Great article. Everyone who is reading this thread should take a minute to read this article.
The Danish Defence Intelligence Service has made a threat analysis that say that Russia probably will attack other countries at their border inside half a year, in two years they will attack the Baltic countries and in five years they will be ready for a large scale war in Europe if USA will not involve themselves.
Update Danish
They have no translated version yet, but Google Translate will probably work.
The link goes to a menu where you can press “Hent publikation”, a direct link doesn’t work.
We have done absolutely nothing of the sort. We’ve given Ukraine the bottom of the barrel, things we were not even using and would have cost us to dispose of. The finest equipment in existence would not even be usable by them. People worried about the collapse of the US need to understand that both Russia and China are DECADES ahead of us in their own collapse and neither will be around in our lifetimes.
Of course, Hitler did not win a simple majority either.
To the author (TL: You’ll appreciate it) – very short YouTube clip:
This article is laughably naive.
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The author’s claim “we are the majority” is objectively false. Trumpists outvoted Harris supporters; that is documented fact. The fact just as many people stayed home is irrelevant; there is no reason, none whatsover, to believe that people who didn’t vote are more opposed to Trump than they are supportive.
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Trying to claim some Trump voters are really not Trump supporters is pathetic. They ARE Trump supporters and there is no reason to think they don’t support what’s happening. We are hearing effectively no opposition from Republicans.
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One third of the population is enough to overturn a Constitution, as history clearly shows.
As to the author’s claim that people will turn against Trump as things get worse, history suggests that is also a dubious proposition. I mean, can we at least TRY reading a few history books? Fascists will just blame problems on Others. It’s the fault of liberals. It’s the fault of Canadians. It’s the fault of immigrants. It’s the fault of China. It’s the fault of a Jewish cabal. Trump’s supporters are sheep. They’ll eat that shit up.
I mean, people like this have been predicting Trump’s downfall for years now. Hey, remember when Trump’s comments about Puerto Rico were gonna swing the election because Latinos would be so mad? And remember how that never happened even a little bit? That made me laugh out loud at this from the article:
“Law enforcement types disillusioned by Trump’s pardoning of January 6 protesters who attacked cops…”
Uhhh… wasn’t that January 6, 2021? A riot Trump encouraged and lied about for four years? So why weren’t they disillusioned already? Why was it that law enforcement types were actually majority Trumpist? What planet is the guy from?
Many nations have fallen prey to this playbook. Pretending the USA isn’t on the same path is ignorant, blind American exceptionalism, nothing more.
Well, I read it. If that is your best hope, we are doomed. I don’t buy any of the arguments presented, much as I would like to. As credible as a child covering his eyes and saying you can’t see them either.
You are not the majority, and the other side is much more willing to cheat and break the law.
The doomsters here need to remember that the people who voted for Trump saw him positively. He would bring down inflation. He would cut crime. He would eliminate the people competing for their jobs. He would make abortion illegal. He would put the Bible back into schools. They saw in him all the hallmarks of a successful politician who improves the lives of the masses.
They definitely did not want him cutting services like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. On the contrary, they dreamed about imaginary checks that the government would send out. They definitely did not want higher inflation. They definitely didn’t want American cars to be too expensive to buy and gas too expensive to pump. They definitely didn’t want Walmart’s shelves to be empty. They definitely did not want the economy to crash. They definitely did not want the country to fall apart. They definitely did not want a civil war. They definitely did not want the country to turn into Cambodia under Pol Pot.
There is probably not going to be an uprising to throw Trump out of office. Americans aren’t the revolutionary kind, not since the Civil War at any rate. They’re too fat and happy. @ThelmaLou’s linked essay is correct. If Trump keeps on breaking stuff rather than improving stuff, his majority will start leaking at the margins. His voters are mostly just people, although some of the loudest are truly fascists. The majority did not vote for fascism; they saw Trump as something way better: a King. A King sounded good to them because a King can just wave his hand and get things done. That’s what they wanted and still want. To get things - things they think are good - done.
No AntiKing’s exist. Nothing we can do will magically whisk Trump and his minions out of government. What we can do is point out the stuff he’s breaking - that ordinary voters will care about. Cutting USAID is tragic and evil, but you’re not going to convince people who think foreign aid is 25-50% of the total budget. Democrats have to pounce on all the internal breakage - stuff that red states care about. Those swing states are still swing states. Percentage points matter. They will in 2026 and especially 2028. Yes, there will still be those elections and there will still be an America.
And when all those things happen, they will not turn on or even abandon Trump — they will blame whatever minority scapegoat(s) Trump accuses of standing in the way of and sabotaging his glorious plan. Those people will be demonized and persecuted. Trump remains the hero.
To do otherwise would require these people to admit that they were fooled, they backed a bad horse, they enthusiastically elected a malevolent dumbshit. And these people will never, ever admit that they were wrong.
I’m sorry, but I agree with RickJay. That essay is sincere, but it has a childlike perspective on the Trump phenomenon. America is Jonestown.
I thought it was an interesting article, though I also largely agree with your objections.
The quoted section of your reply made me think that the author missed one crucial, horrifying detail regarding this purported feedback mechanism: DOGE now has the ability to stop federal payments to only “the worst people”, i.e. all non-MAGA citizens and organizations. It would be an effective way to cleve the population in two, according to its distributed greed, apathy, and cowardice. And something like this seems somewhat unavoidable at any rate, from a fiscal policy perspective; the only way that I can see how they sustain the military and maintain tax cuts without devaluing the currency is to slash entitlement programs. Now, these peolpe aren’t complete fools, and they know that this will engender widespread discontent. But what might engender a bit less discontent is if that same total of payment cuts were instead to be distributed on a selective basis. And from their perspective, what better way to make a selection than along officially registered partisan lines?
