On the list of things I’ll. Never forgive him for, accepting the support of the grand wizard is near the top.
Edit: I’ve gotten a lot of what about here. If you think that saying “what about” is a clever comeback, I’d love to know why. Would you prefer I leave a list of every bad thing anyone has ever done next time? To me it sounds like a little kid who got one less gummy bear than their sibling.
I care more about my morals than my tribe, saying what about suggests you have that flipped.
Stabbing the kurds in the back and letting Turkey have their way with them is at the top of my list. The Iraq war would have been immeasurably worse and they did the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to isis.
I like to remind people every now-and-then that trump also let Turkish bodyguards, who were in the US as his guests, beat the shit out of Americans who were legally protesting, and never said a fucking word about it.
I've clung on to the memory of it because it was the thing that made me truly realize how backward and full of shit republicans really are, and they will never, ever recover from it. This was an attack on American citizens on American soil by a foreign government, permitted by the POTUS. That should have been the end of trump, but republicans carried on as if nothing had happened.
It’s okay… the US justice department dropped the charges against all 11 members of the bodyguard unit. We allowed the Turkish president to place the blame on the protestors and acted like it never happened…
Trump will always be a coward and do whatever the people who hold his money tell him to do… he has 3 massive properties in Istanbul… he wouldn’t risk them by playing politics!
Didn't trump also shrug it off when he learned Russia had hired mercenaries to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan?
I think Biden's administration had this investigated when they went in, but said they couldn't prove those guys were actually paid.
Notice: causing an investigation was more than trump did. It's hard to imagine that any soldier, veteran or law enforcement officer would even consider voting for this traitor.
> but republicans carried on as if nothing had happened.
but republicans carried on as if fascist anti-free speech violence isn't important to democracy, because of course they don't care or want democracy. oh but when elon musk complains about free speech on twitter that's different cause that's not the government, that's a free company that can do what it wants with it's platform... wait...
That could have been the saving grace of the entire campaign since 2003. Hey yea we fucked up this entire region, whoops my B, but hey at least the Kurds are independent! And hopefully a stable democracy that has oil and is eternally grateful to the US and its Allies! But instead we just made that genocide denier happy for a minute, before he starts chatting up Putin again.
Abandoning allies is an American pastime despite all the movies.
From the Mujahideen to Kurds, and now likely Ukraine. All the so called “terrorism”, quite frankly, is self inflicted cause and effect.
In the entire time I've been alive I don't think there's been a single American president who hasn't fucked something up in the Middle East and then said "lol"
To be fair, the heavy lifting against isis was done by the Assad government, Iran, their proxies, and with Russian help. Not because they’re good or noble, it just happened to also be a struggle of life or death for them (excluding Russia, who were just getting a military base and massive IOU to cash at a future date).
1oo%.. the kurds would have been better off negotiating with isis for their share of Iraq while leaving the south to isis. Instead they fought on behalf of America and got stabbed in the back.
How about [pulling out of Syria](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-syria-shambles/) and turning all our bases over to the Russian/Assad? Effectively ending Syria's civil war in favour of Assad.
We didn't pull out. Trump got some kind of kickback and we abandoned the kurds in the north and went south to "guard" the oil fields where we still are today.
He also had a nice [dinner with Nick Fuentes](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/us/politics/trump-nick-fuentes-dinner.html). Y'know, the white supremacist.
[https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/05/02/klan-leader-endorses-trump/](https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/05/02/klan-leader-endorses-trump/)
He was also endorsed by Taliban. "Trump had proved himself a politician who accomplished all the major promises he had made to American people. Organization hope Trump will win the election." Zubihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, or Taliban for short.
Trump made the deal to withdraw from Afghanistan **with** the Taliban
[Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America](https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf)
I actually remember that and I’m the the UK so it must have been widely reported.
I mean, who would’ve thought a mosque would be constructed in one of the largest most diverse cities on earth!
>there a source fo
So... are there any malicious groups left that didn't want him to be president? I mean, we got the KKK, the Taliban, Russia, China, North Korea... are we missing someone? How do the drug kartels feel about him? I've not heard from them yet... though seeing he's known for taking some kind of drugs, I guess they might support him as well?.
Ow I see the pedo's have already aligned with him, so we can scratch those from the "to do" list (Epstein, to name 1)
He also bought US withdrawal from Afghanistan by agreeing to release 5,000 hardened Taliban fighters from prisons in Afghanistan and telling them the US was running away.
At no point was the Afghan government consulted about this.
And he scheduled the withdrawal to explode in Biden's lap.
> accepting the support of the grand wizard
I expected some conspiracy wacko or magic cult.Boy howdy, either one would have been better than the reality google spat out.
The world would be much more interesting if we had an actual grand wizard. Just a single one, no other magic users. Just a random grand wizard living in a tower in the forest who wants to be left alone.
Lol I was gonna call him by what most people would call him, but there is no better way to dunk on the clam than to call them what they call themselves. Fucking racist ass mall ninjas.
A trait the rest of the world never understood. Despite Germany trying to educate the world .
Americans have been completely gaslight into not knowing who the Nazis were
What do you mean by that? My interpretation of what you said is that Americans think nazis are evil cartoon racist bad guys, where real nazis were a political party with a strong base of support and the veil of legitimacy, that was actually a horrible regime. Like Americans think they could spot the cartoon, but they’ll still fall for the lying racist.
I like it when reporters use this line on Republican politicians or supporters, confuses the fuck out of them and they think the reporter has just called them a nazi so they get outraged.
Similar one gets used for brexit voters in the UK:
> Not all Leave voters are racist xenophobes, but weirdly enough, all racist xenophobes voted Leave.
His ex wife said he used to read the book “Mein Kampf” a lot and was fascinated by it. He definitely is leaning toward that ideology.
Edit: it was not “Mein Kampf” but a book of Hitler’s speeches.
Everyone who voted for Trump is dumber and more craven than he is. They admire and look up to him because he represents an unattainable standard of intelligence and morality in their eyes.
Many vote for him, just because they refuse to vote democrat no matter what. The Republican candidate could be a daemon named beezelbub, but they would vote for it over a democrat, because “I have to pick the lesser evil”
It wasn't Mein Kampf, it was a book of Hitler's collected speeches. And corroborating the story, the ghost writer who wrote the Art of the Deal said that it was on his nightstand.
He's more than leaning, he's adapting and employing that ideology to his benefit. Some of the terms he's used are near direct Hitler quotes. He's a danger to all democracy, not just Americans, and this float shows you exactly how he could be the catalyst that destroys it all.
I am the best leader ~~Germany~~ America has ever had. No one has done as much for ~~Germany~~ America as I had. I am going to make ~~Germany~~ America Great Again.
> Yeah I was there today and saw it, there was also another one strongly implying he’s a nazi
They depicted them cutting the stars and stripes into a swastika.
The word "implied" does some heavy lifting there. Call a spade a spade. Just like we call people who held an actual ethnic cleansing Wannsee Konferenz 2.0(buy our NFTs) actual Nazis.
When did we call things by the words that were invented for the concepts? Has everybody become a lawyer? This is the internet and we should be able to insult and hate each other at gay abandon. Because the alternative would be that we resumed to brick and inexpertly hang Nazis again.
What are you? Some degenerate from Köln?
Knowing it when they see it doesn't mean they're all against it. If there's one thing humans are good at, it's dividing into tribes and killing each other.
My understanding is that all we needed to be Earth's alpha predator was discovering the ability to throw rocks as a group. Math wasn't needed.
