Does anyone else have the feeling that Ukraine is safer with no deal?
Yeah, and the EU should immediately step up, and triplicate support for Ukraine.
We (Europe) already did most of the heavy lifting for Ukraine. The US mostly gave old stockpiles of weapons that they would’ve needed to destroy anyway. We are the ones actually paying cash to keep them afloat.
The problem is, in the post-WW2 order, our defense and our defense industry was made dependent on the USA by design. And even up until last November, Europe didn’t want to challenge this arrangement and just went full steam ahead with this arrangement, ordering US made weapons. I think Europe was in denial that Biden could lose or that NATO could ever end.
Only France, and to a limited extent, Sweden and Turkey, have independent defense industries.
In the future, we will have it again. And Ukraine will actually be a key player.
But in the short term, there is no magical button to press that can produce the arms.
Undoing decades of integration isn’t going to be easy.
Indeed, especially during the first Cold War, the US Military Industrial Complex was everywhere. Germany and Japan were forced to buy out dated shit from the Americans. The magical button, tell the US military to shutdown all their European military installations and leave. What would the US MIC do then? I highly doubt they want to lose business.
I mostly agree, but I think the list needs Germany’s excellent Leopard (2) tanks, the modern APC variants and all their industry.
Europe also has a lot of good marine yards that can make Navy vessels and submarines.
And it can drum up drone production in a rapid tempo where needed.
What’s more, European Steel and metallurgy are out of the door of higher grade than the US, Russia and Chinese productions. This is a boon to produce heavy armor quickly.
So when push comes to shove Europe can no doubt ramp up a unified military industry rapidly, no need for it to take a decade, and keep finances in house. Another factor that works against the Trump economy if he thoughtlessly pulls the plug on NATO
Putin is going to make a hard move into the baltics during Trump’s first 2 years, including NATO countries. And Europe won’t be able to do shit about it. They need defenses now and European leadership needs to fast track it.
Any deal with Trump is no deal at all. He’s the kind of guy that, if you give an inch, starts waving his hands around about how you stole 16 inches from him, and how you must be thrown in a hole somewhere.
Granting him anything is telling him that you are weak and ripe to be exploited.
Yes. USA already knows what its going to do. A hypothetical trade agreement isn’t going to change the decision, so Ukraine should make exactly zero concessions in pursuit of influencing a decision which has already been made.
A man who, by the way, was fully supported by every single democratic senator.
He was supposed to be the “adult” in the room. They all fear Trump… For some reason, I don’t get it.
I’d suspect they’re safer with a deal… but they absolutely shouldn’t honor that deal.
I watched some of the transmission and all I can say is my respect to Zelensky grew tenfold with that exchange alone.
Having to interact with these two clowns and still keeping his cool (as much as he was able to) requires A LOT of patience and will. It was horrifyingly stupid in a train wreck kind of way.
Dude… I am saying this from the most unobjective place I can possibly manage. That was was of the most difficult and annoying things I’ve watched in a very long time. It honestly felt like watching a rational adult deal with his children complaining they can’t have a sleepover or something.
I am shocked that A) the White House wanted that embarrassment broadcast and B) zelensky actually remained remarkably calm.
Man what annoying people to talk with lol I’m trying so hard to see this from a different perspective but I can’t even fathom how that could be seen as anything other than rude and embarrassing.
“You haven’t even thanked us once” lmao
I am shocked that A) the White House wanted that embarrassment broadcast
Trump thinks strength is measured by how many people you confront and bully and threaten. He is not smart enough to realize this isn’t how it looks to people outside his bubble of sycophants and MAGA dummies. Elon Musk clearly thinks the same way, and both Musk and Trump crave the respect they will never earn, so they double down on their idiot edgelord/bully methods. The White House media office will be headed by Trump sycophants, who will see this exchange through MAGA eyes. They see a strong man where everyone else sees a pathetic manchild.
Man, don’t take a look at the conversations sub. They are all high fiving each other over this. For them it was a rush of masculinity and power live on TV. You’ve got folks saying that Vance never looked so good and how they want to name their first born over him.
