When is it going to stop being "He's so incompetent, it's like he's doing it on purpose!" and start being "Oh, he's doing this on purpose..."? This has been obvious for so long now.
I'd say it's part incompetence, part intentional sabotage. He truly is a fucking moron, but he also hates the US.
He's easily manipulated by corrupt people, including those who don't have the best interests of the U.S. at heart.
Like seeing Tim Cook gift him that golden statue so apple gets no tariffs...like everyone can see and stroke his ego.
I'll take Russian Asset for 1000, Alex.
There hasn't been a doubt about his intentions for a long time. He is, however, likely taking many actions because someone told him to, he heard a sound bite on Faux News, or he perceived some slight from social media.
it doesn't take much intelligence to destroy things under you over the course of 4-8 years. He's very obviously incompetent because he's doing this on purpose.
No, please don’t give him that much credit. If you saw him run a casino, you’d swear he was doing it on purpose, but he isn’t. He really just is that dumb.
I’m not saying he’s not also in Putin’s pocket, but don’t try to convince me that he has the brains necessary to make sabotage look like incompetence. He’s nowhere near that clever.
It's already gone
Russian plant.
No 'seems' about it. His entire purpose is to put all public on firesale to private interests. Its the same as when he was trying badly to sell New York real estate in the 80s to the Japanese specifically, even though there was a real fear about how much they were purchasing giving them too much control over our land and businesses.
That was always Putin's goal. Was known as far back as 2016.
Krasnov
Since 1997, actually, when The Foundations of Geopolitics was published. Brexit is in there, too.
So far, it’s all going pretty swimmingly, though Ukraine is putting up more resistance than anticipated.
That’s been the plan since 2016.
since long before that.
Facts! You can honestly go back to Nixon and watergate and even JFK’s assassination to see how and who the GOP really are and have always have been.
Especially notable to me that the article made its point without even getting into things like Trump effectively handing leadership in EV technology and alternative energy broadly to China, or giving the Chinese chip-making industry just the boost it needed to potentially be able to supply China's needs on its own, or making the US so hostile to scientific reseach that China will likely end up leading the world in that as well.
Yes - he could hardly do more to more thoroughly destroy the US's standing in the world if he set out to deliberately do exactly that.
Oddly though, that at least provides him with a bit of cover - if he wasn't such a blithering idiot, I'd suspect that that really was his goal. But I don't think he's even capable of maintaining focus on a straightforward strategy, much less a subtle and multilayered one.
making the US so hostile to scientific reseach that China will likely end up leading the world in that as well.
That's already the case
I would've guessed that but didn't know it. Thanks for the clarification.
And that's scary because the standard for scientific publishing in China was mostly shit. I haven't kept up, but I hope they've cleaned up their act. No hate on China, but their actions were speaking volumes not too long ago.
Donald Trump Seems Intent on Sabotaging US ~~Dominance~~
FTFY
Ive been scared for over a decade now that the US gov is following a similar pattern Russia did 20 years ago and that when the US loses it's economic and cultural dominance they will start to do exactly what Russia is doing and flex military might, except with the largest military in the world and bases in damn near every country.
If I was the leader of any other country I would have already started/redoubled efforts planning on how to engage with the US as an enemy years ago. Not 'hur durr they're already an enemy cuz Trump dumb', I mean drones at your doorstep your children weap at sunshine enemy.
If I was the leader of any other country I would have already started/redoubled efforts planning on how to engage with the US as an enemy years ago. Not ‘hur durr they’re already an enemy cuz Trump dumb’, I mean drones at your doorstep your children weap at sunshine enemy.
Yeah... that's actually happening. It just doesn't make sense to be super noisy about it at the moment. Anyone in Canada that has any capability to manufacture drones are getting military procurement contracts approved ridiculously fast right now. Like those kinds of things usually take years to get through the red tape, but now it's like weeks to go from testing to procurement.
At the moment it's only a trade war, and it would be best if that's as far as it goes. But if Trump takes things further... yeah, there will be drones at his doorstep. I wonder what something like this could do to Mar a lago? https://youtu.be/olYVvx8TfGk
There is every chance of this happening. We're already seeing the start of it with Trump's remarks on Greenland and Canada. Those aren't just harmless quips. They're intent to (militarily) bully anyone and everyone into compliance.
It's be cool if the overseas bases had some balls and just said, "fuck it, we'll just side with our hosting country." I guess it could really happen without a mini civil war on base.
Because the US isn't at a full on tipping point on that yet, because yes, that's when civil wars start.
US Civil War #1 started over a military base. If POTUS declares and attack on a major ally, that's probably going to be the starting gun for the second one.
