(Replying to my own post). Also, it’s gotta be mentally draining to be told by the president they have to win but also always let Russian attacks though.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/defens...
(Replying to my own post). Also, it’s gotta be mentally draining to be told by the president they have to win but also always let Russian attacks though.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/defens...
Presidents come and go and, hopefully, this one will be held accountable.
I'm an agnostic, but when I read about what he does, it makes me devoutly wish that hell exists. He has made countless people's lives hell on earth, and he doesn't care at all. No one is holding him accountable in this life: it's inconvenient for those in power.
It's a systemic issue, not due to one man.
What gets overlooked here is the US IC itself being a probable cause: the habit of "housecleaning" by killing individuals suspected to be possible (even only prospective) leaks of inconvenient information is very real.
The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it: a statistically highly unlikely density of "suicides, accidents & mishaps".
The assumption, those actions were "justified" somehow is entirely baseless: there is no transparency and no effective oversight. What is supposedly being kept secret there might simply be illegal corruption or embarrassing and inconvenient to those in power.
Almost every discussion here on HN about those "deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research" has been about how, when you actually dig into the data, they have been very statistically likely.
Calling things "systemic" is unfortunately often just a way of offloading the problem into the pile of Things We Can't Fix. It removes individual accountability, in an era where we are increasingly able to assess the effect an influential individual actually has - because their dialogue is public and recorded, and the consequences of that can be studied.
I think there are plenty of individual men who are absolutely responsible for things becoming worse, and we do the world no favours by helping them shrug the burden of their actions.
There are long standing systemic issues, and then there's also one man making things dramatically worse in new, stupider ways.
So have many others before him.
The only difference is, is that before him we had "Iraq has weapons for mass destruction! we must attack them, before they attack us, we're in danger!", and now there's "we're going in and we're taking the oil!".
So from "we can do whatever we want if we lie" turned into "we can do whatever we want", not really relevant to all the people killed.
But hey, some americans would say that "It's worth it" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP_VnVlFhXU
Nobody is holding up those other guys as shining paragons of virtue either.
“Other people did it too” is not an excuse for immoral behavior.
I think the parent and I basically agree.
But pretty much every US president did something like that, killed people somewhere, usually half the planet away. No US president is in jail for that. OP above me is just blaming this particular one for something that everyone has done before, and many of them even got reelected again by the same people complaining about.
Trump attacked quite a few countries in his first term, even killed the Iranian general (Soleimani), and you guys reelected him after all that. You guys clearly weren't bothered by that enough to vote for someone else.
If nothing else, Iran has learned that they really need those nukes, because you guys will never leave them at peace otherwise.
Not every nation survives a tyrant by the virtue of patience.
Especially in Russia...
There may eventually be a Nuremberg II for the henchmen but the ship has sailed on bringing the dear leader to justice.
Just as important, the US will need to figure out exactly what strings Putin's managed to attach to Trump - kompromat? threats? bribes? elaborate man management? something else? - or this vulnerability could be exploited again.
It's almost certainly just that Trump is a fundamentally fragile, insecure man. He has proven over and over that he will happily fellate (proverbially speaking) any man who says nice things about him, and at least refrain from assaulting most women who say nice things too.
Putin (and everyone else) knows this.
Idk maybe there is something nefarious but afaik Putin's always been cordial with Trump as well as let him do various investments in Russia. I'm not sure there's much reason for Trump to alienate his friend; if you've ever see Trump's staff meetings you'll know how much cordiality is important to him.
All of the above, plus death threats.
Trump isn't the weakness. The weakness is the almost complete collapse of the checks and balances around the president. If those were in place Trump would have been in prison by the end of 2021 at the very latest.
The DOJ, the military, both houses, the AIPAC wing of the Democrats, and corporate media are all fully captured. So are "independent" organisations like the NRA.
The Supreme Court is mostly captured. The lower levels of the judiciary are still holding out, but have limited enforcement ability without the DOJ.
It's why I don't see the US making the course correction it actually needs - realistically the "best" feasible outcome is that a presidential election is held and a business as usual democrat is elected who will immediately not address any of the problems for whatever reason (part of the system/paid by the same people pick one).
Candidates come and go but the system endures and it is the system that is rotten at every level all the way down to the core.
Then 4-8 years later the GOP candidate wins subservient to the same interests as Trump and the US Gov is back there again.
Not really sure what the outcome is for the US at this point, things will have to get a great deal worse before enough Americans decide this is unacceptable but that state can last years/decades before the dam breaks.
