US Politics Thread

[Kieran]

IDK why people are surprised that Trump over-promised (as usual) & he's now having to deal w/ the fall-out! When his actions (or inactions) are defended, they look more & more unhinged! Regret is on the minds of a lot of these Trump-ster, but that won't help us survive the rest of this very new term!

What? That he’s trying to bring both sides together to talk, instead of spending billions of your dollars to increase the fighting?

 

[Moxie]

Putin has made a monkey out of the west for 25 years. Pumping dollars into potentially expanding the war hasn’t worked, nor did handing him Crimea on a silver platter in 2014. It’s hard to see an end to this, without more suffering and pain. A heart attack might help but then we have the old Soviet Union conundrum - who comes next?

I don't think that's quite the point I'm making. Trump has opened his arms wide to Putin, for years. But now it's not just the bromance. Trump has staked some of his political capital on ending that war, and Putin refuses to kiss him back, even though Trump has gift wrapped the pkg. I just wonder if the Prez will have the sense to be insulted. He's generally pretty thin-skinned.

 

[Kieran]

I don't think that's quite the point I'm making. Trump has opened his arms wide to Putin, for years. But now it's not just the bromance. Trump has staked some of his political capital on ending that war, and Putin refuses to kiss him back, even though Trump has gift wrapped the pkg. I just wonder if the Prez will have the sense to be insulted. He's generally pretty thin-skinned.

It's often difficult to read Trump, based on that he says a lot of nonsense that we have to ignore, and filter etc. I think his base instinct is to be against war, for probably good reasons. War is always a missed opportunity and yet successive American presidents have ended up in wars, increased their wars, whereas I don't sense from him a bullishness or eagerness, in that regard.

But still we have to filter him, and see what he's doing. He's put an offer on the table and Putin rejected it. That wasn't unexpected. It's how people negotiate, although these are highest stakes. Putin has people behind him too, watching like hawks to see what he does. He was hardly going to immediately do what America insists upon. There's a next stage that follows, and that's also part of the filtering. You maybe right about what happens next, but worse case scenario is only what's happened under every other president, more or less, since the end of the Cold War. Trump may surprise us - hopefully!

Also hopefully he won't rise to the bait and feel insulted...

 

[Moxie]

It's often difficult to read Trump, based on that he says a lot of nonsense that we have to ignore, and filter etc. I think his base instinct is to be against war, for probably good reasons. War is always a missed opportunity and yet successive American presidents have ended up in wars, increased their wars, whereas I don't sense from him a bullishness or eagerness, in that regard.

But still we have to filter him, and see what he's doing. He's put an offer on the table and Putin rejected it. That wasn't unexpected. It's how people negotiate, although these are highest stakes. Putin has people behind him too, watching like hawks to see what he does. He was hardly going to immediately do what America insists upon. There's a next stage that follows, and that's also part of the filtering. You maybe right about what happens next, but worse case scenario is only what's happened under every other president, more or less, since the end of the Cold War. Trump may surprise us - hopefully!

Also hopefully he won't rise to the bait and feel insulted...

Trump's disinclination to war is that he feels like the US ends up fighting other peoples' wars, and spending its money on them, which he thinks is for chumps. It's certainly not his deep concern for greater humanity, as he has none. All of his motivations are transactional...'what does it do for me?'

He also has no skill at, nor care for diplomacy. His approach to peace in Ukraine is based on completely rewriting history, and so, a lie. ("Zelenskyy is a dictator; Ukraine started the war.") He's reversing decades of US policy towards Russia as a non-democratic regime, betraying our interests and our allies. @Federberg has rightly expressed a lot of anxiety over the fate of NATO given Trump's policies. What he wants out of this negotiation is to fulfill a brag he made about it the electorate, to keep Ukraine out of NATO and further hobble it, and to suck up to his friend the dictator, Putin. I don't know why you would treat this like some normal negotiation, since it never has been. And I'm very curious to know who you think Putin answers to back home.

