Trump 2.0 official thread

[Africablack]

I can't agree with this. While I don't think that Americans are intrinsically dumber than any other people, where they differ is in their biases deviate more from reality, and this affects both their international and domestic politics. In one camp, Trump is seen as the cause of most of American problems, and in another camp, he's seen as the savior of American problems. Both of these camps are very wrong. Trump is only a symptom of the underlying malaise. And I think that a lot of Americans know that this malaise exists and is potentially fatal, but it is due to their biases that they're unable to identify the true problems.

America is a racist country at worst and a race obsessed country at best. Most of the people who voted for Trump know he's a scumbag but they've decided to pitch their tent with him and make him their scumbag because he has clearly stated and demonstrated what they want and that's to protect white supremacy at all costs. For them, the white man is superior and should dominate others because a world where that's not the case is simply unthinkable. First order of business is to reduce immigration from non-white countries and get rid of the non-white people to freeze, or even increase the white numbers, eg: mass deportations of Latinos and blacks, importation of South African whites, and the banning of abortion. Trump can do little else for the remainder of his term but if he can keep the darkies from gaining any more power than they already have then he'll be their hero forever.

 

[Michael90]

Well, you know ... I don't like the bash the Indians all the time, I mean they got their issues, just like everyone else.

This time, this story is underplayed.

This is brutal what happened.

This is like very close to trade embargo.

We ask the question, what are Indian exports?

I mean, I do not know. I never bought a retail product from India, other than an item of clothing or some trinket. I heard that India exports some electronic goods.

Kiss that goodbye for America. That is the special about America. Easy to trade with. As long as we know the rules, everyone comes to the American market.

At this stage of development, the American market is vital for India, and that blew up in a matter of days!

Now those commoditized like goods, stuff India makes, other developing countries make too, have to compete in third markets, and not sure if the Indians will be able to compete.

Furthermore, probably the most important point, who is India's biggest trade partner? Let's answer it this way. India's biggest trade surplus is with America, and that is now gone!

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I mean, this is a true game changing event, and not for the better.

What will happen next?

Modi will cave in, and India might preserve some of that trade surplus, which they desperately need for the foreign exchange because they got trade deficits with everyone else.

Modi will not cave in, which damages the economy in what could be extremely severe ways.

There are no good options here.

Frankly speaking, kind of stunned, and even feel sympathetic. The Indians were not in anyway able or capable to fight the Americans. They going to get squashed.

All they did was not even that egregious!

But they are going to pay for it through the nose.

Yeah but its not as bad as you said. Indias largest trade and export to the US is her service/BPO industry, pharmaceutical industry (both also form a large part of their revenue/economy) and now her growing electronics industry(with apple moving most of her phone production destined to the US to india) has been excepted so far. So the worse has been avoided for now. However, if an agreement is not reached then things could get worse as Trump extends those tarrifs to include semiconductor and electronics industry(which he already said he will do this vcoming months). So for now only the other sectors like the textile, diamond/jewelry, Auto, seafood industries are affected. So the bad news is that for one all these sectors are labour-intensive sectors that will feel the heat,
secondly private investments (capex) may slow due to reduced export visibility. And finally, the rupee could weaken if exports shrink significantly thus affecting the Balance of payments(since india is not a major exporter for her size and so cant offset the lost US market) and also increase inflation and interest rate. Which is not good for india's economy. But it could get worse if a truce or agreement is not reached as Trump could expand the tarriffs.

 

[zyklon]

I can't agree with this. While I don't think that Americans are intrinsically dumber than any other people, where they differ is in their biases deviate more from reality, and this affects both their international and domestic politics. In one camp, Trump is seen as the cause of most of American problems, and in another camp, he's seen as the savior of American problems. Both of these camps are very wrong. Trump is only a symptom of the underlying malaise. And I think that a lot of Americans know that this malaise exists and is potentially fatal, but it is due to their biases that they're unable to identify the true problems.

TBH, not sure if we're necessarily in disagreement.

