of deductive proof can be rationalized.
No, I’m pointing out that this is the world that people like Kimmel built. You want censorship you get censorship.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/1347741672289959936?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Trump and his Congressional sycophants accused the "Biden Justice Dept" as being "weaponized" against conservatives, on the basis of the fact that Trump was investigated and indicted. By painting it as "Biden's" DOJ, they sought to link Biden to it. It was "Biden's DOJ" only to the extent that he appointed the AG (a former nominee to the Supreme Court respected for his legal acumen) and a few other top positions. There was never one hint of Biden trying to influence any DOJ actions. Biden continued the post-Watergate norm of an independent DOJ. Presidents set priorities (e.g. prioritizing civil rights violations, or prioritizing violations of immigration law), but they have refrained from directing specific investigations or prosecutions.
Based on this false claim that "Biden's DOJ" targeted conservatives and victimized Trump, Trump & Co are explicitly, and unequivocally, politicizing and weaponizing the DOJ.
On a related note: a family member of mine is an FBI agent, stationed in Washington DC. He has spent most of his 15+ years with them in foreign intelligence (specifically not law enforcement, as some agents do). For the past few years, his full time assignment has been on one specific country- one of our biggest rivals in the world. He now has to spend 2 days each week patrolling DC, so he now spends only 60% of his time working intelligence. All for Trump's political theater.
I don't want censorship, but I have a more nuanced view of free speech than you. And I'm not a hypocrite - like you. I do not, and have not, advocated silencing people like Kirk for their speech. I support rebutting that speech, as I do with you. But if Kirk's speech, which clearly exhibits prejudice, is allowable - why wouldn't satire?
Let’s get this out of the way first—do you believe those in power should decide what you can and cannot say?
Personally, I do not think those in power should wield that power to limit free speech. I believe that is likely unconstitutional, but absolutely believe it is wrong.
He managed to get rich. I suppose maybe he thought all that luxury just fell at his feet.
As a constitutional matter, the call for a free press is clear. What complicates the present issue is that the FCC was formed by Congress to restrict what enough people found to be offensive. That measure was aimed at certain expressions of profanity and extreme references to individuals and groups. Those limits are subject to changes of sensibility over time but also represent a set of negotiated agreements under constant review.
The elephant and the donkey in the room concern how ownership of the media influences that set of controls. That element also introduces the broader problem of regulation of commercial enterprise.
So, the administration uses some of their power to reduce the limits put in place by Congress and heighten other parts when it serves their political objectives.
[sup]— Sequoia Carrillo · npr · Sep 17, 2025[/sup]
I'm getting some vague 1920s-30s Italy vibes here. Isn't the US education system in need of basic improvements, rather than this?
Quoting Kirk said · Jan 11, 2021
Extremist magnet. Who the senders were (domestic + foreign) might be informative.
Such White House interference in Dept Justice actions is, of course, almost completely unprecedented and highly irregular to say the least. Trump complained that the two impeachments and five indictments brought against him were all 'based on nothing', so in his (twisted) mind, filing false charges against perceived adversaries is no different (and as usual never mind the actual facts). NY Times coverage (gift link). Rachel Maddow comment.
He was bought, for his ability to speak, and would speak about whatever he was paid to speak about, regardless of whether he had any real belief.
Quoting Banno (Nov 14, 2020)
Hopefully that turns out a bit dramatic, yet the comment seems to have aged too well. The first emperor, Augustus (-27), also told Romans he was the only one who could save Rome, and they believed him, et voilà, imperial cult.
What laws and regulations can battle that if their entire drive is set on a “second coming of christ” delusion? I don’t think people realize how dangerous such a movement can become, especially when they seem to now self-radicalize because of Charlie Kirk.
It also cements that the US is a christian fundamentalistic nation, exactly in the same vein as how we view many Islamic nations, forming laws and values out of whatever skewed idea in their religious delusions they push forward as their primary creed.
I have no doubt that most of the people at the Charlie Kirk event want to burn the rest of the world in holy nuclear fire. We’re witnessing a proper cult getting dragged out from the dark by someone bathing in their love.
And few seems to actually care. :shade:
House Trump has
Some are typical authoritarian, and democratic backsliding has been seen.
(By the way, my possibly wrong impression is that personally, Trump isn't particularly racist or homophobic, but some who are have his ear.)
I'll leave Trump accolades to someone else.
Looks like he has maintained support among hard-liners/radicals.
Not to critique, but if one was so adamant and such facts were so self-evident, one could easily have made each bullet point a hyperlink a person just has to click instead of researching themself. The fact I don't even want to, rather I don't have the time to check facts, neither does the average person, I mean, it kind of explains why he gained popularity. People are not intelligent. Not in a free society. Thinking is hard. All I need to do is learn how to dress myself in the morning and do a basic function, any function really, it can be as simple as pushing buttons or pouring coffee, and I get to live a life that a monarch 1,000 years ago could only dream of. I do that, I get to make a living. Anything else is superfluous. That's what the average person thinks. That's how they live. That's who they are.
Since he is still in power and hasn't been removed from power, I guess all of that is legal and aligns perfectly well with the constitution? Right?
This is why he should be removed by force. And since he isn't, we know that the US is broken and does not have a functioning democracy that upholds law and constitution. To say that he is in his right to do whatever he wants is to be an apologist for an authoritarian leader and an authoritarian regime.
There's not really much nuance here.
Quoting jorndoe
Did you miss how he talks about immigrants? Or are you saying that he is too stupid to understand what he is saying if he forward racist remarks from others?
It could very well be that he is too stupid or rather, just don't give a shit about what he says. That anything that can give him the love of his followers will be said, regardless of what it is. I wonder how far he is from relaying an idea of using deadly force against democrats? I mean, if he is too stupid to grasp what he is saying, but he gets love from his followers by saying that, then he could say it. Only his legal team would have to scramble to try and cover it, but if he said something like that, I think he's done for.
Quoting Outlander
Yes, and this is why I hate the masses more than the authoritarian leaders. Because that would be like hating a rock for being a rock, there's no point. But the apathy of the people, to ignore fighting for the freedom and good life they have, to defend against those who want to destroy it for their own benefit, that apathetic people are the worst and they deserve the authoritarian boot on their head so they can re-learn what others already know.
Just think of the farmers who voted for Trump, now panicking over rising costs, lost workers to ICE raids, and exports diminishing. They deserve what they voted for, because maybe now they'll learn not to be stupid. Or they'll perish under their own stupidity, either way, normal, thinking people wins. I despise these people; a bunch of spoiled children who whines to their daddy Trump only to end up being left behind when Trump is done with them. Absolutely pathetic.
False or misleading statements by Donald Trump | List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump | Donald Trump's conflict with the media (Retaliatory lawsuits and federal government actions) | Targeting of political opponents and civil society under the second Trump administration | In Assault on Free Speech, Trump Targets Speech He Hates | The Right Takes Aim at Wikipedia | Donald Trump judicial appointment controversies | Government hiring and personnel of Donald Trump | Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Inspectors general removed or fired by Donald Trump | Trump publicly urges US Justice Department to charge his enemies | Legal affairs of the second Trump presidency | U.S. Democratic Backsliding in Comparative Perspective | US democracy under siege | Trump sides with Putin over U.S. intelligence during remarkable press conference in Helsinki | The Cipher Brief: Report for Tuesday, June 17, 2025 | Under Trump, America’s New Friends: Russia, North Korea and Belarus | US vetoes G7 proposal to combat Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers | US Derails G-7 Condemnation of Russian Missile Strike on Ukraine | Trump Bans AP And Reuters But Invites Russian State Media To Zelenskyy Meeting | Trump has pushed America into a new “Axis of Evil” by aligning with dictators and betraying allies | 2025 Trump–Zelenskyy Oval Office meeting + Some responses | US popularity collapses worldwide in wake of Trump’s return | U.S. Image Declines in Many Nations Amid Low Confidence in Trump | Trump’s War on Science: How His Policies Affect Canadian Research | As USAID retreats, China pounces | Indictments against Donald Trump | Donald Trump quotes
, oh, you're right, something about those evil immigrants eating cats... :D
Racial views of Donald Trump (Springfield pet-eating hoax)
At the moment, I don't have time to organize this stuff — tedious — but can be bribed. ;)
Quoting Christoffer
Yeah. I'm thinking better basic education might help.
"Unilaterally" once meant "done only by one person". Trump used it to mean "Done my everyone except me".
List of countries that recognise a Palestinian state:
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium (recent announcements in 2025 — see sources)
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cabo Verde (Cape Verde)
Cambodia
Cameroon (varied positions historically; check source notes)
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo (Republic of the Congo)
Costa Rica
Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Croatia (debated at times)
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo)
Denmark (varied; see source notes)
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea (position has varied; see source notes)
Estonia (varied; see source notes)
Eswatini
Ethiopia
Fiji (historical / parliamentary positions vary)
Finland (varied; see source notes)
France (formal recognition announced in 2025 — see sources)
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Ghana
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel (does not recognise — included here only for completeness of discussion)
Italy (varied; see source notes)
Jamaica
Japan (does not recognise — included here only for context)
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Luxembourg (recent actions 2025 — see sources)
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Malta (recent recognitions/announcements 2024–2025 — see sources)
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico (varied; see source notes)
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands (varied; see source notes)
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau (position varies; check source notes)
Panama (varied historically)
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal (recent announcements 2025 — see sources)
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore (does not recognise — included here for context; see source notes)
Slovakia
Slovenia
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Sweden
Syria
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tunisia
Turkmenistan
Turkey
Turks and Caicos (territories may have local statements; check national government positions)
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Uruguay
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Western Sahara *(recognises Palestine — note: Western Sahara itself is a disputed/non-UN member entity)
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Complied by ChatGPT. Recent additions may be missing.
There you have it. That’s a principle. I guess it’s a good thing Kimmel, the multimillionaire who celebrated other people being fired or censored, is still doing his show.
We just found out the other day from Google that the Biden admin pressured them to remove accounts for misinformation, many of whom were Trumpists like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon. Terrible isn’t it?
Enjoy Kimmel tonight.
https://nypost.com/2025/09/23/us-news/google-to-reinstate-youtube-accounts-banned-for-repeated-violations-of-covid-19-content/
Quoting NOS4A2
It depends on what the Biden administration actually did. If they "coerced or significantly encouraged" their protected speech, then it was unconstitutional (per the standard set by 5th circuit in Murthy v Missouri). If all they did was flag content that was contrary to Google's policy, they did no wrong.
Despite Kimmel's reinstatement, it is Trump's threats that are problematic. They are continuing, and they clearly cross the 5th circuit line:
"(Kimmel) is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution," Trump said. "I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. "
Justice Department weighing whether to charge former FBI Director James Comey, sources say
Former AG Barr had reported that Trump wanted Comey prosecuted in his 1st term, but he pushed back.
Trump showed his hand on his "truth" social post:
[I]
“We can’t delay any longer,” Trump posted on Truth Social in a message directed to “Pam.” “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” He specifically lamented the lack of criminal charges against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, three of his most prominent political antagonists.[
...Trump amplified his post in a brief gaggle with reporters on Saturday night, saying the post was not meant as a criticism of Bondi but that “we have to act fast.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/trump-bondi-truth-social-00574380
[/i]
Siebert's replacement, Lindsey Halligan, has never prosecuted a case in her life. She was an insurance lawyer. She was 3rd runner up in the 2010 Miss Colorado pageant.
Comey has a good case for "vindictive and selection prosecution". I'm skeptical this will go to trial.
Andrew McCabe testified to the inspector general that Comey authorized leaks. Comey in 2020 testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he did not. One of them lied and obstructed justice. Given that during a hearing in 2018 Comey said he “can’t remember,” “can’t recall” and “doesn’t know” 245 times I’m leaning towards him being the liar. They threw people in jail for far less.
LOL! Here's what the IG said:
[I]
"While the only direct evidence regarding this McCabe-Comey conversation were the recollections of the two participants, there is considerable circumstantial evidence and we concluded that the overwhelming weight of that evidence supported Comey’s version of the conversation. Indeed, none of the circumstantial evidence provided support for McCabe’s account of the discussion; rather, we found that much of the available evidence undercut McCabe’s claim."[/i]
And even if they had a chance for a conviction, Trump flushed it down the toilet with his comments and actions. In addition to his public comments that I quoted, he had also fired Comey's daughter from the DOJ without cause, and likely got the IRS to audit him.
Incidentally, no one gets convicted of perjury for saying they don't remember.
That’s right, it’s Comey’s word versus McCabe’s, and it’s frightening that this stupid dynamic was once present at the highest levels of law enforcement management. These were supposed to be the experienced adults in the room, and they all turned out to be bickering hacks. Now Comey’s lawyers are going to have to convince a jury that McCabe is a liar and Comey isn’t. That’s hilarious.
On the other hand, your inexperienced prosecutor convinced a grand jury that there was enough to indict.
Getting an indictment is a low bar, and she only succeeded on 2 of the 3 charges.
It also remains to be seen if she followed the proper procedures with the grand jury. The judge will get a transcript of the proceeding and could kick it out if she failed to follow the rules.
Quoting NOS4A2
And the IG judged that Comey's was credible, so how does this make him a hack? And you're ignoring the implications on the current DOJ.
The biggest mistake of Comey's career was to discuss the Clinton investigation- contrary to DOJ standards. This has become common, under the current leadership. Comey acted alone, on his own poor judgement, not under orders. The current DOJ prosecutes who Trump tells them to prosecute.
McCabe says that he had two people deliver the leak and that he did that without asking for, or receiving, authorization from Comey.
What answer can Cruz give to these questions: When and where did McCabe say that Comey authorized McCabe to leak? What is an exact quote of McCabe or even a reported paraphrase that asserts that Comey authorized McCabe to leak?
If it is made clear that the indictment concerns McCabe's leak to the Wall Street Journal regarding the investigation of the Clinton Foundation, then on what basis would the prosecution claim that Comey authorized McCabe to leak?
McCabe and Comey might differ on certain matters, but in what exact quotes or reported paraphrases does McCabe say that Comey authorized McCabe to leak?
(1) Governmental action to restrict speech vs private action to restrict speech.
(2) Speech that does not use public airwaves and speech that does use public airwaves.
It is sneaky, dishonest argument from many on the Left to conflate the alleged shooter's own views with those he was raised with, as perhaps we were supposed to glean from Kimmel's comment that the alleged shooter was at root from the Right. The alleged shooter was, it seems, raised in a Right leaning family but he himself, it seems, leans Left. The fact that he was raised in a Right leaning family doesn't cancel that he himself leans Left. Indeed, reversing Kimmel's own point, some on the Left will do anything they can to make it seem that the alleged shooter is not Left leaning.
And Kimmel's comment was not comedy or even humour. There was no punchline or even irony to it. (The comedy was only in the next paragraph in which Kimmel pointed out that Trump, without a trace of self-awareness, segued his answer about grief over Kirk by pointing out how nicely the new White House construction is coming along.) I don't always mind a comedian getting serious during an act, but I am annoyed when comedians claim that their act, even including the non-comedic parts, should have a dispensation from responsiblity for its content just because it's "just a joke".
But it is ludicrous pearl clutching to claim that what Kimmel said disrespected Kirk or is even remotely in the same universe as "hate speech" (oh come on!). Much of the Right seized on the assassination to try to put the kibosh on virtually any criticism of Kirk by claiming it is "hate speech". That's so ridiculous. It was claimed that the Left and Democrats (virtually always, the claims are couched as if there is a monolithic The Left and The Democrats) were celebrating Kirk's death, as if, en bloc, the Left and Democrats were doing any such thing. Who, other than some crackpots on Internet forums and, as rare exceptions, a TV commentor or two, said anything that could remotely be construed as celebration of Kirk's death? I'd like to know what Democrat in national or state office said anything that could remotely be construed as celebtration of Kirk's death. I really would like someone making the claim to give examples with exact quotes. The Right is a wily adaptive creature - turning woke right back as a cudgel against the woke and woke-friendly themselves. Well played, even if crudely and transparently dishonest.
And Vance and Trump, for example, look ridiculous faulting the Left for claiming that Kirk's commentary included vile ideas, when we consider that Vance and Trump propogated the unconscionable lie - endangering local immigrants (legal) in that Ohio town - that immigrants were eating stolen pets, and even as, when it was made clear to Vance that the claim was a canard, he said it's okay for him still to advance it if it is effective in highlighting that immigration is a problem. Seriously, from a candidate for vice president?!
On the other hand, many on the Left are liable to do similarly if the situation is reversed. Thus the mindless, interminable tu quoque loop. Right and Left are both hypocritical and each is hypocritical for saying the other is hypocritical, ad infinitum ...
And especially ridiculously disingenuous and hypocritcal is the argument that Kimmel or anyone should be restricted from the airwaves on account of making untrue claims. First, as mentioned, the claim was, at face value, basically true (even if underneath it was suggesting an untruth). But more importantly, the airwaves are flooded with falsehoods and lies. Falsehoods and lies are the proverbial water we fish swim in. The President of the United States is himself the apex predator liar of those waters. And then all the way down to the most pathetic radio talk show host at the smallest, most hapless radio station in the smallest, most pitiable radio market in the U.S. If we censored the airwaves on the basis of truth, we'd have dead air across the dials and the proverbial after hours TV test pattern around the clock.
Meanwhile, what a juvenile mind the President of the United States has. He harped about Kimmel's ratings and the El Presidente's estimation of Kimmel's talent. As if that adds to the case for kicking Kimmel off the airwaves for speech that clearly should be protected.
But still, most crucially, the President of the United States, along with his team and many of his millions of supporters, took arguably the most salient philosophical and policy minded leap in American history across the cherished line that the government should back far away from imposition of censoring speech. And then the dishonest, hypocritical rationalizations for that.
Right vs Left and Left vs Right. It gets dramatically worse even from just one news cycle to the next. There is no hope for honest, rational national discourse.
1) Unblocking YouTube
2) Unblocking messengers
3) Cancellation of 280 articles of the Criminal Code
4) Signing a peace treaty with Ukraine.
In the future, a 5th point could be added to these four: the return of 2013 territories to Ukraine in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against Russia. firstly, as we suppose, this point should not be declared, because in Russia there is the 280.1 article of the Criminal Code which prohibits public statements with suggestions to give somebody a Russian territory (this will prevent spreading the proposal by the Ukrainian supporters in Russia). On the other hand, the 5th point is important for calming Ukrainian patriots.
The gist of the idea is that Russia essentially consists of three peoples: an apolitical majority and two minorities - democracts and anti-democratic “vatniks”. Authoritarianism in Russia is based on widespread "sectarianism": everyone only makes friends with people who think like them. "Vatniks" talk only with other vatniks, and they believe they are the majority. If the referendum is held, most Russians will probably vote for all points, and the vatniks will experience cognitive dissonance; they will realize they are a minority, and their views will start changing. If Putin refuses to hold the referendum, the fact of the refuse will make the Russians change their views too.
The goal of this plan is to force Putin to implement democratization in Russia.
How about the USA cedes territory to Russia?
We could give them South Carolina.
As a Brit, the only states I know are California (Hollywood), New York (the city), Florida (palm trees), Texas (cowboys), Alaska (cold), and Hawaii (those flower necklace things).
Can you stop kidding? I am serious.
Probably Putin wouldn't perform this referendum, but the fact of his refusal will make the Russians experience a cognitive dissonance, they will start understanding that Putin lies to them.
They probably already know that.
Not truly.
The authoritarianism in countries like Russia is supported by LIES: the rulers declare that they fulfill the will of nation, but in fact they ignore this will in critical points like freedom of speech.
Trump will be able to go further; for example, he can declare that he plans to supply Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, but he would refuse to do so, if Putin nevertheless performs this referendum. Possibly Putin will start again making his nuclear threats. For him, possibly it can be rational to choose the nuclear war instead of the referendum, because if his lies would be exposed, he will loose the power and with the power - his life. But if this becomes obvious for the Russians, they will overthrow Putin.
A simulacrum curb-stomps the fat(uous) orange avatar of American imbeciliity ...
:mask:
Maybe you believe that most Russians support the Putin's war? This is not so. When they vote for Putin, they vote for "stability", not for the war.
I see that in Russia there is an apolitical majority and two minorities: those who support the war and those who are against it. The number of people who are against the war, or maybe have some unconcsious protest, can be estimated by the number of famous writers and musicians who have left Russia after the war - nearly half. Below I present some anti-Putin music videos, which give some insight how many people in Russian are against the Putin's war. Can you look at these videos?
https://youtu.be/q07dm6lPs2k
https://youtu.be/RMg0AGE11oo
https://youtu.be/l07MYf2iPr4
https://youtu.be/6vHufynMM1g
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Oct 2, 2025
I guess everyone knew. At least it's confirmed that there's a Project 2025 element in the White House. Rambling about the others as radicals and scammers will trickle down and out to his herd.
A Boston judge issues a blistering warning over free speech under Trump
[sup]— Axios · Oct 2, 2025[/sup]
Should Young be worried about his future now?
Quoting Stephen Miller · Oct 4, 2025
[tweet]https://twitter.com/StephenM/status/1974534850334933179[/tweet]
Another "Put up or shut up" type claim. Most reports over the past few years tell a different story. More erosion of the Trump regime's credibility; more still if no one calls him out on it. Goes along with Vance's and Trump's earlier comments, perhaps Hegseth's goings-and-doings as well. I guess we'll see what comes of it.
Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2022
[sup]— Anti-Defamation League · Feb 22, 2023[/sup]
Underrecognized: Extremist murders are usually from right-wing actors
[sup]— The Washington Post · Feb 28, 2023[/sup]
What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism
[sup]— National Institute of Justice · Jan 4, 2024[/sup]
Is “radical-left” violence really on the rise in America?
[sup]— The Economist · Sep 12, 2025[/sup]
Trump Called for a Crackdown on the ‘Radical Left.’ But Right-Wing Extremists Are Responsible for More Political Violence
[sup]— TIME · Sep 16, 2025[/sup]
Trump administration says it will target far-left groups for Kirk's assassination. Prosecutors made no such link.
[sup]— NBC · Sep 17, 2025[/sup]
Right-wing extremist violence is more frequent and more deadly than left-wing violence ? what the data shows
[sup]— The Conversation · Sep 17, 2025[/sup]
He's an effective propagandist - effective at telling like-minded people what they want to here. It's especially appealing to those who are still in shock at the assassination of Mister Kirk.
Your response, pointing to actual analysis that falsifies what he says, seems to me the correct one, but none of his audience would be at all interested in researching it.
1)Compliance with Court orders. They document 16 instances in which the government failed to fully comply. They contrast this with history over the past 70 years – there’s only one prior instance of the government failing to comply with a court order: in the 1960s, a judge ordered a cessation of bombing in the Cambodian War. In this case, the non-compliance by the DOJ lasted only for a matter of hours.
2) Presenting false or misleading information in Court – 35 cases are described.
3)Arbitrary and capricious administrative action: 50 cases
If anyone is interested, the full report is here.
The lead author is Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University, who has worked with the State Department and the National Institute of Military Justice.
I consider this analysis extremely important because it identifies behavior by the Trump administration unrelated to partisanship, but firmly entrenched in the law. No one, of any ideological perspective, should consider this behavior acceptable.
Well said.
This is what the strategy of the new populist right is: entrench yourself in your own echo chamber and create your own version of reality by believing your own propaganda. Facts don't matter as you aren't engaged in any discussion. Everything is simply a show of your loyalty to the cause you engage in discourse to win the argument. The Trump team has learnt this now. Anybody remember Trump's first lies in his first term about inauguration crowd size? At first his people then had difficulties with this and the first spokesman had trouble to give a pure outright lie. Now they don't have any problems: it's just a show of faith. Trump supporters don't care a shit about it. If it causes outrage (as it before did) that was just good.
Politics simply has gone astray when it should something that ought to be grounded in reality and trying to find a consensus between opposing views, it turns into a religion. Then political discussion turns into a sermon where the faithful just compete in showing how faithful they are. This shows that the movement has reached an ideological end. Trump of course, didn't have any ideology behind him, but he just became this figure that ideological hopes were pinned on.
Quoting TonesInDeepFreeze
First of all, there is absolutely no intension to have a real discourse. Populists aren't for democracy, they have an enemy (usually the rich, but now it seems the Anti-Trump liberal rich). You don't negotiate with the enemy, you fight it. Democracy is only there for you to win the next elections. In a genuine engaging discussion you have to give respectability to the other side. That won't do. Besides, it's just easier to create a semi-fictional enemy.
Not just populists and prominently egregious demagogues, but also "mainstream conservatives", "center right", Republicans in general, "mainstream liberals", "center left" Democrats in general, "centrists", "independents" and even "neutral" commentators. So much terribly low grade argumentation all over the place. The sneakiest are those who operate under a pretense of being "reasonable", "rigorous" and "analytical". While humans have made spectacular achievements in so many intellectual spheres, public discourse on matters of public affairs seems to continually regress.
Well a new power has just ridden into town. Plenary powers.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/plenary-authority-stephen-miller-cnn-dictator-b2841627.html
Some of these claims will be heard by SCOTUS in this term.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/10/06/bomb-threat-catholic-church-supreme-court/
These sorts of acts, along with the ongoing insurrections occurring throughout the country, hint at a country on the verge of civil war.
Which other insurrections?
Well, usually it starts with the objective being winning the argument just for the sake of winning.
The CDC has been gutted. (— Neil Stone · Oct 11, 2025)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/DrNeilStone/status/1977122920905298306[/tweet]
How can anyone think that RFK Jr is helping Americans?
The psychological oddity is the degree to which people allow anger and disdain to blind then to facts straight in front of them.
The fed cuts rates when things slow down. In other words demand has been stifled, not redirected.
No.
Jan. 6 probe potentially investigated over 150 Republicans, documents show
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/29/trump-january-6-republican-senators-fbi-arctic-frost
There's nothing wrong with spying. It's how we find out what those who are not forthcoming in their admissions, are really up to. Probable cause is not necessary, because spying is how we determine probable cause, therefore prior to it. Those who have nothing to hide don't worry about the spies.
You've always been a man of mystery, MU! Thankfully one fact has been brought to light. You're clearly not a minor, one responsible for one, a female, or a minority.
Because otherwise, yeah. Spying is a form of harassment and mental assault on a person's human rights. It is akin to stalking, threatening without threatening. Restricting their movements, patterns, habits, and even thoughts. Presenting an unknown danger and essentially constantly tickling the "fight or flight" part of the brain with a feather. Or jagged piece of metal.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is also not true. You assume people who live lives of deceit are for some reason moral people who would never lie, commit sabotage, or plant evidence that would hinder people of another "team" or race or ethnic group or religion or what have you. That people wouldn't do things at the expense of another to get ahead or further either one's individual or collective interest(s). This is sheer ignorance of the global community and basic history (as well as human nature).
Come on, man, you're slipping! :razz:
Ok? Trump doesn't care much how the US appears to the rest of the world. In large part, the standing of the US is something the rest of the world created in the first place. It's been clear that Trump is isolationist for the thousands of years he's been on world stage. Seems like thousands, anyway.
Point is: whether they take him for a chump is their problem. Not his. Or mine.
Good lord.
Why is everyone around here so strongly against spying? Have you succumbed to paranoia? If you want to find out what someone is up to, you spy on them. How is there anything wrong with that?
Who have you spied on?
Other than checking the whereabouts of my kids on the phone app, I don't get the urge to spy. However, I accept it as a reasonable and legitimate way of checking up on someone whom you suspect.
They are children and you are their father. The claim “there is nothing wrong with spying” pertains to all those who “get the urge to spy”, who “want to find out what someone is up to“. Are you fine with them checking up on the whereabouts of your children?
Sure, why would I not be fine with it? It's just a natural and acceptable part of our society. It's sometimes required and useful for identifying wrong doers. If someone (my children, or even myself) is suspected, then that person will be checked up on. And the thing is, that the spying is required before knowing whether the person is a wrong doer or not, it's based on suspicion.
I mean I wouldn't disown my society just because people have the right, and will, to spy on others within it. No, I understand the reasons why people spy, and I accept it as an unavoidable, natural, and rational thing for human beings to do. This is because many human beings are inclined toward bad deeds, and to avoid being prevented from carrying them out, or being punished for carrying them out, they attempt to hide this inclination. Therefore they must be watched when they think no one is watching (spied on), to identify that inclination toward bad deeds.
However, if the spiers fabricate evidence, or do other dishonest things, then that's a different story. But that's not a faultiness of spying in specific.
Why would you not be fine with strangers tracking your children?! Are you serious? What an absolutely mad question to even ask!
And you’re comfortable with just anyone making a decision about what is suspicious or not? Or is it just the organizations that can enforce through violence?
Should we all spy on each other? Make sure no one we know is doing anything they aren’t supposed to?
Your position is utterly baffling to me, what am I not understanding?
It reminds me of the Stasi and East Germany.
It's quite likely happening already, and also completely legal. Why should I worry about something I can't do anything about? That just makes a person miserable. And if it's happening it's not hurting anyone anyway. So if I worried about it, I would be the only one being hurt by it. I'm not interested in self-inflicted harm.
Quoting DingoJones
If that's what you like to do, then go right ahead. I'm sure there are many who already practise, so you won't be alone. I won't be joining you though, I've got better things to do with my time, like hanging around TPF.
This isnt a question of not worrying about what you cannot control. You are really not concerned about say a pedophile spying in your kids? Spying itself isn’t necessarily doing direct harm but the results from spying is the intelligence used to inflict all kinds of harm.
Also, I didnt suggest worrying all the time but good lord in heaven man you can take reasonable precautions against people gathering intelligence (spying) to use against you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Perhaps define more how you mean “spying”? Im still utterly baffled by this shoulder shrugging on spying with no exceptions or caveats.
You are changing the goal posts. I am fine with the basic principle as stated "strangers tracking my children". I believe that is a natural, unavoidable, and fundamentally lawful, aspect of our society. But now you ask about a "pedophile", and a pedophile is psychologically ill, or a dangerous criminal. Do you see the difference? You've totally changed the question. Of course I'd be concerned about a pedophile spying on my children. I'm concerned about the very existence of pedophiles. But I'm not concerned about the existence of spying
Quoting DingoJones
If the prospect of people gathering intelligence to use against you bothers you, then by all means take reasonable precautions against it. But if it doesn't bother some of us, then why should we make that effort?
Quoting DingoJones
Let's take your words, "gathering intelligence". And we should add "in secrecy". But not necessarily, "to use against you" though, so remove that as a requirement. The reasons for spying have a very wide range, and the person spied on is not necessarily targeted as one whom the intelligence will be "used against" at any time. Often people spy with the intent of helping the person spied on, so the intelligence in this case, would be used to assist you rather than against you.
No Im not. “Strangers” includes harmless folks and harmful folks, the requirement is only that you don’t know them. Some strangers can and will use spying for harm, ergo we should have some concern about spying.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It should bother you, and it does in the case of a pedophile so you are not actually unbothered by spying. You are unbothered by harmless spying (a minority of spying). That doesnt mean you should let your guard down does it?
Why are you so invested in not being bothered by spying?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
“To use against you” is the concern. Because spying includes the distinct possibility of being used against you I think it is in fact a requirement. Without that requirement
You are ignoring the majority use of spying.
