Zelensky is the strongest man in the world to be able to hold himself back from attacking these ass holes.
I mean, it would have certainly resulted in him being shot on the spot. The Secret Service would shoot anyone .
I wonder how long until the US is nuked? Or at least actually attacked, militarily.
US didn’t spent most of it’s money on army for nothing. Doesn’t matter if the army is as powerful as it says it is, the image is strong enough, so nobody will dare.
The only way it will crumble down is if they do “putin gambit”, really attack someone, fail spectacularly at it, expose inability to do shit, and get 50 square kilometres of baren wasteland for it.Or a civil war.
That’s the only way anyone can beat us
But you just described Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Didn’t even get to keep 50 square kilometers of barren wasteland.
Not really, no. US went there, destroyed a bunch of shit, played around for couple of decades, and went home. They didn’t lose much (occasional humans don’t count, who counts a bunch of kids with guns), that was basically a play so the ghouls can watch some people die, par for the course. US didn’t lose anything substantial ever and never was in a war that was important for them ever since that one with Mexico.
If you’re imagining some kind of first strike situation I think you’re barking up the ring tree. However, the US is extremely vulnerable economically.
I think he should call Trump’s bluff and send in a few dozen battle hardened Ukrainian troops with a few dozen drones and show Trump’s entire nursing home and support staff how things work nowadays. We need to put together an anonymous block chain fund with the purpose of putting multi million bounties on the treason party, funded anonymously by small donors and build a reliable mechanism for people to anonymously, but truthfully claim the bounties. What our political contributions fail to do, crowd funding can do. All of the technology exists to make this happen, and it’s one of the main appeals of crypto currencies. Large scale anonymous transactions. If I find out there’s a billionaire Trump donating traitor or heritage foundation member near me, and I can get a basic Intel file and there’s a 500K bounty on them, then shit. They better hug their money goodnight one last time. Just send an email from a burner/anon account to a recipient with the time of death rough location and wallet address before any news is released. If all the details add up then release the funds to the wallet.
Make it worth while and let rule#3 take effect:
“Number three, never trust nobody Your moms’ll set that ass up, properly gassed up Hoodied and masked up, shit, for that fast buck She be laying in the bushes to light that ass up”
I actually love this idea of anonymous crowdfunding by the masses. But how could we make this happen? I guess it would have to be initiated from the Ukrainian government.
I mean, the framework is already in place with crypto. The silk road ran for years and facilitated enormous amounts of illegal activity, and in the end who got in trouble? Like one fucking guy.
It’s honestly no different than a bookie. You facilitate the transactions and keep a portion of the cut for each transaction. The key is keeping the payor, payee, and broker anonymous.
And no Ukraine wouldn’t be involved in this, if anything the Swiss might be on board, or Panama
Sorry I misread: not crowdfunding assassinations, but the Ukrainian government and defence forces.
fuck you america for voting for this fascist scumbag. nobody should trust you again.
I’m an American and I’m upvoting this. After 2016, I thought that there were some misguided people who didn’t realize what they were doing, but that the first Trump term would push the pendulum hard the other direction. I felt a little validated when Biden won in 2020, but it wasn’t as one sided as I’d hoped. But Trump winning decisively in 2024 tells me that everyone knew and did it anyway. People are getting what they want: rampant racism, sexism, and global bullying.
So yes, we suck, and no one should trust us as a country, regardless of the fact that there are many of us who knew how catastrophic another Trump term would be.
I don’t think Trump won quite as decisively as it first seemed.
But shit, it’s still like… a third of our country that looked at Trump and went, “yeah sure”.
How the fuck do we fix this? I straight up have no clue. And that means it very likely will devolve into violence. And that is legitimately terrifying.
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This was very helpful to read. Thank you.
Most of us want the shithead gone just as bad as you do, but too many dumbshits decided they’d rather not stop him because the alternative wasn’t perfect. I hate it here.