We live in a border town. From the marina, we could walk to White Rock, BC at lot tide. I wanted to share a couple of letters from our local, weekly, free paper; the first from an American, and the second from a Canadian.
It is hard for me to fathom why our U.S. President would take the world’s largest and most successful world power and turn it into a chaotic, emotional mess.
Economic and social chaos is the order of the day, along with alienation and mistrust of our historic allies. It is time for the reasonable members of our societies to reflect and remind ourselves and others of our commonality.
For 200 years, Canada and the United States of America have shared the longest undefended border in the world, in friendship and in trust. We shared respect, support, peace, loyalty and trade. Why on Earth would anyone wish to destroy that in this day and age? It is like we have declared war upon ourselves and there will be no winners.
It is time to revisit our common Peace Arch monument in Blaine. The Peace Arch represents the lasting friendship between our two countries. The inscriptions engraved upon the Peace Arch state: “Brethren Dwelling in Unity,” “Children of a Common Mother,” and “May These Gates Never Close.” What happened? We should serve ourselves well if we revisited and recommitted to our common history and purpose.
That’s how I see it.
[name redacted]
Point Roberts, WA
Point Roberts is that little dangly bit below the 49th Parallel. You need to drive to Canada to get to the rest of Washington.
Joe Clark, former Prime Minister of Canada, asked Canadians to engage with their American friends and neighbors to bring down the temperature of the present situation.
I want to do my bit. I thought the best way to broaden my impact would be to write a letter to the editors of smaller local newspapers. As I live in a very small community on the west coast of Canada, I want to focus on Alaska and Washington state, our neighbors to the north and south.
Many Canadians are concerned about the threats of tariffs and the unwanted calls of Canada becoming the 51st state. What happened, and does the U.S. have to take such drastic actions? Any problems between friends and neighbors are best resolved by negotiations, where mutual respect and facts are the main ingredients for the success.
Naturally, people become incensed if their country’s sovereignty is questioned. Only a miniscule number of people in Canada would consider joining the U.S. There is nothing wrong with the U.S. as such; it is that both countries are different in many respects, and it just is not a good idea. We have good neighbors in our community and are good friends, but they don’t want to live with me, and I not with them.
Canada has always stood by its neighbor; when U.S. Embassy personnel were threatened in Tehran in 1979 or on 9/11 when U.S. citizens were stranded in Newfoundland. Canadians fought on the U.S. side with our troops in Korea and Afghanistan.
What I’m asking you to do is to talk to your Senators and Congressional representatives to encourage the present administration to engage with Canada more constructively to keep our 150-year friendship growing for the benefit of the people on both sides of the border. The U.S. and Canada have more to gain by cooperating than by having a full-blown hissy fit.
With all the uncertainty in our world, let’s show that we can be a beacon of cooperation and mutual respect of culture and aspirations.
[name redacted]
Oona River, B.C.
We the People like Canadians. We’re neighbours. We’re friends. We don’t want to live in a dictatorial oligarchy.
On the front page of the paper was an article about USBP building up a rock barrier between Blaine and British Columbia to prevent people from illegally driving across the border. (The previous layer of rocks had sunk into the ground.)
No, many of them, possibly even most of them, will stick with Trump. But not all of them. That ascribes a solidarity to a group made up of multiple fragments, who had multiple reasons for voting Republican, and multiple expectations of the future, that simply doesn’t exist.
I’m getting off your bus before this stop.
Except most of those “positives” are examples of malice. They wanted to torment and kill women (ban abortion), persecute black people (“cut crime”), ethnically cleanse brown people (“eliminate the people competing for their jobs”), institute religious persecution (“put the Bible back into schools”). They wanted hatred, stupidity, cruelty, ignorance, bigotry and tyranny and that’s what they voted for.
And while they may not like how the results are hurting them too, they’ve demonstrated again and again that they are far more concerned with hurting everyone else than they are with their own lives and welfare. Hatred and cruelty are the overriding, nigh-suicidal drive of the Right.
Only if Russia can move through the whole of Ukraine. The sham “peace deal” will at most gain them control of the territories they currently occupy.
But if any of Trump and Putin’s sleazy maneuverings end up in a change of government in Ukraine, things are going to get worse in ways we can’t really predict.
Another one of those hackneyed bits that – sorry – belongs here:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan
This. It’s so easy to let the dead weight of Republican “leadership” scare us silly but every day brings us closer to another election. This cannot stand. This period will take up significant space in the history section in future but it will be a chapter in America’s story, not the end of it.
I would submit that MAGA is Jonestown. Trump’s followers are being led to their doom and the rest of us will be left standing around in horror, wonder what the holy hell any of them saw that made sense to them.
Damn, I wish I had said that.
I wondered whether this country was fucked after GW Bush got reelected despite the obviously manufactured case for war in Iraq.
After Obama’s congress got eviscerated in the mid-terms for, of all things, successfully expanding healthcare to millions of people, I knew this country was fucked. I knew that there was something wrong with the American voter. I just didn’t quite know what it was.
In the last 5-8 years, I’ve read a lot about things like political polarization, psychology, the evolution of the human brain, the origins of spirituality and religion. As crazy as the United States seems, we’re crazy but all too human at the same time.
Humans are tribal. We’re story tellers. We live in our own reality. We co-create truth, and historically, “truth” and “reality” isn’t based on the scientific method – that’s a very recent part of our experience and development as a species. Truth and reality is whatever people say it is. I wish that weren’t true, but it is.
No; many people like to think it is, but facts are facts and ignoring reality gets you killed. COVID denial didn’t keep people from getting sick and dying.
Some people say they did not die, others say they died, yes, but it was not COVID, and still others say they died and it was good for the economy:
Facts are facts and people choose the ones they like and ignore the others.