Living in the EU, I'm skeptical any of this happens. Our leaders have been pretty reluctant to push back on anything so far and most of these assets are private anyway.
you're thinking systemically. chaosh ish a ladder, shansha. this will lead to overall downturns in everything but pockets of extreme windfall for people well positioned to either sell the US the supplies it needs to engage in war all the time against everyone or to distribute looted assets, and those are the people influencing the decision the most.
European banks need the swap lines by the Fed to stay afloat. ECB, BoE, SNB, Denmark, Sweden, all are on USD life support.
The only viable way to do this would be for the EU to fully switch out of USA/USD into China/BRICS but Russia won't allow it and who is going to buy EU's exports? Not China.
But that analysis of viable options is for rational and competent leadership, so who knows.
EU banks: 1. Lend and trade in USD; 2. Have a shitload of deposits (liabilities) in USD-denominated accounts [1] [2] (1 trillion?)
A huge amount of EU imports (from outside Europe) have to be paid in USD. Like oil/natgas/commodities and manufactured stuff.
The Euro is not really used as reserve currency outside of EU.
So if EU goes into economic war with USA by dumping US treasuries: 1. they would be trading those treasuries for something else (EUR denominated bonds? yuan? something else?); 2. no more swap lines and goodbye exports to USA so USD debt trap with depositors (forced conversion to EUR?); 3. How are they going to pay imports without USD lines?
The only other big player who can give them equivalent liquidity in swap lines is China. But as I stated, that would be even worse than USD dependency and less likely.
All this while the EU industrial base is on the brink and with a huge dependency on American natgas and Chinese supply chain. They cornered themselves and they can't do much without huge sacrifices. The only way out needs a complete shakeup of the leadership in Brussels and a new economic plan. I wouldn't bet on that happening.
In Yuan? Which is certainly a more of a global reserve currency than the Euro and is certainly widely used for international trade? The same Yuan with the massive amount of liquidity outside of China?
The Canadian Dollar and Pound Sterling each are a have a significantly bigger share as reserve currencies than the Yuan....
USD/CNY havs only slightly higher volume than USD/CHF. Hardly anyone uses it anywhere outside China.
RMB settled ~60% of PRC cross border payments last year (up from 30% a few years ago), ~6T USD equivalent in settlement, which already makes rmb more real/useful currency than euro/yen reserves. And functionally shadow reserve - RMB can buy Chinese inputs, intermediate goods and global commodities, i.e. even oil delinked from USD, which covers like everything a country typically needs. That's what reserve is ultimately for, to buy shit/liquidity, not mere storage. RMB already guarantees access to most global goods for the simple reason PRC is producer of said goods. PRC also has massive USD war chest reserves, they already do USD lending AND USD swaplines to global south. In terms of liquidity/scale of swapline to EU, peak US swapline to EU was like 600B during covid and 2008 financial crisis, i.e. 20% of PRC USD reserves, which PRC increasingly need to find uses for as she displaces more USD from trade settlement. So it's doable for PRC, but question of trust, but not whether EU trust PRC, but whether PRC trust EU since these swap lines tend to be commodity-backed, where frankly EU has limited offerings to PRC.
Won’t flooding the market with large supply of bonds being sold at one time cause the price of the bonds to drop, resulting in losses for the sellers of the bonds?
Meanwhile, the bond holders that don’t sell, can wait it out until the bond pays out or the selling mania stops, and the price returns to equilibrium.
That won't work... that will crash the price of [new] bonds, and more capitalized nations will buy the dip. You are operating under an assumption that the humans controlling a quantity of wealth enough to [quote] "crash the bonds market" make decisions based on principles. They don't - and if you compare history with a long term bond price chart then it will become apparent.
Now, pray tell, which other nations are more capitalized than the world's third largest economy? Who would buy the dip? China? I doubt it. And nobody else has the scale.
> unlike Canadians.
Who did what? Symbolically threaten to tax electricity exports to some cities close to the border and stopped importing American booze?
Could, but inevitably one member state will veto it because of their niche interests. See also: EU-Mercosur trade agreements.
We get nothing done in the EU because we are all prisoners to 27 different voting populations, and nothing moves forward if even one of them opposes it
perpetual war is great for neoliberalism because it forces public spending on private, consumable goods. no matter how many bombs you buy today you're gonna need more tomorrow, it's in the nature of bombs. then later if there's ever a break in the destruction the bombmakers can invest their windfall profits in construction companies, thus winning in both directions.
