The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults, will need to offer great concessions to Iran in order to extricate from the effects of a disastrous, illegal (both from a US as well as an intentional standpoint) and of course, completely, utterly failed war. And it might be just that Iran gets to be a permanent toll collector for the global economy.
> The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults
Betting says next president will be Gavin Newsom or JD Vance or Marco Rubio, so I wouldn't bet on that happening anytime soon. It is weird how so bad people bubble up in american politics.
I flatly refuse to believe that people will vote for _JD Vance_. Trump, like him or loathe him (I’d be firmly in the ‘loathe’ camp) has a style/personality which is appealing to some people. Vance, by contrast, is a non-entity.
Newsom should be elected to count all the grains of sand on the California coastline. He can be comped in trail mix and given an upturned boat for shelter.
He does seem wildly corrupt though with extreme exceptions in bills for his friends and backers, more than other politicians I've seen. He is probably better than Trump or JD Vance but that isn't saying much.
I too mostly agree with his populist center takes, but that doesn't mean he is reasonable.
Then you can get rich by betting against it, so most people seem to disagree with you. And in a democracy most people decide who the next leader will be.
Why would you assume that the parent (1) has a gambling addiction, (2) has enough side money they can lock into a far-away bet and (3) wants to place a bet that will more than probably never pay anyway because it won't be insured nor escrowed by a trusted third party?
Buying or selling stocks of companies owned by MAGA henchmen is probably much safer.
> Buying or selling stocks of companies owned by MAGA henchmen is probably much safer.
Not if you are 100% sure, which the poster seemed to be. Its not gambling if its a sure case. So you saying this is a risky bet means you disagree with the person.
> wants to place a bet that will more than probably never pay anyway because it won't be insured nor escrowed by a trusted third party?
Betting sites are trusted third parties.
Anyway, I wasn't telling him to bet on it. My point is that it is weird to say those for sure wont be the next president when most bettors are betting on those being the next president. You saying this is a risky bet means you disagree with him as well.
> Not if you are 100% sure, which the poster seemed to be. Its not gambling if its a sure case. So you saying this is a risky bet means you disagree with the person.
This is incorrect. You can be sure, certain even, of a specific outcome, and yet still be scammed out of your money by the entity that took your bet.
> Betting sites are trusted third parties.
No they aren't, lol. Of course they aren't. Many are illegal, most operate from shady jurisdictions, all have unclear T&Cs and so on.
Never is a long time. Look at where Germany was after both WWI and WWII, and where it is now; it's demonstrably possible to cause irreparable damage to everyone around you, and then rise back to the top (multiple times!). The only questions are timeline and scale.
Germany got a new type of government. The 2/3 required in USA for significant change will be insurmountable short of a disaster on order of second Great Depression since plurality of American voters can’t see past next paycheck, no Democrat that can win Presidential primary has any kind of revolutionary vision, it’s all muted, even Bernie got squashed by centrist voters eventually and he was not even that far to the left IMHO - he even stayed away from race or gender issues.
Hillary Clinton was to the left of Bernie Sanders in 2016, because free trade reduces global stratification and being against trade and immigration like Bernie was (and is) to protect American jobs is elitism.
> Hillary Clinton was to the left of Bernie Sanders in 2016
No, this is so factually untrue as to be offensive.
Hillary is a party stooge through and through, it’s why she was essentially installed as the 2016 dem candidate, in spite of voter preferences. They did Bernie dirty
> Hillary is a party stooge through and through, it’s why she was essentially installed as the 2016 dem candidate, in spite of voter preferences. They did Bernie dirty
No, this is so factually untrue as to be offensive. I caucused and volunteered for Bernie in 2016. He lost the primary vote fair and square, but he dragged himself and his supporters to the convention kicking and screaming as if there was some chance he could overcome a mathematical defeat. Superdelegates never even entered the equation. All he did was instill a conspiracy in his diehard supporters.
I think you are only right on gender and race issues. That might have lost Sanders some voters in primaries. Unfortunately neoliberalism was adapted wholeheartedly by Bill Clinton and Blair and kinda inherited by Hillary, is not remotely left leaning belief.
I'm mostly being tongue-in-cheek (I should've added /s but it's too late to edit it in now). As a former Bernie volunteer and caucuser turned neoliberal globalist shill, I just like to poke at DNC conspiracies by pointing out that Bernie was a flawed candidate and that, even today, he isn't very left-leaning at all on some issues like immigration, visas and trade.
Germany changed its constitution, banned its former ruling party, and actively explores and teaches their school kids about their crimes. The US on the other hand has a chunk of its electorate flying Confederate flags and voting for politicians who think US history textbooks should be more "pro-American".
We need a first reconstruction. We voted in Confederate sycophants ASAP to undo the very first, and spent the next 100 years pretending that slavery wasn't still happening.
Yet again we have instead voted in people who for some reason think the literal aristocracy system of the antebellum south was anything worth protecting, despite the southern US being so dysfunctional it could barely support a war of it's own making.
