You say it like a 35% approval rating is a good thing. It is not.

If you wanted a Russian puppet in the oval office, it would do exactly what Epstein's BFF Donald is doing. There are zero reasons to support anything Putin is doing (read: daily war crimes), however, the destruction from within in the US and EU is executed amazingly well.

It is lowest in history in this point of presidency apart from Nixon, who resigned at this point. That 30-35% is the floor, which won’t budge, likely because the hard core Maga Republicans have nowhere to go in US two-party system - which would be not just a surrender of long-held political beliefs, but a complete social death as well. This does not mean that the core Maga is very happy either, but they hope the movement continues after Trump so they can finally get the full Christian Nationalist Fascism they so desire.

I doubt that is going to happen. Trump is going keep the strings behind the party, fucking everybody hard, until finally he dies or otherwise implodes. What is left of American democracy when that happens is a whole another thing.

Thankfully 45% of people currently identify as independent so his approval among Republicans doesn't have the same impact you'd think it does.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...

Not with 50%+ of the country supporting this administration.

Its the people that are the problem. These policies and politics will outcast Trump because middle Anerica and The South are filled with morons.

If only things were zero sum stick-in-bicycle meme decision making would benefit others

> It is a particularly interesting position when the US is trying to counter China.

The US put countering China way behind on its priority list, below "owning the libs" and settling old scores. I am convinced that if the Iran decapitation had worked like Venezuela, which seems to have been what they expected, then Cuba would have been next.

"The only hope the US had was an alliances with other Western-style nations"

Maybe Trump bets on his great relations with Putin and Kim instead.

Negative sum, not zero sum.

> And then the Europeans suddenly discover that they cannot manufacture enough artillery shells and tanks to out-number the Russians.

Germany (by itself) is apparently out-producing the US artillery shell production.

* https://www.newsweek.com/germany-overtakes-us-in-ammunition-...

Russia's GDP is below that of Italy (and barely above Canada, who is in NATO):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

If the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'. Certainly they need to do more with current geopolitics, but there is no need to crank it to 11.

You are not very informed on the EU's artillery shell production capabilities.

If anything, the major gap is the EU's lack of cheap drone manufacturing, but even that is starting to make progress with help and integration from Ukraine.

Idk, I think the europeans can do better than paying over 500 million dollars to manufacture none [0].

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artiller...

Uhhh, we're not doing so hot there either. https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artiller...

Please. Russia had an economy of the size of Italy.

And I said "had", because this was before Ukraine destroyed most of their oil plants, and refineries, and their navy, and their petrol fleet, and the online stores, and before they killed a big chunk of their male workforce. And before they have an increasing debt with China and NK that they will need to repay somehow.

At this point everybody knows that the Russian economy will not survive after the war is over and that the country most probably will split.

Europe can deal with a ruined post-Ukraine war Russia.

They would just stand some suffering, but for sure 500 millions of motivated people can build more and faster than 100 millions of a Russia tied by deliberate anti-efficiency rules build to please oligarchs. The only question is how much damage could Russia do, before Moscow and St Petersburg are reduced to ashes as retaliation if they dare to try the final solution.

The hybrid war is the real problem. Russia can sponsor still many street "Syrian" terrorist attacks in Sweden, or cause a train wreck here and there, or burn Malibu for basically peanuts. They can do this for years and years.

You are deluded, the EU is an industrial powerhouse compared to Russia, what's missing is just the political will

I wish you were right, but look at Ukraine's desperate requests for Patriot missiles and Switzerland letting the US screw them repeatedly to get F-35 and Patriot.

Sadly not.

Russia went into the war with armed forces that turned out as you say (possibly except the nukes, hard to tell unless they attempt to use one); the war forced them to develop substantial drone and anti-drone capabilities that the EU nations are not yet in a position to counter.

Did not help Armenia for some reason

You seem to ignore the fact that changes take time.

There are entire governments in the EU with workflows built around Microsoft products that have no real 1:1 alternatives. If a governmental procedure stipulates that a ministry uses Windows w/ Office365, it uses Windows w/ Office365, no room for an argument. If anybody pulls a plug here, the consequences will be unimaginable.

It's nice that a single German state has switched to LibreOffice, but the rest of Germany, or the remaining 26 countries might take years, if not decades, to certify and permit someone else's solution.

> But this is also why the EU is aggressively pursuing and building up alternatives

Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from the truth:

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/12/head-of-iea-roasts-euro...

Here are some specific numbers:

https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/many-building-r...

The EU is heavily investing in renewables, but mainly to phase out coal rather than gas, and it's absolutely not electrifying its economy.

You can see this in the EU Emissions Trading System. It covers about 40% of all emissions, but leaves out buildings (dominated by gas) and transportation (dominated by oil). Since electricity is covered, it actually encourages oil and gas over electricity.

Furthermore, member states like Germany are resistant to taxing gas higher than electricity:

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/17/germany-warns-...

Despite the wars in Ukraine and Iran, gas is still encouraged over electricity in many European countries.

China and some other Asian countries have adopted the opposite approach. They aim to replace oil and gas by all possible means, including coal (although it's not the preferred choice).

True, though the prudent move would be to stop investing in the US entirely

If fixing potholes and making the city run better is demagogy, I'd take than any day when the alternative is Cuomo or Adams. It's not like they were high-minded public servants looking at the long term

Done. Now what? NYC is still being run pretty well?

It's crazy how bad media coverage is. All I can find are naked hitjobs by zionist rags and corporate news siding with Amazon over NY delivery subcontractors, that Mamdani is currently seeking to make into actual Amazon employees.

In short: he has balanced the city budget with a 2% tax increase on millionaires, matching New Jersey. He's moving to give every family free childcare. He has frozen rent for rent-controlled housing, and planning the construction of 200,000 more such apartments. He's fixing potholes (that part went viral, for some reason). And more.

Support is up in every demographics, including Jewish New Yorkers, that corpo dems were insisting would be threatened under Mamdani, in a cynical attempt at instrumenting islamophobia to win the election for their do-nothing candidate instead. Crime is down.