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> weaponized against us I take a more optimistic stance here. Trump can only live so long, and everybody except basically Trump and John Bolton knows that the

• suddenlybananas 9mo ago
  Trump already left the stage once. This is something deeply wrong with the US that can't be explained away as a phase.
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  • mg794613 9mo ago
    Exactly, Trump is the brainchild of American mindset. Not the cause, but the result. And now that even the Americans see it themselves, it's too late. They will _never_ gain the same trust again.
• tsimionescu 9mo ago
  I think that your outlook on US politics and future leadership is naively optimistic (though I very much hope to be wrong). First and most importantly, I don't think it should be considered a given at this point that there will be a democraticly elected successor to Trump. It's clear from past attempts and current declarations and actions that the Trump regime will try to maintain power instead of ceding it at future elections - whether they will succeed or not will depend a lot on American institutions and the power of the people. Secondly, your assertion that only Trump and Jon Bolton agree with the current policies seems deeply wrong. First of all, the VP (with a real chance to be President, given Trump's age and apparent health), seems very much on board. Secondly, much of Trump's policies are based on the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document, including at least some of the foreign policy decisions. Thirdly, a desire to re-orient US foreign policy away from Europe (and thus NATO) and towards China exists in a large part of the traditional foreign policy establishment. Fourth, the leaders of the Democratic Party seem to have learned entirely the wrong lessons from the last election, looking more at which of Trump's policies they should adopt rather than what alternative solutions they can promise to the American people.
  • xp84 9mo ago
    Thanks for the thoughtful response. Every official or aligned pundit in the GOP is obliged by Trump's universally-known vanity to make a show of supporting literally every dumbass thing he does, knowing he'll purge them if they even question things. So I will say we can't actually get a read on what they truly think until Trump is gone, preferably by passing away peacefully of old age rather than hanging around live-tweeting his takes on the next administration's actions. Of course this means I'm speculating as well, and I admit that. I just think that I've never seen anyone approaching the Trump levels of pettiness, vanity, and most of all, what looks to me like pure foolishness. Including even his inner circle. Most of them are single-issue extremists. I actually agree that re-orienting foreign policy and military toward China is just plain smart. But it's idiotic to do that by picking fights with allies, and anyone less dumb than Trump can accomplish a pivot to China while at minimum not causing hostility across the Atlantic. Ideally the West should instead be firming up our alliance and working together to counter Chinese influence, plus, it'll be better to have NATO intact leading up to a potential hostilities with China when they invade Taiwan. Of course, China is working hard on amplifying and promoting division inside the US to destroy NATO in the hopes that Europe will run to their arms economically and thus be unable to oppose China. Kind of like how much of Europe has/had dependencies on Russian petroleum which complicated their ability to respond to Crimea and the rest of Ukraine invasion. > leaders of the Democratic Party ... looking more at which of Trump's policies they should adopt I haven't witnessed any adaptation at all from the DNC. It seems that all their beliefs are still summed up as "We ran a perfect candidate and she ran a perfect campaign. It's the voters who are the problem!" I can't emphasize enough how collossal the DNC's screwup in 2024 was. We have a system that has been running for hundreds of years where the idea is a primary election gets you two candidates who are at least spitting distance from electable, and then we have to pick one of those two in the general election. It's wildly imperfect in that it entrenches exactly two parties at a time. But the DNC in 2024 took this system and operated it with utter incompetence by just installing the biggest loser of the 2020 primaries as the only alternative to Trump. Many people were so disgusted they stayed home. If they've admitted this, it hasn't been publicly.
    • the_gipsy 9mo ago
• aucisson_masque 9mo ago
  Americans elected trump not just one time. They did it twice. They all knew who he was by the end of the first mandate yet they still elected him again. Why wouldn’t they find another « trump like » when trump goes away ? Vance or someone else, the list is long. I see no reason for things to change and that’s if the USA doesn’t become an autocracy in the meantime. Trump already did so much in a year, that’s fascinating. He just need to boil the frog a bit longer but everything is in place.
  • ryandrake 9mo ago
    Exactly. Trump is just a symptom. If he disappeared tomorrow, the people who elected him are still here, and they still want the same things: Belligerence, Cruelty, Isolationism, and lots of other terrible things. When Trump is no longer in the picture, they'll find a new candidate who offers this.