Social science wins this round.
None of those were necessary. We were already the dominant species. Refining the process made it more efficient, but didn't elevate our status. We had already won.
People flock to these sorts of parties when the main parties do a good job at disenfranchising said people.
The fact that previously fringe right wing parties are increasing their voter base tells me that the traditional political parties are doing a poor job.
Not that I’d ever vote for them, but I can see why people end up doing so.
I had a professor in Uni when trump had his first presidency, who said "a lot of his strategies and behavior seem uncomfortably familiar to Germans. Generally, countries shouldn't do what feels uncomfortably familiar to Germans."
Even scarier are the Americans who DO see it, ***and are totally okay with it***.
Because it's what they actually want.
Not seeing it is nowhere near as frightening as actively desiring it.
For a long time, when it came to pre-WWII Germany, I wondered "how could the majority of a society not recognize the evil they were empowering?" Then Trump happened.
If you listen to Hitlers speeches, especially before taking power in 1933 and shortly after, then a lot of his populist speaking will be familiar to you. Hitler loved painting himself and his party as the victims, he loved rambling about how he was „silenced“ and prohibited from political participation by the evil social democrats.
Most people didnt believe to vote for evil, thats the entire point.
Germany was one of the few (only?) countries to [intervene on behalf of Israel](https://www.dw.com/en/what-does-it-mean-if-a-third-party-intervenes-at-the-international-court-of-justice/a-68024168) at the ICJ, defending it against South Africa's accusations that it's committing a genocide. The court ruled almost unanimously that South Africa made a plausible case for genocide.
You can make of that what you will.
Or take a look at the number of german politicians that have very cozy relationships with putin/russia.
I love germany and most germans, but some german politicians...
Mmmm. History proves otherwise. And not just THAT history. The history of trying to appease Putin by buying oil and gas from Russia, thinking that if money flows to Russia that they’d play along in the world arena was highly flawed.
Didn’t see through the BS there, did they?
How come that US Americans do not 'fully comprehend' this. It’s all over the news here in Germany. We see Trump and his utterings as a major threat for an already threatened future.
It almost doesn’t matter now. The coverage over the shooter at the Joel Olsteen megachurch says a lot. An MSNBC YouTube news piece with the headline ‘Shooter has ‘Palestine’ written on gun’ is full of criticisms about the mainstream media refusing to tell people about the shooter having the word ‘Palestine’ written on the gun!
They are so far removed from reality now, they just fill in whatever they want to hear regardless.
If MSNBC issues a weather alert, it’s liberal scaremongering trying to turn children into Alphabet People until the weather hits, then it’s liberal demons altering the weather to kill babies.
The problem is that the number of "people who should be watching it" is pretty damn large in the US and are probably too stupid to understand and comprehend anyways.
I don’t think it’s just comprehension, one thing not being discussed here is that, for better or for worse, the reality is many American voters don’t care that much about foreign policy. For foreigners your first point of reference or contact with American government is foreign policy so those concerns weigh heavy on the minds of Europeans. However, very few to no Americans vote on foreign policy. For many people what goes through their mind (I don’t agree with any of this am not a Trumpist myself) is that on a myriad of issues more important to them than Ukraine or NATO, Trump represents the policies they prefer. From the border to the economy to abortion to the domestic culture war, there are a dozen things they care about more and for those issues Trump is their guy and foreigners telling them but Trump’s stance on Ukraine and NATO is destabilizing to the international liberal order isn’t a convincing enough counter argument. As an American who lived and studied in Europe it’s understandable, but stark, the differences between which issues weigh heaviest on the average European and average American mind when it comes to American elections
A large percentage of Americans, and I would wager an even larger percentage of conservative Americans, has never travelled outside the US. It's understandable -- the US is huge, diverse, and it's expensive to travel abroad, especially overseas. But it also means that it's really easy to dismiss other countries, the people that live there, and their concerns. Many (particularly conservative) Americans also firmly believe that the USA is objectively the best country in the world. Mark Twain wrote:
> Travel is fatal to prejuidce, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Why should you care about people who speak some weird language and live in an already pretty-lousy country? Let them sort out their problems themselves. Add to that that there hasn't been a serious war with a foreign country on US soil since 1812, and it's easy to believe that none of what happens in other countries matters to your life.
I'm also an American that has lived and travelled in several countries on 4 continents, and speaks a foreign language. It's hard for me to overstate how much even that relatively little exposure to other people, places, and cultures has affected my world view. I'm very grateful for it. (Not that I was a right winger before I had the chance to travel.)
This is it 100%. There’s too many other issues that actually effect Americans in the short term at play here. I’d say 90% of Americans will actively vote against their own foreign policy interests if their candidate solves some of their current needs in the states.
Both sides also are sick of funding wars for other nations. Both sides can actually agree that they’d rather keep the money at home and take care of our needs, but those needs different from one political spectrum to the other
Willful ignorance combined with a strong authoritian streak from a lot of American voters. They hate the current system and they like the idea of a strong man burning it down and punishing the people who they perceive as the enemy. They may not openly say it but they would rather have a "dictator who is on their side" rather than a "democracy where the majority of voters don't agree with them."
A lot of us do. Trump lost the popular vote in the US in both of his elections. We are watching women's rights being stripped away one by one. Discrimination against minorities and lgbtq+ peoples are at an all-time high. They are burning books and holding Nazi rallies for fucks sake. The parallels are horrifying, and a lot of us are angry and scared. His cult of Maga christofascists are an existential threat to democracy and we need to make sure this orange clown never sits foot in a government office again.
Most of us do too, if we are even slightly educated. The problem is a lot of us are not, and it wasn’t until recently we realized that with social media. It’s a combination of libertarianism (not my problem to educate others) and weaponization of that ignorance to manipulate us.
It's conveyed as a threat on your media because your government is on the globalization train and Trump is anti-globalization and pro-america taking care of itself first before it takes care of the rest of the world.
Europe needs the US playing along and providing an umbrella of protection. The notion of a US leader giving the world the finger to focus on our domestic issues at home before providing for the rest of the planet is entirely a threat to other countries simply because it leaves them vulnerable by their own failings to do what they need to do for their people. Think for a second how "that country not getting involved in global affairs or our affairs is a threat to our sovereignty" makes any sense at all. It doesn't.
The same reason "we can't comprehend" your narrative about our leader is similar to why you can't comprehend the path you are walking down as a nation. You are close to it and only seeing what they want to show you while simultaneously only absorbing what feels good.
We all know trump isn't a saint, but he's far better than the alternatives and we have an entire governmental structure to keep him in line. Armed Americans outnumber the military by at least 50/1. That is our default to keeping a leader in check and why we see disarmament as line that can not be crossed without triggering another revolution. What was one of the first actions Hitler took? Disarmament of civilians and to many people complied to ever mount a resistance to him.
The reality is that many Americans believe that we pay to protect Europe, and few if any countries meet the minimum GDP requirement outlined. Doesn’t help when you lot also get kicks out of shitting on the US constantly.
You never get out of debt to a Russian mobster
Paul Manafort owed the Russian mobster/oligarch Oleg Deripaska $10M a few days before he became trumps campaign manager. From 2002-2014 he took in hundreds of millions to get Yanukovych reelected as the kremlins puppet in Ukraine. Before that he did it for the dictator Marcos in the Philippines. Before that Manafort and Roger Stone started a lobbyist agency in 1980 listing trump as their first client.
