Like a leopard, Trump cannot change his spots. He came to office as a lying, sociopathic narcissist and has maintained his obvious shape and color. How can there be so many foolish and greedy people in America??
Trump didn’t invent taking other people’s stuff. US leaders have been doing versions of it for decades. The difference is that Trump doesn’t bother with the wrapping. He doesn't seem particularly interested in pretending that America intervenes out of altruism. He says take the oil. He threatens countries openly. He even revived “Department of War,” which is at least a more honest description of what the institution does.
What I find more interesting is why Americans are shocked.
Is it because Trump has pulled back the curtain and made the imperial machinery visible without the usual moral theater? Or because that machinery is no longer producing the same domestic benefits?
For decades, imperial conduct imposed relatively little direct cost on most Americans while helping sustain cheap energy, privileged markets, dollar dominance, and a very comfortable material position. The coups, sanctions, wars, destroyed states, and coercion happened somewhere else. As long as the machine delivered at home, most people did not look too closely at how it worked abroad.
Note that after we successfully conquered Iraq (which I would argue we should never have done), under both Bush and Obama, we did NOT take their oil. Not familiar with any theft during Clinton or Biden either. Certainly our history goes back further and was worse, but then so was our racism and other bad behaviors. Could it be that all this open theft is just as you said, taking the wrapper off of how it used to be, that 'golden age' which is back when America was "Great"? As in, "Make America Great Again"? Is THAT (and of course open Racism and Misgoyny) what made us 'Great'?
Of course American “greatness” depended on that machinery. And I don’t think “we didn’t literally take Iraq’s oil” answers the point. Empire rarely works by simply loading somebody else’s resources onto ships and carrying them home. Control over who extracts them, who sells them, on what terms, where the profits flow, and which government is allowed to determine those terms matters much more.
Mosaddegh nationalized Iranian oil and suddenly Britain regarded its loss of control over another country’s resources as intolerable. Chávez asserted greater Venezuelan control over Venezuelan oil and the same basic conflict followed. If Iraq today tried to assert substantially greater control over its oil on terms unfavorable to US interests, I doubt Washington would treat it as a neutral exercise of sovereignty.
Apparently the resource belongs to the sovereign nation — until that nation insists on exercising sovereignty over it.
Mosaddegh was back in 1951, back when Great Britain was still in full 'Empire' mode, though India had been 'released' a few years earlier.
Chavez Oil issues occurred during W Bush, with his major string puller being his VP Cheney, who was tightly tied to major American Oil interests. And even then was not completely out of line for most any nation to react similarly if major companies of theirs had suddenly had major holdings nationalized. Chavez had to expect some dampening of relations with the US as a result. If the US nationalized all foreign owned auto plants in the US, I imagine the impacted countries would also react. This is NOT the same thing as outright theft.
My primary objection is to the underlying assumption that 'all sides are the same'. I agree that normally the Governments should not act as the enforcement arm for their companies enriching themselves off of other countries, and we can debate if what happened in those cases qualifies for that. But no, both sides are NEVER the same. They are not clean ideal numbers like 1+4 = 2 + 4 = 5. And sometimes they are not even in the same order of magnitude. Trump is not just another politician who bends the truth, he tells HUGE lies many times every single day. Trump does not simply find ways to line his pocket a bit, he invites and extort bribes of over 2 billion dollars. The list is very long of ALL the crimes, let alone the 'norms' Trump has broken or done 10 or a hundred times worse than any prior president.
Sorry, but while yeah, he tore the wrapper off, that was in part because the wrapper broke and could not fit around the crimes any more.
Was every president before Trump an angel? Of course not, but we do not live in a world of absolutes. One cat does not equal one dog and neither is as dumb and dangerous as a Hippo.
I don’t think we disagree that Trump is different. My point is that he is not the sole author of US foreign policy, just as no president is. There is a much larger institutional and strategic machinery behind it. Trump changes the style, removes constraints, and sometimes makes certain goals easier to pursue because he does not bother manufacturing the same degree of legal or humanitarian legitimacy. But under previous presidents, many of those goals were pursued anyway; the legitimacy was simply packaged more carefully.
And I don’t think nationalizing foreign-owned factories is quite the same as nationalizing the extraction of your own natural resources. In the latter case, the resource is yours. The question is who controls its extraction, on what terms, and how much of the value actually remains with the country that owns it.
