Shameful day for America where the President and VP two on one berate a visiting leader (guest even) who is fighting for his countries freedom against a totalitarian regime.
It is sobering to see women and children shelled in their homes and hospitals. 20 Days in Mariupol is free to watch on Youtube (Won the Academy Award for Best Documentary last year):
The connection with Europe would appear to benefit millions of Americans.
Very broadly I think the US has done a poor job explaining just how beneficial America's position in the world is to America itself. You see it reflected in the USAID stuff too. Soft power pays dividends in ways that aren't immediately apparent so when it's gone people just don't care all that much. It'll be interesting to see where this all lands 20 or so years from now and how the US public feels about it then.
It’s not perfectly efficient, and it can suffer from the problem you’re describing, but far less severely than the US system does.
Winner take all (one winner): FPTP, single member district ranked ballots
Proportional (multiple winners): Party lists, MMP, multi-member district ranked ballots (STV)
Diplomacy and soft power is a complex, nuanced concept that can't be explained easily.
This brings a wider perspective, which is why what Elon is doing is so scary because it takes out that wider perspective
But in all seriousness, my bewilderment isn't so much that Reagan's stance against Russia was discarded (parties change over time, as well as the relationship between nations), but that it happened with zero pushback and zero discourse. The party leader said, with no explanation, "Our #1 enemy is now our ally" and the party simply said "But of course, no one should doubt this!"
For quite a long time (decades) Soviet Union/Russia was vilified like no other…
Heck, even the general public knew that Russia was the only country that could wipe us off the map with their nukes…
Current leaders grew up and were in the prime of their life during those times…
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-put...
If you're interested in how a democracy should handle itself in such a situation, take a look at Justin Trudeau's recent speech pledging support for Ukraine.
Don't be a sucker. [^1]
Maybe the current administration can work more efficiently if Russia and the US have a single spokesman?
Horrible. I feel so badly for the Ukrainian people.
With two candidates and a variety of issues, you are very likely going to have to compromise on something. You can support Trump's immigration policy, DOGE efforts, and more; without thinking that the US should help Putin restore the Soviet Union.
Personally, I could not bring myself to vote for either of the presidential candidates. I only voted on the down ballot races.
Sure, maybe not 51% of the country wanted this. But I would be shocked if it's less than 38%.
That number is FAR too large.
Abstention just buys you ownership of whatever happens, regardless of who wins.
You really looked at both candidates and decided both were equally bad?
Trump has no moral compass; and the only thing that matters is his ego.
Harris had domestic policy that I almost universally disagree with.
I did vote in the primary, but it didn't matter at that point because the only other option was Haley. I would have been enthusiastic about any other Republican primary candidate.
I can't speak to the level of public support for Ukraine, though it seems most Trump supporters don't really care about Ukraine and want the US to stop spending money on foreign wars. Despite anecdotes about Trump voters being upset by executive branch cuts, polling suggests ~95% of Trump voters are ok with or actively pleased with his gutting of the government.
The median US voter does want this.
> Personally, I could not bring myself to vote for either of the presidential candidates.
Then you voted for Trump, in that case. If you can vote, and don't, then that's tacit approval of what voters choose.
There's one thing T cares about. T.
Zelenski said bad things about him to the dems. Noughty Zelenski, let's publicly humiliate him with the help of my dog V.
Has he always been like that or is it something repulsive he's picking up from Trump?
He needs serious exposure to mature, cultured, well-mannered gentlemen and to get some pointers from honest, respectable US presidents and vice-presidents like he's getting none of now. Or he'll never reagin his former integrity, if he actually had enough to make a difference, it makes me wonder.
RIP Elon RIP Vance etc
This is what the global alt-right movement, which the AfD is a part of, wants.
They see democracy as a weak system and want to replace it by a kind of neo-feudalism.
It’s clear that Ukraine, that fights against the Russian version of that system, must be made to be an example than democracy can not win.
For that reason, this smells of a pre-planned ambush.
He got his start cosplaying as a former downtrodden redneck from the holler, when he’s from suburban Ohio.
>> “I do wonder, how do you make that decision?” Romney mused to me as Vance was degrading himself on the campaign trail that summer. “How can you go over a line so stark as that—and for what?” Romney wished he could grab Vance by the shoulders and scream: This is not worth it! “It’s not like you’re going to be famous and powerful because you became a United States senator. It’s like, really? You sell yourself so cheap?” The prospect of having Vance in the caucus made Romney uncomfortable. “How do you sit next to him at lunch?”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/mitt-ro...
And even then, he only barely won the election. It was the slimmest margin since the 1800s.
He doesn't have the mandate he thinks he does, but he's a megalomaniac led by his nose ring by the psycopathic megalomaniacs behind Project 2025, which ~90% (more?) of Americans said that they didn't like when they saw it.
This is how the American people has chosen to represent themselves. The American people created the system, and the Americans knew their own system. The system produced this guy.
Now, why does it matter which percentage did he get? He got enough, did not he? And obviously he does have the mandate, because he is able to do things his way.
To me, staying home and not voting in an election is a silent vote for whoever the winner ends up being. These people soft-voted for Trump.