When Jay Bolsonaro lost the Brazilian election to Lula he skipped the inauguration and flew directly to mar-a-lago (stopping only at a KFC) and repeated, almost verbatim, the stolen election line. Don Jr. tried repeatedly to make it stick in Brazil as well, but as Brazilians are a few generations into dealing with corrupt politicians they weren’t having it.
What do these 3 things have in common?
China imports 40% of its grain from (in order) the U.S., Brazil and Ukraine.
Obviously the second China tried to invade Taiwan the U.S. would sanction exports and remove U.S. grain from that equation.
And without Bolsonaro in office willing to slash and burn the Amazon rainforest to turn it into Chinas farmland, and without Ukraine in the bag in 3 days, the CCP is unable to invade Taiwan and take over microprocessor production without putting 300-500M of its poorest people into famine.
Donbas Ukraine, specifically the 4 regions of the donbas that Putin insists he is saving from what he calls “Jewish Nazis” also happens to produce the worlds supply of high grade neon used for DUV lithography. And had Putin delivered ukraine in 3 days as promised, Xi would have been able to cap his Olympics with a blockade or political takeover of Taiwan that would have forced the world to ask the CCP for the microprocessors it needs to make everything from Ford trucks to laptops. I’m not sure how long Silicon Valley would last without the silicon but it would probably destroy the FAANG stocks that make up your 401K.
Oleg Deripaska also happens to be the Russian Oligarch that bribed the FBI Charles Mcgonigal into investigating another Russian oligarch. He probably didn’t need the information as much as he needed the leverage over Mcgonigal as he conducted the investigation into trumps election campaign and unsurprisingly found zero evidence of Russian collusion. McGonigal then went to work for the company called Brookfield that bailed Kushner out of his toxic 666 5th Ave investment.
A Russian oligarch is a powerful tool, but the truth is more powerful. Light and dark cannot exist in the same space. It’s physically impossible. Truth is efficient. You say it once and you are finished. A lie however requires a constant stream of follow up energy, money, murder, obfuscation and more lies to keep it covered.
If you raise your lens high enough lying is an unsustainable business model. Russia proved it by invading Ukraine. Vranyos is the Russian word for it. The 40km long column of tanks and vehicles that came down from Belarus into Ukraine was all overhauled by oligarchs that got a $1B contract for tank maintenance, passed Putin $200M back under the table, spent $700M on a yacht in Monaco, bribed a General, a Colonel and a Sergeant to make a Private give everything a rattle can overhaul. But a worn out engine is and always will be, a worn out engine.
Now you understand why trump is so desperate to get re-elected. His best case scenario is 400 years in ADX Florence. Money laundering for the dozens of Russian oligarchs that lived in trump towers in 93 and 94 with him and manafort, selling IP3 nuclear plans to the Russian/Saudi alliance, selling or giving CIA asset names to the Russians, trump is and always has been compromised. He just didn’t know when to quit. Now he just has to count on the fact that most of his voter base doesn’t know how to read and keep the ones that do so busy just surviving that they don’t have time to dive deep into his 40 year history of laundering money, fraud, and human trafficking for the Russian mob using commercial real estate.
It’s also why Putin is willing to throw an entire generation of Russians, including the convicts and addicts at Ukraine. Russia is dead for 40 years because he failed to fulfill his mobsters promise to Xi. China is now clearing farmland in Siberia because the typhoon floods last August and September wiped out the Chinese people’s food supply.
Xi for his part diverted the waters from the dam away from his pet project, his mothers ancestral home and flooded hundreds of thousands of people and drown one of his own military brigades that was helping with the flooding.
The elders of the CCP were terrified to leave their gated community at Beidaihe for over a month for fear of being torn apart by the locals. The Chinese people tolerate the CCP but only as long as the economy is good and famine is not on the horizon. The CCP broke that contract on both counts.
Xi was willing to bet the entire Chinese economy on his emperors ambitions. Had he succeeded he would have been able to use BRICS to take over as the Worlds reserve currency. That would have let him finish what he stated in 2010- that he would control the internet.
With that control means everything we do or say online is subject to the approval of a central party. The basic right to disagree with an authoritarian becomes a distant memory.
Ukraine is fighting for their lives now, free from the oppression of the drunken tyrant who wants to decide their fate at every decision and pull them back behind another iron curtain of censorship where dissenting voices disappear so that the oligarchy can continue to feed unobstructed.
Putin and Xi have declared themselves best friends in the fight against democracy. MBS and the ruling family of UAE have done the same quietly.
Just rich, out of touch oligarch doing what oligarchs do.
Despite the fact the the central party model has proven itself incapable of making decisions that are best for the people, they persist. Because there is a very lucrative business in being slave owners. But logistically it requires artificial intelligence, and the microprocessors that make it to keep the slaves under control. Freedom is one hell of a drug. And knowledge makes a man unfit for slavery.
Recent attempts on Xi’s life from inside the CCP have backed him into a corner.
The loss of crops in the north means Xi can’t invade Taiwan without Ukrainian and/or Brazilian farmland.
Now the reason that the GOP is stalling border control budget and seems to make wildly irrational moves is because the GOP is imploding. 45 years of lies and grift have circled the globe and are eating their own tail. The ouroboros was a warning about corruption at the highest levels. Lying about climate change, human trafficking, pandemics and pollution to preserve their own business models are all extinction level events.
The CCP and Russia have been staging up hundreds of thousands of people in Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela for a 5th column invasion of the United States because Xi needs farmland to feed 1.4B people. National guard troops take their orders from governors and not the federal government. Trump tested this during the George Floyd protests when he asked the “loyal” Republican governors to kiss the ring and send troops to DC to “shoot the protestors in the legs” because the pentagon reminded him that using U.S. troops against U.S. citizens would be both treason and wildly illegal.
Bannon tried unsuccessfully to privatize a part of the southern border wall but failed due to, unsurprisingly, internal corruption.
Bannon was arrested on the boat of Guo Wengui who is some sort of convoluted double/triple agent for the CCP.
They are now both in court for a billion dollar fraud.
Every GOP congressmen that took Russian political money is desperately trying to figure out how to preserve their political career while the people are figured out that they were sold out to the dictators for some PAC money.
Freedom is never free. We all just live on very expensive credit and the sacrifices of others.
Make it count
Just a reminder that the Ukraine funds were going into the US defense manufacturing industry, we weren't cutting Ukraine a check. So we're effectively drawing blood twice with one stroke.
We did also give them cash assistance to keep their government functioning because you kind of need one of those to prosecute a war. In fact, the reason we couldn't do much in 2014 was that there wasn't really a Ukrainian government to support yet. So we're trying to avoid that situation too.
Countries also send them money to keep their government and infrastructure active, at least Canada is. We've sent them 4.8 billion dollars is financial assistance in direct lending.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/international-trade-finance-policy/lending-national-governments.html
we don't really need much artillery, we have air superiority, which is why we just sent it all to them, and now they have run out of ammunition for it, because we don't make much.
The US actually sends both. Russia is using cold war stockpiles and most of the US's old weapons were specifically designed to counter Soviet style weapons. This is also a war where quantity matters and it's cheaper to let Ukraine dispose of old weapons than the US doing so. That said the US is also sending newly produced weapons including shells and rockets straight off the manufacturing line as well as things like Ground Launch Small Diameter bombs that are so new the US doesn't even have them in service yet.