I keep trying to call the White House to express my disapproval but they just call me a dumb lib and send a gang of ICE officers to my neighborhood to kidnap my neighbors.
General strikes. Technically these are illegal when called by unions under the Taft-HArtley act, but if done at the popular level they can grind the country to a halt. But mass protest is the most effective way to bring down a corrupt government, and doesn't require waiting for an election and being disappointed by another round of political scams.
oh that isn't possible to organize
No with that attitude
authorities will brutalize the protestors
freedom isn't free
Americans are too comfortable/lazy to do mass political protest
Well we'll see whether that's true I guess.
what if this leads to civil war
If the alternative is corruption and tyranny, maybe that's a fight worth having. Authoritarian governments do not historically reach a point where they say 'well that's enough tyranny, let's not get carried away lest history think ill of us.'
General strikes require a large and powerful labor movement to organize them, and to provide people with material support for as long as the strike takes to achieve its goals. One day of symbolic absenteeism by the most politically involved 5% of the workforce is not going to cut it.
Protest every weekend? build momentum until this can't be ignored? perhaps write to congressmen? attend townhall meetings and ask questions to your representatives? try to raise awareness to your friends who don't vote?
I have an American friend who keeps complaining about Trump. There was a protest in his city, but he didn't go because he had a BBQ to attend that weekend.
Seriously, this isn't fun anymore and Americans should be extremely concerned and start acting one way or another. It may be symbolic but it's better than nothing, if only for peace of mind.
Representatives already either agree it's bad (and can't do much about it) or will not listen to the public (because they're Republicans and indented to trump for their careers.
I don't have any friends who don't vote, really, and the midterms might not come soon enough to do anything here.
My senator had a head injury and reversed all his opinions for some reason, so I've called his office a lot but he's very pro Invading Greenland now, and pro criminalizing his voters. Unhelpful guy.
I would start preparing for all of this to happen, and tell your friend to get his passport up to date.
> Representatives already either agree it's bad (and can't do much about it)
Representatives can draft articles of impeached for the President.
Senators can start impeaching various Secretaries like Defence ("War") and Homeland Security. Or all of the Secretaries really, since they're not upholding the Constitution themselves by not invoking the 25A to get rid of a mentally unstable President.
Where are all these much-vaunted "checks and balances" that I've been hearing about for so long?
> Where are all these much-vaunted "checks and balances" that I've been hearing about for so long?
That's the problem, turns out there are none.
Or to be more precise, they do exist but they rely solely on each arm of the government acting in good faith and respecting the boundaries of their power and deferring on powers that belong to a different arm of the government.
But turns out there was a 0-day bug in the constitution: if the president simply completely ignores all other branches of government, nothing can be done about it.
The much vaunted checks and balances rely on Congress and the supreme Court checking the executives power. Since the presidents party controls both, this doesn't happen. The Imperial Presidency has been absorbing power from the other branches since the 90s, and we are pretty close to the end of that process right now.
> Representatives can draft articles of impeached for the President.
Trump has been impeached twice. Even if you could get enough Republicans in the House on board to do so a third time (the GOP holds a majority in both houses of Congress), the threshold of 2/3 of the Senate to convict and remove is far out of reach; there aren't enough Republicans that aren't die-hard Trump loyalists (there are rumors that an actual armed invasion of Greenland might change that, but those kind of rumors of opposition often turn out to be overblown when situations materialize, with a decisive number Republicans offering some criticism and then finding an excuse to oppose actual action.)
> Senators can start impeaching various Secretaries
No, Senators cannot start impeachment, which regardless of which officers subject to it are targeted must start in the House. And the same problems which face impeachment of the President apply here.
> Where are all these much-vaunted "checks and balances" that I've been hearing about for so long?
They rely on the same malign faction not controlling both political branches as well as dominating the Supreme Court at the same time. Unfortunately...
When the Republican Party has been largely purged of opposition to Trump (except for senators Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski and a tiny handful of people in the House), and when six out of nine Supreme Court justices are generally loyal to the GOP, then there are effectively no checks and balances.
Trump learned during his first term that he can bypass checks and balances by making sure the GOP is thoroughly MAGA. People who stood up to Trump have been sidelined, such as Justin Amash, Mitt Romney, and, most famously, Mike Pence, who stood up to Trump on January 6 and paid a heavy political price for it. That’s why Vance, not Pence, is the current VP.