    • xp84 9mo ago
      You don't have to convince every Trump voter. The margin who swung from Biden to Trump and elected Trump aren't all those things. They just don't want what the Dems were selling in 2024, specifically: the dems' adopted ideology surrounding gender, plus using race and gender to pick who gets jobs and into schools, rather than merit. If they removed just those two planks from the DNC platform, (1) Harris would have never been nominated, and (2) Trump couldn't have won.
      • Der_Einzige 9mo ago
        [flagged]
      • shermantanktop 9mo ago
        This is the logic of running to the middle. And yet moderate candidates do poorly these days. Worth noting who gives this advice and to whom.
        • terminalshort 9mo ago
• slifin 9mo ago
  The real thing that's changed here is that the US gets no benefit from defending Ukraine or Europe European politicians need to wake up NATO was really an exercise in helping the US with its proxy wars their support will not be reciprocated Not with trump and not with his successor
  • ben_w 9mo ago
    The US may believe the US gets no benefit from defending Ukraine or Europe, but that belief is false. Even with greedy short-term thinking: The economic connections between the US and Europe are a big part of US wealth, and failing to protect your market and your investors is bad for business. Ukraine… Europe supports Ukraine to keep Europe safe. Ukraine is not in NATO, nor is it covered by the EU treaty's mutual defence article.
• Propelloni 9mo ago
  > Note that I'm not saying everyone should give the US a pass or maintain as much economic and defense dependency on the US. But I think it's hyperbolic to make all your long-term plans assuming something as stupid and self-defeating as his worst anti-ally policies are a new normal, because they harm the US at least as much as they harm everyone else, and everyone but those two knows this. It is debatable if everyone but John Bolton and Donald Trump knows this. After all, according to the last NYT poll the current POTUS commands an approval rating of 41 % in the USA. The number of people I meet who do not understand how tariffs work, for example, is staggering. Anyway, it is smart policy to expect the worst and plan for it instead of being surprised by another insane president voted in by the people of the USA. Call it risk management if you like. It would be negligent of the leaders of the EU and its member nations to not account for that. The EU has to reduce dependence on unrealiable trade partners, this is true whether we are talking about warmongering Russia, dictatorial China (probably the most reliable of the three!), or unpredictable USA. So, let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst. The EU can't change it if preparation harms US economic interests in the long run. That's on Trump.
  • xp84 9mo ago
    > After all, according to the last NYT poll the current POTUS commands an approval rating of 41 % in the USA. The number of people I meet who do not understand how tariffs work, for example, is staggering. For sure -- the bottom 41% of economic literacy are so misinformed that they have no clue what they're talking about. But those voters aren't picking the nominee for President from among a circus of general morons, the party elites are, and the Republican Party elites are rich dudes who don't want to screw ourselves back to the stone age. Without Trump just flailing around like an idiot, they'd be content to do things that preserve the status quo in a lot of areas. They pander to the unsophisticated Trumpists where needed, but it's lip service, since a lot of them, for instance, love open borders because of how it depresses wages and gives them a compliant workforce. They talk a big game about the debt or the deficit, and also work to make sure we increase defense spending and funnel as much healthcare spending as possible through a bunch of private insurers who add a huge margin to our healthcare costs.
    • 9mo ago
• dleslie 9mo ago
  I think every American needs to understand this quote: > "We will never fucking trust you again."[0] It doesn't matter that Trump will eventually no longer be President, and it doesn't matter that there are still members of the American political establishment that support the old way of doing things. Trump does not act alone, and there is rapid attrition of those older bureaucrats who valued the USA's allies. Trump's allies in the GOP will continue to be in power, and perhaps worse, the partisan appointees that have inundated the public service will remain. The USA has burned its bridges. There is no more trust to be found. 0: https://www.readtheline.ca/p/matt-gurney-we-will-never-fucking https://www.readtheline.ca/p/matt-gurney-we-will-never-fucki...