Most? He already was president and over 50% voted that guy into office again? How are most people against him?
He didn’t get 50% of the vote.
He won be cause either 6 million people didn’t vote or, to quote Trump, “[Elon] knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide.”
A surprisingly large number of people don’t vote. I refuse to believe that anything approaching half of voting-age Americans support this. Unfortunately, here we are.
Everyone who didn’t vote supports this.
If as many people who turned up to vote would turn up to protest, things would change. Alas, liberals who think filling out the ballot is enough democracy for 4 years are not friends of democracy.
Of course liberals arent friends of democracy.
Liberals refuse to replace First past the post voting with a more representative electoral system in the blue states they control. You can see them here, in this thread, circlejerking over the fact that people are unrepresented by their options at the polls.
We will most likely be using FPTP voting for the mid terms, and these same blue conservatives will be howling about 3rd parties existing. All while doing nothing to fix the spoiler effect that is inherent in the mathematically flawed voting system most states use.
I don’t think I would say non-voters support this.
But they sure as fuck are complicit in not stopping an OBVIOUS threat to democracy by failing to do the absolute bare minimum civic duty of voting.
Edit: fixed grammar
And even more didn’t vote in 2024 than 2020- and most of those who didn’t vote this time would have otherwise voted against Trump. 50% of US votes is far far less than 50% of people eligible to vote in the US.
"They didn’t know"TM
50% of the people that voted in the last election voted for him. Some people didn’t vote, so about 33% of those that could vote voted for him. Since the election, his approval ratings dropped about 15-20%, so about 25% of those able to vote still support him.
Further, it’s 50% of the people in the swing states that really decide things. I’m sure most New Yorkers and Californians that didn’t vote did so because they knew their state would go blue regardless.
Yep. The rule of thumb is that if you were in a swing state, your vote counted for about 5-6 votes because of the way the electoral college works.
There is no equal representation as long as the lower house is capped and the upper house is equal.
I have the same representation as millions of empty acres of land. It’s fucking bullshit. Taxes should work respectively. Your votes are worth more? Cool, foot the bill instead of me funding your backwards empty fucking state.
Democracy ™️
No, most of you either directly voted for him or didn’t care if he won.
Source?
Trump won the election with a majority
most of you decided voting was too much of hassle
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Definitely not most.
They basically handed one of the strongest countries in the world to a very typical college bully and his lackies.
As an American. Agreed
Almost nobody using Lemmy voted for him.
Try telling the blue MAGA BidenBro conservatives.
Those people sound like Harris voters, but you sure managed to fit in all your buzzwords
Yeah.
Yeah…
Let’s remember that there good people there too. Let’s remember that these scumbags, whichever country they run, rely on our sweat, tears and blood to move forward with their decisions. While not all of us are good, obviously, I want to believe that many Americans were tricked by media to think Trump was a valid choice. What we need to understand it’s that this is a us people versus them rulers. If only we would understand this together and stop fighting each other…
The fact that a nation does fascist shit is never excused by the fact that there might be people who weren’t all bad. Or were even good.
Sincerely, A German.
rely on our sweat, tears and blood to move forward with their decisions
Agreed, so stop giving it to them. When I see Americans bring the country to a screeching halt through protest, disobedience, and strikes I will believe in the good people there.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
I’m sure the media played a part.
But fuck. He was so obvious with his racism, with his desire to be a dictator, fuckin everything.
Fuck.
I mean, that counts for Russia as well, but until recently you couldn’t say anything like this without getting attacked
its better to move on and forget about them, because they made it very clear over the last 10 years these types of people absolutley do not give a fuck about anyone elses opinion, and would much rather kill anyone who gets in their way.
Starmer’s visit was pointless Zelensky’s visit was pointless
stop trying to appeal to the better nature of monsters. The Trump administration is either fatally mentally challenged, or wholly complicit with designs of fascism, warmongering, and genocide. Probably both
Close the book on US/EU relations, NATO is dead. America is controlled by the Russian Mafia now.