The U.S. Civil War #1 never really ended (confederate flags all over the South, institutionalized racism, legal slavery in for-profit prisons, etc.), it just went into a "cold" phase. It is certainly heating up again.
So far everyone's done what they've been told or simply quit, lets see how the FBI vs Innocent Lawmakers goes down though.
I wonder why? Hey let's ask his boss, Putin. "Why is the obese imbecile being such a cunt..?"
Ok, this just in from Putin:
"Paedophile pisstapes"
Wow, that could mean Putin was watching Grey's Anatomy. Or it could mean that Putin has videos of russian asset tRUMP pissing over the kids that he had just raped.
Yes. The goal of this administration is and always has been to hurt America at the behest of foreign interests. We have got to stop acting surprised when the people who want to hurt America, in fact, hurt America.
But no one in the us seems willing to do anything about it, aside from making the occasional mildly caustic statements online and in govt.
That's why he was put into power.
Wrong again ....
The powers that be and corporate owners seem intent on allowing Donald Trump to Sabotage US Dominance.
...... dump truck Don is not that powerful or influential and you got to stop pretending he actually has anything to do with power.
Yeah. It's an internal struggle between American oligarchs for who'd control the division of the pie now that it's almost stopped growing. The rest are side effects and distractions, albeit consequential.
The public got so tired of being no. one they voted the absolute worst possible candidate in history to the highest office in the land for shits and giggles. I mean, how bad could it get? Fafo.
Comrade Krasnov doing a fastastic job for his droogs
All the Putin jokes aside, I don't think he's doing it for geopolitical or treasonous reasons. I think it's mainly just a by-product of his style of interaction and competition, which exists for very logical ("logical") reasons and which he's been able to make work pretty well for himself.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-weak-strongman
Snyder says it better than I can, but basically, he is weak and stupid, but he needs to be able to dominate people around him, and so his whole strategy is to attack and weaken, because that's his only way to be able to compete effectively. He can usually dominate the weakened version of whatever he's attacking, in a way he never could if it was at full strength. It's why he shows such innate and passionate violence against anything or anyone that is organized, effective, or popular: Because someday, they might turn against him, and if they did they would definitely win, and so he has to Nancy Kerrigan them before they get a chance.
Again Snyder summarizes it better, but it is also the exact same model that Putin uses, and it's had exactly the same effect on Russia (taking it from at least a regional powerhouse and functioning country that could accomplish significant things, to being a pariah state that barely functions in the first place even internally.) The strategy only works for as long as there is no one "outside the wall" who can come into the sphere of influence in un-weakened form, and if that ever happens, then the strongman crumbles instantly into impotent rubble. To ever let one of these people get control of your country or organization is basically just a nonstop rolling catastrophe that just gets worse and worse the longer they hold on to power.
(taking it from at least a regional powerhouse and functioning country that could accomplish significant things, to being a pariah state that barely functions in the first place even internally.)
Say what you want about Putin but he has been pretty successful in getting Russia back into the global game after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now he's mostly doing this by dragging everyone else down so your average Russian is gaining exactly zilch from any of this, but when you look at the state of democracy all over the West you can't say he reduced Russia's international influence.
Back into the global game?
They collapsed from being a global superpower, to selling off their natural resources to enrich a couple of hundred of the worst people on the planet, and beating up their neighbors for oil money and mostly being ignored by most of the rest of the world unless there's an Olympics or something. Putin didn't cause all of that of course, but he had a huge amount to do with entrenching the systems of corruption that doomed any chance they would have had of recovering their superpower status as China or Europe did after major catastrophes happened to them.
And now, as of the last few years, they can't even beat up their neighbors anymore. Sure, they still have a huge impact on the world stage in the form of destabilizing foreign democracies. You're not wrong about that part. But that's another example of my point: The whole shtick is just weakening everyone else. It won't do anything at all to increase their military power, increase standards of living for either oligarchs or common people. It won't help them win any of those regional wars. And it definitely won't help them against any threat that comes from "outside the sphere" (bird flu or climate change or whatever). It's just more Tanya Harding shit.
One of the very few good things he's doing.
He has done more to destroy the U.S. empire in 7 months than anyone else in it's entire history. Good riddance, the world will be better off.
Wow, who knew a Russian asset might try and "sabotage US dominance"?
That's just Unthinkable.
These fucking writers need to stop acting like they have an IQ of 76.
Oh no! But the other option was so much worse... Right? ... Right‽
Those people never believed that and they have been trolling for over a year while they gleefully watch the world burn. They come into a thread like this and giggle like the edgy teenagers and lonely 20-somethings they are because they've gotten a rise out of you.
They will never feel guilt or shame. The best thing everyone can do is ignore them, forget they exist, and move on.
Right there with you friend.
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.