I am genuinely sorry that Atlanticism came down to a few hundred thousand of the dumbest Midwesterners we could find.
He wouldn't win the popular vote today! Why is it that when you call yourself a Republican, you take a very narrow margin of victory and consider it a mandate to only listen to your fanbase? I bet it feels fun at first, and there are a few people who get very wealthy and powerful as a result, but reality always comes crashing back down.
I suppose that if the talk of suspending mid-term elections bears fruit, that changes the equation.
Would he win the popular vote today? Hard to know. Only the kind of people who are willing to talk to pollsters end up in polls.
Both parties tend to claim a high moral position and definitive mandate from a narrow margin of victory.
Talk of suspending mandates, third terms, and invading Greenland are exactly how he keeps winning- talk past your goal, and retreat to victory.
I’m being sarcastic, for the record. Back during his first term, Trump talked about “second amendment people” doing something about liberal Supreme Court justices (iirc) and the right wing media treated everyone as crazy for thinking that was wildly inappropriate.
All the assault weapons you can store in your shed are useless when an f35 takes them out from 300 miles away.
Ah yes, and if I recall, that is how the US won in Vietnam ... oh wait. Your comment is a perfect example of the very problem I described.
The broader context was that the Indochina War was partially concurrent with, and the bulk of the combat only a little more than a decade after, Chinese intervention in the Korean War. The White House was simply terrified of the Chinese and put all sorts of restrictions on US forces that effectively guaranteed the US could never win an outright military victory.
Hanoi was declared off-limits to US bombers while Soviet and Chinese materiel flooded into the DRV, foreign pilots (including Soviets and North Koreans) were allowed to operate with impunity, airbases just over the Chinese border were used as safe havens for combat missions yet were off-limits to US pilots, over 180k Chinese troops rotated through Vietnam operating AAA batteries and such, etc. etc.
So yes, US unwillingness (arguably, inability) to apply air power where it could actually achieve strategic effects played a very large role in ensuring the US could never win an outright military victory in Vietnam. It's an open question whether the proper application of air power could have enabled such an outright military victory.
Certainly the US could and would apply air power to any serious domestic insurrection. There would be no targeting restrictions for fear of foreign escalation. There would be no influx of foreign aid and materiel. There would be no foreign pilots flying training and combat missions and no foreign troops manning foreign SAMs. There would be no foreign safe havens for rebels.
The conditions that IMO prevented an outright US military victory in Vietnam simply do not exist in a domestic context. Barring the coordinated defection of a significant portion of the US military, any armed insurrection in the US would be quickly crushed.
Anecdata but… I’ve personally known many Republicans who have massive gun collections and even personal shooting ranges in their basement. I’ve never met a Democrat with any of that.
Only one side of this conflict is meaningfully armed and they are already in power.
The idea that the 2nd amendment exists to keep alive a threat of rebellion against a tyrannical gov't is a joke.
You can still call your congressman, senator, local political, councilman, or someone else, spend 30 mins watching a demonstration, donate $10 to Amnesty, tell a random dude in fatigues "grateful for your service but please don't invade Greenland". The more people that do these kind of things the harder it gets for the Fascists to brand those that do as left-wing terrorists.
Invading Greenland is a symptom of us on the ground fighting back. It’s to prove to Americans that we’re now isolated.
But it is important to acknowledge the wins. They do have an effect, and that's the only path we seem to have toward slowing down the march to autocracy.
Refuse to buy from any company that supports the current administration (like Microsoft). End contracts where they exist.
We all know they fall down by showing painted signs at street demos. /s
But yeah, focus on the peaceful citizens making their voices heard, if that makes you feel more secure about how things are going.
We're trying our best over here, but y'all can't give up at home either. I know it sucks and it's hard, but don't give into the temptation to just tune out. If you don't like what is happening with your country, do your best to change it - don't wait for others to do it for you!
If we successfully revolt the US doesn't survive in any form to stabilize the world built around us and there is no guarantee that the ruling party isn't MAGA-like.
The rubicon was crossed. This is the new normal.
Sadly, if you look at polling, none of this is remotely unpopular with US Republican voters. Our country’s union is hanging on by tattered threads.
The assumption of left wing political consensus on this platform is astonishing at times.
Do you approve of the immigration enforcement?
Do you approve of the tariff antics?
Do you approve of Trump torching American reputation with her allies?
Was Jan 6 an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power?
Would you vote for Trump again?
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes, but they were morons
No, not without an amendment allowing a third term, but even if there were an amendment probably still a No because he is too old and his very blunt and impolitic manner is not sustainable long-term in national leadership.
According to the WSJ, thr President has lost about 8% of his voters, so he should make some adjustments.
WSJ POLL: 92% of people who voted for Trump in 2024 are giving him a positive job rating today, including 70% who “strongly approve”
If you start believing you can’t get along then society just turns into a rush to slam the Overton window shut on your opposition. Don’t give up hope.
Do you agree that Trump instigated and directed the insurrection attempt as evidenced by him sending people to the Capitol, and making threatening phone calls to Senators while the mob advanced through the Capitol and the Senators and others begged him to tell the mob to go home?
