But you can be mad and still love someone.

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[–] 27 points 15 hours ago (14 children)

Why did you trust us? We do this shit all the time and always have.

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  • [–] 41 points 15 hours ago (7 children)

    It was more that there is an understanding that the US is allowed to be an empire with benefits kind of trust. The US is the world police that protects those that give them good trade terms and exploits those that don't for their own gain. Countries/people turn a blind eye to the US coup-ing a smaller country provided they are a part of the benefits. The US could have 4% of the population but use 25% of the materials and 33% of the energy provided that structure holds. It is seen as a better standing than the alternative. We call ourselves allies, others call us a part of the racket.

    Then Trump started turning on the allies and the whole agreement started to burn.

    I have said it for a while, Trump seems to be acting in a degrowth manner. I don't think it is because he is a genius but because he is an idiot.

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  • [–] 20 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

    Yeah, we had a lot of what is termed "soft power" in that it's the ability to negotiate and have market strength to make it worth it. This entire regime doesn't realize that and squandered decades of it in a single year when he thought he had full control.

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  • [–] 13 points 13 hours ago* (1 child)

    Trump seems to be acting in a degrowth manner. I don’t think it is because he is a genius but because he is an idiot.

    You're not wrong, but even that's too generous, IMO. Every time I ask myself, "If Putin could install a puppet American president, what would he have that president do?" I am reminded of how neatly everything Trump has done on the world stage supports exactly that.

    We may never know the whole truth about President Krasnov, but we know enough: it's not all just idiocy. It's overwhelming venality and corruption, pee tapes, and a daddy who didn't love him enough turned into authoritarian worship too.

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  • [–] 6 points 12 hours ago

    That is a fair take. Whoever whispers in the ear of Trump is the one in power. That is not just hyperbole, there are many stories of people in the White house, literally locking others out of the oval office so they can talk to Trump and have him declare things to the public hours later. He is the puppet in chief.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago

    ‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn't spell "precipice" if his life depended on it.’

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago

    “I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is. I do not wonder anymore. He won for that exact reason. He was not a candidate. He was a mirror. If you were a racist, you found your guy. If you were a misogynist, you found your guy. If money was your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart was armoured shut, you found your guy. If you mocked disabled people, you found your guy. If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy. If you were a rapist, you found your guy. If you enjoyed golden showers with Russian sex workers, you found your guy. If you had done absolutely nothing to confront your emotional wreckage, you found your guy. If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy. If you were a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy. If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy. If you were a conman, you found your guy. If you mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy. If you longed for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy. If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy. If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy. If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy. If you had never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy. If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy. If your ego contained a hole so large not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy. If you were a sociopath who cared not one molecule about other humans, you found your guy. If he had only two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one. This has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated. Trump did not create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate. He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity. If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That is the part that should chill the spine. Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power? We were living in a fool’s paradise. We aren’t anymore." — Michael Jochum

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