Many people have very little self-awareness, and everyone involved in the regime are poster children to demonstrate that. Even well-educated people spend years learning about law, medicine, business, and so on, but never really understand the self. To borrow from Rod Serling The Twilight Zone’s introductions: “Imagine, if you will, a country that invests in self-awareness. One where people understand and know how to avoid others who suffer from the Dark Triad of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. School systems that teach how to build a healthy ego and human relationships instead of learning the names of state capitals and presidents…”
Very true. Our schools have not been teaching any of these lessons, certainly not clearly. 'RealityTV' seems to celebrate that Dark Triad. There does not seem to be many resources for people to actually learn such lessons, including the skill to spot lies and 'false arguments'.
It might even seem like our school systems, staffed by good people on the whole, are structured to ignore such topics, focused instead on teaching our students to be good employees who do not question power, who show up on time, take work home with them, memorize facts and follow processes... How are students tested? Facts and processes.
Blatant corruption, theft and colonialism……Again where are Republicans on this? This is like the 100th Trump scandal and you get crickets from the tough-guy, tough on crime republicans. Vote them out and make they pay for looking the other way.
Their entire platform has always been a bunch of lies - narcotics to soothe their base. Remember their whole nonsense about "family values" that used to be their big calling card? That has largely gone by the wayside when they threw in their lot with the thrice married serial cheater cult leader. It's always been a big show.
‘…thuggish assholishness’ gets my vote for best descriptor of Trump behavior this year. But ‘Obnoxious bullying’ is always a reliable go-to second if we’re doing ranked choice. What a worthless, awful man.
That may be about any dictator but certainly about Trump. He has set himself up as dominant and controlling, for his benefit. Since his worldview is so simple and insufficiently productive for economic growth, intellectual depth, and long term stability, all of us have been suffering. Like his precious oil, Trump’s influence has saturated our multiple cultures and will not dissipate or diminish without repeated efforts over decades to remove its stench and presence as it morphs into unforeseen consequences. Just as he wants but won’t enjoy.
"the stuff of fascist regimes" is a stupid talk-around that makes you sound like you work for the traditional media that you allegedly despise. Why not say TRUMP IS A FASCIST
How good it feels to sneer, to indulge in irrelevant psycho babble diagnostic name calling.
Weak weak weak. Denial denial denial. Does nothing nothing nothing to stop the predatory behavior.
DOMINANCE is what a predator does. Dominance has nothing to do with feelings. Or understanding the rule of law. Or negotiating deals. Dominance is its own reward.
But dominance does need one thing. SUBMISSION. Stop trashing loyalty. Loyalty is a virtue. Living in denial about the meaning and importance of words means more submission. It does not attack dominance.
Drill in on that one enemy, domination, and we can win. When we quit letting our fear dominate us into weak words, and weak behavior, we can become the loyal opposition. We have less than two months to show our family, friends and neighbors how to shift out of fear and into our own collective, superior power. Let that be how we celebrate the labor we need now to save our country.
Of course Trump *is* a liar. He "made hundreds of billions of dollars on stocks, and many other type holdings, for the USA, not [him]self." Can someone explain the mechanics of that?
While historically incompetence and stupidity are more often than not the root of terrible choices, under Trump, we have to add to those, overt greed, fear of going to prison and a consistent pattern of doing damage to the United States in every way.
Yes, Trump is incompetent, even as a criminal, it is only his lawyers and the corrupt SCOTUS that has kept him out of jail so far, but he knows he is running out of time there.
Trump is stupid, he does not study, he ignores facts that do not help him, and the facts that do help him he lies about with extreme exaggeration.
Trump's personal greed / corruption is historic. The examples and evidence are legion.
Trump is deathly afraid of going to prison, and seems very confident he is going to hell when he dies. Trump is working hard to delay both of these, without changing his lifestyle or the choices that brought him to this point.
The question is not whether Trump consistently makes choices that do damage to the US, but rather Why? Internal division in every way possible, international isolation both politically and economically. Weakening us Militarily both through bad management, anti-DEI (misogynist and racist) policies and spending our munitions, fired competent people until we had less competence, mistreating our personell, lowereing moral... reducing our oil independence... The pattern is far too consistent to be anything other than intentional by somebody, either Trump or someone who strongly influences him (such as Stephen Miller or Putin).
Like a leopard, Trump cannot change his spots. He came to office as a lying, sociopathic narcissist and has maintained his obvious shape and color. How can there be so many foolish and greedy people in America??
This is why Trump is so afraid of Antifa … it names the beast.
