Go and ask the general populace of UK (you know what, focus on the school and college goers) and ask what their country and their His/Her Royal Fartnesses have done to a large part of this globe and revel in the genuine blanks they draw!
That’s very misleading to state. If you look at all polls about DOGE and related topics, you will find DOGE approval is relatively low while the ostensible DOGE mandates have the approval closer to 70% that you’re talking about.
Yet these are not the same things. DOGE has done many things already which upset and discourage people. Come to Canada where the sentiment towards DOGE seems very negative, you will still see a great desire for improved government efficiency.
DOGE is not as well-loved as a poll about government efficiency will make it seem. Almost everyone wants improved efficiency. Many people think their public service needs cuts. Not everyone thinks the way DOGE does it makes sense.
Sure, but that's because they don't understand the bigger picture.
The UK with Brexit is a good example. The majority of the voters believed it was a good idea, due to campaigns not really based on facts. Now they're all angry because the results suck for them and the campaigns were mostly lies.
The same is going to happen with the US majority backing Trump's plans. They all believe a lot of lies he keeps telling. And in a few years they're going to be angry because they then face the consequences like high prices for everyday purchases and terrible healthcare for the working class.
It's just that today they don't understand yet what the results of Trump's policies are going to be. And shouting "Canada/Europe/China has been very bad for us" gets them excited, simple human nature, our group vs the other.
"Sure, but that's because they don't understand the bigger picture."
And there it is! The info given by the current administration is as bewildering as it is incomplete. Russia, governmental agencies, Medicaid(!), medical researchers (who are shaking in their boots about their futures)...it's a long list with very little reasonable excuses. Musk? I'll stop here.
The point being, we won't know until years from now the damage that's being done to both the states and the world stage.
Just because you're bewildered doesn't mean other people are. I think most people understand the scale of the problem and the need for massive action to address it. And they also understand that mistakes will be made but they will be quickly resolved.
And I think most people are relieved that for the first time in a hundred years (ever?) somebody is actually doing something to address govt fraud, waste and abuse. Something more than lots of talk followed by no action which is what has always happened previously.
It will probably be kinder to him than to the neoliberals who thought that giving trillions to an authoritarian regime would somehow make them a liberal democracy.
There was no evidence of him being a Russian asset. The Steele dossier and the corresponding DNC opposition research have been discredited. Remember there were 4 years of Democratic Party government. They could never find enough to indict him on treason.
The best option to actually convict him was in Atlanta for racketeering to win an election. There the democratic attorney general blew it by hiring the prosecutor she was sleeping with.
> They could never find enough to indict him on treason.
Treason is strictly defined in the constitution and doesn't apply here because we aren't at war with Russia.
He probably did engage in seditious conspiracy or such things with them, via Roger Stone and Wikileaks, but they successfully obstructed justice enough to get away with it.
They as in the republicans did.
Trump won the popular vote. The democrats are a complete shit show. They still are and seem completely blind to the reasons they lost.
If the discussion is about A, and, let's suppose, some P(A) is true, if P(B) is also true, but discussion never mentions B - what's the point of solely bringing the fact of truthfulness of P(B) into the picture?
Fair point. However, I didn’t get that impression at all - in my reading the preceding conversation didn’t seem to suggest anything about uniqueness or make any comparisons. Would you mind quoting the piece that made you think it’s suggested so, please?
I'm thinking the assumption here was the accusation of gullibility being made against the first group was being made by a member of the second group, and the argument was that the second group presented greater gullibility traits.
However it should probably be noted that it was official government organizations of the first group that were being gullible whereas the official government organizations of the second group all seem to know exactly what's up, but either seem unable to do anything or are actively participating.
Americans didn't elect him because they believed anything he said. They were basically paying as little attention as they possibly could and have no idea what he has ever said about anything - if you go and read interviews with swing voters they just have entirely imaginary ideas of what he's like.
The only thing they remember is he was president in 2019. They don't reliably know who it was in 2020/2021 though.
(I think the fixed-term strong presidential system is essentially unfixable here. The country needs snap elections.)
You think Trump takes orders from Putin? He's too much an egotist, and he sent the Javalins to Ukreain when lots of the establishment thought it was a bad idea since the experts thought Putin wasn't mad enough to invade again. (Even if he took Kyiv in the time the US took Baghdad, the counterinsurgency to follow would / will break them).
Yeah, IMO Putin does think Trump is incompetent, easily manipulated, corrupt, and easily influenced by actual assets. Elon is similar, but rather than incompetent, he has aligned interests (Russia is a gas station, and Elon sells EVs, both want the price of gas to skyrocket and I suspect both think US global power basically exists to keep gas prices low).
I'm in shock that more people don't realise that Elon / Trump foreign policy is easily explained by Elon wanting higher gas prices, and Trump being easily manipulated.
There's no solid evidence Trump is secretly and knowingly working for Putin, that's just a cooker left-wing conspiracy theory IMO.
This argument doesn’t hold much water. The tariff actions will only compel oil producers to explore new markets. With the US out of the picture, there will be a significant increase in supply. A big portion of this will be due to Canadian oil finding buyers in non-US markets.
Tariffs might hurt Elon but ceding US influence to OPEC (including Russia) by threatening to leave NATO and the UN? What happpens with instability and a lack of US influence in the Middle East?
> There's no solid evidence Trump is secretly and knowingly working for Putin
Not enough to indict, anyways, but there's a spectrum between insane left-wing conspiracy and a jury conviction. Paul Manafort, Trumps 2016 campaign chairman, was sentenced to 7 years prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy against the United States. His protege Rick Gates did 45 days in a plea bargain deal.