  • xp84 9mo ago
    Thanks for that excellent link. I suppose I have to remain optimistic here, but I think that you and I disagree on one really important thing and time will prove one of us right (I think we both probably hope I'm right): I think that Trump is too different from the others, even people he's ushering into the administrative state. That's my opinion because Trump seems to govern from: - 1 part petty corruption: stupid stuff like deals that enrich Kushner, his Trump company itself, and that of his close personal allies - 1 part vanity: stupid stuff that serves no purpose but to exact revenge against people who humiliate him. And let's throw in silly stuff he says just to 'troll the libs' to this group too. - 1 part just pure inexplicable stupidity. Things like pointless tariffs, or the idiocy around Greenland, that hurt nearly everyone and especially the US itself. Honestly some of this may be just the petty corruption part, where someone who stands to make a fortune from the chaos has cut him in on a deal we don't know about. I simply don't see that same motivation triad coming from anyone else, even among Republicans. Other Republicans are driven more by political ideology, their own goals, their own ideas about the culture, their belief that X policy makes the economy stronger, etc. So, while you should judge us by what we do in the future, and bearing in mind that more idiots of his caliber may be discovered, I think and hope that you'll find out that Trump was simply the perfect storm of moron, and can never be repeated.
    • dleslie 9mo ago
      That sort of corruption is endemic to the American political establishment. They profit from their inside knowledge of congress, wielding their insider knowledge to make themselves wealthy; not all do it, but enough do that it's nigh impossible to pass legislation to deal with it. What you refer to as vanity I consider vindictiveness, and as evidenced by his continued support is something that appears strongly associated with Trump's supporters. Vindictiveness is the point, and it's what they voted for. And stupidity, well, PISA performance doesn't bode well for most nations. There's a steady decline witnessed the world over.
• globalnode 9mo ago
  trump disappearing isnt going to restore trust now the world has seen how broken american politics is.
• SanjayMehta 9mo ago
  The damage Trump has done to international relations will last much longer than the three years that he has left in office. It was an open secret that the USA was a transactional unreliable ally, now it's just common knowledge. Even the most ardent "look West" politicians have stopped talking about avoiding China.
• tempestn 9mo ago
  It seems optimistic to me at this point that he could be replaced by a Republican not largely crafted in his image. It's possible, but I certainly wouldn't take it for granted.
  • Der_Einzige 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • shermantanktop 9mo ago
      Vance has zero of the charisma that Trump has for his voters. I can’t explain the charisma. I can’t even really describe it, but it’s real. Others have tried to replicate it with no luck.
      • mapt 9mo ago
        Vance will "have the charisma" of being the focus of the palace cult (around a quarter of the country) while Trump's corpse is still warm. These people aren't people anymore, they're cultist NPCs. They have suspended personal agency and independent reasoning about their interests in favor of the vibes, in favor of the grift, and in favor of arbitrary Strong Executive Leadership. They will say literally anything Fox News et al tells them to say. Vance's job was always to end democracy by replacing Trump with somebody more subservient to capital who could stay on-script, while seeming less crazy to liberals. He was practically raised for this. MAGA has been trained to water at the mouth when somebody jangles their keys, and will happily transfer their utter loyalty and devotion to somebody else who can jangle keys.
        • xp84 9mo ago
          > These people aren't people anymore This reads kind of like you see half the population of the country as subhuman. This is often used by radicals as the first step in justifying extreme measures to achieve policy goals that would be considered unthinkable otherwise. I know you think only the Right could be fascist, but most of the extreme left has become so distraught over their recent losses that they are losing most of their own ethics as well. "These people aren't people" is a shitty look when it's a white-supremacist saying it, and it's an equally shitty look coming from Team Blue.
• beloch 9mo ago
  MAGA will likely not die with Trump, and the Democrats have done their fair share to shaft Canada too. (If Jimmy Carter were still alive you could ask him about his family tree farm and what he thinks of softwood lumber tariffs.) As our PM recently said in Davos, the U.S.-led rules-based world order was a bit of a sham from the get-go. Certain countries were more equal than others. The rules were always flexible and they bent in favour of the U.S. most of all. Canada and other middle powers got an okay deal nonetheless, so we went along with it. That's over now, and "Nostalgia is not a strategy.". Now that we're always going to be four years or less from the next potential bout of American insanity, it's time to build a new order that is less vulnerable to big powers and more equitable for everyone else. An order in which the rules are applied more consistently and have teeth. That doesn't necessarily mean breaking out the feather quills and having a big shin-dig at Versailles though. It's doing lots of little things that shift our dependence to like-minded middle powers whenever and wherever possible. e.g. The white house has threatened other countries (including Canada) with tariffs in order to deter regulation or taxation of american software giants in non-U.S. jurisdictions. That makes dependence on these companies an exploitable (and already exploited) weakness. This is why governments, like France, want alternatives.