Have protests ever stopped the creation of a dictatorship, in history?
> build momentum until this can't be ignored?
Your answer to "how do we stop this" is "do something until it stops."
> perhaps write to congressmen?
"Dear official who actively supports subverting our democracy: Please don't."
> attend townhall meetings and ask questions to your representatives?
Filed under "Rearrange the desk chairs."
> try to raise awareness to your friends who don't vote?
This (alone) would have the ability to change things... but at this point, they are hiding that shameful fact. Non-voters and supporters of third parties in the US are effectively supporting the status quo.
You didn't suggest this, but I already employee a spicy bumpersticker that complains about Trump, and give stern looks to the screen when the news reports on abuses of law.
> Have protests ever stopped the creation of a dictatorship, in history?
They do have the ability to change the course of actions. But even if it's just symbolic, massive protests would show the world that Americans aren't all in favor of the regime in place and some have a functioning morale compass.
> Your answer to "how do we stop this" is "do something until it stops."
That is, in part, a major aspect of resistance, yes. Protests on the weekends are great for community engagement and visibility, but constant pressure and activism are necessary. I think Minneapolis is a great example of how people should react when the situation gets bad. But even before that, getting involved in local organizations so that you're ready to help your neighbors is huge. For those of us not in Minneapolis, a general strikes would be great.
Short of enough Republicans finally declaring enough is enough and deciding on impeachment or the fourth clause of the 25th Amendment, the only other option is for pro-impeachment senator candidates to run as Republicans in the primaries, which begin as early as March. Theoretically, if enough Republican senators up for reelection get primaried due to their refusal to rein in Trump, this may put pressure on the rest of the GOP’s senators to remove Trump this year, and this may also encourage the House (which only requires a majority to impeach).
Of course, the challenge is convincing the electorate in red states that Trump’s antics regarding Greenland are catastrophic enough to warrant his removal, given the stranglehold MAGA has on the Republican electorate.
You're completely dismissing all extraparliamentary means of opposition.
Protests. Riots. Strikes.
Y'know, the sort of thing that toppled Yanukovych in Ukraine, lotsa Middle Eastern dictators during the Arab Spring, British rule in India, Soviet control over the Baltics, etc etc etc.
Your politicians are use- and spineless. It's time for your people to step up.
The sad reality is Americans really don't care about foreign policy -- the only thing that could actually lead to major strikes or protests large enough to move the needle would be if large numbers of American soldiers were dying (i.e., Vietnam).
Plus, I just saw a little segment on Fox News where it was portraying this whole Greenland deal as a way to "help Greenlanders boost their economy, each person will get X cash, blah blah". So anyone only watching Fox is probably convinced we're doing Greenland a favor, liberating them from Danish oppression, just like we recently liberated Venezuela from oppression (in case you didn't know!).
Only 4% or so approve of going to war to conquer Greenland, so if it gets that bad you might expect sentiment to keep turning. but his approval floor has been pretty steady at no lower than ~30 percent through every controversy so far.
I hope I'm wrong but I don't see American citizens rioting over international affairs unfortunately. Hopefully he'll be unpopular enough to lose senate, and his successor won't be as insane. That would be the best outcome.
Americans have a history of rioting over economic and social conditions, however. An attack on Greenland may open a Pandora’s box of consequences that will devastate America by us becoming a pariah state, which will lead to economic pain.
For the sake of the country, I hope that this is finally the red line that will get enough Republicans representatives to finally have the courage to rein in Trump, at least on this issue.
To add, this 56% is not evenly distributed politically. Protests in California, Minnesota, and New York (all blue states) are not likely to get red state representatives and senators to threaten Trump with removal. Blue state congresspeople are already on board with removing Trump, but removal can’t happen without 2/3rds of the Senate getting on board, which means this can’t happen today without some Republican support.
I’m a Californian. It’s one thing for me to write Alex Padilla or Adam Schiff; they’d vote to convict if they have the chance. But they won’t get a chance unless people like Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham say “enough is enough,” but I don’t live in those states.
It is a virtue of Americans that they are unemotional and resolve disputes at the ballot box. [...] Nothing is so important that it can't wait until the next election.
MAGA does not fit that bill. January 6 was a direct attempt to overthrow an election outcome and by extension the government. The current executive is anything but emotionally well-regulated.
