it’s like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won’t do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?
What’s the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That’s unfriendly to say the least.
The answer is disappointingly simple: emotional satisfaction.
For decades, these people have been told that they are incredibly generous towards their allies, and that they get nothing in return. That their allies are abusing their relationships. Of course this is false, but they’ve been told so every day.
Now they get to abuse their “abusers” right back.
It pleases Putin.
Simple. We only really need one ally! Russia. With our good and dear friend Vlad!
/S
They are extremely low trust and simply can’t believe they’re not getting fucked by everyone else secretly
You’re never going to get a satisfying answer to this question, because there is no actual reason. If you want, you can go peek in on the conservative subreddits and watch their gold-medal winning mental gymnastics, but the reason Trump is doing this is Putin told him to. The U.S. is destroying themselves for no gain.
for no gain.
Nearly $3 billion USD flowed through the TRUMP cryptocoin rugpull, whoever owned initial coins made very, very large gains.
The $3 billion in quid buys a lot of anti-Ukraine pro quo
But, thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump could go on national TV and say he change US policy on Ukraine because he was bribed and he’d still be immune to any legal consequences (other than impeachment, but never anything criminal).
Because they think it owns the libs, plain and simple!
It’s like that scene in the Incredibles where Mr. Incredible gets inside the robot, and has it tear itself to pieces. Except an entire country. And ~88,000,000 people voted against self-destruction and are being dragged off a cliff.
I’m not a republican, but from my perspective the US empire has been a force for evil in the world for almost all of its existence. International free trade elevates the power of corporations above countries (ex. international IP law enforcement). The neoliberal status quo sucks, and even if tariffs and pressuring US allies to build up their own militaries and not rely on us are being done for the wrong reasons and not in the right way, they still act to dismantle it. I can see it being better than the alternative in the long run, at least for the world if not for those of us living in the US.
Accelerationist trash take
Not accelerationist, I think tariffs are genuinely a good direction to go, and so is reducing US military influence.
How do you know they are going to reduce military influence? How are tariffs going to help people who are struggling to afford anything as it is? If the goal is to get people to buy American, what is stopping everything from only being controlled or made by corrupted people or corporations who set up on American soil?
Going to steel man this since theres obviously no one on here answering this question seriously. Not a republican and don’t agree with all this, just imagining what my republican dad would say about this:
For ukraine and Europe, we have no interest in protecting them besides sentimental attachments. Ukraine is not our problem, it’s Europe’s and if they want to dump money into a lost cause by all means go ahead, but leave the u.s. out of it unless your going to compensate us for it. The u.s. isn’t threatened by Russia, we have an ocean, the world’s largest navy and nukes to protect us. The larger threat is China and we should be focusing on them, not russia which can barely invade it’s neighbor, much less march across Europe and the atlantic. Europe can handle its own problems.
For Canada and Mexico and tarriffs in general. We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt. We can’t do that if companies find it more profitable to go over seas and pay people pennies when they’d have to pay Americans much more. The only way to get them to come back is to make it too expensive to import things.
This is all about putting America first. For decades America has been spending billions to protect Europe and has been sending billions of dollars over seas to build factories owhile factory after factory closes here in the u.s. We need to stop all of that and spend our money in America for Americans.
Feel free to use this comment as a punching bag, I don’t care, just trying to give OP an actual answer if this was a legitimate question and not some rhetorical question seeking affirmation on how dumb the Republicans are. They are, don’t get me wrong, but just say so and don’t dress it up in questions like this.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it had occurred to me that the US disproportionately spends much, much more on military might than our allies do. Europe pulled a good one on us, ensuring they could lead more carefree lifestyles with first world social safety nets while we take on that heavy burden of being the sentry guard of the entire western world.
However, we made promises of security to Ukraine in return for their nuclear disarmament. It isn’t right that we turn our backs on them now.
Trump is a simpleton. He doesn’t truly understand the long-term butterfly effects of the decisions he’s making.
Dad? Is that you?!