I think I sufficiently indicated that I have concern about those who will do harm, because they do harm. I don't have concern about the act of spying because that act does no harm in itself.
Quoting DingoJones
I believe in placing blame where blame is due, distinguishing acts which are bad from acts which are not, and not letting myself be concerned by acts of other people which are not bad. If an act of another person is not causing harm why should I be concerned about it?
Quoting DingoJones
My kitchen knives have the distinct possibility of being used against me. That's a fact, and requirement of being a knife, it cuts flesh.
Quoting DingoJones
As I said, the reasons for spying have a very wide range. I do not believe that there is any such thing as "the majority use of spying", except as we defined, "gathering intelligence".
Ok.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1989483659980628191?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Yeah, tells something when they covered 23000 pages of files from Epstein:
Number of times of mentions in the documents:
Melania Trump: 12 times
Putin: 792 times
Obama: 1783 times
Trump: 9 379
So it seems that the best friends then had a breakup in their bromance. What else would be new?
Much of it was anti-Trump, though, and he was clearly coaching a Dem congressman what to ask Michael Cohen during an anti-Trump investigation. Like most of you, he had the same Trump obsession. Should we count how many times you’ve said the word “Trump”?
Evidence of the breakup in the bromance?
Definitely evidence of collusion between Epstein and others.
It’s crazy to think he was influencing congressional investigations into president Trump through party apparatchiks, literally feeding them talking points. We can watch it happen live. What other ones did he have his dirty hands in? Whatever it is, that’s a romance of an insidious kind.
Democrat Stacey Plaskett avoided censure for being Epstein’s finger-puppet during an anti-Trump congressional investigation, and will retain her position on the intel committee.
* * *
Well, Axios has released Trump's "peace plan" for Ukraine. It's even worse than the surrender to the Taliban, which is now I guess the low point of American diplomacy.
From the proposal:
And notice that article 3. isn't about Ukraine, because there's articles 7. and 8:
So basically this is a wet dream for Putin. Trump will emasculate the strongest alliance that the US has had ...and Putin will also get Ukraine. This is at least on par (if not worse) than the surrender deal that Trump made with the Taleban (and it should be noted, Biden carried out to the end dutifully).
Why this thread is more apt to review this whimsical action from Trump than the Ukraine thread is that likely (and hopefully) this surrender purposal won't go anywhere.
What an incredible surrender monkey Trump is.
Putin will not get Ukraine. The EU gets Ukraine.
In fact, if Russia invades again, they face destruction at the hands of NATO and the US.
No matter. If this deal goes through, invasion would be illegal according to Russia’s own laws.
I suspect that warmongers don’t like the deal because they’ve wasted so much time, money, and human bodies for essentially nothing. I further suspect that the end of this war will mean the final nail in the neoconservative coffin, and the obsolescence of their belligerent alliances.
That’s simply untrue. He violated the agreement. The Biden administration said the U.S. would not withdraw the remaining soldiers by May 1st, the date which all parties agreed upon, but would withdraw them by September 11 (a purely symbolic form of deceit). His hubris led directly to the death of US soldiers and the loss of billions and billions and billions in military assets, none of which would have been there had Biden abided by the agreement.
What bullshit is this "decisive coordinated military response", when a) you cannot train for this and Ukraine cannot be a member or anybody else (like Ireland etc.) cannot join NATO? The emasculation of NATO and Ukraine-NATO ties makes this totally ludicrous statement. Who the fuck will defend Ukraine, when NATO cannot be in Ukraine?
Quoting NOS4A2
HAHAHAA!!! :rofl:
Wait... :brow:
...you are serious??? :worry:
You really believe the country lead by Putin, that has several times, actually, put into writing that it didn't have ANY territorial claims toward Ukraine or Crimea, to have no aggression towards other "artificial" countries like Ukraine? And then there were ALL the Minsk agreements. How much Putin valued those? What horseshit do you believe in???
Above all, read your history: Russia never attacks, it only defends itself. According to Soviet Union, my little country attacked the Soviet Union in 1939, just as the Baltic States wanted to join the Soviet Union in 1940. So the can easily have a hypocrite law that argues they won't attack anybody. Incredible garbage.
And do notice, this is just like Trump surrender deal with the Taliban. That peace-deal also said that:
Which the Taleban cared shit about. They didn't even pretend to have talks with Republic of Afghanistan. Did Trump (or Biden) care about that? Of course not. But do notice the evident Trumpian issue on both of the peace-deals. Then in 2020 Trump announced the following in the Taleban surrender-deal:
Did he bring up this with the foreign forces, that by 2020 were by manpower a larger force than the US personnel on ground? Of course not! It was just a surprise for them... just like this brainfart. And the same thing is here, where Trump is just demanding actions not only from Ukraine, but European countries too.
South Vietnam, Afghanistan... seems next in line is Ukraine for the US. Or Trump is basically hellbent on Ukraine to be in that category.
Hopefully our leaders keep their calm and handle this as one of those Trump stupidities that comes out from the current White House like the US annexing Greenland and Canada. Trump seems to desperately want that Nobel-prize and one can just imagine what fortunes have the Russians promised to Trump.
Why? Nearly everyone Trump talks to face to face he changes his tune about, even after long online tirades.
My guess here is that you’re one of those who think Mamdani is too “far left” and a gift to the Republicans and can’t possibly accomplish any of his proposals, etc., and that’s skewing your perception.
Otherwise, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’m sure he was respectful, and in return so was Trump.
“The United States affirms that a significant, deliberate, and sustained armed attack by the Russian Federation across the agreed armistice line into Ukrainian territory shall be regarded as an attack threatening the peace and security of the transatlantic community….
… NATO members, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and Finland, affirm that Ukraine's security is integral to European stability and commit to act in concert with the United States in responding to any qualifying violation, ensuring a unified and credible deterrent posture.”
https://archive.ph/S58Vt
NATO was never masculine. They can hardly move tanks between each other’s countries. Beyond serving as a symbol of American posturing in Europe, the only battles they’ve ever had in their 75 year history was against some pirates. You think they’re going to run in and save the day? Delusional.
Read your history. The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore. The Cold War is over.
At any rate, I can’t wait to watch the EU bring out their counterproposal, which will invariably lead to WW3.
Absolute nonsense. NATO passed with flying colors the role it had during the Cold War of creating a credible deterrence. Hardly can move tanks? LOL.
How about those Reforger exercises? Reforger 88 had about 125 000 men, all deployed to Germany from the US, France, Canada, UK, Denmark. The whole objective of the annual Reforger exercises was the moving of tanks into West Germany. And NATO is finally getting back to it's original role (thank God). Some countries unfortunately ran down their militaries (the 90's peace dividend), luckily that stupidity didn't reach my country. But that era has passed.
Quoting NOS4A2
You don't know or care about what the response is, which is obvious from referring to the EU, not the group actually active in the issue.
Anyway, many think that this peace-deal that Axios published was an intentional move by the Russians to humiliate Trump and harass Ukraine. Naturally Trump doesn't notice, but anyway, who cares. I think this will pass as an example how Trump caves in always to get a peace deal.
* * *
Well, I hope the country you are living in chooses to have Swedish Gripens, just like Ukraine. One absolutely cannot trust Trump and as Americans have now twice voted Trump into power, with the US there is a risk, unfortunately, of it being an untrustworthy ally/weapons provider... when the customer isn't Israel. So I think my country is taking a little risk when choosing the F-35. Not a huge risk, but still.
American presence there is the only deterrent Europe has ever had, and the only reason NATO stands any chance. The problem is you all have been taking advantage of the United States taxpayer for far too long without developing any way to defend yourselves. And once that tit is finally pulled away their leaders start to cry while they scramble for answers.
You’re right, I don’t care what the EU response is, because it will invariably contain a bunch of symbolic trash about European ideals before they sentence every Ukrainian to death.
Prominent MAGA Accounts Exposed as Foreign-Run as X Reveals Countries of Origin Feature (— TheWrap via Yahoo · Nov 23, 2025)
Many prominent Maga personalities on X are based outside US, new tool reveals (— Guardian · Nov 23, 2025)
Some of the pro MAGA Twitter accounts outed as foreign agents yesterday (— Edmond Bertrand · Nov 23, 2025)
X's new location feature exposes political accounts based outside the U.S. (— Axios · Nov 24, 2025)
The 28 point plan marks the end of the end
[sup]— Landsbergis · 2025 Nov 21[/sup]
Trump got nothing out of it, that I can see. GOP had been trying to paint Mandami as a "Communist" and claim this is the direction Democrats are taking. Trump gave the dems soundbights in which Trump praises Mandami's intelligence and that he agees with him on many things. Meanwhile, Mandami did not back off from calling Trump a fascist.
Drinking the Kool aid again, I see.
Quoting Punshhh
Yep. This is the Trumpian bullshit rhetoric people like NOS4A2 believe.
France and UK have their own nuclear deterrents, so they are out of the question here (France was even out of NATO for a while). West Germany has been quite supervised about just what kind of military to have. For example with my country, the US was long against us having surface to air missiles or any modern fighter aircraft. Perhaps just assuming that we would be a likely axis with Russia. So that's what the US actually offered us during the Cold War: no security guarantees, likely just tactical nukes on the Northern airfields in order that the Soviets couldn't use them.
Above all, because of the Superpower status and the alliances, the US has been in the leadership role enjoying all the perks that come from that because of the vast alliances it has. Without these alliances, the US president would be a totally minor person at the World stage and the dollar wouldn't have the position enjoys. Someone like the prime minister of Canada. China's economy is big too, but do we follow what the Chinese leader has lately said? Of course not!
This is the thing that many Americans are totally ignorant of and seem to be totally incapable of understanding. The dollar has it's reserve role because of political reasons, not because of economic reasons. Without the US having the Superpower status and it's relations it would be just the largest currency in a basket of currencies, but definitely not the reserve currency. The UK pound never enjoyed this kind of role before when the British Empire was at it's greatest. Such role is only understandable only because of political reasons. Yet this is something never told to Trump loving Americans, who are spoon fed the lie all the time that their Superpower status hasn't been very good for them, that it's been a sucker deal for them. That somehow because they just have the biggest economy, their currency is the reserve currency and thus they can just print more money without any worries.
Partnership for Public Service releases new resources measuring the impact of President Trump’s federal government reforms during first 100 days
[sup]— Partnership for Public Service · Apr 29, 2025[/sup]
If true, DOGE is quite the fiasco.
Trump's mass layoff threat drives US government workers to resign
[sup]— Reuters · May 20, 2025[/sup]
I'm not sure if China will fill anything in Europe, but it already has filled a large role in Asia and Africa. The issue really is that nothing will replace the Superpower US, it will just leave a huge void, which will create a large whirlpool. (Which actually, already has happened in the Middle East).
Quoting Punshhh
Hope that this will happen. The other alternative is that some European will just "Finlandize" towards Russia, like Hungary and Serbia.
Quoting Punshhh
This is the irony so evident in the ignorance and the obvious cluelessness of Trump supporters. The project was for the US itself. Yet I think past administrations are partly guilty of this because the whole foreign policy hasn't been marketed correctly to Americans, only basically with fear of enemies that "hate everything American".
State Department to identify DEI policies and mass migration as ‘human rights infringements’
[sup]— CNN · Nov 21, 2025[/sup]
It's all interconnected, it's not different topics, it's one and the same. It's Immortan Joe and his war boys. It's the radicalization by abandonment and false promises all within an algorithm that traps white men into a feedback loop until they die, socially or literally.
People need to see the bigger picture here. To not get bogged down by details obscuring the overarching problem of our modern condition.
Europe has been fighting itself for thousands and thousands of years, and not even that long ago. Hell, they were doing genocide there not more than 30 years ago. The entire union is essentially a rogues gallery of states. It was Europe that invented fascism and communism, and spread them worldwide. We don’t even need to speak of the travesty of European colonialism.
I never said it was a demand from Europe for the US to provide security, like what you and @ssu seem to believe. What I said was you all have been taking advantage of the United States taxpayer for far too long without developing any way to defend yourselves. The EU gave itself the Nobel peace prize for providing peace to the region, even though they’ve been milking US military presence. So Europe obviously doesn’t need the help to maintain their defense anyways, and I would like nothing better than get out of that blood-soaked continent.
Of course the US state would pressure Google to take it down, though there's nothing in that video that warrants censorship. It will be up and running soon enough. People are so on the edge in front of Trump's guns right now that it's hard not to call it anything other than a fascist state.
If you add Russia to Europe, which I would do, this is totally true. Russia is the most clearest example of European colonialism and imperialism. And the last pure example of it, I would add.
The real tragedy is that Soviet leaders did peacefully handle the collapse of the Empire, but then our famous KGB officer that was picked to lead Russia after Yeltsin thought this was the biggest tragedy of the 20th Century and sees that the Russian Empire is the natural state of Russia (and thus countries like Ukraine are artificial).
Quoting NOS4A2
Nobody has said that. What we try to say that the US has benefited from role it has enjoyed.
Quoting NOS4A2
Says the guy who isn't an US taxpayer. No, what you simply don't understand that the US has benefited from being the security guarantor, the Superpower. That most valuable thing that has come from this role has been the US dollar being the reserve currency. No other great power has enjoyed the situation of the currency they print being the universal reserve currency. If the US would have chosen again the "Splendid isolation" after WW2, the West would have gone with Bancor. It's pure insanity and total ignorance to believe that the role of the US dollar as the reserve currency would just somehow descend from Heaven to the US because it was afterwards the biggest economy.
The other perk from being that Superpower is that countries listen to the US, which they wouldn't if the US had no alliances.
But somehow you don't get the above and go on with the Trumpian populism.
I live in Canada and recently watched the Prime Minister pledge allegiance to the King of England and his heirs during his inauguration. Lawyers and judges bow or curtsy towards a picture of King Charles when they enter and leave a courtroom. Russia could only dream of such fealty.
I am a US taxpayer. I have to file my income tax with the IRS every single year.
I never said nor implied the US never benefited. Indeed, clipping the wings of European war-mongering might have benefited the entire world. But this arraignment has allowed NATO countries to forget about their duty to defend themselves, to spend less tax dollars on militaries, and to spend the money they saved for their own benefit and no one else’s—and all while maintaining that air of European superiority.
I wonder if the assumption that everybody needs a standing army in peacetime is a result of our recent heritage. It took the US a two year ramp up to become effective during WW2. But now we're all supposed to be ready to destroy Moscow at a moment's notice with nuclear armed subs, bombers, ICBMs, medium range missiles. WTF?
Are you a citizen of the U.S.?
The English have indeed been the most successful empire builders starting from the incredible wisdom of creating the identity of being "British" to their multicultural isles. They've been so successful in this, that some English now question just what being English means anymore, compared to being British. Yet this is the prime example of how identities for different people can really be built from scratch. The English were successful in this, the Russian's weren't (or the EU, for that matter). The Russians came closest to this with the identity of being Soviet.
Furthermore, the English (now called the British) have been very successful in creating a British Commonwealth. Canadians are the best example. Yet when the English have used force, the result is relationship that the UK has with Ireland. Even if Russia desperately tried to mimic this with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), they utterly failed. The worst part came with Putin and his Russian reconquista. All that soft power that Russia had, for example over Ukraine, is now past history.
Quoting NOS4A2
Ah yes, unlike other countries, you have to pay taxes for the US even when living outside. My bad. But you do pay taxes to Canada and use the services of Canada, right?
Quoting NOS4A2
After the millions of Europeans killed in WW1 and WW2, Europeans even themselves noticed how bad the constant infighting was. Yet the US has had a notable role in the integration of Europe also.
Quoting NOS4A2
If there's peace and your own military is training with all of your neighbors militaries and the soldiers and officers know each other well and the countries have friendly relations, what's the need for a large military? The Dutch don't have to be prepared if the Germans or Belgium would attack them. Yet Israel obviously needs a large military. It wouldn't have such large military if it as good relations with it's neighbors as Nordic countries have. The size of the military is directly related to a) the threat posed by other countries or b) the role being a great power. If you aren't b) and there is no a), then why would you need a large army?
I myself am an active reservist and have spent now decades in the voluntary defense training here in Finland. I remember few years ago sitting down after the sauna with fellow reserve officers and NCOs who also have been working in the voluntary defense training for many years and asked them one question: "Who of them would have joined the military, if our neighbor in the east with over 1000km land border would be Canada?" None would have joined in that case the military. There naturally wouldn't be a reason for universal conscription and the tiny Finnish armed forces would be struggling with the same problems as the armed forces of Canada, or Belgium. Now, as one commodore put it to me, Finland has an abundance of men to fill it's military ...and a shortage of everything else. The shortage is because we face Russia as an existential threat.
Quoting NOS4A2
Who, other than the French, do maintain that feeling? Nobody else. The core of continental Europe is France and perhaps the Benelux countries... and everybody else looks as being somehow out from the center or have underlying issues, like Germany.
But at least the speech was full of facts.
"The president of the United States is a hateful raging lunatic with all the empathy of Jeffrey Dahmer....
"This president cannot discern moral right and wrong through a person’s actions, like a normal human being. Donald Trump’s entire worldview of whether someone is a good person or a bad person depends entirely on whether that person offers praise or criticism of Trump....
"The guy who can’t feel empathy for the Reiners being stabbed to death by their son is also not going to feel empathy for the people who contend the cost of living is still high, which is why the president keeps running around insisting the word “affordability” is a Democratic hoax and that Americans are living in a “golden age.” "
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/trumps-appalling-reiner-reaction-is-a-sign-of-something-deeply-wrong/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAOy-9NjbGNrA7L7x2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHnJxOyFQAVCJjX1dmES254hLB4rSz1E_i8Pfr0KYkMaO-4rPyHy5KoAfFzrN_aem_Z3LmBDa7udmeucM2zYEPgg
Did you pay attention in your IR101 class? The deal was quite simple. The US allow and support an integrated and strong Europe if Europe would not arm itself. The economic might of the EU supports the US, accept and support its super power status, while the US supports Europe militarily. It benefitted both sides enormously. The new order is different, the US wants Europe to arm itself, but an armed and integrated Europe is a threat, so it wants it armed but not organised. That is unacceptable to European leaders, but the EU is weak and under pressure of its own populations..
There has not been any 'unfairness' though, Europe never profited from the US tax payer, it was all stategy to begin with. The problem is the strategy has changed.
That's an interesting narrative. The American narrative is that after WW2, the US waited for the UK and France to get back on their feet and take over global governance again. They gave them money to help with that, but neither country seemed to care much about protecting the infrastructure of global trade, so the US decided to take over that role, partly inspired by Stalin's ongoing threats. Someone asked him how much more of Europe he was planning to take and he answered, "Not much."
I imagine neither of us is overly interested in the narrative of the other though.
Also after the institution of the post WW2 world order, there will be countless different policies and doctrines. The era of the the European colonial wars was a different one from the Vietnam er and different again from the era of glasnost and perestrojka. Both these narrative are of course one sided and gross simplifications. The only thing I liked to point out is that it is not as simple as "Ohh the Eurorpeans benefited from the generosity of the US tax payer". I think a little bit more thought should go into the situation than that and I think also the writer of that post is capable of coming up with an explanation that takes geopolitics into account a bit more.
That was a pivot point. The US originally became involved in Vietnam to help the French. French parties came to Washington between 1950 and 1954 asking for help to reassert their power over Vietnam. They emphasized that the world's rubber supply travelled through Vietnam, so if it became Communist, rubber might become expensive.
The US was planning to disarm after WW2, but Churchill came in 1952 to try to explain that the Russians were behaving threateningly and it wasn't clear what their plans were. The notion that the US ever felt threatened by an armed Europe is a little far-fetched. An armed Germany, well, yes.
Maybe I wasn’t paying attention because The North Atlantic Treaty article 3 says that all parties “will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.” Where is the agreement that Europe would not arm itself?
Make of it what you will:
Germany, more Wende and less Zeit, please
[sup]— Jamie Shea · Friends of Europe · Mar 23, 2023[/sup]
Yes, there has been a sharp falling off of attempts to defend his behavior as a political device.
Following WW2 Europe was devastated, it was going to take decades to rebuild and re-arm. The war wiped away the colonies of Great Britain (although this had already been on the cards) and France’s colonies were small and with little global influence left. Neither country was in a position to resume global governance. Britain was financially broke with the combination of the cost of war and the loss of empire. The entire population was subjected to strict food rationing for 14years following 1945. We didn’t finish paying off the war time debt to the U.S. and Canada until December 2006. I can’t speak for how France faired financially, but their country was more ravaged that Britain. While Germany was going to be on the naughty step for a generation, with no plans to re-arm.
McCarthyism was in full swing by the early1950. The US made damn sure that as many nuclear scientists etc were moved over to the U.S. as they could get, to prevent them being tempted over to Russia.
There are also facts. Facts speak for themselves.
I've read two histories of the era, one by an American historian and the other by a British historian who did research in Russia for two years.
Ohh, than it must be true right? I am a lawyer, even I do not have that much faith in law and treaties....
Anyway, I am not claiming there is a hidden clause or something. It was just a 'modus vivendi' that was in both the interest of the EU and the US.
Well, the US could at some point be threatened by an armed Europe. It was threatened by an armed Germany alone. It is beside the point, though. The division of labour was in the interest of both parties. The US would be the flag-bearer of the free West, getting support for whatever it did, in Asia, South America, anywhere, actually. The Economic and cultural might of the US would not be challenged. In exchange for this role, Europe could prosper under the US's nuclear and conventional umbrella. The world was essentially carved up into two main blocks, and the leaders of each block, the US and the USSR, held unrivalled prestige and sway over the others. The post-war world order is being carved anew. This means a reshuffling of power balances.
It could go in several ways. The EU is still weak, so it might find itself in no other position than a mere symbolic union, most of its individual member states under US influence, arming themselves to act as battle thralls for the US. An armed EU, though, may also assert itself anew on the world stage. To do so, it needs a political Union. It is in no one's interests, except the EU's, to increase the EU's political unity, especially not if it's armed. If the US likes the EU to go at it alone, and if the EU indeed does so, it is a threat to US interests. The same calculation is made in Washington, so it supports political parties of the 'patriotic' anti-EU kind.
I am not disputing any of your claims Frank, I am sure the French asked for US help in Vietnam. European countries were a mess at the time, and a mess that still liked to cling to their colonial powers. However, if you ask for such help from someone, there is a price to be paid. There is no free lunch, which was my initial point. It is not those nasty European countries robbing the US taxpayer, it was a calculated deal in the interest of both the EU and the US to have NATO and for the US to be the biggest player in it. With the emergence of Asia, especially China, the emergence of new economies, and the collapse of the USSR in 1989, new calculations had to be made. This is just what we see happening.
Our respective narratives aren't really lining up, but as you say, it doesn't really matter. We're going our separate ways now.
White House Defends Witkoff After Leak of Conversation With Russian Official (archived)
[sup]— The Wall Street Journal · Nov 25, 2025[/sup]
How Putin Got His Preferred U.S. Envoy: Come Alone, No CIA (archived)
[sup]— The Wall Street Journal · Dec 19, 2025[/sup]
, no particular concern with the truth of the matter...?
What is truth?
You say we’re going our separate ways, I don’t see it, Trump is an anomaly.
The US government thought that, and to that end, the US gave western Europe about $13 billion, hoping that would be enough to get them back in business. The idea that the US was going to have to remain on the global stage, where it had never been before, didn't start sinking in until the early 1950s. The notion that there was ever a "deal" where the US covers Europe's military costs in exchange for what? economic alliance? is absurd.
Quoting Punshhh
I don't think so.
Even so, the structural circumstances had changed, surely they were aware of that?
They did a secret study in 1949 to estimate the cost of the US taking the place of the British Empire. The result was that the figure was uncountable. Someone suggested maybe the US could manage it with the threat of nuclear attack. That was the climate in Washington after the war. The US had no experience dealing with global affairs. The British always handled that, but now the British Empire is apparently gone and the British experts are saying they have no explanation for what's happening in Russia and China. Stalin is actively fostering the impression that the Soviet Union wants to take over the world. We now know that Stalin did want that, but his real motive had to do with America's win in the Pacific with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's not that Stalin thought the US would actually try to conquer the USSR, he just couldn't stand the idea of anyone having that much power at a negotiation table. So he builds his own atomic weapons, acts like he's had them for a while, and wants to put them to use in the near future. A Russian historian would comment that in this, Stalin was doing something Russian leaders had been doing for centuries: blowing smoke.
So you're right, the US bought a cold war for itself, not with a hawkish post-war stance, but with the decision to use atomic bombs on Japan. What Tobias and you are doing is looking at the position of the US today and retrojecting that back to a time when the US was actually in state of shock and panic about the threats that seemed to be looming before them.
Yep. I'd put the emphasis on "Cold" part.
Indeed only because of nuclear weapons did the US and Soviet Union have so little amount of armed skirmishes. Otherwise it likely would have been the US and Soviet Union having many limited conflicts, at least, just like France and the UK had these colonial wars all around the World before. Now the conflicts were usually fought with proxies.
Only now Pakistan and India have shown that two nuclear armed countries can have conventional, but limited armed clashes without the conflict escalating to a nuclear war (something they have done now twice). Something similar happened between the US and Soviet Union only during the Korean War in the "Mig Alley".
(Only know we have the real picture)
Interesting, as I do not believe there is one narrative. There are many possible ways of understanding a situation, and there is no one definite way that captures its complexity. I do not see our narratives as mutually exclusive.
Or maybe I did not understand you well and you mean with 'we're going our separate ways now' not you and me in this discussion, but the US and EU. Well, if it is the last part, I think we are in agreement. Not that I like it as an EU citizen, not at all, but it may be where history takes both blocks.
Quoting frank
It is not a deal as in a contract Frank, it became a de facto modus vivendi with which the leaders of both blocks could could live.
Quoting frank
It is not something that happens by design, that is my point. There has not been a US plan or British plan or whatever plan. Sure the US was in a state of shock, all countries that participated in the war must have been. There will have been many different policy proposals. In history we always look back from point B to point A to see how we got there, but there is no need to presuppose some sort of 'deal' in the actual sense of a negotiation. There were many moments in history where the trajectories could have been different.
Yes. The old alliances are going away. Most Europeans hate Americans don't they? I'd imagine they'd prefer to look toward Germany and maybe BRICS countries for regional community.
I doubt that, Trump maybe and his acolytes. The issue is though that Trump has lit the touch paper for the U.S. to withdraw from Europe. Not necessarily as a result of what Trump has said, but in the unassailable fact that the U.S. is now an unreliable ally. The post war settlement is fractured. It may well be re-established after Trump has left office, but Europe will have re-armed by then and the U.S. has squandered her position as the unipolar superpower.
It will be important to rebuild the alliance in the future for the troubling times ahead and to offset China. But it will be on different terms.
That won't happen. There's no reason for it. The US will take Canada and Greenland, continue to undermine Central and S. America, and head into increased global warming alone. It's primary interest in the rest of the world will be that it's clearly understood that the western hemisphere is off limits. Do whatever you want to do, but leave the US out of it or be bombed. That's my prediction.
Why such a one sided remark? There is no indication for that at all. Last time I checked Russia was in the Brics and Russia is much more hated than the US. Everywhere, but especially in Eastern Europe.
Such a remark is just a bit ignorant, don't you think so yourself? Give your responses at least a modicum of thought before you hit that Post Comment button.
So full on MAGA, I’m not seeing it. But I’m not in America.
I can give arguments for why that isn’t going to happen, but it might do all the same and you sound convinced anyway. Or maybe you are just saying these things, so you don’t get singled out and pushed up against the wall when it happens.
Not me. I think I'm just tuned into abiding elements of American culture.
I won’t be coming to visit any time soon, now that they are saying they require all your social media account details when filling out the U.K. citizen visa waver form.
True and false are properties of statements.
If you're looking for truth, then you go for the true ones.
Quoting frank
Europeans prefer Germany and BRICS?
That's doubtful (to put it mildly).
How have you come to that conclusion?
Trump Broke America — Canada, Japan & EU Are Building the Future Without It | George Will
[sup]— George Will Insights · Dec 16, 2025 · 20m:34s[/sup]
Japanese and other interests are broader, but the talk could easily get longer than 20 minutes.
An odd observation is that American voters appear to have chosen this path deliberately and obliviously; it doesn't help them in the longer term, especially those who are not well-off.
Many Americans don't understand that their present prosperity exists because of the vast alliance networks the US has been able to create, which has made the country into a Superpower. And many believe the total opposite, which Trump promotes, that the alliance structure is a burden to them. Which is nuts, but anyway, when people are ignorant, they can believe anything.
The US is an oddity in that most countries in its position would demand tribute.
You don't notice that the real tribute is the dollar being the reserve currency and your government having this "perpetual" credit of taking on enormous amounts of debt? That is the tribute system that has made you so wealthy and capable of spending so much on the military!
But notice the important aspect of this: this arrangement has been fruitful and reasonable for the allies of the US and they have been OK with this.
Other Great Powers countries, like Russia/Soviet Union, don't have and never had such alliances like the US has. Russia has now basically North Korea and a lukewarm yet difficult China. And China? Basically Pakistan, because of India. (Which shows just how warm the relations are between BRIC-countries.)
Bullying just goes so far, you know. And this is one of those issues that people don't get: sovereign European countries chose voluntarily to be in the US lead security structure. Once the Soviet empire collapsed, those former "allies" rushed away from Russia. And for a reason, as it should be obvious to everybody!
And what Trump and other American politicians never will say that it's the US itself that has wanted Europe to be dependent on the US. Because there's always "Strategic Autonomy", which you should note when European leaders talk. It's something that the US has been against.
Hence you can look at it from this angle: Why are European countries really trying to get to that 5% defense expenditure so eagerly? Because the US has transformed to be a very untrustworthy ally. That 5% defense expenditure will establish deterrence if the pro-Kremlin stooge in White House wants to shatter the Atlantic alliance.
But then comes the real question: without the US being the defender of Western institutions and the primary member and leader in it's alliances, why would dollar be the reserve currency anymore? Remember that we didn't get Bancor, we got the Bretton Woods system and after the default by Nixon, the petro-dollar system was too based on defense pact with Saudi-Arabia also. Not based on economics. There's absolutely no other real reason for other countries somehow deciding that the US dollar should be a reserve currency. The logical solution would have a basket of currencies, where the US dollar is the biggest currency (but not the sole currency).
One of these days you're going to finally get that this a concern for you, not Americans.
Quoting ssu
There's nothing stopping the world from doing this. The trick will be to do it without causing a run on the dollar. :grin:
Not at all worried about losing your Superpower -status? Lol. Heck, the whole Trump revolution says in writing that this clearly isn't so: Make America Great again. So I guess that a lot of Americans, including future generations, will ask why it happened, if you lose the status.
Quoting frank
The "world" typically doesn't want dramatic changes. Change just is forced upon "the World" when a crisis hits and the effects are unavoidable. Sticking to the present status quo is usually the policy that the vast number of countries prefer. Hence changes don't happen in an instant.
And here it should be noted that there's a quite cacophony of different signals coming from the US.
First and foremost, Trump isn't the kind of politician able to be in control of the whole apparatus (for which actual leadership would be needed). He is more in control of his surroundings in the White House as in the first term (where he unintentionally chose "adults" to be in the room).
