Trump is fundamentally different from Putin. Putin wants to restore the empire Russia lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Trump wants to bully and power trip, but doesn’t want an all out war. After he realized attacking Iran might lead to a more protracted war, he immediately tried to deescalate. Lucky for him Iran has big internal issues and didn’t really want more problems, but other targets might not back down so easily.

This isn’t to say he won’t attack Greenland, but it is less likely than most of Latin American. If Europe doesn’t do anything meaningful to beef up their defenses, he might do it. However, he wouldn’t want a war of attrition against a modern military, but an overwhelming show of force with no clear goal beyond death an mayhem. His strategy is to beat smaller nations until they call him God and bend the knee. He’s a bully, not a conquer.

What will be more scary is if he dies in the middle of escalating wars. JD Vance is a weakling who will easily fold to the rabid zealots who might actually want expensive conquest. They might suspend elections and start forever wars to keep power until they collapse under their own weight.

Bunker up and show strength. Make it clear a war won’t be easy, and he’ll go after weaker nations.

Even the world vs the United States would be a bad idea. We’re geographically isolated from major military powers, and unless there is civil war and regional breakup (nowhere close to happening), the US is impossible to seriously threaten.

It also doesn’t make sense for anybody to pick a fight with the US, as Trump is destroying both the American economy and global influence. Nobody can do more damage to America than Trump, so placating him in surface level ways while preparing a costly defensive strategy is the smart move.

I can’t wait for nukes to finally be used again and it not doing a damn thing to stop proliferation.

I’m personally think we’ll see a cycle of him demanding things, killing people if the demands aren’t met, and then demanding things again. He is a quintessential bully who wants those he oppresses to self police rather than have them do things themselves. He doesn’t want to occupy Venezuela, he wants them to do what he wants so he doesn’t need to. Venezuela is a test of this preferred strategy, so if he is able to get what he wants, him and the rest of the fascists will do the same thing for years to come.

This is just what Watters does. The more depraved and evil something is, the more he likes it.

He got 2.3 million more votes than Harris, which 1.5% more than her for a grand total of 49.8% of the vote. Almost 2% voted 3rd party, which basically means they didn’t vote in FPTP. That still doesn’t mean a majority voted for him. Both Obama and Biden won more than 50%, so him not breaking that threshold in either election he won was noteworthy. He’s always been the most popular of the unpopular.

And all the ones that didn’t vote who could have, were OK with Trump winning, or else they would have turned up to vote against him.

You’re not wrong on this point, at least mechanically. Unfortunately for all of us who understand this, most people are don’t view voting this way. They lack the imagination for an election meaning the death of liberal democracy. Many who sat out might not have thought Trump would win. They thought even if he did win, he’d only be as bad as his first term, which while bad, could still be passed off as more of the same. Even to this day, people still think we live in a nation of laws, that things will go back to normal next election, that we aren’t doomed to decades of instability where nothing is off the table.

I really don’t blame them for thinking this, as a Democrats didn’t really campaign with the desperation they needed to. They tried a new way Democrat approach of appealing to the middle, thinking the left was secure. They didn’t harp on project 2025 or Trump’s open promises of dictatorship. They didn’t want people to panic, to realize how fragile things were, to realize that the rich donors they served were already on Trump’s side. They made everyone, even the loyal voters like me, feel like we had no choice in policy. They made clear that their promises of promoting democracy and regulating capitalism were lies. They made it as hard as possible to rationally support them, so I’ll never blame those who didn’t vote blue more than I blame the Democrats.

You are correct that Americans failed to prevent this; that everything we see is our collective fault. However, most don’t want this. Fascism taking power doesn’t mean it is popular or what most really want. It’s stupidity, not malice.

He got slightly less than half of the vote with a voter turnout of 64%, meaning only a third of eligible voters actual voted for him. The turnout in 2024 was slightly lower than 2020, but it was still higher than most years before. He has never even reached 50% approval rating, which is low compared to the highs of most presidents before him.

Fascists rarely have majority support, only needing a reliable plurality. They did gain power because not enough was done to stop them, but the lack of action was not just from non voters. The Democrats made multiple political blunders that even their own internal investigations revealed. Not only did they fuck up on Gaza, they completely dropped the ball on economic issues; failing to even acknowledge problems let alone offer anything new.

He was probably just trying to force fem him with a tranq gun

Venezuela was a far easier target than a landlocked country in a part of the world where the US isn’t a major imperial player. Maduro was the perfect bad guy for him; an unlikable dictator who bullied neighboring countries over their own oil supply.

The Epstein situation is more depressing than outrageous to me and always has been. As fucked up as it is, I have no faith in it ever jeopardizing his power in any way. Conservatives that often push for child marriages won’t care. Edgy 4chaners who think loli porn is based are a major force in his youth support. Trump’s fascism fundamentally mocks any moral outrage about right and wrong, viewing power as the only metric to determine right to rule. He does not care about God or country, something that most of the Christian nationalists who follow him accept because at least he wins.

My view has long been that Epstein is more of the distraction, despite what him and Trump did being pure evil. The forest is the systemic horrors inflicted on kids by ICE, by increased poverty, by a rise in right wingers who are controlling of kids, while the kids one group of pedos abused is just the biggest tree. All this flaffing around trying to find proof of what everyone already knows is outsized to its usefulness. Trump raped kids and there will never be accountability, while we can see actual good if we work to save new kids from cruel parents, a cruel legal system, and poverty. Even helping one kid in your own neighborhood will do more good than all the attention people have given to Trump/Epstein in the past year.

How the fuck is invading another country for oil about a dead pedo who Trump was a well known friend of? This is literally conquest and you’re still obsessing about an issue that could never seriously threaten Trump

Obligatory:

It wouldn’t matter. There will be no trials and no one will be held to account. American fascism won’t end with some external power or rebel group bringing justice, but by the movement losing momentum and all the war criminals going home. The people who commit unspeakable acts will just be another dad at their kid’s little league game. They’ll just be average workers who have a bit more wealth than those who didn’t kidnap innocent people. The only justice will be them needing to live in a dystopia they did their part in maintaining.

They’re a 3 day old account doing nothing but defend Israel. There’s no use arguing with them.

People using useful technology is inevitable. Most current applications of machine learning are less useful and less efficient than what we had before. The whole thing is a grift to acquire actual resources that are useful like computer parts, land, and other types of capital. Rich people that actually believe in the fantastical promises are the marks

I hate that movie and get upset whenever people act like our current foolishness is the same as the movie’s stupidity. It’s a motivated ideological rejection of reason, not a lack of ability.

This is the rare case where I don’t actually disagree. Then again, I think he’d do this narcissistic nonsense even if people didn’t care about Epstein. Creating petty distractions is just a habit for him, and it has always served him well.

mfw people start treating the neo-feudalist who throws trans people under the bus and tried to join the fascists like some savior bc 4chan memes: