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Donald Trump Stuns With 'Maybe We Shouldn't Even Be There' Admission About Iran War (www.huffpost.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] [S] 81 points 7 months ago (50 children)

I just love the quote:

So, we need, I, I would really, I’m demanding...

He starts with needing help, starts to say he just really wants it, then pivota to demanding it.

The fact that he went thru those steps shows how much pressure he's facing.

His two biggest wings of influence has been Israel and American christo-fascists, if they start pulling him in opposite ways, he can't hold onto both.

He's fucked, but so are the rest of us by extension. Hopefully just till midterms at least.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    I feel like it is more basic than that.

    I think his quote transitioning from asking for help to demanding others “step up” just reveals something he was taught early on—“never show weakness”.

    Along with “never admit wrong doing” and “deny ‘til you die”, if you just set a simpleton up with a few basic, immoral, rules and hundreds of millions of dollars, you get Trump.

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  • [–] 44 points 7 months ago (18 children)

    The thing is, as a foreigner, and speaking bluntly, this is on the entire American population, voting him in once was one thing, but not dealing with Jan 6 harshly under Bidens administration did nothing more than encourage them and their billionaire backers. IF there's no false flag operation to cancel the midterms and IF presidential elections are held and the democrats get into power, you lot are going to have to overhaul your entire system to ensure another Trump doesn't happen. And honestly speaking I can't realistically see that happening.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 7 months ago* (13 children)

    The thing is, as a foreigner, and speaking bluntly, this is on the entire American population

    No problem.

    To put it bluntly I don't expect Americans to understand our political system, so I'm not surprised when foreigners clearly don't. Shits complicated and nonsensical

    I just wish more would ask questions instead of sharing uninformed opinions as facts, but maga thinking isn't reserved for Americans...

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (12 children)

    In the age of misinformation and people using influencers and podcasters as "news and information" it's become the norm unfortunately. I tend to try and get as broad a view as possible and filter out the bullshit. And admittedly I don't understand the PAC system or the electoral college, and I can't condone lobbying as we've seen it's detrimental effect on general rights to Americans as well as pushing policy. Again, these don't affect us as foreigners, but they tend to push certain policies that end up with wider reaching effects.

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    or the electoral college

    That's the part that's relevant...

    Whether a state goes 51% of 100%, counts the same.

    This leads to depressed turnout and obviously no elections being on "all Americans". Most of our votes for president don't matter because most states go one way or the other.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    That's rather f'ed up.

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    That's not even the worst...

    Our House of representatives is supposed to make up for it, but each rep represents over 20x the people they did when the country was founded.

    The reason we lost so much representation, is the room they occasionally meet in would be too cramped if they kept adding chairs to it.

    But just in general, it's almost always best to blame political leaders for a government's actions and not just blame every person living there.

    Good and bad.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    the cap on House seats was a deliberate move to restrict the power of cities/progressive forces of the time, it wasnt some accident/short-sightedness

    make it more expensive to campaign (because you have to reach so many more people) and you effectively force out independent canidates

    even if House seats were increased to something sane like 150-200k pop/seat (currently at 800k+, iirc), the senate effectively gives 2/3rds of national political power to 1/3rd of the country. there is no means for the House to completely bypass the Senate

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    But just in general, it’s almost always best to blame political leaders for a government’s actions and not just blame every person living there.

    Good and bad.

    Agreed, frustration gets to me, considering I come from the Middle East I tend to have very conflicting emotions, having grown up in England I appreciate law and order, equality and an attitude of live and let live. But when my friends and family are in direct danger, my anger rages.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Whether a state goes 51% of 100%, counts the same.

    While the Electoral college has it's own major issues. Awarding of the votes is done because 48 State Legislatures believe all the votes should go to the winner. Maine and Nebraska award their vote on a semi-proportional system. A true proportional system would go a long way of addressing some of the major issues such as a someone's Presidential vote being utterly meaningless. A Republican in California or Democrat in Idaho. (https://electoralvotemap.com/which-states-split-their-electoral-votes/)

    This is the problem when people say "Vote Blue". Sure voting Democrat/Republican for US House or lower elections does matter, Senate and Presidential elections? If you live in a Red State, a vote for the Senate or President is completely meaningless in having a say of who gets elected.

    Sure, states flip from red to blue and vice versa. However, that only happens if Parties really invest in that state to change it. Parties don't have unlimited funds, they pay attention to swing states which would have a better return on investment.

    It's the inherent flaw of first past the post/winner take all style of voting.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    considering the state of mainstream american news, pretty sure those listening to "influencers" are better informed. especially as far as iran/isreal/american imperialism in general is concerned

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (1 child)

    The PAC system is legal bribery with the added bonus of the public being unaware of who is doing the bribing.

    Nations use it to "influence" our representatives, from Israel to Saudi Arabia; the USA is open to all interests with enough cash involved.

    Corporations and billionaires also prefer Super PACs, as what they actually want can be very unpopular publicly (like keeping minimum wage down to seven dollars an hour).

    So, for example, if your (the briber) position is right wing, you contribute to the R party; if the R party won't accommodate your position for some reason, the Ds will (but it will cost you a lot more); if your position is left wing, you contribute to the D party; if the D party won't accommodate your position, the Rs will (but it will cost you a lot more).

    With enough money, you can actually change the major parties political platform. See the history of unions, for example. The Democrats were once the "labor party", when unions were 40% of the workforce in the 1940s. Over the decades, it's now down to 10%. Or "state's rights", the Republicans position for many decades. Now, today they are all about flexing federal power.

    This has absolutely nothing to do with what the American voters actually want at any time.

    Electoral college? Oh dear God I won't even try to explain, it's different for every state (like a province, and there are 50).