Usually Trump's "policies" are just aimless reactions with no clear objectives. Tariffs were surely the thing in his mind (for a long time), but he had to do his TACO. And now? Just look at what a quarter of the US Navy is doing in Venezuela: what on Earth is the objective? Likely the objective is just to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what would stick. Trump and the MAGA crowd (what's left of it) might want to do away with EU and NATO to the great satisfaction of Russia, but it's not so simple. Hence in this environment the Congress and actually the US Military are sending quite different signals as the Pro-Kremlin White House.
NATO and Denmark got through the first Trump administration with Trump not invading Greenland and the US breaching article 1. of the Washington treaty. So the question here is: why wouldn't we get through the next three years too? Then have the democrats regain the White House and it's likely back to something similar as earlier...
These changes take time.
The world typically doesn't want and resists change. That is until it can't any longer, and then things can change rather quickly.
If you look at human history 'gradualism' doesn't really seem like the norm, but rather periods of relative stability interspersed with rapid revolutions... punctuated equilibria.
The US is widely considered by political scientists to be in decline. That's not a result of Trump. It's just that the world changes.
This is so true. Everything stays rather the same, until there's a war or people somewhere simply get fed up with their bad situation and revolt or when the markets panic and we have a crisis that gives us an economic depression.
Quoting frank
Well, I would still remark that a lot that has happened has been self inflicted. Yet, think about it for a while from another perspective:
If the US is decline, where does that leave:
a) Europe?
b) China?
c) Russia?
d) the rest of the World?
When you actually look at all the places now a) - d), they don't actually look so great.
Heck, it's said that I live in the country where the people are the most happy. If that would be true, the World really, really sucks. In many ways, my little countries growth projections are similar to Japan, even if our population hasn't yet declined. Yet Japan shows that this doesn't mean that there will be an economic collapse, just low growth.
One of the interesting questions is how much of this decline and low economic growth is simply due to the demographic transition of countries. Decreasing populations don't create a reason for economic growth.
Yes. Declining population is a looming problem for China, South Korea, and Japan. Europe and the US attract immigrants to offset the decline, but that ignites racial turmoil as those countries become darker in complexion. :)
Nicolas Maduro's heavy-handed rule in Venezuela is finally ended by Trump
Trump Has Dropped the Price of One Thing: Cocaine
Trump has now his own "special military operation", attempting a regime change and trying to "run Venezuela" and get the oil in Venezuela into US hands. Trump was extremely clear about this when addressing the nation after the strike.
Yet nation building was what you wanted and why you voted for Trump, right? :blush:
Perhaps indeed he will now go annex Greenland.
The interesting question is whether and how the US is going to put Venezuela under colonial administration which is presumably what ‘running the place’ will require.
Trump is just “defending our institutions”. I thought that would be right up your alley.
Remember this?
Now you know. And the Venezuelan diaspora are elated.
Maduro isn’t the legitimate leader of that country, and your high-horse leaders just sat around and let him repress his citizens, as they’ve done all over the world. So much for “defending our institutions”. And it probably hurts knowing that the exiled opposition leader in Venezuela dedicated her Nobel peace prize to your favorite president last year, isn’t that so?
Just what institutions I ask? In his press conference, Trump mentioned oil 20 times while he didn't mention drugs, war on drugs or democracy at all. That's quite telling just what "institutions" the sick fuck is values.
Quoting NOS4A2
Lol, Trump threw Maria Machado immediately under the bus, didn't even bother to mention Edmundo Gonzales, but was eager to tell that they were in contact with Maduro's vice president Delcy Rodriguez.
Trump idiocy as ever. Then claim that he's going to run Venezuela without any troops on the ground and the Chavista-regime quite in control of the country still.
Quoting NOS4A2
Actually, I don't. And neither do you.
Just how is this going to work out? What if the Chavistas don't simply surrender?
Quoting NOS4A2
You are just contradicting yourself. So now you are in favor of nation building?
How well it went in Iraq? That country too had oil.
How well it went in Afghanistan?
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Oct 9, 2012
[tweet]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/255784560904773633[/tweet]
Europe: time for Strategic Autonomy!
I really hope that Denmark invokes article 5 if they try to annex Greenland. And seriously push back against the US with military force. It would cause such a turmoil in the US that I don’t think Trump would survive it.
It did affect the United States, however. Her enemies used Venezuela as an oil depot, robbing the Venezuelan people from that precious commodity, and to no surprise anti-Trumpism raised no suspicions when these enemies were taking Venezuela’s oil. Venezuelan criminals were entering into the US illegally under the cover of the diaspora. The regime there used the drug-trade to profit and sent them directly to the US. Hezbollah helped to turn Venezuela into a hub for the convergence of transnational organized crime and international terrorism. All this should serve as a good reminder of what kinds of goods Trump’s enemies are left to defend.
NATO is dead if the US uses violence of the threat of violence to take Greenland. Not just maimed as the UN is, but seriously dead.
Likely what the Trump lunatics want is that Greenland declares independence of Denmark and then they can rape the island. Because what is so peculiar in Trump's deranged mind is that he genuinely wants to increase the physical territory of the United States. It's not the mining rights, iwhat Trump wants is territory. He made it clear in his inaugral speech. With Canada and Greenland, the US would be far larger than Russia. (Let's remember that Greenland is larger than Mexico)
But again, the European allies of Denmark are holding drills in Greenland...
And Macron has visited Greenland with the Danish PM being the host:
The big irony would be if the Swedish sub that took out a US carrier during Baltic exercises… in the end took it down for real during an invasion.
With that said, the US military does have the right to reject illegal orders. Maybe there’s some intelligent brain cells within the US navy who simply will reject orders from that orange pig until people had enough and remove him from office.
I still don’t understand how far he can go before those with the power to remove him, do so. How many illegal things has he done by now? What does it take for the US to remove a president? Impeachment doesn’t work if the people who decide on it are part of his cult.
Quoting Christoffer
The political opposition to Trump hasn't woken up to the fact that this isn't a normal President playing by the rules. Many are just dumbstruck. And then there's the vast majority who don't follow politics and get only mad when the US economy tanks... or more precisely their own economy tanks.
:rofl:
And Trump’s approval rating is at 99%.
Quote me on it later.
I don’t really speak of the opposition, but everyone who sees him for what he is. This isn’t really about political sides, it’s an about normal people against a cult leader.
The situation is interesting to compare to the U.S. backed coup in Chile that brought in Pinochet. The corporate backers of that action were stinging from the loss of recently nationalized infrastructure.
Venezuela is decades past that moment.
At her swearing in Rodrigues was flanked by Diosdado Cabello (who controls the intelligence services and the party apparatus) and Vladimir Padrino López (who commands the military). And what about the generals? Presumably they've been kept compliant with their share of the looted national wealth. Be interesting to see how they react if that is seriously threatened.
Maybe because most people think that the problems with an authoritarian regime is only the leader. That's only true in authoritarian nations in which the dictator rules his closest people with fear. But most authoritarian regimes are composed of a wide net of people who keeps all parts of the nation within the same grasp of power. Even Trump's cult following functions like this, with lots of little nazis and corrupt grifters handling stuff around him. Even though Trump and his people are so stupid and incompetent that I think that house of card would fall with the weight of tungsten if he gets removed or dies.
Normally, if something like this happens, the best way would be to let the UN go in and arrange an election in which the people in power have no power other than to just run the nation until the election is done. The idiots in Washington have now essentially just created a power vacuum at the top and if they don't get an election running fast it will be chaos.
But it's obvious that Trump is just after the oil and minerals for the AI business. Venezuela is among the wealthiest in the world in that regard. He just want someone he can bully into giving him all those goods. He doesn't give a shit about democracy or the people of Venezuela.
The best flipping finger that Venezuela can give to Trump and his cultists would be to change into a proper democracy that starts to do business with their resources at a high price in order to enrich the people and make the nation prosper as a whole. It has just been so good for Trump that Maduro were so authoritarian, it enabled an attack that could just pass as legitimate, even if it isn't. But a proper democracy that opposes the US imperialism? That would be a nightmare for Trump.
Everything I'm reading is that while Venezuela has huge oil reserves, it is uniformly said to be 'heavy, sulfurous and hard to refine'. And the world is not actually short of oil at the moment.
I think the credible motivation is that there was some real Maduro hawks in the Administration - notably Marco Rubio himself - and Trump was infuriated by Maduro's dancing around on television like nobody could touch him. 'That'll learn him'. I can hear him saying it.
As for the Venezuelan government, it's been practically eviscerated by decades of corruption and mismanagement. I wouldn't be surprised if, in fact, nothing much happens. I don't think anyone on either side has much of a clue, let alone a plan.
These "adults in the room" aren't adults in the room, as in Trump's first administration. Only vaguely Marco Rubio tries to give an impression of normalcy by trying to say that the operation was to bring into justice Maduro, that the US isn't at war with Venezuela, yet his POTUS quickly made it clear it was about the Venezuelan oil reserves and that the US taking over the country.
Think about just how ridiculous this whole idea of "running the country is". So you have the Chavista regime in Venezuela still in power, you have thrown under the bus the Venezuelan opposition, and you have stated that you basically are talking to the Maduro/Chavista-regime. The Rodriguez team can now stall things and basically agree on something, yet still say "No" to other things. And it's still a large country. Venezuela is getting support from Colombia and Brazil. Trump can bomb the country and seize oil tankers, but what then? Now the Chavista-regime can convincingly tell it's population that any worsening of the economy will happen because of Trump that wishes to colonize the country.
Yeah, seems plausible.., I’m constantly reminded that I give Trump and his idiots too much intellectual credit for decisions, when in reality most of them are just a bunch of absolute morons representing the most brainless slobs of meat walking this earth.
The other thing is, the extraction and incarceration of Maduro hardly provides a template for Trump’s other stated aims of ‘taking Greenland’ or ‘overthrowing the Colombian government’. Those are very different in size and scope. The extraction was very specific with a clear outcome and a limited theatre of operations. Occupations and regime changes are far more expansive and open-ended. One hopes that Trump’s musings on those ideas are just braggadocio.
Quoting wikipedia
In terms of the US relationship with Europe, yes, it would be a blow.
Taking over a failed state is a big open-ended mess, though. I heard the power is back on in Caracas.
I think that Saddam Hussein was responsible for a lot more of suffering and death than the previous busdriver then President Maduro ever did. Saddam's policies were even worse for Iraq. Hence there were similar arguments for intervention in Iraq. You have always these kinds of arguments and the neocons have stated these, even if the real cause has always been the threat that the country poses.
Countries and their societies are very complex and difficult to change from the outside. Venezuela is the best example of a rentier state and country where the "Dutch Disease" went totally out of control. And later the Chavistas have absolutely wrecked the economy with disastrous socialist policies. That's were Venezuela is irrelevant of how much natural resources and beautiful beaches and wildlife it would have to make it very prosperous.
What would be the chances of a foreign entity to get things to improve even if they would be wholeheartedly welcomed to the country, yet with the same regime in power? Because they would have to improve in order for the oil industry to be modernized and put on to track... and the profits to start flowing. But here there's not even that. The Trump administration thinks that it can change at gunpoint with threats Venezuela where in a similar earlier case even by occupying the whole country of Iraq and having Americans in charge didn't work.
The short answer: it won't work.
I really hope Danish and allied military gets to Greenland and defend against such a thing. Attacking Greenland in a way that leads to combat against allied troops within Nato would be such a diplomatic disaster for Trump. He would also essentially become a military target and invoking article 5 against the US would stir things up quite a bit.
If the opposition in the US doesn't do anything about Trump in such a case, I would conclude that the US is quite fucked and have a hard time recovering. But the real deal would be to target Trump with the international court. He wouldn't be able to go anywhere as a president, not anywhere that actually matters for a US president anyway.
I would love for all of these morons who infested the US and Europe to just fuck off to Russia like all the other authoritarians and morons of society. It's quickly becoming a cesspool for such low lives and I wouldn't mind putting up a big iron wall against that part of the world. Let them rot in there.
It would be the perfect squeeze, just as Europe reduced its energy imports from Russia and basically blew up any possibility to restore that in the near future. That is after the US berated Europe for propping up the Russian economy by still importing Russian energy.
Also, all of a sudden the US seems to be willing to provide a backstop to Europe for the Ukraine guarantee, which seems oddly out of character considering the past year.
Who are the real dunces in this story?
US will exit 66 international organizations as it further retreats from global cooperation
[sup]— AP · Jan 7, 2026[/sup]
These are the 66 global organizations the Trump administration is leaving
[sup]— AP · Jan 7, 2026[/sup]
I'm guessing that military spending isn't going down.
Europe - thinking that appeasing Trump and just waiting three more years will make this self-destruction of the US built alliance system and international order to stop.
The US Congress - both the supine Republicans who assume that there's a huge support for Trump and the Democrats who seem to assume that it's business as normal with Trump and all they need is to wait for the next elections starting this November.
Trump - the real idiot who is voluntarily following Kremlin playbook on how to destroy the US Superpower.
the MAGA supporters - cheering all the way this destruction that Trump is doing.
Seems that way, doesn't it? I mean, if we were to imagine what sort of behaviours Trump would practice if - "hypothetically speaking" - Putin was directly influencing Trump's action, I'm not sure much anything would be different.
It was a rhetorical question, I was thinking Europe.
It looks like the U.S. will go over the edge at the same time as Iran. Who would have thunk it?
Then others can follow his lead and claim they don’t need to abide with international law to deal with him.
But it seems no one has the balls to do anything about him. That’s why I always ask “where’s the line?”. How far can he go without direct consequences? His personal military force ICE just killed a civilian and him and MAGA just blames it on the left. He’s constantly pushing further and further without real pushback.
When does anything blow up in his face? Because there are lots of people just constantly talking about “the latest thing” he’s done being the end of him, yet he continues further and further. The constitution doesn’t mean anything, the law doesn’t mean anything, international law doesn’t mean anything, people’s lives doesn’t mean anything. And no one gives a shit.
In any functioning nation, they would have arrested him months ago. If the government can’t deal with him, then soon enough the people will. History is relentless with examples of this.
But I’m more interested in how the republicans will deal with him.
If they don’t, in any way, then the republican party is dead by becoming a conservative MAGA death cult.
How will the republicans ever be able to heal from this? The only way would be to fraction off into a new party for those who didn’t side with Trump. It would create a bad election at the start, but they could recover if they side with the democrats on the main mission to put an end to this cult bullshit. Otherwise, what will happen when the boomers of the old republicans die off leaving just the young cultists left; those who were brought up in the evangelical radicalist church schools who produce fanatics like a factory, and who tries to torture LGBTQ+ people into becoming straight.
If the US don’t become a fanatical Christian fundamentalist nation that the MAGA wants, then it will probably strike back hard at the fundamentalists in a way that breaks the nation in half.
The people in the mid-USA have nothing to live for anymore. It’s just a wasteland of dismantled industries that will never be brought back, whatever people believe about tariffs. They’re doomed to hate the regions of the US that holds up the economy. And they will hate until they die off. These people are the ones who cheer on Trump’s violence, because it’s their fantasy of striking back at whatever made their life shit. How will they survive after Trumps demise? They will be absolutely ignored once the illusion of Trump caring about them disappears with him.
Either the US ends Trump now, or there’s a risk of pushing the cult into becoming actual violent extremists. I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up becoming a major terrorist faction in the future, especially if they feel failed.
Not so much directly by wording, but by the potential (ab)use.
I thought there already were laws to deal with such things.
What was missing?
Now all he has to do is stimulate sufficient dissent on the run up to the mid-terms and democracy will be finished.
I thought previous administrations deported more people without resorting to ICE crap.
If so, then what does House Trump need that crap for?
It's a lot more that $1Billion. ICE was allocated $74.85Billion for 4 years; Border Security was allocated $64.73 Billion ($46.55 billion for the border wall; $18billion for additional staffing and surveillance technology). A billion was added to the Defense Dept's budget for help with border operations.
The number of deportations was above average in 2025 (at around 600K), unless you count the number of self-deportations - which was a whopping 1.6million (see this). These are cases where immigrants accepted a cash incentive to voluntarily leave.
But what an unbelievably gauche and classless gesture, accepting someone else’s Nobel. With Trump, there’s never any bottom.
I also got surprised when I watched it on the news. There are no limitations for Trump when we talk about classless gestures, indeed.
However, I understand the movement of Machado – she tried to "woo" him with the aim of finding a way to be recognised as the legitimate candidate for the Venezuelan government. This says a lot about her. She is ready to drop off many of her things just to finally start addressing and solving the big social issues of Venezuela. The problem is she (and her nation) depends on one of the biggest twats that the Americans have ever voted for.
True. No slight on her. But then Trump is like ‘thanks lady, now go away.’ I bet the Nobel Committee is less than impressed.
I agree.
He truly believes that everything can be obtained by the "art of the deal," as he would say, even when some things are valueless. It is frustrating that the near future of a country depends on this kind of traffic.
That an enthusiastic Trump just bloated out. Just like he has now said that he isn't so keen to have the midterms anymore.
It's going to be interesting to see just when Americans have been humiliated enough by Trump.
Is it when he cancels the midterms? When he grabs even more power?
The movie was made in 2024 and the story is from a 1990's book, so Bovino inspired the movie. Perhaps it has been the other way?
The sour grapes who live over there wouldn’t give it to him if he stopped world war 3, but they would give it to Obama for actually nothing. That’s how meaningful that prize really is. In my opinion, it’s time to come up with a new one, one that isn’t tied to the elite sensibilities of a class who has led the world down the path of ruin. No one cares what they think anymore.
Although it should be noted at least some Republicans in Congress are speaking out against this lunatic scheme.
Perhaps next time he’s impeached, Republicans will actually finish the process.
It’s incredible that the only time these people fall in line, get serious, get organized, and pay attention, is when they’re sending everyone over the cliff. It’s really something. When it comes to healthcare, social services, or really anything that makes life better for the 80%, they have no ideas and no follow through.
The Republican Party are a officially a death cult.
It’s amazing that we’re giving everything away to China. Especially when solar cells and wind turbines were invented in the United States. Guess Trump really loves China after all.
This twisted person is a grave danger and threat to world peace.
[i]We have subsidized Denmark, and all of the Countries of the European Union, and others, for many years by not charging them Tariffs, or any other forms of remuneration. Now, after Centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back — World Peace is at stake! China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it. They currently have two dogsleds as protection, one added recently. Only the United States of America, under PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, can play in this game, and very successfully, at that! Nobody will touch this sacred piece of Land, especially since the National Security of the United States, and the World at large, is at stake. On top of everything else, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable. Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question. Starting on February 1st, 2026, all of the above mentioned Countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland), will be charged a 10% Tariff on any and all goods sent to the United States of America. On June 1st, 2026, the Tariff will be increased to 25%. This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland. The United States has been trying to do this transaction for over 150 years. Many Presidents have tried, and for good reason, but Denmark has always refused. Now, because of The Golden Dome, and Modern Day Weapons Systems, both Offensive and Defensive, the need to ACQUIRE is especially important. Hundreds of Billions of Dollars are currently being spent on Security Programs having to do with “The Dome,” including for the possible protection of Canada, and this very brilliant, but highly complex system can only work at its maximum potential and efficiency, because of angles, metes, and bounds, if this Land is included in it. The United States of America is immediately open to negotiation with Denmark and/or any of these Countries that have put so much at risk, despite all that we have done for them, including maximum protection, over so many decades. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA[/i]
As I stated a few days ago regarding Machado's medal gift, he truly believes the world is a Monopoly game, and the conflicts can only be approached with deals or trading instead of diplomacy. He reminds me of an Ottoman emperor who demands that his vassal states pay tariffs to avoid being crushed by his strength.
I get a feeling that he is really becoming an embarrassment now and responsible Americans will not let him do it.
The whole point is to get you into an emotional, reactive mindstate (which 95% of this forum seems to be in) where you've convinced yourselves that Trump is crazy and the source of all ill in the world, when all he's doing is putting up a display to cover for Washington, which was planning to carry out these policies anyway.
A nice example of this reactivity is Europe: Trump will get Europe to the point where they'll demand a departure of the United States, a direction which the US is planning to go anyway because it seeks to create distance between itself and Europe so it can credibly stay out of a war between Europe and Russia which it is actively seeking to establish.
Washington, via Trump, is playing you and other parts of the world like a fiddle.
Washington is a circus, and the president, the uniparty and the senate are its clowns, and ya'll are making yourselves inadvertently a part of it.
No they weren’t. False equivalence, as usual.
What policies? In some cases, that’s true— and true of both parties. In others, it’s true about the Republican Party; they’re glad to have Trump as a lightning rod. But in many cases, including the one I mentioned above, it’s very different, and right in your face: one is using the entire force of government to shut down offshore wind, for example, including projects that are 80 or 90% completed— the other passed legislation that was putting billions into that industry. That’s not the same thing— not even close.
There are a lot of policies like that. And it matters. So why keep sticking to this over-general nonsense? Even if you don’t mean it completely, it still gives the sense of the argument from the 90s: “both parties are just as bad.” Maybe that was true at some point, and is still partially true, but it’s lazy.
The US is ran by a uniparty in all ways that matter.
So domestic policy, and actual details, you don’t take seriously. This way you can keep making bullshit generalizations. Well done.
Next time I’m confronted with reality, I’ll use that line. :up:
If you still believe in US politics, you won't have to worry about that ever happening. :kiss:
“Believe”?
Nice quip though. Meaningless, but nice.
Thanks. :pray: All in good spirits.
Something I find frustrating in trying to understand, and something that causes me much consternation. Reluctantly, I have come to accept that there a great number of ignorant minds vulnerable to manipulation if you inflame hatred strong enough in them.
I'm kind of surprised that he didn't just make his own.
Yes, and Hitler had Vemeer's The Astronomer - for a while
(He'd plundered it, and added it to his personal collection)
I wish everything I’ve ever hold in my hand would automatically become my possession. Just imagine how successful one would become. I could just grab the declaration of independence and it would become my declaration of independence to with as I please. Or I could just grab the presidential pen and I would be president. Together with the constitution I would own the nation.
Just grab everything… grab grab grab.
I am reminded of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and the famous quote from it -
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
In addition to a poor grasp of history, Trump seems to be saying "Nyah, nyah, you didn't give me the prize, so I am going to start a war."
[i]Dear Jonas:
Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only a boat that landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT[/i]
https://x.com/nickschifrin/status/2013107018081489006?s=20
It looks then that you agree with me that there is a general drift in US geopolitics in the national interest. But this is a meaningless platitude which can be applied similarly to any country. In order to have meaning in this discussion it should be possible to discern the effect a significant change in leadership would make to that drift.
Here we have a leader who has trashed the trust foundational to NATO and is threatening an action which will inevitably result in the end of the alliance. Meanwhile has is reported to have invited Putin to be on the board of his newly formed Palestinian rebuilding council. I heard from a reliable commentator earlier that this council is to be much more than an authority on Palestine, it is to become a global alliance of authoritarian leaders to usurp the role of the UN. Do these sort of development alter your US strategy?
If this is your take on Trump's words and actions, then you are living outside of reality as much as Trump is.
Did you have a read of the letter Trump sent to the government of Norway (a couple of posts up)
Here's what Anne Applebaum wrote about it -
[i]One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history. Trump did not end eight wars. Greenland has been Danish territory for centuries. Its residents are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections. There are many “written documents” establishing Danish sovereignty in Greenland, including some signed by the United States. In his second term, Donald Trump has done nothing for NATO—an organization that the U.S. created and theoretically leads, and that has only ever been used in defense of American interests. If the European members of NATO have begun spending more on their own defense (budgets to which the U.S. never contributed) that’s because of the threat they feel from Russia.
But what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for the invasion of Greenland.[/i]
Did Vemeer dedicate it to him and finally give it to him? Then the analogy is a stretch, but I guess anything will keep the fantasy alive.
Do you believe Machado gave it up willingly? That would be a naive position.
She dedicated it to him upon winning it. You didn’t know that?
Yes, I knew that. Because she thought Trump could help install her party as the truly democratically elected party in Venezuela, but that wouldn't work for Trump, would it? But, she's still putting her hopes on him. She really has no choice at this time.
You knew this but something something Hitler.
Plunder is as plunder does.
Like I said, whatver it takes to keep the fantasy alive.
Fantasy? No, Trump is very real, and if you read the analysis of Hitler prepared for the Office of Strategic Services by Harvard psychologist Dr. Henry A. Murray, in 1938 – I believe, if you are living in the real world, you might recognize someone you know, someone who is currently threatening world war -
Murray pegged Hitler’s personality as “counteractive narcissism,” a type that is stimulated by real or imagined insult or injury. According to Murray, the characteristics of this personality type include holding grudges, low tolerance for criticism, excessive demands for attention, inability to express gratitude, a tendency to belittle, bully, and blame others, desire for revenge, persistence in the face of defeat, extreme self-will, self-trust, inability to take a joke, and compulsive criminality. Murray concluded that Hitler had these characteristics (and others) to an extreme degree and lacked the offsetting qualities that round out a balanced personality.
The USA is fucked.
I wonder if the experience with beauty competitions plays a part in the reactions.
Sounds like the US is only Trump… maybe the rest are just slaves in his empire then. Apethetic or by will, they salute to him, and every single citizen stand by his side.
I guess no one will remove him, because everyone aligns with everything he does.
The USA elected him, twice.
That does not meant they are all in agreement with him.
It does means they are fucked.
I tried to use an overly ironic twist to it all. Because I think the biggest travesty isn’t that a monster is a monster… it’s that so many people in opposition can’t seem to do anything to remove a corrupt, power-abusing politician from power. If this had been any other nation, there would have been hell to pay for his actions. The US was supposed to be the land of the free, who had constitutional power to oppose an abusing government. It’s been the foundational philosophy behind most politics there.
Yet, when shit hits the fan and they get a king behaving like a child and wielding an excess of power, the exact thing the civil war fought against, everyone hides down. The US has always talked the talk, and this is the time to walk the walk. But everyone stands still, and they seem to have become silent.
Except for a few brave ones speaking out in the streets, there’s very little outrage where it matters. The rebelious police, the reluctant military, the whistleblowing secret service agent. The journalist reveal, the pentagon deepthroat, where’s the actual explosion of hits and shrapnel against him? And even with the few who tried, very little happens.
The constitution is a joke, a performance. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. Trump killed it. It’s up to the new US to decide by what measure the US should exist. A closed off authoritarian nation like Russia and China? Or a renewal of the US values, with an updated constitution which prevents people like Trump from taking power? To take power away from the dying neoliberal monster which destroyed most of the US, and make sure the nation is run by actual leaders and representatives of democracy. To form an immunity against the blight of power-abusing charlatans.
He needs to be removed immediately, but no one has the guts to actually do it. There’s no one right now who can argue against his abuse of power. He’s a text book example of breaking the constitution in every way that should matter. So the last chance is to remove him before he destroys the US further. And the ways to do this is diminishing.
Well said.
Oh please. FDR and Lincoln, two of our greatest Presidents, went far beyond Trump in terms of suspensions of civil liberties and executive overreach. You underestimate America's tolerance for this type of thing.
I don't pay particular attention to anything Trump says or does. It's a waste of time - polarizing bullshit meant to elicit an emotional response whether it's negative or positive, to get people (and entire countries) into an irrational, emotional state of mind.
People who continuously exhibit said responses are being played.
Tbe source of all this is Washington, and Trump's display is meant to convince you otherwise.
Quoting Punshhh
I don't believe it's spontaneous, if that's what you mean.
Quoting Punshhh
That's the thing: US foreign policy hasn't meaningfully changed for decades, completely irrespective of whichever clown occupied the White House. Even if they say they want to do things different, they will say A, but do B.
Quoting Punshhh
I've discussed my thoughts on this at length in the various geopolitical lounge threads. Without going into too much detail, let me simply say that Washington is clearly rolling out a coherent strategy vis-á-vis Russia and Europe, vis-á-vis the Middle-East, and most certainly vis-á-vis China - strategies with discernable goals and observable behavioral patterns that can be traced back decades.
Yeah, during the civil war and WW2. Is that what the Trumpies are saying these days?
The Treasonous Tard is creating his own civil and world wars that us plebs must now suffer through. You must be proud.
I hardly factor it into my analysis because it is unlikely to have a significant impact, for three reasons:
The first is that presidents are temporary phenomena, and Trump is too. In all likelihood the next president will be some perfectly inoffensive, milquetoast figure whose job it will be to gather all the frightened sheep back into the fold in what is essentially a geopolitical game of 'good cop, bad cop'; the play practically writes itself, and the clownshow continues.
Second, the US is already a pseudo-democracy where the people have little to no influence on the things that actually matter. Never in the last hundred years or so, have I been able detect any meaningful influence of the American public on US long-term strategy.
Thirdly, even if the US were to turn from a "democracy" to a full-blown authoritarian dictatorship overnight, it is unlikely to meaningfully change US long-term strategy. Such strategies are not selected at leisure, but dictated by the rules and dynamics of power. If the US has any intention of vying for a spot at the top of the pyramid, its strategies, rivals and allies are all but set in stone for the foreseeable future.
Really?
How about the opposition to the Vietnam war? I think the Domino-theory was a long-term strategy.
Or the Civil Rights movement? The policy towards blacks in the south was a long-term strategy too.
It’s a realist perspective. Those that are in government are mostly motivated by security and power concerns, as overarching long-term goals. That seems to be the case, especially when looking at something like defense spending, which has only gone up over the years regardless of what the public thinks, and regardless of political party.
But the public do have influence in the short term, beyond question. I think it’s obvious they have long term effects as well (the very fact that the government has to be more cautious or clandestine is itself an effect), but I guess that’s arguable.
I think one slight spanner here is that not only do governments change (thinking long term) somewhat radically (in context - not radical in its normal use) this seems to be due to changing times- i.e the voter base also goes through similar (although, not necessarily aligned) changes. This seems to me a quite clear long-term aspect of the US which will (and seems to have, as you and ssu note) continue to cause those in power to adjust - cynically, i would think.
Defense spending, as a share of GDP and of the federal budget, is historically very low right now.
In fact, payments on the national debt are now larger than the defense expenditure. During the Cold War the spending was far higher.
He never had a mind. He's a mad king and has always been. The only reason we've not seen this is because he had adults around him who slapped him if he misbehaved. Now the bully is roaming free and has his bully friends around him. The population of the US obviously can't do anything to remove him. And if he attacks with violence, if he does something towards allies, well, he's to become an actual enemy and a legitimate target for other nations. If that happens, the US population might want to step aside and let the adults deal with him.
He’s just lived up to his nickname of TACO. They just need the men in white coats to come in and lead him away now.
One of the first (and best) books I read on foreign policy was Kissinger's Diplomacy. As a writer and intellectual, I hold Kissinger and his theory of foreign policy with great respect. These days, I struggle with realism or neo-realism. It just seems to be the idea that the state - or rather, the people running the state - are primarily concerned with the national interest and how to attain it. Perhaps I am wrong about this. I agree that there is such a thing as the national interest, but to say that politicians consistently grasp it or pursue it is not borne out by history. If humanity isn't really rational, why must we hold to the view that they all of a sudden become rational when they form state bureaucracies and governance structures?
