Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Cthulhu 2020]

And yours valuable? Give me a break.

Primary hope is always that Trump makes things better; and in some areas he does, he just looks a lot less effective at getting there then expected.

Plenty of people in the world desire US downfall because US is the most destabilizing and dangerous force in the world at the moment. And that is true Trump or no Trump; Obama's legacy so far is much worse.

And some of steps that could be taken to rectify this problem are even quite popular in US. Like stopping endless wars.

Despite all Trump's rhetoric, he still haven't started any new ones, and despite token missile strikes, he is withdrawing troops from both Syria and Afghanistan.

You don't have to hide it Shalcker. We all know you're one of those people who desires the US downfall because it would improve Russia's place of power in the world. You try hard to pretend that you want Trump to succeed, but you talk far more about how much "people" want the US to fail, and have a pretty specific idea of why they want the US to fail. You have very intimate knowledge of parties who desire the US's downfall. I realize you have to keep your cover to keep the turnips flowing, if you freely admit that you like Trump because it advances the US's downfall, then some of the less extremist alt-righters may begin to wonder why they guzzle your propaganda all the time. But most of us with two functioning set of eyes know you desire the downfall of the US, and the rubes who eat your propaganda are completely blindfolded because they'd rather pwn teh libs than have a functioning country.

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One thing you can rely on from MMO-C:

The collective love/hate towards high elves and Donald Trump

I mean, both Donald Trump and high elf lovers are the specialist of special snowflakes who get easily hurt and desire a safe space when anyone challenges their ideas with logic. So yeah, I can see where the hate comes from. The love, not so much. I don't really care about high elf lovers though because they don't matter to me. Trump however is the US president, kind of hard to just say that kind of thing doesn't affect me as a US citizen.

[Skroe]

Tell me how US counters Russian imperialistic urges there.

Russia is intrinsically imperialistic. Its entire national myth, in various forms going back 300 years is that they're a people of destiny who have a right and responsibility to rule Eurasia, and that they'll never truly be safe until they do. You can throw some elements of Third Rome-ism in there at various points. But regardless, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and Russian Federation are all fundamentally the same thing: Three organizations of the same continent-spanning Empire, an accident of history and geography, that justifies an expansionist foreign policy via a never ending foreign threat, and uses that to build and sustain a 300 year old police state at home. Within the context of Eurasian countries, Russia's borders are deeply unnatural and a remnant of imperialism. Which is why likely several times over the course of our lives, those borders are likely to contract again, as the Russian Empire continues its long break up.

Because that's what the fall of the USSR was: the end of the Russian Empire at its greatest extent. All the Russian Federation is, is your classical imperial reorganization. An attempt by imperial inheritors to try and stop the bleeding. The Romans and the Byzantines tried that too. It worked for a few decades. Thing's looked stable. But it only ended up being a mere unstable cliff as they continued their tumble down Mount Olympus, so to speak. Such is the case here too.

The US went to war in Afghanistan because of 9/11.

But actually having bases in Afghanistan (and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean) gives us very convenient access to Russia's soft underbelly. Us making friends with the countries in the region, and making them (bribing them) to be more loyal to us than to Russia keeps Russia off balance and makes them have to spend their limited diplomatic resources to offset that.

Keep in mind in just the time we've been arguing about Ukraine, the US diplomacy-military wombo combo has progressively undermined security in regions Russia hasn't had to worry about in a long time.

The US, for example, is going to be testing a mission-ready hypersonic air-breathing cruise missile that'll fire from a mobile truck launcher in 2020. It's estimated to be able to fly at least 6000 miles on a flat trajectory. Russia has nothing even close to that. Its air breathing hypersonic test articles are limited to a few hundred miles. Its only hypersonic-speed weapons able to travel anything close to that distance are ballistic missiles.

Now wouldn't it be a shame if the US were to put a few of these things in Afghanistan. Or Tajikistan. Or give European countries the technology to build their own... technology that Russia decades away from having (as previously discussed, Russia's hypersonic efforts focus largely on converted ballistic missiles and re-entry vehicle shaping, not air-breathing engines). From Afghanistan, they could hit Russian bases in the West, or the East, in minutes, from a direction Russia has never had to defend against.

