• ddplf@szmer.info
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    7 hours ago

    Hot take, we’re being too harsh on her.

    As in, yeah, she should’ve know better than to accept that position. Clearly she didn’t realize that she’s being hired for being the next ivanka doll, she must’ve figured that she was in because she was so competent.

    Now I’m asking the real question - WHO GAVE HER THAT OFFER? Couldn’t they have predicted that she would fail so miserably BEFORE she was picked for the job? Or was the ivanka factor just wayyy too important?

  • BenLeMan@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Private Eye nails it again.

    That reminds me, I need to check for new episodes of Have I Got News For You. Ian Hislop is one of the wittiest people on television today and the banter between him and Paul Merton is always epic.

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Yeah so the reason Trump is allying with Russia isn’t because he’s Putin’s dog. Allying with Russia is a purely geostrategic decision meant to undermine BRICS which is the primary economic organization weakening American hegemony. The blue side of the American ruling class first aligned with the European bloc which sought to destroy or at least severely weaken Russia through the Ukraine war and economic sanctions partly because of the threat Russia could be militarily but mainly because of the threat to western global economic institutions like the IMF and World Bank that BRICS poses. Russian economic presence in Africa and West Asia is a direct threat to the imperial core’s ability to extract wealth from those regions. They do not wish to have competition, their economies can’t honestly survive that competition long term. This route is very obviously failing. Russia still exists, it is still economically strong, weakened a bit yeah but not unrecoverable. Europe isn’t though, Europe is pushing austerity on its people to fund a military build up.

    The red side of the American ruling class recognizes this failure and is taking a different route. It seeks to make an ally of Russia in order to isolate China and, ideally, create a new economic bloc with Russia to exploit the imperial periphery and make a semi-periphery of Europe.

    Personally I do not believe this route will work either but I do believe it is what they are hoping for. Entire nations do not decide their broad geopolitical decisions based on personal relationship.

    • Rothe@piefed.social
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      18 hours ago

      Leave it to the tankie to sanewash (although there is nothing sane about their rant) Trump.

      Absolute moronic tankie take, but completely expectable.

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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        12 hours ago

        It’s irresponsible and lazy to reduce your enemy to “insanity”. States are rational actors defending specific material interests of the ruling class that controls them. If we are dismissive of their subjectively rational worldview we will be blindsided by their actions and easier to manipulate.

      • ForeverComical@lemmy.ca
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        17 hours ago

        Yeah it’s nutjob conspiracy theories mixed with what seems like russian propaganda I don’t know. Trying to form patterns among the chaos is just what a human brain does but still…

    • NoForwadSlashS@piefed.social
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      20 hours ago

      Russia still exists, it is still economically strong, weakened a bit yeah but not unrecoverable. Europe isn’t though,

      Doubt. If Russia’s GDP is around the same as Italy’s, and is 20% of the total GDP of France, Germany and UK put together, I don’t see how that can be spun as “stronger than Europe”. It’s not even stronger than individual countries in Europe!

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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        12 hours ago

        I didn’t mean to imply that it is economically stronger than Europe as a whole. My goal was to present Russia as a significant growing economy in global competition to Europe through it’s connections independent of european control. Russia has vast material resources on its own and is allying with anti-european economic independence globally. Subjugating or destroying the Russian economy would be a significant blow to this movement.

        I do not mean to imply that Russia’s support for anti-imperialist movements in Africa and West Asia are entirely benevolent but it is a threat to Western imperialist economic systems.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      23 hours ago

      Entire nations do not decide their broad geopolitical decisions based on personal relationship.

      I see you’ve never heard of a dictatorship have you?

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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        23 hours ago

        Even in a dictatorship this is not the case. Kings would be killed by their nobles if they did not defend their interests. A dictator does not just get to do whatever they want, they have to meet the needs of their political base which they absolutely have. Often that political base is a military or cohort of oligarchs. They are not independent of these forces.

          • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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            12 hours ago

            Idk where you got the idea that I was saying dictatorships make the average working person happy and comfortable.

            • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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              11 hours ago

              Because you said dictators would be killed by the populace if the populace were unhappy with the dictator and therefore even dictators need to maintain an average happy level for the population.

              But that’s not true they just put the population in fear of their lives. They prevent rebellion by making rebellion dangerous.

              • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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                11 hours ago

                Kings would be killed by their nobles if they did not defend their interests. A dictator does not just get to do whatever they want, they have to meet the needs of their political base which they absolutely have. Often that political base is a military or cohort of oligarchs.

                Because you said dictators would be killed by the populace

                Do you think “nobles, oligarchs, and military leaders” are the same thing as “the populace” or “the average person?” Can you read?

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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        11 hours ago

        You can say that about any politician who supports improving relations with any country.

        If Nixon was a Chinese asset, how would his behavior look different? If Jefferson was a French asset, how would his behavior look different?

        Or really anyone who supports policies that benefit someone else, like, perhaps the Civil War benefitted Mexico or someone by weakening the US with internal strife so then, what, should we conclude that the abolitionist movement was driven by Mexican assets? Should we assume that people who protested the Vietnam War were Soviet assets? Should we assume that people protesting the Iran War are Iranian assets? It’s ridiculous.

        The question isn’t whether someone’s actions are consistent with some hidden motives or conspiracy theory, but whether they’re consistent with things that are already out in the open. It isn’t really necessary to come up with these speculations to explain why Trump does things when his motivations are explainable through things that are factual and plain to see.

        Also, if he were a Russian asset, he probably wouldn’t have armed Ukraine in his first term.

        • nieminen@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          I’m going to disagree slightly with your comparisons. Trump is openly admiring Putin and his policies, doing business with him directly and not through diplomats or proper house procedures. Actively weakening the US to the benefit of only our “adversaries”, especially Russia.

          If you laid down proof that Nixon or Jefferson were literal assets, I’d still be surprised. If you did the same for trump, I’d say “what else is new”.

          He repeatedly and transparently spreads Russian propaganda on his shitty xitter clone when he’s not busy posting ai slop and treasonous garbage.

          • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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            10 hours ago

            If you laid down proof that Nixon or Jefferson were literal assets, I’d still be surprised. If you did the same for trump, I’d say “what else is new”.

            That’s literally just your opinion. There are plenty of people on the right who “wouldn’t be surprised,” if it turned out that, for example, BLM protests were funded by China or someone. Because in their opinion, they went against the national interest, and in their opinion, there wasn’t a legitimate grievance for them to be organic.

            I don’t think there’s ever been a labor movement or an anti-war movement in any time in any country that wasn’t accused of being foreign assets. Because things like striking for higher wages causes economic disruption which benefits the enemy, and being a conscientious objector reduces the potential strength of the military and benefits the enemy. But there’s simpler explanations which are that people oppose war because war sucks and want higher wages because money can be exchanged for goods and services. This demonstrates that the logic is flawed.

            Trump is openly admiring Putin and his policies

            That doesn’t indicate that he’s a Russian asset, at best it indicates that he’s a Russophile. It is possible for a person to support Putin and his policies without coercion being involved, is it not? There are people out there who support all sorts of things, many of them, very bad things. But supporting a bad thing doesn’t mean they’re secretly being controlled by some foreign puppetmaster. It means that they disagree with me, either in terms of what effects the policies will produce or in terms of whether they value those effects positively or negatively.

            I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for y’all to understand that some people just think differently from you and have different perspectives. Or maybe you do understand and this whole “Russian asset” thing is performative, I can’t really tell.

      • Ginny [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        20 hours ago

        I actually quite like Private Eye when it isn’t being transphobic or homophobic or promoting vaccine misinformation. It does more good journalism around corruption than you’d think. But I think “libs” is an entirely accurate description of what they are.

    • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      If they ever stop they might leave themselves enough cognitive capacity to critically think about their political life and the actual results their philosophy has brought them, and then they wouldn’t be liberals anymore. So the Lib Leaders make sure the chorus never goes silent, just rotates from Russia bad to China bad to DPRK bad and back to Russia again. They’ll probably add the Sahel states to the list once enough Libs figure out where they are.