I get that realism can be a lens with which to view things, but given its lack of interest in internal politics, it shouldn't be the only lens. I would not cling to a lens that routinely dismisses internal politics in favor of international conditions.
$850 billion is the highest it’s ever been. It’s only gone up.
It’s a ridiculous sum of money. Given our GDP, it should be 1 or 2%, which would still be more than any other country. To argue it’s somehow “lower” is nutty. Look at inflation adjusted spending. To compare to GDP in attempt to make it something other than a monstrosity is absurd.
Several times he talked about Iceland instead of Greenland. His dementia is showing.
Primarily concerned with security — which makes sense.
I don’t completely agree with realism either, but I’d suggest reading further on it. It’s not as silly as you describe. Most of it is truism. Self preservation is key — although clearly not always rational.
You're not wrong, but well...
That’s true. But the government has more than adjusted for inflation. Much more than your average worker. Seems like yesterday I was talking about the $600 billion dollar allocation.
Funny how that goes.
Simply put it: Danes have to keep the heads cool. Trump is a demented idiot and people around him will repeat everything what he says, but the US establishment aren't made of demented idiots. It's something we never should forget here.
Let's just wait if Trump really puts on tariffs to Europe in the end of the month ...or he has forgotten it then.
Quoting Mikie
First, there's inflation (as @Tzeentch noted). Secondly, the defense expenditure has been a far higher percentage of the GDP during the Cold War. Let's remember that also the armed forces were back then larger. There were more men, more ships, more aircraft and more ...nuclear weapons. A way lot more.
I don't think realism is silly. I love Kissinger's work.
Yes, self-preservation is key, but what does that even mean anymore? If we took the population of the UK and sent it to India, and brought 70 million Indians over to the UK, and granted them UK citizenship, is that not self-preservation? You have the same number of English citizens before and after - the UK has therefore been preserved. Or is there something perhaps essential to a country?
Yes, so what?
And spending has more than kept up with inflation, as I mentioned above.
The United States spending on military is outrageous. The fact that it has been outrageous for decades, or in fact in some ways MORE outrageous in the past (during wars especially), is irrelevant.
I think it means preserving its sovereignty. But maybe this is a discussion for another thread — my initial point was only to point out the framework that is being used (in part) in approaching these issues.
I get where you're coming from, but even in the face of threats to a nation's sovereignty, it is often easier to bend the knee and secure one's own safety rather than to take a stand. Humans are first and foremost concerned with themselves and their families' safety — loyalty to the masses comes later. This applies to leaders as well.
But yeah, realism is a lens that has its uses.
EDIT: Perhaps my point is too much on a personal level as opposed to a state/social level, but what is a government if not a collection of people with their various allegiances? Maybe I am missing the sociology of it.
He could have followed that with, that’s a nice piece of ice you’ve got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.
Just like his niece, Mary Trump, said, he’s nothing but a grifter.
Speaking of idiots, the Danes are sending troops to Greenland, ready to die for their monarchy and the last vestiges of their colonial empire.
I’m loving buying the dips in stocks though. Knowing full well that he’ll just cave makes it rather easy to make some money. For that I applaud his senility.
I watched the speech in Davos and expect that no one was listening by about half way through. He was just babbling. I could feel the tension just ebbing away as it became more and more obvious that he’s senile.
He may have come away with a “deal” after his meeting with Mark Rutte and think that everything is settled, everyone’s a winner and he’s done great again. But maybe he wasn’t listening to the speeches before he arrived. European leaders made it clear that the world has changed and the change is permanent. Europe will be decoupling it’s dependencies on the US and securing it’s future independently.
No.
They're hosting NATO exercises, which guarantees the actual safety of Greenland.
Which Trump seems to go with now Rutte.
Your a bit off here. Trump already caved in. For the time, at least...
(with Donald, everything has to be golden)
Wonder how many meme's there are about the spelling.
Shouldn't it be "Bored of Peace?" :wink:
I think it has nothing to do with Trump 'caving'. He said a couple things (which he does all the time and costs him nothing) and managed to create panic in Europe, leading to them making concessions.
If you think the Europeans 'won', you don't understand the game that is being played.
I completely dislike him. What a twat.
A thinner version of Donald Trump with a Mickey Mouse face. The way he woo Trump makes me upset. Disgusting at its best.
I guess he forgot he's European when he changed his NL suit for the NATO one.
Calling Trump "Daddy" and all that... :razz:
Rutte definitely is always saying that thanks to Trump, NATO countries are increasing their defense expenditure, which is something Trump likes a lot (as Obama wanted also this, but failed).
Well, Denmark might really have increased it's defense spending because of Trump and his actions. But the real reason is naturally Putin's Russia invading Ukraine. That's the obvious reason, which nobody says around Trump. Why get the baby into a tantrum? Just look at what the response was to the Norwegian prime minister, when the baby didn't get his [s]Noble[/s] Nobel-peace prize.
Quoting javi2541997
Remember what ALL republicans said about Trump, starting from JD Vance or someone like Lindsey Graham before becoming total toadies and yes-men for him. But Republicans just love Trump, just like Americans for some reason unknown to everybody else love to pay the most in the World for health care services and still have a mediocre health care system without universal health care.
Yet Rutte has been straightforward: he publicly repeated that he NEVER will take sides if two member states argue, and that he will follow similar actions that secretary generals made to keep the calm between Turkey and Greece.
NATO's article 1 is actually very important. To have all European countries in an military alliance is there to avoid the possibility that Trump put in front of everybody. Just like the EU started from an union that made rearmament difficult, so has NATO also this effect as NATO armies usually operate with each other. And lastly, NATO is actually an US created organization for US objectives, which the orange idiot never has understood (and basically the American establishment seems to have failed to reason to one part of the American public).
As I've said, without NATO there surely would have been after 1945 a war between Turkey and Greece. And now we saw that even the Trump the lunatic didn't go through with taking Greenland.
Hopefully he plays now with his new Mar-a-Lago based "Bored of Peace" -project and has there other country leaders making him feel important and at center stage.
(Donald just loves to be the center focus. Look at that smile.)
Is this genuinely something you want to stand behind? Be very careful.
He was against the reckless expenditure when he was the prime minister of NL; now he is pushing for more expenditure just to woo Trump. Are they clowns, or am I the blind dude who is not seeing what is going on?
Quoting ssu
That's what I was about to say. It is hard to be a "neutral" NATO secretary general when the institution is oriented to protect and spread American interests, presence, and culture. I don't really want to see this conflict escalating, and I wish Greenland the best in their future, but if this [the issue] ends up screwed, at least we will have a reason to finally dissolve NATO and focus on something European—whatever it would be called or managed.
Do you not realize that the entire free world has absolutely no respect for him?
Peace and security is not a game
I think this, but I also think you're not a clown. Its entirely plausible (and indeed, seems maybe at the 51% probability mark) that it's just the shit show it looks like, and he's a total moron who has lost it.
But it also seems to me entirely plausible that, while "4d Chess" is some kind of invention of a cultish aspect of his base, there's intentionality to these things and he's perhaps willing to be seen the way you say above, while having achieved his initial goal and moving on with his... plan (that was hard to say lmao)
I don't know. But it seems plausible to me, and he seems happy enough to say it may be true.
Quoting javi2541997
That doesn't seem wholly accurate. It was set up (by Europe - not imposed by American) to prevent Soviet encroachment, and to ensure Europe retained American defense interest, rather than American withdrawing like after WWII. But you're right in terms of the conflict of interest.
That is not really true though, is it?
Seems more like wishful thinking for those who do genuinely have no respect for him which is fine. But Machado, Meloni, Orban, Milei, apparently, Rutte. They are just leaders you do not like. which is fine. But its best not to make statements that are untrue about a President. Like Cameron Kasky is finding out.
The irony is palpable when we have to set something up to prevent Soviet encroachment, but we look the other way when this attitude comes from Washington. What a terrible circus the politics are, mate. I don't like it.
I agree with the rest of your post.
I'm still confused as to what those concessions are exactly. From what I've heard about the framework deal it was essentially just the same arrangement that previously existed which already gave the US full control over Greenland's defense. At the very least when they did their thing in Venezuela they got Maduro. If he's gonna be risking a decades long alliance and causing Europe to seriously reconsider it's ties to the US then I was expecting something more tangible to be honest.
I don't think you are blind.
That talk "reckless expenditure" I assume is before his last years of being a prime minister (2010-2024). The Russian invasion of Ukraine change a lot. Prior I lived in a nonaligned country where nobody was seriously demanding the country to join NATO. It was an possible option in a theoretical future. So a lot has changed.
It’s just my opinion after watching the speech. Can you say you watched it and found it coherent?
Semi, but there's an insanely big (defamatory) leap between "babbling" and "senile". That's hte care I was indicating is needed.
You mean what I said about Trump not being respected? It is my considered opinion that leaders around the world recognize that Trump is to be handled, not respected. And his approval ratings around the world are absolutely dismal.
Quoting AmadeusD
Now, who is making assumptions?
Quoting AmadeusD
I have eyes to see, and ears to hear. There is nothing respectable about him.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, he's been receiving a lot of death threats.
Vance has commented, as have the agencies involved. I think it takes assumption to take this narrative seriously at this stage. Being predisposed to eat up social media posts which suggest things you're predisposed to believe is something I'd suggest guarding against. Fact check things before getting up in arms.
Quoting Questioner
There is no assumption. IT is a direct inference from the fact that you made an absolute claim which was false. I infer, then, you are not partial to saying "Well, Meloni likes him" (or Orban, or whoever) Which she does. Because she's conservative. ITs a logical inference. Not an assumption. Otherwise, i agree. Its a professional courtesy from most leaders.
Quoting Questioner
It is factually untrue. Your opinion is something else, and you're entitled to it. That wasn't what you claimed. I don't play games. You were wrong to say what you said. It's not an opinion or something your eyes and ears can tell you, unless you're going to accept that several world leaders in the free world like Trump and respect him. Being honest isn't giving up your position.
Quoting Questioner
Jesus Christ. Just condemn lying about hte president on National TV. There is no evidence he has received death threats as a result of this. That has been tied to his advocacy about Gun Control.
It is really important to not be wrong.
Lol, and you use the DHS as your fact-checker? They, and the Trump administration, are known liars. This is like using the old line, “If you don’t believe me, just ask me.”
The DHS has been caught telling lies over and over again, making claims repeatedly contradicted by eyewitness accounts, video evidence and local law enforcement. A comprehensive fact-checking document of DHS misinformation was prepared by U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Read it here.
But, let’s focus in on the opinion given by Judge Sara L. Ellis as the result of her overseeing a case brought by journalists, protesters, and members of the clergy against DHS (the defendants) for unjustified brutality and arrests in the Chicago area.
You can read longer passages from her opinion at this link, but here are some highlights -
[i]After reviewing all the evidence submitted to the Court and listening to the testimony elicited at the preliminary injunction hearing, during depositions, and in other court proceedings, the Court finds Defendants’ evidence simply not credible. Plaintiffs submitted a mountain of evidence, providing the Court with over eighty declarations, numerous videos and articles, and other evidence. Defendants did not rebut anything that Plaintiffs set forth…
… it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost anything that Defendants represent….
Defendants, however, cannot simply create their own narrative of what happened, misrepresenting the evidence to justify their actions. Overall, after reviewing all the evidence, the Court finds that Defendants’ widespread misrepresentations call into question everything that Defendants say they are doing in their characterization of what is happening at the Broadview facility or out in the streets of the Chicagoland area during law enforcement activities.[/i]
Quoting AmadeusD
I am quite satisfied that I know the facts. But, if you are listening to Vance, it's not facts you're getting. He has certainly spread misinformation about my country, Canada.
I have to ask - are you really unaware of how dishonest the Trump administration is?
Quoting AmadeusD
Sorry, you made me laugh again. Stickler, are you? I read enough to know that there is no love lost between world leaders and Trump. They flatter him, and handle him, and manipulate him, but they do not respect him. What's there to respect? Maybe some realize they have to play gently with the clawed beast. Maybe some are in it for the same reasons Trump is - only interested in "What's in it for me?" And maybe some, like our PM Mark Carney, see reality as it is, and respond with intelligence, foresight, and resolve.
Quoting AmadeusD
I listen with my ears, and I read with my eyes. I am well-informed.
Quoting AmadeusD
Lol! Didn't I read a post of yours in another thread disparaging emotional responses?
Quoting AmadeusD
The fact is, Trump is suspect, and though Kasky may have spoken out of turn, there are a lot of people who do not find it a stretch to believe that Trump was more involved with Epstein than he claims.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Why did he publicly endorse (for a Senate seat) Roy Moore, who had been accused of sexually molesting minors as young as 14 years old?
Nine women accused Moore of being a perv. Trump’s response?
“Well, he denies it. He denies it. He totally denies it. He says it didn’t happen. And you know, you have to listen to him also.”
Why did he brag about going into the change rooms at Miss Teen USA to see them naked?
“I sort of get away with things like that,” he said.
Why did he brag about "grabbing them by the pussy?"
For more about Trump's sexual misconduct, go to this link.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay, so you are calling him a liar, but the Trump admin honest. Why?
Respect has nothing to do with it.
Trump is Washington's clown, and nations who take him seriously make themselves part of his circus; the Europeans first and foremost.
They have about themselves an air of frightened sheep. Trump rattles their cage, and after some loud bleating they pat themselves on the back for a job well done; the bad man could have taken everything, but instead he only got something.
You’re right, there were no concessions made. It was all just one giant ego trip for Trump, where people stood up to him and he had to back down. TACO.
What it did result in though, is that the EU leaders cannot now trust him, or the U.S. to act in good faith. This is resulting in a major change of geopolitical strategy in the EU and new alliances being forged, without the U.S.
What did he get? Apart from an embarrassed look on his face and a climb down.
You reading Musk’s mind now?
Sovereign American military bases that Greenland will have no say over is what is on the table - obviously the preamble to an inevitable full incorporation.
Calling it a "climb down" (like that has any meaning to Trump anyway) is just coping behavior.
Well, where I come from, respect means something.
It certainly means something to Trump. A couple of years ago, in an interview, Trump was asked what was the most important issue facing the US. Here is his answer –
“Basically, respect all over the world. We don’t have it anymore. We had tremendous respect three years ago. We don’t have respect anymore. They don’t listen to us. They don’t care about us. They just don’t do what we want them to do and what they have to do, especially since we make life very good for many countries. And we have to get that respect back. And if we don’t, we’ve got some big problems.”
Now, he’s constantly (and erroneously) boasting that the USA is the “most respected country in the world.” It’s one of his rhetorical staples. At a press conference a couple of days ago, he again said, “In the old days, they didn't respect our country … America is respected again on the world stage.”
It’s a ridiculous lie he tells himself to ward off narcissistic collapse.
Quoting Tzeentch
Do not mistake Trump for a strategist. He is no strategist, but an internet troll (who happens to be the president of a very powerful country) consumed with his own self-aggrandizement, and having the world tremble under him (which he takes to be respect), and increasing his own personal wealth and power. In his capacity as president, he exploits, not serves. It’s estimated his personal fortune has increased by at least $1.4 billion since he took office.
His interest in Greenland reflects a covetous desire to acquire “real estate.” About Greenland, he has said, “I like ownership.” (As if Greenland would become his – part of the self-enrichment mindset.) At Davos, he said, “Who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease?”
And he wants his name stamped in American history (as he does like to stamp his name on whatever he can) for some “great achievement.” (He imagines he is the new Polk. He’s referred to the 11th president as a “real-estate guy” who got “a lot of land,” and he hung Polk’s portrait in the Oval Office, replacing one of Jefferson.)
The Kremlin understands this aspect of Trump’s psychology, and takes advantage of it. They flatter and manipulate him. He’s highly susceptible – so Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said, "There are international experts who believe that by resolving the issue of Greenland's accession, Trump will undoubtedly go down in history. And not only in the history of the United States, but also in world history."
But, anyway, take away his audience (he’s running an administration based on spectacle), get him in a room, one-on-one, and he folds, like the little coward he is. Do you believe he got anything more from Greenland than the USA didn’t already have access to? This “concept of a plan” Trump speaks of? But with his outrageous threats and his bluster, Trump got to make himself the centre of attention, as all malignant narcissists crave, but when he’s with people who are far smarter than him, he can never get the upper hand.
No, Trump is not a strategist. Most of his presidency are pages right out of Project 2025, as this Project 2025 tracker reveals. Policy is only the means to his own personal ends. He has no stake in policy per se. He is surrounded by self-serving sycophants – Vought, Hegseth, Miller - who feed his delusion that he’s the one really in charge, while they direct which way policy goes. Trump doesn’t care, as long as his narcissistic needs are met.
Trump pushes people's buttons and puts them in an emotional state of mind, which makes them predictable and easy to control. That practice has a name: reflexive control.
Reflexive Control (2018)
Reflexive Control: Influencing Strategic Behavior (2023)
To be clear, I don't believe Trump is a strategist - the people he works for are.
Every second you're talking about Trump as a person is a second wasted. The only interesting question is what his behavior and words are supposed to elicit from their audiences, and why.
Quoting Tzeentch
Can you explain the apparent contradiction is these two statements.
Quoting Tzeentch
Who does Trump work for?
Quoting Tzeentch
None of this happens without Trump.
If you want to keep falling for Trump's 'rage baiting' then by all means, have at it. Take the clowns seriously, become part of the circus.
Observing patterns is not falling for anything. My interest is intellectual
Keep in mind: the original agreement was 25%.
Lots of distraction and hand wringing. In the end, nothing changes and he declares victory— and his supporters cheer what a great dealmaker he is. See the renaming of NAFTA, or dozens of other examples.
Give Trump $1 billion and you get zero say in any decisions.
He is the chairman for life, with sole veto power, and controls all the funds.
No oversight, no accountability.
I guess he is looking for investors for Kushner’s development project
The countries that have so far signed on all have repressive regimes (I guess they feel at home with Trump) –
Argentina
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Belarus
Egypt
Hungary
Indonesia
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kosovo
Morocco
Pakistan
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Turkey
United Arab Emirates
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Well, Putin and Netanyahu can't show up to join Trump's Peace Board because they would get arrested for war crimes. (The irony is over the top)
I'm Canadian, and I have to say, I am optimistic about the new ties being forged between our country and China. I expect they will be more stable than the ties with the US. And markets love stability.
Many countries do not recognise Kosovo as a sovereign country. Mine is an example.
On the other hand, it surprised me that Belarus appears in something relatively important—I thought everybody forgot Lukashenko's dictatorship.
Apparently the USA does. And so does my country, Canada.
Quoting javi2541997
All of the countries on the list have repressive regimes.
The local news station is broadcasting information about the 4th Amendment, which denies police the power to enter your home without a judicial warrant. They explain that ICE spokesmen have stated that they can enter homes without warrant, so the advice is to remain calm, don't open the door unless they show you a warrant, and basically be prepared to contact constitutional lawyers who are already preparing to bring cases to the Supreme Court. Strange times we're living in.
Careful, they may be disguised as Jehovah's Withesses.
So now, there’s actually a risk of civil war or serious violent unrest. Trump is too stupid and narcissistic to draw back and the governor is calling for resistance, calling in the national guard.
If the republicans doesn’t back the fuck away from Trump now, there might not be any republicans anymore. They will all be considered guilty and there will be a reckoning for aligning with, and supporting Trump.
If this isn’t de-escalating quickly, it could be a serious moment for the US.
Are you an American? I am so, so very sorry.
Know that we up here in Canada are rooting for the good guys to prevail.
I read an article today about how the USA is officially in the first stage of civil war, if history is any lesson.
So, for solace, I turned to the third inaugural address of President Franklin Roosevelt, delivered in January 1941, for inspiration, and to remind me what the USA really stands for. The current aberration will fall, and the USA will get back on the right road.
Roosevelt said -
[i]… There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future—and that freedom is an ebbing tide.
But we Americans know that this is not true…
…. For action has been taken within the three-way framework of the Constitution of the United States. The coordinate branches of the Government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire predictions come to naught.
No, democracy is not dying…
… We know it cannot die—because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise—an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority.
We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.
We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.
We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still spreading on every continent—for it is the most humane, the most advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of human society…
… we all understand what it is—the spirit—the faith of America. It is the product of centuries. It was born in the multitudes of those who came from many lands—some of high degree, but mostly plain people—who sought here, early and late, to find freedom more freely.
The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It blazed anew in the Middle Ages. It was written in Magna Charta…
… The destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy spoken by our first President in his first Inaugural in 1789—words almost directed, it would seem, to this year of 1941: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered. . . deeply, . . . finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people."[/i]
You underestimate the mental gymnastics involved in all of this. This thread should be a good sign of that.
Looks that way so far. I look forward to Trump supporters spinning this, or simply cheering on executions for resistance.
“If they just complied, they’d be alive.” Fuck you.
:confused:
You may be underestimating him (or his advisers). I've heard a suggestion that the plan is to provoke serious unrest so that the Insurrection Act can be invoked and the elections suspended. Much as I admire Minnesota, it might be wise to save the opposition until after the election.
It was never about safety or immigration. The state-sanctioned terrorism that the Trump admin is raining down upon Minnesota is a pretext to taking over elections in the state.
Pam Bondi has sent a letter to Minnesota stating that they'll get out of the state if the state turns over all their voter rolls.
Here's the letter -
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/24/us/pam-bondi-walz-doc.html
ETA - Bondi cites the DHS to support her ludicrous claims!
I am not, I'm just generally opposed to obvious fascism. Especially when it starts to threaten our neighbors and us with supposed military action. Then it's not just opposition in general, but actually building towards Trump becoming an actual enemy of our Scandinavian nations.
Quoting Mikie
I look forward to Trump and MAGA being labeled as an extremist violent group and dealt with accordingly. They've now flown a little too close to the sun. State sanctioned execution should be such a red flag that the national guard should arrest and fight back against ICE. Trump and his bootlickers should be arrested for sanctioning and defending these murders.
Actually, the people should just stop working, stop society fully in support against the government. If everyone who oppose this violence just stopped participating in society, it would fuck the government up so much. On top of that, march against the white house, demand justice, tell the apathetic and lazy politicians in Washington that if they don't remove Trump, they will be dragged down with him.
The US population should as a whole nation oppose this. But I've lost hope in the common people. They simply don't care until a boot is on their head. Well, that's happening now, so why wait until the boot comes to their door? Isn't one fascist boot too many?
Quoting Paine
They are violent extremists. These people are the low-lives of society, incel fuckers who are like children with toys getting approval to beat up or kill any US citizens they like without consequences.
This kind of thing was the thing the second amendment was made for, to defend against a power abusing government. It's basically in the constitution that the people have the right to shoot back in defense against ICE. It's just a matter of time before this happens.
Yeah, "could be", in that it could actually be a spark for civil war. It's never been this close. If people start arming themselves in defense of ICE, it could cause shootouts in the streets and Trump will never back off, he's too much of a narcissist being led by Stephen-the-actual-nazi-Miller and Peter-trying-to-have-a-Patton-speech-Hegseth, to de-escalate. Which means he could very well send troops and escalate if such a thing happens.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yeah, he seems hell bent on causing so much trouble that there's a real chance of major shootouts.
But, all it takes would be for the mentally functioning people in the US to just stand up against him, with the threat of violently dragging him out of office. There should be far more people like that than people supporting him. I'm just wondering when people reach the point of having enough and actually acting on it.
Quoting Tzeentch
You serious? In what society would you classify their actions as supported by the law? And if you classify their actions as legitimate in breaking the law, then why not just shoot every ICE agent attacking the people since these ICE agents are really the ones who plays stupid games here. Attempt some basic Kantian ethics to your defense of their actions and universalize their behavior, you see a pattern of fascist executions in that? How many more of these killings would it take for you to see clearly how immoral all of this is?
You can unbunch your panties now. I never said it was morally justified. What I said is that the guy played stupid games and won his stupid prize.
No, he did not, he carried legally, didn't draw his gun. He was filming them, legally, they had no right to beat him down, and they removed his legally carried gun and only after it was removed did they back off and shot him on the ground.
There's no stupid games being played here but what the ICE agents did. I don't know why you try to downplay all of this, what are you defending here?
Anyway, I'm not defending anyone nor downplaying anything.
Arrest for what? What's the crime here? Please elaborate because you are downplaying this event. I don't understand how you think you're not doing that?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/24/alex-pretti-killing-witness-testimony
You are essentially just arguing along the line of what the Trump admin is saying, which are lies proven by video and witness reports.
What a shocker.
Quoting Tzeentch
Yeah, except you really are.
Oh, okay. Cool. Fair and balanced take.
But you’re right — actions do have consequences. So murdering someone for resisting arrest, when there was no threat (the gun was already removed), should indeed have consequences. But way to defend state power. Really shows the value of your other analyses— as complete garage. But you do you.
How cavalier we are when it’s not someone on our team. Republicans really have no souls.
I'm not defending state power. Just stating the obvious. If you think the state and its various agents are incompetent, corrupt nazis, etc. all the more reason not to do what guy did.
He had a legal carry that he didn’t even draw or have his hands on. Just stop. The evidence is clear here and you’re just grasping at straws to defend unlawful actions by state agents.
So naturally I wonder, why? What’s your game here? Because this just feels like fascist apologist bs to me.
Quoting Tzeentch
I ask again, what crime did he commit? What did he do to warrant being killed like that? Give a straight answer.
Give a straight answer to your strawmen? Get outta here buddy. :lol:
Personally, I can't make heads or tails of the videos. I'll wait for the investigation.
What strawman? You defend the actions of the ICE agents by pointing out that the victim did something wrong, i.e he committed some crime to warrant being shot to death.
I’m asking you what crime he did or what he did wrong. How the fuck is that a strawman?
Nope. Try again.
Stop bullshitting, what did he do wrong? You said “play stupid games” about him, so what games did he play to warrant being shot do death?
Why can’t you give a straight answer to what you yourself claimed? Law enforcement can only use deadly force if it is warranted, so please justify what you’re saying and say what he did wrong.
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
Need me to hand you a dictionary too, bubba?
What was the cause for arrest?
Quoting Tzeentch
It was a legal carry, don’t you understand US laws?
Quoting Tzeentch
So what are you saying then?
What did he do wrong? So far you’ve amounted to him carrying a weapon, which he legally had the right to do. So, you are essentially making up causes that doesn’t apply.
Miller posted that “an assassin tried to murder federal agents.” – and Vance reposted it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DT8GlKbDzsD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Dude, we saw the video.
Reminds me of a couple of quotes from George Orwell, the author of 1984 -
[i]“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ”
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”[/i]
And what does Trump post this morning on his social media?
About his f*cking ballroom.
I’m building, on top of everything else that I am doing, one of the greatest and most beautiful Ballrooms anywhere in the World, with more than 300 Million Dollars of Great American Patriots’ money, and working closely with, right from the beginning, the United States Military and Secret Service. This is a GIFT (ZERO taxpayer funding!) to the United States of America, of 300 to 400 Million Dollars (depending on the scope and quality of interior finishes!), for a desperately needed space, sought for over 150 years by previous Presidents and Administrations, so that the White House would no longer be forced to use a cheap and unsafe “tent,” for big and important STATE EVENTS, Dinners, Meetings, Conferences, and already scheduled future INAUGURATIONS (for safety, security, and capacity purposes!), on a very wet, and subject to weather, White House lawn. Making such a large gift to the U.S.A. was thought to be, by almost everyone, “A WONDERFUL THING TO DO” — But no, as usual, I got sued, this time by the Radical Left National (No!)Trust for Historic Preservation, a group that couldn’t care less about our Country! All of the Structural Steel, Windows, Doors, A.C./Heating Equipment, Marble, Stone, Precast Concrete, Bulletproof Windows and Glass, Anti-Drone Roofing, and much more, has been ordered (or is ready to be), and there is no practical or reasonable way to go back. IT IS TOO LATE! Why didn’t these obstructionists and troublemakers bring their baseless lawsuit much earlier? Congress never tried, or wanted, to stop the Ballroom Project! Everyone knew what was taking place at the White House — A great, big, beautiful gift to the United States of America! For those that are interested, the tiny East Wing was so “bastardized” and changed, built and rebuilt over the years, that it bore no resemblance or relationship to the original building. The so-called “preservationists,” who get their money from the most unusual of places, should not be allowed to stop this desperately needed addition to our GREAT White House, a place that a President has never needed permission to change or enhance, because of the special grounds on which it sits, no matter how big (and important!), that enhancement may be. Additionally, in this instance, it is being done with the design, consent, and approval of the highest levels of the United States Military and Secret Service. The mere bringing of this ridiculous lawsuit has already, unfortunately, exposed this heretofore Top Secret fact. Stoppage of construction, at this late date, when so much has already been ordered and done, would be devastating to the White House, our Country, and all concerned. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
This is exactly what they want. They know someone is filming. They know it riles up the rest of their cult, that they will hold vigils, make t-shirts, and engage in other collective displays of whatever you want to call this. They want to get hit. It’s why they stand in front of cars; it’s why they spit in faces: it’s why they scream in the ears of those authorized to use lethal force.
The glaring part of all of it is that it’s done in defense of criminal and immoral behavior. There are videos of people crying when pedophiles are captured, for Christ sake. Why don’t they ever protest for the innocent?
You present as clueless as Trump.
It's about fascism
Now about January 6th being a tour and Ashli Babbitt being a martyr….
Total consistency from the cult.
Right — it’s everyone else’s emotions. Coming in and saying something stupid, then pretending it’s somehow an obvious point, is pretty childish. We get it — you don’t really give a shit and aren’t worried. Next time it’s a Trumper I’m sure you’ll feel the same way. :wink:
:rofl:
The Trump bootlicker strikes again with another honest and consistent take.
One says he deserved it, the other says he wanted it. This is what we’re dealing with folks.
Fascists were always out in the streets protesting. Why don’t you guys just do a little putsch and be done with it?
Oh heavens no. I'd be sharing pictures of the Trumper standing in for Jesus. Guy did everything right to get himself unjustly shot - what unparalleled heroism.
Protesting is as American as apple pie.
Trump is a fascist, there can be no doubt.
Let’s first differentiate between patrimonialism, which is a style of governing - and fascism, which is a formal system or ideology. Trump surely fits patrimonialism – in that he treats the state as his personal property and family business.
But, as Jonathan Rauch writes – “Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse.”
The Trump admin is characterized by these fascist tendencies (read the supporting evidence at the link) -
[i]Demolition of norms.
Glorification of violence.
Might is right.
Politicized law enforcement.
Dehumanization.
Police-state tactics.
Undermining elections.
What’s private is public.
Attacks on news media.
Territorial and military aggression.
Transnational reach.
Blood-and-soil nationalism.
White and Christian nationalism.
Mobs and street thugs.
Leader aggrandizement.
Alternative facts.
Politics as war.
Governing as revolution.[/i]
In summary -
[i]… what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism…
His mindset, his symbolism, and his rhetoric all underscore the point he made to The New York Times this month: his own mind and morality are the only limits on his global power. This is Fascism 101.[/i]
Yeah, like walking around. Not to mention being held down by 4 guys. That definitely deserves being shot 10 times, unarmed.
Unless you’re on our side. Then reverse all that. States rights, 2nd amendment, unjust state violence, don’t tread on me, Biden is a dictator, etc etc.
