This will be answered midterm.
American Election 2024
- Thread starter Sbooker
- Start date
This will be answered midterm.
None of that 50% are going to complain until one of these actions affects them personally.
I’d guess the National Parks this summer might generate some blowback due to hiring freeze affecting seasonal staffing.
I’d guess the National Parks this summer might generate some blowback due to hiring freeze affecting seasonal staffing.
I was going to reply but I’ll do they right thing and just observe this thread with interest aside from anything that is related to Australia.
On that Clive Palmer’s party’s catch cry is “TRUMPet of Patriots”.
Edit. I saw a satirical piece that said he was going to build a wall on our southern border and make Mexico pay for it.
Clive Palmer Announces New ‘Trumpet of Patriots’ Party, Promises To Build Wall Between Australia and Mexico — The Shovel
“One of the things that I’ve learnt over my career is that all politics is local. Which is why we’ll be fielding candidates in all fifty states"
theshovel.com.au
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Apologies if I'm dim. Could you explain the "we're all responsible" part?
jimk
Active member
Two recent anecdotes:
I was complaining to a friendly, young stranger on a chairlift. It was about the clumsy, chaotic attempt by Trump/Musk/DOGE to streamline the Federal Govt. They are throwing out the baby with the bath water. At the end of my diatribe I said, "yet I voted for the guy... don't ask me to explain." Without a hint of recrimination the stranger said, "no, I get it."
I was discussing the same USGovt streamlining subject with two conservative ski friends. It's getting personal I told them. It cost my nephew his job and it may yet cost one or more of my children their jobs. These are older, smart, guys, especially smart about finance. They were sympathetic to the personal threat, but at the same time loved the idea that finally someone was going after USG waste, fraud and abuse and trying to do something concrete about our National Debt.
Can't speak to what Harvey said about we're all responsible, but I think half the country is deeply dissatisfied with the way the country was going. This half is ok with disruption. They may not all agree on what exactly gets disrupted, but that's beside the point
I was complaining to a friendly, young stranger on a chairlift. It was about the clumsy, chaotic attempt by Trump/Musk/DOGE to streamline the Federal Govt. They are throwing out the baby with the bath water. At the end of my diatribe I said, "yet I voted for the guy... don't ask me to explain." Without a hint of recrimination the stranger said, "no, I get it."
I was discussing the same USGovt streamlining subject with two conservative ski friends. It's getting personal I told them. It cost my nephew his job and it may yet cost one or more of my children their jobs. These are older, smart, guys, especially smart about finance. They were sympathetic to the personal threat, but at the same time loved the idea that finally someone was going after USG waste, fraud and abuse and trying to do something concrete about our National Debt.
Can't speak to what Harvey said about we're all responsible, but I think half the country is deeply dissatisfied with the way the country was going. This half is ok with disruption. They may not all agree on what exactly gets disrupted, but that's beside the point
If half are dissatisfied, then who exactly is responsible for that?
The dissatisfied half?
The other half?
The oligarchs?
The Supremes? Congress? Executive?
Some other group?
I'm saying all of us are responsible for it.
Maybe that's just an opinion. I figured it to be an immutable fact. Or more accurately a tautology, true by definition.
Maybe no one is responsible, and it's just the natural progression of capitalism, leaving more and more people behind.
ShiftyRider
Member
When you disrupt your allies you look like a fool.
If you wanna make policy transactional, make sure the costs of loss of intelligence gathering are accounted for. Hindsight 20/20 and all, how much would America have been willing to pay to have a spy network that woulda prevented 911?
en.wikipedia.org
If you wanna make policy transactional, make sure the costs of loss of intelligence gathering are accounted for. Hindsight 20/20 and all, how much would America have been willing to pay to have a spy network that woulda prevented 911?
Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US - Wikipedia
Most Americans have zero interest in foreign policy unless it affects them personally.
So the pushback that would matter would come from old school Reagan Republicans. Lots of them were outraged on January 6 but got over it fast when they observed Trump’s enduring popularity. So it’s not clear how many of them will fight Trump on Ukraine in the long term.
The interesting case is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. His track record is solidly pro-Ukraine. He’s currently evasive, not condemning Trump’s remarks but not endorsing them either.
So the pushback that would matter would come from old school Reagan Republicans. Lots of them were outraged on January 6 but got over it fast when they observed Trump’s enduring popularity. So it’s not clear how many of them will fight Trump on Ukraine in the long term.