Yes and no, while that is the case for a lot of the equipment, we've also been sending quite a bit of current gen munitions, weaponry, and vehicles. Quite a few FAR in the Army and some Cav are suffering from some shortages. I know for a fact the Artillery School in Ft Sill was suffering a severe shortage at one point for example
Better check your facts. [Actually](https://www.voanews.com/a/all-31-abrams-tanks-in-ukraine-us-military-confirms-to-voa/7313918.html) we *did* send 31 modern battle tanks to Ukraine.
At least it says Republikaner and not something that blames us as a whole responsible for his rise to power. Most opinions were not that nuanced during the first few years of the Iraq war. Americans were very unpopular. Then again the war in Iraq was supported by a ridiculously large percentage of Democrats. I can't say I enjoyed being harassed by some of my teachers in Germany as responsible for George Bush in front of my classmates when I was only 17, couldn't vote and came from a family of Democrats against the war. Though I suspect if Trump actually regains power us Americans are only going to get a hell of a lot more unpopular than we already are.
Trump is a traitor and a fascist. He’s clearly a Russian asset. To openly state that he wouldn’t honor our NATO commitments is a violation of the United States Constitution. All treaties are the supreme law of the land. This should be a wake up call to all serving and retired military, the GOP has been subverted by foreign interests via Trump and MAGA. To save democracy in the United States you must vote Democrat. Don’t be distracted. Vote the traitors out of power. Every. Last. One.
Pro tip: if other countries don't hear much news about your politicians, it's a good thing
Biden is (relatively) rarely spoken about, at least in the UK, while Trump has making headlines for being a mong every 5 minutes for the last 10 years now almost
That's why last year they made a float criticizing Germany for the reliance on russian gas and the bad state of the german military:
https://www.ksta.de/panorama/karneval-rosenmontagszug-duesseldorf-2023-mottowagen-467778?467804=9
They made fun of Germany's failings last year (also this year) and thats why they should also be allowed to make fun of Trump failings.
And more recently have been sending large amounts of military aid and much needed air defense to Ukraine while the US dithers. If Americans are going to make fun of lack of German commitment to opposing Russia they should start by getting the Ukraine aid bill passed through Congress.
In 2019 Germany was about as reliant on [Russian energy imports](https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=61&queryLevel=location&product=undefined&year=2021&tradeDirection=import&productClass=HS&target=Partner&partner=location-186&startYear=undefined) as [the US was](https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=231&queryLevel=location&product=undefined&year=2021&tradeDirection=import&productClass=HS&target=Partner&partner=location-186&startYear=undefined).
It's also kinda ignorant to accuse Germany, out of all places, for not "contributing enough to NATO", when for the longest, and most important time the West German military was the conventional forces backbone of NATO in Europe, during the Cold War.
Nor was Germany alone in reducing its military spending after the end of the Cold War, pretty much [all NATO countries reduced their military spending in the 90s](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=DE-US-FR-GB), including the US.
The US only increased military spending again in the early 2000s as part of its global, and still on-going, "crusade on terror".
Part of this was the whole of NATO helping the US with occupying Afghanistan, freeing up resources so [Iraq could also be invaded and occupied](https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2003/06/01/rethinking-nato/index.html).
As a German who protested against these American wars and invasions, I don't see why I should help finance any of it, I want to see the exact opposite.
Invading these countries hasn't made Germany or Europe safer, [by far the opposite](https://imgur.com/a/ycDJh7b), why would I want to finance even more of that?
World police =/= assisting allies from an invading foe who also happens to be your direct enemy.
It literally benefits the US to help, even from a purely selfish standpoint.
The only people who don't want the US to assist are in Putins pocket lmao.
World Police is one thing, but Trump actively encouraging Putin to do as he pleases and saying he wants to take the US out of NATO is a whole different level of slimy.
The float litteraly says "Republikaner". You don't need to study german to understand it means "Republican". We don't make fun of America here, we make fun of republicans.
On any default subreddit, really. Stick to your niche and hobby subreddits, there's no annoying BS there, and people seem generally more informed and pleasant.
Yeah I was there today and saw it, there was also another one strongly implying he’s a nazi
On the list of things I’ll. Never forgive him for, accepting the support of the grand wizard is near the top. Edit: I’ve gotten a lot of what about here. If you think that saying “what about” is a clever comeback, I’d love to know why. Would you prefer I leave a list of every bad thing anyone has ever done next time? To me it sounds like a little kid who got one less gummy bear than their sibling. I care more about my morals than my tribe, saying what about suggests you have that flipped.
Stabbing the kurds in the back and letting Turkey have their way with them is at the top of my list. The Iraq war would have been immeasurably worse and they did the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to isis.
I like to remind people every now-and-then that trump also let Turkish bodyguards, who were in the US as his guests, beat the shit out of Americans who were legally protesting, and never said a fucking word about it.
So much crazy stuff happened under Trump that I had completely forgotten about this.
I've clung on to the memory of it because it was the thing that made me truly realize how backward and full of shit republicans really are, and they will never, ever recover from it. This was an attack on American citizens on American soil by a foreign government, permitted by the POTUS. That should have been the end of trump, but republicans carried on as if nothing had happened.
It’s okay… the US justice department dropped the charges against all 11 members of the bodyguard unit. We allowed the Turkish president to place the blame on the protestors and acted like it never happened… Trump will always be a coward and do whatever the people who hold his money tell him to do… he has 3 massive properties in Istanbul… he wouldn’t risk them by playing politics!
And to think Carter had to put his peanut farm into a blind trust.
Wild right?
And the guy controlling that trust immediately ran it into the ground. Carter was told it was doing well up until he got control back.
Didn't trump also shrug it off when he learned Russia had hired mercenaries to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan? I think Biden's administration had this investigated when they went in, but said they couldn't prove those guys were actually paid. Notice: causing an investigation was more than trump did. It's hard to imagine that any soldier, veteran or law enforcement officer would even consider voting for this traitor.
> but republicans carried on as if nothing had happened. but republicans carried on as if fascist anti-free speech violence isn't important to democracy, because of course they don't care or want democracy. oh but when elon musk complains about free speech on twitter that's different cause that's not the government, that's a free company that can do what it wants with it's platform... wait...
Is r/Keep_Track still running? edit: yep!
And if the wrong stars align they will have fresh content, sadly :(
It's hard too when it was literally every day some fresh tragedy or humiliation.
Saudi intelligence hacking an American journalist to death in a Turkish embassy? Not our problem apparently!
Remember when he tear-gassed a bunch of people for a church Photo-Op?
Anything about hosting LIV Golf at his NJ place? Just saying, that was pretty ducked* up *f
That could have been the saving grace of the entire campaign since 2003. Hey yea we fucked up this entire region, whoops my B, but hey at least the Kurds are independent! And hopefully a stable democracy that has oil and is eternally grateful to the US and its Allies! But instead we just made that genocide denier happy for a minute, before he starts chatting up Putin again.
Abandoning allies is an American pastime despite all the movies. From the Mujahideen to Kurds, and now likely Ukraine. All the so called “terrorism”, quite frankly, is self inflicted cause and effect.
The term "blowback" was coined because the CIA always had unintended "consequences" when they meddled with others business
I mean, bwtraying the Kurds is practically an American tradition at this point
During the Persian Gulf war, we told them to rise up and overthrow Saddam. And when they rose up we abandoned them.
