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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

and it's going to be like that for decades unless november there's a broad sweep of offices and the other party actually exercises power for once and prosecutes politicians criminal behavior instead of that infuriating clemency nonsense they always do.

I'm betting they'll get elected and then sit on their hands as hard as possible calling it a "return to normalcy", fight their constituency, insist on doing absolutely nothing, and then get kicked right back out 2 years later and whine about people not voting for them.

The change has to be sweeping. The current people in power doing crypto pump and dumps: Internet trolls posting rage-baiting AI slop as official government communications as like the FDA and the CDC, then betting on polymarket about who they're going to bomb, teenaged 4chan trolls ctrl+f'ing for keywords to cancel things like cancer research because it has a "woke word" like "diversity" in published medical literature, these should be structurally impossible from getting near power again. Don't ever forget this happened. There's no undo. Decades down the drain.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/halted-nih-clinic...

And the Wild threats to invade neighboring countries. Someone needs to do to America what America did to Venezuela.

But instead, these criminals get to keep their jobs and it goes completely unpunished. Seriously, felony is not the right term. It's way beyond that.

View on HN

I suspect the people of Greenland won't ever trust Americans again.

This isn't just going to go away. You can't just undo what Orange Mussolini is doing, and it'll take far longer than a decade before anything like a trusting relationship can be reestablished.

Not just Greenland. I imagine a lot of people here in Blighty will not take well to the US meddling in the sovereignty of the Falklands.

I do wonder if the sudden noise is due in part due to to Peter Thiel's move to Buenos Aries.

As someone in Blighty just add it to the pile of existing issues with the US and its current government.

Unless the US gives significant military aid (or outright joins them) the Argentinians can't take the Falklands, They are much more heavily defended than they were in the 80's (in fairness it would be hard for them to be less defended than that).

This is just the usual "Things are fucked at home, Distract them with the Malvinas Again" they pull periodically, it's to appeal to his domestic base - about all we (the UK) should do is state it's not a matter for debate and dust off the "If they do the stupid thing again" plans we already have and then carry on.

Bigger problems in the world for us than the Malvinas.

Milei is flailing.

Typical criminal politician move when they’re about to lose power.

At least a generation and that's if they truly clean house and out right apologise.

Not only Greenland but Canadians won't either.

I promise you, no amount of change in US policies or election results is going to fix it.

Canada has realized that it's a national security issue. The issue is not "Republicans" or "TRUMP" , it's bigger than this.

As a European, that would change nothing for me. The issue is systemic disinformation, fundamental lack of empathy and all those echo chambers. As long as this exists, the current situation will repeat or get worse.

> november

Have the Dem restored "appealing" and leadership?

Edit: look, see? About the barbarity of sniping (the counterargument to the at least two hitters at time of edit is not the post from lyu07282). My post is obvious and direct - friend of mine met only days ago a minor intellectual stating that voting the current administration in the usa was "right" given the opponents, and it is one of a long series of encounters. That the acquaintances of the friend were insulted or not in response is irrelevant. That a regime gave power to another out of evident faults is a fact, and if the reaction of some is ventral - "oooh! boo!" - the highway downwards remains paved.

The DSA is pretty much the only hope democrats have left to restore any amount of credibility and they are fought by pretty much everybody right now.

no, i have no trust in them.

There needs to be some set of adults who take this lawless criminal hijacking of the government seriously for what it is.

This is clear as day, not a matter of politics. It's just clear crime. The material evidence is irrefutable and indefensible and it happens multiple times a day.

The democrats will gain a paper-thin majority, but one politician from Bumshart, Nebrahoma will block every important vote and nothing will change.

Feels like I’ve seen this movie before

I don't think it's going to be paper-thin. Paper-thin would be a move of five to ten seats. This doesn't feel like that. This feels more like 30.

All that's going to do, though, is mean that Trump can't get anything through the legislature. The legislature can't get anything passed, either, because Trump can veto it. So he's going to rule even more by executive order, because he won't be able to get cover from Congress.