Even in his infamous 70 minute speech on the day of (which by the way was still going when most of the protestors were already at the capitol) where he called on people to “fight like hell” he called for peaceful demonstration.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
He did not call any senators. He called McCarthy and had a very heated conversation and when McCarthy told him to call off the protestors immediately the President barked back that he believed Antifa breached the capital, not his supporters (not true but that’s what the President believed at the time).
So you partially agree that Trump is an insurrectionist?
>He repeatedly asked for people to remain peaceful in the run up to J6.
>Even in his infamous 70 minute speech on the day of ... he called for peaceful demonstration.
One "I'm sure you will be peaceful" at the beginning of a 70 minute speech is not an instruction to be peaceful, it's verbal window dressing for a speech where he told the crowd the election had been stolen and if they did not fight like hell they wouldn't have a country any more. He then directed them specifically to election proceedings he was already working to end either via the false slates of electors or having Pence unilaterally call the election fraudulent. He and his lawyers had created and submitted utterly false vote results from the states, and he repeatedly, publicly and privately, pressured Mike Pence to (illegally) reject the count itself as fraudulent.
>He did not call any senators. He called McCarthy
You missed out the part where McCarthy told him they were his supporters and the President ominously replied, "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
The most damning part of the timeline that indicates Trump's use of the violence to get his way is how long it took him to say anything to the protesters. Well over an hour since the capital was broken into Trump tweets: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!" This tweet was made after aides had been "unsuccessfully trying for up to 20 minutes" to get him to release a calming tweet.
Two more generic calls for peace via Twitter as he watches violence on TV for hours and is begged by multiple parties to intervene. Finally he's talked into a video call because the delay has been achieved and no more pressure can be applied to the Senators after Ashley Babbitt was shot, and the crowd begins winding down.
Then another round of calls to allied Senators to pressure them to vote against certifying the vote.
And all this is before you get to testimony that asserts that Trump's team was aware of the participation of the literal insurrectionist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, that Trump was informed many, many times by his people there was no stolen election and no evidence, and that multiple Trump staff sought and received pardons for their actions.
So what part of this whole situation reads like someone trying to stop a riot, rather than someone using it a situation they created as leverage over America's most sacred political process? If you think there’s an innocent explanation, what is it? Why all the delays, and pressure, and false electors?
For decades now, elite self-dealing, institutional opacity, and captured power steadily eroded public trust. Trump did not arrive as a reformer. He arrived as a punishment mechanism. A stress test. Unfortunately, US elites are drawing the wrong lessons so far.
Amongst the MAGA voters I know, ethical behavior is very much a “hope for” bonus than an expectation.
There is a lot of ends-justify-the-means rhetoric in that voter pool that I talk to.
Trump didn’t reveal hidden corruption, he openly violated constraints that previous leaders still treated as binding. Calling him a “stress test” misstates causality. Stress tests expose weaknesses, they don’t require millions of people to excuse norm violations because the harm initially falls elsewhere. This wasn’t inevitability or opacity, it was a collective decision to lower standards.
The only way this sort of rhetoric can be fought is at the level of moderation. This site has user-driven moderation, which in theory means that you can fight the tide this way, but in practice the authoritarians and fascists have access to these tools as well, and bad faith use is rarely punished, so these tools are less of a panacea and more of a race to who can down-vote who first.
The only other alternative is for the paid moderation of this site to put their foot down and say "We are not okay with fascists and authoritarian apologists on our site" and ban them. The admins of Hacker News are another on a very long list of social media site hosts who have decided to wash their hands of the responsibility. They don't care.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If you decide you still want to engage, I recommend viewing the interaction through the lens of an attention economy; spend less time on a rebuttle than they did on their post, and only in places where you think it will actually be seen.
Unless one verifies every single user by ID, there needs to be at least a platform-level detection of user jurisdiction and the application of appropriate penalties and limits to their activity.
It's the old way that social spaces on the internet used to work, and you don't need ID verification for that, you just need spaces that are conducive to that style of community-building. Think Discord, not Instagram. Think (invite-only) Mastodon, not Twitter. Think lobsters, not HN. Think Tildes, not Reddit.
Yes, that's why I need others to help. There are actually less of them (bots) than us. There is one pretty strange "tiktok-like" site, that has the worst kind of people and memes out there showing up regularly, something like 4chan but for images, but somehow most trolls (there are trolls from many different groups operating there) still can't hold on and every such trolling post is pretty fast met with a big wave of downvotes and counter-comments.
> The only other alternative is for the paid moderation of this site to put their foot down and say "We are not okay with fascists and authoritarian apologists on our site" and ban them
The owners of that site can't manage such a big firehose of hate and most users say that they are racist degenerates (and they say they don't care if you are black or white racist, if you are racist they like you).
> The admins of Hacker News are another on a very long list of social media site hosts who have decided to wash their hands of the responsibility. They don't care.
They DO care and a lot of users here also care. Every stupid comment that I've seen could be from troll was very quickly downvoted and counter-commented. We didn't see a lot of them, because they are deleted pretty fast and often and trolls just can't get easy foothold here.