I'm curious what you think the AOC/Mamdani left is even like. MAGA is the culmination of decades of escalating extremism. I was in OKC when the right wing terrorist killed so many innocent people, and that was what, 35 years ago? Meanwhile, AOC/Mamdami are lunatics who want ... better healthcare? Less inequality? What is so objectionable about their ideology that it justifies that absolute craziness that has consumed the right wing?
> Meanwhile, AOC/Mamdami are lunatics who want ... better healthcare? Less inequality?
It's not about their goals, it's about first world versus third world approaches to achieving those goals. The first-world approach is about shared sacrifice and building systems with the correct tradeoffs, incentives, etc. That’s how you end up with a system like Sweden that has high middle class taxes to support a robust welfare state along with extremely competitive corporate taxes. It also fosters efficiency because middle class people have a lot of skin in the game.
The third-world approach instead is tribalistic. The bad tribe, rich people, have the money, and the job of government is to expropriate that money and give it to the good tribe. In that kind of politics, you see a strong emphasis on identity and class warfare, and very little talk about tradeoffs, system, and sacrifice. It’s a type of politics that works equally well in Bangladesh, where the population is barely literate, as it does in Queens. (Of course, MAGA is like that too. Trump is the third world version of Reagan or Romney. It’s not a coincidence that no Republican in history has done better in Queens’s “Little Bangladesh” than Trump in 2024.)
The devastation from AOC/Mamdani politics is far worse than right-wing terrorism. In 1960, South Korea had a GDP per capita around $150, while Bangladesh was at $100. But my parent’s generation Indians/Bangladeshis were AOC/Mamdani socialists. As a result, Bangladeshi grew to just $260 by 1989 when we left. By then, Korea was at $6,000. And of course today Korea is a first world country while Bangladesh is still a third world country.
Around 2010, Bangladesh adopted neoliberalism and tripled its GDP per capita in just 14 years. So there was nothing about Bangladesh structurally that prevented the same kind of growth you saw in South Korea. It was all cultural and political. If my parent’s generation hadn’t been AOC/Mamdani socialists, I’d still probably live in my homeland. More importantly, millions of children would be alive today who instead died in poverty because of delayed economic growth.
This is not a problem specific to very poor countries. Latin America is largely a lower middle income continent with slower growth than developed economies. From 1960 to 2018, Latin American GDP per capita grew just 1.8% annually: https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/latin-america-economic-gr.... Latin America actually fell further behind the U.S. since 1960.
We can just look at the current situation. AOC/Mamdani policies have been the norm in the US since ... oh wait, never. We are run by the billionaires, not by the socialists.
Maybe your argument is that our GDP is doing great? Except the entire point of MAGA is that a whole class of people feel like GDP is not describing their own situation accurately. It's almost like all it really describes is how successful the billionaires are. The US lags behind a bunch of western nations in important metrics, and we are decidedly to the right of them and have been for a very long time. Trying to lay blame for this on the paltry excuse for 'the left' that we have in the US is pretty lame.
> It's absolutely ridiculous to read my comment as expressing any opinion with regards to the US administration. It's simply an accurate answer to the question presented.
Either you're being obtuse or you need to seriously reconsider how you communicate and how you expect others to read it.
Instead of saying "you're being obtuse", say "It seems that you're being obtuse here because ..."
> reconsider how you communicate and how you expect others to read it.
I think the problem is firmly on your side. If we're discussing potential approaches to dealing with political leadership that's on track to start a massive war and possibly get millions of people killed, violence is inherently going to feature in those conversations.
Where would you even draw the line? If a hypothetical leader of a country came on the TV suggesting that we should build large camps where we will kill all the jews, would it be okay to shoot them then? What if we replace killing the jews with re-educating gay people?
This conversation doesn't belong here and will devolve into a flame war. It's not my job to teach you how to communicate.
> I think the problem is firmly on your side
The fact that you're getting downvoted and flagged to death would lead me to disagree. It seems most people didn't interpret it as you intended, which is a failure of communication on your side.
>The fact that you're getting downvoted and flagged to death would lead me to disagree. It seems most people didn't interpret it as you intended, which is a failure of communication on your side.
The fact that I did not choose to tailor my communication to the people obsessively fighting their ideological battles on the internet does in fact not indicate a failure on my part.
There's simply no way a reasonable person can read my comments and reach the same conclusions you have.