Any real change will have to be after 2028. The Democrats are likely to hold both houses and the presidency, unless they absolutely blow it (which they could). That's the one chance. If they don't enact concrete change by 2030, then this will be normalized, and the next time it happens will destroy any remains of actual democracy in the US.

Why 2030 instead of 2032? Because there's likely to be a backlash in the election of 2030. There always is. The Democrats may not have the power to do what needs done after 2030.

it's not about legislation and veto, it's about exercising congress's prosecutorial power. I don't want to hear any weak kneed bullshit about "well they'll do it to us".

Don't ever take that bullshit. Nobody else is doing anywhere near the wild level of criminality. Seriously, all this procedure stuff around groups that are breaking the law is insane.

It'd be like if a policeman saw someone rob a place, put the things in the car, and then the thief says "oh but there's a no looking in car rule" and then just drives away.

This is all complete insanity. Charge these people with the dozens of crimes they are committing every day.

You are forgetting the trump card of Supreme Court. They will block any change or effort by Democrats no matter how many seats dems win.

Mitch McConnell holding the seat then railroading in a judge is bad faith cheating and we can't be constrained by procedure and let bad faith actors get away with cheating.

Revoke the appointments and change the rules. SCOTUS isn't some unquestionable papal position with divine right.

The wild corruption of accepting gifts from groups arguing on the court and then using Galaxy brain weasel language to claim it doesn't count. No. Every person in prison has a reason why the law shouldn't have applied to them.

Are we a nation of rules or aren't we?

You follow the rules and maintain integrity of your oath or you're kicked to the curb.

And calling this a both sides political thing is the most tired dodge I've seen. I'm tired of the bullshit excuses why someone with a Trump has can rob bank

It's cute that you think power is going to change hands in November. It'll be his reischtags fire. He's already planning to send ice to police the elections and only in places he's bound to win will people be voting.

Don't fall for his scare tactics on this one. They do not have resources to pull off having ice interfere in elections at scale.

There will be fuckery, and the election will not be fair, but any sort of steal will happen after votes happen.

Sorry but no "unless" left IMO. China has been and is still gaining momentum in every strategic matter, and they are very probably going to lead from now on.

What I am curious about is how that global leadership is going to change them, from citizens to government.

> and it's going to be like that for decades unless in like november or so there's a broad sweep of offices and the other party actually exercises power for once and prosecutes politicians criminal behavior instead of that infuriating clemency nonsense they always do.

European here. I've written about that on Reddit but can't find it because the search there is dogshit so I'll have to write from memory...

We will not trust the US again any time soon, and so is our position regarding the UK. What both of you did, and especially how you got there, is an appalling history, a tale of a completely subverted democracy, and most importantly of a system that never got forced to be updated to centuries of learnings, unlike virtually all developed countries who underwent sometimes multiple wars, revolutions or the occasional peaceful democratisation.

Before we trust you again, you must undergo what we Germans had to post-1945. You have to update your constitutions, yeet out the fossil crap that in no small part led to the situation (FPTP voting, media regulations, in the case of the US making voting either a holiday or move it to Sunday like everyone else), prosecute not just the corrupt politicians but also the oligarchs that backed them, introduce an educational system that is actually worth the name to prevent the youth being corrupted, and demonstrate for many years that you can be trusted again.

Trust is easy to tear apart. All you need is a buffoon shitting in his own diapers [1] or a bus littered with propaganda [2] and a dumbass uneducated populace. But it takes decades and/or immense suffering to (re)build. And for both the US and the UK we gave you not just one chance to show you're better, but multiple. The US first had Bush wo tried to rope us into the Iraq war with his WMD lies, then after Obama came Trump 1, and after Biden came Trump 2, and the final straw regarding the UK and its ever more braindead PM choices was Lettuce Liz [3].

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_Leave_bus

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Truss_lettuce

Trust and trustworthiness. Trust is very hard to win back, once its gone. Trustworthiness makes you willing to rely on a partner. Trustworthiness only builds very slowly over prolonged periods of time, by consistently not betraying ones trust.