Is it likely to happen in the next five years? Probably not. But the existence of the possibility, and the leveraging of that threat will be used, especially in the post INF-treaty era (thanks for that btw... boy did you make a mistake you'll live to regret). But even the existence and threatening of these things, and other things like it, around Russia's periphery destabilizes Russia's security and make your government feel unsafe and off balance. That is the point.

Did you hear the US army's latest science project as part of the 3rd offset strategy that's going to test fire next year? A artillery cannon that can fire a rocket-assisted projectile over 1000 miles. A few of those in the Western half of Germany can hit most of Russia's military west and south of Moscow.

Will we ever use them to blast the Russian army into small bits with projectiles that they can't intercept? Very unlikely. But the presence and threat of doing so keeps Russia off balance, ensures Russia stays down.


It is the enemy of the free world and always will be.

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You don't have to hide it Shalcker. We all know you're one of those people who desires the US downfall because it would improve Russia's place of power in the world. You try hard to pretend that you want Trump to succeed, but you talk far more about how much "people" want the US to fail, and have a pretty specific idea of why they want the US to fail. You have very intimate knowledge of parties who desire the US's downfall. I realize you have to keep your cover to keep the turnips flowing, if you freely admit that you like Trump because it advances the US's downfall, then some of the less extremist alt-righters may begin to wonder why they guzzle your propaganda all the time. But most of us with two functioning set of eyes know you desire the downfall of the US, and the rubes who eat your propaganda are completely blindfolded because they'd rather pwn teh libs than have a functioning country.
.

The good news is, Trump is too stupid and too undisciplined to be causing permanent damage. He is mostly embarrassing, and his damage has been domestic and moral in nature.

Because most of what the US is doing is despite him, and because large swathes of the US government are still very much the government that Bush'43 and Obama built (Trump can't hire people), it's very likely he's going to hand his successor a country more powerful than he got it.

This Huawei black-list, for example? It never would have happened a few years ago. As the New Cold War gathers steam, countries and companies are choosing their allegiance, and most are choosing not to cross the world's only superpower, who won the last cold war.

That's kind of the big irony of the New Cold War. It represents a destabilized situation... the liberal order since World War II being threatened by an authoritarian revisionist power... but it's very existence and the emergence of a bi-polar international system enhances US power relative to the multipolar world that some envisioned. Which shouldn't be surprising really. Being a pole in a global order is expensive and nobody really wants to pay for that (or is unable to pay for it). Except the US and China that is.

Forces way bigger than individuals, even the President, are at work here.

[Shalcker]

The United States literally built the modern international order which has kept the peace and suppressed great power warfare for 75 years and underwrote what is the most peaceful, economic and most free period in human history.

Built together with USSR. "Modern international order" is as much Soviet creation as it is American. It is why Russia is still there in Security Council with permanent veto.

And it is US that tries to dismantle it lately with continued unilateral actions that US uses their financial power to enforce among "allies".

That anyone wants to overturn it speaks largely to ambitions that order blocks, or utter myopia in the way the world works. A world without the United States as the leading power is a world where autocracy will overwhelm liberal democracy again. I know you'd like that. But that would be a historic disaster.

No, it isn't the world where autocracy will overwhelm liberal democracy. That's bullshit scaremongering on par with "Red Menace".

The fact of the matter is you people... Europeans, Russians... had centuries to build a sustainable regional and global order. And you failed. You always failed. You always warred with each other. You created whole new human rights violations. It is in your nature. To kill thy neighbor rather than to live with them. Given time and cause, you will do it again. The United States is the thing that protects the free world, more than anything else, from the nearly 2000 years of oceans of blood being spilled, rising once again.

You're part and parcel of that system, creating new human right violations and warring on global scale.

And that is correct. It never will be able to do what it likes ever again. It lost that power. It lives in a world of consequences where the US is able to impose them at a time and place of its choosing.

Not for long.