Europe, prepare for war. America, prepare for the dominion of Fasicsm, and civil war
Not necessarily monsters (actually yeah they are), but he has a 40 year history of being compromised and owned by Soviet and Russian oligarchs. I’m reading “American Kompromat” now and it couldn’t be clearer. It’s not even hidden or anything. The Russians really just, won the Cold War. They did it, they toppled the US. Good job for them.
The reasons for which the US was able to turn fascist are all homegrown. We don’t need to resort to blaming foreigners for the rise of fascism - which is the only logical conclusion to a country that was founded on genocide and colonialism under the sole guidance of white slavers. This is peak American exceptionalism.
Social safety nets, wages, childcare, healthcare, mental health, working hours, etc… have all been crumbling for some time now. The fact that our adversaries picked up on this and exploited it by no means absolves Americans of their turn towards fascism.
If, at the end of these 4 years when democracy has been truly and completely demolished, the only lesson you’ve learned is “damn russian spies destroyed america!” You haven’t learned your lesson, and you’re honestly spitting in the face of all the victims of US policy both domestic and abroad.
I think it’s fair to say Russia exacerbated our existing issues. That doesn’t absolve us, as you point out, but it’s not unreasonable to say “Russia won”, either.
We had every opportunity to fix our issues. But nope, we just never really dealt with our history of racism and all the other bigotries (and capitalism, let’s be real). When we tried to make things better, the reactionaries pushed back. First with war, and when that was lost, with law, and when that was lost, with rewriting history. That is a strategy that keeps working. Turns out if you don’t care for your citizens, they’ll eat up all that fake history looking for someone to blame. And that makes us weak to fascism.
So yeah, Russia may have sped up the process, but the roots of our downfall were here all along.
The core of the issues were fully American. However, USSR/Russia has worked very long and hard to pour nitroglycerin and gasoline on these issues for their own benefit, such as expanding territory, capturing/killing US and NATO spies, etc. all thanks to their little pet in the white house now. I mean in the 30s the same fascist/capitalist leadership tried another coup it just didn’t work (where George H.W. Bush’s father was involved, of course). In the 80s they hollowed out our support system even more, and it’s only declined from there.
It’s clear you don’t know who I am or what I know, of course, but you’re reading into my comment way too much.
The Russian Mafia won the war,
the nation itself is fucked. regardless of what happens. they’ve been doomed for a while.
If your definition of the Russian Mafia includes, the Kremlin, then yes. Putin and co are absolutely gangster scum that work hand in hand with the actual mafia and international criminal organizations. Sure the actual people of Russia are fucked (just as with any country of a dictator).
the russian federation is just a medieval imperial entity masquerading as a federated state. And its society is just a totem pole of people getting used as assets and cattle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJgr-0t-RPc this more describes the political totem pole within the country,
but demographically, the country is a totem pole too. Moscow and St Petersburg rule the rest of the country like bandit kings.
How is NATO dead, just because the US is no longer reliable the rest of the countries can still respond
NATO was a tool of American influence. Just as the Warsaw pact was a tool of Russian influence.
The trans-atlantic partnership is over. NATO is obsolete, a successor is needed. America has checked out,
Nato is not dead just because the US leaves it. The EU wasn’t dead either after the UK left.
the US and Hungary have no reason to officially leave NATO because they can sabotage it from within and use it to blackmail and steer Europe into the position they want, being puppets of Russia and US.
the last thing America wants is a detatched Europe that isnt allied with them, they see independent Europe as a hostile entity, they are only interested in Europe being vassal states.
France and the UK are more than capable of maintaining an article 5 nuclear umbrella. If that’s all NATO is worth, it’s still enough.
France is one election away from Marine Le Pen kissing the feet of Putin.
I wasn’t convinced at first that NATO is dead on Trump’s first term. But here we are and it is a long time coming.
