Well, now it makes sense why Putin has that picture of Trump.
US is declaring itself their enemy. Other NATO countries should treat it accordingly.
> No single person, or President, has done more for NATO than President Donald J. Trump. If I didn’t come along, there would be no NATO right now!!! It would have been in the ash heap of History. Sad, but TRUE!!! President DJT
> The whole problem we are having with criminals in our Country was caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Radical Left Thugs that surrounded the Resolution Desk in the Oval Office - And, of course, the Illegal Use of the Auto Pen!!! They should be in jail!
I understand how there would be one or two people who'd hear that and go "Fuck yeah wooo". It's worrisome to me that a group of people could read/see/listen to that and think that sounds good. It's shocking to me that 77.3 million people could read that and think it's sane, good and is how a president should sound like.
At what point, and how, does the US system pants up and bell the cat?
A bipartisan pysch assessment from 11 respected people across the political spectrum blind voting an opinion would likely be unanimous in diagnosis at this point.
The Europeans and Canada should take note.
But to your point, I am certain that I am not going to profit from this fuckery. (Although, hilariously I bought silver a decade ago to teach my daughters about investing—and they each purchased a once or two from me. Of course it turned out to be a local maxima and they grow up, went to college—watching their investment sink all the while. Perhaps they did learn a valuable lesson in investing.)
No, I'm just doing damage control.
I had asked a month or so back as to where the "safe harbors" were during the Great Depression. My impression (and the responses did nothing to contradict this) were that there were no safe harbors—as perhaps there may not be any in some dystopian future we may or may not be headed for.
"Hold, don't sell during the panic," is all anyone could offer. (And so too holding those silver coins until now might also have been a valuable lesson for my daughters?)
Surely economy and the world economy operates in a completely different way now than it did back them, if not in the US, the very least in the rest of the world? But that's just my intuition, maybe things are more similar than they are different in reality?
> Of course it turned out to be a local maxima
Not to pour salt into your wounds (sorry), suppose your daughters were born 1980-1990 sometime, you really managed to hit exactly the stagnation phase it seems, that sucks but probably true what you say, still had a lesson in there :) I got curious and maybe others are too, especially if you don't usually look at price of commodities so here: https://www.macrotrends.net/1470/historical-silver-prices-10...
Nowadays the world's economy operates in even more globalized way and when the biggest players get hit, everyone suffers (1998, dotcom, 2008, covid). That's why the tariff war was such a counter-productive idea; even if you theoretically end up on top, everyone will still lose, including you.
Almost all of these, would on their own, have been grounds for impeachment in the past. It shows how far this extremism has come. If Trump is not impeached, which will require a simple majority in the house and 2/3rds in the Senate, I fear he will continue his mental spiral and potentially do something far more deadly like using a nuke. And I am not being hyperbolic; I genuinely fear the next few escalations in his behavior could be far far worse.
Take a look at the voter base: There’s a hubris of invincibility and jingoism in the air. Even among typical moderates. Rome can never fall!
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...
Studies have shown for a long time the human brain is frequently wired to prioritize group loyalty over factual accuracy. Probably something left over from when we were living in caves in small groups. Trump understands it extremely well. He just has to bring up immigrants and their brain reasoning centers turn off and they start frothing over Haitians eating dogs. Prior to Trump, most white Americans only encountered this if they brought a black girlfriend home.
After Obama, Trump literally rewrote the republican party. Congressmen who weren't falling in line got fired or forced to retire. Many many times, eg see Liz Cheney. The last time a purge like this happened was at the time of the Civil War. Even super-popular FDR tried taking out conservative democrats but wasn't successful (which btw is one of the main reasons we didn't get stuff like universal healthcare in the 1930s; southern democrats decided it was a threat to segregation).
That probably shows us how to stop it: wait for a massive failure like WW2 or the Great Depression, then implement strong safety nets, media, education, etc pretty much everything Western Europe is doing & more (eg housing).
It's not a rational thing. Like you said "Biden housing immigrants in hotels" and the implication is that he personally spent trillions on it and the sky is falling.
You need to train people to switch their brains back on, because it's a national security issue. All kinds of policies from free college to a shorter work-week so they have less stress and more time to think. Again, just copy what Western Europe does. They went through it before.
De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance?
(Intended to the parent comment.)
jorblumesea•2w ago
who would have thought that America's closest geographic and cultural ally would feel the need to ditch that relationship. Wild times.
agd•2w ago
jorblumesea•2w ago
embedding-shape•2w ago