The thing is, it’s not total rubbish. The problems are real - rust belt decline, life is harder for Americans than it was in the past. America is more protected from Russian aggression than Europe. He doesn’t seem to realise or care that the reason for that is because we trusted that the US would have our back and its not like the us wasn’t getting anything in return.
It’s just that these truths are mixed in with lies - immigrants are the problem, tariffs will fix anything, that if america abandons it’s allies and its promises (over protecting Ukraine after they gave up their nukes), this will lead to a better long term outcome for America.
Trump is too dumb to understand subtlety and he’s being played by multiple bad actors, domestic and foreign.
We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt. We can’t do that if companies find it more profitable to go over seas and pay people pennies when they’d have to pay Americans much more.
Canada has
- Higher wages
- More safety regs
One of those must be the issue. ;-)
When we spend money in other countries, we are spending it on Americans. When free people thrive, America wins. When people around the world have stable governments that at least try to look out for their own people, America wins. Even if 49% of it is wasted to fraud and abuse, we’re still coming out ahead: the only Americans who have lived through a draft are in their 60s, and a nuclear attack in their 80s.
This hedgemony has staved of world war three and nuclear war for 75 years, and kept the world a relatively stable and safe place for virtually everyone.
Even if you completely disagree with me, and feel like voting for conservatives is the better alternative, two facts completely undermine that decision. First, the times America has failed to live up to its ideals or faltered in its highest pursuits have been exclusively presided over by conservatives. Second, the number of times conservatives have cut spending and passed the savings on to the 99% is exactly zero, but their track record of increasing spending while only significantly cutting taxes for the 1%…is 100%. And, as a bonus fact, this the wealthiest nation ever to exist in the history of the world. The diea that we can’t afford to help Americans and keep up our global spending is meritless, for example, we could eat like three billionaires and end global hunger, provide healthcare and education to every American.
This is a good steel man response, very much like Facebook posts I have seen lately. It’s really sad how much the right has abandoned listening to experts and just assuming we can apply “common sense” answers to fix problems that are complicated.
Do you think there are many republicans on this site?
The answer is: they do not give a shit.
They do not care about the US as a country.
They do not care about the Americans as a people.
They do not care about the economy.
They do not care about anything apart from their own personal interest. Lining their own pockets is all they care about. If someone helps them do that, they are friends with them. If they don’t, they do not matter.
Congratulations, you now officially live in a cleptocracy where they shake you down, take all of your money and give it to the guys who already have billions. All the taxes they claim to save by obliterating social security, affordable care etc? They are not going back to you, they will stuff them in Musk’s pockets through bullshit contracts and other schemes.
And at the same time, they are critically crippling the IRS to make sure the billionairs no longer even have to pretend to pay taxes.
You’re describing the Republican politicians. The Republican voters are a different bag entirely.
Out of the ones I have discussed politics with, their underlying motivations for supporting Trump are emotionally driven but explained through rhetoric aligning with their emotional motivations. It tends to be grouped into one of a few different feelings:
- cost of living/financial security — immigrants’ fault, taxes, foreign nations taking advantage of US generosity
- fear of change/bigotry — immigrants, “DEI”, “wokeness”, border security
- American exceptionalism/egotism — immigrants, 1st ammendment
- distrust of federal government — “DEI”, government corruption, regulatory overreach, socialism = communism
- distrust of industry — vaccines harmful, science bad
Aside from the bigotry and exceptionalism, those emotions aren’t necessarily wrong. Cost of living increases, politicians owned by lobbyists, and profit-driven privatization of essential services are actual problems. The issue with conservatives is that they have scapegoats to blame those problems on instead of acknowledging the underlying causes. All it takes is some loudmouth, ignorant jackass offering an overly-simplified, emotionally-compelling solution to a complex problem, and others will latch on to it, oversimplify and exaggerate it even more, and disseminate it until the rest of them start believing it.
People can be hateful, narcissistic pieces of shit, and it goes without saying that this repugnant rhetoric is spread intentionally. But, it’s also a direct consequence of a public education system failing among a landscape of patriotic propaganda and media controlled by a powerful few who put profit and self-gain above the health of society.