They pose as citizens of European, African, Asian or American countries online and try to steer discussion to subvert the local society. The Twitter location reveal showcases that it has an immense scale.
There are many examples such as Scottish independence movement going offline when iran goes offline.
On websites like HN and reddit you cannot even see where someone is originating from. But you can ALWAYS detect them by the cognitive biases they're using to drive their propaganda: false equivalency biase, false choice dilemmas, and so on.
Yes, and there are more Russians than Ukrainians, yet somehow they can't overcome a smaller country in 4 years. Trolls want you to give up in countering them. Their work is about pushing propaganda AND demoralising people so that they give up fighting. When you think "why bother", they won.
This is fantasy thinking, projection of a subjective wish.
The dollar is the global reserve currency and is under no serious threat to be displaced (and no, the dollar dropping back to where it was a couple of years ago vs the Euro, is not a meaningful event).
The US economy is by far the world's largest and now dwarfs the Eurozone.
To answer your question: the US economy is going to last a very long time yet. So far it has lasted hundreds of years. Please provide a comparison to any other economy that has lasted so long and done so well. You'll be able to name two or three examples maximum.
In the moment people tend to get hyper emotional, hyperbolic. They think something fundamental is changing. That's almost always nothing more than personal subjective projection of what they want to have happen, rather than an objective assessment of reality. Back in reality the US has survived and thrived through drastically worse than anything going on in the present. The Vietnam era was far worse both socially/culturally and economically. WW2 was drastically worse. The Civil War was drastically worse. The Great Depression was drastically worse. But oh yeah sure, the US superpower is about to end any day now.
The geographical land mass of Europe will of course survive anything bar a collision with another planet, if this is what you're referring to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett
> To answer your question: the US economy is going to last a very long time yet. So far it has lasted hundreds of years.
How old is the US?
> The dollar is the global reserve currency and is under no serious threat to be displaced
Everybody leavs the dollar since a while.
What is not fundamental about the end of NATO? What is not fundamental about the US actively working to give up its role as global hegemon? The US may survive but that doesn't mean it's not fundamental.
I swear you yanks playing down every single thing that Trump does, as if history has ended, are insane.
The USA will reap what it is currently sowing and it frankly will deserve it.
Also, I’m not sure the US economy was even great for most of the periods you mentioned. The question of if the US survives to have the same economic standing that it did in the 1800s is not that compelling
Nominal, Eurozone, yes.
But, being the reserve currency boosts the exchange rate all by itself. I'd argue that this acts as hysteresis, that it adds strength that keeps it a reserve currency longer than it would if there was no memory in the system. Therefore, if anything does induce a shock, the PPP rate is more relevant when considering who might displace it; this other currency (or currencies) would then also get the same hysteresis benefit.
The EU, PPP, is about the same as the US (30 T), and I'd argue that "the EU" is important measure for near-future stuff rather than the current Eurozone, because the EU has the no-specific-time-constraint preference to become all Eurozone… except for the bits that opted out. But also some more neighbours who opted in without being in the EU. It's weird.
China, PPP, it is bigger than the US, 40 T by PPP. Not quite as big as the gap between the US and India, but close enough I had to get the calculator out I can't eyeball the ratio on a linear graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/jfgbd60rb...
> To answer your question: the US economy is going to last a very long time yet. So far it has lasted hundreds of years. Please provide a comparison to any other economy that has lasted so long and done so well. You'll be able to name two or three examples maximum.
You didn't do well for all of those hundreds of years, if you squint hard enough to ignore the great depression you get to about 150 years, which basically means about the same as every other industrial economy that didn't have a war in the middle split it apart. If you don't do that (because the great depression really sucked), the half of Europe whose national boundaries explosively reorganised, and also the Soviet Union, wave hello.
The USSR is an important reference, because basically nobody saw the collapse coming until a year or two before it happened. It was unthinkable.
> In the moment people tend to get hyper emotional, hyperbolic. They think something fundamental is changing. That's almost always nothing more than personal subjective projection of what they want to have happen, rather than an objective assessment of reality.
All true.
> Back in reality the US has survived and thrived through drastically worse than anything going on in the present. The Vietnam era was far worse both socially/culturally and economically. WW2 was drastically worse. The Civil War was drastically worse. The Great Depression was drastically worse. But oh yeah sure, the US superpower is about to end any day now.
How many of those occasions did the US refuse to rule out military force with its primary set of allies in order to seize land supposedly to keep it safe from a nation that's now 33% richer than it is? The Civil War was not a time when y'all were a big player on the world stage, it was when Europe was busy carving everything up into colonies.
(I'm talking about FIFA in case you are not aware)
With Trump in power they can grab it
Start preparing for the post-American world.
Turns out, when the law has failed, the only solution is a fight to the death. And after such a fight, we do not return to our normal state and live happily ever after, we remain deeply unstable and untrustworthy for decades to come.
The same ones currently blowing up shipwrecked survivors in the water in the Caribbean? A literal textbook example of a war crime? I’m not.