Here's the same conversation we just had, simply with the US replaced with another country. Perhaps it'll help you understand just how ridiculous you come across as to someone who isn't emotionally invested in the culture wars:
Commenter 1: Why are residents of Germany letting Hitler go rogue internationally, risk going to war with basically everyone else and also murder all the jews?
Commenter 2: If you can think of a good way to stop that absolutely terrible thing from happening, I'm all ears
Me: You could shoot him
messe: I'm no fan of the German administration (I live in Denmark and am LGBT), but leave that inflammatory rhetoric off of HN.
And before someone brings up Godwin's law or something equally silly, we're literally talking about superpowers fighting over Europe here. Hitler is a perfectly fitting comparison.
> The fact that I did not choose to tailor my communication to the people obsessively fighting their ideological battles on the internet does in fact not indicate a failure on my part.
It kinda does if you're actually trying to get your message across and not just doing this for your own self gratification.
I'm done here. Too close to Godwin's law after your last remarks. I don't know what my quote had to do with Godwin's law (feel free to explain).
We're so far down the comment chain though that I don't mind saying that you're coming across as an insufferable cunt who has to be technically correct.
>It kinda does if you're actually trying to get your message across and not just doing this for your own self gratification.
I'd imagine that's the most common use case for HN, indeed.
>I'm done here. Too close to Godwin's law after your last remarks. I don't know what my quote had to do with Godwin's law (feel free to explain).
I pre-emptively addressed this remark in the very comment you're replying to! If you think the WW2 comparison is inappropriate, I'm actually genuinely fascinated and very interested in hearing why.
>We're so far down the comment chain though that I don't mind saying that you're coming across as an insufferable cunt who has to be technically correct.
I gave a perfectly reasonable answer to a question that was asked by another commenter and you attacked me because I ... ? Not sure how that makes me the "insufferable cunt".
If you have a real answer as to why my comment was inappropriate, go ahead and share it. But so far over the course of 4 comments you've been completely unable to do that.
I think you're just being completely unreasonable in demanding that a fundamentally inflammatory topic should be discussed in a non-inflammatory way. That's simply not possible.
Any conversation concerning war is fundamentally inflammatory to some people, at least per the Oxford definition. How could such a topic not arouse angry or violent feelings? Should we not discuss these topics then?
You're an insufferable cunt because you're failing to read tone. Most people would understand that from reading my comments. I guess this is a failure to communicate on my part to you.
You're coming across as someone who is arguing for the sake of arguing. Which I enjoy in many settings (love a good pointless argument in a pub, where nobody wins but both sides rile each other up).
I'm not failing to read tone, I'm just trying to genuinely engage in spite of your trolling.
The criticism pointed at me just seems absurd in a world where it's not unusual for heads of state to announce their intention to cut off the balls of a opposition leader if they can find him, https://x.com/mkainerugaba/status/2013331792506298533
This is the rhetoric being wielded, and it's being wielded by people who do mean what they say. This is the nature of politics being discussed, it seems bizarre to stick your head in the sand and ignore that. The world will not magically become a better place if HN users suddenly decide to pretend that violence does not exist and does not play a significant role in politics.
This is simply what conversations involving armed conflict look like. On HN, we should hopefully still be able to discuss these things from a more intellectually curious point of view.
We're presumably accepting the premise that the country is going to "go rogue internationally and risk going to war with Europe, Canada, or South America?".
Would it similarly have been a horrible thing in your mind if someone had shot Vladimir Putin in January 2014?
Well, ignoring the moral questions around it, here's a good reason.
Trump isn't really the problem. He's the figurehead. The problem is the people who are backing him and using him to further their agendas. If he were to suddenly stop being president, for whatever reason, it wouldn't solve any of the issues we're having.
In fact, it might make them worse. If Trump vanished, Vance is president and Vance is, if anything, even worse than Trump if for no other reason than Vance is actually smart.
Vance would almost certainly not be interested in owning Greenland. In fact, it's very unlikely that anyone but Trump would be, owning Greenland simply isn't all that interesting.
Of course Vance might be worse in other ways, but he doesn't seem all that into starting wars.
The push for Greenland is coming from factions other than Vance, and those factions would remain. I'd expect Vance to go along with their desire just as much as Trump is. Why wouldn't he?
The US taking over Greenland is essentially an entirely new idea that hasn't really been broadcast before by anyone but Trump. This strongly suggests that the idea doesn't originate from any powerful "faction".