Then there was the time Trump stood up at his campaign podium and directly asked Russian hackers to leak more Clinton emails:
> “Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump said, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
And during his presidency, he went out of his way to take secret meetings with Putin in Hamburg Germany[1], among other places. We have no idea what was discussed, which seemingly checks the "secret" box at least. As for "knowing," well, he directly asked for their help, but who knows how mentally "there" he is. Comes down to "for" I guess, as I'm sure he'd characterize it as "with"?
Lack of critical thinking I'd say, inward and outward. Gaping hole in nation's education system, just listen to what higher level says.
I have one german colleague with whom we dicuss sometimes deeper topics. He confirmed what I thought - germans, at least his generation, are/were raised to feel utterly responsible for WWII atrocities of their ancestors. I don't mean having objective information without the push to make them feel morally superior or ignoring inconvenient truths like ie russians always do, no I mean a very heavy guilt burden pushed on all young folks, who then don't have a clue how to process that.
Then they are stunned into any action even when a murderous nation is clearly trying to subvert and destroy their society and does very direct attacks against infrastructure. Anything, literally anything including losing without a fight, apart from actually standing up and fighting back aggressor. And rest of EU goes where germans go, can't ignore that massive influence. 3 years of brutal unprovoked war seems barely enough to move the needle at least a bit as we saw in recent elections.
> germans, at least his generation, are/were raised to feel utterly responsible for WWII atrocities of their ancestors.
A common misunderstanding, unfortunately also among Germans themselves. We are raised not to feel responsible for the crimes of the Nazis ourselves, but responsible to make sure the world never forgets what happened and how. It’s not about guilt for the past, but wariness for the future.
I’m not happy with other traits of our People either, but I think the way we handle the holocaust is the right one still.
It's not wariness for the future. It's performative absolution for the past. They're totally fine with mass-murdering 6 million of another ethnoreligious group. They're not fine with the funny cross sign, the hand raise, the words used as labels, or the idea of persecuting Jews. They're completely fine with the ideas those symbols represent, as long as you don't use the symbols, or the name, and the target group isn't Jews. In fact, they're doing it right now against Palestinians. They also learned it's bad PR to let German people see it happening with their own eyes, and it's bad PR to make it legal to complain about, so they don't do either.
I don't know which axe you have to grind, mate, but everything you said seems to be the second-hand—flawed—impression of a foreigner.
You're talking about Germans as if a unified group with a single opinion, which could not be farther from the truth. In the recent elections, we saw extremist parties from both left and right, as well as different centrist opinions, gaining similar share of the public vote. That is not a country that's "totally fine" with mass-murdering 6 million people.
I assume you're speaking of Palestine; let me tell you this. The relationship between Germany and Israel is, for—at least I hope—understandable reasons, a complex one. German citizens currently alive are obviously not personally responsible for the Shoah, but the state of Germany, a fictional construct, will carry this responsibility indefinitely. And that implies, to a certain extent, an obligation to stand on Israel's side. If you don't at least try to understand why this is, and why Germany, as an entity, thinks it is morally correct, then you don't get to tell us how to do our foreign policy.
In Germany, you can absolutely spread pro-Palestine opinions, as long as you don't demand violence against Jews. Blaming the Israelian army for war crimes against Palestinian citizens is fine, and a welcome part of public debate. Again: You may not agree with that policy rooted in the origins of the federal republic of Germany, but it is our policy. Accept that, our leave.
Having said all of this, I, personally, am highly critical of the settlements and the way the war on Hamas was carried out. I'm not fine with mass-murder, but I'm also not fine with terrorist attacks on civilians. This issue is more complex than you try to frame it, and picking a side is a step in the wrong direction. I can condemn terrorist and criminal soldiers and politicians at the same time, without pretending Israel is flawless or Hamas doesn't exist.
> German citizens currently alive are obviously not personally responsible for the Shoah, but the state of Germany, a fictional construct, will carry this responsibility indefinitely.
Do you also think Italy should foverver be responsible for Roman conquest?
What about the other countries that have now claimed land previously under the control of the Reich? Why do you think the government of someone in Munich has any more responsibility than the government of someone in Gdansk?
This whole idea of holding nations forever responsible for supposed crimes of their forebeares becomes absurd pretty quickly. And absurd is also giving one group of people a special protected class - that means that yes, you have absolutely not learned the correct lession from the past.
> You may not agree with that policy rooted in the origins of the federal republic of Germany, but it is our policy. Accept that, our leave.
You don't get to tell people to leave just because they don't share your opinions.
The Israel/Palestine war is simpler than you are making it seem. Israel has killed more people, kidnapped more people, tortured more people, tortured them more thoroughly, killed more people during torture, done more terrorist attacks, and killed more people in terrorist attacks than Hamas. But that's okay because Israel didn't start the war, so the side that started the war deserved it. Oh wait, Israel did start the war by invading Palestine. Also, it's not terrorism when we do it.
Germany funds 1/3 of the war. Divide the numbers by three and Germany still comes out worse than Hamas. By the numbers, the west isn't merely "not flawless" - to reiterate, the numbers say the west is behaving worse than Hamas.
Which is probably why they don't put the numbers on the news any more.
And Germany arrests pro-Palestine protestors and shuts down pro-Palestine organizations very regularly. I live there and everyone who thinks the war is bad is scared to say it. It has happened that organizations that simply allowed their halls to be used to host a pro-Palestine lectures had their funding removed and were shut down, so organizations are afraid to do this unless they're about to be shut down anyway. Police just randomly arrest people at demonstrations - even if they can't find something to charge them with, the arrest is enough to deter them. Speaking Arabic is banned. There are some demonstrations but only a small fraction of people feel courageous enough to participate. Speech has been successfully chilled.
Americans elected a president who behaves exactly like a Russian asset. And no evidence could make them change their mind about it.
Who are the gullible people again?