Trump didn’t invent taking other people’s stuff. US leaders have been doing versions of it for decades. The difference is that Trump doesn’t bother with the wrapping. He doesn't seem particularly interested in pretending that America intervenes out of altruism. He says take the oil. He threatens countries openly. He even revived “Department of War,” which is at least a more honest description of what the institution does.
What I find more interesting is why Americans are shocked.
Is it because Trump has pulled back the curtain and made the imperial machinery visible without the usual moral theater? Or because that machinery is no longer producing the same domestic benefits?
For decades, imperial conduct imposed relatively little direct cost on most Americans while helping sustain cheap energy, privileged markets, dollar dominance, and a very comfortable material position. The coups, sanctions, wars, destroyed states, and coercion happened somewhere else. As long as the machine delivered at home, most people did not look too closely at how it worked abroad.
Trump didn’t invent the machine.
He just stopped pretending it was something else.
Note that after we successfully conquered Iraq (which I would argue we should never have done), under both Bush and Obama, we did NOT take their oil. Not familiar with any theft during Clinton or Biden either. Certainly our history goes back further and was worse, but then so was our racism and other bad behaviors. Could it be that all this open theft is just as you said, taking the wrapper off of how it used to be, that 'golden age' which is back when America was "Great"? As in, "Make America Great Again"? Is THAT (and of course open Racism and Misgoyny) what made us 'Great'?
Of course American “greatness” depended on that machinery. And I don’t think “we didn’t literally take Iraq’s oil” answers the point. Empire rarely works by simply loading somebody else’s resources onto ships and carrying them home. Control over who extracts them, who sells them, on what terms, where the profits flow, and which government is allowed to determine those terms matters much more.
Mosaddegh nationalized Iranian oil and suddenly Britain regarded its loss of control over another country’s resources as intolerable. Chávez asserted greater Venezuelan control over Venezuelan oil and the same basic conflict followed. If Iraq today tried to assert substantially greater control over its oil on terms unfavorable to US interests, I doubt Washington would treat it as a neutral exercise of sovereignty.
Apparently the resource belongs to the sovereign nation — until that nation insists on exercising sovereignty over it.
Mosaddegh was back in 1951, back when Great Britain was still in full 'Empire' mode, though India had been 'released' a few years earlier.
Chavez Oil issues occurred during W Bush, with his major string puller being his VP Cheney, who was tightly tied to major American Oil interests. And even then was not completely out of line for most any nation to react similarly if major companies of theirs had suddenly had major holdings nationalized. Chavez had to expect some dampening of relations with the US as a result. If the US nationalized all foreign owned auto plants in the US, I imagine the impacted countries would also react. This is NOT the same thing as outright theft.
My primary objection is to the underlying assumption that 'all sides are the same'. I agree that normally the Governments should not act as the enforcement arm for their companies enriching themselves off of other countries, and we can debate if what happened in those cases qualifies for that. But no, both sides are NEVER the same. They are not clean ideal numbers like 1+4 = 2 + 4 = 5. And sometimes they are not even in the same order of magnitude. Trump is not just another politician who bends the truth, he tells HUGE lies many times every single day. Trump does not simply find ways to line his pocket a bit, he invites and extort bribes of over 2 billion dollars. The list is very long of ALL the crimes, let alone the 'norms' Trump has broken or done 10 or a hundred times worse than any prior president.
Sorry, but while yeah, he tore the wrapper off, that was in part because the wrapper broke and could not fit around the crimes any more.
Was every president before Trump an angel? Of course not, but we do not live in a world of absolutes. One cat does not equal one dog and neither is as dumb and dangerous as a Hippo.
I don’t think we disagree that Trump is different. My point is that he is not the sole author of US foreign policy, just as no president is. There is a much larger institutional and strategic machinery behind it. Trump changes the style, removes constraints, and sometimes makes certain goals easier to pursue because he does not bother manufacturing the same degree of legal or humanitarian legitimacy. But under previous presidents, many of those goals were pursued anyway; the legitimacy was simply packaged more carefully.
And I don’t think nationalizing foreign-owned factories is quite the same as nationalizing the extraction of your own natural resources. In the latter case, the resource is yours. The question is who controls its extraction, on what terms, and how much of the value actually remains with the country that owns it.
Many people have very little self-awareness, and everyone involved in the regime are poster children to demonstrate that. Even well-educated people spend years learning about law, medicine, business, and so on, but never really understand the self. To borrow from Rod Serling The Twilight Zone’s introductions: “Imagine, if you will, a country that invests in self-awareness. One where people understand and know how to avoid others who suffer from the Dark Triad of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. School systems that teach how to build a healthy ego and human relationships instead of learning the names of state capitals and presidents…”
Very true. Our schools have not been teaching any of these lessons, certainly not clearly. 'RealityTV' seems to celebrate that Dark Triad. There does not seem to be many resources for people to actually learn such lessons, including the skill to spot lies and 'false arguments'.
