[locopati]

the GOP produced him and the Christian xenophobic anti-everyone policies have been a 50 year project that's now coming to fruition. Trump is bad and so is the rest of the Republican party. this problem doesn't go away when he does.

[K0balt]

It’s not that simple and we shouldn’t be so eager to blame our neighbours.

Trump has been heavily involved with Russian money ever since US banks refused to loan him more money for his repeated bankruptcies. At that time, Putin was head of the KGB, iirc (could fact check this I’m not 100 percent sure). Also very sus ties through marriage. I’m not sure he is -happily- compliant, but from whatever combination of stick and carrot that may exist, there is little doubt in my mind that the administration is carrying so much water for Russia that europa would blush.

If you want to see the whole story in embarrassingly human terms all you have to do is watch the physical interaction between Trump and Putin when they are in close proximity. The monkey doesn’t lie.

If you pay attention, almost everything the admin does benefits Russia in some way. Eroding soft power. Undermining nato. Crippling us debt. Hamstringing innovation through reckless trade shenanigans. Undermining trust. Abandonment of Ukraine, an erstwhile critical ally. Hand wavey condemnation of Russia but with no teeth whatsoever. Collapsing the straits of Hormuz. The list goes on and on.

[jfengel]

Our neighbors are exactly the ones to blame.

Putin didn't elect him. Our neighbors did -- almost 80 million of them, and tens of millions more who decided that either choice was fine with them.

The ones who voted for him are not calling for him to be turned out of office. The elected representatives are supporting this action, and their constituents aren't turning on them, either.

He's doing what Putin wants, but he couldn't do it if it weren't also what tens of millions of Americans want. There are many ways they could do something about it, and they aren't. The overwhelming majority of them will vote to continue it come November.

Putin is not the problem. My neighbors are.

[rstuart4133]

> Our neighbors are exactly the ones to blame.

This is a bad road to go down.

If you start blaming people rather than processes, the obvious fix is to disenfranchise the people (or worse). If you blame the process and then change it to get a better outcome, everyone wins.

There is a lot of low-hanging bad fruit in how the USA runs it's democracy. You allow gerrymandering, you allow politicians to make it difficult for people to vote. The small voter turnout means the fringe single issue voters get a disproportionate say. You use first past the post, which means candidate the majority think is the "least worst" may not get elected. (No voting system is perfect, but FPP is by far the worst.) Your political donation laws favour corporates, who by definition have no interest in voter welfare.

[K0balt]

Certainly gullible people are problematic in a democracy. But he would never have been elected without massive support from the oligarch club. Also look at the statistical analysis of the election-not decisive by itself but substantial.

Also, why do you think the dem ticket was so underwhelming? The USA thinks it’s a two party system, but it’s not. It’s really a one party system. The money party.

If you want your democracy back, get rid of citizens united, make journalism independent of industry, and create some decent framework around campaign finance.

[K0balt]

> Our neighbors are exactly the ones to blame.

you do realize that this is precisely the agenda that is being pushed on both sides through millions of advertising dollars every month?

If you’re too busy looking sideways to find the blame you never look up. You are living in an intentional society. It’s not nearly as as-hoc as it seems . You don’t have to push water if you can just tilt the land. The circumstances that exist for you , and your neighbours, are precisely the circumstances that were engineered for them to fill. Now, they chose to fill that role, but they didn’t make the role. Look up.

[oliwarner]

Before him there was the sense that there were [at least] two groups within the GOP. We had something similar in the UK before Brexit, the French had a much broader centre-right movement before Le Pen.

Radical populists have a habit of cuckooing all the moderates out of the party nest. I'm not sure the GOP made Trump, but they sure as hell let him in.