Trump47 Foreign Policy Catch-All | Vance in Munich
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I mean, Vance just went to Europe and told Europeans they, not authoritarians in Russia and China, are the problem and they shouldn’t fear fascism, they should work with fascists and quit being so pissy about foreign government officials from Russia and the U.S. interfering with their elections.
The Trump Administration has gone on the world stage to declare that we are a Supervillain State, and so far everything they’ve done indicates an intention to carve up the world into spheres of domination among the United States (Western Hemisphere & Middle East), Russia (Europe) and China (the rest).
superrific
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Of course, it's no coincidence that Vance picked out Greta. Female, young, autistic -- perfect target for the party of punching down. And the word "scolding." Yep, checks out.
CFordUNC
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So hard to even process that this is what's happening. Truly surreal.
HandsonFire
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If I’m Zelensky no way I ever meet in person with Trump/Putin. They will probably assassinate him, if they can figure out how. They give zero shits about any consequences.
lawtig02
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We had a chance, Pubs. Russia has never been weaker. China is facing enormous demographic and economic challenges. We could have led the world for the next 100 years. But you guys just couldn’t handle the thought of sharing a bathroom with a biological woman.
superrific
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Nice euphemism. Hopefully people will distinguish the American government from the American people. Our government right now is 100% terrible. The American people are only about 45% terrible.
CFordUNC
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Not sure I've ever seen a more succinctly accurate statement in more than a decade on this board.
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It's true. We are the baddies.
The worst of us leveraged our humanistic and empathetic vulnerabilities to steer the world further towards class and racial systems of alignment. The folks at the top are more concerned with class, but they operate with simple cynicism directed towards the easily manipulated racial tribalists. IMO, combating this second rise of the Nazis will require a severe turn towards cynicism for those who believe in humanism, democracy, and pluralistic society. I recognize that’s a bit antithetical, but we’ve seen time and time again that you can only defeat reactionary bullies with uncompromising pushback.
Paine
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Can you elaborate a bit on how cynicism is necessary for uncompromising pushback? I don’t see those as dependent on one another.
If what you’re saying is: liberals and socialists need to realize that, despite our inclinations towards humanism, most people are voting (or not voting) based on narrowly perceived self-interest, then I agree with that. But that doesn’t mean I myself need to turn to cynicism.
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The second part. Empathetic folk often overestimate the existence of empathy in the world, and particularly within their ideological antagonists. The rising tide trope is idealistic, and historically tenuous.
The empathy gap is a durable characteristic and often far more powerful than a rising tide orientation. Basic in-group, outgroup stuff. I think we do ourselves a disservice if we view rising fascism as a phenomenon we need to convince people out of, because “we all want to do well”, vs realizing this is about mobilization of like-minded (or at least sympathetic) folks who haven’t meaningfully engaged in the political process.
4thgenheel
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Paine
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Go for it. I fully agree with that diagnosis @Healing.
I think this dynamic has manifested itself well in the USAID crisis. People of our persuasion can see the obvious good that foreign aid does. Unfortunately, foreign aid remains one the top things Americans would like to see cut.
Instead of trying to convince people out of this, we need to focus on the core issues we can mobilize people on: education, healthcare, pocketbook issues.
Setting ourselves up as the noble defenders of USAID is only strengthening the picture of Democrats as defenders of crumbling institutions and Republicans as anti-establishment populists.
Shenanigans
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This is incredibly accurate. Mobilize with like-minded people right now, while it's still easy to do. The usefulness of the right to general Americans is essentially nothing. I'm well past cynical.
Eventually the military will be unleashed domestically. My prediction is around the midterms when elon/trump somehow "find" 50 million votes from dead democrats. They will then declare a national emergency, rigged voting systems, setting the stage for constitutional realignment, and a 3rd trump term.
I truly want you all to understand this is a very real possibility, a likely possibility. Mobilize now. Make them uncomfortable, make them suffer, destroy them. It's the only thing their non critically thinking brains can understand.
superrific
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You're not wrong about this, but we should be able to talk about things like:
farmers losing crops because they were selling to USAID
the diplomats/USAID staffers in Congo who had to flee, leave all their belongings, and pay their own way home and have not received any reimbursement and don't know if they even had jobs.
You are right that going to bat for USAID itself is probably not a political winner. On the other hand, I don't think anyone really cares. Sometimes you have to shore up the base too.
Paine
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True. There are some specific examples within USAID that make sense for Dems in terms of highlighting a message of: here is what government does for you, even if you don’t see it. I think connecting these threads for Americans is crucial.
I’m interested to see how Dems respond to attempts to dismantle DoE and Medicaid because I think the case is a lot easier to make there. With USAID, people can just say outrageous things about Serbian DEI initiatives or gay theater productions since the effects of USAID aren’t acutely felt in the daily lives of *most* Americans.
superrific
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Talking about the Congo incident also reinforces the impression that Trump doesn't actually give a fuck about Americans. That conduct was way worse than Benghazi. To leave them out to dry like that is unconscionable, even if someone doesn't agree with their political program.