Indeed. He’s in an awful situation and has no good options. With only Europe (both politically and militarily) it will be real hard for them. OTOH with a blackmailed ‘deal’ with orange they loose a big piece of resources without any guarantees not to loose the rest to Russia or to the orange in a deal extension. To get out of this situation without a major loss would be a miracle, but hey, I really hope they make it.
fuck you america for voting for this fascist scumbag. nobody should trust you again.
Most of us want the shithead gone just as bad as you do, but too many dumbshits decided they’d rather not stop him because the alternative wasn’t perfect. I hate it here.
Most? He already was president and over 50% voted that guy into office again? How are most people against him?
A surprisingly large number of people don’t vote. I refuse to believe that anything approaching half of voting-age Americans support this. Unfortunately, here we are.
50% of the people that voted in the last election voted for him. Some people didn’t vote, so about 33% of those that could vote voted for him. Since the election, his approval ratings dropped about 15-20%, so about 25% of those able to vote still support him.
I’m an American and I’m upvoting this. After 2016, I thought that there were some misguided people who didn’t realize what they were doing, but that the first Trump term would push the pendulum hard the other direction. I felt a little validated when Biden won in 2020, but it wasn’t as one sided as I’d hoped. But Trump winning decisively in 2024 tells me that everyone knew and did it anyway. People are getting what they want: rampant racism, sexism, and global bullying.
So yes, we suck, and no one should trust us as a country, regardless of the fact that there are many of us who knew how catastrophic another Trump term would be.
I don’t think Trump won quite as decisively as it first seemed.
But shit, it’s still like… a third of our country that looked at Trump and went, “yeah sure”.
How the fuck do we fix this? I straight up have no clue. And that means it very likely will devolve into violence. And that is legitimately terrifying.
How the fuck do we fix this?
The primary issue is twofold:
- Heavily biased information and restrictive media diets
- Democrat Inaction
If you try viewing even a tiny amount of right leaning content on a fresh social media account on any platform, you’ll see the type of content that gets perpetuated. People simply become indoctrinated by content recommendations that are practically incapable of showing the other side, not to mention that most mainstream media is entirely corporately captured.
The fact that the Democrats were slow to release official policy for Harris’s campaign, indeterminate on Gaza, and had (or really, still have) a very “this is fine, you’re just overreacting, but sure we’ll fix a few things” attitude towards political messaging, only helped Republicans, because it led a lot of people to just vote for the party that promised the most, and that was the Republicans. All the wars would be over, things would be cheaper, all the “bad” people wouldn’t be here anymore, etc.
To a normal person with very little media literacy, those promises sound downright amazing.
I personally think we fix this by at least starting with messaging, since that’s what actually leads most people to make a decision on who to vote for. There were literally people deciding on election night who they wanted to vote for, so messaging is highly important.
The left needs to speak to the immediately visible, material needs of the working people directly. While it’s important to fight against the right on culture war issues to prevent the ceding of ground on things like civil rights and discrimination, I think a lot of left leaning messaging focuses too heavily on that, and as a result, it can seem to right-inclined people that the left has no economic policy. That needs to change.
See: Bernie Sanders, and how he very consistently addresses specific economic issues people face, and has broader support on the right compared to any democratic congressperson. Hell, even JD Vance said Bernie was one of the people he least disliked on the left, and Bernie’s further left than the Democrats. Populist, economic disparity focused, anti-billionaire, pro-worker sentiment is how you change ordinary people’s minds in the current media economy.
As an individual, the most you’ll likely be able to do in this respect is going to be volunteering for phone banking efforts, donating money to left leaning charities focused on reducing economic inequality, and generally bringing these kinds of talking points up in general political discussion with others.