It might even seem like our school systems, staffed by good people on the whole, are structured to ignore such topics, focused instead on teaching our students to be good employees who do not question power, who show up on time, take work home with them, memorize facts and follow processes... How are students tested? Facts and processes.
Well said.
Blatant corruption, theft and colonialism……Again where are Republicans on this? This is like the 100th Trump scandal and you get crickets from the tough-guy, tough on crime republicans. Vote them out and make they pay for looking the other way.
Their entire platform has always been a bunch of lies - narcotics to soothe their base. Remember their whole nonsense about "family values" that used to be their big calling card? That has largely gone by the wayside when they threw in their lot with the thrice married serial cheater cult leader. It's always been a big show.
‘…thuggish assholishness’ gets my vote for best descriptor of Trump behavior this year. But ‘Obnoxious bullying’ is always a reliable go-to second if we’re doing ranked choice. What a worthless, awful man.
"Assholishness" made my day. Kudos, Noah!
Loved "thuggish asholishness"!
“…dictator who spread mayhem far and wide.”
That may be about any dictator but certainly about Trump. He has set himself up as dominant and controlling, for his benefit. Since his worldview is so simple and insufficiently productive for economic growth, intellectual depth, and long term stability, all of us have been suffering. Like his precious oil, Trump’s influence has saturated our multiple cultures and will not dissipate or diminish without repeated efforts over decades to remove its stench and presence as it morphs into unforeseen consequences. Just as he wants but won’t enjoy.
"the stuff of fascist regimes" is a stupid talk-around that makes you sound like you work for the traditional media that you allegedly despise. Why not say TRUMP IS A FASCIST
“His ego is the world’s largest gas guzzler…” Now there’s an image I can’t unsee.
And what a price the world pays and will continue to pay for this sad and tragic weak and sick ego.
My message to the R’s: Karma is here and it’s moving fast!
I was robbed at gunpoint. Those bullies!
I was raped. Roy Cohn taught him!
He puts his name on everything. Vanity!
How good it feels to sneer, to indulge in irrelevant psycho babble diagnostic name calling.
Weak weak weak. Denial denial denial. Does nothing nothing nothing to stop the predatory behavior.
DOMINANCE is what a predator does. Dominance has nothing to do with feelings. Or understanding the rule of law. Or negotiating deals. Dominance is its own reward.
But dominance does need one thing. SUBMISSION. Stop trashing loyalty. Loyalty is a virtue. Living in denial about the meaning and importance of words means more submission. It does not attack dominance.
Drill in on that one enemy, domination, and we can win. When we quit letting our fear dominate us into weak words, and weak behavior, we can become the loyal opposition. We have less than two months to show our family, friends and neighbors how to shift out of fear and into our own collective, superior power. Let that be how we celebrate the labor we need now to save our country.
And now, Trump is a dictator spreading mayhem far and wide.
Of course Trump *is* a liar. He "made hundreds of billions of dollars on stocks, and many other type holdings, for the USA, not [him]self." Can someone explain the mechanics of that?
While historically incompetence and stupidity are more often than not the root of terrible choices, under Trump, we have to add to those, overt greed, fear of going to prison and a consistent pattern of doing damage to the United States in every way.
Yes, Trump is incompetent, even as a criminal, it is only his lawyers and the corrupt SCOTUS that has kept him out of jail so far, but he knows he is running out of time there.
Trump is stupid, he does not study, he ignores facts that do not help him, and the facts that do help him he lies about with extreme exaggeration.
Trump's personal greed / corruption is historic. The examples and evidence are legion.
Trump is deathly afraid of going to prison, and seems very confident he is going to hell when he dies. Trump is working hard to delay both of these, without changing his lifestyle or the choices that brought him to this point.
The question is not whether Trump consistently makes choices that do damage to the US, but rather Why? Internal division in every way possible, international isolation both politically and economically. Weakening us Militarily both through bad management, anti-DEI (misogynist and racist) policies and spending our munitions, fired competent people until we had less competence, mistreating our personell, lowereing moral... reducing our oil independence... The pattern is far too consistent to be anything other than intentional by somebody, either Trump or someone who strongly influences him (such as Stephen Miller or Putin).
Who will be coming to our shores to extract our stuff once we are too weak to defend ourselves?