I really hope the US heals, quickly.
What bold change looks like is Trump. An anti-Trump government implementing bold change in the other direction would be bad too. Not as bad because more of their change would at least be toward things that would be good in the long run, but there would still be a lot of harm on the way by taking it too fast.
Each expansion of executive power is treated as unprecedented until it becomes normalized. Before Bush, indefinite detention without trial was unthinkable. Before Obama, the executive assassination of U.S. citizens without due process was unthinkable. Before Clinton, routine humanitarian war without congressional declaration was unthinkable. Each step is later reclassified as “different,” “necessary,” or “less bad,” each step decried by the "opposition" but excused by partisans. The danger isn’t that one party does uniquely shocking things. It’s that both parties participate in a ratchet where norms only ever move in one direction supported by the rank and file. What looks like a false equivalence is actually a cumulative one: today’s outrage rests on yesterday’s precedents.
And it’s not even mainly about presidents. Fixating on the occupant of the office misses how much of this is legislative and bureaucratic drift. The real damage is often done through laws that quietly expand state power, normalize surveillance, weaken due process, or lock in perverse incentives. Presidents sign them, but Congress writes them, renews them, and funds them. That’s where the ratchet really lives.
USA PATRIOT Act (2001), Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001), Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994), FISA Amendments Act (2008), National Defense Authorization Acts with detention and secrecy expansions, Telecommunications Act (1996), Controlled Substances Act (1970), Defense of Marriage Act (1996), Welfare Reform Act / Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996). All terrible. All drafted and passed by both parties.
This is why “no one did X before” is the wrong metric. The system advances through laws and precedents that feel technical, temporary, or defensive at the time. Each one lowers the bar for the next. By the time something looks outrageous, the groundwork was laid years earlier by people insisting they were the reasonable alternative.
No Democrat president threatened to take over Greenland or took another head of state hostage without precedent.
Yes, they are corrupt and warmongers, but not nearly as harmful as the current Republican party.
Least we can do is downvote it.
Straight out of "Manipulators' Handbook 101".
Actually, it kind of is.
See The Fourth Turning and any other book based on the Strauss-Howe generational theory.
Is this theory air-tight and inviolable? No. Does it more or less support this “silly trope”? Yes. I think it’s safe to say that it is directionally correct.
Its so disappointing and tragic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-a...
This was 2020 and still some people who allgedely want to make America great again voted for him.
That's the EU's problem, not Trump's)
Why would you pay the US $10 when you can get the same thing from France for $8?
Or the US then has to issue bonds with massively inflated returns - i.e. pay a much higher interest rate.
They can literally print them
1. EU countries coordinate a mass selloff of US debt, somehow even coercing private holders into a fire sale.
2. US bond prices consequently fall. EU holders lose tons of money on the sell side. US and Asian buyers rush to buy and get a sweetheart deal and massive risk-free returns, which starts crashing the stock market.
3. The Fed intervenes. They conjure up dollars from nothing and buy the bonds EU holders are selling at some discount, maybe 95 cents on the dollar. Those new dollars go into those countries' and banks' Master accounts at the Fed.
4a. EU countries' and banks' Master accounts are frozen. Maybe some portion of the funds are released every week in order to allow an orderly flow of value without too much market distortion. Or maybe given the act of financial war, those funds remain frozen indefinitely.
4b. Alternatively, their Master accounts are not frozen. Now, presumably EU didn't sell all their bonds just to hold non-yielding dollars. So they'll go to the forex markets and buy up Euros, massively strengthening the Euro and fucking up their export-based economies. Maybe they buy gold, or EU sovereign debt, or ECB steps in with mad QE. EU bond yields crater. EU holders lose more money on the buy side as whatever assets they purchase get more expensive. Inflation ensues.
5. US is furious and retaliates with financial warfare of their own. Or perhaps kinetic warfare. The ringleaders of the fire sale end up blindfolded and earmuffed on a US warship.
6. EU is in a much worse position than before, lost a ton of money on each leg, likely had tons more frozen, has pernicious inflation and/or diminished exports, cut off from the dollar system making currency reserve management and forex difficult and costly. The US is also now furious and looking to impose additional costs on EU however and wherever it can.
Your mistaking is in using rationality and logic.
But if the value is high or you've landed on their naughty list, they'll have you pay before receiving the package.
That's literally what they are. American forces appeared in Germany in 1945.
De facto and de jure are two very, very different things...
(not saying the US forces are occupying Germany, just commenting on op's logic)
And there is a kernel of truth in it. The USA likely wouldn't give up Ramstein under any circumstances safe the German military mobilizing against them, the base is (was?) too important for the US. When Trump invades Greenland we will see this play out (how the base stays active and Germany is powerless to stop that).
"Why should the U.S. continue to have access to these bases, or receive support from allies’ naval assets, air forces, or even intelligence services, if it tries to take sovereign territory from a NATO member like Denmark? "
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-europe-greenlan...
So if the US decides to resign from NATO, they would likely face challenges directly with Germany regarding their existing agreement.
I'm a Finn.
