Global Politics - General Chat

[Jassassino]

Here's the thread where we pretend it's about global politics but, like most things, we will discuss exclusively the USA (unfortunately).

So how about that houmous them trade tariffs?

[Wayno]

Why couldn't they elect a woman just for once.

[Aragorn]

I have zero remorse for what is happening in the US. People act as if there is been an alignment shift with a Trump second term but this is the result of superstructures that are integral to the US since inception as a brutal colonizing force and a modern day empire that is the largest exporter of human suffering. It’s been 16 months of Americas funding the settler state to bomb the people of Gaza- so it’s hard to be moved because cars are 30% more expensive now.

Americans lack political imagination and a will to act and what is coming is a result of that.

[Jassassino]

. It’s been 16 months of Americas funding the settler state to bomb the people of Gaza- so it’s hard to be moved because cars are 30% more expensive now.

The Palestinian Genocide and the active contributions my country have to it make me feel sick. We have Labour MPs like Jess Phillips, masquerading as faux Left confinuing to vote in favour of Israeli occupation. It's sometimes extremely exhausting to open any news page just lately.

[tr0nic]

Americans lack political imagination and a will to act and what is coming is a result of that.

I sympathize with this and agree with it 75%. But I was also there in NYC during the Summer of 2020, in a Level IV ballistic vest and a Kevlar helmet throwing fireworks at the NYPD. To say we were squashed before we even began is an understatement. We did try to act. Foundations were laid for radical change, but at least half the country decided they love violence and hurting their neighbors more than change. We are facing the strongest empire in human history, and most of us still have a long way to fall before we have nothing to lose. But we will fall.

Taking things a little personally aside, I still mostly agree. I and the others I stood with are/were an outlier compared to the average strip mall-brained American from the Midwest. And those are the people that are going to feel the heat from this empire collapsing. They're going to come to love those 'handouts' they say they hate very, very soon when their homes inevitably become tent cities.

Don't even get me started on Palestine, I have to actively untense my jaw just thinking about the videos I've seen that have come out of Gaza.

[Aragorn]

I of course don’t want to discount the efforts of those that do work on the ground and try to influence change - but in the face of the well polished meat grinder of red, white and blue fascism I’ve always felt that most organizations and active efforts either try to work within the assigned box (the 2016-2020 “resist” folks who think war hawk Clinton would have been somehow better than war hawk Trump, or how BLM has been dumbed down and commodified in its demands).

A lot of it tends to be very liberal, and pointed squarely in the direction of influencing a governing body that is not broken, but working exactly as intended.

[Bread]

Why couldn't they elect a woman just for once.

A black woman at that.

Maybe one day. There's always Jasmine Crockett.

[tr0nic]

I of course don’t want to discount the efforts of those that do work on the ground and try to influence change - but in the face of the well polished meat grinder of red, white and blue fascism I’ve always felt that most organizations and active efforts either try to work within the assigned box (the 2016-2020 “resist” folks who think war hawk Clinton would have been somehow better than war hawk Trump, or how BLM has been dumbed down and commodified in its demands).

A lot of it tends to be very liberal, and pointed squarely in the direction of influencing a governing body that is not broken, but working exactly as intended.

Yeah sorry if it sounded like I was jumping down your throat, I'm not, I'm squarely pissed at the liberals. Biden getting voted in literally halted any kind of forward progress that was being made. Liberals were talking all this shit about being "Duh Resistunce" and it immediately ended once that geriatric pisspot got elected. And now we're here. And still many liberals think this system can be salvaged, and it clearly cannot go much farther except into sheer brutality on itself.

We built all these tools of colonial violence and they're reaching their logical endpoint of being turned on us. The only hope I really have besides trying to organize in my own community is that the present day fascists might be too stupid to accomplish their most brutal goals. Looking at the El Salvadorian mega prison shit though, that hope is running out fast.

