The Trump Presidency - Part 2

Ollie Derbyshire said:
Yes which is my point, knowingly acting this way shows they have major issues to me.
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I disagree, you don't have to have mental health issues to act like this, sometimes people are just self-centered evil bastards
 
Rams said:
The mistake Traitor Trump is making is that he’s undermining his military as well as going against their values. Trump’s not lasting 4 years in office.
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A lot of the military voted for him knowing all this
 
RexHamilton said:
I really don’t get this.

Side A - Awful on an issue I’m passionate about

Side B - Every bit as awful on the issue I’m passionate about and demonstrably more awful on a whole host of other issues.

“Well what choice had we except to not vote”.

It’s literally the lesser of 2 evils.

It’s like if Person A came to you and said they were going to break your leg. And person B comes and says they’re going to break both your legs, your arms and your back. But you get to choose which person inflicts the damage.

And your answer is, “feck it, someone else can choose. My leg is going to be broken anyway.”
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This just shows how broken democracy has become not just in America but most places, vote for genocide but just the marginally worse genociders please. This attitude just enables and reinforces the status quo too and never results in any meaningful change.
 
RexHamilton said:
I really don’t get this.

Side A - Awful on an issue I’m passionate about

Side B - Every bit as awful on the issue I’m passionate about and demonstrably more awful on a whole host of other issues.

“Well what choice had we except to not vote”.

It’s literally the lesser of 2 evils.

It’s like if Person A came to you and said they were going to break your leg. And person B comes and says they’re going to break both your legs, your arms and your back. But you get to choose which person inflicts the damage.

And your answer is, “feck it, someone else can choose. My leg is going to be broken anyway.”
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The analogy is more like if both candidates showed up a person's house and took turns breaking their arms and legs, and afterward you berated the person for not voting for candidate A because they're better than candidate B on every issue that isn't "breaking your arms & legs."
 
Fenômeno said:
Threw his weight by sending a tweet? The proof will be in the pudding let's revisit this next year. The US will negotiate a bad deal for Ukraine and Starmer will appear to publicly begrudenly accept but we all know he will just be following bosses orders.
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You say let's revisit it next year and then go on to predict the outcome.
Be consistent please.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
The analogy is more like if both candidates showed up a person's house and took turns breaking their arms and legs, and afterward you berated the person for not voting for candidate A because they're better than candidate B on every issue that isn't "breaking your arms & legs."
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Except it’s not like that is it, it’s more like the same analogy but to your neighbour (at best) who you’ve got on with for several years, rather than you.
 
Buster15 said:
You say let's revisit it next year and then go on to predict the outcome.
Be consistent please.
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I’m consistent as I know the uk will never deviate from the US position so it’s an easy prediction.
 
Superden said:
trump cant tolerate any kind of challenge in a conversation, and he has no rhetorical skills, which is why he resorts to childish name calling and shouting. European politicians need to get their crap together and start poking the big bear. I reckon we are no more than three or four similar incidents away, on the world stage, before he loses his mind completely and tries to do something that even the republicans around him cant stomach. the fact that he mentioned hunter bidens laptop again and again, just shows how petty and pathetically minded he is.
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You’re not wrong. There’s a definite irony in a bloke who’s been portrayed by his acolytes as some sort of macho, red blooded throwback being so unbelievably precious and thin skinned. Although it certainly isn’t surprising. The clues were in the wig, the fake tan and all the makeup.
 
That_Bloke said:
Gaza played no role in Harris' defeat. It became quite the convenient excuse to justify the November debacle and an unending source of schadenfreude for some, though.

That is never going to happen. Aside from geostrategic considerations, the prevalent and widely spread pro-Zionist ideology, the latent as well as institutional racism are too deeply ingrained in the American society, and the Israel lobby too powerful to see a 180° turn in US policy toward Israel, no matter the party in charge.