>Before we trust you again, you must undergo what we Germans had to post-1945.

Literally just yesterday, Germany's public broadcaster released a 26-minute documentary. "The far right's rise: Is Germany at a breaking point?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOk01r2eoc0

The AfD, which became Germany's top-polling political party for the first time last year, is now the clear leader in polls. It may soon win an absolute majority in a German state election.

The far-right is also widely projected to win the 2027 French presidential election:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2027_F...

And Switzerland seriously considered immigration restrictions much harsher than anything contemplated by the US.

It's interesting to see how leftism changes as you cross the Atlantic. In the US it's usually baseless moral self-flagellation; in Europe it's usually baseless moral preening. In neither case do the facts seem to be particularly important.

"we gave you not just one chance to show you're better" is such a fascinating thing for you to say. For years our leaders told you to be less dependent on us. Now you're speaking as though your dependency on us was some kind of favor you were doing for us. It's mind-blowing how out-of-touch you guys can be.

Please elaborate, whats so strict about Switzerlands restrictions? Why shouldnt a country be allowed to limit the people they want to have from immigration?

(Exercise for you: Try to get a passport from Liechtenstein, even if you work there permanently for a Liechtenstein company, its unlikely that you can even rent an appartment there!)

>Please elaborate, whats so strict about Switzerlands restrictions? Why shouldnt a country be allowed to limit the people they want to have from immigration?

Precisely. Why is it that people only clutch their pearls with horror when this principle is applied to the US?

I suspect because we don't regularly hear of masked armed thugs in Switzerland beating up, sometimes killing or throwing into concentration camps innocent people who were looking to immigrate.

Nothing wrong with making immigration laws strict, if that's what a country wants. That is totall fine.

But there is no justification to beat people up, kill them or throw them into concentration camps. Just tell them no in a professional manner and politely send them back to their own country (also, not some random contry they haver never been in).

ICE has killed US citizens too, they don’t limit themselves to immigrants

Yes you are absolutely correct.

How many Swiss citizens have they detained in concentration camps and deported to places they've never been and have no connections?

You haven't really the addressed the point of the US not being trusted.

Even if the EU becomes far right, far right governments don't work or trust each other. What you are saying is moot.

As an American, I don't necessarily want the US to be trusted. I want foreign governments to put pressure on us to stop developing omnicidal AI. The sooner the "rogue AI agents" conversation links up with the "USA is untrustworthy" conversation, the better.

As long as ASML is helping to supply OpenAI with AI chips, Europe still trusts the US too much. https://pauseai.info/amsterdam-protest-2025-december

I'm not as optimistic as you are, because a component of the rightward shift is the international collaboration of the respective movements' leaders. For example, US republicans closely worked together with Orbans party and Germanys AfD, exchanging strategies and such. This is also reflected across the media landscape in these countries - when new fabricated talking points pop up across US conservative spaces, it usually takes 2-4 weeks until the same talking points are repeated by many German right-wing media outlets.

Of course these alliances won't survive forever, as these movements have to continually expand their definitions of "out-groups" to keep their core "in-groups" satisfied, since they keep making their countries' issues worse by attempting fixes that are easy, simple, and wrong. But when a movement is built around the rejection of any uncomfortable history or research mixed with a huge dose of anti-intellectualism, it is fundamentally incapable of ever reflecting and learning beyond what the personal gain of their leaders.

Most of these alliances are held together by Russia though. When Putin falls, they all fall.

Why do you think so? The US funding won't suddenly stop, especially given how much the GOP hates the EU. Plenty of other rich people too.

Unless there are objectively good reasons to expect this we must stay vigilant, since if we gamble on infighting and it goes poorly, the consequences could become horrifying.

> The US funding won't suddenly stop

yup, but the utter majority of foreign funding that was found in the AfD and the other far-right parties' scandals came from Russia. The propaganda they spout comes straight from Russia. The bot farms amplifying their propaganda are mostly Russian.