There’s something else that’s commonly overlooked though, and that’s local policy. Think of a city’s “town hall” type meetings that accept public comment. How many people in that city are actually regularly attending a town hall meeting? Think of how few people it really is during a particularly contentious proposal. Now imagine what it’s like when it comes to something like “housing and urban development: reducing the rate of homelessness - meeting no. 57” Almost nobody. Get yourself and a few friends down to your local relevant policy meetings, make even a little noise, and the amount of change you can make as a result can be drastic compared to the actual % of the city’s population you make up.
Pushing for things like ranked-choice voting in local elections can also be very viable, since it’s proven that tends to push voters further left, on average, and it also adds some extra competition that can spur a party like the Democrats into actual meaningful action.
Let’s remember that there good people there too. Let’s remember that these scumbags, whichever country they run, rely on our sweat, tears and blood to move forward with their decisions. While not all of us are good, obviously, I want to believe that many Americans were tricked by media to think Trump was a valid choice. What we need to understand it’s that this is a us people versus them rulers. If only we would understand this together and stop fighting each other…
rely on our sweat, tears and blood to move forward with their decisions
Agreed, so stop giving it to them. When I see Americans bring the country to a screeching halt through protest, disobedience, and strikes I will believe in the good people there.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Did Trump and Vance think this embarrassing display made them look the better of the leaders?
Because it really didn’t.
Yea, looks like they used their leverage over Zelensky to lure him into a trap that turned out to be a verbal-WWE media stunt…
…turns out Zelensky is more articulate and mature than both of them combined…
I suppose it might go down well with some of his base who love the “macho” shit, but the rest of the world are looking on with disgust.
In some ways, this has probably worked out well for Ukraine, as it might focus minds in Europe. Though I do wish Zelenskyy had pointed out the $350bn in aid lie that Trump keeps spouting.
Though I do wish Zelenskyy had pointed out the $350bn in aid lie that Trump keeps spouting.
He would need to have been able to get a word in edgeways to do that. What should happen is that media reporting on it should point out that it’s a lie but most media organizations seem too busy gargling Trump’s balls these days for that.
Zelensky is the strongest man in the world to be able to hold himself back from attacking these ass holes.
I mean, it would have certainly resulted in him being shot on the spot. The Secret Service would shoot anyone .
I wonder how long until the US is nuked? Or at least actually attacked, militarily.
US didn’t spent most of it’s money on army for nothing. Doesn’t matter if the army is as powerful as it says it is, the image is strong enough, so nobody will dare.
The only way it will crumble down is if they do “putin gambit”, really attack someone, fail spectacularly at it, expose inability to do shit, and get 50 square kilometres of baren wasteland for it.
I think he should call Trump’s bluff and send in a few dozen battle hardened Ukrainian troops with a few dozen drones and show Trump’s entire nursing home and support staff how things work nowadays. We need to put together an anonymous block chain fund with the purpose of putting multi million bounties on the treason party, funded anonymously by small donors and build a reliable mechanism for people to anonymously, but truthfully claim the bounties. What our political contributions fail to do, crowd funding can do. All of the technology exists to make this happen, and it’s one of the main appeals of crypto currencies. Large scale anonymous transactions. If I find out there’s a billionaire Trump donating traitor or heritage foundation member near me, and I can get a basic Intel file and there’s a 500K bounty on them, then shit. They better hug their money goodnight one last time. Just send an email from a burner/anon account to a recipient with the time of death rough location and wallet address before any news is released. If all the details add up then release the funds to the wallet.
Make it worth while and let rule#3 take effect:
“Number three, never trust nobody Your moms’ll set that ass up, properly gassed up Hoodied and masked up, shit, for that fast buck She be laying in the bushes to light that ass up”
I actually love this idea of anonymous crowdfunding by the masses. But how could we make this happen? I guess it would have to be initiated from the Ukrainian government.
I mean, the framework is already in place with crypto. The silk road ran for years and facilitated enormous amounts of illegal activity, and in the end who got in trouble? Like one fucking guy.
It’s honestly no different than a bookie. You facilitate the transactions and keep a portion of the cut for each transaction. The key is keeping the payor, payee, and broker anonymous.
And no Ukraine wouldn’t be involved in this, if anything the Swiss might be on board, or Panama