I don’t know why we got to be assholes. I prefer speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
I'm not opposed to changes in territory in principle... but there's no principles involved in the current US administration acting out like a fragile child.
If the US can extract Maduro, it can extract the leadership of Novo Nordisk, their lead scientists and all of their intellectual property.
/amused scenario
Hence Eli Lilly +40% in the last year and Novo -23%. Or on a longer timescale you can see the problem:
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NVO:NYSE?sa=X&sqi=2&ved...
"Pricing power fell when someone else entered the market" isn't dropping a ball is why I ask.
Most people probably prefer a pill vs injections with needles.
I wonder whether UK media decide to hammer Farage over his Trump connections to screw Reform super hard.
UPD: If you don't believe me, look at the European right-wing leaders (including a sitting head of state, Meloni) currently banding up behind Orban, a widely known Putin's shill in Europe.
The US is Taiwan’s most important military ally, even if that relationship remains unofficial. It is also the most critical power in the First Island Chain. If the US stopped being a global superpower, countries like Japan and South Korea might not be willing to aid in defending Taiwan on their own.
That was my thought as well. It's a dangerous rhetoric being displayed by USA. "We need this land for our security". Turns out, what if other powers start using the same rhetoric? Russia did it already for Ukraine, China might say "We need Taiwan for our security".. where does it stop and ultimately it leads absolutely nowhere good.
I wouldn't describe that position using the word "recognize". It is more accurate to use the official term "acknowledge" instead.
In fact, the US and its allies have been the only major powers advocating for a "rules-based international order." On the other side, you have Russia annexing Crimea in 2014, and China building artificial islands in the South China Sea to forcefully claim territory that isn't theirs under international law. Not to mention that all authoritarian states, by their very nature, are a clear violation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which defines democracy and freedom of speech as basic human rights.
But at the same time, the US doesn't need a moral justification to sanction China over AI hardware. It is, as always, about power and influence.
The worrying part is that the US is losing its global influence by threatening an ally over Greenland. If they ever resort to military measures, they would lose all influence over the EU, and that would leave Taiwan in a very dangerous spot.
Edt: would love some arguments instead of downvotes
What example do you know of a democratic country collectively "accepting" invasion by a dictatorship because being free is "not worth it"?
I can't really come up with anything.
I think it is likely that he wants to stop protecting Taiwan, give it up to China and then expect to make a deal with China to buy stuff manufactured on the island with money, afterwards. It would be totally in character for him and match his actual actions across the world.
He probably sees Europe as too meek to do anything more dramatic/substantial. And believes that without NATO, Europe would buy more US weapons that they now get "for free".
[1] https://www.dirittoue.info/u-s-legislation-restricts-preside...
Buying weapons from an unreliable and possibly adversarial (former) partner would create strategic dependence and weaken Europe’s defense autonomy. => It would be stupid.
Just like Trump being hot-and-cold on Ukraine. The administration's real goal isn't the US letting Russia take over Europe or even Ukraine. The goal is to scare the EU enough about the possibility the US might let Russia take over Europe or Ukraine that they start paying the expense of making sure that doesn't happen.
Greenland only has a population of 56k. If the US really wanted to buy Greenland, it should suggest a referendum whether Greenland should be annexed by the US, then pass a law that says the US will give each Greenlander $1 million if the referendum passes. I'm sure it would pass in a landslide and it would only cost $56 billion, which seems much lower than the price of trying to capture it militarily.
The US is allowed for decades to have a military presence on Greenland, but the US Army has been diminishing it's presence as the time went by.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-defense-spending-3bbea1ccc6...
[^1] With NATO, the security reason given by US makes no sense. And as for natural resources, I'm sure there are perfectly legal and inexpensive mechanisms that US companies can use to set up mining operations in Greenland.
Does not make sense. Denmark had already budgeted with a huge increase of military capabilities on Greenland. If US wanted more they could talk with their allied.
And the 'lol just pay them' argument is tone deaf and insulting to the Greenlanders. If you followed along you would know that they have already stated that they would not take money. To say nothing about the laws that governs the Kingdom and the process of leaving the it. Which can not be deferred by paying anyone. But I guess americans have a really hard time understanding the rule of law now.
The ideal for the US superpower right now, is to collapse Iran's regime while Russia is kept busy in Ukraine. It's unable to lend support to prop up its allies. The peace efforts are fake, meant to maintain a constant back and forth that never really goes anywhere. The US system has been focused on trying to strip Russia out of that region for decades, since before 9/11. Iraq was about Russia. Syria was about Russia. The first Gulf War was about decimating the Soviet supplied Iraqi army with the latest generation of US weapons, to put them to the test.
Most of the agenda exists from one administration to the next. The Pentagon works on its strategic aims across decades (see Bush & Obama & Trump and pivoting against China).
The US superpower is interested in the great power conflicts, it's not interested in Iraq because of oil, or Venezuela because of oil. It's about Russia and China, the other components (oil, chips, weapons, etc) are mere strategic calculations on the board.