Some analysts think that the unipolar world is over, and that we’re heading into a multipolar world again but dominated by regional blocs. The EU is definitely there, and sometime later the African Union will become more cohesive and globally influential. But I don’t see Latin America having as strong regional grouping as the EU. In Asia, we can forget it because Asians tend to be insular. There is ASEAN but they do not have the same solidarity as the EU.
You forgot to mention China. Unless the EU gets its shit together and resists the same forces that are destroying the US, China is going to become that unipole.
For one why limit it to the North Atlantic? Japan, South Korea, and Australia should get in on the action too. And France and the UK can help them all get nukes (yes I mean that seriously - US and Russia being the only large nuclear powers is a disaster). Now would be a great time for the stable democracies (not the US) to create a new alliance.
South Korea and particularly Japan doesn’t need help getting nukes. Japan in particular has never been afraid of showing an advanced space program(for icbm technology) and their immense plutonium stockpile. They could assemble ICBMs that could target anywhere in the world in a matter of weeks.
Yeah, but if they can do it that fast on their own, imagine how much faster they can get it done with help.
Besides, if China starts getting a little froggy Japan and South Korea are going to need a lot more than a few armaments to ward them off.
NATO was that, but it may very well continue on as something else. Without the US mind you, but nothing says the rest of the NATO countries can’t just decide to stay in.
Of course it might also be a good time for them to all make the international equivalent of the No Homer’s Club. Either way.
NATO is still usefull as a framework for cooperation with the UK, Turkey, Canada and Norway.
Under Putin’s Sock Puppet, most certainly. However, the US MIC might hold the key to bring the USA back to being the USA.
Before completely cutting off ties from the US showing the public attempts had been made for diplomacy and providing evidence of what a bad actor US has become is important.
Showing is way more impactful and supports moves made afterwards than just making claims and cutting ties.
So not completely pointless, since the public needs to be able to come to the conclusion themselves first before drastic foreign relation changes can be made.
A united EU against today russia? Doubt will last weeks. But we are too afraid.
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They’re also going to gut IRS. So there will be less revenue.
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Tariffs need someone to collect them. And sales tax is very much the IRS. It’s not automated just because they itemized your receipt.
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Fun fact: Pinkerton is tanned, rested, and ready to go.
do you not know that WE pay the tariff charges? or do you honestly believe that, example, Canada is just like “yeah we dont mind paying the 25% in our exports, we’ll just cover that for you”
sorry but no. they will upcharge the export 25% to counter the tariff, then it gets sold to US for 25% more, then on the store shelf WE pay 25% more so cover the “losses”
if you dont think this is how it works. let me ask you a simple question scenario.
you have a lemonade stand. you sell for 1 dollar on the street. suddenly, someone says. hey i own this street. you have to pay me 25 cents to sell here.
do you continue to sell for 1 dollar and lose 25 cents per sale? or do you charge 1.25 to keep making the same profit?
if your answer was “id move to a different street” well then you cant comprehend a question and you are dodging it.
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You can’t not pay sales tax unless you’re a business. You’re just expected to pass it along to consumers who can take it or leave it.
also crickets when it comes to israel.
Even worse, look at this bullshit: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-844166
Israel is lobbying the United States to keep Syria weak and decentralized, including by letting Russia keep its military bases there to counter Turkey’s growing influence in the country, four sources familiar with the efforts said.
Good job GOP. We lost the Cold War.
All these years after winning it. That’s some special war-fightin right there!
Few things age like milk as they’re happening!
Imagine being Zelensky and having to fly some some rando country to beg for help from a Nazi asshole to end the invasion from another Nazi asshole. And if you were to die, one of the two assholes would win?
Zelensky, if you need my help personally, just ask. I have a wheelbarrow so we can carry your balls. Trump would love it if his genitalia could weigh down a party balloon.
I’m sure Germany, France, or the UK would love to get the mineral rights that Trump is after.