There are many facets to the malaise you speak of, and even more ways to frame them: arrogance, ignorance, naivety, nationalism, political decay — perhaps even growing pains, side effects or destabilizing dangers imposed by American exceptionalism — but let's skip on the normative moralizing.

The collective American consciousness — for better or worse — is anxious, if not panicking over its largely impotent attempts to prevent, prepare for, and/or otherwise process the displacement of the United States on the international stage — as its sole superpower, or as many Americans fear, as a superpower altogether — thanks to the rise of China.

However, what great or formerly great empire, and population thereof, ever had an easy time coming to terms with such a demotion in status and privilege?

The British are still trying to make sense of things with concepts like "

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," a catchphrase in the same vein as — if not even more embarrassing than — "

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." The Russians have — in Ukraine, over the course of the last ~42 months — lost six figures' worth of men while faltering to reclaim slivers of empire that vanished with the collapse of the Soviet Union over a generation ago.

OTOH, American society is just starting to become aware of the displacement anxiety inflicting fear, uncertainty and doubt upon its national consciousness.

This is going to be a long, if not rough ride. Might as well as break out the popcorn to enjoy the show :

 

[4Tran]

TBH, not sure if we're necessarily in disagreement.

There are many facets to the malaise you speak of, and even more ways to frame them: arrogance, ignorance, naivety, nationalism, political decay — perhaps even growing pains, side effects or destabilizing dangers imposed by American exceptionalism — but let's skip on the normative moralizing.

The collective American consciousness — for better or worse — is anxious, if not panicking over its largely impotent attempts to prevent, prepare for, and/or otherwise process the displacement of the United States on the international stage — as its sole superpower, or as many Americans fear, as a superpower altogether — thanks to the rise of China.

However, what great or formerly great empire, and population thereof, ever had an easy time coming to terms with such a demotion in status and privilege?

The British are still trying to make sense of things with concepts like "

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

," a catchphrase in the same vein as — if not even more embarrassing than — "

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

." The Russians have — in Ukraine, over the course of the last ~42 months — lost six figures' worth of men while faltering to reclaim slivers of empire that vanished with the collapse of the Soviet Union over a generation ago.

OTOH, American society is just starting to become aware of the displacement anxiety inflicting fear, uncertainty and doubt upon its national consciousness.

This is going to be a long, if not rough ride. Might as well as break out the popcorn to enjoy the show :

I would say to this that the Americans are significantly less well informed than anyone else (other than the Indians). And that the effect of this lack of information also has more detrimental effects. Once upon a time, the Americans were so far ahead of everyone else this didn't matter, but that's no longer the case. It'd be one thing if it were just some random person spouting off nonsense about their own superiority, but it's another when it's the prevailing view among the social, intellectual, and military elites.

I'm old enough to remember the Cold War and it was a very different matter. Back then, the Americans would closely examine Soviet capabilities, their actions, and what their leadership said and used this information to form strategies and plans. This doesn't happen any more. Hell, so many American elites still talk about China as if it were the China of the '90s! They don't bother reading what Chinese leaders say or bother looking into what China even looks like.

I think that the biggest takeaway from this is less that the Americans are dumb and more that the limitations of how they view the world keep them from being able to fix the problems they have. Currently the US has all sorts of structural problems in their political system, social system, economic system, and military system. Theoretically, these are all fixable if the country is capable of identifying what the underlying causes are and they are willing to invest the effort in the solutions. But given American biases, their problems are effectively insurmountable. Which should be ridiculous for the military system given that the US still has the strongest military in the world, but it's a reflection of how useless the Americans are.

 

[Iracundus]

I would say to this that the Americans are significantly less well informed than anyone else (other than the Indians). And that the effect of this lack of information also has more detrimental effects. Once upon a time, the Americans were so far ahead of everyone else this didn't matter, but that's no longer the case. It'd be one thing if it were just some random person spouting off nonsense about their own superiority, but it's another when it's the prevailing view among the social, intellectual, and military elites.