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
A little history lesson: the US has defacto and dejure been defending Greenland since WWII (they've had a defence pact since Denmark fell to the Nazis). US bases have been on Greenland from then to the current day.
Even after Ukraine, Europe buys Russian gas. Even with all the threats from China towards Taiwan, Europeans are cozying up to them. And Europe still doesn't adequately defend itself, with a few exceptions.
While Trump is erratic in public, all recent US moves point to a confrontation with Russia/China in the near future. And Europe just sits by twiddling their thumbs. Feels like Eastern Europe and the Baltics are the only ones who take it seriously.
National security? We already have the right to station as many troops there as we want! And we have actually removed troops recently.
Mineral rights? America is already richly endowed - its just impossible to access what we have when permitting is almost impossible. If there were actually valuable lodes in Greenland, it would probably be easier to mine now!
The only thing I can think of are the warm fuzzies you may feel as a despot to take land and enrage your allies.
Plus, punishing exactlty those Nato partners who are sending military there to see how to strengthen the defense. That shows you don't want Greenland stronger, militarily. You want it weaker to have less issues when you invade it.
Only at Thule. The 2004 re-agreement rescinded the unrestricted establishment of bases:
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/04-806-Denm...
It significantly emasculated the 1951 agreement:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp#art2para...
> President Donald Trump revealed in a new interview with The New York Times that his quest for full “ownership” of Greenland is "psychologically important” to him.
> During a two-hour sit-down with multiple Times reporters on Jan. 7, Trump was questioned about why he won't just send more American troops to Greenland — which is legal under a Cold War–era agreement — if his goal is to fend off foreign threats. The president replied by saying that he won't feel comfortable unless he owns the island.
> "Why is ownership important here?" Times national security correspondent David E. Sanger asked.
> "Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success," Trump, 79, replied. "I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base."
> White House correspondent Katie Rogers — whom Trump recently called "ugly, both inside and out" for writing a story about his age — chimed in to ask, "Psychologically important to you or to the United States?"
> “Psychologically important for me," Trump answered. "Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything."
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/donald-trump-says-wants-...
"Exclusive: How Palantir's Alex Karp went full MAGA" [2]
Look at All In Podcast - tech VCs - they are all in support of this administration.
[1] https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
[2] https://www.axios.com/2025/10/23/trump-alex-karp-palantir-ma...
It’s also lose-lose for the US. There isn’t a positive outcome. If it’s dropped, the damage is “just” reputational and partly repairable. If it’s pursued: tariffs, threats, coercion. It burns trust inside NATO, accelerates European strategic decoupling, and hands a propaganda gift to every US adversary. A forced takeover would be a catastrophic own-goal: legitimacy crisis, sanctions/retaliation, and a long-term security headache the US doesn’t need.
And the deeper issue is credibility. The dollar’s reserve status and US financial leverage rest on the assumption that the US is broadly predictable and rule-bound. When you start treating allies like extractive targets, you’re not “winning” you’re encouraging everyone to build workarounds. Part of the postwar setup was that Europe outsourced a lot of hard security while the US underwrote the system; if the US turns that security guarantee into leverage against allies, you should expect Europe to reprice the relationship and invest accordingly.
The least-bad outcome is a face-saving off-ramp and dropping the whole line of inquiry. Nothing good comes from keeping it on the table.
You're going to pick better next time, right?
Oh, and a system that allows a politician to incite a mob to attack the sitting parliament, and get away without punishment, then pardon the perps is a joke.
If the dems win in 2026 and 2028, what is there to stop a return to fascism and further collapse in 2032?
Regardless, we are looking at a long time before the world doesn't look at our government in disgust (rightfully).
To give an illustration of how long institutional memory over things like this can be:
As of when I went to primary school in Norway in the 1980's, we were still taught at length about the British blockade of Norway during the Napoleonic wars due to Denmark-Norway's entry into the war on Napoleons side and its impact on Norway (an enduring memory for many Norwegian school-children is having to learn the Norwegian epic poem "Terje Vigen" about a man evading the blockade).
Norwegian agricultural policy to this day has had a costly cross-party support for subsidies intended to provide at least a minimum of food idependence as a consequence of learning the hard way first during the Napoleonic wars with a reinforcement (though less serious) during WW2 of how important it can be.
A large part of the Norwegian negotiations for EEA entry, and Norways rejection of EU membership was centered around agricultural policy in part because of this history.
The importance of regional development and keeping agriculture alive even in regions that are really not suited to it is "baked in" to Norwegian politics in part because the subsidies means that on top of those who are about the food idependence a lot of people are financially benefiting from the continuation of those policies, or have lived shaped by it (e.g. local communities that would likely not exist if the farms had not been financially viable thanks to subsidies), so structures have been created around it that have a life of their own.
Conversely, a lot of support for the US in Europe rests on institutional memory of the Marshall Plan, with most of the generations with first hand experience of the impact now dead.
Create a replacement memory of the US becoming a hostile force, and that can easily embed itself for the same 3+ generations after the situation itself has been resolved.
