623
Apparently you can just talk to other countries and ask them to help dealing with issues your country faces.
Good luck trying to talk to China now after Trump.
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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The US could have also taken the Sackler family out to sea and disappeared them, but we didn't. I think that would have been an appropriate punishment (if a little too lenient) for engineering a nationwide addiction crisis.
But your point stands.
The American brand is permanently tarnished, and it's going to be a bummer to see the consequences unfold in the coming years.
The coming decades, probably. This won't be right in my lifetime.
It's wild to think that with the same amount of power Obama and Biden had, that Donald has completely rearranged the landscape of American politics, and once the post-tariff trade agreements kick in (rerouting supply chains around rather than through the US) and the BBB puts the kill shot on the poor and middle class, I think that the next year or two will be a clear historical demarcation line.
I'm not sure about that. This presidency is more than 50 years in the making, involved a stolen vote, multiple billionaire co-conspirators, even Obama was like "how do we stop this??" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnhBrVb_aaw
They have all the authors of p25 behind them, the house, the senate, the judiciary, the POTUS, the whole shootin' match.
I'm with you dude. Solid points all around.
We need to have a viable plan for when he cancels elections. I don't know how to make such a plan, but we need it yesterday.
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Did Biden ever have a majority in both houses? I know Obama had it for the first two years and that's how he got Obamacare through. Neither of them had SCOTUS stacked in their favour and ruling them immune from their own intervention.
No, he did not. Both houses flipped with the midterm.
As is tradition, unfortunately.
The American brand is permanently tarnished
I wish this were true. But after Iraq? After Vietnam? A Cold War that nearly wiped out the entire human race? After CIA sponsored coups from Brazil to Guatamala? Henry Ford was passing out copies of "The International Jew" all over Germany during the 1920s. Roosevelt forced the Platt Amendment down Cuba's throat. McKinley oversaw a genocide in the Philippines. Polk gave us the Annexation of Texas and the revitalization of the North American slave trade. Anyone ask Andrew Jackson what happened to all the Cherokee down in Florida?
America is a country with unlimited do-overs. Our brand is never tarnished. We are always and forever a Shining City On A Hill even as Ronnie fucking Raygun is sponsoring nun rape down in Nicaragua.
The events you're describing are the history of every major world power. The global power that hasn't participated in numerous atrocities does not exist.
The difference here is the loss of domestic rule of law and its cascading downstream effects for global cooperation and trade, which yes, will create significant future problems for the US and its brand. This will become more evident in a year to a year-and-a-half when the post-tariff trade agreements take effect, for a start. China is the obvious beneficiary.
But could get a whole lot worse a whole lot faster depending on how far Donald decides to push his unilateral warmongering, and whether or not Congress does anything about it.
The global power that hasn’t participated in numerous atrocities does not exist.
Almost as though power is accrued at the expense of the vulnerable.
The difference here is the loss of domestic law and order and its cascading downstream effects for global cooperation and trade
The only countries that the US has alienated are ones it is explicitly sanctioning. Nobody else is actually cutting ties.
China is the obvious beneficiary.
China's the trade-alternative for countries under US sanctions, precisely because Trump's done a ham-fisted job of diplomacizing with his counterparts overseas. But a future Pete Buttigieg administration can patch that up if he chooses. There is more to be gained by doing business with the US than with Venezuela or Iran or Cuba. Chinese leaders know that and act accordingly.
But could get a whole lot worse a whole lot faster
Sure. Or it could come to a grinding halt if Trump loses control of Congress and falls into lame duck status three years early. Already, we're seeing sharp divides even inside the GOP, which already operates on thin margins in the face of a Dem election wave.
Plenty of precedent for an unpopular President to get sidelined by skilled and ambitious legislators. And the US has demonstrated time and time again that it has the manpower and the infrastructure to rebound quickly under strong, competent leadership.
We're almost certainly going to face a nasty recession going into the next few years. But we're still a massive, hugely populated, highly technical, heavily industrialized economy. Losing unipolar status isn't the end of the empire. A bad few years of economic contraction isn't the end of the world.
Now... the long tail of climate change... that's another story. If the Colorado River dries up before it reaches Arizona, we're going to see some shit flying.