  • willhslade 9mo ago
    Wasn't Carter a peanut farmer? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter
    • beloch 9mo ago
      His family farmed a few things, including trees. Carter was on the record as a fan of soft-wood lumber tariffs, even though his term had come and gone by the time the softwood lumber dispute arose. There are democratic presidents who have done worse things to Canada than Carter. I singled out Carter because, today, he seems to be viewed as left-leaning (for a POTUS) and un-Trump-like.
      • kasey_junk 9mo ago
        Left leaning in the US has not meant international trade friendly, historically it’s the opposite. The Clinton/Obama branch of the democrats who were pro free trade are really the exception. That the Republicans sold out their business branch for cronyism and populism with MAGA may end up being the negative outcome of that movement with the longest negative ramifications (my thinking being administrations can change immigration policy easily and Trump is more the final nail in the rules based international order than the initiator of its demise)
• ycombinary 9mo ago
  [dead]
• ropable 9mo ago
  Trump has done/is doing generational harm to the perception of the US worldwide, to say nothing of US soft-power influence. It's going to take decades to rebuild that trust after he's gone, and we still have a couple of years of his term to run yet.
  • womitt 9mo ago
    Rebuild? Never Failing empires rarely peak twice...
  • ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
    Given that a sizeable percentage of U.S. people seem to still support Trump, I don't think trust is going to be rebuilt. There's also the massive issue of the U.S. political system that has been shown to have a fatal flaw - that would have to be fixed along with the broken two party system. I liken it to Germany rebuilding trust after WWII.
  • mlrtime 9mo ago
    > It's going to take decades to rebuild that trust after he's gone I see this over and over again, wish there was some way to bet on it. But it would be difficult in 10 years to say cause and effect. People have short term memories unless harmed very specifically / directly. Not indirectly affected.
    • jcgl 9mo ago
      > I see this over and over again, wish there was some way to bet on it. One can play with bond markets and various ETFs or other derivatives, depending on what you envision. But even if your bet is qualitatively correct (that trust in the US ebbs for decades), it's hard to get the timing right to make an actual bet.
  • aa-jv 9mo ago
    Trump is just your latest excuse, American, but its not working. The rest of the world saw what Americans did to Iraq, and it has been downhill since then. You don't get to be the #1 funder of terror around the world and keep demanding glory and respect from the lackey nations you push around with those terror networks...
• kettlecorn 9mo ago
  The decades long level of trust in the US and its institutions was unprecedented and built off of the tremendous goodwill and momentum post WW2. It was an unusually high degree of trust, and now it's unusually low. Even if the US reverses its policies it will take a very long time to rebuild trust, and even then the historical warning marker of the Trump admin will be studied as a reason to never return to the prior level of trust. Without total trust software products are a natural target for any country that's thinking more about how to defend its own sovereignty. Policies and subsidies for locally built software that previously would have seemed frivolous or wasteful now seem prudent and badly needed.
  • mmasu 9mo ago
    yesterday in an article here on HN i read a wonderful dutch proverb: “trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback” seems it’s applicable to this case too. Sad to see decades of work being tore apart in a few months.
    • mlrtime 9mo ago
      Where does money land on that proverb? Meaning people have very short term memories when some sort of financial incentive is inserted.
      • balamatom 9mo ago
        Well, ask yourself where'd it get the horse
      • ben_w 9mo ago
        Trust is something you can give a price to. The higher the risk of e.g. a loan, the more interest it has to pay out to be worthwhile. The exact amount* is, as I understand it, governed by the Black–Scholes model. * probably with some spherical-cows-in-a-vacuum assumptions given how the misuse of this model was a factor in the global financial crisis.
  • ajjahs 9mo ago
    [dead]