Medicaid is just a gift wrapped with a bow and placed on a platter. Absolutely the Dems will go after that. It's unclear, though, that it will pass. Valdao in CA (spelling is wrong) seems like an obvious no vote on that, and they have only one other vote to spare. Don Bacon is not necessarily a yes vote on that, and there are other Reps in swing districts who are going to be loathe to rip away health care.
Nonetheless, they put it in their budget, we should go after it.
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JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party
US vice-president meets with AfD leader Alice Weidel as Trump administration courts European populist parties
JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party
US vice-president meets with AfD leader Alice Weidel as Trump administration courts European populist parties
“… The meeting was the latest in a string of contacts between the party and figures close to Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the billionaire now leading a purge of the US federal government, has repeatedly claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany” and last month hosted Wiedel in a 75-minute live conversation on his social media platform, X.
Addressing the Munich security conference earlier on Friday, Vance admonished Europe’s leaders for refusing to work with their far-right parties.
…The move sent shockwaves through German political circles as the Trump administrationappeared to be making a large bet on some of the continent’s most toxic parties in opposition to the sitting governments in the UK, Germany and other major allies. …”
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Founded in 2013 as an anti-European Union party, AfD has since radicalized and become an extremist, anti-immigrant party whose aim is “to eliminate the free democratic basic order,” according to a 2023 report by the German Institute for Human Rights.
The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV), its domestic intelligence agency which monitors extremist threats to Germany’s democracy, has listed AfD as an officially suspected extremist organization and classified its youth wing, “Young Alternative,” as extremist in April 2023. The state-level BfV offices in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia have gone a step further and classified the AfD party as a whole as extremist.
Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD party in the state of Thuringia, has twice been fined by a German court for using a banned Nazi slogan. The phrase, “Everything for Germany” (“Alles für Deutschland”) was a slogan of the Nazi stormtroopers and engraved on their daggers….called for Germany to stop atoning for Nazi crimes and make a "180-degree turn" in how it remembers its past.
Gauland also said in 2017 that Germans should be “proud of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars.”
Höcke has engaged in extremist speech to the extent that a judge ruled that he could be described as a fascist without fear of a defamation suit, because such a description was a “value judgment based on facts.”
AfD leaders have also threatened to deport German citizens of non-ethnic-German heritage.
In its 2017 election manifesto, AfD asserted that the presence of Muslims in Germany was a threat to the country: “Islam does not belong in Germany. The AfD sees the spread of Islam and the presence of over 5 million Muslims, whose numbers are constantly growing, as a great danger to our state, our society and our system of values.”[2]
AfD members were exposed as participants in a November 2023 secret meeting of far-right extremists in Potsdam, including Austrian neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, who discussed a mass deportation plan for foreigners and "non-assimilated" Germans, as part of AfD’s strategy should it be elected to govern Germany.
Following the exposure of the secret meeting, AfD politicians initially denied participating, but just weeks later began actively campaigning with the slogan, “remigration,” which was the term used at the meeting for the mass deportation plan.
The US government is intentionally elevating the profile of a German christonationlist, white supremacist, party.
If ten people are at dinner, and one of them is a Nazi …
The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV), its domestic intelligence agency which monitors extremist threats to Germany’s democracy, has listed AfD as an officially suspected extremist organization and classified its youth wing, “Young Alternative,” as extremist in April 2023. The state-level BfV offices in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia have gone a step further and classified the AfD party as a whole as extremist.
Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD party in the state of Thuringia, has twice been fined by a German court for using a banned Nazi slogan. The phrase, “Everything for Germany” (“Alles für Deutschland”) was a slogan of the Nazi stormtroopers and engraved on their daggers….called for Germany to stop atoning for Nazi crimes and make a "180-degree turn" in how it remembers its past.
Gauland also said in 2017 that Germans should be “proud of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars.”
Höcke has engaged in extremist speech to the extent that a judge ruled that he could be described as a fascist without fear of a defamation suit, because such a description was a “value judgment based on facts.”
AfD leaders have also threatened to deport German citizens of non-ethnic-German heritage.
In its 2017 election manifesto, AfD asserted that the presence of Muslims in Germany was a threat to the country: “Islam does not belong in Germany. The AfD sees the spread of Islam and the presence of over 5 million Muslims, whose numbers are constantly growing, as a great danger to our state, our society and our system of values.”[2]
AfD members were exposed as participants in a November 2023 secret meeting of far-right extremists in Potsdam, including Austrian neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, who discussed a mass deportation plan for foreigners and "non-assimilated" Germans, as part of AfD’s strategy should it be elected to govern Germany.
Following the exposure of the secret meeting, AfD politicians initially denied participating, but just weeks later began actively campaigning with the slogan, “remigration,” which was the term used at the meeting for the mass deportation plan.
The US government is intentionally elevating the profile of a German christonationlist, white supremacist, party.
If ten people are at dinner, and one of them is a Nazi …