Russia lost the Cold War. It went from being a rival superpower and ideological competitor to a nation whose government is little more than gangsters who use the Russian people as a piggy bank to enrich themselves.

Right, and enriching US corporations with same government backing on US taxpayer dime like latest tax cut is so much better. /s

Russia will _never_ stand up as a peer level rival to the United States ever again. We'll see to that. Losing wars has consequences, and Russia lost the one that really mattered.

Noone lost the war. We just withdrawn from pointless fight.

Fight that you still trying to keep fighting 30 years after it was over.

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You don't have to hide it Shalcker. We all know you're one of those people who desires the US downfall because it would improve Russia's place of power in the world.

Because it'll stop bullshit conflicts US keeps propagating everywhere it goes.

Don't think of everyone else to be powerless mirror of your own country.

You try hard to pretend that you want Trump to succeed, but you talk far more about how much "people" want the US to fail, and have a pretty specific idea of why they want the US to fail.

Mostly wars.

You have very intimate knowledge of parties who desire the US's downfall.

Intimate? Live 40 years with even passing interest in politics and you'll see it just as clearly.

I realize you have to keep your cover to keep the turnips flowing, if you freely admit that you like Trump because it advances the US's downfall, then some of the less extremist alt-righters may begin to wonder why they guzzle your propaganda all the time. But most of us with two functioning set of eyes know you desire the downfall of the US, and the rubes who eat your propaganda are completely blindfolded because they'd rather pwn teh libs than have a functioning country.

I think you're retreating into this state because you have no good rebuttal.

Do you want wars to continue? I bet you don't.

What is wrong with Russian saying it?

[rda]

Russia is ... It is the enemy of the free world and always will be.

My message to our little ecstatic friend is much simpler than Shalcker's:

Please stop your stupid escapades. You are not talking for your country and you are not talking for any significant part of it. You are just one small guy with not much in the way of knowledge and just a lot of free time to post your pompous ideas on the forum of a video game. Your thrust is as primitive as it gets - the US are great, others be fucked - you accuse others of thinking like that and deride them for it, but your own thrust is just as primitive and just as pathetic.

Yes, Russia has grave problems. Yes, Putin and his cronies are pretty terrible. I hope you never have to live in a country plagued by the corruption this extensive and this determined. But this will come to pass. We already had a window of freedom before Putin and when we had it, we were developing very fast and achieved a lot in very short time. Our banking system, for example, put everything on the West to shame in a couple of years, you are just now catching up. We will do this again. We will catch up to you. Truth is, plenty of us are already on the West, and they play a significant role in its technological success. You are surrounded of things made with help of Russian hands even now. So, we will overcome our current ills and we will catch up to you, no problem.

And now the question is, when we do catch up, what's your stance is going to be? Judging by you calling out not just Russians, but also Europeans, for riding on your supposed great success, I am guessing it will be the same BS - the US are great, others be fucked. First, this absolutely won't fly. Second, this won't even enter the picture. Because, as I said, you are just one small guy with a whole lot of BS in your head, you are speaking for nobody.

Have fun, small angry pathetic guy.

[Dontrike]

Have fun, small angry pathetic guy.

Ah, nothing like a classic rda post where she can only insult instead of having an actual rebuttal. That's when you know they don't have anything.

[Thepersona]

I mean, both Donald Trump and high elf lovers are the specialist of special snowflakes who get easily hurt and desire a safe space when anyone challenges their ideas with logic. So yeah, I can see where the hate comes from. The love, not so much. I don't really care about high elf lovers though because they don't matter to me. Trump however is the US president, kind of hard to just say that kind of thing doesn't affect me as a US citizen.

Umm... how do i put this... but i'd actually love to be able to make a high elf toon, but i know that if blizz did that, a good % of the BE population would switch to alliance, and the faction imbalance would be worse than it is right now.

[Belize]

So, President Bitchcave caved like a bitch on the Mexico Tariffs.

That's a shame, I was looking forward to buying cheap stocks after the market panic it would have created. Oh well, he'll crush the economy sooner or later.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Because it'll stop bullshit conflicts US keeps propagating everywhere it goes.