The major proponent appears to be Stephen Miller. There are a lot of reports that the tech bro contingent is eager for it as well.
It's not at all true that this is an entirely new idea, though. Greenland's status has been a topic of discussion ever since (at least) World War 2. What's new is that the administration is signalling that they are willing to actually invade. In the past, that was only discussed in terms of war plans should the US mainland be attacked or there's another world war. Purchasing it, though, is a pretty old idea.
> It's not at all true that this is an entirely new idea, though
I meant entirely new for the current generation of people running the white house, not that it's literally never ever been discussed before. The people who were previously interested in this are mostly long dead.
The purchase of Greenland was most recently the topic of intermittent but somewhat serious discussions between 1940-1955. After the cold war the US government largely lost interest in Greenland, pulled out almost all staff and closed all but one base. If some kind of Greenland acquisition had any significant backing, the US would at least have maintained a more significant presence there.
> The major proponent appears to be Stephen Miller. There are a lot of reports that the tech bro contingent is eager for it as well
It's really really hard to imagine Trump's successor being particularly interested in pursuing Greenland, especially since they wouldn't even have a complete term to work with. There's no indication that some powerful faction exists that'd be particularly interested in Greenland, and there's no obvious reason as to why such a faction would exist.
Because we, collectively, have abdicated our responsibility to elect thoughtful representatives who care about the rule of law and betterment of society.
That abdication has lasted decades and led to what is essentially a cascading failure across multiple levels and wings of government.
The reality is people all over the world are largely the same. This isn't some genetic or cultural makeup of Americans.
The average person isn't going to be out protesting on the streets until something starts to direly impact them. Life is filled with complications and worries enough that human's just choose to allocate their capacity for worry to more immediate issues.
Despite appearances, Trump's power is largely political. If he didn't have the support of the Republican party, he couldn't do most of the things he's doing, since Congress would override him.
But the reality is that he still has significant public support, from a public who get most of their current events from filtered, biased news media. In that way, we've actually become remarkably similar to Russia under Putin.
Republican ID is at around 27% of the electorate and on a downward trend; his support from independents who are much larger than either Dems or Reps is much less.
My statement implied no such thing - merely an opinion that all media is trash and unworthy of trust. For the most part. Same can be said for politicians. For the most part.
If Dems want to govern, they need to run on platforms that are popular with voters in marginal districts; not lefty fantasy stuff that is off-putting to normies.
I mean, I understand the frustration, but this like asking why don't the Russian citizens just, you know, make Putin stop invading Ukraine.
I did my part, but I have 70 million compatriots that are just all too willing to allow the earth scorching as long as it means they don't have to see another black little mermaid.
I've met all sorts of people and they're generally not dumb, so it’s not mass stupidity but maybe narrative capture. When media incentives align with wealth and power, propaganda becomes pervasive and people absorb it without realizing it. Social media algorithms and echo chambers amplify this.
The myth of the American Dream (reinforced by the prosperity gospel and fused with the modern conservative movement) has turned greed and hierarchy into “virtues.”
What’s strange is that the people selling it (Trump, Musk, etc.) come across as profoundly miserable.
I've met all sorts of very rational people, but when you bring up immigrants their brain reasoning centers turn off and they start frothing over Haitians eating dogs.
You have to know how to trigger it, cause Trump knows it extremely well. Studies have shown for a long time the human brain is often wired to prioritize group loyalty over factual accuracy.
Prior to Trump, most white americans only encountered this if they brought a black girlfriend home.
If you think the average American has any real control over what comes out of the White House these days, I have some ocean-front property in Kansas City to sell you.
We can't give up our power just because the situation is difficult. We need to assert as much power as possible. Organize; talk openly about the problem; coordinate plans for voting (yes, I know its early). Pressure politicians. There are things individuals can do, right now. No, it's not enough on our own. But if we don't act as individuals, then we really are screwed.
Because most Americans don't care about what's going on in the rest of the world and basically just care about inflation: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/HHP... (p. 16). Even after everything, a majority of Americans say Trump is doing a better job than Biden, who had worse inflation on his watch (p. 18).
Americans don't care because they don't have to. In Germany, 40-45% of GDP is exports: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?location.... In the U.S., it's just 10-11%: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?location.... Exports to the EU are just over 1% of GDP. To put that into perspective, if exports evaporated completely, that would wipe out just three years of American GDP-per-capita growth. For Germany, it would wipe out more than two decades of GDP per capita growth.