[Departed]

The insane thing is, for once, Trump is making good on his promises.  He vowed to destroy our already terrible economy with tariffs that would gut everyone's 401K's and retirements, and by god, he delivered.  Same with his bloody mass deportations that are seeing innocent people sent to a torture prison and him going back to bombing the middle east and threatening other countries because he doesn't understand anything.  The amount of swing voters to have come out and said "I didn't vote for this" is just absurd.  They literally did.  Crazy to think that under 230,000 votes in three swing states was all it took to prevent this.

I voted for Harris and got as many people around me as I could to do the same, but I didn't go into November optimistic.  At first, I kind of was, but the second Harris opened her mouth about Gaza, I was pretty much gearing up for a Trumpty-dumpty reunion.  Because Harris proved that she was just Biden in a younger package.  That DNC speech she gave made me sick when she started talking about having the most lethal military in the world and both sides-ing a one-sided conflict. 

I maintain that harm reduction matters, but to say that Trump managed to somehow be worse than Biden on Gaza doesn't yet mean a whole lot because the only real difference between them was Biden withholding the "Mother of all Bombs" that Trump is now giving the IDF.  And Biden not wanting ground troops in Gaza whereas Trump just said to get boots on the ground.  Biden was still aiding and abetting Netanyahu for thirteen straight months and Harris refused to budge an inch.  I would probably guess that AIPAC put the squeeze on her; that the whole reason they bothered ousting Bush and Bowman was a kind of warning to Harris, but if that were true, and she couldn't spin that, then that's just another testament to how weak so many of these establishment democrats are.

The problem with the United States is that, collectively, voters have a very poor memory.  Look at how many people have already forgotten about "SignalGate", or, more importantly, that Trump just straight up bombed innocent civilians in Yemen.  Didn't even last two weeks because there's always something new and horrible happening, and even the pain of these tariffs will be forgotten by voters sooner or later.  So even if democrats take over in 2026 and in 2028, I would bet that it's not going to be actual, transformative progressives taking over, but more status quo warriors like my dear publicity-seeking governor, Greasy Gavin.  None of them have the will or desire to finally stop arming and funding monsters like Netanyahu or the Saudi Prince.  Nor do they have the desire to actually address the issues back home.  And because the establishment liberals only want to do incremental change, voters will get dissatisfied and immediately vote republicans back into power.

It's going to take someone with policies that are actually transformative, like raising the minimum wage to a living wage, genuinely punishing price gougers and restoring a robust middle class to finally break this cycle of nonsense.  But so long as the establishment has its way, that's never gonna happen.

My hope is that, come 2028, either AOC or Tim Walz is our nominee because they're the only ones with the records and rhetoric of actually doing good by people.  But anyone else, and it's just a bandaid, and not even really that, since most establishment dems are almost as bad on foreign policy as the right is.

[NateDog]

The problem with the United States is that, collectively, voters have a very poor memory.  Look at how many people have already forgotten about "SignalGate", or, more importantly, that Trump just straight up bombed innocent civilians in Yemen.  Didn't even last two weeks because there's always something new and horrible happening, and even the pain of these tariffs will be forgotten by voters sooner or later.  So even if democrats take over in 2026 and in 2028, I would bet that it's not going to be actual, transformative progressives taking over, but more status quo warriors like my dear publicity-seeking governor, Greasy Gavin.  None of them have the will or desire to finally stop arming and funding monsters like Netanyahu or the Saudi Prince.  Nor do they have the desire to actually address the issues back home.  And because the establishment liberals only want to do incremental change, voters will get dissatisfied and immediately vote republicans back into power.

Can't speak for other countries but it's effectively the very same here in Ireland. Can't tell you the number of times since the millennium that from election to election we've just flip-flopped back and forth between the very same groups. People seem to think just going the other way will fix things, then it doesn't happen so they go back again, then it doesn't happen so they go back again and so on and so forth. Every failure or embarrassment is the biggest thing in the universe until it's not 10 minutes later.