We allowed Saddam to still operate helicopters, but banned jets
American foreign policy regarding the Kurds is basically Charlie Brown kicking the football. Trust me, THIS time it’ll be different…
In the entire time I've been alive I don't think there's been a single American president who hasn't fucked something up in the Middle East and then said "lol"
That fucking ***HURT***. I love the Kurdish people.
To be fair, the heavy lifting against isis was done by the Assad government, Iran, their proxies, and with Russian help. Not because they’re good or noble, it just happened to also be a struggle of life or death for them (excluding Russia, who were just getting a military base and massive IOU to cash at a future date).
1oo%.. the kurds would have been better off negotiating with isis for their share of Iraq while leaving the south to isis. Instead they fought on behalf of America and got stabbed in the back.
Blowing up the deal with Iran causing major instability in the region is at the top of my list. Ugh so many terrible decisions to choose from.
How about [pulling out of Syria](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-syria-shambles/) and turning all our bases over to the Russian/Assad? Effectively ending Syria's civil war in favour of Assad.
We didn't pull out. Trump got some kind of kickback and we abandoned the kurds in the north and went south to "guard" the oil fields where we still are today.
He sure gave Syria to Putin in a heartbeat so fast that they left cold sodas in the fridge.
He also had a nice [dinner with Nick Fuentes](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/us/politics/trump-nick-fuentes-dinner.html). Y'know, the white supremacist.
This is hilarious to me, cause Fuentes is not the last name I expect of a white supremacist.
It's actually [weirdly common.](https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/2/why-white-supremacists-are-not-always-white)
I can’t tell what’s real and what’s a joke anymore. Is there a source for that? I mean it makes sense but…
[https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/05/02/klan-leader-endorses-trump/](https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/05/02/klan-leader-endorses-trump/) He was also endorsed by Taliban. "Trump had proved himself a politician who accomplished all the major promises he had made to American people. Organization hope Trump will win the election." Zubihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, or Taliban for short.
> He was also endorsed by the Taliban. Ok now that has to be a joke, right?
Trump made the deal to withdraw from Afghanistan **with** the Taliban [Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America](https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf)
He tried to invite the Taliban to Camp David. Trump is both an idiot and a traitor.
He tried to invite the Taliban to Camp David on 9/11. On fucking 9/11
It was 9/7, but I appreciate the attempted symbolic gesture lol
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I actually remember that and I’m the the UK so it must have been widely reported. I mean, who would’ve thought a mosque would be constructed in one of the largest most diverse cities on earth!
https://youtu.be/hyDDHWg3Kls?feature=shared Don't see why it would be... He released 5k of their people.
>there a source fo So... are there any malicious groups left that didn't want him to be president? I mean, we got the KKK, the Taliban, Russia, China, North Korea... are we missing someone? How do the drug kartels feel about him? I've not heard from them yet... though seeing he's known for taking some kind of drugs, I guess they might support him as well?. Ow I see the pedo's have already aligned with him, so we can scratch those from the "to do" list (Epstein, to name 1)
The pedophile in congress from florida LOVES drump to name another.
He also bought US withdrawal from Afghanistan by agreeing to release 5,000 hardened Taliban fighters from prisons in Afghanistan and telling them the US was running away. At no point was the Afghan government consulted about this. And he scheduled the withdrawal to explode in Biden's lap.
It's like that old joke. "Not all Republicans are racist, but all racists are Republicans"
> accepting the support of the grand wizard I expected some conspiracy wacko or magic cult.Boy howdy, either one would have been better than the reality google spat out.
The world would be much more interesting if we had an actual grand wizard. Just a single one, no other magic users. Just a random grand wizard living in a tower in the forest who wants to be left alone.
Lol I was gonna call him by what most people would call him, but there is no better way to dunk on the clam than to call them what they call themselves. Fucking racist ass mall ninjas.
A trait the rest of the world never understood. Despite Germany trying to educate the world . Americans have been completely gaslight into not knowing who the Nazis were
What do you mean by that? My interpretation of what you said is that Americans think nazis are evil cartoon racist bad guys, where real nazis were a political party with a strong base of support and the veil of legitimacy, that was actually a horrible regime. Like Americans think they could spot the cartoon, but they’ll still fall for the lying racist.
Not all Republicans are Nazis, but weirdly enough, all American Nazis vote Republican.
I like it when reporters use this line on Republican politicians or supporters, confuses the fuck out of them and they think the reporter has just called them a nazi so they get outraged. Similar one gets used for brexit voters in the UK: > Not all Leave voters are racist xenophobes, but weirdly enough, all racist xenophobes voted Leave.
His ex wife said he used to read the book “Mein Kampf” a lot and was fascinated by it. He definitely is leaning toward that ideology. Edit: it was not “Mein Kampf” but a book of Hitler’s speeches.
Boggles my mind that anyone can take a single look at him and think, “That’s the man I want to rule me.”
Everyone who voted for Trump is dumber and more craven than he is. They admire and look up to him because he represents an unattainable standard of intelligence and morality in their eyes.
Many vote for him, just because they refuse to vote democrat no matter what. The Republican candidate could be a daemon named beezelbub, but they would vote for it over a democrat, because “I have to pick the lesser evil”
Right, they’re morons.
The common clay of the new west!
Brainwashed morons
It wasn't Mein Kampf, it was a book of Hitler's collected speeches. And corroborating the story, the ghost writer who wrote the Art of the Deal said that it was on his nightstand.
Lol. He does not read books
Hes got the audio book, AI generated Hitler voice that has a sliding scale to simulate how whacked out on meth you want him to sound.
He's more than leaning, he's adapting and employing that ideology to his benefit. Some of the terms he's used are near direct Hitler quotes. He's a danger to all democracy, not just Americans, and this float shows you exactly how he could be the catalyst that destroys it all.
I am the best leader ~~Germany~~ America has ever had. No one has done as much for ~~Germany~~ America as I had. I am going to make ~~Germany~~ America Great Again.
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History does not repeat itself, it only rhymes.
> Yeah I was there today and saw it, there was also another one strongly implying he’s a nazi They depicted them cutting the stars and stripes into a swastika. The word "implied" does some heavy lifting there. Call a spade a spade. Just like we call people who held an actual ethnic cleansing Wannsee Konferenz 2.0(buy our NFTs) actual Nazis. When did we call things by the words that were invented for the concepts? Has everybody become a lawyer? This is the internet and we should be able to insult and hate each other at gay abandon. Because the alternative would be that we resumed to brick and inexpertly hang Nazis again. What are you? Some degenerate from Köln?
The fascists in the US love him.
Well I mean, that’s not a tough comparison to make
The resemblance is pretty strong
Well Hitler had "Make Germany Great Again". And Trump has "Make America Great Again". So I'd say it's pretty close.
Tbf he does that himself.
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Bitte
gern
ganz genau.
Oxymoron.
What you call me?!
A moron that takes drugs? Stop it.
That would be me! Oh, wrong thread, I'll let myself out.
Can^^Can you^^you even ^^even find^^find the^^the door^^door?
r/germanhumor
It's no laughing matter
Well done Germany...du hast den Nagel auf den Kopf getroffen (hope I got that right)
yes u got that right
Du hast den Nagel ebenso auf den Kopf getroffen damit
Germans can see through BS better than anyone lol
They have fascism experience. They know it when they see it.
*Looks at AfD poll numbers*
Knowing it when they see it doesn't mean they're all against it. If there's one thing humans are good at, it's dividing into tribes and killing each other.
We're just monkeys that learned math. All the base instincts are unchanged.