Hell, even a genocide didn't make them budge one bit. On the contrary, they systematically cracked down, hard, and silenced any form pro-Palestinian support, passed bills to basically criminalize any critic of Israel (eerily similar things happened in Germany in the past 16 months, but you already know that).

And you think that protests are going to change that? Feck both parties, they are two cheeks of the same backside on this topic.
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I think it did, it gave some people the excuse not to vote on 'moral' grounds, whether that made the difference is debatable, probably not but it certainly played a role
 
RoadTrip said:
Except it’s not like that is it, it’s more like the same analogy but to your neighbour (at best) who you’ve got on with for several years, rather than you.
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The problem with the original analogy is that it relies on the premise that the hypothetical person believes the Democratic nominee is better than Trump on all but one issue.

In reality, that person would vote for the Democratic nominee the majority of the time.

The reason Trump won the election is because lots and lots of people though the Democratic nominee was worse on many issues. They thought the Democratic administration was terrible.

So the actual calculus for most voters was very different.
 
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RoadTrip said:
Pandering to Trump’s ego. Yes we are selling our soul but in the grand scheme of things it’s better to take that position with any hope of making all parties unite against Russia, which whether we like it or not is stronger if it includes the US. Do I agree with inviting him? Hell no. Do I really care? Probably not. I don’t think our allies see that as us aligning to the USs views on Ukraine. That much is obvious. Starmer is just trying to tread a fine line.

And no, it doesn’t prove your point. The UK would do all it could to maintain its relations with the UK, but there is a line. A line that’s further away than it should be, but as I said, if it ever came to aligning for our existence between the US and Europe we would choose Europe.
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Starmer's stance is almost certainly not just about the Ukraine situation, some of this is about tariffs, the invite isn't a new thing, it's been in the works for a while, this was just the official part, Trump knew it was coming at some point and it not arriving would have pissed him off, and we know what the likely outcome of that would be
 
Just watched his meeting with Zelensky.


The part where they were arguing was like watching an episode of The Jerry Springer Show or something.

This is what the US has...

And some fecking gobshite with eyeliner
 
What I think might be happening here is that Trump, or the people behind him, have fully accepted that climate change is real and happening.

But, because of their neo-mercantilist, ultra nationalist persuasion, instead of trying to work with the world to reduce and eventually change course, they view everything as a zero sum game and to win, they have to simply capture as much natural resources as possible before things get worse in 10-20 years. Plunging things more toward a dystopia of haves and have nots that they believe they will control as technocrats.

Or maybe I just watched the latest episode of Paradise and I'm thinking too much like a sci wifi writer.
 
Rams said:
Not the top brass
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True but if it ever comes down to the military having to choose between what the top brass tells them to do or what the 'commander-in-chief' tells them to do, I'm not sure what that outcome would be
 
I can't help thinking this thread needs a new name, Presidency just doesn't feel right
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
What I think might be happening here is that Trump, or the people behind him, have fully accepted that climate change is real and happening.

But, because of their neo-mercantilist, ultra nationalist persuasion, instead of trying to work with the world to reduce and eventually change course, they view everything as a zero sum game and to win, they have to simply capture as much natural resources as possible before things get worse in 10-20 years. Plunging things more toward a dystopia of haves and have nots that they believe they will control as technocrats.

Or maybe I just watched the latest episode of Paradise and I'm thinking too much like a sci wifi writer.
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That would be too clever. I think stupidity and short termism is the most likely explanation.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
The problem with the original analogy is that it relies on the premise that the hypothetical person believes the Democratic nominee is better than Trump on all but one issue.

In reality, that person would vote for the Democratic nominee the majority of the time.

The reason Trump won the election is because lots and lots of people though the Democratic nominee was worse on many issues. They thought the Democratic administration was terrible.

So the actual calculus for most voters was very different.
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I don’t think anyone is genuinely debating what the calculus was or wasn’t. If we avoid semantics and just be frank, the issue here is that, in some peoples view, those who materially let the Israel situation change whether they voted at all or who they voted for were foolish/some other derogatory word.

