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The Trump debate, and international politics in general.

flyingguitar said:
you don't quote them, but you do spread their rhetoric

I think a lot of people on here don't buy into the right wing bs and when you say some of the stuff such as Donald trump being honest, when a lot of us know he isn't often, it is kind of like saying the sky is orange, I think a lot of us want to know why you think that, what evidence you have seen that makes you think that, etc.
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GooseOnTheLoose said:
With the greatest respect, @Jb85 hasn't spread anyone's rhetoric but their own. I may not agree with them on their initial post, but all they said was that they didn't believe Keir Starmer had delivered, but didn't qualify the statement. When challenged, they said they didn't want to qualify the statement, they didn't say it was a fact, they said it was a feeling.

I believe that @Jb85 has said that they appreciate some of the sense of national pride that Trump has installed in Americans, and believes that should have been the case for Brexit. That doesn't mean that they believe that Trump is right, or that Trump's form of Nationalism is the way forward, or even that they're a fascist. It's just an alternative view. Personally I wouldn't have picked a divisive figure such as Trump to illustrate that point, but that's my view.
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Thank you @GooseOnTheLoose you’ve put my own thoughts down better than I could have. Really appreciate it mate.
 
Tom said:
Not everything needs to be explained, but populist one-liner lies/exaggerations regurgitated from Murdoch or GB News are liable to challenge on a forum where there is actual intelligence.

Trump will be gone in four years. Nothing lasts forever and virtually everyone he does can be undone. Refer to 2017-2021 for details. He is not worth any Briton’s energy of thought.
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Even if Trump doesn't manage to change the limit on presidential terms (he has indeed hinted at such a thing), I'd be more concerned about the aftermath of it all as they continue to lurch further into cosplaying A Handmaid's Tale after thinking it was a guide rather than a stark warning.

Then of course you have the effect on other particularly right wing groups rising across the globe. AfD, Le Pen's mob in France, Reform in the UK. One shouldn't ignore the potential that such actions and decisions will have far reaching repercussions across the globe. Especially with Musk's keen interest in supporting these groups (and Tommy 10-Names, which even Farage had the sensibility to step back from. Broken clocks etc.).

It can be undone. If the opposition get into a place to get back in charge. And that's the big worry with Project 2025 and the current actions of the Republican party, as the roadblocks that were in place last time round aren't really there anymore.
 
Double Post.

But in case anyone was in doubt of Musk's salute being that of a Nazi persuasion, he once again appeared at a rally of the German far-right AfD party.

So yeah. Nazi.
 
I am really concerned about the US,

just read that Elon has essentially gotten access to the federal governments Hr team and sent a mass email to a ton of federal staff with apparently a pretty much copy paste from the email he sent to twitter employees where he offered them some money to quit. this is very similar to what happened to twitter and I can't help but feel like this is a way to kick out many current federal employees to replace them with corrupt trump die hards.
 
flyingguitar said:
I am really concerned about the US,

just read that Elon has essentially gotten access to the federal governments Hr team and sent a mass email to a ton of federal staff with apparently a pretty much copy paste from the email he sent to twitter employees where he offered them some money to quit. this is very similar to what happened to twitter and I can't help but feel like this is a way to kick out many current federal employees to replace them with corrupt trump die hards.
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You're right to be concerned, but you've read the wrong play.

Elon Musk hates regulation and centralised government, ironic given that SpaceX only exists to serve NASA and Tesla was founded with $450 million in loans from Uncle Sam, but I digress.

They're being fired / made redundant and their positions will not be filled by anyone else. It's not about replacing them with people who are loyal, it's about shutting down various government departments.

Musk's form of über capitalism means that only the private sector should provide, in exchange for cash. Parks? Waste of taxpayers money, let a private company run them and charge entry. Water? It's a commodity that can be sold for a profit, which isn't the government's remit. Healthcare? You want something, you have to pay for it, why should I pay because you've broken your arm? Police forces? I'll pay for my own security, but why should I pay for yours, when you could rob me? Etc, etc, etc.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
You're right to be concerned, but you've read the wrong play.

Elon Musk hates regulation and centralised government, ironic given that SpaceX only exists to serve NASA and Tesla was founded with $450 million in loans from Uncle Sam, but I digress.

They're being fired / made redundant and their positions will not be filled by anyone else. It's not about replacing them with people who are loyal, it's about shutting down various government departments.

Musk's form of über capitalism means that only the private sector should provide, in exchange for cash. Parks? Waste of taxpayers money, let a private company run them and charge entry. Water? It's a commodity that can be sold for a profit, which isn't the government's remit. Healthcare? You want something, you have to pay for it, why should I pay because you've broken your arm? Police forces? I'll pay for my own security, but why should I pay for yours, when you could rob me? Etc, etc, etc.
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good point, I forgot how much elon hates the government there are many examples:
the recent space x rocket that blew up was launch and they didn't properly warn the aviation industry and they had to panic and divert planes over the alantic in fear of debris hitting them.
the SEC Elon hates them so much he literally threatened to fire a law firm because they hires someone who used to work there.

but I do wonder if it is a case of being critical of the power someone holds, but when you are king and in control then you have the power keeping that power to threaten other companies such as blue origin or Boeing for space x why get rid of the FAA now if you can use it to rather than fine your companie fine your competitors and make yourself the only way to get to space
 
I hope that everyone who refused to vote for Kamala because it would go against their conscience to vote for someone who didn’t explicitly condemn Israel never get a good nights sleep again, the 🤬 enablers.
 