And the US has demonstrated time and time again that it has the manpower and the infrastructure to rebound quickly under strong, competent leadership.
A lot of the manpower has been sacked. Replacing those people and getting them to a point of strong competency will take years and years and a lot of money.
Second best time to plant a tree is today. #guesswebettergettowork
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Idk I say we should've just given them a taste of their own medicine, but only like a week's taste, then strip their wealth.
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This is the problem with progressive movement, it's slow. It works but you need patience. People aren't going to be patient about fent killing their whole town. They're going to be reactionary and elect a bullshitter who will sell them a lie about how he'll round up all the people bringing in fent and stop it dead in its tracks. But it never works.
The American electorate genuinely isn’t very bright. I really hate to say it.
Most people on this planet are just straight up dumb as fuck. You can never convince me otherwise. My whole life this has been confirmed over and over and over again.
Even if a person is smart, they still have blind spots and areas in which they are still indeed dumb as fuck. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, those blind spots lie in things like politics, economics, and civics.
Even if person is smart and highly educated he still seems to have the ability to dwell in stupidest bubbles.
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Naw, people love saying shit like that about large groups of people.
Yeah, I like the simple example with roads. If you have a two party system where one party builds roads then it's pretty easy for the other party to say "look how much they're spending" then get in power they can choose not to invest in roads for a term or two before anyone notices the negative effects of not investing. That true of most policies but its easier for some people to grasp with basic physical infrastructure they need
This is the problem with the average voter. They don’t understand that policy takes more than 30 seconds to shows its effects. Biden also almost had inflation beat back too, but the public wanted deflation and wanted it now, and trump said he’d lower prices!
its actually in disarray, not many "dems" are part of the progressive movements, most are likely moderates or center right at best.
Biden wasn't typically referred to as a progressive.
Yeah, making life harder for as many people as possible tends to not have the effect of lowering crime. Investing in people is the way to go. But it takes more than 4 years to really show, sometimes it takes multiple generations before the positive effects are felt. But they are felt.
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And Trump will take credit for it!
Joe Rogan and Dave Rubin looked at a graph that finished in 2024 with a large dip and praised Trump for that effect.
He's certainly being given credit by right wing idiots
And Lemmy will deny Biden credit for it.
It would have been nice if they had published this before the election. It might have made a difference.
I kept trying to tell people Biden's policies were intelligent, but it would take time to see the quantifiable result. It's hard to cite sources that haven't been published yet. Science moves too slow to keep up with a four-year electoral cycle.
And now all this progress will be undone and worse due to anti-intellectualism taking the helm. Typical...
“I bombed Venezuela and look what happened!”
-Trump
Guess who's going to take credit.
The guy with two thumbs and is sittin over here! You're welcome!
WRONG! It's because Trump just PARDONED an International Drug Trafficking Extraordinaire Stupid LIBTURDS!
You mean threatening allies and making racist statements wasn't the answer to fentanyl ODs? What a world. Also, expect China to stop whatever helped because more dead (especially young) Americans are beneficial to them in the long run.
Thanks Biden!
Maybe, but I feel like making intranasal narcan so readily available had to play a not insignificant part.
On the one hand I am grateful it exists, but I do find it odd the manufacturer is a shady bioscience company that has a long history of very concerning issues regarding their partnership with the U.S. government as a biodefense contractor.
no but because trump is president now he gets to take credit, and blame biden for it not happening sooner
I lost a very close friend to fentanyl in 2025. They even had narcan at home when it happened, but by the time their partner found them it was just moments too late.
I'm still not over it and probably never will be, the anger and grief is just so strong. Their death was so preventable. But they decided to take the risk and buy some shit from the dark web and not test it first, and they decided to hide it from their partner and friends.
I wish we lived in a world where drugs were decriminalized and destigmatized, maybe my friend would have felt more comfortable giving their partner a heads up before trying some sketchy dark web product. Unfortunately, there is just nothing that truly helps severe chronic pain, and our medical system sucks.
Anyways y'all, please be safe out there if you're inclined to try anything off the street. Get ahold of some test kits and narcan, and please have someone you trust supervise. Fent has been put into so many things -- including coke, Adderall, Xanax -- nothing is "safe" anymore (not saying drugs were safe before, but the risks are so much higher than they used to be ~15 years ago)
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