The winning Presidential campaign message would be this: I promise to work to reduce the power of the Presidency via supporting and campaigning for legislation and Constitutional amendments. It is time for Congress to once again be ascendent like it was in the first century of our great Republic.
We need a G. Washington, who refused more power than he was offered, setting precedents and expectations.
No, that is your wishful thinking.
Based on recent years and the power of personalized AI influence campaigns, the winning Presidential campaign message (after 4 years of 'change nothing substantial Democrat' would most likely be 'I need real, full (silently: fascist) power, to finally drain the swamp'.
None. No vulnerability. The population and the RNC just voted for a known Russian asset for some reason.
Our vulnerability is an open internet that includes Russia, leaving our populace completely open to Russian influence campaigns of micro targeted propaganda, recruitment, and incitement.
I like how the “Chinese propaganda” against datacenters was found to be mostly a collection of facts.
While Russian propaganda is more clumsy and emotional, we’ve produced such an unequal society with such low regular education and outright corruption that people fall for it. That says something negative about US, not them.
If we admit our system cant even survive an open internet, it should be dismantled or reformed rather than free exchange closed.
This.
I lived in a communistic country, where BBC/Voice of America/Radio free Europe were banned/jammed, under the pretext of 'your feeble minds will not be able to resist the insidious allure of western burgeois propaganda'.
Seeing the same argumentation from the west's side is disheartening. We are now in the west, but (almost) full circle back where were before.
Education would blunt, but not eliminate the threat of nation-state funded micro targeted influence campaigns. Moreover, it would take years, and we have the problem now.
In terms of data center propaganda and fact. Both are true. China is funding anti data center sentiment for geopolitical power, while at the same time, there are legitimate reasons for people to not like/ or fear AI. The problem is we (the U.S.) have to solve both. We cannot let China have significantly better AI models than we have because that is a real national security threat, while AI also threatens potential mass destruction dangers and an avenue of utter concentration of wealth, etc
I’m not buying the “AI security threat”, and I don’t really care if the best models are open source - and Chinese. If everyone can buy enough hardware to run the best models, what’s the threat? The same tired arguments as banning books on encryption or chemistry?
I see the crazed AI investment as worthless financial gambling, a house of cards that will eventually crumble, and the argument that “we need to fund AI” really is “your tax dollars should bail out our financial mistake, because security”.
It’s nonsense all the way down. Covid showed we didn’t even manufacture basic drugs in the country anymore, and were openly threatening our biggest/best/longest allies (Canada, Mexico, NATO). AI is so far down the security list as to make it noise, compared to our recent missteps.
I like how the “Chinese propaganda” against datacenters was found to be mostly a collection of facts.
That's not my understanding. Got any credible links that back up this point?
You guys do know that the same thing is said about americans in "the rest of the world"? Remember the "weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" thing?
Propaganda and bribery. Things like the Hungarian funding of CPAC and the NRA holding a July 4 celebration in Russia some years ago.
The weak spot was the conservative prediction to fascism - worship of force and masculinity - which was easily retargeted against other Americans.
I think Trump is just that naturally that stupid and always has been.
Epstein files?
Yeah, January 2021 says no.
This was wasn't after January 2021, and hasn't been during his second term. There are methods to hold presidents accountable, there are institutions to prevent the harm from happening.
These have failed.
You’re kidding right?
> always let Russian attacks though
The article doesn't say anything of the sort. Literally just said to put a halt on OFFENSIVE operations.
If I were to guess I'd say it was an overly ambitious negotiation tactic.
Also, that was a year and a half ago. The current status quo is that Ukraine is producing more drones than Russia can deal with, bombing Russian targets daily and the US-Ukraine relationship is much closer, with Ukraine sharing drone technology and intel with the US.
The US and Russia are allies.
No, despite what the conservatives and Fox News say, we are not
In what sense? Removing the embargo on russian oil? Inviting the gremlin from the kremlin to Alaska (of all places!) and rolling out the red carpet?
Does US know it ? Coz it certainly acts like one for most part of the war
The new US policy under Trump is giving up trying to win the world and instead focusing on internal market and dominance over the American continent. Causing and sustaining friction everywhere is aligned with this policy.
This is the result of a shift of power in the US politics, from the global financial capital of the last decades back to the military and industrial sector.
The new US policy under Trump is to burn everything down while extracting as much wealth for himself and his cronies as possible.
And creating so much chaos afterwards that it becomes impossible to recover any of it
That's more of a side effect if anything
> The new US policy under Trump is giving up trying to win the world and instead focusing on internal market and dominance over the American continent.