Sure, the US MAGA network, the super riches (Musk, Thiel, ...) aren't to be underestimated. But they are breaking apart already and without a cohesive force connecting them, they will be much less powerful.

Sure, so far the funds came from Russia, but the US government has openly talked about increasing their funding.

I don't think that their propaganda is fully dependent on Russia. IMO their strategy was really easy to observe during/after the 2020 election: they do contentious things with barely any justification, then watch conservative social media spaces for explanations/justifications that users naturally share & amplify. From these options, they select ones advantageous to them, and then turn them into talking points. This machine doesn't need to get talking points from Russia! They just need a halfway charismatic leader to keep it going, especially due to my next point.

The bot farms are no longer needed thanks to AI! I guarantee you, they are already running plenty of bots themselves. And since these days most social media & news media companies are aligned with/owned by them, they can easily optimize their approach well enough to become dangerously effective.

I just don't see a reason to feel so safe about them breaking apart before major damage is done. Just look at how genuinely friendly Trump acts towards most highly authoritarian leaders, compared to the way he acts towards most other leaders. I assume they'll definitely break apart after e.g. the EU is broken up, because then the US will squeeze everyone else. But under Trump they're going to keep it up, as far as I can see.

You write as if you have confabulated yourself into being Europe's official spokesperson. This is all a bit high-handed.

I'm not really sure how you are comparing Trump's US - responsible for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, tearing up the Iranian nuclear deal and then starting a war to reimpose it that has created a global energy crisis, kidnapping Maduro and threatening to invade Greenland, beginning a global trade war, giving up on climate mitigation, nuclear treaties and AI safety - with the UK over the same period.

Liz Truss is not really Trump's equivalent. She achieved exactly nothing in the UK, let alone the world, in her few weeks in office. It's also worth pointing out she didn't win a general election: she became PM via the Conservative Party's internal selection process.

> I'm not really sure how you are comparing Trump's US - responsible for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, tearing up the Iranian nuclear deal and then starting a war to reimpose it that has created a global energy crisis, kidnapping Maduro and threatening to invade Greenland, beginning a global trade war, giving up on climate mitigation, nuclear treaties and AI safety - with the UK over the same period.

The Brexit shitshow took years to resolve from the Brexit vote to the actual Brexit event and absolutely hogged attention all over the EU apparatus. We could have used the energy we had to expend on that crap (including trying to prevent a restart of the Ireland-related violence) to instead make the EU itself better, react to the multitude of crises happening during the time, or furthen the EU integration. But no, we had the constant noise of Brexit all the time.

> Liz Truss is not really Trump's equivalent. She achieved exactly nothing in the UK, let alone the world, in her few weeks in office. It's also worth pointing out she didn't win a general election: she became PM via the Conservative Party's internal selection process.

Which is even worse from EU perspective. PMs/Presidents changing every 4-ish years, okay, that's pretty standard. But it's hard to negotiate anything, knowing that your negotiation partner can get booted at any time.

OK, fair enough, Brexit generated a lot of political noise and was a bureaucratic headache. Not really the same thing as Trump's America though.

Well, the only thing the Trump admin did that really hurt us was the tariff trade war and the Iran war. The rest sucked for those affected, but had little consequence for Europe, and so the prevailing attitude here is "we can't do anything anyway, why should it matter for us"...

Feel like there’s an opportunity for a faulty towers reversal where we apologise for Brexit, Boris and Truss. If it helps any, 48% of us wanted to stay. This Brit has a profound sense of wehmut. Seems like the whole continent is struggling with nationalism though, no? Hearing AFD is on the rise

> Feel like there’s an opportunity for a faulty towers reversal where we apologise for Brexit, Boris and Truss.

There certainly is, and I for one would certainly appreciate it. The problem is, with Reform polling as high as it does... there is a pretty high chance that they torpedo any negotiations :(

>We will not trust the US again any time soon

That's a high horse you're sitting on there!