Nobody has any right to claim surprise. If you couldn't see this coming, you are stupid, full stop.
Yeah…
Egg shortages.
Fatal measles outbreaks.
Airplane crashes.
Crypto scams.
Tariffs.
Betrayal of allies.
Pardons and special favors for insurrectionists, crooked mayors, and online pimps.
The American people voted for change!
• 77,935,722 voted against this administration (50.2%)
With an estimated population of 341M, there were approximately 90M people who were eligible to vote (over 18, and not prevented from voting from a conviction) that did not vote.
The American people DO NOT support Trump. He only won due to voter suppression and a massive amount of ad money.
Of the voters who didn't vote for Trump or Harris, certainly some of them would have voted for Trump (or not voted at all) if their third-party candidate didn't exist. Put another way, if we had universal approval or ranked-choice voting, it's plausible that Trump would have ended up with a popular vote majority (but it could have gone either way, certainly).
> there were approximately 90M people who were eligible to vote that did not vote.*
Whenever an election is decided, I generally move all of those uncast votes over to the tally of whoever won. Staying home and not voting is the same thing as a soft-vote for whoever wins.
> voter suppression
I wish we could really quantify this. Not that it would change MAGA minds about anything, but it could be useful to know.
> a massive amount of ad money
Harris had a similarly massive amount of ad money, too, and it didn't help.
Honestly, I think the failures of the Democratic party machine as a whole are just as responsible for Harris's loss as GOP underhandedness is.
> Democratic party machine as a whole are just as responsible for Harris's loss as GOP underhandedness is.
This we agree on.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-spent-290-million-2...
It isn't just the money, but whom it benefits. Someone almost no discretionary income, 100 or 300 is a ton of money. Musk won't even notice the 290M.
Dems basically handed this election to Trump; Biden running when he had memory issues, then handing it to Harris whose numbers were questionable against Trump(with the braindead excuse that only she could get the funds), along with generally not responding to issues voters obviously care about(border), trying to ignore issues like excessive wokeness/DEI instead of admitting it is a problem.
Trump is going to lie and obviously only cares about himself, some % of rubes will vote for that, but you don't have to make it so damn easy for him.
This is a problem because if you stop caring about Ukraine falling, you will start to care when Poland, baltic countries, etc., get overrun next. Zelenskyy wasn't joking when he mentioned American shores.
You can't hold free elections when you're not free.
US held elections in 1864
France held elections in 1871 during a large war where parts of the country were under Prussian occupation
Korea held elections in 1952
Vietnam held elections in 1956
Iraq held elections in 2005 with large parts of the country under foreign backed insurgent occupation
Georgia has held elections in 2008, 2012, and 2020.
Ukraine itself held elections in 2014 and 2019. Either the Donbas and Crimea are Ukrainian or they're not.
* millions of Ukrainians in the occupied territories * 1000km frontline that is extremely thin in places. should they pull troops off the line to vote, or run ballot boxes to the trenches? * their Constitution forbids it * the Russians will attack polling places, possibly killing hundreds
Britian didn't have an election for 10 years because of WWII, so it's not like it's unprecedented for a democracy to put elections on hold during an existential crisis.
1. The entire affair provides cover for continued operations against Russia without great power escalation. Hopefully Putin doubles down and loses even more military assets. If you don't understand this point take a day or two to think it through.
2. Ukraine cannot win (its objectives) this war without Western troops at some point & that's been clear since the start. US objectives have been met, with Russia unable to mount a conventional threat to Europe; with its hardware now discredited against Western weapons - much to the dismay of the Sino-Russia-Iranian axis; and with European underspending on defense & overreliance on Russian energy now reversing.
3. Get used to the new USA. We are going to very publicly assert our power and by doing so hopefully deter war in Asia.
Anyone who doesn't understand 1-3 needs to meditate on this and grow a pair.
That’s not deterring war, it’s appeasement. Ask the great European powers (and eventually the US) how that worked against Hitler…
All that post WW2 good will and trust just went poof. You think Germany or France is going to support us after this?
But I dont know why Vance even jumped in like that. It both undercut Trump and forced Zelensky to voice his disagreement.
But then they both attacked him for some perceived lack of gratitude which just spiraled out of control.
People need to understand that who they're dealing with a trolls, not idiots or geniuses. The two negotiating strategies are to 1. provoke 2. create uncertainty. This seems to be extremely efficient at getting them attention, emotionally exhausting opposition, keeping counterparts off-balance and has the benefit of being able to make them a lot of money, considering that they're in control of market instability.
He sent hundreds of thousands of his own people into a meat grinder to fight for the privilege of being ruled by his corrupt government (recognised as one of the most corrupt governments in Europe) instead of a different corrupt government, with his thugs literally going door-to-door dragging unwilling youths off to die. The average Ukrainian wasn't any better off under Ukrainian government than under Russian government, and they'd certainly be much better off alive than dead.
It was always ironic that Trump kept a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office but after today, it's almost obscene.
Past performance is, in fact, often quite a reliable guarantee of future results.
This Ukraine debacle wasn't the clean win he wanted.
It's a binary outcome from his perspective. If he obtains his his key objectives at some survivable cost, that's a win for him.