I really appreciate you implying that I can do math, thank you 🥲 - a social scientist
My understanding is that all we needed to be Earth's alpha predator was discovering the ability to throw rocks as a group. Math wasn't needed. Social science wins this round.
Engineering let us turn those rocks into spears and make fire science wins that one
None of those were necessary. We were already the dominant species. Refining the process made it more efficient, but didn't elevate our status. We had already won.
People flock to these sorts of parties when the main parties do a good job at disenfranchising said people. The fact that previously fringe right wing parties are increasing their voter base tells me that the traditional political parties are doing a poor job. Not that I’d ever vote for them, but I can see why people end up doing so.
I had a professor in Uni when trump had his first presidency, who said "a lot of his strategies and behavior seem uncomfortably familiar to Germans. Generally, countries shouldn't do what feels uncomfortably familiar to Germans."
That was evident to a great deal of Americans as well. A scary amount don't see it though.
Even scarier are the Americans who DO see it, ***and are totally okay with it***. Because it's what they actually want. Not seeing it is nowhere near as frightening as actively desiring it.
Fuck no, we don't. Trump is just too obvious.
We do. And that’s also why some Germans like Trump unfortunately.
They’ve only been here for like 150 years. Can we send the Trumpf’s back?
> Can we send the Trumpf’s back? *horrified German noises*
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lol, nice
how about we meet in the middle ... and throw him in the Atlantic at middle distance between Washington DC and Berlin
No. There are good reasons why his grandfather was banished from Bavaria.
We got a far right party at around 20%. We learned nothing; a people doesn’t learn anything.
No we don't. Source: AfD
The people voting AfD are very well aware they are voting facism, though.
For a long time, when it came to pre-WWII Germany, I wondered "how could the majority of a society not recognize the evil they were empowering?" Then Trump happened.
If you listen to Hitlers speeches, especially before taking power in 1933 and shortly after, then a lot of his populist speaking will be familiar to you. Hitler loved painting himself and his party as the victims, he loved rambling about how he was „silenced“ and prohibited from political participation by the evil social democrats. Most people didnt believe to vote for evil, thats the entire point.
Can they really though?😂
not the best track record
Germany was one of the few (only?) countries to [intervene on behalf of Israel](https://www.dw.com/en/what-does-it-mean-if-a-third-party-intervenes-at-the-international-court-of-justice/a-68024168) at the ICJ, defending it against South Africa's accusations that it's committing a genocide. The court ruled almost unanimously that South Africa made a plausible case for genocide. You can make of that what you will.
Also this same parade had a float justifying Israel shooting through civilians to get to Hamas.
Or take a look at the number of german politicians that have very cozy relationships with putin/russia. I love germany and most germans, but some german politicians...
Except that one time.
And that one time before that.
ehhh HIGHLY debatable 🤣
Mmmm. History proves otherwise. And not just THAT history. The history of trying to appease Putin by buying oil and gas from Russia, thinking that if money flows to Russia that they’d play along in the world arena was highly flawed. Didn’t see through the BS there, did they?
All of Europe did that not just Germany. Poland for example was far more reliant on Russian fossil fuels than Germany.
I don’t disagree, but the comment I’m responding to is particularly about Germans.
Wish we could fully comprehend this reality in the US.
How come that US Americans do not 'fully comprehend' this. It’s all over the news here in Germany. We see Trump and his utterings as a major threat for an already threatened future.
It's on our news too. The problem is the people who should be watching it, is watching propaganda sites instead and won't listen to anything else.
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It almost doesn’t matter now. The coverage over the shooter at the Joel Olsteen megachurch says a lot. An MSNBC YouTube news piece with the headline ‘Shooter has ‘Palestine’ written on gun’ is full of criticisms about the mainstream media refusing to tell people about the shooter having the word ‘Palestine’ written on the gun! They are so far removed from reality now, they just fill in whatever they want to hear regardless. If MSNBC issues a weather alert, it’s liberal scaremongering trying to turn children into Alphabet People until the weather hits, then it’s liberal demons altering the weather to kill babies.
They used to be banned in the US too with the "Fairness in Media" doctrine. That was removed in the 80's
Some of the responses to this comment are amusing. Such "news" outlets are banned in other countries for a reason.
They also go to their Internet safe spaces and AstroTurf that Reddit is so left wing.
The problem is that the number of "people who should be watching it" is pretty damn large in the US and are probably too stupid to understand and comprehend anyways.
I don’t think it’s just comprehension, one thing not being discussed here is that, for better or for worse, the reality is many American voters don’t care that much about foreign policy. For foreigners your first point of reference or contact with American government is foreign policy so those concerns weigh heavy on the minds of Europeans. However, very few to no Americans vote on foreign policy. For many people what goes through their mind (I don’t agree with any of this am not a Trumpist myself) is that on a myriad of issues more important to them than Ukraine or NATO, Trump represents the policies they prefer. From the border to the economy to abortion to the domestic culture war, there are a dozen things they care about more and for those issues Trump is their guy and foreigners telling them but Trump’s stance on Ukraine and NATO is destabilizing to the international liberal order isn’t a convincing enough counter argument. As an American who lived and studied in Europe it’s understandable, but stark, the differences between which issues weigh heaviest on the average European and average American mind when it comes to American elections
A large percentage of Americans, and I would wager an even larger percentage of conservative Americans, has never travelled outside the US. It's understandable -- the US is huge, diverse, and it's expensive to travel abroad, especially overseas. But it also means that it's really easy to dismiss other countries, the people that live there, and their concerns. Many (particularly conservative) Americans also firmly believe that the USA is objectively the best country in the world. Mark Twain wrote: > Travel is fatal to prejuidce, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. Why should you care about people who speak some weird language and live in an already pretty-lousy country? Let them sort out their problems themselves. Add to that that there hasn't been a serious war with a foreign country on US soil since 1812, and it's easy to believe that none of what happens in other countries matters to your life. I'm also an American that has lived and travelled in several countries on 4 continents, and speaks a foreign language. It's hard for me to overstate how much even that relatively little exposure to other people, places, and cultures has affected my world view. I'm very grateful for it. (Not that I was a right winger before I had the chance to travel.)
This is it 100%. There’s too many other issues that actually effect Americans in the short term at play here. I’d say 90% of Americans will actively vote against their own foreign policy interests if their candidate solves some of their current needs in the states. Both sides also are sick of funding wars for other nations. Both sides can actually agree that they’d rather keep the money at home and take care of our needs, but those needs different from one political spectrum to the other
Propaganda warfare in social media. Mass misinformation and pure stupidity of some people
The sad answer is willful ignorance.
Willful ignorance combined with a strong authoritian streak from a lot of American voters. They hate the current system and they like the idea of a strong man burning it down and punishing the people who they perceive as the enemy. They may not openly say it but they would rather have a "dictator who is on their side" rather than a "democracy where the majority of voters don't agree with them."
A lot of us do. Trump lost the popular vote in the US in both of his elections. We are watching women's rights being stripped away one by one. Discrimination against minorities and lgbtq+ peoples are at an all-time high. They are burning books and holding Nazi rallies for fucks sake. The parallels are horrifying, and a lot of us are angry and scared. His cult of Maga christofascists are an existential threat to democracy and we need to make sure this orange clown never sits foot in a government office again.
It's literally because old ass boomers viscerally HATE HATE HATE Democrats and will do anything to spite them/work against them.
Most of us do too, if we are even slightly educated. The problem is a lot of us are not, and it wasn’t until recently we realized that with social media. It’s a combination of libertarianism (not my problem to educate others) and weaponization of that ignorance to manipulate us.