When your nation voted poorly last time you picked a homicidal maniac who killed people in death factories. Americans helped you then, at extreme cost.

Trump pumps-and-dumps the world economy, but his approval rating is also below 1/3. Most Americans clearly don't approve, so why should we not trust them?

If all it takes for democratic nations to stop working together is that they elect a crook once, we're all doomed. Many european nations are very close to picking their own "Trumps" in the next elections.

In a democracy, any one crook's influence should be short-lived. That's the whole point of a democracy.

We need to help each other remain democracies, as the alternatives are so much worse.

That said, sometimes help comes in the form of removing the gold to say "you're out of line buddy".

> Trump pumps-and-dumps the world economy, but his approval rating is also below 1/3. Most Americans clearly don't approve, so why should we not trust them?

because all it takes is for someone not as toddler-y as Trump to run for the job, the "moderates" in the GOP are mostly gone.

> In a democracy, any one crook's influence should be short-lived. That's the whole point of a democracy.

The problem is, Trump's influence will last for much much longer because y'all appoint your Supreme Court judges for lifetime.

> If all it takes for democratic nations to stop working together is that they elect a crook once, we're all doomed. Many european nations are very close to picking their own "Trumps" in the next elections.

The thing is, the US keeps electing warmongering crooks (Bush 1, Bush 2 and Trump all engaged in definitely illegal wars), and Trump was reelected by the populace despite literally attempting a putsch. In any decent democracy, this would have yielded him and the ringleaders a lifetime in prison, if not capital punishment.

>despite literally attempting a putsch

To me it never made any sense. The buffalo hat guys clearly had no greater plan, and the BBC actually had to apologize for faking a clip to make it seem Trump ordered it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/13/bbc-doctored-tru...

The BBC spreads to all of the EU's other news outlets, so Europeans "know" there was a putsch attempt based on a fake clip. Literally fake news, which plays directly into Trumps narrative and adding to the teflon layer he seems covered in.

Exaggerations, bad faith reporting, assumptions of guilt based on hunches - that's counterproductive if you really want to hold power accountable.

It's very important that the accuser of a crook is not a known liar. Because then even the true accusations won't stick and the crook gets away.

More accurately, nothing was "faked", the footage shown was of things Trump actually said, with a lot of "weave" (aka Trump waffle) removed.

The "apology" (BBC regrets the cut was not obvious to all) included:

   “We strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim.”

which is hardly the hallmark of an apology.

>nothing was "faked", the footage shown was of things Trump actually said

Of course he said the words, but not together as the sentence the BBC reported. The meaning was faked.

What the BBC did here was literally equivalent to filming someone saying "We should support Kamala and fight Trump at every opportunity" and cutting it to say "We should support Trump at every opportunity".

No honest person can accept that. No honest person can accept Trump either, for many reasons, but perhaps an actual coup-attempt is not one of those reasons.

We all live in bubbles these days, it's not easy. :-/

Your post sounds like concern trolling to me. I'm not a European and I watched the whole speech in real time and it was clear to me that he was attempting a coup.

If you think the buffalo hat guy was a coup attempt, fine - I have no interest in defending Trump.

I just wanted to highlight a common bubble-truth that turned out to not be as true as many think. You may be convinced he tried a coup, but does the BBC story perhaps move the needle a little bit towards understanding how someone else might feel that maybe he didn't?

Accusations of trolling is depressing, but I appreciate you actually writing a comment instead of just smashing the downvote.

> We need to help each other remain democracies, as the alternatives are so much worse.

Trump and his cronies are openly attempting to break the EU apart via funding and amplifying right-wing movements across the EU. These movements are collaborating, sharing strategies and spreading the same talking points, while they're using their control over social media platforms etc. to suffocate our democracies.

I would love to be able to trust the US. But the guy currently pissing against everyone's legs was re-elected after an attempted Putsch. How could they ever remove all MAGA influence from all of society and government?