Protesting? They are blocking streets, lighting fires, waving foreign flags, and making “trans autonomous zones”, all to defend those who defraud the American people, actual immigrants, and the communities illegals subvert. Imagine if a bunch of Trumpers did that. By all means, go protest—I would rather they did. But this is sheer lunacy and I hope residents put them down.
Let me help you: just picture it’s a bunch of January 6th patriots. There— problem solved.
Oh, is that why Alex Pretti got murdered?
Quoting NOS4A2
Trump would pardon them
Quoting NOS4A2
Spoken like a fascist
The penalty for protesting wrong is death. Until a democrat is in office.
See? Defending criminals and endorsing violence in the streets. You’d make a good blackshirt.
You make no sense.
They would have made great Nazi sympathizers.
I have had a disturbing thought - that the ones justifying the murder of Alex Pretti are the ones who would have marched people to the gas chambers.
Americans live there, work there, and have to deal with this violence every day. Why won’t these insurrectionists stand up for them, and not the people who defraud the immigrations system? I’m just suggesting you guys are wrong.
Oh my dear innocent, this has nothing to do with immigration
Do you know what ICE stands for? Do you head to the streets, riot in the Canadian streets, when they deport illegals and foreign criminals?
Back when Tom Homan did the same thing under Obama, and on a greater scale, he was given awards and glowing reviews. Now he’s a fascist. So clearly there is no principle involved here at all, so it’s just the defense of criminality and the tacit belligerence towards the law abiding taxpayer.
You haven't given a reply to my post about Trump's fascism
Indeed. But at least that would stick it to the libs.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/time-for-ice-to-pause-in-minneapolis-e9ecf097?mod=mhp
Wall Street journal editorial page. Even these climate-denying imbeciles have an ounce of integrity at least. Can’t say the same for a few members here— but they still provide laughs.
It was tucked in to the back of his belt. It was not being brandished.
Guess just carrying a gun legally is enough to get you shot 10 times. Look forward to applying those standards in the future. What goes around comes around. :up:
Except he’s a Klutz, just look at his performance at Davos. Mark Rutte patted him on the back and pretended to make a deal, so Trump could save face.
Also he’s in cognitive decline, with contenders for the top spot starting to jostle behind him. The MAGA base isn’t big enough to keep the show on the road, once Trump is out of the picture.
The parallels with Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party in the U.K. are there. It all fell apart like a cheap suit and the party imploded. The rats are fleeing the sinking ship and joining the Reform Party.
There isn’t a hard right alternative in the U.S., where will they flee to?
It's really a concept of how to really fuck everything up:
1) Rapidly enlarge one particular force disregarding a vetting process and training.
2) Take literally the political rhetoric of "tough on illegal immigration" by disregarding formal standard police procedure, perhaps as "pinko-liberal weak" obstacle for the process.
3) Have totally ludicrous "quotas" ordered by the White House that simply cannot be achieved as the country's tough stance on immigration has already diminished the actual size of illegal immigration.
4) Have no cooperation with local law enforcement and basically treat the local authorities as part of the problem. Have the actions of this government force heavily politicized.
5) When all the above points 1) to 4) create popular resentment and accidents of total ineptness occur, like where one ICE team member taking away an holstered gun leads to someone yelling "GUN" and several agents discharge there weapons several times on a victim that was already on the ground and wasn't a threat, THEN LIE ABOUT IT even if there is multiple video evidence from different angles of the incident.
What's the worse that can come from this? First steps have already been taken on a very dark path, if this path will be followed. Look at this picture:
Above are Minnesotan National Guard giving donuts and warm coffee to people. They have yellow vests on deliberately to make them visually separate from roaming ICE teams in Minneapolis. It looks like an innocent picture, but it tells very unsettling things of how downhill things are going in the US. First, there are basically now two government armed groups following orders from separate leadership that are totally at odds with each other. States might really start to think just what is their relation to Trump's regime now. Just like NATO countries are thinking now what the future holds for them as the US is what Trump has made of it.
Yes, now it might really be a stretch that you would have these two entities, Donald Trump's ICE versus local law enforcement and National Guard shooting each other. Perhaps it is as remote as Greenland being invaded by the US. Yet this is extremely alarming just what is happening with the US.
It’s really stupid, is what it is. Because Trump is 80, and he’s deeply unpopular. They’ll get wiped out in the midterms, beyond a doubt, and then Trump is out of office forever. Then he’ll be dead — hopefully sooner than later, but not long — and what becomes of this weird coalition?
All the precedents they’re setting will be used against them. Just a matter of time. And I look forward to it.
But the democrats aren't doing well either. They're so out of touch with reality they can't even muster much opposition against what is happening now. Most of it is just politicians saying "we don't like this", but not much else.
The US needs a purge and rewrite of how their political system works. Because the system today will just invite some new Trump into office at some point.
What the US should do is to really use this as an opportunity to restructure the political system into having much more rigorous guardrails against grifters and authoritarians.
But the US population is either too stupid, or too apathetic to ever muster any such change, even after something like this. Slaves of the modern condition do not have the power, even if they are free to do so. They've been conditioned to not care.
The way things are going look very sinister to me. Even now when the GOP is enjoying a narrow margin in Congress, Trump isn't going the actual way of having laws pushed through the Congress, but just goes on with more whacky executive orders even if those. Just messages in his Truthsocial! Declaring that he is in charge of Venezuela and then the income from oil from the seized tankers ends up on a bank account in Qatar. And (was it WP) it's been reported that he has made now over a billion dollars in his first year of his second term. He bloody well knows what he will be facing if (when) the democrats are in control.
You really think that after the peculiar attempt on Jan 6th, now with having total control of the Justice Department, FBI and with those ICE goons around, that Trump will respect democratic elections that would be devastating for him?
So what do you do when he just postpones the elections? Trump has said publicly that "we shouldn’t even have an election". What if he does what he has said? Or when they aren't free and fair? Alzheimer kicking in or another Trump having another stroke might take time. Just look at what he's done or attempted to do in one year.
Don’t you think it’s still a little premature to start making predictions given that them rest of the haven’t panned out yet? I’m still waiting for your recession, but then I read this morning that gdp growth is expected to keep climbing. It’s almost to the point that should ssu predict something, it would be wise for others to predict the exact opposite.
That is historically insane.
They are, however, fucking blind.
That's true, but there's always going to be a question: If local law enforcement co-operated, the way they did under Obama, there wouldn't be the need for ICE to be carrying out these raids and there would be no media-driven (and, as much as you might think this is fine) a concerted, semi-violent effort to impede, harm and hamper not just the enforcement, but agents themselves, the temperature wouldn't be so goddamn high.
This is doable 10 years ago. It's not now. If its the fact Trump is doing, then that is the problem for those people, not hte enforcement.
And yes, there is always going to be this question, because that's what happened under Obama.
I'm not sure what you mean.
I suppose there are various reasons that people don't react effectively/cohesively (and timely). :/
The US could use that by now.
In other news ...
Newsom says Davos appearance was canceled under pressure from Trump (— Guardian · Jan 21, 2026)
Translation: a bunch of bullshit that combines bothsideism with blaming the protesters. Just watch Fox News and you’ll get the point.
I'm not sure you understand what is happening.
There are over 2 million undocumented immigrants in red state Texas.
There are over 1.2 million undocumented immigrants in red state Florida.
There are about 130,000 undocumented immigrants in blue state Minnesota.
ICE agents in the hundreds are sent to the red states, but 3000 ICE agents were sent to the city of Minneapolis alone. (This is about 14% of the total number of ICE agents to cover all 50 states) The president's lawless army has descended upon the city, and this has nothing to do with immigration. It is about terrorizing. It is about having a pretext to invoke the Insurrection Act. It is part of the strategy to ensure Trump does not have to leave office.
Trump's offer to remove the ICE army if Minnesota hands over the voter rolls shows that.
The insurrection act cannot change the timeline for federal elections. That is down to your congress. The 20th Amendment sets an absolute end to a presidential term on January 20th, with no exceptions for emergencies or ongoing challenges.
You assume Trump will uphold the Constitution
Like how it was laughable to think that someone like Trump "would end the forever wars" and "focus on America itself", and obviously that this guy "would drain the swamp". And he did move on Greenland, obviously got only scared when the stock market took a hit.
And Kash Patel btw. seems to be exactly the kind of guy I thought he would be.
Quoting AmadeusD
Exactly. First of all, ICE or any government agency wouldn't make an operation without approval of the state in normal times. And then it would be low key, simply marketed as totally normal police stuff. Just ask yourself: was it really in the news when the highest number of illegal immigrants were sent away during the years when we had Democrat Presidents? You have to have a serious political crisis when for example the Military is put into a state without the acceptance of the state leaders. It's not something that hasn't happened, for example President Eisenhower put the military escort black children to school:
Quoting Questioner
And this tells what really is here the issue.
The whole immigrant issue is just the smoke and mirrors here, just like "Chinese or Russian warships off Greenland" or "Canada sending Fentanol to the US" or whatever bullshit Trump says. But it's something that the MAGA crowd likes and keeps them fantasizing that Trump is actually doing what he promised to do. In reality this is all about a power play.
Seriously, if a Presidents gets over one billion in wealth in one year with even the Swiss bribing him, does anyone think seriously that this guy will just give away power and face the consequences? Trump does control the Justice Department and people like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem do know that they are on thin ice without Trump/Vance team in power.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Questioner
I think Trump just declaring himself a President for life won't happen. But I think that Trump will try to fake an election win so that at least the Senate is in GOP hold. Trump isn't worried about the next presidential elections, he is worried about impeachment after the Midterms. And what better for him to do this, when all of his stellar political career it's been about the democrats having large scale election fraud. After that, if he would be shrewd, he'd do the Yeltsin thing: pick a Putin, who will let him be safe from investigations and possible jail time. Is JD up to it? Well, he surely is on the Trump boat.
Election fraud is a real possibility, because then people can say that everything is normal and we have seen already this dumpster fire. Not holding elections and oh boy, Trump is for a real ride. It's a move that even US "former?" allies won't accept. And hopefully the American people.
The real issue is of course is that Trump is a simply a disaster. The Greenland deal ended in disaster. As some put it aptly, NATO secretary general had to tap Trump on his back to get Trump from the whole he had dug himself with Greenland and gave him a fictional win. Trump is his worst enemy.
In the end Trump will have his supporters. These people will think that everything is just a lie and badmouthing of Trump. And if Trump will break the rules, he's breaking them because his opponents will do the same thing. Hopefully many will see that this man is really not well and not for the job that he holds now.
An electoral commission would naturally be the first thing an autocrat wants to control. But there are many other entities, simply called the separation of powers. When people don't think that this separation of powers are needed and assume that actually nothing works because of the separation of powers, then you get these populist autocrats. Strong men that promise to correct everything and make things better... and end up making things better only for themselves and their cronies.
Not so now.
This is at the core of the problems with US politics. It's built on a system in which the power that can be abused is also the power who decides who's deciding if that power is abused and what to do about it. It's a damn ouroboros.
It doesn't take much brain power to understand that what needs to be fixed in the US is to form a government which has independent entities who all gets checked independently. And with that, a much stricter form of power that if abused will immediately render the elected officials unfit for office.
There's a proposed law for Welsh elections that politicians will not be able to lie to promote a candidate. Of course the politicians all call out that it would limit free speech, but it's the best law I've heard about for a while that's actually a proposition. There's no reason why lying would be necessary, and if politicians fear that they accidentally mislead, then, maybe... politicians need to be a bit more fucking educated on the matters they govern so they can speak the truth.
I think that democracy is dead, or, the form of democracy we've had in most places of democratic nations have become outdated. It cannot exist together with the internet, because the internet is a machine that takes lies and spins them out of control. It doesn't matter if it's intentional in marketing for elections or not...
The world needs to evolve democracy into a better form of it. It starts with removing the ability for politicians to spin elections with lies, manipulation, threats and fear mongering. To make "being a politician" a very hard job that at the top of the game requires tremendous leadership, intelligence and representative grit. We need to purge all the charlatans and bullshitters from halls of power everywhere. There can be some low level idiots as part of fringe parties, but to reach the top of power, there should be so many traps for grifters and authoritarians that they don't even get the time to lift a megaphone within a political sphere.
This is so intensely confused.
Minnesota actively, publicly said it would not co-operate with a Federal law enforcement activity which is justified and reasonable (not the current activities - i'm saying conceptually) was apparently fine under Obama. I would focus there. That would be sensible as it indicates you're going to get some trouble. As ICE have, in fact, had. You can ignore all the assaults on ICE if you like, but there are two sides to this (not hte murder of Pretti - It's bogus to pretend anything I'm saying is an attempt to justify whatever Mikie is whittering about. You have to actually read and not assume).
Texas, as far as I know, is co-operating. They do not need to run the type of operation seen in Minnesota (although, I'm not saying its good or that I'm 'fine' with it either). I wouldn't focus there. I wouldn't anticipate issues. Nor have there been.
Quoting Questioner
Well, both of these are utterly preposterous and supported by anything but personal assumptions.
Quoting Questioner
Haha. If you think so - I'd prefer to keep my head on my shoulders. If you truly think these are motivations for anything he's done, I implore you to bookmark this and come back to me in three years.
Quoting Questioner
No. That shows (on an inferential basis)he's concerned that Minnesota has been propped up by illegals voting for their Democrat mates who have supported wide-spread fraud. But prior to that, checking voting eligibility and fixing the holes (many of which have already been found - why are we ignoring things like that?) is exactly what he's said he wants to do. Is it in service of 'his side'? Yes. So was allowing millions of illegals to vote Dem.
If you're going to make this type of assumption that's fine - but I'm going to then say Walz dipping shows clearly he's guilty of fraud. Nice work :)
Quoting ssu
Not entirely askance from your position here, but I think when you have multiple state leaders actively claiming they wont participate or co-operate with lawful ICE operations (which, at least as initially proposed, they were) you can't just "let it run its course".
But the optics and possibly actually authoritarian bent is not lost on me. It's is crucial to remember I am not a fan of the Don. I am a fan of discussing things in a mature manner and hearing all comers. It is not interesting to me to have people(Mikie) be so intensely combative and incapable of reading a full post that they say the batshit stuff they do.
Quoting Christoffer
Who does?
How is that to be assessed?
Or implemented?
These seem like wishful pipedreams of someone who thinks their moral compass is perfect (not you, but whoever actually runs this argument to its end).
The elected King? Yes.
:rofl:
Fair and balanced, as always.
Agreed. It’s actually far worse than what we’re hearing. It’s also deeply unpopular. But something something Obama, so it’s all good.
There is no dirty trick that is beneath him to ensure he maintains power. We've seen that with what transpired after the 2020 election.
You expect Minnesota to co-operate with their occupiers?
Besides, states are not required by law to co-operate with ICE.
And - “Operation Metro Surge” is unconstitutional – it violates both the 1st, 4th and 10th amendments
Here’s where Trump differs from Obama. Trump’s goons – thousands of masked and armed agents lacking professionalism and adequate training – stormed in uninvited and are terrorizing the Twin Cities – once there -
• using force against individuals peacefully engaging in constitutionally protected speech;
• arresting, threatening and using force against innocent bystanders;
• pointing firearms at individuals who pose no threat to DHS agents; and
• carrying out enforcement actions at sensitive locations like schools, churches, hospitals.
Many United States citizens have been the victims of unlawful racial profiling by DHS agents due to the color of their skin or, in the words of one ICE agent, because “I can hear you don’t have the same accent as me.” These individuals are frequently handcuffed and detained for hours by DHS agents for no reason. Immigration agents have targeted individuals in sensitive locations, including schools, medical facilities, places of worship, daycares, and funeral homes.
At the heart of this invasion is political retaliation -
President Trump made this clear himself on January 9, when he stated Minnesota is “corrupt” and “crooked” because its officials accurately reported election results and those results did not declare him the winner. “[T]hey’re crooked officials. . . . I feel that I won Minnesota all three times. I think I won it all three times . . . I won it all three times in my opinion . . . It’s a corrupt voter state . . . I won Minnesota three times and I didn’t get credit for it. That’s a crooked state.”
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
I have to admit I am somewhat shocked that you would repeat such a stupid falsehood.
Undocumented immigrants do not have the right to vote.
It happens, but it is extremely rare. Extensive review of the 2024 election uncovered a few cases. For example, in Michigan 16 (that's ten fingers and six toes) noncitizens voted.
18 states recorded none at all.
Do you really think an undocumented immigrant would risk deportation in order to vote?
When I asked you what this meant, you chose not to reply, so I will have to assume that you are suggesting it is historically insane to draw parallels between the Germans who marched people to the gas chambers and the MAGA goons
Why? You think those in the 1930s were a different human species than the ones we see today?
What turned them then is what turns MAGA now.
In both cases, people were/are manipulated by a propagandizing “strongman” who spreads baseless claims and exploits human weaknesses, most especially fear. In both cases, violence is normalized and empathy blunted. Hate is made to feel normal, hate against the people who the strongman tells you is the enemy. The target group is dehumanized. Trump has a few target groups –
Here’s some of the things he has said about immigrants –
[i]“They’re poisoning the blood of our country.”
“… pour into and infest our Country”
“The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans. They’re animals.’”
“They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums. You know, insane asylums, that’s ‘Silence of the Lambs’ stuff. ... Hannibal Lecter, anybody know Hannibal Lecter?”[/i]
Here’s what Trump says about the Democrats, who he regularly calls “radical left lunatics” –
[i]“The party of hate, evil and Satan.”
"the enemy from within”
“… and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries."[/i]
Take a look at his posting history.
Here’s one – full of the usual lies -
… I would like to wish an early New Year’s salutation to Crooked Joe Biden and his group of Radical Left Misfits & Thugs on their never ending attempt to DESTROY OUR NATION through Lawfare, Invasion, and Rigging Elections. They are now scrambling to sign up as many of those millions of people they are illegally allowing into sour Country, in order that they will be ready to VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024.
The support Trump gets from his base depends on hate. He also keeps them entertained with spectacle.
I’ll leave you with a couple of things. First, something I read in an Atlantic article -
[i]I ARRIVED IN MINNEAPOLIS 11 days after an ICE agent shot Good in the face. Her picture was hanging like a religious icon on windows and walls all over the city. To many who had not already become involved, her death was a call to action.
One of those latecomers was a 46-year-old documentary filmmaker named Chad Knutson. On the morning after Good was killed, he was at home with his two hound dogs, watching a live feed from the Whipple Building, where ICE is based, a five-minute drive from his house. A protester had laid a rose on a makeshift memorial to Good. As Knutson watched, an ICE agent took the rose, put it in his lapel, and then mockingly gave it to a female ICE agent. They both laughed.
Knutson told me he had never been a protester. It seemed pointless, or just a way for people to expiate their sense of guilt. But when he saw those ICE agents laughing, something broke inside him.
“I grab my keys, I grab a coat, and drive over,” Knutson told me. “I barely park my car and I’m running out screaming and crying, ‘You stole a fucking flower from a dead woman. Like, are any of you human anymore?’[/i]
Second, a reply I got on another forum when I posted a similar sentiment about MAGA cult members being reminiscent of those who marched people to the gas chamber.
A Trump supporter replied, “Let them burn!”
It's the same mentality that called Renee Good a "fucking bitch" after he killed her.
I’m not. Better not to put any effort into trolls— although your exhaustive explanations are appreciated, if even an exercise in futility. Ignorance eventually shines through though, doesn’t it? They can’t help but give themselves away.
What’s so very sad on this thread, regarding this murder, is how it exposes those who want to think of themselves as objective observers who don’t play party politics as the frauds they really are. Either they’re so uninformed as to he an embarrassment, or know better but surrendered any principles to partisan hackery.
Anyway — you’re right. We’re supposed to ignore the gross lies that reflexively came out of this administration. How Good and Pretti were “domestic terrorists” and “would-be assassins” — despite no criminal record whatsoever, and no evidence to support the claim whatsoever. When now contradicted by video evidence — the human garbage that they are — the claims have changed. No retraction, no apologies.
But we’re supposed to forget all that.
This theatrictal outrage over a single man murdered is just an emotional venting mechanism for people who are foaming at the mouth to use it as a justification in their own partisan hackery - something which your comment is positively overflowing with. You even accused me of partisanship! Which was pretty amusing.
I'm not sure if you've been paying attention the last several decades, but killing people under questionable circumstances is an absolute normalcy to the United States.
But I guess only when the killing gets emotionally relevant, it's time to get on our soapboxes.
Is that what they did?
Renée Good
Alex Pretti
You know where he got the idea that many of them come from insane asylums. They’re [B]asylum[/B] seekers. Who came from asylums.
There are lots of people who would be of interest to ICE hold up in their houses in Minneapolis having to have food delivered by friends. They’re too scared to go outside.
After the 2020 election Trump's total ineptness and lack of leadership qualities was shown. The self-coup, which basically it would have been if Trump would have overturned the elections, didn't happen. It was Trump encouraging his voter to go to Capitol Hill (which the did and stormed the place), yet Trump simply went to the White House to watch his supporters invade the Capital. It was simply a mess.
To me the really scary part was when general Mike Flynn advise him to use the military to confiscate the voting machines. That was a direct plan and someone like Flynn would have known that either power or then prison. Only later it seems that Trump has thought that this would have been a great thing to do.
Yet the issue is that on Jan 6th 2020 Trump would have had total strategic surprise. The political system and the Democrats were totally like a deer in the headlights, totally unable to understand what was happening. It would have been unfathomable. And Trump had his followers making it seem to be as a popular revolt. A self-coup would then have been actually possible, but Trump just created a huge mess.
Now it's totally different.
Now everybody is ready for the dirty tricks. Trump seizing power is not unfathomable. And now the limits of Trump's outrageous actions are seen. Just like with Greenland, Trump has to withdraw from the most insane denials of Pretti having attacked the ICE agents. Bovino, the nazi-like commander who has lost all credibility, seems to have been sidelined.
Yet now Trump does have his yes-men (and yes-women) in prominent positions who know that they likely won't last even if the next president would be a Republican. Such people can have the determination to go with Trump's dirty tricks, unlike people in the Trump's first administration.
…and the system that enables such a king to be elected.
Perfectly calm. But thank you.
Quoting Tzeentch
Because it’s true.
For the record, what I’m pointing out here — and reacting to — is the utter hypocrisy of those on the right, yourself included. Yes, I know what the claims are — none of you are “the right,” or Trumpers, or politically aligned; you’re all just cool neutral observers taking in the facts and making judgements based only on that.
But I see through all of that propaganda, as anyone should. Simply look at the emphasis, at what lines and narratives get echoed, what gets downplayed — at what context gets excluded. It’s perfectly predictable how you and several others will react. As obvious as how a Fox News or MSNBC would react.
Why not simply say “this was a mistake— shouldn’t have happened, regardless of party, and they shouldn’t be lying about it.” Even Glenn Greenwald and the Wall Street Journal could do that.
That’s what I would have done if it were the Biden administration. I am politically left and so currently prefer democrats, so I myself wouldn’t have railed against it at length, that’s true — but I also wouldn’t come on here pretending to be beyond partisanship while repeating DNC talking points verbatim, or trying to minimize the killing. You can look back at my history — at Trump’s assassination attempt, at Charlie Kirk’s murder, etc. I didn’t do that. You did, however.
So yeah, stupidity and hypocrisy and fake neutrality are worth calling out I think. And I do it calmly— just perhaps not nicely (which isn’t warranted in my view).
Anyway— carry on with your fair and balanced interpretations.
You're not seeing through anything. You're knee-deep in tribalism and that's what you're seeing reflected back at you. Everyone who doesn't chant along with you on your soapbox of shallow moral indignation must be "right wing" - cute.
:scream:
Thankfully we all have objective observers like you and Risible Guy to set us straight.
Ok! Don’t let me interrupt your charade.
Speaking truth is never futile.
Nah. Anyone who takes US domestic politics seriously is beyond redemption. :lol:
I've read the entirely of Jack Smith's Special Report, and I encourage all to read it if they want to understand the depths of Trump's corruption.
https://www.justice.gov/storage/Report-of-Special-Counsel-Smith-Volume-1-January-2025.pdf
This hints at another trait I've seen in Trump supporters - "Unless it affects me personally, I don't care."
Pam Bondi’s Letter to Minnesota Could Unravel Entire ICE Crackdown
[i]A federal judge is focusing on the attorney general’s letter in a case on the legality of President Trump’s operation in Minnesota.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s blackmail letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz after the killing of protester Alex Pretti may force the Trump administration to end its violent immigration crackdown in the state.
On Saturday, hours after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, Bondi demanded that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz give the Trump administration full access to the state’s Medicaid and SNAP records so that her office could “efficiently investigate fraud.” Bondi also demanded Walz end the sanctuary state policy and hand over all state voter registration records to Trump. Walz refused.
Now a federal judge is weighing this letter as evidence that the administration is using the presence of armed federal agents as coercion to achieve policy goals…
“The president of the United States said in the middle of this chaos and violence in the streets … he said, ‘Minnesota, your day of retribution is here.’ That is crazy. How can that not violate legal sovereignty?”[/i]
Speaks to how incompetent the Admin is
True — unless one is from the US. It matters a little more to me what happens to my friends and neighbors. Mea culpa if that’s “domestic politics.”
Easy for me to tell the Sudanese not to take their domestic politics seriously though, despite the rapes and murders occurring outside their window. Because I’m above that petty stuff, and wicked smaht.
In fairness, not a Trump supporter. But curiously goes far easier on him and his policies than a Biden or Obama. :chin:
Fair enough.
He's clearly a Trump apologist, and in my books that is a supporter.
There can be no middle road on this issue. You either support fascism, or you do not.
You’re supporting crime. If Trump took out Hitler there would be riots. There was people out there protesting when he took out Maduro. This is what anti-Trumpism leads people to do.
The one redeeming quality of the Sudanese government is that it isn't clever enough to hide its incompetency and corruption, and therefore no one views it as a vessel for meaningful change.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Washington. It's the perfect psychopath.
Trump perfectly encapsulates what US domestic politics is: an inflammatory clownshow meant to distract from anything that's actually important.
When things like Alex Pretti's death happen, all the more inflammatory it gets. The palpable outrage, the indignation - all such delicious psychological treats on which the American people are so very hooked - would I be wrong if I called it psychological masturbation?
Quoting Mikie
Oh, I don't think that's true. They're all clowns meant to sell you the lie. I had my reasons to reserve judgement on Trump, but his second term has left no doubts.
He’s talking about naturalised Sudanese U.S. citizens, who are being targeted by ICE.
Obama deported more people than Trump. THe circumstances in which they were held were as bad or worse. The places they were deported to were the same.
Conceptually, Don is the only difference. The extreme knee-jerk to his plans cannot be ignored as a trigger for how this has gone. Not that it justifies anything, but "fair and balanced" is a joke if you cant admit this.
This explains a lot. This is a childish, unhelpful and extremely bigoted way of thinking about other human beings. You are also probably entirely wrong on what you're calling fascism, in order to do hte first part. That's how bigotry works: you cloak it in something you think its morally worthy. Funny, that.
Quoting Questioner
No. I either missed it, or didn't get to it. Please stop making assumptions about motivations and things you couldn't possibly know. That is, it seems, the most glaring problem in almost everything you want to talk about.
To answer: Yes. Because they are nothing alike (or, not more than trivially). The charges that they are speak to a lack of understanding, or perhaps a wilfull stupidity on the part of those claiming it in my view. The onus is on you. So, onward..
Quoting Questioner
If you truly think this is a good faith question (rather than an attempt to frame everything the exact emotional way you like it) I can't understand why you would wade into a philosophy forum.
Quoting Questioner
This, for instance, is exactly the type of emotive, unhelpful nonsense you seem addicted to.
Prior to their arrival, the state should have fucking co-operated with Federal law enforcement's planned, notified lawful activity to enforce immigration regulations and laws (again, we can discuss how it's played out later. That is not yet open to us, in this exchange, if you want to actually sort anything out). As they did, apparently, under Obama who deported more, in worse circumstances.
DHS notes a more than 1000% increase in assaults on ICE agents. Are you trying to kid me, or yourself? Even court documents (which, I hope you understand what's happened when i delieneate between DHS stats and court docs) reports a 25% increase. That is absolutely absurd and would be considered a form of organised treason in many circumstances (I wouldn't call it that - I'm making a point).
Quoting Questioner
Possibly. There is no ruling on this and making such a bold statement, again, explains why its so hard to have you say reasonable things in response here. Certain actions definitely do - that's not in argument here with me. But this statement is wholly incomplete and misleading.
Quoting Questioner
Then we have nothing further. You are not in touch with reality and clearly on a particular intellectual mission I have no interest in. Why did you bother.. .
You are clearly incapable of hearing either a competing view, or refraining from hyperbolic emotional framing. You're entitled and I have ill no will. Am just utterly astounded at this type of bad faith being present on this forum (besides Mikie) and so shall 'dip' as they say. Different strokes... Let's stick to poetry.
To be a little more specific:
Why don’t you stick to commenting on things where you can skate by on fluff. In this case, there are actual facts— so better you stay clear.
Ignoring your emotions and accusations about how bad faith and mean everyone who disagrees with you is, you’ve so far made the mistake of making two factual claims. One about Obama and his deportations, the other about millions of illegal immigrants voting. Both are so stupid it’s embarrassing, particularly the latter.
It’s the same pattern with you apparently: wade into a topic you know nothing about except for some slogans or talking points, posture as an expert and objective observer “above it all,” feel entitled to lecture others about how bias and emotional they are, then when confronted with refutation — “dip out,” or “see your way out.”
Yes, please do, but next time spare everyone the time and simply keep for mouth shut. :up:
You’re clearly acting on bad faith. Time for him to dip out in indignant disgust.
I combed through your reply, and could not really find any meaningful rebuttal to the facts I posted.
But I will say a couple of things -
The repetition of the lie is the loyalty test.
Ad hominem attacks signal a lack of any substantive argument.
While you are making a list, a few more bullet points:
That is enough bullets for one day.
I wonder why that happened.
Quoting Paine
:up:
So basically more whataboutism. Put in a more numeric way: it’s wrong that person A lied 10 times; it’s also wrong when person B lies 1000 times. But 10 and 1000 are different, and the 10 doesn’t justify the 1000. False equivalence and whataboutism is truly rampant.
Must all be delusions of the liberal media bubble. Now about those millions of illegals voting for democrats…oh and the election was stolen and vaccines cause autism and …
I understand what you are saying about political messaging. What is most important to me is the scale of the present effort. The recognition deserves its own moment.
So what do you make of the many people that are disgusted about the politics, but just live on with their lives? Besides, in a democracy you can elect other people after those with fascist tendencies and you don't go after those that did vote for the authoritarian candidate. There are countries that have been capable of this.
Quoting NOS4A2
I don't think there were no riots after Maduro was taken out. In fact even Caracas was quite silent as people were afraid if a war would come. And if there was a protest, pretty small one compared to the response to the execution style murders done by incompetent goons that ICE unfortunately now represents. Anyway, if Rubio tried to make it a case of bringing Maduro to justice, Trump made it quite clear just what it was all about oil by declaring the he would now manage the oil of Venezuela. That's the criticism. What I've noticed is that usually people refer to the fact that Maduro stole the elections and that basically his regime (naturally without him) is still running Venezuela.
