American Politics Discussion Thread

[Zed-F]

One thing I will point out is that Trump and his team assume Russia will simply win, but this is still an open question. Given the price of oil has fallen sharply, and the trade war with China will continue to cool economic activity globally, it is entirely possible that Russia will effectively go bankrupt this year instead of next.

[BING_XI_LAO]

One thing I will point out is that Trump and his team assume Russia will simply win, but this is still an open question. Given the price of oil has fallen sharply, and the trade war with China will continue to cool economic activity globally, it is entirely possible that Russia will effectively go bankrupt this year instead of next.

I guess a global economic recession is a good thing, as long as it's also bad for Russia. 2 more weeks!

To be fair to Trump, I should be more accurate, maybe they don't think Russia can win in any kind of sweeping way, but they just find it overly difficult to fight Russia east of the Dnieper.
Back in 2014, I wasn't anti-Western and I didn't know much about the conflict, but I felt that we in the West should simply fortify the Dnieper if we wanted to get involved. It would be a far easier option (just look at how little activity there is on the Kerson front right now along the river and how useless the Krynky beachhead was), and the Ukraine had already lost some of the best locations on the other side of the river anyway.

Unrelated: TIL that Scott Bessent has two adopted children, commissioned via surrogate, to "raise" with his gay "husband". Can you guess whether these gay men chose two girls, one girl one boy, or two boys? ZERO points for guessing which option they went with and why. Also it explains why I felt instinctively repulsed when I saw a clip of him speaking for the first time the other day, he has the mannerisms and the effeminate physiognomy of a deviant, like Keir Starmer.

Kind of reminds me of various Western officials from the UK and other countries meeting representatives of the new Syrian government while the latter conducts a gradual campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against Alawites. Left or right, westerners enforce extremely evil policies at home and abroad. I hope my country Australia is eventually liberated from US occupation by China so that we can have a virtuous confucian government instead of sadistic democratic deviants/terrorists. People's Whole Process Democracy, drawing on Communist and Confucian traditions, selects for competence and good conduct in the leadership, liberal democracy selects for psychopathy.

[greenline]

Peter Navarro was the tariff guy for Trump. I do not think his ideas are completely without merit, but it was very strange to me that tariffs would be step 3 of radically changing the government rather than step 8 or step 10.

[Zed-F]

Bing, I don’t get a read from you that you’re so much anti-western as just cynical and a troll. Power corrupts, regardless of where you are in the world. Clearly closed societies and autocratic governments have fewer safeguards against corruption and bad actors, but that doesn’t mean western countries are immune from those either. We’ve gone through different historical periods where corruption in Western politics has been less tolerated or more tolerated; right now we’re going through a period where concerns about corruption seem to take a back seat to tribalism.

[greenline]

People who believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely seem to have very convenient classes of that exceptions to that rule. Charitable NGOs, progressive tycoon trust funds, semi-underground former commie organizations, government watchdog agencies, district court judges with an immigrant background, all are assumed to be just users of power by the neurotic man concerned with corruption.

[Zed-F]

Not every business leader is corrupt, and neither is every government oversight agency. Could you find examples of some that are? Sure. The more you look for them, the more you are likely to find them -- that's confirmation bias for you.

Everyone should be willing to spend a little effort on checking their own biases, but trusting no-one and nothing is exhausting and unhelpful. You need a certain amount of trust that people in your own society are generally trying to do the right thing, or society breaks down. Why do you think the increase of social media has led to the increase of tribalism?

At some point, all you can do is your best, have a little humility, and try to give others the benefit of the doubt when you can. You'll live a less stressful life if you don't feed your own sense of outrage all the time.

[greenline]

I try not to spend most of my day outraged. I try and work on improving my skills and enjoying what there is to enjoy in my personal life.

But people spend some time thinking about politics because politics spends a lot of time thinking about them. Social media increases tribalism, sure. But when you decide to give someone some trust, it isn't arbitrary. It's a question of who, which groups, which institutions.

[MJW (ya that one)]

US Senate ratings. Who is likely to declare running is considered. 

   

[Charr Babies]

Definition of "troll" in this echo chamber: one who speaks inconvenient truths.

Welcome to the club

BING_XI_LAO

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Left or right, westerners enforce extremely evil policies at home and abroad. I hope my country Australia is eventually liberated from US occupation by China so that we can have a virtuous confucian government instead of sadistic democratic deviants/terrorists. People's Whole Process Democracy, drawing on Communist and Confucian traditions, selects for competence and good conduct in the leadership, liberal democracy selects for psychopathy.

HEAR HEAR 

[Zed-F]

Countries and governments don't have morals, they have interests. Every government can and does do evil to someone. The question really is, to whom and on what scale. Democratic governments at least have better tools available to avoid and/or mitigate the harm they do to their own people, whereas authoritarian governments don't necessarily care about the harm they do to their own people because there are fewer constraints on the pursuit of unchecked power, and because they can always fall back on repression.

Right now we are seeing the US administration abandon the use of those tools en masse, in favour of chaos and grift. There is no coherent strategy, only profit-taking at the expense of the public good.