People can and should do what they want with their vote. But that doesn’t make them immune from others having an opinion on what they chose to do. Likewise, those same people are allowed to have an opinion on the opinions of those passing judgement.

In my view I can see both sides of the argument. I would challenge whether this election was one where one should accept the worse outcome by taking a matter of principal. And we slowly are going to see why, in my view, over the next 4 years. Someone else may see it differently. Fine. I respect that. But to some degree, those people need to also accept that this choice is a direct outcome of many like minded people choosing to make this election a matter of principal. They cant have it both ways. And sure, you can blame many things - like, for example, the DNC not giving them a reason to vote. And that’s fair. But doesn’t change the fact they didn’t vote.

It’s complicated to boil down into analogies or compartmentalise these things as independent events, though. They aren’t really.
 
Red in STL said:
Starmer's stance is almost certainly not just about the Ukraine situation, some of this is about tariffs, the invite isn't a new thing, it's been in the works for a while, this was just the official part, Trump knew it was coming at some point and it not arriving would have pissed him off, and we know what the likely outcome of that would be
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Of course. And rightly so. Just because Starmer likely disagrees with many things Trump does, he also has a decades long relationship to respect. Just because Trump might not, doesn’t mean Starmer should willingly let it burn as well. The reality is, a united front on all accounts with the US on side is an overall better outcome. So of course, veering away from that is only a last resort.

The issue though, which no one has yet managed to deal with, is the more you pander the more he can creep towards your “red line” with no resistance.

It’s a lose lose. It’s honestly going to be a shit 4 years.
 
Zehner said:
And by not voting, you voted for somebody who doubles down on the genocide enabling and on top of it supports an imperialistic invasion.

You could have voted for Harris and then went on the streets to demonstrate, contacted your representatives to criticize the Democrats' Israel politics but you chose to do nothing and now there's a president in office who is much worse than the other option, wants to turn Gaza into a luxus resort and generally accepts every geopolitical maneuver by other countries, no matter how despicable it is, as long as he profits from it. I get your line of thinking, I really do, but this can't have been the best option. Not for Palestinians, not for Ukraine, not for the US.
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No, by not voting, people who didn't vote for harris didn't vote. That's it.

The rest would be similar to me saying you voted for the murder of children because you voted for harris. I'm sure you disagree with that conclusion.
 
GueRed said:
Just watched his meeting with Zelensky.


The part where they were arguing was like watching an episode of The Jerry Springer Show or something.

This is what the US has...

And some fecking gobshite with eyeliner
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Trump supposedly said at the end of it thats gonna make great TV
 
It's just amazing how biden/harris voters treat a fecking genocide as if it was just your run of the mill political disagreement.

And quite tragic that someone who refuses to vote for a genocide supporter can't possible have done it because they have their own personal morals, beliefs and red lines. No, it has to be because they want to be pure or stand on a high horse during online discussions.
 
Red in STL said:
I think it did, it gave some people the excuse not to vote on 'moral' grounds, whether that made the difference is debatable, probably not but it certainly played a role
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Why the quotation marks on the word moral?
 
Isn't Trump proving that he can do or say anything, but other than some moaning and lip service, most of the world wouldn't dare to spoil their relationships with US?
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
The problem with the original analogy is that it relies on the premise that the hypothetical person believes the Democratic nominee is better than Trump on all but one issue.

In reality, that person would vote for the Democratic nominee the majority of the time.

The reason Trump won the election is because lots and lots of people though the Democratic nominee was worse on many issues. They thought the Democratic administration was terrible.

So the actual calculus for most voters was very different.
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No. The original analogy was a direct reply to someone who used just Gaza specifically as a reason.
 
afrocentricity said:
Honestly if I hear someone else state 'it's Trump, you have to play the game, compliment and butter him up and pretend to be his deferential buddy......'

Why? What is this shit?
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Playing the bullies game
 
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