Don't live in your own echo chamber, but listen to what actually the critique is about.
So what's your take on the WSJ that Trump has benefitted 1,5 billion dollars in one year of his second term? What do you think about Trump asking 1 billion for a permanent seat on "Board of Peace", where he is chairman for life? Is that Presidential behavior? This from the guy that promised to "drain the swamp".
I was thinking about some of the disingenuous opinions shared in this thread, and the opinion in general, that one can someone "rise above reality" and ignore how millions of people are being negatively affected, as if it were all a paper game, as if the stakes were not as high as they are. Taking the people out of the equation leaves an empty shell of empty words.
A woman and a man were murdered by the state, and it appears there will be no accountability. This is a fascist act. Trying to rationalize the murders is an implicit support of fascism.
But yes, you are right, voting against the fascists is of course taking an anti-fascist position. And I hear the hope in your post that the current situation is an aberration and things will return to "normal" after the fascists are out of power.
This requires actively countering the fascists' goal of never having to give up power - more than sitting on top of a pedestal and declaring, "That's just the way it is!"
Action is required. We've seen that the action of committed people in Minnesota has resulted in Trump backing off somewhat.
A book I read years ago by Rebecca Solnit - Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities -
makes a call for activism, and "makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable."
https://www.amazon.ca/Hope-Dark-Untold-Histories-Possibilities/dp/1608465764
Do you mean the Trump Organization has benefited? That’s a business that has been around for 4 decades and has over 10,000 employees. I understand that anti-Trumpism doesn’t allow one to differentiate between Trump the president and Trump the organization, so I simply do not take the criticism seriously.
I think the Board of Peace is going to do better than the United Nations and the effete Rules-based International Order combined, mainly because they treat states as “legal persons”, complete with rights and duties, and Trump doesn’t. Besides, Trump alone has already done more to secure peaceful dialogue than all of Europe and the United Nations has ever done, anywhere, at any time, so maybe it will only prove to undermine those institutions further.
Yet that action can be still done by the rules of the republic, just as the people of Minneapolis have done. Is Minneapolis burning? Is there looting? No. Minnesotans are showing how to deal with Trump.
Why? Because Trump is no Putin. With a guy like Vlad, the US would have already lost totally it's republic and likely a majority would be pleased with the way things are going. Not with Trump as Trump's worst enemy is Donald himself.
And we can already see that the Trump regime is panicking...and blame each other. Democrats are demanding Noem to be fired or face impeachment. And Noem seems to be whisked away "to oversee issues on the Mexican border". Of course the real head that should roll here (because it won't be Trump) is Stephen Miller. His deranged quotas and enlisting of untrained agents with against the law tactics has backfired as it evidently would be. The worst thing of course that the White House went with ludicrous lies of domestic terrorists attempting to assaulting law officers, when everyone can see the trigger happy executions that these goons do.
And of course the second murder really did spoil what should have been Melania's week: her film is coming out, so I guess that she got upset the events in Minnesota and made a rare public announcement. That might actually have made Trump to think that the straightforward lying won't bring him success.
And on the international front, I think the response to Trump has been shown with the actions and the stance that Canadian prime minister Mark Carney has adopted. Trump himself saved the Liberal Party from a humiliating defeat and destroyed the pro-Trump candidates chances by his condescending attacks on Canadians. And people are getting the message: if you accept what Trump wants, he will see it as weakness and will come form more later. Mark Carney gave a great speech in Davos, which likely will be one of the important speeches in this system. Anyway, the damage towards that allies have already been done: even if the US ousts Trump and US leaders will want to strengthen their alliances, people will always remember that Americans voted twice for Trump, and thus can vote populist fascists again to power.
Yes, he gave ICE agents federal immunity,
https://www.fox9.com/news/trump-adviser-stephen-miller-tells-ice-have-federal-immunity-when-dealing-protesters
Trump fascists are throwing each other under the bus.
Noem shifting blame -
[i]“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told one source who relayed her comments to Axios.
In an earlier copy of the Axios report, others blamed Miller for divisive comments about slain anti-ICE protestor Alex Pretti wanting to “massacre law enforcement,” which were made by Border Patrol senior official Greg Bovino.[/i]
Miller shifting blame -
[i]Stephen Miller admitted that Border Patrol agents may 'not have been following protocol' during the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti as Kristi Noem appeared to blame him for the fallout.
Miller's remarks were a dramatic U-Turn just days after the top Trump aide lambasted the 37-year-old nurse as 'an assassin' who 'tried to murder federal agents'.
In a statement to the Daily Mail, Miller said: 'We are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol.'[/i]
It has made me far less optimistic about several posters.
I think there is great meaning in how we live our lives and the decisions we make, for they affect the lives of others.
I reject that we must remain pawns and victims of external influences.
Yes, immigration enforcement is necessary, but it must be done with the consent of the governed. It must be lawful and accountable. What do you make of this? - an ICE agent saying to an American citizen, “If you raise your voice, I erase your voice.”
Right now, nearly half of the American people support abolishing ICE altogether – more than support it.
As concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search for Meaning (page 130-1) –
[i]To be sure, man is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions…
Man determines himself, whether he gives into conditions or stands up to them…
One of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them. Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.[/i]
If you are a Christian, listen to Jesus, who encouraged action against injustice – see the Parable of the Persistent Widow – (Luke 18:1-5) -
[i]Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”[/i]
No-one is protesting deportations. They are protesting the lawless, fascist tactics.
Despite some rhetoric about “deescalation” in Minnesota, the reality on the ground is that nothing significant has changed. There are still thousands of untrained, violent paramilitary units hunting brown people all over Minnesota.
:100: :mask:
Why, why, why??!
Oh wait…Just more whataboutism. :yawn:
I guess someone has to say it: No one gives a shit about what you think. :victory:
Yes. These Trump apologists are simply incapable of just saying “yeah this is wrong.” Gotta be false equivalence and whataboutism. How intellectually lazy— and boring.
You have to appreciate it for what it is: some form of tribal ritual. You shouldn't expect anything constructive from people who are at the height of religious ecstasy.
Trump is being fetishized as the personification of pure evil, and by continually bewailing his existence one not only exculpates themselves from America's misdeeds but also puts themselves at the other end; that of pure good.
Both sides of the political aisle do this (and even people in other western countries who are part of the same system), but it's reaching a crescendo under Trump as America's global reputation is tanking and its corruption, historical and present, is plain for all to see.
Unfortunately, this sort of tribalism only extends the lifespan of the system.
Because both Biden and Obama did not go with it as Trump has done.
And the first thing to understand is that WHEN there's democrats in power, it is percieved by immigrants, legal or illegal, that the US is more open to immigration while people understand that Trump is hostile towards immigration. Now tourists from Europe are afraid to come into the US. Then during Obama and Biden the border control performed it's ordinary duties at the border, not patrolling through US cities.
And what has specifically Trump done wrong, I earlierly commented on this, but here it's again.
Quoting ssu (This is literally true: @Punshhh made an apt comment about this here: )
Quoting ssu
In fact, by interviewing ICE and border patrol agents, Ken Klippenstein wrote a good article ICE Unloads about how badly the agents themselves see the situation. Worth reading. For those that don't read it all, here's a quote. Klippenstein writes:
Hopefully this answered just why Trump's actions are different from the past presidents and just why there is so much criticism.
:rofl:
We get this elaborate bullshit in lieu of a simple “yeah that guy shouldn’t have been shot.”
Quoting Tzeentch
But definitely not you! Lol
We get a strawman with the complexity of a Star Wars plot to excuse the minimizing of crimes of one’s preferred administration. But yeah we all think you’re still above it all.
Risible.
Except, it wasn't just a simple "yeah that guy shouldn't have been shot" - it's moral grandstanding about fascism, calling people 'human garbage', instantly jobbing everyone who isn't chanting along with superficial lamentations into 'the other camp', etc.
People were probably too busy whipping each other up into this self-gratifying frenzy that they lost all sense of self-awareness. It's a rather indecent sight.
Quoting Mikie
Feel free to point it out wherever I do. Oh, and by using my actual words and not what you think I must "secretly" believe because I am somehow partisan in the US clownshow.
You know you're describing MAGA, right?
The NYT image below shows federal agents - armed with battlefield technology and weapons – suppressor (silencer), MAWL, M-LOK, Magwell, dump pouch – on a doorstep in Minneapolis.
They entered the house, violating the Fourth Amendment. Her husband was arrested and ordered released four days later
Watch the brief video here for more details
Yes. Are you aware that I'm describing you also?
Don't make the mistake of thinking you know me. You don't know me at all.
But I could fill a book with cultish behavior of MAGA
I don't think MAGA is evil - just manipulated
Just checked - there have been a couple of books written about it -
[i]Cult OF MAGA: How Trump turned apathy into idolatry through white hot populism, tepid placations and stone cold lies.
The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control[/i]
From the "tribal" perspective, that which divides the tribe is evil. And the designation is justified.
The man was murdered unjustly by ICE, but like all saints of the Anti-Trump Movement, he isn’t as amazing as that crowd is portraying him. He was a part of an organized and mentally ill cult of goons who spend their free time stalking and assaulting agents of the federal government.
Pretti assaulted federal agents?
The defensive whatsboutism about the ICE agents behavior, not just in this but in all areas is appalling and disgusting. There’s no ”sides” in this as if things were on equal standing, there’s the normal side and the fascist side. And I’m tired of hearing the utter bullshit omitting from the apologists of the Trump regime. There’s enough to warrant calling Trump’s regime fascist, we even have researchers on authoritarianism backing that up. So I will just say that anyone defending ICE and the Trump regime’s behavior will in my eyes be active supporters of what’s going on and through that be irrelevant to even engage with. Enough is enough, and I think the ones who agree should do the same. To stop feeding the attention addicts.
Hey bud - can you say what you mean here? I'm genuinely, semantically not understanding - Obama at least with highly motivated and animated about mass deportation, which was carried out, and in pretty shitty conditions. I don't want to wade into that, just giving context for why i just want to know what this specific thing is pointing out
Quoting Christoffer
Quoting NOS4A2
You can do much, much better than this, even being caught in a semi-delusional state. NOS4a2 says enough stupid, morally corrupt shit. to not do this...
Quoting praxis
Yes. It just doesn't matter. He was murdered, plain and simple (it was also like, 11 days earlier as I understand so likely totally irrelevant unless it was the same agent, and in that case, runs against the Agent).
When did he assault them?
God, you missed the point. I think "willful ignorance" best captures it
Quoting NOS4A2
You can't be taken seriously when you post this kind of unfounded slander
See the Sons of Liberty
What one needs to delineate is this: Who is on the side of respecting human rights?
But it doens't take anything whatever away from the callous, horrific nature of his death
Pretti spit on a car. I haven't seen any evidence of him pushing anyone.
I see, the Newman effect strikes again! :lol:
Earlier Presidents didn't have badly trained agents actively roaming the streets for possible illegal immigrants and stopping people who look to be foreigners.
And when the police fucked up, they didn't go with such blatant lies of the killed people being domestic terrorists.
It's totally different when you come into the airport from an international connection or come to the border crossing and have to represent your passport (visa in some times) and have to tell just what you are doing in the country to you walking on the street or driving home and your stopped by the border guard.
These simple differences, like abiding with laws, having the law enforcement working together. Or things like not locking up 8 year olds for six weeks and then let them back to their family.
Heck, some threw around terrorist accusations.
For someone in those positions in particular, that's not good enough, and a slap on the wrist won't do.
Maybe they took Trump's example?
Quoting Nixon 1973 (somehow came to mind)
Renée Good (1988–2026)
Alex Pretti (1988–2026)
EDIT
Conservatives Say Renée Good Was Brainwashed By Bible Into Loving Thy Neighbor
[sup]— The Onion · Jan 15, 2026[/sup]
Since the Ukraine war started, Russia has engaged in "systematic dismantling of independent civil society, harsh suppression of anti-war dissent, and the persecution of minority groups."
In the US, we're about to explode because 2 people were murdered by ICE. That's actually a good sign about the health of rule of law.
They didn't need to (the badly trained part is arguable - they fucked up constantly under Obama particularly in terms of care-giving in custody).
Quoting ssu
I do not see this the way you do. I would have absolutely no problem doing this in the midst of a crack down on illegal immigration. But yeah, I understand what you're saying now. Thank you.
Quoting praxis
Err, no. What hte fuck dude... this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Either I or you (and likely me) misinterpreted video evidence of an event. Good god.
Like coming on a thread after someone was just murdered by the state and placing the emphasis on the protesters’ behavior.
Speaking of trolls. Weren’t you gonna “dip out”? Anyway— please go on about substantive contributions— like claiming millions of illegals voted for democrats, that Pretti assaulted officials, that Obama was just as bad as Trump, etc. You’re truly cringey. One might even say risible.
Quoting ABC news
Not a propitious beginning for any future litigation.
Risible.
More like the posturing ignoramus effect. Knows nothing about the subject, but compulsively has to comment on it anyway— while pretending to be an expert. Truly embarrassing.
Imagine spending all this time (and resources) searching for something so obviously conjured up by a fraud? How stupid does one have to be to believe the election was “stolen”?
In the current environment, independent observers need to be present...
The claim is essential to his brand. He got people to talk about it again.
It is like the Durham investigation in that respect. But the idea of independent investigation is difficult in a land where special counsels are not permitted unless agreed to by the aggrieved party.
But they made no effort to account for what was removed while it was happening.
While that process is by no means a guarantee of perfect diligence, consider how less perfect it would be if the discovery started in a different storage locker altogether.
It follows the pattern in the U.K. of the far right claiming voter fraud via postal votes. Something which is patently false.
Below is a link to a video Trump posted on his social media a couple of days ago. After a minute or so of propaganda, the main message is spoken – (which seems to be that Trump doesn’t make mistakes, and how dare you question him) –
Word for word from the video -
“This is what you voted for, so why are you questioning every decision he makes? God didn’t save his life so he could make mistakes. He knows what he is doing. Maybe it’s time to shut the fuck up and let him cook.”
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115976094211574919
The positive sign here is that Minneapolis isn't literally exploding. The injustices aren't an excuse for burning up stuff and for looting. That is really positive. Also, earlier a think tank/study group made a study just how civil war would break up in the US and the scenario was just as what has happened in Minneapolis. The city was just wrong. In that scenario two government agencies, on controlled by the executive and one controlled by the state start shooting at each other. I think that this "Fort Sumter"-moment has passed for now. Even if ICE is still roaming the streets in the city, some kind of dialoge, even if weak, is done. Above all, the White House has backed down and now the Trump people are blaming each other. Stephen Miller, the father behind the immigration strategy, is now backpedaling and saying he got wrongful information and Noem is telling that she was only following orders.
That should immediately tell every ICE agent just on how thin ice the whole organization is on now, when looking at the future. It's quite likely that there's going to be quite a reform and organizational restructuring as now ICE has turned into Trump's own Sturm Abteilung.
“I cannot be mistaken - what I say and do is historical.”
~ Hitler
“Il Duce ha sempre ragione.” (The leader is always right).
~ Mussolini
A Fort Sumter moment would require that half the states had already seceded. :cool:
This is why people call it christo-nationalist death cult. Basically, there’s no difference between Islamic fundamentalists in Middle East and Christian fundamentalism in the US. It’s the same form of religious fundamentalism in which people are ready to kill for it.
If people actually dig a little deeper into the Christian culture of the US, you see the same form of “paradise” worshipping death cults that we often attribute to Islamic fundamentalists. Who fall to their knees in front of a self-made cult leader who’s just in it for their own power and narcissism.
The US will never become a stable nation until the cultists are branded extremists. The MAGA movement and the Christi-fascists need to be branded as such and the state need to ditch the connection to Christianity and become a proper secular government.
I’ve never understood how we look at the Middle East with criticism of their religious states and laws while the US is basically the same but with Christianity as its religious base.
It’s basically an outdated relic of a time when the church had the power. Why are we still doing that shit in the world? It wasn’t even true of many of the old civilizations that came and went, many of them were more secular than we realize. Many of the gods of pantheons were just treated as gods of stuff around the people and so were spoken in language, but were less in control over their society. During the Middle Ages, most of the peasants used folk lore in the pantheonic fashion and the church weren’t as in control as people think.
The modern US has tied the Christian belief to the manifest destiny with Columbia as a national Christian icon. It’s an all-American Christian religion that has been used for US exceptionalism.
And now, when the American dream is dead, and most rural areas are dying, people hold onto that faith more and more as a cult because realizing the bullshit that the US has become is too much for the US spirit. “The American dream isn’t dead, we will still manifest desitiny, we’re the greatest country in the world, we are the leaders of the free world, we are the chosen ones”—It all comes crashing down.
As I mentioned before, Las Vegas is the best analogy of the US. Built in the worst place possible, ignoring the climate and the low ground water; when you drive into the city, all commercial posters speak of “getting loans and credits” while going out of town the backside of those same commercial signs show “get legal help”, “want financial advice?”. The strip is filled with simulacra of dead empires, plastic renditions, fake skies, impotent sizes of real statues somewhere else, “why go to Europe when you can see Venice in an ozon-filled air-conditioned bunker? You walk down the strip as the poor are either dying on the street or dressed up as the king’s entertainment—and if you walk past the buildings’ shiny exterior, you see the crumbling concrete backside and peering over the parking lot for the working staff, you see their residences for miles; broken houses slowly decaying.
This is the heart of the US. A shiny surface that tries to fool people through its plastic polish, hiding a deep rot underneath. A rot that’s ignored by the working staff on the promise that they will some day manifest their destiny. Wipe enough tables from cocaine and saturated fat and some day you will own the stage in one of those plastic not-to-scale versions of a Roman temple, for the eyes of richer people eating a smash burger made by your neighbor while being wipped by some celebrity chef.
Trump is just a messenger of the rot. The US needs to absolutely fail as a society before its population understands just how rotten everything is. The nation has the potential of actually being a “leader of the free world”, because they already have the economic ties to the world, they have the cultural influence, but for it to happen, they need to lead by example and not just put on a shiny dress.
Prove to the world that they are the peak of humanity’s knowledge, prove that they embrace the multiculture fact that is the sum of the entire earth, prove that dreams are actually possible and that people want to go there to live the dream and that this dream is actually real.
For that to happen, the christo-nationalist death cult fascists need to be fought, they need to be branded extremists and disappear. The state and constitution needs to be reworked into a new paradigm, breaking off from Christian fundamentalism and into actual representative democratic power, based on knowledge and competent leadership for the people and international relations. The neoliberal capitalist experiment needs to be thrown in the trash and economic policies need to be formed in favor of the people rather than the capitalists. Lobbyists need to be banned from Washington, transparency and better room for the people to speak in Washington. Education absolutely free and the same for all, health care free for all, oppurtunities open for all, social support for the poor and homeless to help them get back on their feet, help for the addicts to rid themselves of addiction, free mental care etc. etc. etc. for the nation to thrive, it needs the people to thrive first.
Trump is the manifestation of everything that’s wrong with the US and for the US to survive and become better, him and all similar to him needs to be removed from having any power whatsoever. That’s not an opinion, it’s the cold hard fact of what is going on. They need to be removed, as well as all the similar political figures on the left who do nothing but speak tropes without action.
The US needs to grow a backbone, and not in the manifest destiny, Christian fundamentalist Trump strong man bullshit-kind—but the educated, morally exemplary, humanist and “for all mankind” way. And it can’t be a shiny surface, it needs to be the core of ideals and foundation of every land, town, and city. Of every person from the toilet cleaner to the university professor, to company CEO.
For that to happen, the US needs to collapse and die, it needs to be picked apart by vultures, excremented by them into becoming the fertilizer for the good to finally grow.
The rot must go.
I can't disagree with anything you've so eloquently said. I will add to that, though, that there are a lot of very good people in the US, and the future of the country is going to depend on them to continue to make their voices heard.
Right now, it appears that the leader best poised to steer the US out of the dark time they find themselves in right now is Gavin Newsom
Unfortunately, Gavin isn’t enough. The rot is deep, and it requires a rebirth of what it means to be the United States. The good people in the US are the few who’s never really getting traction because the culture is so infected with the neoliberal hyper-individualized capitalist ideology that people view it as a fact of physical reality. There’s no difference between Iran and the US in this sense, both are composed of some good people and the rest deeply and fundamentally having their head in religious ideals of a promised land. It’s just that for most of us in the west, the US have been close to our own values at the surface level, but underneath, there’s an indoctrinated delusion that is now breaking at the seams.
Bloody or not, a revolution may be needed to shake the foundations away from the delusions of old doctrines.
In terms of a national law usurping local authority, perhaps a closer parallel would be the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The slave catchers, however, were private agents of slave owners, not a federal agency.
In the latter sense, a parallel can be seen as an inversion of desegregation laws of civil rights era opposed by state and local governance, especially with the focus of ICE upon schools and public services.
Boston theaters are empty for the Melania documentary (— Axios · Jan 29, 2026)
Bizarre ad allegedly pays you to watch Melania Trump's new movie (— UNILAD · Jan 29, 2026)
Well, at least it's not serious in this case. :sweat:
$50 + free ticket to go see the movie? I suppose I might. :)
Honestly, I can't think there is anything interesting about her that would make me want to watch a movie about her.
Definitely the hottest First Lady ever…But I can’t see that being the basis for a whole movie.
Opinion | How Trump Has Used the Presidency to Make at Least $1.4 Billion (archive)
[sup]— The New York Times · Jan 20, 2026[/sup]
CNN reporter taken aback by 'staggering' report about Trump's wealth during second term
[sup]— Robert Davis · Jan 20, 2026 · 4m:27s[/sup]
No, I just Googled images
Well, technically playing the market like that is textbook market manipulation at the highest level. It’s obvious he’s been doing it, he even said out loud “I’ve made my friends billions of dollars.”
And as always, the law doesn’t apply to Trump. If anyone else did the same, they would be getting decades in prison.
This is why I say that people should just start breaking the law against the government. Why should the people care about the law if it doesn’t exist and doesn’t lead to consequences? Through a basic Kantian perspective, Trump is universalizing breaking the law.
The people should be able to manipulate the market for their own gain and shoot ICE agents that shouts at people.
If the law doesn’t apply to everyone equally, then the law doesn’t really exist, except as a way for some to have power over others. In those situations, revolution is the only method.
Yes, I thought so. Joking aside, I expect anything salacious will have been redacted. But at least we will have Melania’s movie to watch instead.
New reporting from the New Yorker sets the profiteering by Trump and his family at over $4 billion
https://wgme.com/news/nation-world/police-arrest-26-anti-ice-protesters-for-riotous-conduct-outside-minnesota-hotel-riots-greg-bovino
Meanwhile, Spain moves to legalize the illegals.
“ Madrid points to ‘positive impact’ of migration as it moves to grant 500,000 undocumented people legal status.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/1/28/as-western-powers-crack-down-on-migrants-spain-embraces-500000
We get to watch in real time as a once-powerful empire turns into a commie shithole.
That was also a prominent feature of Orban's election victory in Hungary.
A lot of the other moves used by Orban would not work in the U.S. system because of the Constitutional boundaries in place (so far).
It never was Spain that was great, it was Portugal.
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting Punshhh
Relax... leave my country alone.
We don't have law enforcement agencies which shoot people in the streets or folks who jump from the balcony every bloody summer. We are not perfect, but at least we are not like you.
Simmer down there Franco, you aren't better than anyone else.
I didn't say that. I'm not like Trump. :smile:
That's cool. So you know you aren't better anyone else. Anywhere. Ever.
Spain colonized the Americas. Spanish is the most widely spoken language on this side of the pond. Do they not teach history there?
Dude, that happened a looooong time ago.
It is not time to live with the nostalgia of the past. Spaniards want to live in a country with affordable houses and better salaries. Our history cannot fix this.
You said "turns into a commie shithole" but trust me, mate—haven't we turned into that since we lost our last possessions in the Caribbean Sea to the USA in the 1898 war?
The species hasn’t evolved much in the last couple hundred years, I’m afraid.
Yet you keep electing people who want to take a large part of your income in order to spend it on illegals, other people, themselves, knowing full well that if you find a higher salary they’ll just take more.
OK, NOS. Fair enough.
I believe I understand the reality of my country better than anyone else here, just as you understand Canada.
Yes, Spain is a country with heavy taxation. Everyone is angry about this here—myself included. However, I don't think the money goes to illegals. Furthermore, the problem is that we don't really know where the public budget is spent.
Sánchez is a liar, I agree. I will not vote for him in the next elections. I think I will not vote for someone. Yet I think this issue should be irrelevant to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The latter posted a "Wow" on his X account, showing a video of immigrants waiting for something in a supposed public administration in Spain. Apart from being a hoax, I don't really get why he cared a lot about this. Will these 500,000 immigrants steal SpaceX or pickpocket him? It is something that only concerns Spain, and I dislike how often the American policy pokes its nose in other countries.
Fair enough, Javi. No offence meant to you personally. But in the same vein, American politics ought to be irrelevant to Europeans, yet here we are.
There's a power asymmetry that makes the U.S. more relevant to us in Europe than vice versa. Militarily, it's a world power and so globally relevant; and economically, the dollar is the world's reserve currency and so gobally relevant. Spain is neither militarily relevant globally nor has it even a strong say in the direction of the euro---itself a second-class currency (as all are in relation to the dollar).
So, I think the point is that any interest in Spanish internal affairs by Trump/Musk etc is likely to be feigned, and reference to them rhetorically motivated, whereas that's not necessarily the case the other way around. As for documenting the undocumented, I don't know what it has to do with communism. These types of amnesties have occured everywhere to some degree or another. Haven't you had some in the U.S. too? And you can agree or disagree with them, but if your expressed point of disagreement is that they are an indication of a communist takeover, you denigrate your own argument, and actually I don't think you think that anyway, NOS. Presumably, you have something more coherent to offer. (I'm not taking a position by the way; I don't have a rhetorical reflex on this one).
Honestly, I don't think Trump/Musk's opinions on the internal politics of European countries are feigned or with a rhetorical purpose. It seems to me that they want to interfere in our opinions and thoughts. If we were that irrelevant, I still don't get why Musk reacted with a "Wow" on his X account for just documenting the undocumented.
Since the political direction of the government of my country is to not spend really much on NATO, respect internal law and try to be as little polluting as possible, it is obvious that Sánchez will always confront Trump/Musk. The internal political direction regarding immigration in my country might not be interesting to anyone, but Musk and Trump know very well what they are doing – spreading around the world their "culture war" and making this and that "better again"; and Spain is not an exception in their interests.
This is a common thought that I share with friends from other Spanish-speaking countries (South America, mainly). Perhaps Trump doesn't care about Paraguay or Uruguay, but when the governments of these countries turn into a "commie" bureau, you will see how he quickly starts to care about South America and wants to spread "democracy" and "free elections" over there.
Your point is amplified when considering the efforts at the inception of the U.S. alt-right movement to align with nationalistic parties in Europe. The efforts begun by Bannon and Breitbart back then are followed by J.D. Vance and Hegseth continuing the work today.
A clear picture is being painted of a decades-spanning extortion and blackmailing racket ran by Epstein and his wife, whose job it was to collect dirt on all sorts of high-profile people from all over the world. Both Jeffrey and Ghislaine have deep ties to the CIA, MI6 and Mossad, leading me to believe this was a state-run enterprise.
Another party that is curiously implicated seems to be the Rothschild family, which Epstein literally calls himself a representative of in one of the leaked e-mails.
If you want to understand who pulls the strings in your country (and perhaps in mine also, unfortunately), this is where you start looking.
The Rothschild connection sounds interesting, do you have a link?
Department of Justice | Epstein
Type 'Rothschild' in the search bar. 11,860 results.
I agree to an extent. The Monroe doctrine doesn't extend across the pond though. Thankfully.
Yes. I had a nice and interesting exchange of ideas with you both, and I agree mostly with everything except that we are not militarily relevant globally nor do we have a strong say in Brussels.
I'm joking. I am pretty aware of the limitations of the peninsula I live in. :rofl:
Ireland hardly fares any better. Probably worse in that we're highly compromised and dependent on American tech.
It’s true; Europe has grown dependent on the US for many reasons, most of which is the American government’s fault. Good or bad, living generations of people in both continents have to deal with these conditions.
The prime minister is the president of the Socialist International and from the Spanish Socialist Workers Party. That’s what we call a “commie” over here. This entire thread is about calling Trump a fascist and Americans dumb Nazis-lovers. Hell, I was called a fascist a page or two back. Please allow me this one…
Fair enough. :up:
I think things could be friendlier if we were all a little less reactive. Part of the problem I see is that it is highly profitable in the economic sphere for us to be so (see, click, see, click). This tends to pollute everything, especially online conversation.
Ain’t that the truth.
I understand your view. Yet, PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party) gave up on Communism and Marxism after winning the 1982 elections because they wanted to make Spain a member of both the EU and NATO. It is hard to explain because it is true that they still use "socialist" in their acronym, but they always repeat that they are a social-democratic political party inspired by the left-wing parties of Sweden and the Labour Party of the UK. I do not think these are real commies in the pure sense of the word. Furthermore, there are more leftist political parties in the Congress which accuse PSOE of being neoliberal. Imagine those! These are real commies: United Left.
I have never called you a fascist. Believe it or not, I agree with you on many of your points – mainly when you claim that European countries have grown very dependent on the USA. This is true.
It is just that I didn't get why the news of documenting 500,000 people here went around the world. I think some folks exaggerated on his reactions towards this.
Over here many use the term “commie” in the pejorative sense to describe basically anything left-of-center. My use of the terms wasn’t necessarily a description of his values, only that he is going to try to subvert the prevailing global orthodoxy with some far-left theatrics.
For instance his latest move is one of them. I’m not aware of the laws over there, but over here there are tedious and lengthy processes to becoming a citizen, and this is true of many nation states. It can take years to become a citizen. Documenting the undocumented on such a large scale is to make a mockery of that effort, and the many who go through that effort (myself included). Many have been jailed or deported based for far less.
The process is tedious and slow here too. I think there is a misinterpretation of the concepts. Sanchez is conceding the citizenship to 500,000 immigrants, yes. But this is not equal to becoming Spanish. It is just that these persons are now documented to be hired legally in the labour market. Without these papers, they are hard to hire, and if they are, many businessmen exploit them because they are not in a current legal status. My view about this is that Sánchez wanted to make a movement against the employers. After this, those people now have the right to be hired in better conditions.
But it is important to clarify that they do not have the right to vote in the Spanish elections, nor do they start receiving grants. This is a lie.
Its not just that though is it? There are concerns about an immediate influx of 500,000 legitimate names on voter rolls (Municipal - the ones that matter), health care registers, tax obligations (welfare, I guess) and in a social-democratic milieu that could be disastrous. They only need a year to meet what I understand to be the thresholds for these entitlements. There's also the potential for cultural clash, but I don't put as much into that as much who have reacted to it globally.
Agreed. The Bannonite effort was aspirational rather than effective. We can freak when Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen gets a helicopter ride to a waiting carrier.
It's hard to see a cultural clash in this context. Most of them are from South America; they share the same language, religion, ethos, etc. They are like siblings or cousins to us.
Quoting AmadeusD
Our health care system is already very screwed. It is not their fault.