Is that why he bombed Iran and single-handedly caused a global energy crisis? A shift of focus to “dominance of the American continent”?
Well yeah, probably -- during this self made crisis oil prices in the US are some of the most well controlled.
Destabilizing everywhere else is a potential step taken toward achieving continental superiority in certain regards.
( not a GOOD step, mind you)
He's just doing his best to make everybody switch to renewables!
Blocking foreign-made solar power inverters must be part of that master plan:
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-423682A1.pdf
That's just deliberate damage to the US, his actions have increased move to energy sovereignty globally and done more for net zero than any president before him.
Unfortunately this slows down adoption of renewables even more, China produces most of world’s renewables and batteries but bootstraps this industry with oil.
> Is that why he bombed Iran and single-handedly caused a global energy crisis?
Yes. Oil price hurts China industrial capacity more than the US economy. Oil companies made a $93 billion profit amid the war [1]. The US is a net oil exporter, while China halved their oil imports [2].
ExxonMobil and Chevron are US-incorporated. TotalEnergies (French) BP (UK), Shell (UK) also have significant US-based ownership (~50%, ~25% and ~25% respectively), including BlackRock, Vanguard, mutual funds, and US pension funds.
> A shift of focus to “dominance of the American continent”?
1. Venezuela was under embargo and selling oil to China. The Nicolas Maduro hijack and the country's political realignment with US will have the double effect of negating oil to China and securing large nearby reserves.
2. Argentina has a Trump-aligned president, who is vocal about undermining the Mercosul agreement and is currently in diplomatic attrition with Brazil. Recently signed a $20 billion loan from FMI.
3. Paraguay signed a treaty for a US forward operation base in their territory. The Paraguay border is home to a large hydroelectric, a major power source for 3 countries: Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.
4. Colombia has a new Trump aligned president. It's a young president with no political background. The US State Department announced a $1 billion assistance upon his election for military investment.
5. Peru’s new president Keiko Fujimori is Trump-aligned.
6. Chile’s new president Jose Antonio Kast is Trump-aligned.
7. US retaliated against the prosecution of former Trump-aligned Brazil president for attempted coup by announcing an 50% emergency tariff (which didn't hold legally), then crafting a Section 301 investigation to justify a 25% tariff in July 2026.
8. US is giving asylum to the former president's son, who is vocal on social media about defending the US tariffs as retaliation, defends military intervention of the US in Brazil, as well as stating (but without proof) that Brazilian polls are rigged – not the one his father ran and won, apparently.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2026/aug...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/EconomyCharts/comments/1uxdx8p/chin...
> The US is a net oil exporter, while China halved their oil imports [2].
This seems to be the opposite point you want.
Everybody is going to have increased expenses for everything due to their oil dependency _except_ China. Which will raise the price of Chinese exports to the market price but giving China a lot of producer surplus.
Or China can keep doing it's Belt & Road plans and grant other countries money to help with their oil problems in exchange for territory. Or also keep prices lower to continue hollowing out other countries manufacturing capabilities.
--
The leaders of South America claiming to be "Trump aligned" is good for Trump. Trump is not the average american citizen. And boy will those leaders flip the second he's out of the presidency.
It's believed China managed to halve oil imports due to large (undisclosed) reserves, emergency public policies and overdriving coal use, but this can't last. China is also extremely dependent on Russian oil, which is a country at conflict and having its key infrastructure destroyed. China is building their renewable energy capacity fast, but this has to be quick started on oil.
Increasing oil prices have the double effect of slowing China expansion and energetic transition long-term while increasing dollar demand in the short term - just look what happened to gold prices once Iran war started.
The new Trump-aligned leaders of South America are puppets to secure cheap, nearby materials and food in a future world in conflict, where the US has to re-industrialize rapidly. The US navy would be spread too thin, and the US currently doesn't even have capacity to build its navy - the US recently sought the help of South Korea in this matter.
Please note none of this my opinion, the current US foreign policy strategy is a public fact. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donroe_Doctrine
> Please note none of this my opinion, the current US foreign policy strategy is a public fact.
This is beyond arrogant and makes discussion impossible. Your opinion is not automatically a 100% accurate reflection reality because you have citations.
that’s a lot of words about South America in order to paper over what we are all currently feeling at the pump and in the economy at large. Between his incoherent tariff policies and the paltry job numbers we are seeing, I think you’re going to have a hard time convincing me he’s doing things that are good for us domestically. I’m not even touching the heated social issues he’s been pouring gas all over.