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Ah yes, the entire US population has the power to do those things. Literally every person, including children.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (29 children)

    you still think voting will get you out of the fascism you invited in?

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (17 children)

    Of course not. If the first move on a chess board was to simply take your opponent’s king, that would always be the first move in every game.

    Having the midterm vote suppressed is just one sacrificial pawn in the direction of what needs to be done to eradicate fascism.

    Knowing what to do isn’t that valuable if you don’t time it correctly. It’s not just one person or party. It is systemic and requires a critical mass of history to be successful.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (16 children)

    hmmm with every erosion of your civil rights and liberties, the job of getting the pedophile president out is just going to be harder and harder... you don't need to wait until the last possible recourse is an actual assassination.

    It is beyond my understanding how nobody seems to be actually calling for a General Strike in the USA... and the feeble attempts at marches (which are good) are specifically called far apart and on weekends to ensure they can simply be ignored by the regime

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    There’s plenty of local calls for a general strike, but the media (social, mainstream, all of them) are actively squashing it because they’re owned by the billionaires who are the true benefactors of fascism.

    Plus the fact that close to 60% of us would just be flat broke if we miss a paycheck, it’s not an easy hill to get over.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    The news did a very effective job of nullifying the No Kings protests. Hard to get a unified movement in a country larger than Europe going when it doesn't even get on the nightly news.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    "Do it when people are working, not when they are able to attend."

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  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    so you don't know what a general strike is?

    it's not a party, the idea is that people don't work or consume to stop economic activity

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    So you don't know that No Kings was not an economic protest?

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  • [–] -4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I did.. I am saying this is why it was completely ineffectual

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    It was ineffectual because it wasn't the thing you want it to be?

    Ok.

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  • [–] -2 points 7 months ago

    It was ineffectual because it caused nothing to change... you still have a pedophile rapist president acting as a King with no accountability.

    If anything, the orange kiddy fiddler is acting even more bold now than when you held those marches

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    While I do understand the difficulties, I think you keep underestimating how shitty it will be to become a functional slave under fascism with no civil liberties or rights.

    Yes, being broke is a problem... getting killed for not addressing a cop as "sir" sucks even more

    The more you wait, the harder it will be

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    Obligatory reminder that the US is geographically monstrous and organizing a nationwide strike of enough people would be extremely difficult to pull off. We're also extremely tied to our employment for little luxuries like healthcare, and we have very weak worker protection laws, and right now seems like an especially bad time to lose your job protesting for the sake of the half of the country that absolutely loves what Trump is doing, whether they admit it openly or not.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    General Strike in the USA

    FYI, this is somehow illegal in the USA.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    so?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    A lot of us are organizing and are going out pretty much every weekend to protests. I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety. Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here.

    Our current situation really is the culmination of almost 70 years of rightwing efforts. It’s a long listen but worth checking out How Conservatism Won by Robert Evans. He lays out in a clear concise way “how a consortium of rich failsons got together to fund a network of right wing think tanks and shift American culture in a fun new direction. (note: it was not actually fun at all).” They’ve been very successful and those think tanks are now pipelines used to funnel ideological purists into powerful positions like our current Supreme Court.

    The shadowy cabals the rightwing says are behind everything is classic projection again, they're controlled by shadowy cabals of rich people. One of the primary ghouls/traitors responsible for the attempted overthrow of our government on J6 was Roger Stone, the same traitorous ratfucker who began his career working for Nixon and has a fucking Nixon tattoo on his back. It's really impossible to overstate how bad these people are and they're winning.

    The coup was successful, they're in power and if they don't want to give it up they won't.

    Get to know people in your community. Take an interest in growing food, learn how to fix things. Establish secondary lines of communication and start preparing.

    https://generalstrikeus.com/

    https://www.dsausa.org/

    https://pslweb.org/

    https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/

    https://socialistra.org/

    https://www.socialistalternative.org/

    https://afsc.org/news/how-create-mutual-aid-network

    https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/raids/

    https://mutualaidhub.org/

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Maybe if people actually showed the fuck up it might. But there's so many "voting doesn't do shit" people that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    The way I see it, there are 3 choices.

    1. Vote (effectively). If you still have a glimmer of hope that things can be changed for the better, you need to be doing this. Job one is to keep republicans out of power, vote for whomever is going to beat them. Job 2 is to push Democrats further left in the primaries. Mamdani showed us that this can happen, reluctantly at first, but the party will respond to its voters. Key word there is "voters" if you don't vote, they don't know about you, and won't give a fuck about you.

    2. Disruption. I can't in good faith call for violence, but if you genuinely believe it is impossible to fix the system by voting, you need to be in the streets disrupting day to day operation of the system that oppresses you. Protest, strike, squat, whatever you gotta do, but you can't do it halfway. If you aren't literally ready to fight for your life then, this option isn't for you.

    3. Do nothing. You can just sit around and bitch about things. Whatever happens is (almost) equally your fault as it is the people who voted for it. You'll end up against the wall just like the other two groups, but it will take the nazis you left the door open for, a little bit longer to get around to you. I've got no respect for the people in this group, no one should TBH.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    you are not wrong… but I was referring to the pedo president sabotagging elections… if he is OK comitting the country to war to cover his past crimes, cancelling elections would be a walk in the park

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  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago*

    Do you really think "voting" will, for example, bring about real change, like universal healthcare?

    Over 70% of voters want universal healthcare, as polls have demonstrated for over THIRTY YEARS. It doesn't matter.

    Think of voting as participating in a poll or something, like voting for your favorite "American Idol".

    It won't actually change the show, it's just part of the entertainment.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Invited in? I didn’t invite any of this in. Not by my vote, not by my letters to government officials, and not by my protests.

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