Quoting AmadeusD
They can only enter the voter rolls if they get the nationality and there is a reciprocal agreement–this decree is only documenting them legally. The government is not giving them the Spanish nationality, and if this were the case, not everyone would have the right to vote in municipal elections, because not all countries of these immigrants have a reciprocity agreement with us.
Article 176 of Spanish Constitution:
Without prejudice to the provisions of Title I, Chapter I of this Law, the right to vote in municipal elections is enjoyed by foreign residents in Spain whose respective countries allow Spaniards to vote in these elections under the terms of a treaty.
The treaty is regulated in our LEY ORGÁNICA 5/1985 de 19 de junio, del Régimen Electoral General and it says:
The citizens of Norway, Ecuador, New Zealand, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Iceland, Bolivia, Cape Verde, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom and Trinidad and Tobago who are over 18 on the day of voting and who are not deprived of the right to vote, may vote in municipal elections in Spain.
For this purpose, they must be in possession of the corresponding residence permit in Spain.
Must have been legally resident in Spain for the time required by the relevant agreement (five years at the time of application for registration on the electoral roll and, in the case of Norwegian nationals, three years on the day of voting; no temporary requirement is required in the case of New Zealand).
[sup]— Jasper Ward, Rod Nickel · Reuters · Jan 23, 2026[/sup]
:up:
Trump’s First Year In Office
[sup]— The Onion · Jan 29, 2026[/sup]
:grin:
Isn’t all really a larger interconnected web of trade and ownership over companies established in many nations around the globe? While some nations have become more influential and important for others within global trade, even those larger nations depend on a lot of others to make that dependence work. A domino chain of dependence. Looking at the whole global economy in a reductionist way, it’s more of a complex web.
But now the US put heavy tariffs on most, which we haven’t even seen the full effects of yet as the consequences have just begun within the national economy in the US.
And since the behavior of the US have tainted their reputation and future prospects in international relations, and Europe is quickly looking at local solutions for replacing much of that current dependence; we might see a situation where the US, in the future, will look to amend the relations on more mutual level of trade.
And if it goes sideways, well, the US doesn’t have nearly as good of a national economy as people think, and if the AI bubble pops, that could burn the economy over there. If Europe have figured out a way to cover much of the dependence by that time, we would survive much better from such a crash.
The EU, right now, is globetrotting and speeding up trade relation deals that’s been in slow talks for decades. I think that’s setting up possibilities for bypassing the US and getting much of the base components and supplies from the sources themselves rather than through US products and tech.
The big question, I think, is what the US economy is without tech trade. If the others’ tech dependence is reduced, and most of the US economy, that is resting on tech companies and the AI hype bubble, goes down, what does the US have then?
Now he wants to take over elections? What could go wrong?
I had no inkling of those reciprocal voting treaties!
I want it here.
That's fair. I don't think this is going to be quite the joyride you do, but fair.
Quoting javi2541997
LOL no, that's not the concern though. Making worse is surely not ideal.
Quoting javi2541997
This appears to go for State and Regional elections, not Municipal elections (given my next sentence). I noted that after a year, they will meet the required residency time. I mean, I could still be wrong but clarifying what I understood.
Quoting javi2541997
Colombia is one of the most common countries of origin for this group? Seems to me they will be able to vote. Thanks very much for the elucidation.
Then stop reading. It's unlikely to be representing reality.
It's in Spanish, but here they are:
https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2022/11/05/pdfs/BOE-A-2022-18150.pdf
https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2010/08/27/pdfs/BOE-A-2010-13463.pdf
The reciprocal voting treaty with Argentina (for example, among others):
https://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L9/CORT/BOCG/A/CG_A140.PDF
Uruguay:
https://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L9/CORT/BOCG/A/CG_A281.PDF
Paraguay:
https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2010/06/21/pdfs/BOE-A-2010-9770.pdf
United Kingdom (English):
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c8b809440f0b640d24a45a5/CS_Spain_2.2019_Elections.pdf
They will be able to vote in the next municipal elections, not in the coming ones, because they also need the minimum legal residence in their local city. Apart from what I explained, this is another benefit from Sanchez's decree. Since they are now in a legal status and documented, the time starts to count to take part in the next municipal elections.
By the way, I can't see the problem because. A) As a Spaniard myself, I would also be able to vote in the municipal elections of those countries (Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina...), so I would be hypocritical to criticise this; B) not all the immigrants are part of the reciprocal voting agreement – for example, there are also many persons from Angola and Senegal, but we do not have these kinds of treaties with their governments.
Yep, they’re propped up on an AI bubble right now with the administration enabling corruption on a grand scale. What could possibly go wrong?
Guns.
What a twisted mind he has
[i]Collins noted that “a lot of women who are survivors of Epstein are unhappy with” the way the justice department redacted the documents, including, “entire witness interviews are totally blacked out”
Trump attempted to end the discussion: “I think it’s really time for the country to get on to something else … nothing came out about me … (there was) “a conspiracy against me”
Collins asked: “But what would you say to people who feel they haven’t gotten justice, Mr President?”
Trump then launched into a personal attack on Collins
“You know, you are the worst reporter,” Trump said. “You know, she’s a young woman,” Trump said to the Republican lawmakers arrayed around his desk. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile,” he said, turning back to Collins.
“I’ve known you for ten years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face,” Trump said bitterly.
“Well,” Collins interjected, “I’m asking you about survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, Mr President.”
Ignoring her reply, Trump continued, “You know why you’re not smiling? Because you know you’re not telling the truth. And you’re a very dishonest organization, and they should be ashamed of you.”
“These are survivors of a sexual abuser” Collins replied.[/i]
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUUKJxejbFq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
It’s shameful.
When he claimed the files don’t incriminate him, he squirms and then claims that Epstein conducted a conspiracy to frame him. He looks worried.
He's not going to be able to outrun the questions forever
Which "state" would that be? The proposal of "state-run" requires that there is a specific "state" which runs it. The mention of association with a number of different states, is sort of contradictory to "state-run". And this is before even considering the possibility of Russian financing. To determine who "ran" the operation would require an understanding of who provided the funds.
Having ties to many states implies an entity acting outside the bounds of any state. Therefore it appears, at this time, like it was an operation run for personal gain, rather than for any state. That's why Trump appears to click right in to that clique. However, if it turns out that the financing was Russian, and it was "state-run", by Russia, that opens another can of worms.
How is that not obvious?
Russia, ... really? :lol:
Calling things “state-run” is giving too much credit to the organizational level of how any of this operated and fundamentally… why?
It seems more that all of this is because of the corrupted power that wealth grants people. It’s not just the money, it’s that money gets you through the door of so many places of power, and in those places are people who are both in the financial, commercial and state sector, because that’s simply where the power is.
There’s no grand scheme or goal with any of these people. Their perverted desires are common throughout all classes of society, but when you have wealth you have the power to hide it in such a way you can organize an entire movement of it. And with bribes and lobbying, you get whatever the fuck you want.
Further, if you keep dirt on people, that grants even more power.
I think the movie “Mountainhead” really shows this. It was criticized for ridiculing billionaires in ways that were over the top, but from those who actually have insight into the private behavior of the super rich and powerful, it was spot on.
If people ever seen a poor family suddenly being struck with wealth through lottery, and witnessing how they sometimes end up in tragedy as they cannot handle what that kind of money does to people, this is similar, but to people with much more control over their situation and better understanding of how to use that money. And many of them just lets lose in ways that are so immoral they could very well be aliens.
They are simply delusional, perverted people who’s headspeace is so fucked by their power that there’s nothing they wouldn’t try and do because they have so much power through the ties to other rich people and state officials backing them up.
It creates a web of perversion, with people who don’t see the population as people, but something alienated from themselves, “things”, so to speak. And so they treat people as things.
But there’s no goal here, there’s no real agenda.
It’s just corrupted infantile minds playing games with the world, personal perverted ideas being manifested because there’s no consequences at that level of society.
This is basically what led up to the French Revolution. If things don’t turn around and things change for the better, people will get fed up of being treated as things, and we will see some literal heads roll down the streets again, ridding society of these parasites who rape and plunder both literally and spiritually.
It’s not about state power, it’s about a global oligarchic aristocracy who don’t give a fuck about states, nations or anything but their own pleasure as they ride on the backs of the worlds population with a big “Yee-Haw!”
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/france-paris-prosecutors-x-office-elon-musk-sexual-deepfakes-holocaust-rcna257202
These and other incidences of European harassment have been a growing concern, as the supposed allies who have been benefitting from American military protection for decades, have been threatening US companies with their censorship regime for many years now.
They are the good guys.
Yeah, Elon Musk called the raid on Twitter (X) offices a ‘political attack.’
France’s official response -
“Investigating child sexual abuse material isn’t controversial. Turning it into political theater is manipulation. Maybe that logic flies on some island. Doesn’t fly in France."
French authorities — and their European counterparts — have been watching Elon Musk for a long time. Officially, French Law enforcement is responding to whistleblower complaints of the “sexual abuse of minors” and funding from foreign entities to destabilize the French government by working with local far-right Russian-funded groups (proven in a court of law) with Russian-backed leaders of France’s far right.
Musk has used X to:
• Boost extremist narratives in Europe
• Undermine trust in democratic institutions
• Attack elected leaders who challenge him
• Interfere in public discourse during elections
• Promote AI-generated propaganda with minimal safeguards
You’re linking me to substack articles from a Canadian anti-Trump propagandist. Are you the author?
The story from Axios and NBC is far different:
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/03/musk-grok-deepfakes-paris-prosecutors-x-search
What part of it do you believe to be not true?
And why would you defend spreading pornographic images of minors?
Anyway, here's another corroborating article
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/french-police-raid-x-grok-elon-musk-9.7072861
I don’t know, I’m not going to read it. Your guy is a failed disc jockey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Blundell
I haven’t defended anything. In fact I criticized French authorities.
You called their move on targeting the pornography as censorship
Quoting NOS4A2
Why? Because it might tell you something you don't want to hear?
These are images generated by users, not the company. It’s weird that they wouldn’t want to go after the guilty people, but aim it towards Musk.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2007475612949102943?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Why would you want them to go after the innocent and not the guilty?
Follow the money. Take a look at Epstein's funding.
You can't be that naive.
Grok (the generative-AI developed by Musk's company xAI) has become a porn generator.
Employees at xAI have to sign a waiver stating that -
[i]...their jobs would require being exposed to “sensitive, violent, sexual and/or other offensive or disturbing content,” the waiver said, emphasizing that such content “may be disturbing, traumatizing, and/or cause you psychological stress.”
... In meeting after meeting (Musk) has championed a new metric, “user active seconds,” to granularly measure how long people spent conversing with the chatbot, according to two of the people.
... As part of this push for relevance, xAI embraced making sexualized material, publicly releasing sexy AI companions, rolling back guardrails on sexual material and ignoring internal warnings about the potentially serious legal and ethical risks of producing such content, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen former employees of X and xAI[/i]
Blaming Russia is some peak cope.
American billionaires, and their banks are not a "state". Furthermore, you need to distinguish between the targets of the extortion and blackmailing, and the beneficiaries of the extortion and blackmailing.
You proposed that Epstein and his wife managed a "decades-spanning", "state-run enterprise" of "extortion and blackmailing".
If this is the case, then some state must have provided them with the funding, to operate, and in return that state would receive benefit from the extortion and blackmailing.
Have you seriously looked into which state was providing this funding, and benefitting from the operation?
The World is Investigating Epstein's Network. America is Protecting It
Like I said, the ties with the CIA, MI6 and Mossad are clear. Evidently you haven't seriously looked into any of this yourself or you would have known that their greasy fingerprints are all over this case, and you wouldn't have come with the ridiculous suggestion that "it was the Russians".
Judging by your comment I'm guessing you believe that clown in the White House runs the show? Never wondered who runs that circus and whether such parties may benefit from holding compromising material over the people you get to vote for?
There seem to be a lot of Russian escort women moving around the place including one being trafficked into the U.K. for the use of Prince Andrew. Which the police are looking into.
Possible Russian involvement here;
https://dossier.center/jeffreyepsteinrusconnect-en/
I think the Epstein pedo sex-ring was more subtle than blackmail. When you have the Mossad ties, the basic issue is that people are basically pro-Israel. And that's it. As that's the most natural thing for any politician or billionaire to be in the US, pro-Israel that is, this stance isn't at all dubious or threatening. It would be totally different if Epstein would have been working for let's say the Chinese. Hence sexual predators like Bill Clinton or Donald Trump (or "former" Prince Andrew) just would love to be in such "safe" pedophile ring.
Now Epstein seems to have wanted to have connections to Russia, but these were more like attempts to have business connections etc.
Of course the horribly sad state where Trump has put the Department of Justice and the FBI has made the US system a real banana republic court totally dependent on the whims of the local dictator. It is just laughable.
Now it seems that the Trump-lovers are eager trying to say that all Western countries are as corrupt as the US is now.
Quoting Punshhh
There's actually tons of this kind of stuff as many countries and their hosts have taken care of the needs of one British prince.
Quoting Punshhh
Lol. The whole Trump administration is looking like a Russian operation.
..., and House Trump babbles about a dire invasion by immigrants in Europe, and meanwhile the Kremlin claims that the better part of Europe is Nazi, ... :D (It's almost like they're cooperating/competing in airing incompatible propaganda.)
Not long ago, Trump inadvertently admitted listening to Putin before both US and French investigations. This was about the alleged bombing of a large residence of Putin's. (Irrelevant either way.) Trump is a Russotoady (or worse).
It's going to be exquisite coming back in another two years.
I don't know what the real story is but am curious why it is patently implausible from what you have learned.
This is the same guy parroting the claim that “millions of illegals vote democrat.” I’d take the trolling comments with a grain of salt. All fluff and posturing.
But regarding what you said: you don’t believe that Russian involvement had any real impact on the election in ‘16, do you?
People who are jumping on the Russia story are desperately clutching at straws not to have to come to terms with the truth about the system they are living under. It's a coping mechanism.
In general because of lower standard of living modelling (prostitution) in the West seems a lucrative career for many. Some of Epstein's American victims have said that they were told that they were rare.
Do notice that Epstein wasn't government employee. Intelligence services usually have very dubious connections.
There is talk of Epstein using Sergei Belyakov, then Deputy Minister of Economic Development in Russia to procure the women.
https://dossier.center/jeffreyepsteinrusconnect-en/
Christopher Steele an ex MI6 operative stated yesterday on LBC radio;
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/christopher-steele-epstein-trump-russia-5HjdRrM_2/
It is well known that the CIA, MI6 and Mossad do the same. Your point?
Quoting Punshhh
And the US just so happened to be at the absolute peak of its power, while Russia was at its low point.
But I'm sure they'd never abuse that power to gain leverage over high-profile people.
The Americans are the good guys after all!
Let me tell you something about Epstein. Everything published about him which is "clear", is what he wanted the public to know. What he was really doing, his intentions, he obscured and kept secret. There are two sides to him, the public presentation, and the private, what he was actually doing. And, he was a master at secrecy. That's why he did what he did, so well.
And what a convenient way to muddy the waters: everything that's clear is in fact suspect! It has a nice Orwellian ring to it.
Anyway, you believe what you want to believe buddy.
Where were the U.S. and the U.K., why weren’t they infiltrating Russia, getting ready for hybrid warfare? They were asleep at the wheel.
Straw.
Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency
(Note: poisoning the well is the point—buried deep in the article is that the whistleblower complaint was deemed “not credible” by the Inspector General of both the Biden and Trump admins)
Recent news about her investigating the 2020 election in Georgia and Puerto Rico hints at what the possible target may be.
Genuinely, I have no idea. Epstein was obviously a fixer of some kind for very powerful interests. He called himself a representative of the Rothschilds, and Arianne de Rothschild was directly involved with him.
But the truth is that what has come to the surface is probably only the tip of the iceberg. If whoever is behind this managed to keep this scheme under the rug for ~50 years, there's no telling how deep this thing goes.
Rumors of powerful people involved with human trafficking and pedophile networks have circulated in Europe for decades as well.
My guess is that Epstein wasn't unique, just the one that got caught. Again: tip of the iceberg.
It ends with the obscenely racist image of the Obamas as monkeys
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116021857490657707
Reactions to it on Insta -
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUZ-1ONDpE8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUaHNyfDkDs/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Obvious racist is obvious.
As I've been saying before, I don't think the problem is Trump, just like the problem isn't the racists. It's the people who allow the racists and Trump to reach power that is the problem.
Society will always have fringe people who become broken and hurt society. And it's the job of society to make sure that these fringe people do not reach power and influence because it can skew society towards a place which doesn't really reflect the empathic nature of regular people, and instead skew them towards their own fringe ideas.
Humans, as they grow up, constantly have an internal battle between these fringe ideas and the more sane values which makes them a functional part of the collective of society. But if society have been pushing the skewed ideals into cultural norms, then it will enforce these skewed ideas within people maturing.
The job of society is to make sure this doesn't happen. And this is why the US is an immature toddler as a whole. It was always founded on immature ideals that it never grew out of.
While other societies mature, the intelligent people will take note of it and learn from other's mistakes or success. Steal ideas to create a better society without having to go through blood first.
The US has never been good at this because it was founded by a fundamental rejection of the rest of the world. A place to go to if you were sick of were you were.
But this has now come back to bite the US in the ass. While other more matured nations in the world found stability, the US just rejected their ideas and hugged the US flag like a scared children hugging its parent.
So, don't blame Trump for being a racist, disgusting excrement of US politics and business, he's just the symptom of a culture that hasn't matured enough to make necessary changes to its fundamental ideas about how society should function.
But you cannot build society in a mall, bazaar or market place. People have nowhere to live in there, there's no actual functions for living standards. Everyone tries to fit their lives in between the stores and commerce, but the ones who take up the most space are the ones who are good at selling and trading. Those who are businessmen. They get all the space they need, they get to roam that landscape.
The US is a mall and Trump is the guy swirling the sign that screams of good deals, while the store owners try to hide the working staff who cries in the break room.
That is the US condition.
I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not quite prepared to relieve the autocrat (and his enablers) of accountability. The damage happening in the US does not happen without Trump.
Leadership matters, and whether that leadership seeks to unite or divide, and whether that leadership puts his own self-serving needs or those of the country first.
He's an accelerationist of the fundamental problems with the US. In that sense there's something good that might come out of all of this, because instead of a slow death of the US, it's a rapid one.
I'm not saying he's not responsible, I'm saying that there are far more like him, or close to his values who needs to be purged from politics.
The US, as it exists today, need to die so that it can be reborn. Since the US has an evangelical view of its own importance and excellence, that delusion of excellence and importance must crumble so that things can be rebuilt on its ruins.
A fundamental breakdown of the constitution might lead to a necessary update to the constitution. A breakdown in how justice and law functions, might lead to an update to how law and justice functions. A breakdown in US values, might lead to an update in US values.
Why do we want things to return to the slow death of the US? When Trump is purged from politics by becoming a dark stain on US history in the history books, the important part is to also purge the rest of his type of power.
The US needs a revolution, or it will become a semi-third world nation just like Russia. A place of oligarchs and poor people, being pillaged and sent to war by those oligarchs; never able to stand up without being sent to prison. That revolution doesn't need to be a bloody uprising, it just needs people pushing the filth and rot out of the halls of power, and replacing it with actual representatives of the people, able to reshape the national politics into a new era, free from the delusions of the past.
The inability to change for the better is what is destroying the US and this is not Trump's fault, but the essential nature of US culture.
Trump is just just the evangelical mascot of all of this, performing the rotten values that the US population have been too apathetic to purge from society.
As I said:
Quoting Christoffer
Thank you for the insightful (though dark) take on things.
Trump shares a racist video that depicts the Obamas as primates in a jungle
[sup]— Bill Barrow, Josh Boak · AP · Feb 6, 2026[/sup]
Trump shares racist video depicting Obamas as apes
[sup]— Colleen Jenkins, Daniel Wallis · Reuters · Feb 6, 2026[/sup]
On the same day, Trump posted a video that outlined how the post-civil-war Republicans advanced the rights of African Americans and the Democrats were the racists.
It completely ignores the fact that the ideologies of the parties flipped during the 20th century.
In the 1860s-1870s – the Republicans were the progressives, and the Democrats the conservative party
By the time of FDR – the Democrats were the progressives, and the Republicans the conservative party
As if to correct that mistake, Trump posted the Obamas as monkeys, just to make it plain where they now stand
Any support for Trump now is an explicit declaration that you are a racist
It is, at least, verification that Trump is racist.
Trump has survived so many revelations of his character that he figures himself to be invulnerable.
This instance feels different. Maybe Macbeth is calling for his own destruction through complaining about the boredom with his charmed life.
Yep, you seem to hit the nerve. :up:
Of course it was first the war against Georgia, the Russian army hadn't been yet reformed, but it managed because the Georgians were even more unprepared to fight the Russian 58th army. That the US didn't respond, but let Georgia on it's own just like Europe did basically emboldened Putin (who actually then was prime minister and Medvedev the President). There had been these interventions earlier in the disguise of "Russian peacekeepers" (even South Ossetia had them to defend the Pro-Kremlin insurgents), but this was the first conventional war with a neighbor state. After the war the West tried several times to "reset" the ties. This was basically what every US President has done since Clinton.
So you can call it sleeping on the wheel, but in reality it's simply hoping that Putin and Russia would be something that the US hoped it to be.
I'm sure many of you are aware that there have been testimonies about Epstein and the elite that frequented his company that are so grotesque they defy belief. These testimonies go well beyond the abuse of adolescents and young women.
Given the amount and consistency of testimonies that have been given over time, I've always considered the possibility that what was suggested could be real, yet at the same time what was being described was so outlandish and repulsive that it was simply hard to believe.
The recent revelations contain various examples of coded language being used to disguise what people speculate are conversations about extreme child abuse. One of the more well-known examples are abnormal conversations about 'cheese pizza', which is commonly understood to be a reference to sexually explicit material containing minors (as I'm sure you understand if you take the first letters of each word).
Out of sensitivity for this platform and its members, I won't go into any details.
What I'm curious about is whether recent events have changed your opinion about the credibility of these claims.
“A federal grand jury returned an indictment earlier this week charging a 33-year-old man with threatening to kill the Vice President of the United States during his visit to the Northwest Ohio region in January.”
“While investigating the alleged threats, federal agents discovered multiple files of child sexual abuse materials in the defendant’s possession.”
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ohio-man-charged-threatening-kill-vice-president-united-states
You're out of the loop.
No-one - and I mean no-one - has put more targets on the backs of people than Donald Trump.
And his best friend was a pedophile.
I think that's one way of dealing with a scandal: make it so absolutely bizarre and outlandish and give the room to the most eccentric conspiracies, you make it simply too crackpot for people to hold interest. Just remember what happened to the 9/11 truthers.
Well, Trump was amazed to find out that Lincoln was a Republican. Who knew?
The MAGA-cult has nothing to do with conservatism or the values of the Republican party. It is a revolutionary movement.
The bunker view is that none of the reactions to the Administration are about what they do or do not do. There is no loop.
:100:
:up: :up:
Trump’s FBI Sends Ominous Note to Election Officials About Midterms
[sup]— Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling · The New Republic · Feb 6, 2026[/sup]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/mattberg33/status/2019560910625632442[/tweet]
Some of the things I've heard can be described as "crackpot theories", but surely there's enough evidence to take the accusations of extreme child abuse seriously, at least? Or do you not think so?
To add to the Epstein conspiracy theories, here's a draft statement announcing Epstein's death dated a day before he died.
ICE surveillance concerns shift Democrats’ demands for body cameras
They do. The article literally says:
Clearly I’m not in the habit of believing everything they say.
Not seeing the issue??
Are you ever going to make claims you can back up? This one would be actionable if you had any public personality.
Quoting Questioner
Hmm... Well, our MAGA-enthusiast @NOS4A2 lives in Canada, so perhaps your right.
Have people noticed just how international this has become?
Keir Starmer is having his share of the scandal with the British ambassador having been a close member of the Epstein-circle. (The ex-Prince is already yesterday's news.)
And Norway is having it's own royal scandal with Epstein!
What a wonderful world elite we have. But it's interesting to notice just how different countries handle the Epstein-case.
Of course, starting with the hero of the Q-anon movement who ought to have got rid of the pedophile rings in power: Donald Trump and his trusty sidekick and favorite of @NOS4A2, Kash Patel. :lol:
(Remember how things were going to be, MAGA?)
Yeah. I mean, some of the most key players seem to have been exonerated in some sense, but there are all these weird names popping up like some you've noted. Obviously, being in the files doesn't, in and of itself, mean there was untoward or criminal behaviour but good god. It almost makes you a right-wing conspiracy theorist.
"Imagine being so hateful that you can't hear joy, just because it is in Spanish."
Yes, well, Philosophy Forum itself wanted to interview one Epstein contact, namely Noam Chomsky. (If I remember correctly, Chomsky declined the PF interview because of his ill health.) Knowing somebody like Chomsky and Hawking gives respectability. Epstein seem's to have been a man that carries out many kinds of favours. A mr fix-it, who fixes also other things than being just a pimp for billionaires.
Chomsky actually was one of the few that defended Epstein after his first sentence. Reason seems to be that Epstein had helped Chomsky:
Of course it's called "networking". What are friends for?
But from the Epstein case comes to mind another criminal who made it Big Circles: Bernie Madoff. Who Madoff scammed were also some royal families and Madoff was also "discreet", a somewhat shadowy figure yet reputable, the one time chairman of NASDAQ. And Madoff of course, simply turned himself in. With a bit of luck, he could have wiggled away like a Bitcoin-conartist.
What is obvious is how small these circles are. I remember that in 2016 VICE News, which btw. made outstanding coverage of the start of the Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014, simply said that the Epstein-scandal wouldn't go anywhere, because the Clinton and Trump, hence both ruling parties, were embroiled in this issue.
Now as both are deep in this stuff, one perhaps alot deeper than the other, it's hilarious to see how the partisan commentators simply aren't able to face how both parties have sex-offender presidents.
Is this relying on the pre-Epstein stuff for Trump?
Well Clinton was a womanizer, and Trump, hmm, when did he meet Epstein for the first time?
Remember when Trump walked in with Paula Jones and other women claiming that they were sexually harassed by Clinton? I mean these two sexual predators... But I guess for Trump it seemed a "smart" move to get the MAGA-cult all enthusiastic about taking down pedophile rings and attack sexual predators like Clinton.
That’s why Mandelson was made ambassador in January 2025, so he could smooth talk a better tariff deal for the U.K., it worked. The trouble is it nearly brought down the U.K. Prime Minister yesterday morning.
And Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was also forwarding market sensitive information to Epstein. While he was a UK trade envoy. There will be a lot more to come out, as he made lots of shady friends who wanted to touch royalty.
So let's take as an example how Norway is looking at the Epstein connection of the resigned ambassador, just to give an example of how democracies act on these issues:
So Epstein left the children of this diplomat couple 10 million dollars and them being in contact with Epstein resulted in a prompt resignation and a police investigation. Would this have happened if Juul and Rød-Larsen were Americans and Republicans?
For the record: he agreed and was about to do it, but had a stroke before he was able to.
Also worth noting that to anyone who knows anything about Chomsky, his relationship with Epstein is a nothingburger. The only people trying to make something out of it are people with axes to grind. Show me he was involved in the trafficking in any way and I’ll certainly change my mind— But won’t hold my breath.
The bridge was financed by Canada, used both US and Canadian steel, and is publicly owned by the governments of Canada and Michigan, but now Trump wants to hold it hostage in one of his extortion schemes. This lying sack of corruption is seriously bent.
(or maybe just desperate – re: Epstein files)
Here’s what he posted on his social media yesterday –
[i]As everyone knows, the Country of Canada has treated the United States very unfairly for decades. Now, things are turning around for the U.S.A., and FAST! But imagine, Canada is building a massive bridge between Ontario and Michigan. They own both the Canada and the United States side and, of course, built it with virtually no U.S. content. President Barack Hussein Obama stupidly gave them a waiver so they could get around the BUY AMERICAN Act, and not use any American products, including our Steel. Now, the Canadian Government expects me, as President of the United States, to PERMIT them to just “take advantage of America!” What does the United States of America get — Absolutely NOTHING! Ontario won't even put U.S. spirits, beverages, and other alcoholic products, on their shelves, they are absolutely prohibited from doing so and now, on top of everything else, Prime Minister Carney wants to make a deal with China — which will eat Canada alive. We’ll just get the leftovers! I don't think so. The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup. The Tariffs Canada charges us for our Dairy products have, for many years, been unacceptable, putting our Farmers at great financial risk. I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve. We will start negotiations, IMMEDIATELY. With all that we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset. The revenues generated because of the U.S. Market will be astronomical. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP[/i]
https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-chief-trump-told-goodness-stopping-epstein-2006/story?id=130010254
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01249718.pdf
Lol, using what Trump says to exonerate him. Don't you know everything he says is a lie?
It's Carney. I'm not sure what you're talking about, or why you are mentioning Carney, (who became the Canadian PM in 2025), in this context. What's he got to do with Epstein?
I was interested in how you lot would accept this information in order to maintain your story. Will you recall this information when your disk jockey starts blogging about Trump, or will you bury it deep in your psyche?
Really? You lot?
Quoting NOS4A2
It's not my story. It is the story of a 1000 abused, raped and exploited girls.
Even though Trump thinks it is just about him.
Quoting NOS4A2
What? Trump's lies?
Quoting NOS4A2
You're misguided, judging me instead of Trump.
But anyway, what is your response to Trump's rant about the bridge?
Do you think he is just angling to get the bridge named after him?
Do you understand that after years of US inaction, Canada stepped in and solved an American infrastructure failure?
Do you agree that a US president cannot seize a foreign-owned bridge on a whim? Or suddenly demand half of its ownership?
What do you think of Trump’s lies on this one?
His claim of “no US content” is a flat-out lie. The bridge used US steel, US labour, US contractors and hundreds of US suppliers.
Obama did not secretly waive anything for Canada. Trump did in 2019 – within existing trade agreements.
When Trump says the “US gets nothing” – they get a modernized trade corridor, and thousands of Michigan jobs, at zero construction cost.
And the Chinese government has no control over hockey (it’s just called hockey – not “ice” hockey) or the Stanley Cup.
Who is the person Carney’s wife is talking to in these photos back in 2013?
https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/search/set%3a2798828
Lol, the right is pretty desperate.
I am confident that Carney has nothing to explain.
That’s right. The former Governor of the Bank of England and now Prime Minister of Canada photographed with child-sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, just hanging out at music festival in 2013. No big deal.
By all accounts, they were not "hanging out." They barely knew one another. In the Epstein files, there is no direct communication between Epstein and Carney. What you're presenting here is not even a good try. So transparently desperate to take the heat off where it should be.
You do understand that Trump and his administration is engaged in an active cover-up of the largest sex-trafficking scandal and influence pedaling scandal in US history?
I don’t think Carney is guilty of anything. Epstein and Ghislaine had their hands in all elite circles, world wide. Of course the pictures prove nothing. But as you and the media have proven, none of that matters. Pictures of Trump and Epstein are often the only one’s shown in news articles, and especially in this thread. But so far it appears Trump is the only one who called the police, and one of the first.