Trump promised an end to the war in a day. He can't even get a proper cease-fire. Personally, I'm still curious to know how Trump reacts to Putin making this a pissing contest.

 

[Kieran]

Trump's disinclination to war is that he feels like the US ends up fighting other peoples' wars, and spending its money on them, which he thinks is for chumps. It's certainly not his deep concern for greater humanity, as he has none. All of his motivations are transactional...'what does it do for me?'

He also has no skill at, nor care for diplomacy. His approach to peace in Ukraine is based on completely rewriting history, and so, a lie. ("Zelenskyy is a dictator; Ukraine started the war.") He's reversing decades of US policy towards Russia as a non-democratic regime, betraying our interests and our allies. @Federberg has rightly expressed a lot of anxiety over the fate of NATO given Trump's policies. What he wants out of this negotiation is to fulfill a brag he made about it the electorate, to keep Ukraine out of NATO and further hobble it, and to suck up to his friend the dictator, Putin. I don't know why you would treat this like some normal negotiation, since it never has been. And I'm very curious to know who you think Putin answers to back home.

Trump promised an end to the war in a day. He can't even get a proper cease-fire. Personally, I'm still curious to know how Trump reacts to Putin making this a pissing contest.

He shouldn’t react to Putin making it a pissing contest, that’s not how you negotiate. He has to focus on the goal he set himself, which is to end the war. Ignore Putin’s boorish behaviour, his lateness to the meeting etc. Putin began this war and relative to what he wanted, it’s gone badly for him. He needs peace.

I didn’t say Putin answers to anybody in Russia. He also doesn’t care about Russia but there are always would-be tyrants eyeing up the crown. We’ve known this since time out of mind. No dictator can be unaware of the usual fate of dictators.

As for the rest of it, I don’t disagree with much of it. Obviously I could point again to Obama and his weakness and lacking understanding, in the face of Russia, and also the way the west poodle-like handed over Crimea in 2014, led in that enterprise by the French and Germans, and watched over by America.

I’m not saying this to score points or start arguments, this is history by now, but the west has not always been strong or clear in its dealings with Russia, since the break up of the USSR. Putin sensed weakness and went full invasion into Ukraine. He lied about the reasons, naturally, pretending it was about Ukraine wanting to join NATO - seemingly Finland actually joining NATO was okay with him.

If Trump fails to bring peace - and when dealing with rats like Putin, it’s unlikely to succeed - we are going to have to face a further prolonged war that might expand into neighbouring countries anyway…

 

[Moxie]

He shouldn’t react to Putin making it a pissing contest, that’s not how you negotiate. He has to focus on the goal he set himself, which is to end the war. Ignore Putin’s boorish behaviour, his lateness to the meeting etc. Putin began this war and relative to what he wanted, it’s gone badly for him. He needs peace.

I didn’t say Putin answers to anybody in Russia. He also doesn’t care about Russia but there are always would-be tyrants eyeing up the crown. We’ve known this since time out of mind. No dictator can be unaware of the usual fate of dictators.

As for the rest of it, I don’t disagree with much of it. Obviously I could point again to Obama and his weakness and lacking understanding, in the face of Russia, and also the way the west poodle-like handed over Crimea in 2014, led in that enterprise by the French and Germans, and watched over by America.

I’m not saying this to score points or start arguments, this is history by now, but the west has not always been strong or clear in its dealings with Russia, since the break up of the USSR. Putin sensed weakness and went full invasion into Ukraine. He lied about the reasons, naturally, pretending it was about Ukraine wanting to join NATO - seemingly Finland actually joining NATO was okay with him.

If Trump fails to bring peace - and when dealing with rats like Putin, it’s unlikely to succeed - we are going to have to face a further prolonged war that might expand into neighbouring countries anyway…

I think they've stacked the deck against Ukraine, but I hope that somehow they can come up with a solution to end the war, stop the killing, and leave Ukraine with its territory intact, and also its ability to make sovereign decisions, such as whether or not it wants to join NATO.