The interesting case is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. His track record is solidly pro-Ukraine. He’s currently evasive, not condemning Trump’s remarks but not endorsing them either.
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Do they recognise many nations have regularly and loyally followed the US into conflicts in the past 5 or 6 decades? They don't see that the US being the world's major power has a partial responsibility to be a watchdog of sorts? Those are both genuine questions and not meant to be inflammatory.
Australia being a resource rich nation with realistically very limited defence capabilities is suddenly very vulnerable considering the leader of the free world has condoned a superpower with a despot leader invading a non threatening neighbouring nation. The Taiwanese must be more than a little nervous right now. I'm pretty sure the goings on of the past week won't have escaped Xi and the CCP generally.
I went out to dinner last night with a friend/business counterpart from Perth, who's had a number of head-spinning experiences on her current U.S. visit. While waiting for her bags at Houston's luggage claim after the long flight from down under, there was an East German-like recording: "Welcome to the United States. Your baggage is under the care and control of President Donald J. Trump." She also walked by the USAID building in DC a few days ago while they were pulling down the agency's flags and removing the logos from the side of the building.
The USA has a long history of isolationism, consensus of the vast majority through the 19th century.. There was a popular backlash after WWI when the Senate refused to join the League of Nations, an idea pushed by then president Woodrow Wilson. The Republicans were the isolationist party leading up to WWII. FDR took unilateral executive actions of questionable constitutionality to aid Britain in 1940 and 1941 before Pearl Harbor. Much of the Cold War era was the only time there was a strong consensus for activist foreign policy. The American Left became isolationist after Vietnam, not a winning issue for them for the rest of the Cold War.
Post Cold War, incompetent execution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan revived isolationism in both parties. There are lots of bad actors around the world but to many Americans the logical argument is that none of them are the existential threats of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
jimk
Active member
James D mentioned sometime back about the BS factor with Trump. He uses BS to test the water and initiate negotiations. I honestly think some of the anti-Ukraine BS talk right now is somehow setting things up for a reasonable settlement of the Rus-Ukraine war. I think all of us here would like to see a settlement, even if it's not fully to the likes of Ukraine. It's not good for Euro/World stability for that conflict to continue to drag on with the risk of Putin doing something nuclear to save face.
The rebuttal to jimk's argument above is that Trump has been an unabashed Putin fanboy going way back to at least 2016 (remember Helsinki?). Nonetheless the war is sufficiently stalemated that handing over all of Ukraine to Putin is just as unrealistic as rolling back Russia's gains to prewar borders. It would be difficult for Trump to impose a blatantly lopsided settlement on Ukraine and some of the Euros. The question is whether a peace settlement sets up a stable enough situation where Putin can't invade and take more later.
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Given the ongoing mineral/rare earth horse trading with Trump, I wonder how much of Ukraine's deposits are already in Putin's hands? 25%?
ShiftyRider
Member
Those many Americans' cluelessness is evident to me and sbooker...
To reward aggression against a non-proliferator is the exact same thing (but with more duplicity) as to welcome infinite proliferation.
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Shifty Rider gets no argument from me. Liz and I both had fathers who worked internationally and have always had a global outlook even though my dad was a staunch Republican and hers a Democrat.
But I believe that if we are going have a political thread we need to get out of our bubble and understand what many Americans think, particularly when there were enough of those Americans to elect Trump twice.
But I believe that if we are going have a political thread we need to get out of our bubble and understand what many Americans think, particularly when there were enough of those Americans to elect Trump twice.
I get it too. The Indigo Blob cried wolf when Trump was president last time, and life for most Americans 2017-2019 was pretty good. And during COVID 2020 Trump's pronouncements were awful but they did fast track the vaccines and prefund their swift rollout ahead of other countries.
BUT, we also know that numerous Cabinet officials and other appointees were sanity guardrails during those years. During the 2024 campaign it was largely ignored by most Americans that those guardrails might not be present during Trump 2.0. However, I'm guessing that jimk was aware of that possibility. Did you discount it? Did you think like much of Trump's bluster that it was all talk and wouldn't really happen? Trump spews so much BS that I can see some people thinking that way.
Now that we see that the guardrail warnings were real, has jimk changed his mind? Does he regret his vote? The other view perhaps is that Trump is sufficiently over the top this time that eventually enough of the public will be alienated to provoke the political reset that the USA badly needs.
I'm willing to take a serious bear market hit if it alienates the business community from Trumpism permanently.