I'm old enough to remember the Cold War and it was a very different matter. Back then, the Americans would closely examine Soviet capabilities, their actions, and what their leadership said and used this information to form strategies and plans. This doesn't happen any more. Hell, so many American elites still talk about China as if it were the China of the '90s! They don't bother reading what Chinese leaders say or bother looking into what China even looks like.

I think that the biggest takeaway from this is less that the Americans are dumb and more that the limitations of how they view the world keep them from being able to fix the problems they have. Currently the US has all sorts of structural problems in their political system, social system, economic system, and military system. Theoretically, these are all fixable if the country is capable of identifying what the underlying causes are and they are willing to invest the effort in the solutions. But given American biases, their problems are effectively insurmountable. Which should be ridiculous for the military system given that the US still has the strongest military in the world, but it's a reflection of how useless the Americans are.

Russians are white and so were taken more seriously. The American government as a whole has an unspoken and unacknowledged racism that leads to it constantly underestimating non-whites despite any information or analysis. This has happened before with Japan in WW2, North Korea, Vietnam, etc... Though some intelligence reports and analysts may be accurate, the actual decision makers just cannot seem to take them seriously and always seem to suspect at some level that they must be exaggerating, that the other side cannot possibly be as good or as competent as reported.

 

[siegecrossbow]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1954561808787742880

 

[Temstar]

I would say to this that the Americans are significantly less well informed than anyone else (other than the Indians). And that the effect of this lack of information also has more detrimental effects. Once upon a time, the Americans were so far ahead of everyone else this didn't matter, but that's no longer the case. It'd be one thing if it were just some random person spouting off nonsense about their own superiority, but it's another when it's the prevailing view among the social, intellectual, and military elites.

I'm old enough to remember the Cold War and it was a very different matter. Back then, the Americans would closely examine Soviet capabilities, their actions, and what their leadership said and used this information to form strategies and plans. This doesn't happen any more. Hell, so many American elites still talk about China as if it were the China of the '90s! They don't bother reading what Chinese leaders say or bother looking into what China even looks like.

I think that the biggest takeaway from this is less that the Americans are dumb and more that the limitations of how they view the world keep them from being able to fix the problems they have. Currently the US has all sorts of structural problems in their political system, social system, economic system, and military system. Theoretically, these are all fixable if the country is capable of identifying what the underlying causes are and they are willing to invest the effort in the solutions. But given American biases, their problems are effectively insurmountable. Which should be ridiculous for the military system given that the US still has the strongest military in the world, but it's a reflection of how useless the Americans are.

I don't think this is that exceptional for a declining hegemon, it sounds awfully like late stage Qing with their "foreign barbarians only know how to do their 奇技淫巧, we don't need them". Qing leadership weren't exactly that aware of British Empire around the time of the Opium Wars either.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1954561808787742880

A pale imitation of the original masterpiece:

 

[Topazchen]

Trump is now running an extortion ring

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1954653733024846217

 

[Tse]

I don't think this is that exceptional for a declining hegemon, it sounds awfully like late stage Qing with their "foreign barbarians only know how to do their 奇技淫巧, we don't need them". Qing leadership weren't exactly that aware of British Empire around the time of the Opium Wars either.

Not really. The Qing in the half century before the First Opium War was extremely concerned about the British threat. The court and the Emperors themselves commented that the British had occupied India, and Malacca and Macao during the Napoleonic Wars, and they feared the British military and aggressiveness immensely, see Waley-Cohen, Joanna, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History. (W. W. Norton 2000), 104, 126, 129–131, 136–137. According to Qing court records at the time, the main reason why the Qing refused the Macartney Embassy's demands was because they feared a permanent British trade post and embassy will lead to some kind of trick of British colonization. Henrietta Harrison, The Qianlong Emperor’s Letter to George III and the Early-Twentieth-Century Origins of Ideas about Traditional China’s Foreign Relations, The American Historical Review 122, No. 3 (June 2017) 680–70. The real reason why the Qing naval defences were left to decay was because their funds were diverted to fighting the White Lotus and Eight Trigrams rebellions, despite knowing about the external threat. Ronald Po, The Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2018), 79-80. The modern American blindness to their rivals' capabilities is unparalled.