From the Danish and Norwegian side, Britain annihilated or captured most of the Danish-Norwegian fleet because Britain expected Denmark-Norway to enter the war on Napoleons side (as a consequence, Denmark-Norway of course entered, but severely weakened), and Norway was blockaded and faced famine from 1808-1814.
After the war ended, the Norwegian mainland was handed over to Sweden (Iceland and Greenland were also Norwegian at that point, but stayed with Denmark), but Norway took advantage of the process and passed a constitution and briefly went to war against Sweden to force a better settlement, resulting in a relatively loose union. So this whole affair had a very significant effect on the formation of the Norwegian state.
The reason Trump is able to get away with so much right now is because Congress is letting him. They could easily constrain his tariff powers, or his warmongering powers (they actually were close to doing that WRT Venezuela before some Republican Senators caved like a bunch of wet blankets), but they don't, because this is what people voted for. Trump is so much more powerful in his second term because at this point everyone knew he was a convicted felon, they knew he fomented the attack on the Capitol, and still a majority of voters voted for him.
Safeguards only work of someone is willing to enforce them.
E.g.:
- no direct elections of a president with such broad powers.
- Separating the head of state and head of government, and split their powers.
- Proportional representation to reduce the chance of the largest party obtaining so much power alone.
- Not letting the president appoint supreme court justices.
- No presidential pardons; basically removing the chance of getting out of protections against legal sanctions after leaving office, and removing one of the strongest means of protecting loyalists.
The US isn't uniquely vulnerable, but it is a whole lot more vulnerable than governments in countries where the head of government is easier to replace and have fewer powers vested in their own personal mandate.
A direct election of a single powerful leader is also fundamentally creating a less democratic system - it reduces the influence of a huge minority of the electorate far below what their numbers justify.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember people saying "Never Forget" about 9/11, but it's barely in any discourse at this point, and that was a single generation ago and had two major wars a bunch of PoW scandals, war crime scandals that led to Manning, and domestic surveillance that led to Snowden. And yet, despite all that, I've only heard 9/11 mentioned exactly once since visiting NYC in 2017, and that was Steve Bannon and Giuliani refusing to believe that Mamdani was legitimate.
So, yeah, if Trump fades away this could be forgotten in 8 years or so; if this escalates to a war (I'm not confident, but if I had to guess I'd say 10% or so?), then I see it rising to the level of generations.
I mean, I live in Germany these days, and this country absolutely got the multi-generational thing, and I'm from the UK whose empire ditto, but… the UK doesn't spend much time thinking about the Falklands War and even less about the Cod Wars.
What you describe is called "to historicize an event". The WW1 has been historicized by WW2 (some argue it's the same war). But not even WW2 has been historicized yet (at least in Europe) and it already ended 80 years in the past, so I doubt an atlantic conflict is going to be forgotten in the next few decades.
Edit: I originally linked to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicization, but this does not describes what I mean. It is weird, because the supposed German equivalent does. The German article is about a concept from the science of history, while the English article is about a literature concept.
> so I doubt an atlantic conflict is going to be forgotten in the next few decades.
If it gets to one, yes. Was writing late at night, so sloppily, sorry about that.
Right now, I think we're not that far gone yet. Absolutely agree it becomes as you say if it becomes hot war. Not sure about which step between will be the drop that overflows the bucket.
If we don't reduce conflict to mean military conflict, then I think there is definitely some diplomatic issue ongoing.
> Not sure about which step between will be the drop that overflows the bucket.
True, this is kind of the open question, because the EU both needs to be the adult in the room and deescalate, but also can't do compromises with territorial integrity otherwise it has already lost. This will of course have an impact on the "time to forget".
But I don't think if there is a uprising today in the US, Trump and the whole admin is gone next week and they improve their constitution, that the whole issue will just be forgotten. The whole pro-, neutral- or even contra USA debate has been ongoing for decades know. For example the trade deals aren't exactly concordant with EU law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_I) and the USA has been boycotting multilateral institutions, that the EU wants to have authority. I mean it is new that they openly sabotage the ICJ, but that they have the capability to do that is not.
The damage would mostly hit the top performers of the US stock market (amongst others) while not damaging the EU as much.
It'll probably be tariffs first though, followed by the ACI if things get really bad.
You cannot defeat MAGA the same way: the "enemies" are among us, and they aren't going anywhere.
You're the outsider, to me. The pre-9/11 Taliban were seen as "kinda weird but we can do deals, oh dear aren't they awful, never mind", the post-9/11 were not even worthy of talking to. The USA is currently in a similar "pre" state, an invasion would make it a "post" state.
If I'm a German or French or Swedish officer, especially if I'm suddenly in Greenland, I'm going to be thinking hard about the changes to come in the next few years so that they're not all dependent upon a friendly America. If nothing else, they're all getting ready now to operate without any Americans in the loop, since it might be Americans they're fighting. That means the entire NATO command structure, which presumes American dominance of it, is now an obstacle to avoid rather than a resource to share. Every PM is asking the head of their air force if they can fly their F-35s without the Americans knowing about it and possibly shutting them down remotely.