You're completely ignoring Trump's actions. You're completely ignoring the cover-up. You're completely ignoring a vast body of information that shows Trump is a scumbag.
Like I said, I'm very interested in how this is spun. If you read the ABC article, it appears they are insinuating Trump is a liar for saying he didn't know about Epstein's abuse. It won't be long before they'll start condemning Trump as a rat and a bad friend.
Maybe he is?
Anyway, about that bridge ... still waiting on your response to that.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/TheDemocrats/status/2021236742460756143?s=20[/tweet]
I consider it the pro-truth mind.
Raskin had access to the unredacted files.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUlCU-Uig_2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Again you missed my point. For Epstein it was splendid to have connections with intellectuals and academicians. Chomsky obviously thought that the Mr Epstein was a decent man.
Yep, you are here to defend Trump!
So @NOS4A2, are you as excited about Kash Patel as you were when he was made FBI director?
It seems odd to want the CIC to be a pedophile Questioner.
But I do like to see Trump get irritated by the persistence of those who turned the story into something much bigger than it is.
Is that back when you said the FBI was going to collapse under his leadership? I’ll give you my answer in two more years.
There is a photo of some children being trafficked in a toy cart. So it might be damning evidence after all.
That's weird, because according to this from 2019:
Although, from your own article:
So who the hell knows.
His FBI scrubbed the files and his DOJ inappropriately redacted the files in order to protect rich and powerful men from accountability
What is the punishment for such crimes? What does the law say about such acts?
Well, the Supreme Court went and gave him immunity.
Did I read that Clarence Thomas is in the files?
The corruption is so blatant
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUmrG9DDsup/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
I love this line. It just demonstrates Trump's MO, of saying whatever he thinks might get people riled up. If he was a little bit more in tune with what Canadians actually worry about, he might have said that China would close all Tim Hortons. Then he could even claim that he would step in, and interfere for Canada, preventing them from closing Timmy's, so long as he could rebrand the chain as "Don Trumps". Then Canadians would all be buying their coffees from Donny's.
The dislike that Canadians have for Trump is quite deep. He came into Toronto with a grand scheme for Trump Toronto, along with big Russian financing. He paid himself shit loads of Russian money, went bankrupt, and left the locals with a whole lot of unpaid bills. How anyone could "lose money" on a real estate deal in Toronto at that time, is unimaginable.
Dishonest huckster
Copied from a post this morning made by the Canadian CBC -
So apparently the President of the United States needed a civics refresher this morning.
After Donald Trump publicly threatened to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, Prime Minister Mark Carney had to personally explain some very basic facts to him:
• Canada paid 100% of the construction costs (roughly $4 billion)
• The bridge is jointly owned by Canada and the state of Michigan
• It was built with union labour and steel from both countries
• It supports over 12,000 jobs, including nearly 9,000 American workers
• It will save commercial trucks hundreds of thousands of hours every year, easing congestion and strengthening trade
And yet Trump is still floating the idea that the U.S. should “own at least half” the bridge, delay its opening, or demand toll revenue Canada is using to recover the costs it alone paid.
This isn’t a misunderstanding.
It’s pressure.
Infrastructure as leverage.
Trade as coercion.
Economic threats dressed up as “fairness.”
Even Republican officials in Michigan are warning that blocking the bridge would hurt U.S. workers and hand a massive win to the billionaire owners of the aging Ambassador Bridge, who have spent years trying to kill this project to protect their monopoly…
So let’s talk about the bigger questions:
What does Canadian sovereignty mean if our infrastructure can be threatened with a signature?
How should Canada respond when economic bullying replaces diplomacy?
Who benefits when public infrastructure is delayed or sabotaged?
https://www.instagram.com/p/DUmaGHbEz0J/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Their sentiments are captured in a song recently released by Jack Nelson -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n65LKnbA3Y0&list=RDn65LKnbA3Y0&start_radio=1
Here's the lyrics -
Red Hat
[Verse 1]
It hung by the door on a rusty old nail,
A symbol of pride in a small-town tale.
I wore it through fields, through rallies and rain,
But now it just carries a shadow of shame.
[Chorus]
So I'm burning my red hat, watching it glow,
The fire eats the lies I didn't want to know.
I can't stand with a man who divides and deceives,
Burning my red hat, I'm setting myself free.
[Verse 2]
He said he'd fight for the working man’s hand,
But his words turned to dust, just smoke in the sand.
Turns out his promises were built on the backs,
Of fear and of hate, and I'm done with all that.
[Prechorus]
I can’t unsee the truth I’ve found,
No more blind faith, no sticking around.
[Chorus]
So I'm burning my red hat, watching it glow,
The fire eats the lies I didn't want to know.
I can't stand with a man who protects the obscene,
Burning my red hat, and all that it means.
[Bridge]
Ashes rise like a prayer in the night,
For the ones he’s wronged, for what’s still right.
I’ll stand for justice, not for his show,
The flame’s my witness, now the world will know.
Sometimes you just don’t want anyone to know you’re an informant. Do you suspect something nefarious?
Then the sheriff of Palm Beach must have lied to the FBI, which is a crime. Anything to keep the dream alive, I guess.
I suspect that we can never trust anything Trump or his lawyers say about the matter.
Quoting NOS4A2
Well it's a little peculiar that the sheriff in charge of the investigation didn't include this in any contemporaneous notes during the investigation, or call Trump in to be interviewed about what exactly he knows. How often does someone call the police to tell them that they know that someone is raping children, and then it's just left at that?
The cops were already looking into Epstein, when the alleged phone call was made. Someone must have tipped Trump off and he called the Sheriff and tried to make out that it was he who was informing the Sheriff’s office that Epstein was a pedo’.
While prior to that Epstein was frequenting Mara Lago, presumably supplying girls (adult girls) for his party’s.
Yeah, that's why it's weird. Someone calls claiming to have knowledge that would help the investigation, and then it's never followed up and never mentioned until 13 years later.
Also if Trump thinks Maxwell is "evil" then why allow her to move to a minimum security prison against standard protocol, and why refuse to rule out a pardon? Does he genuinely think that the evidence that led to her conviction does not prove her to be as "evil" as he thinks/knows she is?
One would think a rational person would be relieved.
“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
? Mark Twain
I think the FBI has already collapsed to something similar as ICE... but let's look at the things later, when history of this era is written.
Frankl asked how it might be possible to resurrect and sustain concepts like a noble meaning in life, which had been so wantonly demolished by a torrent of lies.
I could see it. It’s a small town of less than ten thousand and Trump is the most prominent figure there. Trump probably knows the guy.
He's dished out threats before. Almost made it standard procedure.
Chokehold
[sup]— Nora Benavidez et al · Free Press · Dec 2025[/sup]
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Feb 11, 2026
Doubtful. Some have, many haven’t. He’s a lame duck, and old. Most can’t wait for him to just go away.
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Feb 11, 2026
Totally made up.
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Feb 11, 2026
No one— anywhere — thought this was impossible.
Quoting Donald J. Trump · Feb 11, 2026
Like who? Palau?
What an imbecile.
On the same day, he posted this -
Canada has taken advantage of the United States on Trade for many years. They are among the worst in the World to deal with, especially as it relates to our Northern Border. TARIFFS make a WIN for us, EASY. Republicans must keep it that way! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Certainly, everyone knows he is just a deluded windbag.
In any case, Congress voted to end his Canada tariff scam
(Bondi made a stupid spectacle of herself and proved she is now Trump's Maxwell)
Trump posted today -
AG Pam Bondi, under intense fire from the Trump Deranged Radical Left Lunatics, was fantastic at yesterday’s Hearing on the never ending saga of Jeffrey Epstein, where the one thing that has been proven conclusively, much to their chagrin, was that President Donald J. Trump has been 100% exonerated of their ridiculous Russia, Russia, Russia type charges. Actually, it is the SLIMEBALL Democrats, many of them big Donors and Politicians, that have been proven GUILTY! “Republican” Loser, Sanctimonious RINO Congressman, Thomas Massie, made a total fool of himself yesterday, fighting aimlessly against a hopeless agenda of Hate and Stupidity, as most clearly stated by his crashing Job Approval Numbers in the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, where a Military Hero Opponent, Ed Gallrein, is crushing him in the Polls. He is now in “Wacky” Liz Cheney territory! Nobody cared about Epstein when he was alive, they only cared about him when they thought he could create Political Harm to a very popular President who has brought our Country back from the brink of extinction, and very quickly, at that! In fact, this attempt by the Democrats to take away attention from tremendous Republican SUCCESS is backfiring badly. Maybe they should focus on their quest to Open our Borders to the World’s Greatest Criminals, have Transgender for Everybody or, get Men, no matter their size or strength, to play in Women’s Sports. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
More like total manipulative bullshit - If he'd been honest, it would be true but wholly irrelevant and stupid as it applied to a single month. Representing almost nothing of significance.
Otherwise, yep, 100% on point.
Yet another appalling demonstration of Trump's ignorance and his total disregard of science and scientists. This one with planetary implications.
He's also allowed "forever chemicals" in pesticides to make the chemical companies rich while making the people sick.
One of the chemicals is isocycloseram which is linked to reduced testicle size, lower sperm count, and liver toxicity
71% of Americans feel that things in the US are out of control
61% feel the direction of the US is off on the wrong track
58% are dissatisfied with how democracy is working in the US
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_z9wtNZI.pdf
Yes— truly gross. This time around going full blown climate denial, and then some. Some say ICE is the worst part of this administration— I think the environmental policies will ruin many more lives, and may just be the death knell for the species as we know it.
Cue the know nothing apologists who ensure us it’s all an exaggeration and we’ll be just fine.
From here:
And voter fraud is exceedingly rare:
So the law would do overwhelmingly more harm than good.
How do you know they are Americans if they cannot prove their citizenship?
As of January 2024, more than 7.2 million migrants had illegally crossed into the U.S. over the Southwest border during U.S. President Joe Biden's administration — a number higher than the individual populations of 36 states.
I don't know, I'm not the people who did the study.
But I'm curious, how does one get the identification to prove that one is an American citizen without already having proof that one is an American citizen?
Quoting NOS4A2
Was this factoid going anywhere?
Birth certificate, social security number, passport.
Do you require ID to vote?
And millions don't have them: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/11/nx-s1-4991903/voter-registration-proof-of-citizenship-requirement
So my question is: how does one get them without already having one of them?
Quoting NOS4A2
We do as of 2023. That meant that almost 2,000,000 people couldn't vote in the 2024 general election.
You city gives you a birth certificate when born. You get a certificate of citizenship when you become a citizen legally. Is that not how it works in your country?
I thought you were forced to vote or get a fine.
That's Australia, not the UK.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm sure my parents were given my birth certificate when I was born. I don't have it. But that doesn't answer the question. Millions of Americans don't have their birth certificate, a passport, or any other relevant ID. So how do they then get one?
So you are assuming, without evidence, that these people are American. Tough titty. If one cannot provide a drivers licence, he cannot legally drive. If he cannot provide a passport, he cannot fly.
It’s the same as in your country, indeed any civilized country. In my state you can go to vital statistics to prove your birth and they can get you a birth certificate if you have lost one. You can use other IDs to get other IDs, and so on.
Do you think illegals should vote in elections?
:lol:
I'm trusting that the people who came up with these numbers know what they're talking about. Whereas you seem to be assuming, without evidence, that anyone without ID isn't American?
Quoting NOS4A2
The right to vote is a bit more important than the right to drive and the right to travel abroad.
Quoting NOS4A2
Which is fine if it's quick, easy, and free, but a lot of people do not have the time or the money, especially if they can't drive because they don't have a driving license. I think you're in denial about the reality of how difficult many people's lives are.
Quoting NOS4A2
No, and they almost never do. Whereas millions of legal citizens will be disenfranchised by ID requirements. The law does far more harm than good.
I think it’s condescending that you’re treating people as if they cannot do the basic requirements of getting ID. In fact there are plenty of supports to help one to do so. Do you believe they were born in the woods or something?
How do you know they almost never do if they cannot prove who they are?
And yet millions don't have ID. That's the reality.
Quoting NOS4A2
You're asking me to prove a negative. The burden is on the government to prove that someone is doing something illegally, and even the Heritage Foundation could only find ~1,600 cases over 40 years.
But if they wanted to, they could get one. That’s the reality.
Sorry, even the heritage foundation doesn’t know how many illegals have voted in elections. There is no way to know either way if no one has to prove their citizenship.
So there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's not as easy as you're pretending it is. As an example from here:
“Widespread”. That word just seems to always find itself in front of “voter fraud” whenever an apologist speaks of it. Is plain old non-widespread voter fraud ok in your books?
It doesn’t follow from here that they should be allowed to drive, fly, or vote in what ought to be secure elections.
Disenfranchising millions of eligible voters to prevent 1,600 ineligible votes over 40 years does more harm than good. If there were millions of fraudulent votes per election then ID laws would make more sense, but when there's barely any? It's absurd. It's like burning your house down to kill some spiders.
Quoting NOS4A2
They absolutely should be allowed to vote.
All I'm hearing from you is "fuck poor people".
So every country that requires ID to vote is disenfranchising millions of people. But I hear no one making such an argument against other countries, like Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, New Zealand, Mexico, Argentina, UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands.
That no fraud is found is no argument that it never occurs. That’s a complete fallacy. The point of fraud is that it is not found. That’s the point of all criminal activity. And the fact that no “widespread” fraud occurs is not an argument that it does not exist. The point is to prevent fraud, not to prove past fraud.
A driver's license will not be enough. Millions of women will have to provide a passport or a birth certificate. Many will not be able to. it's clearcut voter suppression.
In Canada, all we need is a driver's license
:rofl: In the running for one of the stupidest things I’ve heard on this forum.
“There’s no evidence that the tooth fairy exists, but that’s not an argument that she doesn’t exist.”
And so why then do we think voter fraud exists? Well, Daddy Trump said so.
And he’s right: .0000845% fraud in Arizona over 25 years. About the percentage nationally — not once close to being significant, let alone altering an election— anywhere, ever. But yes, it exists. Easier to round down to 0, but it exists.
So don’t say it doesn’t exist; that’s a fallacy. Believing in something when there’s no evidence—definitely not a fallacy. :up: Welcome to the MAGA cult.
Well, we Americans elected him…
So the babies are going to hang on to their birth certificates so that they'll be able to vote when they hit the legal age. Or maybe your mommy might do it for you? Life is good isn't it?
Quoting Mikie
Where did February 14th go?
What?
It’s impossible for significant voter fraud to happen in the U.K. without it becoming known to the electoral commission. There are sufficient checks and safe guards in place to verify every single vote.
Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer Kathy Ruemmler to resign after emails show close ties to Jeffrey Epstein
[sup]— Ken Sweet · AP · Feb 13, 2026[/sup]
Goldman Sachs’ top lawyer Kathy Ruemmler to resign after emails show close ties to Jeffrey Epstein
[sup]— AP · Feb 13, 2026 · 36s[/sup]
Trump would make America’s inflation crisis worse, 16 Nobel economists warn
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/business/nobel-economists-trump-inflation
Now:
Inflation cooled in January, dropping to lowest level in 9 months
https://abcnews.com/amp/Business/inflation-expected-cooled-january/story?id=130059514
One of Obama’s top lawyers. It’s almost crazy they wanted this stuff out, then it keeps backfiring in their faces. So funny.
The crazy Republican blonde chick wanted the files published. She quit Congress over it, didn't she?
Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years
[sup]— Dominick Mastrangelo · The Hill · Feb 11, 2026[/sup]
That's an extremely odd response to what he's saying.
Verified citizens should be able to vote. That's just an administrative no brainer. It has nothing to do with attitudes towards poor people. Are you saying that anyone, anywhere, without providing that they're actually legally able to vote, should be able to vote? I just want to get clear before making any further comments.
I think that every citizen ought be allowed to vote, and that the government ought not introduce any economic or bureaucratic hurdles that can effectively disenfranchise the poor (or anyone else). If they cannot make it free and easy for every citizen to get ID then it should be the government's burden to prove that a voter isn't a citizen and not a citizen's burden to prove that they are.
Yeah, got you; thanks for that. I understand the impetus.
I think that's utterly absurd and probably a cause for concern if you're ever in position to run any large number of people.
I think this would work very well, and something similar is probably working very well already. Illegals wouldn't even try to vote because there would be a possibility of getting caught and deported. And, they would really get very little if anything, in return for casting a vote. Clearly they would not be so inclined.
The idea that there is any significant number of illegals voting is simply ridiculous. I mean, voter turn out is only around 60% of eligible people. They can't even get the eligible motivated! It's crazy to think that there's a bunch of ineligibles just champing at the bit, to cast a vote for nothing. Voting will not make them become legal or anything like that.
Obviously, the need is to go the other way, make it easier for people to vote, not more difficult.
A stupid issue for gullible people.
Ok. That's not relevant to this issue, unless it is for you. Let's assume all the current speculation comes to fruition, and there's multiple legitimate cases about large numbers of ineligible voters. Let's just say that's true. Cool. I wont be mentioning it again.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So what?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Wait; what? A vote for ...nothing? I cannot understand what you might mean. There are plenty of reasons for illegals to vote, if they're able.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It isn't difficult. That's the entire point. It isn't difficult, and most countries have no issues with these requirements. We do where I live. Want to know something? It was literally never spoken about, complained about or mentioned as anything other than a good for election security until BLM started getting international coverage. It's coattails.
As far as I am concerned, saying its fine for anyone to vote in federal elections without oversight or confirmation of eligibility is essentially ending secure elections. And, that is what it is by definition. So, it's not all that interesting to me whether people are doing it. It is that it shouldn't be allowed by the system.
On the other hand, what I actually have a problem with is people complaining about not being able to vote (when they probably wouldn't anyway if there wasn't social cache in complaining), due to regulations that apply to everyone. Everyone. It is fair. I think something I agree with NOS4a2 on is that the trust in the "system" as somehow uncorrupt, while discussing support for avenues for corrupt activity is bizarre.
I think probably that's an overstatement, but it definitely seems unfounded and mostly the arena for the gullible, yes. Luckily, for the argument supporting voter regulation, that's not really relevant.
The point is that allowing people to vote with no check on whether they are eligible is stupid. It is stupid.
And not true. they don't just register anyone who walks in the door.
I think this goes some way to the Republican push to suppress the female vote.
So your conception is that somewhere in the universe, people are allowed to vote without any check on whether they’re eligible to do so — and that this is stupid and wrong. Is this really the assertion?
I have seen evidence which would support that claim. I'm not standing heavily behind it, but the entire argument is that people should be able to vote without being verified. In that context, what are you indicating there? I'm just plum unaware of what that process would be, sans ID or whatever..
Quoting Mikie
You can re-read and answer this yourself. Please do not put words in people's mouths. We're making some headway recently.
Lol — literally repeated what you said.
But yeah, just confirming out of politeness. Didn’t think such a stupid argument existed. Can’t say I’m surprised.
Anyway, my advice to you elsewhere stands: why repeatedly embarrass yourself by wading into topics you know nothing about, like US voting? Stick to fluff. :up:
But I’m guessing you won’t share it. That may be substantive, so best to avoid.
Oh wait — it doesn’t exist. But what about Trump and Rogan? They couldn’t be screaming about these things for nothing…
Well, no. I'm not having a substantive debate here, and again, it isn't about those claims anyway (and, unless you're about to admit bad faith, its clear I don't take them too seriously or support some campaign to 'sort it out' or whatever). It is about the concept of unverified voting - which responses seem to indicate most people aren't happy with anyway, it's just that they aren't occurring. That's fine.
Quoting Mikie
They certainly could.
Quoting Mikie
You "literally" did you. You suggested, in your own words, an uncharitable claim i didn't make and didn't intimate would be my position. Check yourself.
Quoting Mikie
You don't take my advice. I am loathe to take yours. You constantly comment on things you're clearly not up to. Apparently, so do i.
Onward we go Mikie. Smoke a joint and calm down.
Quoting frank
That's cool. Can you vote upon some standard ID doc?
Quoting Questioner
Speak for yourself, Questioner.
Quoting Questioner
To attend protests? LOL.
As usual.
Quoting AmadeusD
It’s exactly about those stupid claims. Both about voter fraud — which is so small it’s practically nonexistent — and about “Quoting AmadeusD — which are both exceedingly stupid. And being used to justify stupid new regulations.
Which is why you should stick to fluff that has no way of being verified. This actually can be.
It’s a stupid solution in search of a problem.
Most states already require ID at the polls. 14 states do not. All states are required to confirm eligibility and citizenship, usually through registration — drivers license or social security number the most common ways; of course address is confirmed too. The ones that don’t require ID at the polling place require an affidavit and/or signature and are checked against voter rolls.
Here in New Hampshire, you used to be able to register same day as Election Day with an affidavit, but now they require an ID or birth certificate as well —even though there were never issues with the old way. Courtesy of a republican legislature and Governor. Both idiotic.
And, of course, voter fraud is virtually nonexistent. It’s about as common as winning the megabucks.
So, again: just making it even more cumbersome to vote for the stupidest of pretexts, all so that the republicans can skim a few thousand votes away from democrats— as the populations most affected are mostly democratic voters.
But whatever— they’re so hated they’ll lose anyway. Still funny to watch the apologists get so easily riled up about absolutely nothing though. See also trans people, boys in girls’ bathrooms/sports, the abortion of babies in the 3rd trimester, mandating EVs, immigration, the canceling of Christmas, the eating of dogs and cats, etc etc. Stupid myths that Fox News conjures out of thin air.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/terrebonne-tatiana-auguste-supreme-court-result-9.7088850
Well, I'm telling you, point blank, it wasn't. You came into it late, and I am telling you that wasn't what was being discussed. Quoting Mikie
There is no end to your inabilities.
Quoting Mikie
Hehe.
You are such a bore. I never said that’s what you were discussing. But since you do exactly what you childishly, and tiresomely, accuse others of doing — namely, completely misreading, I’ll break it down:
Quoting Mikie
So I’ll help you: this entire discussion was about both voter fraud (which Nos and others were discussing) and apparently your own peculiar, and stupid, claim — which I quoted directly and you deliberately left out, about checking on eligibility.
So try reading better. I’ll repeat: that claim that you made, is completely stupid and baseless. Understand?
This entire “debate” — the one you joined in on and know nothing about, as usual — was about voter ID, and is usually justified by claims of voter fraud. So you’re wrong about “it not being about that,” but that doesn’t mean you claimed anything about voter fraud. You’re making another claim. And, as I said before, both are stupid. Yours is just more stupid. And I went through in detail why that’s the case.
So next time, don’t do this usual game of making a baseless claim and then running away after you’re called out by claiming you’re a victim. Your claim about “ allowing people to vote with no check on whether they are eligible” is wrong. Period. Be a man and admit it.
Take care Mikie. Let's hope hte new site has a block function
I am specifically talking about the highest reaches of government covering up for the rape and murder of girls
Translation: another stupid statement by you which you’re not man enough to admit is completely baseless. When confronted, play victim and run away. For the umpteenth time. Boring indeed.
Anyway, for everyone else, this statement:
Quoting AmadeusD
Is completely untrue, as shown — substantively (thus ignored by Risible, whose arena is feelings) — here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1041116
Also laughable that this was claimed:
Quoting AmadeusD
Yet never given. What a shocker. But please go on lecturing people about “substantive” posts and their lack of “understanding,” wondering why so many people can’t stand you.
Projection is usually confession. Risible is actually terrible at reading comprehension. Hence the constant accusing others of it.
[sup]— UN · Feb 16, 2026[/sup]
Epstein files: ‘No one is too wealthy or too powerful to be above the law’; rights experts demand accountability
[sup]— Vibhu Mishra · UN · Feb 17, 2026[/sup]
The White House hasn't dealt with this crap appropriately.
You mean to tell me that the evil empire lacks the common decency to investigate and persecute itself?
What an absolute shocker! :scream:
Epstein Files Reveal Scope of Ghislaine Maxwell’s Role in Clinton Circle
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/us/politics/epstein-clintons-maxwell.html
How can you characterize anything to do with the Epstein files as a gift? That's sick.
I just find it hilarious that it exonerated those who you hated, but exposed those who you support.
You don't get it. My only feeling from it all is great sorrow for the suffering so many girls went through
One way to help is to point to those involved in his orbit, like the Clintons. You could also point out that Epstein was coaching a congresswoman in a House Oversight Committee hearing, Stacey Plaskett, proving his influence on the highest seats of power.
Yes, fine, get them all, but I don't understand getting pleasure from it
I don't understand how one cannot be pleased at this kind of disclosure.
Chlorine Dioxide, Raw Camel Milk: The FDA No Longer Warns Against These and Other Ineffective Autism Treatments
[sup]— Megan O’Matz · ProPublica · Feb 18, 2026[/sup]
Anyone else?
Correction! Oh no, what am I saying?
Maxwell and Epstein never trafficked any girls to anybody else but just to Jeffrey himself. There were no client list (or clients). No underage girls were trafficked to any US Presidents or billionaires etc. That's according to director Kash Patel, on whose judgement, conclusions and glorious leadership of the FBI @NOS4A2 firmly believes in! The awesome new heights in law enforcement that the FBI has reached under the brilliant supervision and leadership of director Kash Patel is something to marvel at. Perhaps only the stellar work that attorney general Pam Bondi has made in the Justice Department comes close to this awesome service for the Republic. :wink:
So why are we talking about Jeffrey Epstein? If someone like Jeffrey E has pictures like this one of the British ambassador to the US, it's totally normal in Washington circles, right?
So why is @NOS4A2 talking about Epstein? President Trump has made it clear that the case should be closed and the nation should move on.
I think her point, and it's a decent one, is that this whole situation sucks. It's not exactly good that there's a load of pedophiles and enablers in the US government. Having them convicted is justice, but it's indicative of the exact problem we shouldn't be happy about. It's more that the whole thing is morbid, rather than its bad they get dealt with, i think.
That said, I can understand how Questioner comes across as someone who might think its sad Clinton got caught, in the sense that its damning to the social divide one lives under the impression of.
First it was "Ep-who?" or something.
Then "No such dossier".
Then "Hoax".
Then "Deep state Biden conspiracy" or something.
Then "Fabrication by Obama".
Then more misdirection.
Then... (add/swap/repeat whatever)
All this from government officials in-the-know, paid employees of the US people, lying to everyone.
I'm thinking more than a slap over the wrist is warranted.
Credibility is gone.
Well, at least the Kremlin and Beijing (and @NOS4A2) are cheering at the chaos, I'm sure.
Was trying to make sense of this, but gave up:
Trump claims leaders call him ‘The President of Europe’ (Aug 26, 2025)
Trump thrashes European leaders in wide-ranging interview: ‘I think they’re weak’ (Dec 9, 2025)
Trump claims Europeans say he could ‘lead them’ (Dec 12, 2025)
A totally unfounded assumption, and I take offense to it
I made no assumption. I described how you can come across. You do come across that way. Not comment on what you actually think. If that's uncomfortable, that's okay. You can behave differently to stop that impression if you want. I'm not complaining about it, anyway.
Please read more clearly before getting your pants in a twist :) Offense is taken, not given.
You were right when you said this. There is no positive side to girls getting raped and murdered.
Quoting AmadeusD
You were wrong when you said this. Turns my stomach to think that anyone might think I have any empathy for any sexual predator. My concern is wholly focused on the victims.
Besides, i don't give a shit about Clinton. Don't know where you got that idea.
Yes, that seemed the basis of what you were saying. I think NOS4A2 is quite quick to create schadenfreude, in his view.
Quoting Questioner
Mate, you are not reading clearly and I have requested that you do read more clearly. Please do so, to avoid these situations. I said nothing about what you think, feel or care about. Point blank, period. I said you come across this way. If you feel I said anything but this, please quote it. I will apologise.
And you do. There is no argument, because this is a subjective opinion of mine wholly divorced from whatever you actually think. You come across this way. If you don't want to, alter your posting style.
Quoting Questioner
I quite literally did not suggest you did. If you do not like how I see your posts, that's not actually for me to do anything about.
But I didn't. I asked you to quit with the judgments. Your incorrect speculations are not appreciated.
Who Is Doug Wilson? Pentagon Defends Pastor Who Led Christian Prayer Service
[sup]— Nick Mordowanec · Military.com · Feb 18, 2026[/sup]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/DOWResponse/status/2023872979554509109[/tweet]
What the fvck are those people doing at the Pentagon?
Isn't their church good enough for their rituals?
Exclusive: US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-plans-online-portal-bypass-content-bans-europe-elsewhere-2026-02-18/
Oh there's a reason for this: last year Europe was still trying to appease Trump. But I think that has now passed.
What actually has happened is that the rupture Mark Carney was talking about in Davos has really happened. (If you haven't heard the quite historic speech, here's the transcript). And Davos was the place that Trump had to back down from the "Greenland is ours, soon"-talk, as threatening sanctions at the NATO members (sending troops to Greenland to plan future military exercises there) opted the EU to bring up the "trade bazooka", known as Anti-Coercion instrument intended actually for China. That spooked the markets, which then spooked Trump to TACO.
Rubio now at the Munich security conference basically reinstated, if more diplomatically, the same line that JD Vance had talked and created panic. This time, no panic, simply understanding that the US is going it's own way and appeasing Trump doesn't work. Yet true to it's decided new US strategy (which I covered on this thread), Rubio then went to help Victor Orban, who needs support in the next elections and to Slovakia, which has also an "anti-EU" administration.
It’s a strong win for the neosocialists and globalism. But even without IEEPA, Trump can quickly recreate much of the current trade policy via other means.
Apparently, Trump has a melt-down during the Governors meeting, flying into an uncontrolled rage, yelling out, "These f*cking courts!"
How dare they be a check on him.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DU_NNV2kZmf/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
:lol: Our president, ladies and gentlemen. Excellent reading comprehension.
Dude just can't help himself. :roll:
[i]Reporter: "Hakeem Jefferies called you a wannabe king."
Trump: "Low IQ."
Reporter: "Why won't you just work with Congress?"
Trump: "I don't have to."[/i]
huh? Then ... that sounds like a wannabe king.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DU_scR7kWwV/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
It is undeniably childish, and also inaccurate. The primary duty of the American government is to protect the rights of the people (including illegal aliens).
A simplistic, obvious, tired, childish move. The psychology of an 8 year old. The democrats staying seated was the absolute best part of the night. A big “fuck you” to his desperate, stupid ploy. If be thinks any of this will help him in the midterms, he’s in for any awakening.
But actually, that's not hte function of government anyway. Its the granting, and enforcing of rights.
A government performs many functions. The primary duty of the US government is to protect the rights of the people, and the people include illegal aliens who are granted many rights under the constitution.
Just this week, a federal judge held that a policy permitting removal of migrants to third countries without prior notice or opportunity to object was unlawful. That decision reinforces the legal principle that individuals must be given an opportunity to challenge removal plans before they are carried out.
MAGA doesn't care about the constitution of course. They only care about what Lord Trump tells them to care about.
I wouldn't stand for a hypocrite, either
If a person can be removed without due process, it can be a citizen, since without due process they do not have the opportunity to prove they are a citizen.
Quoting Questioner
Due process is quite different in both cases. That is why no citizens have been accidentally deported. They have been detained, processed (duly) and released.
Very much glad this dumpster fire isn't being imported to the new world.