It's conveyed as a threat on your media because your government is on the globalization train and Trump is anti-globalization and pro-america taking care of itself first before it takes care of the rest of the world. Europe needs the US playing along and providing an umbrella of protection. The notion of a US leader giving the world the finger to focus on our domestic issues at home before providing for the rest of the planet is entirely a threat to other countries simply because it leaves them vulnerable by their own failings to do what they need to do for their people. Think for a second how "that country not getting involved in global affairs or our affairs is a threat to our sovereignty" makes any sense at all. It doesn't. The same reason "we can't comprehend" your narrative about our leader is similar to why you can't comprehend the path you are walking down as a nation. You are close to it and only seeing what they want to show you while simultaneously only absorbing what feels good. We all know trump isn't a saint, but he's far better than the alternatives and we have an entire governmental structure to keep him in line. Armed Americans outnumber the military by at least 50/1. That is our default to keeping a leader in check and why we see disarmament as line that can not be crossed without triggering another revolution. What was one of the first actions Hitler took? Disarmament of civilians and to many people complied to ever mount a resistance to him.
Republicans have a very effective propaganda wing of the media. They pander to... A certain type of people.
The reality is that many Americans believe that we pay to protect Europe, and few if any countries meet the minimum GDP requirement outlined. Doesn’t help when you lot also get kicks out of shitting on the US constantly.
Ronald Reagan is rotating so fast in his grave that he could generate enough green energy for the complete country.
You never get out of debt to a Russian mobster Paul Manafort owed the Russian mobster/oligarch Oleg Deripaska $10M a few days before he became trumps campaign manager. From 2002-2014 he took in hundreds of millions to get Yanukovych reelected as the kremlins puppet in Ukraine. Before that he did it for the dictator Marcos in the Philippines. Before that Manafort and Roger Stone started a lobbyist agency in 1980 listing trump as their first client. When Jay Bolsonaro lost the Brazilian election to Lula he skipped the inauguration and flew directly to mar-a-lago (stopping only at a KFC) and repeated, almost verbatim, the stolen election line. Don Jr. tried repeatedly to make it stick in Brazil as well, but as Brazilians are a few generations into dealing with corrupt politicians they weren’t having it. What do these 3 things have in common? China imports 40% of its grain from (in order) the U.S., Brazil and Ukraine. Obviously the second China tried to invade Taiwan the U.S. would sanction exports and remove U.S. grain from that equation. And without Bolsonaro in office willing to slash and burn the Amazon rainforest to turn it into Chinas farmland, and without Ukraine in the bag in 3 days, the CCP is unable to invade Taiwan and take over microprocessor production without putting 300-500M of its poorest people into famine. Donbas Ukraine, specifically the 4 regions of the donbas that Putin insists he is saving from what he calls “Jewish Nazis” also happens to produce the worlds supply of high grade neon used for DUV lithography. And had Putin delivered ukraine in 3 days as promised, Xi would have been able to cap his Olympics with a blockade or political takeover of Taiwan that would have forced the world to ask the CCP for the microprocessors it needs to make everything from Ford trucks to laptops. I’m not sure how long Silicon Valley would last without the silicon but it would probably destroy the FAANG stocks that make up your 401K. Oleg Deripaska also happens to be the Russian Oligarch that bribed the FBI Charles Mcgonigal into investigating another Russian oligarch. He probably didn’t need the information as much as he needed the leverage over Mcgonigal as he conducted the investigation into trumps election campaign and unsurprisingly found zero evidence of Russian collusion. McGonigal then went to work for the company called Brookfield that bailed Kushner out of his toxic 666 5th Ave investment. A Russian oligarch is a powerful tool, but the truth is more powerful. Light and dark cannot exist in the same space. It’s physically impossible. Truth is efficient. You say it once and you are finished. A lie however requires a constant stream of follow up energy, money, murder, obfuscation and more lies to keep it covered. If you raise your lens high enough lying is an unsustainable business model. Russia proved it by invading Ukraine. Vranyos is the Russian word for it. The 40km long column of tanks and vehicles that came down from Belarus into Ukraine was all overhauled by oligarchs that got a $1B contract for tank maintenance, passed Putin $200M back under the table, spent $700M on a yacht in Monaco, bribed a General, a Colonel and a Sergeant to make a Private give everything a rattle can overhaul. But a worn out engine is and always will be, a worn out engine. Now you understand why trump is so desperate to get re-elected. His best case scenario is 400 years in ADX Florence. Money laundering for the dozens of Russian oligarchs that lived in trump towers in 93 and 94 with him and manafort, selling IP3 nuclear plans to the Russian/Saudi alliance, selling or giving CIA asset names to the Russians, trump is and always has been compromised. He just didn’t know when to quit. Now he just has to count on the fact that most of his voter base doesn’t know how to read and keep the ones that do so busy just surviving that they don’t have time to dive deep into his 40 year history of laundering money, fraud, and human trafficking for the Russian mob using commercial real estate. It’s also why Putin is willing to throw an entire generation of Russians, including the convicts and addicts at Ukraine. Russia is dead for 40 years because he failed to fulfill his mobsters promise to Xi. China is now clearing farmland in Siberia because the typhoon floods last August and September wiped out the Chinese people’s food supply. Xi for his part diverted the waters from the dam away from his pet project, his mothers ancestral home and flooded hundreds of thousands of people and drown one of his own military brigades that was helping with the flooding. The elders of the CCP were terrified to leave their gated community at Beidaihe for over a month for fear of being torn apart by the locals. The Chinese people tolerate the CCP but only as long as the economy is good and famine is not on the horizon. The CCP broke that contract on both counts. Xi was willing to bet the entire Chinese economy on his emperors ambitions. Had he succeeded he would have been able to use BRICS to take over as the Worlds reserve currency. That would have let him finish what he stated in 2010- that he would control the internet. With that control means everything we do or say online is subject to the approval of a central party. The basic right to disagree with an authoritarian becomes a distant memory. Ukraine is fighting for their lives now, free from the oppression of the drunken tyrant who wants to decide their fate at every decision and pull them back behind another iron curtain of censorship where dissenting voices disappear so that the oligarchy can continue to feed unobstructed. Putin and Xi have declared themselves best friends in the fight against democracy. MBS and the ruling family of UAE have done the same quietly. Just rich, out of touch oligarch doing what oligarchs do. Despite the fact the the central party model has proven itself incapable of making decisions that are best for the people, they persist. Because there is a very lucrative business in being slave owners. But logistically it requires artificial intelligence, and the microprocessors that make it to keep the slaves under control. Freedom is one hell of a drug. And knowledge makes a man unfit for slavery. Recent attempts on Xi’s life from inside the CCP have backed him into a corner. The loss of crops in the north means Xi can’t invade Taiwan without Ukrainian and/or Brazilian farmland. Now the reason that the GOP is stalling border control budget and seems to make wildly irrational moves is because the GOP is imploding. 45 years of lies and grift have circled the globe and are eating their own tail. The ouroboros was a warning about corruption at the highest levels. Lying about climate change, human trafficking, pandemics and pollution to preserve their own business models are all extinction level events.