There's a story going around today in French newspapers about how French and Ukrainian intelligence fed US intelligence some false strategic info to see if it ended up in Russian hands, which it did within days. Now Ukraine is consciously breaking its relationship with US intelligence because it can't be trusted, while getting closer to French and German intelligence. I suspect that the UK is also carefully looking at what's shared via the Five Eyes and decided what it can/needs to withhold.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/find-the-story-going-around...
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/trouve-les-articles-de-pres...
However, in finding that, I've found some outlets disavowing the story, so treat it as unproven:
https://unn.ua/en/news/did-ukraine-allegedly-provide-the-us-...
Personally I highly doubt a possible democratic would return a conquered Greenland. And even if it did, it would have to ensure that kind of derailment doesn't happen again. The opposition so far seems to be about as ineffectual as centrist parties across Europe at dealing with the far right.
Yes. Ian Bremmer keeps pointing out that if the "law of the jungle" becomes the norm for relations between countries, the USA will not benefit as much as autocracies like China and Russia.
See https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TLhz6ZbrMuI for a more full-throated explanation from Ian.
Isn't Trump busy replacing US Army leadership with those loyal to him? Why would Army and ICE be on opposite sides?
Seems MAGA just have to continue the present course and apply just enough pressure to the election system to keep "winning" half-credibly and autocracy is there in not too many years.
I mean they are already past pardoning those attacking congress for not accepting the election result.
It is just a gradual process which is well underway, at what point would California and Washington suddenly prop up a militia?
Which is exactly the case as long as Trump is POTUS. There's no good deal to be made for Denmark, Greenland, or Europe in general. Trump is a bad person, and can not be trusted.
Any deal that is made will either be altered or voided. And he'll continue to move the goalposts.
There are two outcomes with Trump:
1) He tries to bully someone into submission, and keeps coming back for more if successful.
2) He is slapped so hard that he gives up entirely.
Unfortunately (2) is a bit shaky these days, as he views the US military as his personal muscle.
Lately SCOTUS has been providing stricter textual interpretations of Constitutional questions. Many of these have aligned with Trump administration arguments based on the power of the executive as outlined in Article II. The text says, "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America," and, "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." One of the key arguments is that Congress can't take that power away from him. For example, Congress can't tell him that he can't fire executive-branch staff, because the executive power rests with him, not with Congress.
One thing the Constitution is very clear on, though, is that only Congress can impose tariffs ("The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises"). Furthermore, recent rulings of this Court have established the major questions doctrine, which says that even if Congress delegates the specifics of implementing its powers to the Executive branch, that delegation cannot be interpreted broadly. It can't be used to create new broad policies that Congress didn't authorize.
Therefore, because the text of the Constitution explicitly grants the right to impose tariffs to Congress /and/ Trump's imposition of tariffs is both very broad and very substantial, many people believe that SCOTUS will deny Trump's tariffs.
The case as argued is about Trump's right to issue tariffs under the IEEPA (a law Congress passed to give the President some ability to take economic actions due to international emergencies, which do not explicitly include tariffs), and there is some debate about what a negative ruling would mean for the return of tariffs to merchants who have paid them. Both of those points require careful consideration in the decision. Will the ruling limit itself to just tariffs issued under the IEEPA or to the President's ability to establish tariffs under other laws? If the Court rules against the tariffs, will the government be required to pay people back, and if so, to what extent? It's not surprising that the decision is taking some time to be released. There's a lot of considerations, and every one is a possible point for disagreement by the justices.
[0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/prediction-market-trade...
Just want to comment what an incredibly piss poor argument that is, because if you take it to its conclusion, it means all of the power rests with the Executive and none with the Legislature. That is, by definition, the Executive branch has all the people that actually "do stuff". If the executive has full, 100% control over the structure and rules of the branch, why bother even having a legislature in the first place if all the laws can be conveniently ignored or "reinterpreted".
You could argue Congress still has the power of impeach if they believe laws aren't being faithfully excited, but I'd argue that is much too much of a blunt instrument to say that laws should be able to constrain what a President can do within the executive branch.
A dissenting opinion from obstinate judges can drag this thing out until the end of the session.
This demonstrates, again, that Trump is the prime domestic enemy of the US. Where are the agencies that are sworn to protect the US against enemies foreign and domestic?
Who said they don't consent ? There was no referendum. /s
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46670275 and marked it off topic.
It has more upvotes and comments than anything else posted since it’s been posted 2 hours ago, and has been on the front page for an hour before disappearing
Also go EU!
Most things fall off the front page really fast, I know because I am now spending rather too much time on this site…
> Bipartisan Legislation Prohibiting a U.S. Invasion of a NATO State Introduced
https://hoyer.house.gov/media/press-releases/bipartisan-legi...
It’s honestly just very difficult to communicate with Republican parts of the country on open, reddit-like social media.
It's quiet depressing, because a large number of them know they'll be just fine regardless what they do.
We, in Idaho, recently had a school voucher program rammed through even though a huge number of people called to oppose it. Like 90% against 10% for. They still signed it into law.
It's all very disheartening.
>Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.
>“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? ...
Nuts!