DanJB said:
I hope that everyone who refused to vote for Kamala because it would go against their conscience to vote for someone who didn’t explicitly condemn Israel never get a good nights sleep again, the 🤬 enablers.
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I don’t think Harris would have been ‘worse’ for Palestine, but the complete inertia of the US political system means there’s no progressive way to vote in the dying embers of the American empire, especially in regards to their cult-like commitment to Israel. The genocide has already been fully enabled and funded for the last year by the Democratic establishment, Trump is just accelerating it into the ethnic cleansing stage, with perhaps shocking speed. At least this will hurry up the inevitable, tiresome process of the mainstream liberal establishment, who have spent the last year smearing everyone who stood against this (after all, would Israel really bomb a hospital?!), declaring that they were in fact, “against it all along.”

At some stage, we will need to stop measuring the virtue of our vote based on a post-WWII political reality. Of course, voting to avoid fascism should always be a fundamental consideration. But it's now obvious that in the relatively comparable democracies of the US, mainland Europe and the UK, fascism is lapping at the edges of our political reality every day, and the supposedly sensible establishment parties and forces are simply happy to maintain the status quo. A recent YouGov poll of American voters post-Trump's victory found that, amongst the nearly eleven million people who voted for Biden in 2020 and didn't repeat their vote in 2024, 29% of them stressed that his lack of action on Israel was their top reason to avoid, the highest percentage after a lack of vision on a fairer, more equitable economy. These are completely normal, considered criteria in which to withhold a vote, and it is the responsibility of our leaders to react accordingly and, heaven forbid, propose something different.

Personally, my pragmatic streak still wins out, even as my disillusionment with politics has increased. And just as I voted for Starmer with my nose held, I probably would have done so for Harris, were I an American citizen. What Trump will achieve domestically and internationally is going to have a profound, negative effect on the world and it's most marginalised people. Nonetheless, I think the urge to blame voters who were repelled by the entitlement or indifference of the establishment on Trump's cartoonish evil is a waste of time, and passes the buck from those in power, and especially those who claim to seek progress.
 
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Trump’s tariffs are now officially in place, and further to the previously announced tariffs, the White House have now announced that 104% tariffs will be collected on Chinese imports from 12:01am tomorrow (5:01am BST): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cp8vyy35g3mt

I try and stay relatively politically impartial and see both sides of the argument in most cases… but I honestly think Trump might have lost the plot at this point. I frankly have absolutely no clue what he thinks slapping huge tariffs on China and triggering a trade war will achieve… and I was quite shocked when I saw the speech a few days ago announcing the initial tariffs. He went on some weird tirade about the word “groceries” that I didn’t get at all, and the whole manner of the thing seemed like some weird game show rather than a presidential speech!

Thus far, his second term really is seeming to be a whole new ballgame compared to his first… I still have my doubts that he’ll follow through with much of what he’s put out, but some of the rhetoric and policy announcements seem way more extreme than in his first term.
 
For anybody interested, Matt Parker (Stand-up Maths) did a video on the tariffs and the formula that the Trump administration shared.


From: https://youtu.be/j04IAbWCszg?si=Vjom-nfznvG0jNiH


  • The formula is a load of tosh designed to make things like clever, but in reality it's just the difference between exports and imports (trade deficit) rather than countering a tariff the other country is imposing on US imports.
  • Some countries have a trade surplus (buy more from USA than sell to them) but are still subject to tariffs.
  • Tariffs based purely on trade deficit don't make sense, since what you're exporting vs importing are in completely different areas, e.g. importing meat products but exporting aeronautical equipment. You need to buy the same US Dollars worth of aircraft from us as we do beef from you (?).
  • Using the USA's own data it also shows there will be a 10% inflation on goods paid for by US consumers.
 
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...and here we go...
FIGHT!
Epstein matey, that pedo guy, richest bloke, most powerful bloke, $150,000,000,000 dropped out of a hole in your pocket overnight, possible forced removal of an immigrant...and the two biggest egos on the planet.

Oh bring me a big bucket of popcorn and a ringside seat.

It's the end of the world as we know it...
 
Who could've seen this coming?

The mental gymnastics already in full swing as lines are being drawn as daddy & daddy fight.
 
There’s talk that Elon Musk is now on about funding the Democrats, with Donald Trump warning him of “consequences” if he does.

Given that Elon Musk is essentially the poster boy of the far right, that would be a truly perplexing turn of events…

I did not expect things to turn quite so ugly quite so quickly between Musk and Trump… given how politically aligned they appeared, I’m surprised that it seems as though they now genuinely hate each other.
 
Grifters gonna grift.

These people go where the money is, and will change their political/religious/gender views at the drop of revenue.

And their cult will follow blindly.
 
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