Even if the US proves me wrong and manages to turn the wheel around, I won't see the US as an ally again until 1-2 decades pass without republicans taking any control over the government.

> Most Americans clearly don't approve

Except they did. Votes for Grump in 2016 were completely understandable, sympathizable even. Responsibility for the train wreck of a first term didn't fall at the feet of the voters - it's explainable by one politician being an utter shitbag once in office. And for the most part our institutions did function to contain most of the (direct) damage.

But Grump 2024 was a known quantity. The votes in 2024 demonstrate that the average American is either proudly ignorant of the actual policies they're choosing (ie fully steeped in propaganda that hides/downplays the destruction), or actively malicious towards the rest of the world (while benefiting from a privileged international position). Neither one bodes well for future decisions, even if there is some political will to pull up from the current autocratic destruction.

And no, the "we didn't know how bad he was going to be" of a 33% approval rating doesn't make up for that. Grump was a known quantity for this election, and the only way someone could have "not known" is by actively rejecting listening to their fellow citizens. Which goes right back to willful ignorance.

>The votes in 2024 demonstrate that the average American is either proudly ignorant of the actual policies they're choosing

That's a simplistic take.

Trump had less than 50% of the popular vote even though his opponent was clearly showing signs of dementia. The last-minute replacement had spent too much time being the "defund the police/eat the rich" sidekick to Biden and was clearly not representative of the views of the average American. She still got almost as many votes as Trump, from Americans who wanted to vote "Not Trump".

Seems to me the average American had little choice. All the Democrats had to do was field a candidate that could finish a coherent sentence mirroring the average American sentiment and they'd have landslide victory. But they didn't.

> too much time being the "defund the police/eat the rich" sidekick to Biden

It seems like you're merely demonstrating one dynamic by which people are able to maintain that proud ignorance - buying into simplistic feel good narratives about the "other side" which swamp their reasoning capabilities, absolving them of responsibility for their decision. This is a large part of being "fully steeped in propaganda".

For the actual reality, Harris was a public prosecutor - essentially a police officer's best friend. Neither Biden nor Harris were looking to destroy the federal government. More than anything, they represented the status quo rather than this nonsense you're repeating about "defund the police/eat the rich".

I'm a libertarian who hadn't voted for a major party in a national election until 2020. I had to come to terms with getting older, more conservative, and having to holding my nose and voting for the corpo status quo. But it was the reasonable, responsible choice. I can most certainly understand people who stayed home or voted third party. But voting for the known quantity destructionist and rationalizing it with nonsense propaganda is exactly what I was talking about.

There might be an argument to be made that your argument could be used to placate the rest of the world if we manage to turn the ship around but without Constitutional reforms that would keep the destructionists from gaining power again - "we were tricked" may work yet again. But as far as the actual question, no, people who voted for Grump in 2024 should not be allowed to look away or disown the horrible mistake they chose to make. It is in fact a necessary part of any reconciliation process.

>For the actual reality, Harris was a public prosecutor - essentially a police officer's best friend.

That's not helpful though, as she also made multiple public expressions of support for the defund movement, the protests-turned-riots after the Floyd murder, and the BLM movement.

I can't help thinking that made her a weak choice for both sides of that divide. Is she the tough on crime option or the anti-police one? Where does she actually stand?

I think if she had gone all-in on the tough-on-crime track she'd still have gotten all the protestor votes, and perhaps also the "can we stop police brutality without burning cars" votes. Which I think is a sizable chunk, perhaps even the most common opinion on the matter.

Anyway, all this to say that the explanation for the current situation is not as simple as "half of all Americans are crazy and evil". Current approval ratings clearly say most Americans know they effed up.

My first response was to a German who clearly felt the US as a whole is a lost cause, without acknowledging that Germany is in the process of making the same mistake. I wonder if the Germans will realize they effed up as quickly as the Americans have?

Both sides of the atlantic are throwing stones from glass houses, when we should be cooperating. The dictators are rejoicing...

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