Don't think of everyone else to be powerless mirror of your own country.

Mostly wars.

Intimate? Live 40 years with even passing interest in politics and you'll see it just as clearly.

I think you're retreating into this state because you have no good rebuttal.

Do you want wars to continue? I bet you don't.

What is wrong with Russian saying it?

You spend your effort attempting to say that I'm wrong about you, only to prove me right with this post. But I mean, as I said, anyone with two functioning set of eyes who watches your post history knows that the US's success is the last thing you desire.

[Shalcker]

You spend your effort attempting to say that I'm wrong about you, only to prove me right with this post. But I mean, as I said, anyone with two functioning set of eyes who watches your post history knows that the US's success is the last thing you desire.

"US success" seems to be "Pretending to solve problems that you cause yourself, then making things even worse".

Sure, most powerful country in the world can create "problems to be solved" indefinitely.

I don't see why anyone else should have that as a goal, nor necessarily why US citizens should follow along with it.

[Thestrawman]

You know Trump has fucked up when the Russians are doing everything in their power to deflect by bashing the US instead of trying to defend anything Trump has done.

[Paranoid Android]

Trump’s $3.6 Million Ireland Detour Brings Taxpayer-Funded Golf Tab To $105.8 million https://t.co/M6d3fSbo2e

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status...822547968?s=19

Remindrr, but of course we all know that Trump's trip to Ireland was to play on his golf course and enrich his business. A total publicity trip to market his business on tax payer money.

So you are fine with this I'm sure Trumpkins?

[Mayhem]

Tell me how US counters Russian imperialistic urges there.

Uh, I don't think comrade Putin will like that you say the US is equally bad as Russia.

[Adam Jensen]

Meanwhile, hell has apparently frozen over.

Is he complimenting her (what? Carlson complimenting a liberal?) by saying she's like his idol? Or is he trying to insult her by saying . . . that she's like his idol whom she's very much against?

[Wyrt]

Is he complimenting her (what? Carlson complimenting a liberal?) by saying she's like his idol? Or is he trying to insult her by saying . . . that she's like his idol whom she's very much against?

Carlson has a few left wing beliefs about the economy and the working class and he seems to be anti-free market, BUT he's too stupid to realize it yet.

[Shalcker]

Uh, I don't think comrade Putin will like that you say the US is equally bad as Russia.

Russia is a lot more complex then you think.

[Zaydin]

So apparently this big deal Trump is touting with Mexico to stop his tarrifs going into effect? Apparently it was worked out months ago.

Safe bet Mitch McConnell told him that if it came up for a vote in the Senate to block his tariffs he would lose and so Trump was looking for a way to get out of the corner he had backed himself into without admitting he lost.

[Wyrt]

So apparently this big deal Trump is touting with Mexico to stop his tarrifs going into effect? Apparently it was worked out months ago.

Safe bet Mitch McConnell told him that if it came up for a vote in the Senate to block his tariffs he would lose and so Trump was looking for a way to get out of the corner he had backed himself into without admitting he lost.

So, the tariff thing was just a distraction then.

[Zaydin]

So, the tariff thing was just a distraction then.

More likely he wanted to look tough for his base and miscalculated the support he had from his toadies in the Senate and needed a way out that he could pretend wasn't admitting defeat.

[Paranoid Android]

So apparently this big deal Trump is touting with Mexico to stop his tarrifs going into effect? Apparently it was worked out months ago.

Safe bet Mitch McConnell told him that if it came up for a vote in the Senate to block his tariffs he would lose and so Trump was looking for a way to get out of the corner he had backed himself into without admitting he lost.

Ha! The con-man fails again, but his base will likely fall for it.

Besides this idiot on the verge of hurting the economy and even a slim possibility the Republicans might actually go against the idiot, we find the agreement was already set.

So 40% of the US follows a straight-up con man, which in turn influences one of our two political parties. So much irony that this guy lies like some PoS, yet his followers yell 'fake news'.

I live in the most stupid time in America.

[Mayhem]

Russia is a lot more complex then you think.

Anything else completely unrelated to say?