I really want this to blow up in Trump’s face. Rude strongarm tactics is a real bad look.
I sure as hell hope we don’t make our support contingent on securing mineral rights from Ukraine while they’re over a barrel.
Of course he has. That was the whole point. When he didn’t fall in line with the plan, Trump and Vance threw a tantrum. Zelenaky will not just accept peace at any price, he’s acting in the best interests of his country and I do not blame the man for it.
? I’m from the UK, I’m saying I hope we’re not as overtly sleazy with our support.
And to clarify, the deal wasn’t even a peace deal. It was a “ceasefire now, then when Russia recuperates and starts again, we’ll have 0 contingencies. See, what if a bomb dropped on your head right now? We can’t predict the future!”
Watched it, my takes: Trump is definitly the lets make an offer he can’t refuse type of negociator. I am thinking that the last week’s visits have been hard on their ego. I suspect there is an agreement between european leaders to not let them get away with lies and bullshit when in person, even in the oval office. And it seems to be working, Vance respect comment make them look real fricking weak.
The “respect” and “you should be thankful” comments reminded me of that old (I think Tumblr) post:
Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”.
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me, I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority, I won’t treat you like a person.”
and they think they’re being fair, but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.
The respect comment took me back to his donut debacle. The couchfucker is a charisma void.
If you want to see the full video, including the parts before the discussion gets hot, here’s the full video.
Thanks.
Congrats America, we’re the bad guys now.
A foreign democracy is sending an entire generation of their male populace into the afterlife to prevent Russia from expanding their borders and influence, which is bad for everyone including America, and our dumbfuck “leader” is trying to fleece them for everything he can in exchange for helping them with what amounts to chump change.
Such an embarrassing time to be an American. We’re transitioning into a much more dangerous world.
A foreign democracy is sending an entire generation of their male populace into the afterlife to prevent Russia from expanding their borders and influence
More to the point, to defend themselves. Ukraine isn’t playing some kind of geopolitical game; it’s trying to survive and has a huge moral high ground that your characterization of it disregards.
I’m not disregarding anything. I’m making a point by driving home what it does for Americans, because all Americans care about is themselves. If I frame it from the perspective of Ukraine trying to defend themselves from invasion, Americans could give a fuck less.
If that’s your goal, then you need to understand that Americans give even less of a fuck about the framing you gave it. It’s not the Cold War anymore; Americans have no concept that “Russia… expanding their borders and influence” would affect them in any way. Americans don’t even have a fucking clue where the borders being fought over even are!
At least the “Ukrainian self-defense” angle has a clear villain and a heroic scrappy underdog to root for as entertainment. In terms of getting Americans to care, that really is your best bet.
(Source: am American. And if you think this viewpoint is even more cynical than yours, then congratulations, you’re correct.)
Holy fucking smokes. This was without a doubt the cringiest, most uncomfortable display of lack of professionalism and pure second-hand embarassment I’ve ever seen from a president and a vice president.
I have so much respect for Zelensky for putting up with that. What an absolute circus. Americans were made to look so feeble and insecure.
its hard to believe peopel are on trumps side. also hard to believe they gave zelensky shit for not wearing a suit for some reason. while must walks around in a hat and T shirt. the maga double standard is fucking crazy.
its hard to believe peopel are on trumps side.
There are a lot of stupid Americans out there who are ride-or-die Trumpers who will believe anything he says.
Though there are more and more cases of people who voted for him and are now realizing “what did I do?!”, it’s too late now but it serves them right.
The whole thing felt like an embodiment of this meme:
Fuck the MAGA US. Kick them out of NATO, and let’s arm Europe. Between France and the UK we are a nuclear power of our own.
As a point of clarity. Trump demanded a ridiculous share of minerals from Ukraine. Zelensky wanted to negotiate that. Trump essentially told him there was no negotiation. They could give up half of their future mineral wealth or they could kick rocks.
give them to EU or china instead.
