| ▲ | thecopy 3 hours ago |
| It all seems so surprisingly unnecessary. Angry geriatric man f*cks the world up for generations to come, then in a short bit he will die, and not have to live through the consequences. |
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| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Trump is the symptom, not the cause. The cause the US people. |
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| ▲ | panda-giddiness 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | No, the cause is structural. Even if one could identify the sources of rot (money in politics, an outdated electoral college, the collapse of our information environment, whatever), Congress would deadlock, the Courts would block any meaningful reform, and the President would be left trimming the blight while the rot festered underneath. | |
| ▲ | kzrdude 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is a very simplified take. Congress has been locking up for the past decades and is now unable to do useful regulation for the people. Much of it is due to how the funding of candidates works and the feedback loop effect it had on the political culture. Trump is a symptom of this failure of political culture too. | | |
| ▲ | smashah 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | ...A political culture the public has voted for by allowing it to continue despite being bound by a constitutional duty to prevent the same disenfranchisement you've described. America will be judged by its own demonic standards. The standard by which they justified their participation in the Holocaust of Gaza ("they voted for it"). |
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| ▲ | atoav 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes and no. Because you can always go one level higher and ask: Why are the US people the cause? And then we will talk about structural issues, to do with social mobility, education, a dysfunctional journalistic landscape, a tribalization of the political landscape and so on.
But of course it doesn't stop there. You can go one up: Why did these underlying causes came to be? The simple answer is that a certain loose conglomerate of polticians, billionaires and CEOs thought it would profit them (it did). You can pick one of the issues mentioned above and go deep on why it is in the bad shape it is today and the answer will always boil down to lobbying and money in politics. This are the much more insightful reasons and you get there just by asking "but why?" two times like a yound child. Totally recommended. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > will always boil down to lobbying and money in politics. And here you take the easy way out. Just blame third parties. You should keep asking why to find the real cause. My personal take, as someone who is European but has lived in the US, Texas metro areas specifically, is that first past the post elections sow division. Choices are limited, political activity is neutered, and extremism builds until it finds an outlet through either of the two possible political choices. Taking over that side entirely. Political systems needs vents for frustration, and the US system does not have that. Which finally leads to the people. The only ones that could cause change needed to reform their representation in the political system is the people. | | |
| ▲ | joe_mamba 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >Political systems needs vents for frustration, and the US system does not have that. Out of curiosity since you made this claim and said you're european, where are the EU vents of frustration that the US lacks? Because I see it differently. Trump IS the frustration vent itself but people refuse to acknowledge this and look for something else to blame as if people shouldn't be allowed to use their vote for a crazy candidate as a vent of frustration, and the frustration vent should be a virtually inexistent token piece. | | |
| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Out of curiosity since you made this claim and said you're european, where are the EU vents of frustration that the US lacks? Proportional representation definitely helps here. You could look at the UK as a good counter-example, where the UKIP (a Brexit supporting party) got like 15% of the votes in the 2015 election, and no seats. Where people see that voting doesn't change anything, they'll look for some other way to effect change. That being said, PR doesn't really appear to be working that well. I (personally) think that a lot of the issues relate to free flows of capital across the world, which leads businesses to be set up in areas of cheap labour, which makes people in developed countries angry and more likely to vote for anyone who'll promise to fix it (regardless of how insane their ideas are). But it's complicated, monocausal explanations are typically deceptive. |
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| ▲ | smashah 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Foreign and Billionaire demonic interest have disenfranchised the people long ago. Luckily the people have a second-amendment constitutional duty to re-secure the free state. It's clear America is no longer a free state. One cannot be free in a panopticon. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It is time to stop blaming third parties. The truth is that congress is able to rein in Trump any second they want. The reason they don't is that they know that they will get primaried and lose their seat for someone more aligned with the people and Trump. | | |
| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > they will get primaried Primaries are kinda insane though. It basically means that a small minority of voters control who actually is allowed to stand for election under a party banner. Like, I understand how it ended up this way, but it's having really bad consequences. That being said, if you could fix gerrymandering, a lot of the issues with primaries go away, as there would be more competition in the actual election which would dis-incentivise proposing extremist candidates in the primary. |
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| ▲ | littlestymaar 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Even if Trump died today, Vance would continue his nefarious job. |
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| ▲ | sschueller 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Exactly, just see the gal of garbage spewed by for example Scott Bessent at the WEF yesterday. The arrogance is outright insulting. | | |
| ▲ | ncruces 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | “The size of Denmark’s investment in US Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant.” So an ally is irrelevant. People wonder why the EU is built the way it is, and behaves the way it does. It's precisely to avoid this. To bind Germany and France together and avoid the big powers treating smaller neighbors like this. I guess that's bad to some people. This is not a trade dispute over something signed last summer. It's a lot bigger than that. | | | |
| ▲ | ImHereToVote 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The U.S. can't really afford the status quo regardless who is in office. | | |
| ▲ | sschueller 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The U.S. needs changes in its constitution if it ever wants to go back to where it was and get the rest of the world to play along again. The fact that the DoJ is not an independent institution unlike in almost every other western country makes it impossible to uphold the law if the white house doesn't want to. The only thing preventing a sitting president from going after his political enemies is a "gentleman's agreement" between administrations in the United States. Stability it key and there isn't any as we can see clearly. |
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| ▲ | graemep 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Vance seems to be very different. For all we know his real views are still these https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/15/jd-vance-donald-tru... | | |
| ▲ | ndsipa_pomu an hour ago | parent [-] | | And yet his allegiance is completely up for sale. He will do whatever he is told to do by the likes of Peter Thiel & co. | | |
| ▲ | graemep an hour ago | parent [-] | | It looks like it at the moment. I wonder whether it would remain the same if he was president. He would need Thiel less, and not need Trump at all. |
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| ▲ | rsynnott 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you really think the threat that “JD Vance might be unhappy with you, and would direct the literally tens of people who like him to vote against you in primaries” would keep the Republicans in congress under control? Trump’s whole thing is his weaponisation of a cult of personality. Vance doesn’t have a personality at all (and I’d assume he was chosen for that reason, Trump not wanting the competition.) He’d be dead in the water from day one. | |
| ▲ | thrance 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Vance has none of whatever Trump used to entrance 50% of Americans. MAGA dies with Trump, although I'm sure something else will come end replace it, if the issues that led to it aren't fixed. | |
| ▲ | pjc50 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I guess we find out how much of this is cult of personality and how much is just the propaganda system. | |
| ▲ | thecopy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Vance doesn't have the cult of personality | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | nosianu 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| You will have to translate this German language article, but this is NOT Trump. It is about the tech billionaires supporting this quest, and why they want it. https://orf.at/stories/3417584/ I doubt Trump would have ever even thought of Greenland on his own. I think was told about it, and the narrative planted in his head deliberately. This focus on "Trump" in Internet comments and media irks me to no end. Trump is not a failure and not the wrong person in the job - he is ideal for those behind him. The money does not like public attention. |
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| ▲ | captn3m0 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We even know which billionaire planted the Greenland idea: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/15/ronald-laude... | | |
| ▲ | austin-cheney 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | This gets me thinking that the US would benefit so much from trading its income tax for an aggressive estate tax. The US would have far greater tax revenue, the standard of living would dramatically increase for the average citizen, and idiots like these two would be powerless. Let influence be reserved for those who have built it. |
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| ▲ | raverbashing 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | But if you repeat the idea as your own so it becomes (Yes the president can't tell Greenland from Iceland, but neither half of those "tech bros" who failed geography at school |
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