It was the hegemon of Europe though, and it is once again – at least economically. I don't know much about European culture to say how popular German pop culture is there though.
You also have to consider the outside intervention forcibly imposed upon Germany, after being defeated in war both times, and how the first round of that contributed directly to WWII. It's not exactly a playbook to copy verbatim.
This. We all thought Trump was a crazy accident but the fact that he almost beat Biden, and then did beat Harris, means we just can't trust Americans to put sensible people in charge. Assuming a democrat takes the office next, they will inherit an economy in tatters, a failing infrastructure and a broken strategic alliance. They'll have four years to try to fix all of that while the republicans blame them for everything they've inherited, and four years from that the American people will have largely forgotten how Trump and his minions trailed dog shit all through the house and they'll vote for the next right wing dick that's been groomed for the job - probably Pete Hegseth, or Don Jr, or Mark Wayne Mullin
Neither Biden nor Harris were sensible candidates. Democrats could have easily beat Trump by running a more appealing/less polarizing candidate. Didn't even have to be both. Obama was polarizing but he was appealing and he won comfortably.
As a non-American I have always wondered about the criteria used by Americans to vote for their presidents.
Clinton and Obama had various defects, but at least both of them looked like presidents and talked like presidents.
On the other hand, both George Bush Junior and Trump (of course especially the latter), looked like clowns and talked like clowns.
I have never understood their appeal to the masses. I understand the discontent of those who have voted against the Democrat "elites", but the fact that anyone could look at Trump and believe that he is the right man for the job seems unbelievable, regardless of how inept were his opponents.
Your reference to Democrat "elites" shows you have a hint of it... in this country that term never applies to a Republican -- even if they were born rich, went to Ivy League schools, and were handed a career and a professional network on a platter.
It is almost _exclusively_ used to denigrate women, minorities, or men who support progressive causes.
> The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults
This rings as "make America great again", just with a different mythology standing-in for "again".
The US (or at least the US _state_) hasn't been in control by reasonable adults in over a century, or arguably ever.
What is finally becoming obvious is that this particular landmass is much too large to be under the control of a single state, and now that we have instant communications and ubiquitous cameras, even the arguments (laid out eg in the federalist papers) are no longer dispositive.
Calm and careful deprecation of the US as a state needs to top the new agenda.
> The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults
Everyone reasonable seems to be holding their breath in anticipation of this eventually happening.
What if it doesn’t? What if all of this is a symptom of an underlying deterioration that extends deeper and beyond the current administration? It’s not Trump that made Americans A-OK with wars of aggression; Obama blew up as many kids using drones as Trump put into cages. What if the next few are the same, or worse? What do we do if this isn’t a temporary excursion but the new normal for the US and A?
> What if it doesn’t? What if all of this is a symptom of an underlying deterioration that extends deeper and beyond the current administration? It’s not Trump that made Americans A-OK with wars of aggression; Obama blew up as many kids using drones as Trump put into cages. What if the next few are the same, or worse? What do we do if this isn’t a temporary excursion but the new normal for the US and A?
In the cold war, there was the "Evil East" and the "Good West", and this opposition forced at least some token "goodness" and a certain predictable behavior on both sides. It also forced both sides to have some firm principles they adhere to. Now the cold war is over, and while it did change more in the formerly East, the West, at least in some parts, also learned a few things. Among them that principles are negotiable, especially without a closed opposing bloc with the opposite principles. Doing business with China and Russia not only made people rich, it also moved Western culture more towards the Eastern ones, more than anyone would like to admit. Starting to see things from the Eastern perspective also induced the West to over time to not just understand the former enemy better and learn the "good stuff". We started to find things like strong autocratic leadership, compromises on human rights, ignorance of international laws and treaties, and wars of aggression and conquest more acceptable and even preferable.
Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. The US saw what Trump did during his first term, and four years later, after relative calm, they were like "nah, let's go back to Trump." That's the new normal. In fact, things will be worse during the next election, with even more of the media owned by unhinged billionaires intent on robbing as much as possible from normal people.
But Trump was even more egregiously poor. That’s what Americans don’t seem to understand. They’ve revealed to the whole world that they are a retarded people.
All they had to do was put a little daylight between their platforms. Show that they believe in something different. But that is not their role in the Ratchet Effect.
I don’t think it’s helpful to treat the American people like children and do silly things like blame the democrats for Trump, especially for a people that is usually so obsessed with personal responsibility. The Americans voted for the retarded senile paedophile and they got him. It says something truly awful about the American people, mind, but personal responsibility extends to the political sphere, too, not just the private or economic one.
The American people are to blame for Trump. They got what they voted for.
> The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults
There is no way back, as there is no way back to the world before covid or before the 2008 global crisis. They say about Russian history "it was bad and then it got worse". Over and over, for hundreds of years. Vlad and Donnie are friends now.
> when finally back in control by reasonable adults
no one even knows who was really in control during the previous administration. quite a few idiotic and destructive policy changes were made during that administration too