When someone grows up being told America is a flawless nation, that self-reliance is the foundational trait of success, is never educated to think critically of the government and media, and is bombarded by a neverending stream of false information that validates their fears and lulls them into feeling smarter than everyone else, they end up being indoctrinated into the right-wing cult we have today.
They won’t blame foundational American principles (like the economic ideology) for American problems—they were made to believe America is perfect. It must be something external (like immigrants) making their life worse.
They won’t question those they believe have authority over them—the teacher is always right. If Trump says it’s the Democrats fault, it’s the Democrats fault.
They won’t make an effort to understand other views—self-reliance is antithetical to empathy, and they had it ingrained which one was more important. The only person they can trust is themselves and by extension those who agree.
They also won’t need to understand other views. With the breadth of echo chambers available at the tip of their fingers, it’s easy to seek and reinforce conservative views, social connection, and validation. Chuck McFuck has a sole trans daughter who begrudgingly interacts with him, in contrast to his 10,000 friendly and cooperative buddies on r/conservative.
Ah, my favorite kind of poster.
One who posts a self-congratulatory “question” to a group who obviously isn’t going to read it and then never replies to any of the comments.
The question isn’t stupid. But asking it here is
You would likely get an answer akin to “they aren’t our allies, they’ve been exploiting us and now that the bill is due they are flaking”
The president is a Russian asset
I imagine it’s so no one would be willing to come to our aid as he destroys the country.
Echo chamber problems lol.
Y’all have banned or bullied every single Republican or conservative person off this website.
You can’t talk to people who aren’t here.
Aren’t you a conservative? Are you banned? Is this real?
- Not a conservative.
- I am currently banned from like 30 different subs and like 10 of them I don’t think I even interacted with whatsoever.
- Is anything real? Won’t know till we die.
Still waiting on that source.
Fucking source for what?
Y’all have banned or bullied every single Republican or conservative person off this website.
On this dumbass claim of yours. Or are you admitting that it’s complete bullshit now and then?
All you have to do is look at what happened to the conservative community. There was a post asking whether it was meant for trolling conservatives or for actual discussion, and the resounding answer was that no conversation was possible with conservatives or anyone who holds right of center views.
There were a few lemmings who posted in support of allowing conservatives to have a place to chime in, and they were downvoted into oblivion.
That’s being bullied off of Lemmy, which is fine, communities are self organized and managed, and chasing away wrongthink is apparently what the vast majority of this platform wants.
Again, all of that is fine, but we shouldn’t pretend chasing those people off wasn’t the intended outcome, or that this isn’t an echo chamber.
How the fuck would I ever be able to prove that with any hard data? Use your fucking head you dolt.
You can see the takeover of the main “conservative” sub being turned into a place to mock conservatives. The repeated comments from many users across all the subs that they are straight up not welcome here.
Like unless you got some magical way to see every active user and their political ideology idk how the hell you expect me to prove anything like that with a verifiably source of any kind.
If you really don’t think this website bans or bullies conservatives off of it ask yourself how many conservatives to you see around here? Even in their own conservative subs they are constantly down voted into oblivion. They only have a handful of active users at any given time and even in my short time on Lemmy I have seen several people that posted there stop accessing the site altogether.
I stand by my original claim that y’all (the far left majority) of Lemmy have bullied or banned all of them off the site. I’m not even conservative and I’ve been banned from many subs and been told to fuck off in various ways since the day I made my account. A few people have even told me to kill myself in creative and beautiful ways.
No love for differing opinions on this website.
So you’re full of shit. Got it. Thanks.
Source on that claim? I’ve seen you claim that a bunch on here, and I have yet to see any of it being true.
Probably the downvotes on his comment are a liiiitttttllllllleeeee bit indicative
I just wanted him to say he’s full of shit which he ended up saying in a long, winded response.
Hold up! The truth matters again‽ I thought I’d never see the day.