That not only means that 90% of America's economy is domestic. It means that most people have no exposure to the rest of the world through their workplaces. To the extent they do, that experience is with Canada and Mexico--we have twice as much trade with those countries as with the EU. Canada and Mexico have essentially zero meaningful leverage over the U.S. So even for the relatively few Americans who have some exposure to the rest of the world, most of their exposure is to relationships where America is the utterly dominant party.
Inflation, and immigration/border security. Americans still prefer Republicans to Dems on the latter, even though the specifics of current-year ICE enforcement is unpopular. And Dems have so much trouble just saying "we should deport illegal immigrants that commit other crimes and secure our borders" that Republicans will probably win the next election, too.
>In Germany, 40-45% of GDP is exports . . . In the U.S., it's just 10-11%
The contrast is even more stark than those numbers suggest because while the US is basically self-sufficient in petroleum these days, it imports and exports a lot of crude because US refineries are good at refining heavy crude and sour crude, which other countries struggle to refine. The crude produced in the US is the easy-to-refine non-heavy non-sour stuff so it exports some of that and imports an approximately equal amount of difficult-to-refine stuff because that way US refineries can take advantage of their comparative expertise to make a little money.
The point is that it would be easy for US refineries to switch entirely to US-produced crude as their supply, and if they did that, that 10-11% figure would go down a lot.
The reason people tend to think that international trade is important to the US economy is that during the Cold War, Washington used the ability to trade with the US as a carrot to tempt countries into allying with the US against the USSR. But the main motivation for the US to do that was not to enrich Americans but rather to increase the (long-term) military security of Americans.
"They" don't exist. There are no Russians who replied to me in any manner when I said "You need to just overthrow your government" because I never said such a thing to anyone. Nothing I said was sarcastic, it was all meant to be taken extremely literally. You're trying to catch me out as a hypocrite but I didn't do what you said I did.
It's not, it's supposed to make you come up with your own answers, because sometimes the answer is more obvious to see when you see someone else with the same problem, and pretend you're helping them, instead of helping yourself.
Ironically the original intent of the second amendment was closer to "the states should have a lot of people used to using guns so they can raise militias if necessary".
ICE has recruited a lot of those people - you don't see as many weird paramilitary militia groups as you did back in 2020. So I guess it technically worked as intended here. Unfortunately that means more jackboots with "don't tread on me" flags on their unmarked vans.
In some ways some people are literally blinded to the problems they cause because as you say, they do not and some say cannot see the problem.
A good discussion on the topic is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jooEsmOOm2k
tl;dw - authoritarianism and conservatism directly impact your cognition and ability to reason about the world and prefer abductive reasoning and avoiding new information.
"Republicans don’t want to hear this, but there’s a pretty long-standing body of social science research that indicates people who have right-wing attitudes, particularly regarding religion and epistemology, appear to have lower cognitive capacity." (and it gets worse with age because you do not receive new information)
What makes this disillusionment even more difficult to claim is that it’s the same argument that’s used to counter liberals by saying they are all sheep, etc.
Which, leads us to simply morals and ethics. Two sides with two different views who both are angry at the other for not having their views.
That’s not to say both are right, but there’s surely one side that has a lot more care for us all as humans vs thee.
"They are all sheep" is rich coming from the most conformist group in existence. There is a reason they use "blue-haired" as an insult. Their rugged individualism can't tolerate deviating from the flock for acceptable hair styles. Conservatives are clowns. They would be funny, except they are destroying our country.
> enjoy watching their family get beaten bloody, ie. Stockholm syndrome
That's sadism or something, not Stockholm Syndrome which is about victims forming psychological bonds with their abductors, named so after it happened in Stockholm in 1973.
I think it's less about "like to see someone get beaten" and more "see someone who thought they owned the world and could bully others around, crumble under their own incompetence is satisfying", or something like that. Personally, I think it sucks, but I do understand how others can see it in different light, considering the long history of meddling with others.
I'm all for us Americans feeling the pain of electing this idiot, but let's not forget that only 30% of eligible voters actually voted for him. It is a shame that more didn't vote against him, but when the Democrats decided to run someone that the country didn't even remember existed a few months before the election, instead of for the 2 years PRIOR to the election, she never had the chance.
Ah, 30% voted for him, but more than 30% decided it didn’t matter to them which one was in power. It’s unclear to me if that apathetic percentage has actually moved significantly.
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