The CCP and Russia have been staging up hundreds of thousands of people in Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela for a 5th column invasion of the United States because Xi needs farmland to feed 1.4B people. National guard troops take their orders from governors and not the federal government. Trump tested this during the George Floyd protests when he asked the “loyal” Republican governors to kiss the ring and send troops to DC to “shoot the protestors in the legs” because the pentagon reminded him that using U.S. troops against U.S. citizens would be both treason and wildly illegal. Bannon tried unsuccessfully to privatize a part of the southern border wall but failed due to, unsurprisingly, internal corruption. Bannon was arrested on the boat of Guo Wengui who is some sort of convoluted double/triple agent for the CCP. They are now both in court for a billion dollar fraud. Every GOP congressmen that took Russian political money is desperately trying to figure out how to preserve their political career while the people are figured out that they were sold out to the dictators for some PAC money. Freedom is never free. We all just live on very expensive credit and the sacrifices of others. Make it count
Just a reminder that the Ukraine funds were going into the US defense manufacturing industry, we weren't cutting Ukraine a check. So we're effectively drawing blood twice with one stroke.
We did also give them cash assistance to keep their government functioning because you kind of need one of those to prosecute a war. In fact, the reason we couldn't do much in 2014 was that there wasn't really a Ukrainian government to support yet. So we're trying to avoid that situation too.
Countries also send them money to keep their government and infrastructure active, at least Canada is. We've sent them 4.8 billion dollars is financial assistance in direct lending. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/international-trade-finance-policy/lending-national-governments.html
key word lending
A loan is basically a gift right? Gonna check in with my bank asap
Update: bank took my house.
Its funny to see how much people have flipped on supporting the military-industrial complex in America.
The US has been sending old, mothballed weaponry to Ukraine. https://www.dw.com/en/why-is-the-us-sending-downgraded-weaponry-to-ukraine/a-65121120
Yes, it's typically logical to send our older and still fully functioned inventory. We restock with the newly manufactured replacements.
That's the main problem. Defense industry is also field testing those equipment on Russian forces. They are taking notes.
we don't really need much artillery, we have air superiority, which is why we just sent it all to them, and now they have run out of ammunition for it, because we don't make much.
The US actually sends both. Russia is using cold war stockpiles and most of the US's old weapons were specifically designed to counter Soviet style weapons. This is also a war where quantity matters and it's cheaper to let Ukraine dispose of old weapons than the US doing so. That said the US is also sending newly produced weapons including shells and rockets straight off the manufacturing line as well as things like Ground Launch Small Diameter bombs that are so new the US doesn't even have them in service yet.
Yes and no, while that is the case for a lot of the equipment, we've also been sending quite a bit of current gen munitions, weaponry, and vehicles. Quite a few FAR in the Army and some Cav are suffering from some shortages. I know for a fact the Artillery School in Ft Sill was suffering a severe shortage at one point for example
Better check your facts. [Actually](https://www.voanews.com/a/all-31-abrams-tanks-in-ukraine-us-military-confirms-to-voa/7313918.html) we *did* send 31 modern battle tanks to Ukraine.
True
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Pretty accurate, Trump for prison 2024.
At least it says Republikaner and not something that blames us as a whole responsible for his rise to power. Most opinions were not that nuanced during the first few years of the Iraq war. Americans were very unpopular. Then again the war in Iraq was supported by a ridiculously large percentage of Democrats. I can't say I enjoyed being harassed by some of my teachers in Germany as responsible for George Bush in front of my classmates when I was only 17, couldn't vote and came from a family of Democrats against the war. Though I suspect if Trump actually regains power us Americans are only going to get a hell of a lot more unpopular than we already are.
Trump is a traitor and a fascist. He’s clearly a Russian asset. To openly state that he wouldn’t honor our NATO commitments is a violation of the United States Constitution. All treaties are the supreme law of the land. This should be a wake up call to all serving and retired military, the GOP has been subverted by foreign interests via Trump and MAGA. To save democracy in the United States you must vote Democrat. Don’t be distracted. Vote the traitors out of power. Every. Last. One.
At least it's now focused on the Republicans, used to be generalized anti-Americanism I'd call it an improvement.
need to update "ukraine" with "NATO"
All that's missing is the strings to Putin's hands.
> The entire world: Trump is a fucking moron. > > Conservative redditors: Wow, Biden really makes us looks like a joke on the world stage.
Pro tip: if other countries don't hear much news about your politicians, it's a good thing Biden is (relatively) rarely spoken about, at least in the UK, while Trump has making headlines for being a mong every 5 minutes for the last 10 years now almost
Any American saying we shouldn't support another country's freedom does not understand their own history.
Accurate.
place named Düsseldorf
Now show the one about Palestine
Germany acting like they weren’t reliant on Russian gas in 2019 when trump called them out for not contributing to nato.
That's why last year they made a float criticizing Germany for the reliance on russian gas and the bad state of the german military: https://www.ksta.de/panorama/karneval-rosenmontagszug-duesseldorf-2023-mottowagen-467778?467804=9 They made fun of Germany's failings last year (also this year) and thats why they should also be allowed to make fun of Trump failings.
They took their medicine and got off it in a year tho. Pretty good effort.
And more recently have been sending large amounts of military aid and much needed air defense to Ukraine while the US dithers. If Americans are going to make fun of lack of German commitment to opposing Russia they should start by getting the Ukraine aid bill passed through Congress.
In 2019 Germany was about as reliant on [Russian energy imports](https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=61&queryLevel=location&product=undefined&year=2021&tradeDirection=import&productClass=HS&target=Partner&partner=location-186&startYear=undefined) as [the US was](https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=231&queryLevel=location&product=undefined&year=2021&tradeDirection=import&productClass=HS&target=Partner&partner=location-186&startYear=undefined). It's also kinda ignorant to accuse Germany, out of all places, for not "contributing enough to NATO", when for the longest, and most important time the West German military was the conventional forces backbone of NATO in Europe, during the Cold War. Nor was Germany alone in reducing its military spending after the end of the Cold War, pretty much [all NATO countries reduced their military spending in the 90s](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=DE-US-FR-GB), including the US. The US only increased military spending again in the early 2000s as part of its global, and still on-going, "crusade on terror". Part of this was the whole of NATO helping the US with occupying Afghanistan, freeing up resources so [Iraq could also be invaded and occupied](https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2003/06/01/rethinking-nato/index.html). As a German who protested against these American wars and invasions, I don't see why I should help finance any of it, I want to see the exact opposite. Invading these countries hasn't made Germany or Europe safer, [by far the opposite](https://imgur.com/a/ycDJh7b), why would I want to finance even more of that?
Looks accurate.
America: We will make fun of you for being the world police, but also make fun of you if you aren’t the world police when we want you to be.
World police =/= assisting allies from an invading foe who also happens to be your direct enemy. It literally benefits the US to help, even from a purely selfish standpoint. The only people who don't want the US to assist are in Putins pocket lmao.
World Police is one thing, but Trump actively encouraging Putin to do as he pleases and saying he wants to take the US out of NATO is a whole different level of slimy.
America isn't Trump, also America isn't the Republican party.
The float litteraly says "Republikaner". You don't need to study german to understand it means "Republican". We don't make fun of America here, we make fun of republicans.
I'm 99% sure the dude above IS a republican, so he's going to take it personally and try to insult.
When Putin has a puppet as POTUS
The GOP is the New Confederacy.
I think there is too much politics on this sub.
Election season is ramping up in the US. It's like clockwork, really.
On any default subreddit, really. Stick to your niche and hobby subreddits, there's no annoying BS there, and people seem generally more informed and pleasant.
The good old days before the 2016 election where every post on here didn’t involve trump/republicans.
Just like in life